this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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I always felt like Buddhism was more a philosophy than a religion. It can be used as a religion, but it really boils down to "Life sucks, but you can be happy if you stop thinking about how much life sucks".
Some sects are more dogmatic than others, with some woo woo metaphysical nonsense and ceremonial practices. Secular Buddhism though is definitely just the philosophy and practice of mindfulness that uses the same allegories but ditches the more problematic stuff.
There’s also Nirvana, so it’s more like “Life sucks. Rebirth sucks. If you follow the path of Buddha you might be able to break this cycle”.
I'm allergic :(
I never understood that part. Maybe the next life does suck, but so what? I'm not going to be there to experience it, and the next guy won't have any memory of me, so who cares? Reincarnation as a concept never made sense to me. You get a new body, your memories get erased... what is even left of you?
Your soul. If you believe in fairy tales, that is.
Even if I did believe in that, I still wouldn't care. Trying to destroy your soul by reaching nirvana so that it can't be reborn seems to me akin to trying to destroy your carbon atoms so that they can't be recycled into other organisms' bodies. I mean... you could, I guess, but why on earth would you care about that?
I have been to South East Asia and married a women from the Thervada tradition. If it isn't a religion I don't know what that word means.
Yes of course you can treat it like a philosophy. You can pretty much do whatever you want. I am pretty confident I can treat 3rd wave feminist thought as a metaphysics system if I put my mind to it, I am also confident that I could interpret a child's drawing via a Marxist-Hegelian lens. Anything can be modeled as anything else. I can model the sun and the banana. Both appear yellow to me, both have dark spots, both make human life more enjoyable.
The issue is if that means anything, is it useful to us? So yes you can go thru their 25 centuries of writing spread over an area 3x of Europe, with 4x the population. Filter out everything you want and keep only what you want. Then slap a label on it called Secular Buddhism. You can do this, but don't really expect us to all say what you are doing relates at all to what they are doing.
No offense but I don't think you've read any of the texts or seen any Bhuddist practice if you think so. The corpus of texts that belong to the different traditions are massive and Bhuddists have everything from prayer to pilgrimage. It's only not a religion if you ignore everything.
You could say the same about Christianity. "Life sucks, but you can be happy if you think about the fact that the suffering is temporary."
Absolutely not. Christianity is “Life sucks and will always suck unless you submit to what we say and only what we say, otherwise you suffer forever”
And Buddhism doesn't say that? The only difference is that Christianity adds "in hell" at the end of that sentence, Buddhism adds "in the cycle of death and rebirth".
Buddhists have near hells. Basically the same idea except it isn't eternity. There is debate about this but the number I have heard is 13 different hells.
Of course. Because otherwise rich people living a life of leisure might think life isn't so bad after all and they wouldn't mind reincarnating to live it again.
Meh I am neither and would take reincarnation if it was offered. Get to be a baby again, giant boob in your face whenever you are upset at anything. Doesn't seem so bad to me.
As opposed to Buddhism which constantly tells people that life sucks and will always suck unless you follow the Buddha (founder), the Dharma(Gospel), and the Sanghu (church).
Very different
It's more of "life sucks because the all knowing, all powerful, all loving deity is not so secretly a sadist who is constantly testing you to see if you're good enough"
True, but whether or nor the suffering is caused by a personal god or by impersonal cosmic forces doesn't really make any practical difference. Both religions claim, without any basis in fact, that the suffering is eternal and that they are the only way out.
Who says that they don't have a god who causes suffering? Ever heard of Maru? He is a godlike being, with red skin, and horns. He tempts people into sin and stops their salvation. According to their stories the Buddha during his time in the wilderness got tempted by him 3x and defeated him by argument. This story was recorded in the 6th century BCE
That feeling you have of the floor dropping out from under you is a normal reaction. Don't be alarmed.
Eh... that depends on which particular sect you're talking about. Some lean more heavily in to the supernatural than others.
As I asked before. Name 2 sects that do not have supernatural elements. Also you know that their holy writings do not back you up. Maru was not an allegory for them.
You may have asked that, but not of me. More to the point, I didn't say anything about sects with no supernatural elements, so I'm not sure why you're asking me to name examples of those. I said some lean more heavily into the supernatural than others. This conversation will go a lot more smoothly if you respond to what I'm actually saying instead of what you imagine I'm saying or what other people in other conversations you're participating in are saying.
Fine. There are some sects that have less woo.