• Phen@lemmy.eco.br
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    1 month ago

    Buddhism’s “Life sucks? Be nice and die and you’ll get a better one” sucks but it’s still better than “you should be nice to others, but that’s too much to ask so go be as awful as you want and just regret it later and that’ll be fine”. But even that was better than whatever the fuck people are interpreting from religions these days.

        • TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          Excuse me, if you actually understand the path and believe the point is being “nice”, then why the fuck are you talking to me like that? And if you don’t understand the path, then again, why the fuck are you talking to me like that?

          The eightfold path concerns “right” or “wise” or “virtuous” action… but what do those have to do with being “nice”?? Haven’t you heard that light and dark create one another?

    • Comment105@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Before Christianty it was also a lot of “killing people is just really fucking cool, actually”, which even as an atheist I still admit was worse.

      Not that Christians didn’t.

      But they made some sort-of-safe havens.

      • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        Christianity was revolutionary for suggesting that we are all equal in the eyes of the divine and suggesting that you can be forgiven.

        • BlueFootedPetey@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          Not a relgious scholar, but which religion taught that people are not equal in the eyes of the divine?

          I could believe the forgiveness thing maybe. Again, not a scholar.

          • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month ago

            Many of them as at the time notions of the divine backing whomever was in charge was common. Christianity explicitly states we are all equal in the eyes of God which includes everyone from the unwashed beggar to the emperor of Rome.

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        The Spanish missions have entered the chat. They actually sent people back to Spain when they said “yo, maybe Jesus wouldn’t be cool with us enslaving and murdering the locals”.

      • Phen@lemmy.eco.br
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        1 month ago

        Yeah. Personally I don’t see life as being “sacred” or anything and I think people should ultimately be free to choose to end their own if they really want to (provided they also get good support for trying to deal with whatever leads to that choice) - but it kinda scares me that this “sanctity” that is attributed to life is the only thing stopping people from being casually OK with murder.

        • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 month ago

          Perhaps it depends on your definition of sacred. Life is the only mechanism that we know of by which the universe understands itself. If you ascribe to free will, life is the only mechanism able to change the course of events that were initiated by the Big Bang. If you don’t ascribe to free will, then it is the only mechanism able to witness the course of events that were initiated by the Big Bang.

          That seems like something worth preserving in large, even if an individual life should be ended for compassion or justice. A life doesn’t have to be sacred, but Life seems pretty sacred to me.

  • topherclay@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    This guy doesn’t know the one about the pizza guy making him on with everything and then not giving him back and change. So he is angry cuz he didn’t get the anti joke.

  • MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    The hungry tiger jataka is my favorite

    "One day, the Bodhisattva and one of his disciples decided to take a stroll in the forest nearby. This had become a regular practice. They often went for strolls.

    While they were walking, the Bodhisattva notices something extremely terrifying. He saw a tigress, which looked weak and hungry. The tigress was about to devour her own cubs. Now, that moved the Bodhisattva’s heart. He did not want the poor animal to suffer the guilt of eating her own cubs. So, he came up with an idea.

    He sent his disciple back to do something. The Bodhisattva had decided that he would offer himself as food to the starving tigress. He simply could not let her eat her cubs. And he knew if his disciple had seen this, he would definitely stop the Bodhisattva from offering himself. You may also like to read, The Tiger And The Golden Bangle.

    After the disciple is gone, the Bodhisattva approached the tigress. With the utmost compassion in his heart and no malice, he let the tigress devour him. The tigress ate him and fed the cubs as well. After a while, the disciple returned. When he saw the Bodhisattva’s blood stained clothes, he realized what had happened.

    He knew the Bodhisattva well. So, he knew the hermit had offered himself to save the tigress. He went back and told his fellow disciples of the Bodhisattva’s sacrifice out of love and compassion. "

    • drolex@sopuli.xyz
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      1 month ago

      Upon seeing the blood stained clothes, the disciple said ‘Hey I was hungry, too! Fucking weirdo.’

      The disciple was named Colonel Sanders and this was his inspiration to invent the hamberder and never be hungry again.

      • ryedaft@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        Nah, they just get reborn. Like, ping

        The problem is that tigers have a taste for Bodhisattvas now.

    • Juliee@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Yeah well this is why I think that kind of shit is not for me. Sounds cool and all no judgy but you know I have few other things on my mind other than being animal food

      Enjoy yourselves however if that’s your thing (or rather let others enjoy you)

      I think I am gonna focus on pleasantries of today thank you very much

    • EightBitBlood@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Fasting grampa wants his life to matter, so feeds himself to Tiger instead of just bringing in another food source. Tiger gives no shits. But Grandpa lovers think his sacrifice was beautiful instead of unnecessary.

      Not the Buddhist teaching. But my interpretation.

      And one MAGA supporters should definitley read.

    • CodexArcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 month ago

      The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao.

      Spiritual practices are experiential; you aren’t meant to just hear them, you are meant to practice them and be enlightened through lived understanding.

      • ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        To be honest Tao Te Ching reads like an edgelord fanfic.

        Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.

        This source is called darkness.

        Darkness within darkness.

        The gateway to all understanding

    • stringere@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal.

      Ryokan returned and caught him. “You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.”

      The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.

      Ryoken sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.”

  • Allero@lemmy.today
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    1 month ago

    I felt a bit sympathetic to Buddhism up to the point when I actually visited a Buddhist temple and listened to the speeches of monks.

    The amount of brain rot disguised as wisdom has made me feel Christianity ain’t that bad after all.

    Sorry in advance to any Buddhist out there, but it struck me how the common perception of it differs from the actual thing.

      • Allero@lemmy.today
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        1 month ago

        I’m not super good at remembering things I don’t need or accept, so I’ll speak a bit generally, but, for example, the cosmology and all the quasi-gods are extremely intertwined, excessively overcomplicated, but actually simple and repetitive;

        Also the pretentious way it poses as a way to direct you in life (monks went so far as to say Buddhism goes far beyond modern philosophy and psychology and is at the forefront of knowledge in life of dignity and happiness), while really it can be condensed to “endure pain and man up, feelings don’t matter, just do what needs to be done”, which is super toxic and not really effective (and I wonder if it’s also contributing to the toxic work culture in the Far East).

        Also, as in many religions, it’s full of stories about miracles happening every day (like, the man who was terminally ill, was set to die within a month and barely walked, but then decided to go 8000km by foot through entire Eurasia to the main temple, and he lived, and succeeded, and lived as a monk ever after).

        Etc. etc.

    • deathbird@mander.xyz
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      1 month ago

      Out of curiosity, which Buddhist tradition was this temple out of? I’ve had similar experience, but I get the feeling like Buddhist thought might be about as diverse as Christian.

      • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        It’s m8ch more doverse than Christianity, actually. Buddhism isn’t so much a religion in the judeochristian sense as a characteristic that many religions have. There are Buddhist traditions that worship gods, there are godless Buddhist traditions that worship the Buddha, and ones thay don’t even wirshio the Buddha but just think he was a pretty wise dude. Some require you to meditate daily, others to chant some mantras, and there are Buddhist traditions like Zen that worship nothing and are all about getting your head out of your ass.

        • MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca
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          1 month ago

          Plain Buddhism was kind of a downer so they made stuff like pure land buddhism that is more of a fun afterlife version instead of hardcore OG Buddha which is like kill yourself and stop existing forever because the world is just an eternal cycle of pain and reincarnation into more pain forever.

        • deathbird@mander.xyz
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          1 month ago

          Aye, perhaps not in the “Judeo-Christian” sense, but a religion nonetheless.

          But actually it strikes me that “Judeo-Christianity” is more about theme or literature than form. The Christians claim a common God with the Jews, but that’s mostly it. In form Christianity seems more Greco-Roman than Judaic to me.

          “Greco-Romo-Christan” maybe?

          • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month ago

            How does a monotheistic religion whose prophet explicitly claimed to be part of the succession of Jewish prophets and to have “come to confirm” their teachings seem more like a polytheistic religion where gods aren’t known for using prophets to send messages to the people to you? Serious question. I’m intrigued.

            • deathbird@mander.xyz
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              1 month ago

              Jesus did not really claim to be part of succession of Jewish prophets based on the text in the New Testament. In the first three Gospels one could certainly describe him as a prophet, though by the fourth he was definitely being described as God. That in itself makes it far more like mithran cults than Judaism.

              And while a lot of what he taught was consistent with Jewish thought, a lot of it was contrary to Jewish thought and practice too, even explicitly so. And later writings by Paul, which for better or worse are canonical to the vast majority of Christians, pull the religion further away from Judaism.

              Now Greco Roman gods didn’t need prophets, because they had more formal roles that played similar functions: priests and oracles. Christianity on the other hand has prophets, saints, martyrs, and priests. Judaism on the other hand had priests, occasional prophets, then later rabbis. Notably Christian prophets prophesy about Jesus’s return or his goings on in heaven, while Jewish prophets were mostly telling people to get back into their covenant and stop marrying foreigners, usually promising freedom from whatever country was currently conquering them at the moment as a reward. Notably people claiming to be Jewish prophets do not get a lot of traction in Jewish communities these days, and have not for millennia.

              I mean you can’t deny that Jesus was Jewish, but he was an eccentric Jew, and the people who became his hangers on created a religion that did not look like the religion he mostly practiced. Certainly not one that looks like Judaism of today.

              Christianity says Jesus is god, uses multiple images of their God, but also multiple gods through their Trinity / triune God head work around, centers mostly around devotion and worship through novel praise rather than rule following and study. It often focuses on a personal relationship with the godhead. Judaism doesn’t do this stuff, but it’s not out of place in pagan traditions.

              I mean Jesus was literally conceived by the Holy Spirit entering into Mary, like Zeus going into countless mortal women to make half-God children. I mean I guess it wasn’t technically sex because that would be tasteless, but certainly all the Jewish prophets I can think of were conceived through two human people having sex.

              None of that’s to say there’s anything per se “wrong” with Christianity, but there’s a reason it exists alongside modern Judaism and not instead of it.

              • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works
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                1 month ago

                Those are all valid points. Still, Christian Cosmology is the same as Jewish Cosmology: the world as an artifact created and ruled by a single all-knowing monarch who is in essence different and separate from it. And Jesus did define himself as coming to confirm the teachings of Judaism e.g. in Matthew 5:17, although in practice his teachings were very different - hence Christianity not being considered a Jewish sect but a separate religion. And because of this claim he made, the Jewish scriptures were received into Christianity, bringing along several beliefs that simply have nothing to do with anything Jesus ever thought was worth mentioning and several more which directly contradict his teachings. So there is of course this powerful connection between the two that can’t really be severed.

                As for “multiple gods through the Trinity”, I wouldn’t put it like that exactly. Rather than being similar to Greco-Roman polytheism, the doctrine of the Trinity seems to me closer to the Hindu Trinity of the Godhead (Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva). Hinduism is of course polytheistic but these three gods in particular are not separate persons but different aspect of the same entity that manifest in different circumstances. A crude analogy would be if a person adopted one identity at work, another one at home with their family and another one while asleep. It’s still the same person, but fulfilling different roles. So it is with the Holy Trinity of Christianity. Hence what Paul said in Philippians 2:5-8:

                In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!

                In any case, this is a very interesting discussion.

            • nickiwest@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              There are definitely elements of Christianity that mimic Greco-Roman (and other, older) mystery religions. Down to celebrating their deity’s birth at the same time and commemorating his death and rebirth by having followers share bread and wine.

              My favorite theory of the origin of Christianity is that it was a Jewish attempt to mimic the mystery religions that were popular at the beginning of the Common Era.

              • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works
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                1 month ago

                The central point of mystery religions like the Eleusinian Mysteries is to cultivate the mystical experience. In judeochristian theology, that experience is considered sacrilegious. Some Jews let Jesus have it and became Christians, but nobody else is allowed. And the ones we call Jewish today didn’t even let that one guy have it.

                The similarities between Christianity and Greco-Roman mysticism are only surface-level and were a marketing ploy to gain followers. In its core, Christianity is still Judaism, just packaged for export. Hence why two thousand years later, Christians are still quoting the Old Testament to justify bigotry, even though they claim to be followers of the guy who said “love each other as I have loved you”.

                • deathbird@mander.xyz
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                  1 month ago

                  It feels to me like there’s an inconsistency between calling Christianity “Judaism for export”, and saying that it quotes the Old Testament for the purposes of bigotry. Or maybe it just feels antisemitic, even if not deliberately so. I mean it’s not like there isn’t bigotry in the New Testament, or radical acceptance in the Old.

                  But also I don’t think you can argue that Christianity is a mere extension of Judaism and at the same time argue that it shouldn’t utilize Jewish text.

    • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      It depends really. I grew up Buddhist and things were chill. Speeches I heard at temple were just telling us to be good people, be nice to people no matter their race or gender stuff like that, don’t do harm to people or animals.

      Even Abrahamic religions have good and bad spiritual leaders, some are cult like and others are just trying to get people to have decent morals.

    • Donkter@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      A classic cult tactic tbh. Convince people that they can divine meaning from random nonsense and they’ll convince themselves that they are more enlightened and above those around them who don’t understand.