/polpol/ - Politically Incorrect Discussion

Buddhism is great for philosophy. Quite a few religions are. I think if you read into it like a philosophy book, and just ignore all the magic, you'll get the most out of it. Agnosticism is the way to go.

>>13358

Yeah, that's what it seems like. As a philosophy it holds a lot of beliefs and ideas that are in line with my own. Plus it seems to encourage questioning of its beliefs, which is paramount to me. Are there any other religions with similar schools of thought? Jainism and Hinduism follow the same vein of thought as Buddhism, but they are more packed with gobbledygook.

>>13357

>Which religions are the most grounded in reality? Secondly (and I'm aware of the irony of this question) which religion out there doesn't require a massive leap of faith and blind belief?

Really, there isn't one. Since both of us are atheists I guess the reason you didn't choose a religion is exactly because you wanted some sort of proof, but just didn't receive it.

Buddhism despite what wikipedia or the other sources say actually isn't a religion, but a philosophy, only a few sects and branches are actually religious. Buddhism doesn't worship Buddha or someone else, doesn't pick a creator of the world, it isn't organised or led by someone ( Well some could argue that the holder of the Dalai Lama title could be a figurehead, but still ), its simply a philosophy.

And its good that your interested in it, the more viewpoints you get, the clearer picture you get.

As for hinduism, just ask yourself - Do you really believe that all the 100s of gods exists? Ofcourse not, but again if your interested only in the philosophy go with it. Im not familiar with hinduism, but you'll see that buddhism was influenced by this religion.

Reading what you said, I think you might also be interested in Daoism.

>>13362

That seems to be the path I'm headed on. Obviously all the magic and a hundred gods flying around in Hinduism are bullshit, which is why I'm more interested in Buddhism, since it cuts a lot of the Hindu crap out. I'll definitely try to read into Taoism this week or this weekend if I can't make the time for it.

In a similar vein, outside of religions, are there any other philosophical schools with similar tenets? I know of stoicism, and so far it's the one philosophy that I truly agree with.

>>13357

Religion is the natural result of wisdom. One man divines wisdom, and he teaches it to his few. They, having secondhand knowledge of the wisdom, then preach it to many. In each successive teaching, the truth is diluted, until you have the blind leading the blind. This is organised religion.

Don't think that you have to subscribe to a particular religious belief. You will be much more successful in finding some fulfilment if you view each religious tradition in parallel, as their commonalities will surprise you and give you a greater insight into the true nature of reality. For example:

>Buddhists believe in 'nirvana', a state of complete and total enlightenment, or perfection

>Christians believe in 'the kingdom of God', or heaven on earth, in which God in his divine form becomes immanent in all human existence and mankind achieves unity with the divine, effectively redeeming and ultimately saving mankind and banishing the world from sin – read: complete and total enlightement, or perfection

>Hindus believe in 'brahman', an ultimate divine state of the universe – read: a state of complete and total enlightement, or perfection

>Platonists believe (with varying differences, but essentially) that life can be split into two forms of existence: spiritual, or higher existence, and material, or lower existence, and we must strive to achieve and capture this spiritual and noble font of goodness in our lives – read: complete and total enlightement, or perfection

Surprise surprise, despite their differences, all mankind has zeroed in on this perennial truth. Now, isn't that food for thought?

>>13363

Stoicism is the obvious choice, I was about to suggest it when you said it. I would also recommend checking Epicureanism and other Greek/Roman philosophy strongly. They had a competitive marketplace for philosophy that produced results with similar success to modern markets for goods.

The 'death' of their ideas with the coming of Christianity has a major advantage in that they don't pick up the cruft any active religion/philosophy seems to and the age does nothing to hurt ideas so fundamental to what humans are and how they live. Of course there is a tragic cost in lost works, and you likely have to DIY with no live teacher.

"Outer Space and Inner Space"

>>13365

This is one of the things that has fascinated me most about religion, and partly what caused me to want to seek them out and learn. The shared commonality amongst religions that developed independently of each other is interesting. Although I'm not sure if it is because of some kind of eternal truth and higher existence, or that they have some ancient predecessor, or that human can't handle their own mortality and thus come up with. Those, thus far, are the possible explanations I can think of.

Before I would have just accepted the third explanation, but the first and second explanations are starting to sound a lot more reasonable the more I've been reading. The common ancestry of Abrahamic religions and ancient Canaanite religions is pretty obvious and definitely accounts for all the commonalities we see amongst them.

What seems to set Buddhism and other religions from India apart from the other religions that I know of is their explanation of time. They believe time is more like a wheel than the straight line we perceive. Interestingly enough, this view of time that the ancient Indian religions champion seems to be the most compatible with our current scientific understanding of the universe.

I guess the next question I should pose in this thread is who or how did the concept of cyclical time arise in ancient India? We naturally perceive time as linear, and science has only just relatively recently acknowledged that the universe may in fact be cyclical in nature.

>>13366

I did a quick preliminary read on Epicureanism and it definitely sounds appealing as you said so. And as far as the DIY aspect of this, I think I might prefer it this way. I don't want to get a muddied view of a philosophy or religion because of people's personal biases. My girlfriend, for example, talks wonders about post-modernism, and I had no idea what post-modernism truly was until I began doing some learning on it in a thread on here. Needless to say, I'm not a fan of post-modernism to put it lightly.

>>13368

I'll try to see if I can make the time to watch this in its entirety tonight. Thanks for the link anon.

>>13357

agnosticism is just saying you dont know and cant know

>the non-theistic beliefs of Buddhism and cyclical nature of the universe are attractive to me

these cyclical ideals and kharma nonsense are attractive to being lazy and just letting it all happen because "it will continue happening"

nothing gets good when good people just let "things take care of themselves"

> hell

jewish ideal of torment

>my opinions

I view religion as a man made system of control. I say this as one who has an unwavering belief in the eternal God.

What we have today are a means to control people through their faith. I spent the first ten years of my life as a believer studying and exposing cults. I (with others) have helped people out of some nasty places and really saw the underbelly of my country, but after time I noticed the same bullshit going on in my church….so I went to a new church, and then another, and so on……

I have studied so many religions I know more about most of them than their followers do. I saw patterns of control and manipulation weaving them all together. People are just too self centered to lead anything without it corrupting them.

>you want to test a man give him power

If you stick just to holy writings you would be better off. Most seem to be benevolent with just a dash of wackiness. Some books are just obviously written by selfish men (The Quran, The Book of Mormon, Dianetics all come to mind…..I honestly could not finish Dianetics). The most interesting and disturbing is the Bible. It is a history of men's failures instead of their successes, but it is also very much about the ugliness of man. If read I recommend skipping the genealogies and re-translate "jew" back into Judean because that is the original word.

I was an atheist who on a silly dare challenged God to make himself real to me. He did, but that is not a story that I share. It gave me a faith that I can not kill, but this world is not longer about faith. If you decide to take a spiritual journey collect all the texts you need and get away from it all. Take some time to get away from everything if you can so that you can relax and meditate. Fasting, juicing, or detox diets for more than a week are also excellent since they really clear the mind…..now I'm starting to sound like a hippy…..I hate hippies.

Either way no man and no argument will convince you. I have pulled people from the fire only to see them jump right back in and then attend their funerals.

This is your journey. I wish you peace on it.

Go make a /religion/ board and argue about n0thing there, faggot. saged

The great thing about Buddhism is the staggering range and complexity of doctrine and praxis. You can go the simple, austere route of Zen or Theravada, or you can grok out on the intricacies of esoteric Vajrayana in Tibet and elsewhere, with their thousands of deities and mandalas and enormous libraries of ancient commentaries and commentaries-on-commentaries. It's just a lot of fun to explore and there is an inexhaustible amount of material to work with, suitable to any temperament or proclivity.

>>13457

You need to read more, grasshopper. Here is a good tip of the iceberg to start with:

http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Part-2-12.htm

The Buddisto-Natsoc rabbit hole is deep and twisty indeed.

>>13438

I can see that there is a lot of wisdom in your words, and your thoughts on the spiritual journey reflect my own in many ways. I still doubt that I'll find god or anything of the sort, but I would like to achieve enlightenment in the buddhistic sense. That is a journey that one can only take for themselves.

>>13357

>>13357

I see religion as nothing more than the history, teachings and wisdom of the revered ancients. Therefore it is the greatest source of knowledge available today as it illustrates the path that all others branch from.

Also your views on Buddhism seem to be the westernized version that seeks to remove all of the higher nature of the dharma to make it more attractive to westerners.

>>13487

Oh yeah, I'd have to agree with you there. That's why I'm iffy on the whole thing because I don't to end up as THAT guy.

>>13391

>science has only just relatively recently acknowledged that the universe may in fact be cyclical in nature.

You shouldn't need "science, the entity" to develop your understanding of the universe for you. All it takes is a keen eye to see that everything in existence operates on a basic principle of rhythm, cycles, and so forth.

>Orbits - at both the galactic and atomic scale, and everything between

>Economies

>Homeostasis

>Circle of life, lunar cycles

>Music

>Electrical signals

>Seasons, day/night, climate, migration of animals

>Rise and fall of empires

The ancients had this knack for wisdom.

>>13597

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRGzJg5A3m8

Forgot to attach.

>>13598

The arguments and debates surrounding consciousness are incredibly interesting. I have heard from friends that there are some theories on how consciousness continues through death. It could be possible that religions picked up on this, and then added onto it. However this is just hearsay from friends, so I may be talking out of my ass.

I just say I'm agnostic to avoid the shitstorm of other peoples beliefs even though I lean more towards the atheist side of things, but I can't fucking stand 90% of atheists I meet as they are all fedora tipping "enlightened" beings. I respect all religions (even Islam to an extent) but if I had to pick a religion It would be Buddhism.

>>13907

https://youtu.be/gg85IH3vghA

Let's just say that you are a group/body of information. We know that the world has at least 10-11 dimensions.

When you stop being in the 4th dimension (past-present-future), what dictates whether you disappear from the others or not? After all, you only disappear in one axis after a certain point..

Time is just a measure. Our observations affect things beyond time - I'd say this points to the direction of us being important in the fifth dimension at least.

Example:

>"double slit experiment" via photons refracting from a distant galaxy.

>Source - Galaxy (refracting) - satellite - us.

If we look at the galaxy in general, we see that an individual photon goes through all potentials, whereas if we look at the individual routes, the photon goes through only that, despite the speed limit of information (making this.. beyond time; beyond 4th dimension)..

Add to this the fact that we have a caused world with 'no explanation' - all the theories seem to be wishful thinking with piled up theories and hypotheses..

>>14206

They are the same archetype of human responsible for all the witch hunts etc.

Make this clear to them, and hilariousity ensues.

Besides, they can't prove logic, they can't prove empirism, not their own reason beyond the tool value. They have no real arguments over what caused this world, why certain things are 'evil' or 'bad' or even 'preferable' - latter becomes a mere tool as well, losing all real meaning. Despite this, they have strong opinions on how things should be.

I'm a deist. It means I am open to non-theistic principles on the laws of nature but I see the presence of God through the sacred geometry of nature. I see god as more of a collection of forces which run throughout our reality and study the building blocks of nature as evidence (not scientific to me, more of awe and piece of mind). Deism and athiesm share a blurred line but I do believe in a higher force than just nature as we see and analyze it and I also believe that some mysteries of the universe cannot be unravelled.

>>13362

You're showing your ignorance here. Buddhism is a religion with monasteries, missionaries and holy scriptures (sutras such as the lotus and heart sutra). Philosophical/Humanist (atheist) Buddhism is a relatively recent invention. It's true they don't focus on most divine deities but for example Pure Land a very popular grouping of Mahayana Buddhism basically believes in a Western Paradise akin to Heaven and Tibetan Buddhism are rife with divine beings.

Hinduism is just a western label for Sanatana Dharma or Eternal Law which basically states that all those 100s of gods are emanations of one unchanging deity known as Brahman.

If you believe in an unchanging eternal immaterial spirit/soul than Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism is very grounded in "reality". Gnosticism is basically a Western school in the way of Hinduism.

If you don't believe in a spirit/soul then Buddhism is more grounded in "reality" for you specifically Zen/Chan Buddhism as it doesn't abide by any scriptures just Koans (Riddles) and Meditation.

The way you worded your question is very loaded as it depends upon the persons philosophical/theological beliefs.

The arguments for God that are most reasonable to me are the Uncaused Cause or Prime Mover from Aristotle and Aquinas. The closest you'll get to a mathematical formula is for God is from Godel.