I'm a Buddhist who never meditates

I'm a Buddhist who never meditates.
I'm called a "fake Buddhist" in the West.
But in East Asia, 99% or more Buddhists are like me.
But Westerners know better what Buddhism is, right?

Anyway, ask me anything about Pure Land Buddhism!

Other urls found in this thread:

selfdefinition.org/tantra/Yamasaki-Shingon-Japanese-Esoteric-Buddhism.pdf
twitter.com/AnonBabble

How do you expect to escape Samsara then?

Buddhism is cancer and should be removed from East Asia

What's the difference between nirvana and atheistic death?

If there is no self, then what transmigrates to the next life?

Why did't the buddha just kill himself?

I swear I just do not understand buddhism at all. it seems to me that the buddha should have just disproved reincarnation to himself, and the he could of just happily killed himself and never suffered again

>Pure Land
About as Buddhist as Mormonism is Christian, probably even less.

In the next life.

Why?

>What's the difference between nirvana and atheistic death?
Nirvana is described in the Nirvana Sutra as "Self, Purity, Bliss". It is not the nothingness of the nihilists. The atheistic death leads to reemergence.

>If there is no self, then what transmigrates to the next life?
Observe a river or a flame. It's never the same, it's always different; yet it's always the same. Thus you are like a continuum, like a stream.

>Why did't the buddha just kill himself?
Rebirth.

>About as Buddhist as Mormonism is Christian, probably even less.
Thank you, Westerner, for teaching us about our own religion.
Pure Land is the most widespread form of Buddhism in China & Japan, and thus it is the most dominant form of Buddhism in the world.
That makes it closer to Roman Catholicism as it is the most widespread form, and not Mormonism which represents only a tiny fraction of believers.

How do you pronounce the amidabutsu?

Na Mo A Mi To Fu?

What do you think about Tientai?

Nah Theravadas are like Catholics and Mahayanas are like Orthodox but the really it's all a much different development. Any how Pure Land Buddhism does resemble Christianism more. Zen is like the Buddhist Lutheransim or maybe Calvinism.

Human birth is extremely rare, the next life for you probably means moving up or down the planetary spheres. The next human birth means millions of years from now, you'd be a fool to waste this life. Part of the entire basis of Buddhism is its practice, dry philosophy and mental speculation won't help you at the time of death.

You really shouldn't comment on things you don't know anything about : (

>Zen is like the Buddhist Lutheransim or maybe Calvinism.
Really?
And not the Pure Land of Shinran that literally uses the term "faith alone"?

>How do you pronounce the amidabutsu?
"Namu-Amida-Butsu" (I follow the Japanese traddition)

>What do you think about Tientai?
The most philosophically advanced system.

No. A person of shinjin attains birth in this life. It means that while one is still alive here, one already attained birth in the Pure Land if the sincere entrusting faith (shinjin) aka. settled mind (anjin) arises in him. Then it's just a matter of the process unfolding. One is assured that one is already in the stage of Non-Retrogression. It's not about guessing or hoping ... when you have shinjin you KNOW what your destiny is.

Theravadas - More centralized than Mahyanas and have less pizzaz and shimmer in their ritual.
Mahayanas - Less centralized and have a large cult of Bodhisattvas similar to saint cults which also look stronger in Eastern Orthodoxy.
But to be fair Mahayana domains are where a lot of the divergence has generated which is comparable to western Christendom's history.
Zen is equatable to mainline Protestantism by being a later medieval refinement of practices and tradition.

No, sorry. Nothing you say makes any sense.
The closest to Protestantism would be the Pure Land Buddhism of Shinran, as it teaches "faith alone" (sola fide). Reliance on only faith through a gift of Grace, not through good works. Many scholars have noted a striking similarity between Luther/Calvin and Shinran.

There are no similarities between Zen and Protestantism.

Protestantism teaches realiance on scriptures (Sola scriptura). Zen teachies non-reliance on scriptures.

Protestantism teaches faith alone. Zen teaches gnosis (/prajna) instead of faith (pistis).

Etc. etc.

Could be Pentecostalism or some other kind of Evangelicalism also.

It's not very Catholic in that case.

The thing I will never understand is stoner, sex-positive Western Buddhism.

Isn't Buddha's main point that craving for sensual pleasures lead to suffering and that you should try to reduce those cravings?

Wth were do yo encounter these outside of the 60's?

>Pure Land is the most widespread form of Buddhism in China & Japan, and thus it is the most dominant form of Buddhism in the world.
That has nothing to do with its closeness to traditional Buddhism or even just the teachings of Buddha. Way to miss the analogy.

>closeness to traditional Buddhism
Define "traditional Buddhism".

> just the teachings of Buddha.
Define "the teachings of the Buddha"

---

Please define these.

>Define "traditional Buddhism".
Salvation through meditation as one's own effort is a good place to start.
>Define "the teachings of the Buddha"
He taught many things, and chanting a name in hopes of being reborn in a paradise where achieving liberation is a shoe-in was not one of them.

>Salvation through meditation as one's own effort is a good place to start.
That is your arbitrary definition. Why do you think that is traditional Buddhism?
Traditionally only monks meditated. Lay followers did not, except rare cases.
>He taught many things, and chanting a name in hopes of being reborn in a paradise where achieving liberation is a shoe-in was not one of them.
Nor does Pure Land Buddhism claim that.
Let me ask you this: did the Buddha teach the existence of paradise and hell?

>Why?
They corrupted the social fabric of China, making son go against fathers, subject to ruler. Doesn't even count the fact that Buddhist monk does not give anything of value to the people, they are in fact a burden to society and have to rely on other hard working people to support their degenerate lifestyle.
It is nothing but a foreign mourning cult.

Do you have/ know where to find any good images of the Sukhavati?

I'm looking to use them for visualization. Google gives mostly boring tibetan thangkas

The only pure land school that officially sucks and is a mormon tier money scam is the Sokka Gakkai

>Traditionally only monks meditated. Lay followers did not, except rare cases.
Meditation isn't a monk only rule, it's right there in the eightfold path. The monks have a lot of additional requirements but meditation isn't one of them. Eightfold path isn't a monks only teaching, it's the very simple foundation everyone's supposed to have.

selfdefinition.org/tantra/Yamasaki-Shingon-Japanese-Esoteric-Buddhism.pdf

It's irrelevant. You're doing the mistake of taking a specific Sutta and making it normative.
I am talking about how most Buddhist in history lived in PRACTICE.
Jesus Christ tells people to sell all they have and follow him. He tells people to turn the other cheek. He tells people to follow every letter of the Law, etc.

How many Christians do these things?

So most Christians are not real Christians?

OK then.

Sokka Gakkai is not a pure land sect though, at least they would vehemently deny it.
They're a Nichiren Buddhist sect.

This isn't some random obscure passage we're talking about, it's the 8 very basic things you're definitely supposes to do. Christians don't do everything in the bible, but they mostly follow the 10 commandments.

>it's the 8 very basic things you're definitely supposes to do
Prove it.

the Noble Eightfold Path is only for noble persons (ariya-puggala) or the same, noble disciples (ariya-savaka) who have at least entered the stream to nirvana. In other words, the Noble Eightfold Path is not meant for puthujjana, that is, common people

Are you aware that Pure Land Buddhism has a lot of Manichaeist influence? Anyways, I like the imagery of Pure Land a lot. I am more Ch'an though. Granted, I do not like what Japan did to Zen in Meiji era -- they made it more family oriented, believe it or not.

Let me guess: You are South Korean, right?

is there any point to being a buddhism if you don't believe in reincarnation?

if the buddha didn't believe in reincarnation, wouldn't he have just killed himself to avoid suffering?

Nah based on buddhist doctrine he'd have lived as long as he could, helping others to kill themselves.
When everybody had killed themselves he would then kill himself.

>not meditating
>Buddhist

Pick 1

It's pretty weird how Christcucked South Korea is among the East Asians.

Buddhist dont claim reincarnation. Rebirth is however more accurate.

There is no entity that gets re-incarnated, passed through death, dies, is born, etc.

This

Reincarnation or transmigration of a soul or self is a hindu, jain, platonic, etc concept.

Not a buddhist one

Why do so many people still believe the buddhism = reincarnation meme? What texts outline rebirth as oppose to reincarnation? What's an easy way to btfo pseuds who maintain reincarnation?

How so? That sounds pretty interesting.

>Why do so many people still believe the buddhism = reincarnation meme?
New age influence in one side, complicated terminology in other.

>What texts outline rebirth as oppose to reincarnation?
I owe you that one, I'm not well versed in sutras to look for an exact passage, perhaps other user can. But...

>What's an easy way to btfo pseuds who maintain reincarnation?
... the idea of Anatman vs atman. Atman is the self in hinduism and jainism (the """soul""" so to say). Buddhism views it as anatman (un-soul / un-self). It explicitly considers that there is no self. The "rebirth" on itself is illusory, an error because the consciousness keeps trying to identificate with a body and with the actions (the karma, which is unexistant as well, as there is nobody doing the actions.

Buddhism considers more a "mental continuum" so to say. A chain of actions that create an idea of self with whom the mind identifies, creating the illusory idea of a being.

Confusion is due to translation issues.

>Why do so many people still believe the buddhism = reincarnation meme?
Because most people are convinced self exists, and if you're convinced self exists then you think rebirth is reincarnation, or that the idea of rebirth without self is somehow a contradiction.
>Confusion is due to translation issues.
Gautama Buddha made a point of repeatedly mentioning what he was teaching was really subtle and easy to misunderstand, so I think even before translation became a factor this topic was already one that a lot of people were likely going to screw up.
>It’s amazing, lord, it’s astounding, how deep this dependent co-arising… and yet to me it seems as clear as can be.
>Don’t say that, Ananda. Don’t say that. Deep is this dependent co-arising, and deep its appearance. It’s because of not understanding and not penetrating this Dhamma that this generation is like a tangled skein, a knotted ball of string, like matted rushes and reeds, and does not go beyond transmigration, beyond the planes of deprivation, woe, and bad destinations.

Not really, as no religion can always fulfill its promises to it's people there will always be people dissatisfied with their religion. Normally this doesn't matter to much because the organized religions of choice for any given government gets to force everyone to play along. In Western influenced lands of religious freedom however religions no longer have the ability to force people to remain in the fold so people will inevitably go searching for what their original faith was not giving them in another. Its why you see Americans go through different Protestant denominations like a box of tissues. In 50 years I bet we'll see a bunch of Koreans who grew up Christian look to Buddhism or Zoranastrianism or something when Jesus is no longer novel and hasn't let them down yet.

How does sunyata work exactly? How can the fundamental nature of reality be nothingness? How can emptiness exist without reference to something else? If something else does exist alongside emptiness, then why is Buddhism not dualistic?

Major US cities on the pacific coast.

>But Westerners know better what Buddhism is, right?
Yes, because it was created by Europeans in 19 century.

Emptiness doesn't mean non-existence. It just means nothing has an existence independent of other things. A thing only exists because it is made up of or came from other things. Take those other things away and the object in question ceases to be. In this way it is "empty" of any essential independent existence. All things are like this including mental constructs and physical things.

There's another stage of thinking after this where you realize even emptiness itself is empty. If you want to know the formal logic behind it look at nagarjuna's mulamadhyamakakarika. A more intuitive way of approaching the same thing is through dogen's shobogenzo.

You sound like an insufferable cunt.
Which is funny because Western Buddhist are among the most insufferable people in the world to begin with.

What is the difference between rebirth and reincarnation?

if there's no self that gets reborn, then what's even the point of buddhism? At death you will be released from samsara no matter what you do, so buddhism is pointless.

I'm pretty sure buddha believed in reincarnation, and you guys denying are just trying to apply a western lens to it. The whole purpose of buddhism is to not have to ever exist again, right?