What is the difference between eastern and western buddhism?

What is the difference between eastern and western buddhism?

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vividness.live/2011/06/24/protestant-buddhism/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyanatiloka
workshedpod.com/podcast/episode-32-the-skeptic-the-truth-the-dharma-with-douglass-smith
youtube.com/watch?v=yd1rCCWX0bo
youtube.com/watch?v=2KU-sSsSVow
youtube.com/watch?v=QOQiZbAPtW4
youtube.com/watch?v=-v-iNe1wVZ0
youtube.com/watch?v=Oi0V3Pycru0
youtube.com/watch?v=y2kuztpY9hA
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

I suppose geography.

Nothing. The dharma has no east or west.

Western Buddhism: Big blue eyes, buck tooth, pointy nose and glowing chin orbs.

Eastern Buddhism:Slit Eyes, chubby triple chin, pink lips.

vividness.live/2011/06/24/protestant-buddhism/

both shit

One has cultural baggage like Shinto/Animist/Vedic background.

Other has cultural baggage like Christianity/Judaism.

Cultural baggage everywhere.

The Western/Eastern distinction lacks subtlety.
For instance, France and Germany have specific history with
Buddhism (more/different authors translated, earlier than in the UK or the US) thanks to 19th century orientalism.
So it is a complicated question, Buddhism has been received and understood vastly differently each Western country.

This. Good Dharma Eye!

What the fuck does the left guy have on his chin? Pearls?

western buddhism is just another form of materialism and nihilism, eastern buddhism specifically denounces both

Western Buddhists tend to put more emphasis on meditation

thanks to They-who shall-not-be-named.

Actually it's the eastern one, precisely southeast asian Theravada one eg.Thailand Laos

what a joker - the Thai Forest meditative tradition only arose less than a hundred years ago precisely as a reaction against the solidified mainstream Buddhist tradition. This is still pretty fringe. Pretty much the same scenario in Burma. I.e. a recent invention.

Stop before making a fool of yourself.

>less than a hundred years ago
It's actually more than hundred years ago.

is this the pic with Gesù Cristo and the Buddha?

>buddha didn't meditate or teach meditation

Care to explain?

The hungry ghosts?

What country has the best buddhism? Isnt laotian super dumbed down?

No. It's a monk from central asia (sogdian, bactrian or tocharian) and a chinese monk, both buddhist. Thanks to the silk route buddhism was taken from India to China by central asian peoples who are now extinct and didn't look like east asians or modern turkic central asians.

k thanks govna

>Care to explain?

Buddha specificially adressed the materialist and annihiliationist views of his time and argued against them, teaching rebirth after death and the existence of spiritual realms and beings. Most western buddhists are atheists disgrunted with their christian or jewish backgrounds who are attracted to buddhism because of a conception that Buddha was a rationalist and an atheist who denounced religion and didn't believe in the soul.

But buddha specifically denounced superstitions, like gods, and no-soul / no self doesnt lend itself to the concept of rebirth after death.

Why do hinayana faggots always shoehorn gods/realms/supernatural into an otherwise kino philosophy?

You dont need to believe in that shit to become an enlightened human. There was a zen patriarch who specifically had no education regarding the otherwise retarded numerology/gods/whatever of indo-buddhism.

>taught the existence of spirit realms and beings

No he didn't. He reinterpreted pre-existing vedic beleifs and turned them into metaphors for present human experience (i.e 6 realms in wheel of samsara, each realm is a psychological state or position in life depending on one's actions, not an actual physical place one goes to). He never explicitly disavowed them because they were useful as pedagogical tools for the ignorant who may still take them literally. Once understanding starts to be achieved however, these 'rafts' are left behind for higher truths. A correct understanding of codependant arising, emptiness, non duality, etc, all necessarily exclude superstitious or supernatural beings or realms except as mental concepts which have no true reality in of themselves.

Rebirth =/= reincarnation

See nagarjuna's mulamadhyamakakarika, shintideva's bodhicayavatara, or ethics in early buddhism by david kalupahana for proof of this viewpoint.

>MORE emphasis

You've read it wrong. Or rather more accurately, you've read a westernized hippie nonsense.

Pali canon is full of things like Buddha talking to gods, acknowledgement of magic, heaven/hell, ghosts, etc

So what was Buddha referring to when he referred to reincarnation?

Pedant.

The point is it's quite recent in the larger scheme of things. If anything, the early Western Buddhists - mostly Germans, who became monks in Sri Lanka, for example, placed a lot of emphasis on meditation as opposed to ritual, and this helped form the meditation-heavy Western Buddhism we now know.

Both are trash, so nothing

May I have a source to read about the german monk? I'm quite interest.

Not that poster, and I disagree with his assessment/criticisms of so-called "western buddhism" but I believe he is referring to Nyanatiloka

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyanatiloka

There were quite a few; Nyanaponika Thera being one, Nyanatiloka being another. There are plenty of articles and books on them and this movement in general.

You will kindly note that I have not made any explicit assessment of so-called Westerm Buddhism, other than by way of contrast with the supposedly meditative emphasis of Theravada, a tradition which does not date all that long back.

There are plenty of possible criticisms of Western Buddhism, but since you don't say what specifically you disagree with, and I am not a mind-reader, I am at a loss as to how to answer your charges.

>There are plenty of possible criticisms of Western Buddhism, but since you don't say what specifically you disagree with, and I am not a mind-reader, I am at a loss as to how to answer your charges.

Admittedly I may have assumed you were another poster in this thread - however assuming you were not - the idea that "Western Buddhism" tries to re-interpret Buddhist teachings to be more compatible with secular-humanism and dismiss its supposedly superstitious baggage.

Now, although not entirely wrong it falls into the trap of failing to distinguish the Buddha's philosophical system from the various belief systems of the cultures that adopted "Buddhism" over the centuries.

rebirth

You won't find me defending the watered down "Buddhism" lite.

There is also the trap of ignoring the surrounding cultures and religious beliefs and practices, and making Buddhism out to be something that sprang from a void, or that existed in a vacuum. At best, a reaction to Brahmanism etc. We now know that that was not the case, see Paul Williams' Indian Buddhism book.

>There is also the trap of ignoring the surrounding cultures and religious beliefs and practices, and making Buddhism out to be something that sprang from a void, or that existed in a vacuum. At best, a reaction to Brahmanism etc. We now know that that was not the case, see Paul Williams' Indian Buddhism book.
Never read it but it sounds similar to the works of Richard Gombrich.

Imo is right on the money. Buddha, being a man of his era, was confined to the existing language and ideas of the time he lived and thus used this language to communicate his ideas.

redpilled buddhism is here
workshedpod.com/podcast/episode-32-the-skeptic-the-truth-the-dharma-with-douglass-smith
youtube.com/watch?v=yd1rCCWX0bo
youtube.com/watch?v=2KU-sSsSVow
youtube.com/watch?v=QOQiZbAPtW4
youtube.com/watch?v=-v-iNe1wVZ0
youtube.com/watch?v=Oi0V3Pycru0
youtube.com/watch?v=y2kuztpY9hA

Buddhas specifically talked about past lives

The pali canon was written 500 years later and is made up of a mixture of philosophical writings, rules for monks, poetry fantastical stories etc. It'd be silly to take it all at face value as "the teachings of the Buddha" or even "the teachings of Buddhism". Some of it is just art produce by the Sangha drawing on their own cultural traditions and surroundings.