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Goodbye Jesus

Buddhism: A Simple Explanation


Orbit

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I thought I would share this ebook, as it gives a very simple but pretty comprehensive background on Buddhism. I'm up for discussion if anyone's so inclined.

 

http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/tree-enlightenment.pdf

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That would take a little while to digest.

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Big read, I've read through chapter 4.

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  • 3 weeks later...
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There's some cool things about Buddhism, but at the end of the day if you don't believe in literal reincarnation then the whole thing seems ill-founded. If I had to choose something I'd go with Mahayana. It's like an extension of the ideas in Advaita Vedanta, although considered different. 

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I'm more partial to Zen myself, which is basically atheistic. For meditation purposes, I also like Vispassana meditation.

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I'm more partial to Zen myself, which is basically atheistic. For meditation purposes, I also like Vispassana meditation.

I've heard some Zen lectures from Alan Watts and basically agree with it. And I've had contact with Vispassana medition through Peter Joseph. I haven't found anything that I necessarily disagree with from those two. But that's probably because they both present a very western look at those things. When things are flying around in sankrit and so fourth it doesn't impact me like having it all translated into English and westernized understanding. 

 

One thing worthy of noting from the book is how advanced Buddhism's moral code was to the birth of Christianity. I've entertained theories that Buddhism's influence with missionary work in the west contributed to what we find in Christianity. It was by no means something new on the block. I know some Christians that are so ignorant that they think no one understood "do unto others" until Jesus said it in the beginnig of the common era. A good reading on Buddhism would boggle the mind of that sort of Christian. Must have been that tricky devil coming ahead of Jesus trying to lead people away before he got there - Justin Martyr's 'the devil got there first' apologetic discourse....

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I'm more partial to Zen myself, which is basically atheistic. For meditation purposes, I also like Vispassana meditation.

I've heard some Zen lectures from Alan Watts and basically agree with it. And I've had contact with Vispassana medition through Peter Joseph. I haven't found anything that I necessarily disagree with from those two. But that's probably because they both present a very western look at those things. When things are flying around in sankrit and so fourth it doesn't impact me like having it all translated into English and westernized understanding. 

 

One thing worthy of noting from the book is how advanced Buddhism's moral code was to the birth of Christianity. I've entertained theories that Buddhism's influence with missionary work in the west contributed to what we find in Christianity. It was by no means something new on the block. I know some Christians that are so ignorant that they think no one understood "do unto others" until Jesus said it in the beginnig of the common era. A good reading on Buddhism would boggle the mind of that sort of Christian. Must have been that tricky devil coming ahead of Jesus trying to lead people away before he got there - Justin Martyr's 'the devil got there first' apologetic discourse....

 

There's a nice explanation of the two here: https://integrallife.com/integral-post/stages-meditation

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That was beautifully written. Aside from not believing that the practice has any real bearing on mythological reincarnation, it's still something beneficial to living this one life in the most profound sense of it. Why not venture into the mind set of interconnection with everything and take that as a moral basis for interaction in the world? That's worlds more powerful than any sense of morality found in Christianity. We're told that "whatever you've done unto the least of these, my brethren, you have also done unto me." That seems figurative in Christianity and something that's not literally true, but what's expected of us. In Buddhism it's literally true, you and the other are one. You wrong yourself every time you wrong another. Christianity pussy foots around that point because in order to go that far with it the orthodox setting is breached. It's esoteric symbolism turned inside out into exoteric teaching for mass audiences. The symbols are there, but they're not taken to the mystical conclusion. God is even omnipresent, and yet they don't accept that everything is God. Funny religion....

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