Buddhism

[PartSkeptic]

I would say that the "core" of Buddhism is what is embodied in the Four Noble Truths.

i.e. that there is no way to avoid sickness, old age, and death, along with other varieties of bad things that can happen, but that you can learn to deal with it and be happy anyway.

If you identify Buddhism as the teachings of Buddha, but Buddhism the religion has much more.

 

[Bladesman87]

Buddhism is much closer to atheism than it is to theism. In the vast majority of variations and branches of Buddhism, there is no Universal Creator God... in fact, no God at all

“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”
― The Dalai Lama XIV, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.

You won't hear the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury or any other leading God botherers making such statements any time soon

I am not a spiritual person, but if I were, I think Buddhism is probably what I would gravitate towards.

Not that I'm accusing the Dalai Lama of doing that here, but I think a lot of religious types would happily contend that they'd accept scientific proof, it's just that the follow up is to then deny that science has concluded anything of the sort.

Kent Hovind, for instance, I can easily imagine claiming that his beliefs about evolution are completely scientific.

 

[Chanakya]

(...) Is Brahman the Ultimate Reality?
Is Brahman the Supreme Consciousness?
Is Brahman the Universal Spirit?
Is Brahman the Creator?
Is Brahman all of the above? (...)

Depends on which particular Hindu you ask.

(Except for your fourth question. The answer to that is always a "no", it's Brahma without the 'n', and a different pronunciation, who's the creator. And the creator isn't the top dog either, and no one worships him. And that makes answer to the fifth question a "no" as well.)

That's the beauty of Hinduism. There are so very many shades to it. Although there are those who militate against interpretations different from their own, and sometimes such bigots command more attention than at other times.

Despite the beauty (and most religious texts and themes do have beauty, even the Bible can be very beautiful and moving) there isn't a shred of proof anywhere of what all of those texts say, and the Buddha himself went out of his way to "debunk" the Vedas (or at least, not to debunk but to advise his followers from not bothering with them), so I don't see why Hinduism would pass the "skeptic test" or be taken at all seriously, except for its mythological aspects I mean?

(...) I thought the Vedas were the basic religious texts and the Gita an inspirational story?

The Vedas (the rituals, the Brahmanas, and the Aranyakas) are the primary texts. The Aranyakas or the Upanishads contain the core philosophy of Hinduism. But arguably, the more folksy Puranas are as "core" to Hindu thought as the Vedas, although there are those who swear by only the Vedas and dismiss the rest.

The Bhagvat Gita (there is more than one Gita actually) refers to one particular mega-poem within the epic story Mahabharata. The Bhagvat Gita does present a reasonable summary of Hinduism, but there are plenty of Hindus who disagree with plenty of individual bits of that poem.

 

[Chanakya]

Not that I'm accusing the Dalai Lama of doing that here, but I think a lot of religious types would happily contend that they'd accept scientific proof, it's just that the follow up is to then deny that science has concluded anything of the sort.

Kent Hovind, for instance, I can easily imagine claiming that his beliefs about evolution are completely scientific.

I think the Dalai Lama's a great role model (for the religious I mean -- if one can think clearly about religion, realize its ultimate emptiness, and not need any religious role models at all, then that would be best -- but barring that, and if you must have a religious role model, then I vote for the Dalai Lama), but his repeated support of science does fly in the face of the fact that he is what he is by virtue of his alleged reincarnation, so I don't see how he can have it both ways?

 

[Chanakya]

What I find really fascinating about the Buddha was that he was able to talk of "no self" at a time when the actual knowledge then extant came nowhere close to suggesting that our "self" might be wholly fictional. (Not just in the sense that we're actually emanations of something infinitely bigger, that sort of thought did exist obviously, but in the sense, simply, that there simply isn't a "we".)

HOW did the man, in the total absence of any kind of knowledge (neurological or otherwise) that might suggest such a thing, arrive at this remarkable conclusion? Not just as speculation, but allegedly with such surety that he based his entire life around that notion?

That, to me, is the enduring "mystery" about the Buddha, and Buddhism. Might that suggest that there might be something in his "method" after all?

 

[Chanakya]

Hi everyone, my second post here.

I would like to open a new discussion, this time, as there are not many skeptical discussions debunking Buddhism, I would like to talk about it:


1- Buddhism has an idealistic psychology too. In which you blame the suffering of the person in the present for errors of the past (Karma)

2- Buddhism has irrational and banal ideas: If the "I" is an illusion, what reincarnates? The Karma.

3- Buddhism has very dualistic concepts: All pleasure and attachment is the source of suffering, so is suffering

4- Buddhism may even be right about some types of suffering, but it generalizes ALL forms of suffering caused by attachment and pleasure. Yet it says that life is suffering and death is suffering.

5- Buddhism uses very vague and groundless concepts in reality:
One test would be the five aggregates and their erroneous statements

6- Buddhism says that we only suffer because we have attachment to the world and the body, we should not hold on.

7-And yet the complete distrust and hatred before the human mind, even if it is not completely reliable, it has always been useful to us

8- And to conclude, the statement that our world is an illusion, the fruit of our ignorance

I have a little difficulty debunking some of these concepts, can you help me?

What to me is the core of Buddhism -- Anatta, "no self" -- that you cannot debunk. On the contrary, advances in neurological science actually seem to be actually supporting that notion.

Why do you need "ism"s at all, incidentally? Either to adhere to or to reject? Why don't you simply pick up those things from those cultures/religions that you like, and discard the rest? Cafetaria Christianity may be frowned at by some Christians, but I would imagine that the Buddha wouldn't mind your cherry-picking the bits of his (alleged) teachings that you like, and discard the rest. In fact he does (allegedly) urge you to discard even all of his teachings if you don't like them.

I imagine the Buddha, if he'd been alive today, might be a great addition to this forum. (And not merely as an entertaining originator of weirdo threads.)

 

[sackett]

What is the sound of three hands clapping?

This thread.

 

[alfaniner]

I'm all for Buddism. Except I can't decide on which sect -- "Tastes Great" or "Less Filling".

 

[Hokulele]

At least we are on the same page with many of your comments.

Let us stick with Hinduism since it underpins Buddhism. (Or do you disagree with this statement?)

Underpins in what sense? In the sense that Hinduism is what the Buddha was outright rejecting when formulating his philosophy?

Is Brahman the Ultimate Reality?
Is Brahman the Supreme Consciousness?
Is Brahman the Universal Spirit?
Is Brahman the Creator?
Is Brahman all of the above?

Is Brahman intelligent (can think, reason and remember?)
Is Brahman "God"? (anthropomorphic entity)

You do understand the difference between Brahma and Brahman, yes? They aren't the same thing, and it looks like you have conflated them in this list.

I thought the Vedas were the basic religious texts and the Gita an inspirational story?

The Upanishads are more of the basic religious texts than the Vedas, and while the Bhagavad Gita is a poem, it summarizes the religion, its practices, and its beliefs far better than a BBC article does.

Again, have you read any source document at all on any of these religions you are conflating with each other? Any of them? None?

(Ah, there is a page 2, and several of these points were ninja'd. So be it.)

(And I got the Vedas and Upanishads backwards. Whoops. Been a while since I read some of either.)

 

[Dancing David]

So tell me where my research is wrong. It seems Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism believe that the underlying truth of the Universe it that it is unthinking "Spirit". Yes? No?

In respect to the dao, absolutely not, the dao is not able to be captured in words, so No

 

[Apathia]

Hi everyone, my second post here.

I would like to open a new discussion, this time, as there are not many skeptical discussions debunking Buddhism, I would like to talk about it:


1- Buddhism has an idealistic psychology too. In which you blame the suffering of the person in the present for errors of the past (Karma)

2- Buddhism has irrational and banal ideas: If the "I" is an illusion, what reincarnates? The Karma.

3- Buddhism has very dualistic concepts: All pleasure and attachment is the source of suffering, so is suffering

4- Buddhism may even be right about some types of suffering, but it generalizes ALL forms of suffering caused by attachment and pleasure. Yet it says that life is suffering and death is suffering.

5- Buddhism uses very vague and groundless concepts in reality:
One test would be the five aggregates and their erroneous statements

6- Buddhism says that we only suffer because we have attachment to the world and the body, we should not hold on.

7-And yet the complete distrust and hatred before the human mind, even if it is not completely reliable, it has always been useful to us

8- And to conclude, the statement that our world is an illusion, the fruit of our ignorance

I have a little difficulty debunking some of these concepts, can you help me?

I have little difficulty debunking most of the concepts listed above as well. And so do a good deal of Buddhists. There are misunderstandings carried on by ignorant Buddhist believers and misunderstandings based on cursory impressions by Western readers. (For example this notion that Buddhism denigrates the mind.) And of course there's this reincarnation mess that Buddhism inherited from Hinduism that secular Buddhists (such as myself) would like to see entirely 86ed. (And isn't a necessary teaching of the Historical Buddha anyway.)

Most things on the list are first impressions I had that initially caused me to dismiss Buddhism as having nothing of value for me. But after more reading and exposure to Buddhist texts and excellent writers, I found a lot very useful.

So I say spend some more time researching what it's about, especially from a practical angle.

Now if you meet some Buddha on the road who brandishes dogma at you, do what I always do, wrest the dogma from his hand and stab him with it!

 

[Dancing David]

Try harder. Use analogies if you wish. We are talking about a thing, an entity, something that exists, and that some humans have experienced else they could not write about it.

You sound like a cosmologist saying "The time before time came into being at t=0".

Perhaps you should read the tao de zhing?

The tao is only described by analogy.

 

[PartSkeptic]

What is the sound of three hands clapping?

This thread.

Well, three thumbs up for that post.

The responses I am getting make me feel that way.

 

[PartSkeptic]

Let me try again. (To avoid five hands clapping. )

Religion is a belief in a divine (superhuman or spiritual) being or beings, and had practices/rituals and moral code that result from that belief.

A religion teaches or expounds its own truths about the world, the universe, humanity and God(s). These truths deal with life and death and what comes after death.

Combined with all of that is how to achieve salvation or enlightenment.

I am trying to focus on the divine being(s).

But first some basics that we can agree on in Hinduism.

Brahman is the infinite source of everything. The Chandogya Upanishad defines this as "There is but one without a Second." The one True reality.

There are three major Gods:
Brahma is the Creator.
Vishnu is the Sustainer.
Shiv is the Destroyer.
With their female consorts.
And a whole lot of other gods such as the Nature Gods, the Planetary Gods and the Community Gods.

The Revealed religious texts are the four Vedas written in Sanskrit and accumulated over millenia.
The Rig Veda
Yajur Veda
Sama Veda
Atharva Veda

Each Veda is divided into sections:
Samhitas
Brahmanas
Upanishads

The Remembered texts are:
The Shastras
The epics
Th puranas

And then there is the Bhagavad Gita ("Song of the Lord")
An inspirational story that has become a "manual" for Hindus

Basic concepts:
Truth - Eternal Reality encompassing the laws of the universe.
Immortal Souls - Which go through a cycle of death and rebirth.
Moksha - Salvation by reaching awareness and becoming one with Brahman.
Dharma - Duty or the role in life.
Karma - Actions building character/soul which have consequences later.

And then there are all the various denominations and sects.

What do posters here understand about Brahman - the One True Reality? What are the attributes of this entity?

 

[Porpoise of Life]

You're trying to paint all of these ancient religions as basically believing the same as you, but getting details 'wrong'.
You are trying to derail the thread into discussing your own personal superstitions as if they were the natural culmination of lots of different religions. That's why you're over generalizing and not really responding to other posters.

There are already a few threads on your personal beliefs. Why try to make this one about your personal god concept too?

 

[Hokulele]

You might want to start your own thread on Hinduism, as this has pretty much nothing to do with the OP at this point.

 

[PartSkeptic]

You might want to start your own thread on Hinduism, as this has pretty much nothing to do with the OP at this point.

Buddhism

Buddha started out as a pampered prince until he ventured out. He then had four “visions”:
Sickness, Old age, Death, Homeless seeker of Truth.

Buddha had self-indulgence in his early life and then put himself through extreme self-denial (which nearly killed him). He realised the truth of the “middle way”. He sat under the Bodhi tree and meditated. He saw the stream of his past lives and how they contributed to present and future. He became an Awakened One. He chose five disciples and began teaching. His example was wisdom and compassion. One lecture was the Four Noble Truths, which he elaborated on during his life.

Four Noble Truths:
Suffering – Duhkha in Sanskrit
The Cause of Suffering – Desire or Craving
The Cessation of Suffering – Nirvana reached by eliminating craving.
The Path to End Suffering – Eight spokes of the Wheel of Dharma (eight Right ways)

Buddha’s teachings were preserved in oral form for several hundred years. The first written form was the Pali Canon of Sri Lanka. It has three sections (baskets):
Disciplines - Rules
Sayings – sermons, discourse and poetry
Doctrines – Philosophy, about mind

Buddhism was exported by Emperor Ashoka to the East. It took north and south routes.

When one looks at Eastern Buddhism it is a religion as defined. When one looks at Zen Buddhism and Western Buddhism they have stripped away the theistic aspects.

The scriptures do confirm the existence of celestial beings, as well as heaven/hell and other places of existence.

Sure seems like some meditation added to Hinduism to me.

If one says it is a "pick-what-you-like and ignore-what-you-do-not-like" then that is not religion. Just what an atheist would like. No Dharma and no Karma.

 

[PartSkeptic]

(snip)

Again, have you read the Bhagavad Gita? The Pali Canon? The Tao de Ching?
(snip)

Have you?

I was trying to get an online free download of the Pali Canon.

https://www.facebook.com/DPMMIpoh/posts/10153095035218074
The Pali Text Society's edition of the Tipitaka (English translation) fills over 12,000 pages in approximately fifty hardbound volumes, taking up about five linear feet of shelf space, and costing about US$2,000. Moreover, a few of the more obscure books in the Tipitaka are simply unavailable in English translation, so if you really must read the entire Tipitaka, you'll just have to learn Pali.

Wow. No wonder they do not leave a copy in hotel bedrooms.

 

[Chanakya]

PartSkeptic : Let's not further derail this thread. But just to point out one short and simple detail, short because there's no scope for debate about this : As I'd pointed out in my earlier post, the Bhagvat Gita isn't a "story", nor does it stand apart from the epics : it is, in fact, a poem, not a story in verse but a set of exhortations etc, and it is itself very much part of one the major Hindu epics.

As for picking and choosing bits and pieces : You'll have read the Kalama Sutta, I'm sure. Surely we can defer to the Buddha when it comes to what he meant his teachings to be?*

*Insert "alleged" at all the right places. The alleged historical Buddha, his alleged teachings, what he allegedly taught, etc.



Edited : Reason for editing : Removed some bits from my comment that might be hurtful to those who may be invested in either of the two religions we're discussing. Those bits weren't central to what I wanted to convey, so there was no reason to go out of my way to say them here. Luckily this particular sort of arrow can be put back in one's quiver.

 

[Chanakya]

In respect to the dao, absolutely not, the dao is not able to be captured in words, so No

We haven’t interacted before this, Dancing David, but I’ve gone through many of your posts on this forum, especially on Buddhism, including threads going back a very long way. You seem very knowledgeable on this subject, Buddhism I mean, the secular portions of it.

What you say there, in the part I’ve quoted, you may have meant merely in jest, it is sometimes difficult to tell from purely textual conversation. If that is the case, then please ignore the rest of my post.



In case you meant that literally, then I find this sort of talk very off-putting. They say this sort of thing in all kinds of mystic literature, be it Sufi, or Buddhist, or Hindu, or even Christian mystic. I find this kind of obscurantism bordering on the disingenuous. It lets you say all kinds of profound-sounding things without in fact actually saying anything at all. A very convenient cover for lack of knowledge.

In my experience, while obscurantism is part and parcel of most mystic systems, these deep-sounding nothings are uttered most often by the Daoists as well as the (neo-)Advaitins. I’m afraid I’m with vittoricq on this one : if you’ve really got something to say, either in terms of a concept or construct, or in terms of some perception, or in terms of some world-view, then no matter how complex it is, if you know what you’re talking about then you’re usually able, if you take the trouble, to actually talk about it. Perhaps indirectly, perhaps in a very simplified manner, perhaps with the aid of an overabundance of analogies, whatever, but if you know what you’re talking about then you’ll usually be able to convey it fairly well even to the layperson. If all you say is apparently incomprehensible gibberish, then probably what you have to begin with is itself incomprehensible gibberish.

Incidentally, I keep on saying “you”. I don’t mean “you” personally, naturally, I meant that generally. That’s one difficulty I have with Daoism, what little I’ve read and heard about it. No one seems to be able to say what exactly it is, or even, at a more practical level, what it is for and why you should strive for it, without going all circular-logic about it. That goes for some neo-Advaitins as well, although not so much for (traditional) Advaita proper. Other “systems”, religions, at least you can understand what they are saying (although you’ll probably not agree with them) ; even Zen, although it has all those mind-bending koans etc as part of its formalized method, the fundamental base of the system is clear enough, you know what they’re at, basically. But with Daoism, the root of it is so very obscure and ultimately unitelligible that you don’t even know whether to agree or not. You have no option but to step over it and leave it without really understanding it at all.

Which could, perhaps, merely be a long-winded way of saying only that I myself don’t understand Daoism, nothing more. (Although I do understand, somewhat, the other systems that I’ve read about, so perhaps it isn’t just me.)

If you’ve any views about this I’d love to know. (And if you’d said that only jokingly, and not really meant it seriously, then I’m sorry for going off on this tangential and lengthy derail!)



This thread has already gotten derailed somewhat, and I realize I am pushing it further away from the OP’s question. Perhaps a separate thread? Except I’m only requesting for your views about this one aspect, specifically about your understanding of the Dao in light of what I’m asking, and perhaps that won’t take more than one post from you?