Buddha, Confucius, and Aristotle popped into existence at roughly the same time on the long timeline of human events, propounded very similar ethics in particular cultures that were at a similar maturity in their development.

This is far beyond coincidence I think and there is something to more to this phenomenon. The similarities of Aristotle's Virtue ethics, further developed by the Stoics, Buddhist Ethics with the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, and the Confucian ethics of moderation and 'living within the parameters of Heaven" (determinism) are startling.

It might just be some grand coincidence these men popped up in similar places and espoused similar ideas at the same stage of social development in their far removed and relatively unknown respective cultures, but it could be said that once a particular level of Surplus is achieved within a society, certain emergent things start to occur within culture, like development of religion, ethics, politics, arts, music, literature, etc, etc.

Look at linguistic development....Latin was the king of languages until, roughly around the same time, The Inferno elevated Italian, Don Quixote elevated Spanish, and Shakespeare elevated English, out of the ranks of languages for the plebes and into languages fit for literature. It is hard to say this is simply coincidence and not some sort of actual function of culture.

There are other, less important aspects of Buddhism of course, but Buddhism ultimately revolves around the Four Noble Truths, which describe dukkha (suffering), and the Noble Eightfold Path which describes how to get out of the cycle of dukkha.

Imo they were created as methods of survival during the dark ages where ignorance and violence was commonplace.



Buddhism I had a lot of respect for and gets a lot of ideas right in their traditions, but ive moved away from it because its ultimately a tamasic religion.

Buddhism's purpose is to end suffering, which makes no sense to most peoples lives. People follow their desires and inspirations unto higher fulfillment, following desires to find better situations, not acting out of fear.

Buddhism's highest tenet is to act out of fear of suffering, which ultimately causes cognitive dissonance because youre not moving toward activities based on desire, just avoiding others. It discourages faith that good things can happen. Plus if you act against your natural desires, in the end your deceiving yourself and actually have no direction in your life because your acting out of fear, not productive inspiration.

My opinion on the religion after years of practice and reading.

This post was edited by EndlessSky on Jun 30 2015 03:35pm

I've honestly never practiced a religion. As an outsider I kind of came to the same conclusions myself. I still use the Eight-fold path for microdecision making on a regular basis, usual Right thought and Right intent. In CBT we call that Mindfulness.

1. Buddhism is not self-help, it is a metaphysical philosophy that offers a metaphysical ethics.

2. In what way is Buddhism's highest tenet to act out of fear of suffering?

3. Why should we seek what we desire? What makes our desires worthwhile? What we desire isn't usually what is best for us. This is corroborated by modern neuroscience (e.g. Kent Berridge's research showed that the "liking" and "wanting" systems are separate, i.e. what we want has nothing to do with what makes us happy).

1. You can call it whatever you want but its tamasic, tailored to prevent suffering. Buddhist monks for the most part don't meditate for the long term joy created by the activity itself, they do it to prevent the effects that come about if they don't.

3. It relates to one buddhist concept called rigpa, which I do agree with, in which you pursue your desires in order to better understand them. We do have emotions for a reason, and you don't get karma points for needlessly suppressing them. Also, suppressing desires completely before attempting to understand them is ignorance in itself. How do you know what you're missing? The only way to take a measurement is to interact.



Sweet, maybe I'm not crazy.

Cool that you can use it in a practical way.

I'm not a Buddhist, but from everything I've read, I completely disagree.

I believe the purpose of Buddhism(as they define it) is to see things as they really are. To see the world as forms, to see thoughts as forms, and to recognize that all these forms will pass away. That's the basic reality we are faced with as humans... everything comes and passes away. Everything is impermanent. Buddhists accept this reality... and they learn to embrace it.

Now, you can label that as the purpose is to end suffering, but that's not really true. The purpose is to see things as they really are, and that alleviates a massive amount of mental suffering that the typical person goes through.

I don't know too much about Buddhism, and the little I know about it I've learnt it through Juche. All I know is that it embraces the concept of monism and teaches us that we are all part of one unique, absolute truth.

I plan to delve deeper in the subject, as understanding Buddhism is necessary to fully understand korean culture.

The most important quality to buddhism is meditation and using the process to first understand and gain selfawareness and then restrain ones thoughts and actions to rid oneself of unnecessary distractions.

If youre serious Id suggest the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Its about the tibetan traditions but it outlines the practice in full and is written very straightfowardly.

Theres also a decent documentary about the origin of the practice called The Buddha for skimming.

This post was edited by EndlessSky on Jul 5 2015 04:06pm