What are the most legitimate critiques of Buddhism that are a bit more sophisticated than the standard "muh void...

What are the most legitimate critiques of Buddhism that are a bit more sophisticated than the standard "muh void worship" samsaracuck reddit fare? I'm willing to debate anyone who can back up their claims.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtu.be/QTrJqmKoveU
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichiren_Buddhism
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Well the Buddha left his family for one

define buddhism.

Read this and you'll have it all.

is it unironically good user? I could go for a sf book that isn't shit.

Not an argument, since Buddhism is a system of praxis. "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him."

The concepts defined by the Four Noble Truths and the system prescribed to carry it out.

Very well, in that case the criticism of buddhism is that their claims have no clear basis, and are subjectively disagreeable. Craving and the things that buddhism seek to eliminate are not desirable to remove according to my subjective aesthetic and moral compas. I can't dismantle it more than that, because it isn't a real philosophical thesis, it's just someone presenting their opinions as an inherent truth

It's Zelazny. Everything he writes is good.

Buddhists and Stoics generally have the best way to live your life. However:

>hard to read texts
>lots of superstitious nonsense added to it
>Thousands of years of baggage

They both put the cart before the horse. They deaden the greatest virtues of the soul, so they can better emgage on the things that we only engage in in the forst place to better enjoy the things they have abandoned
There's no beautt in a life of restraint. A life well lived should be composed of highest highs and lowest lows

Dukkha signifies not only craving but a restlessness and dissatisfaction intrinsic to life, rooted in our desire for what is essentially impermanent. Beings have their principle outside of themselves: they must appropriate their environment to themselves, or perish. Hence the thirst of desire, to assert oneself as oneself in a world of centers.

Whether or not you feel your life situation is working out for you is irrelevant to the mechanics of desire and privation that undergird it: it's the same in you as it is in me, its just that your little bubble of equilibrium is holding steady now, but is fated to pop

No, the Stoic is the wave-beaten rock on the shore, the arahant is the air that can never be cut with a sword

It's not fun.

Spoken like a huge idiot fag butthead dork who is also a nigger nigger nigger nigger

>legitimate critiques
I've heard too many shitty buddhist "critiques" in my life. However one legit critique I personally have is lack of good argument surrounding the validity of rebirth and how karma works surrounding it. I get the practical application to this life, but not so much to next life. I understood that to be a Buddhist you have to (at a certain point) trust in Buddha's intuition simply because higher truths are not accessible to non-enlightened beings. I understood that trust is not blind faith but rather one built through the truths from the mundane. Indeed, I've never really encounted much of a logical issues or incoherence problems in many of the axioms/truths buddha presents as most are fairly reasonable/given with bit of meditation. My critique is just jumping from the mundane truth to the ultimate truths is bit too much to my own logical mind.

What's your take on this OP?

Why should anyone take seriously a man who weighed close to 400 pounds and preached about self discipline?

There are no more proofs of the supernatural elements being true than for other religions and without these buddhism doesn't make more sense than for example christianism without God or a more than human Jesus.

This is bait right?

No fancy shmancy soul stuff required. Your center just re-constitutes itself after death. The universe is an isolated system, energy is always recycled, and since I cannot be around to experience the absolute unconsciousness after death, it follows I am always "here" to know I'm here (unless enlightenment is pursued, but honestly enlightenment is just another name for the radical coincidence of transcendence and immanence). Also, no, there is no continuity of essence or personality or whatever.

The Buddha was a downright empiricist, if not physicalist (with some qualifications of course), so karma doesn't make an appeal to some objective moral standard. Simple causality. Do certain things, get certain results. No good or evil, only integrality vs. dissolution. Not punished for your anger, you're punished by it. Being caught in the snares of materiality is its own punishment

None of the practices rely on supernatural authority to work.

Nietzsche's critique. It's no coincidence that Buddhism first flowered in an ancient and tired civilization. The general stock had been worn down by centuries of warfare and legal restraint. Unlike the Vikings or the Arabs, certain Indian groups no longer possessed the qualities necessary to happy living.
>existence contains suffering, therefore one ought to seek annihilation
Only the mental type for whom suffering far outweighed the joys of life could believe this. Elsewhere, there were men living harsher lives and never thought to complain or worry.

Buddhism explicitly rejects annihilation is. Nirvana is not annihilation, it is wholeness, the extinction of everything that obstructs the coherency of the self. The critique would be more legitimate if the Buddha sounded like a defeatist, but he continually extols his followers to "higher and higher strengths" and to be a principle/island unto oneself, much like Nietzsche's concept of the Self in Zarathustra.

annihilationism*

>Buddhism explicitly rejects annihilation is. Nirvana is not annihilation, it is wholeness, the extinction of everything that obstructs the coherency of the self
The adjective before that word makes it pretty clear what I mean.
>much like Nietzsche's concept of the Self in Zarathustra
Nietzsche considered Buddhism as a sort of life negation. Its final purpose is as far opposed as possible to Nietzsche's hopes for humanity.

Nietzsche's idea of the self was closer to Buddhist anatman than he could have known. Both are nothing but the negative drive to overcome all determinate forms and identities.

Nietzsche's critique is based off of strawman/poor translation/understanding of Buddhism. Buddhism's translation work has been changed dramatically in the last half century.

>existence contains suffering
Its not existence contains suffering, but rather "existence is [suffering]". Suffering is just a common translation but the nuanced version includes everything distressful from the mundane to extreme.

>therefore one ought to seek annihilation
This is not a Buddhist position at all. While the first part of this statement is simple translation/nuanced problem, this bit is simply wrong. On a basic principle, Buddhism doesn't advocate existence and non-existence paradigm. In fact Buddhism outlines these two extremes as "wrong view." This is because existence/non-existence both have flawed axioms/presuppositions about the nature of the world. Nietzsche either didn't bother to read that or the understanding of Buddhism of the time is fairly superficial. This is why I've(others also) say Nietzsche's criticism is deeply flawed.

No one said annihilation of consciousness. The whole aim of buddhism is blissful annihilation.

The rest of your post fails to address Nietzsche critique even remotely.

That's very nice. Can you prove it? And can you prove that this dissatisfaction is undesirable? To my eyes, nothing could be worse than nirvana

Then if there is no annihilation proper, the argument is just semantics. Because the bhikkhu negates his identification with bodily desires, does that mean it's a life-denying philosophy?

>can you prove an intrinsically negative state is intrinsically negative

Come on bruh.

If the base of his argument is flawed its waste of time to address the top since the argument rests on flawed axioms about the nature of Buddhism.

The fact that you still believe Buddhism as being some sort of annihilationist belief (blissful or not) shows the whole problem is rooted deep down in your understanding of Buddhism.

>Then if there is no annihilation proper, the argument is just semantics.
The argument has nothing to do with any of this. It's life denying because it denies the urge to live and procreate and fulfill oneself. IT denies the joys of life and chooses instead to annihilate the passions and instincts, which have become a burden.

> (You)
>This is bait right?

No, not at all.
And regarding his "enlightenment". It is entirely possible that he had a stroke which led to an altered state of consciousness.
Here is an interesting Ted talk on the subject
My stroke of insight.
youtu.be/QTrJqmKoveU

>If the base of his argument is flawed
You never touched the base of his argument.

>can you prove something distressful is undesirable
No. That's just the axiom Buddha takes. If you believe suffering is good, then Buddhism is completely wrong. But there's still the rest of the world who will probably say suffering is a bad thing.

>But there's still the rest of the world who will probably say suffering is a bad thing.
And deny that life itself is suffering, preferring instead to believe that it merely contains it.

Something being unpleasant doesn't mean it's undesirable. A tragedy can be appealing, and a life without great catharsis of all sorts is a shallow life.

Nietzsche believes Buddhism is a life denying/annihilation belief system. That's his base. Its wrong.

stop playing hide and seek bruv, if you don't have anything, just leave

That's a different argument altogether.

>Nietzsche believes Buddhism is a life denying/annihilation belief system.
And it is. Its aim is annihilation of the appetites.

If I kill your whole family, that's makes you happy?

No, it does not deny joy or fulfillment, like I already told you, nirvana is a consummation of the Self, not its dissipation.

>In numerous contexts, the Buddha and other Arahant or Perfect Men are described as "having made the Self become" ... "as a mother fosters her son". This "making become" of the Self is an indispensable part of the Buddhist pilgrim's progress, and certainly no less so than is the corresponding negative task of putting a stop to all "becoming". To have completed the task is to have completed the other, and to have reached the goal: and "so", as Wordsworth days, "build up the being that we are"

The "fat Buddha" is a Chinese monk named Bodai you fucking mongoloid

Buddha never denied the value of suffering on the Path. Where are you getting half this stuff?

So we disagree on what Buddhism is. If you don't want to acknowledge there might be deficiencies in the your/Nietzsche's understanding of Buddhism then there is nothing to gain in arguing.

For the purpose of refining and bringing the Self into its own. Even Nietzsche in Zarathustra advocates this.

>No, it does not deny joy or fulfillment
You keep dancing around semantics. According to Nietzsche, whatever denies the appetites completely denies the passions of this world for a state of release.

If you want to understand, I believe this guyis saying that Buddhism is not annihilationist because it is more about shedding the burden of 'suffering' and 'craving', while also being realsitic about it. If you believe that being annihilated is the goal you are wrong because even if you attained Buddhahood, that existence would not be annihilation it would be nirvana as was previously described. Annihilating or being free of your own suffering and existence is suffering does not mean annihilating your own existnece.

>So we disagree on what Buddhism is.
>Nirvana literally means "blowing out, quenching, becoming extinguished
The Buddha disagrees with you also.
For the purpose of annihilating the conventional self in order to secure permanent blissful consciousness. The Buddha's self is consciousness and perhaps some accumulated karma, But even the latter is impermanent.

That's a complete misinterpretation of Nietzsche's thought. Nowhere does he advocate slavery to the passions, and yoking them under a higher will is precisely what ascesis is.

No, why are you so obsessed with happiness? But if you killed my whole family, being truly devastated would be preferable to indifference. Strong emotions, even negative ones, are preferable to any "middle path". It's like buddhists totally fundamentally miss the point of life in their pursuit of something worthless

>Nowhere does he advocate slavery to the passions,
No one said that he did. What the actual fuck is wrong with you people?

Extinction as in, the untying of the knots of ignorance.

You're accusing Buddhism of being life-denying for the same reasons Zarathustra says he loves the Overman: because he bends his lower self to a higher purpose.

>because he bends his lower self to a higher purpose.
And a completely different purpose

Yes, that does make sense but Buddhism advocates for the higher satisfaction that is harder to quantify. The reason why the blanket word 'desire' makes you think that passions are denied is because ambition is certainly a virtue. But you the desire to live a Buddhist lifestyle is a desire that is not a 'craving'. Because in a Buddhist lifestyle there is peace with gain or loss, thus thsi desire is free from 'craving'.
And by no means is attempting to attain nirvana a state of release, practically it obviously involves a lot of work which is why so much focus is put into meditation and an ascetic lifestyle.

>The reason why the blanket word 'desire' makes you think that passions are denied is because ambition is certainly a virtue. B
The passions are certainly denied, being drives tied to the ego which Buddhism seeks to disintegrate.

>Nirvana literally means "blowing out, quenching, becoming extinguished
>The Buddha disagrees with you also.
Nirvana doesn't mean annihilation of life. Try again.

A higher purpose nonetheless, that calls for great strength of will and discipline. What's life-denying about it? Isnt life-denial weakness, timidity, cringing before life instead of trying to conquer the self? Come on.

No, only unwholesome passions are denied. See the distinction between desire as thirst and desire for higher states.

>Isnt life-denial weakness, timidity, cringing before life instead of trying to conquer the self?
It depends entirely on what your first principles are. Nietzsche's argument is that those of Buddhism are wrong. I presented that argument but no one has addressed it yet.

You've been proven wrong repeatedly. You're relying on distinctions the Buddha explicitly disavows.

>ego which Buddhism seeks to disintegrate
I get a striking suspicion you're pushing sort of weasel narrative.

Buddhism isn't about disintegrating the ego. Buddha state ego is an illusion as in there is nothing to disintegrate. What is shattered is the belief that ego has an existence.

>You've been proven wrong repeatedly

>I get a striking suspicion you're pushing sort of weasel narrative.
Probably because, like most "Buddhists" on this website, you've swallowed the doctrine hook line and sinker.
>Buddhism isn't about disintegrating the ego.
I never stated the ego was a unified "thing." Buddha's conception of the ego is not much different than Freuds. It is a series of drives, perceptions, illusions, etc. Buddha seeks to eliminate these "bonds," as he sees them. Nietzsche's criticism of this is something I've supplied, but it still hasn't been mentioned by a single one of you.

Just so this doesnt go in circles, the non-exstence of the ego does not prevent endeavoring to live a virtuous life in the present. In fact, it puts into perspective the multiplicity of lives you will live and as a result may make you want to help them along the karmic path. It may make you want to do all you can because you know you are fleeting

Try again cock licker. Your God was a fat, slovenly pig.

Why do people paint pictures of hell and suffering, watch horror movies and tragedies, and so on, if negative emotional catharsis is without merit? Beauty is nuanced and beauty is ultimately the greatest virtue that all other virtues are ranked by how much they facilitate this "prime virtue".

Alright fine, mention Nietzsche's criticism please. Is it that eliminating desire removes passion which makes life worse?

And you've still yet to present a good argument for why the extinction of the false self is life-denying, besides the language of negation that always gets Nietzschebois like you sharting

...

What was Nietzsche's criticism on this again?

Here you go cock licker. Here is your God.

Basically, Nietzsche held that the view that life consists mostly of suffering was totally subjective, and that it tells us nothing about the world and everything about the person making such claims. He observed that such views tended to originate with persons who were mentally "degenerate" or, in the case of Buddha, from a member of a gentle, worn out and highly civilized race. Such persons would naturally see great suffering where the vigorous wouldn't stop to take notice. Ex: Buddha lives an easy life, but saw so much suffering that he commenced his journey. The vikings lived immensely strenuous lives, but tended not to see themselves as trapped in suffering.
There is no way objective way to compare the amount of joy and suffering in life.
>for why the extinction of the false self is life-denying
Because it looks beyond this world and this life. It denies that one's purposes can be contained within a life and seeks to eliminate the present drives to any worldly purposes. It is therefore, life denying

First of all, dukkha is more an ontological property of existence than a subjective aversion to suffering.

Second, nirvana is not transcendence. It does not look beyond this world or this life. This is plain wrong.

"Before enlightenment, mountains were mountains. During enlightenment, mountains were not mountains. After enlightenment, mountains were mountains"

>It does not look beyond this world or this life
Its literal aim is never to be reborn in such a manner of life.

No, there is no "other" world, there is only the polarization of an originary, nondual state through ignorance. Samsara is nirvana, nirvana is Samsara. There is no life-denying transcendence proper in Buddhism, only the coincidence of immanence with transcendence, which even Nietzsche's Overman shares, since it is specifically the transcendence in and of the earth

Well, I would say that the most accurate way to measure suffering would be analyze where suffering is present in everyone. Everyone suffers because of greed, lust, jealousy etc. These are the things that plague society no matter if they are advanced or not. The reason vikings complain about it less is for the reasons you said but that does not mean it isn't present. So the phrase existence is suffering means that to exist will be to suffer in some way or another. The part about existence being mostly suffeirng is because there is greater potential for suffeirng than happiness.
If vikings move beyond their hardship and instead commit to building a better civilisation then that is one step on teh right path. If they are caught up in tribal war, raping and pillaging then they're in some ways giving in to the bad kind of desire

>which even Nietzsche's Overman shares
You're far out of your depth here. Nietzsche's overman says yes tot the passions.
One could say the same for joy imo

>there is greater potential for suffeirng than happiness.
This is not quantifiable, nor agreeable

yes, so the joy is not eliminated but rather replaced by a wholesome satisfaction by choosing to live a lifestyle that focuses on the virtues previosuly mentioned in this thread.

>You're far out of your depth here. Nietzsche's overman says yes tot the passions.

And the Buddha says neither yes or no. You're out of your depth too.

checked
I started talking to a froup of Nichiren Buddhists, they told me that their form of buddhism is based on embracing life to live to the fullest. For desires, desires are something that are human in nature and to deny it is to deny the human reality. instead desires (or dreams) can be used as fuel, a catalyst to embrace life even further.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichiren_Buddhism

What i mean is, don't you think it is easier to make a mistake and fail rather than work hard to attain success? Don't you think that there is more laziness and dissatisfaction because fulfillment and working towards happiness is harder? And if you mean just trivial happiness, what do you remember more, every fun time in childhood, or the one tragic breakup?

>And the Buddha says neither yes or no
I see. So how many consorts does he recommend?
And there is no way to compare this with the lost joy

>its all relative man
>vikings didn't experience suffering
>buddha is just a cry baby
>i'm a robot
No wonder people call Nietzsche a hack. What a retard.

*group of...

>I see. So how many consorts does he recommend?

>what is the Middle Road

>What i mean is, don't you think it is easier to make a mistake and fail rather than work hard to attain success? Don't you think that there is more laziness and dissatisfaction because fulfillment and working towards happiness is harder?
No and no.

A road leading, ultimately, away from sexual lust, even if it accepts it temporarily.

like i said, joy is not lost its form is changed. Of course it isn't everyone's cup of tea to live like a monk but thats true for every religion, the minority of followers are the most devout. Its not like humor is gone and its not like actively . For example eating deliciosu food all the time can be a bad desire because it encourages attachment to the food and if you are deprived of it you will feel more suffering than when you ate it all the time and were used to it in complacency. However eating good food occassionally allows you to appreciate its tatse but not focus on desire for it, in taht way moving beyond desire. Its not like Buddha never laughed at a joke, his happiness can better be described as satsified appreciation imo.

You really don't think it is easier to be lazy, the definitve easy way out?
What is your opinion about my third question?
Maybe it can be interpreted another way. The question becomes: Which do humans remember more in the short term, joy or sadness? What do people do more of: complain or praise?
So it can be said to mean existence as we perceive it is mostly suffering.

Once again you're making the newbie mistake of assuming the moral precepts advise against x because x is intrinsically wrong, and not because x is usually detrimental to the willpower and discipline required to get going on the Path

Negation for any purpose is still negation

My criticism against Buddhism is entirely in the fact that while its metaphysics are solid its morality is questionable.

Its true that reality is one of Becoming, one defined by Impermanence, Dissatisfaction, and A Lack of Essence. These things are simply true.

However the 'error' of the Buddha is that he seeks the Unconditioned. Having defined the Unconditioned as desirable, his philosophy makes perfect sense, but I see no reason why the Unconditioned should be seen as desirable.

As other advocates of Nietzche have pointed out, the Eightfold Path is not the ONLY possible response to the Three Marks. Another possible response is embracing Becoming, accepting the inherent impermanence of reality, and fighting and dancing your way through.

Unless one accepts the 'spiritual' side of Buddhism [rebirth, Nirvana as universal perception, etc], there is no reason to accept the desirability of the Unconditioned [which others have noted from a mortal standpoint is effectively dissolution].

What? Does not the Overman negate the "thou shalt" of society? Your argument is literally semantics.

>You really don't think it is easier to be lazy, the definitve easy way out?
People aren't generally lazy, so if "easy" in this context means the path of least resistance, the natural flow of the river that is human behavior, then no, being lazy isn't the easiest thing to be, cause naturally people will be productive.
People complaining isn't an indication that they suffer, it is an indication that they aspire for better. Criticism is simply more productive than praise.
Your third question is silly to me.

A lot of joy with a lot more suffering is always preferable to a little joy with no suffering

>However the 'error' of the Buddha is that he seeks the Unconditioned. Having defined the Unconditioned as desirable, his philosophy makes perfect sense, but I see no reason why the Unconditioned should be seen as desirable.

Good thing Buddha actually uses negative semantics instead. Buddha isn't advocating for "desire the unconditioned" but rather dissolution of the desires that causes the suffering.

Negation of passions is negation of passions

>but rather dissolution of the desires that causes the suffering.
And the greatest joy, from the point of view of a Nietzche