Any Buddhists on boxingscene?

[W1LL]

Namaste lads. Philosophy is a very interesting thing. It is mad how these things resonate with us on such a deep level. You can read something on Buddhism etc, and you feel like, "Yea m8, this is how I should be leading my life." In practise though, over long peroids of time, I always found it too hard to put into practise consistently. At the minute I am more intrigued with Stoicism than anything else. I would recommend looking into Stoicism, lads.

[Beercules]

Seems that way, but Buddhism is based on practice and experience... Think of the difference as: Two people want to make a great pizza. The first person goes to church and has faith that when he walks into the kitchen through the grace of God it will all come together and a pizza will emerge that Sal would envy!

Person two meanwhile, goes to Sal's pizza and asks to practice making pizzas for a week. His strategy it to perfect the skills... This is the difference between faith and practice, vis a vis Buddhism versus Theology.

heres where it gets interesting though: Buddhism has a history of philosophical discourse (The Abhi Darma text, etc) and in India all the philos/religious traditions had to argue their points with each other... So the flavor of Buddhism is not always found in the strategy it used to survive as a viable tradition in a society that venerated these traditions.

In other words the "we strive to dissapear without a trace" (Nirbana), Life is suffering, we have no attachment to anything, yada yada... can seem very non-life affirming lol. But there is more to them when you practice and do not simply see these points as ideological positions...YES the Buddhist logicians, philosophers did argue these points! for the reasons above... But practice teaches one the following:

Many great men simply did not think our relationship with God(s) was important. Think about it... God does not tell us how to live, how to deal with our own suffering. Even in western theology, God was, to many, thought to have made the world and left... Science and discovery was given!

Technically speaking Buddha did not take a position on the issue of a supreme deity... we cannot express this point of view in our language, so we incorrectly say "Buddha does not believe in God." Buddha's concern was how to live in a manner where we did not create Karma, which bound us to a cycle, a chain of rebirth, based on craving, attachment and to repeat the fate of having a body that aged, got sick and died.

Buddha addressed these issues alone, for the salvation of our selfhood through self control, awareness, vigor (intellectual and physical) and kindness. REAL kindness... Not giving the drug addict a fiver for a fix cause your a good guy, but showing the life form trapped, how to escape the shackles of dependency.

Hope this helps and Pretty Boy, did not mean to hijack your thread.

Ohh and regarding meaning? Essentially to a Buddhist it works on two distinct levels; On the one hand is goodness, kindness, compassion...BUT this is a form of attachment in itself. So just as the dumb monks learn what one should do.... most of us strive for this.

But at the higher meaning? meaning can be found in total self possession, and the direct experience of not being attached in a disfunctional way to anything. This issue is the one that originally separated the two orders> Mahayana and Hinayana. But this meaning cannot be described and has to be experienced. I had a flash of it during a ten day retreat at the monastery where i resided, (no talking for ten days! meditating 8 hours a day) and it was quite an experience! Suffice to say, it is not as it sounds.

^^^



Smartest poster on here bar none. Can you go further into Mahayana and Hinayana?

[Beercules]

Namaste lads. Philosophy is a very interesting thing. It is mad how these things resonate with us on such a deep level. You can read something on Buddhism etc, and you feel like, "Yea m8, this is how I should be leading my life." In practise though, over long peroids of time, I always found it too hard to put into practise consistently. At the minute I am more intrigued with Stoicism than anything else. I would recommend looking into Stoicism, lads.

What is Stoicism?

[W1LL]

What is Stoicism?

[Beercules]

Very interesting. The first video had trouble loading but I've watched the second one posted.

[BodyBagz]

Buddha was an atheist whereas Jesus called himself the Jesus the Son of God. This is first and the big difference between two. Buddha never did any miracle in his lifespan, but Jesus did it many times. Buddha doesn't want to pull people with magic.

While Buddhism is a tradition focused on spiritual liberation, it is not a theistic religion. The Buddha himself rejected the idea of a creator god, and Buddhist philosophers have even argued that belief in an eternal god is nothing but a distraction for humans seeking enlightenment.

What if Buddha was wrong

[billeau2]

^^^



Smartest poster on here bar none. Can you go further into Mahayana and Hinayana?

When Buddhism started it was a great success! Not because of the Buddha though... And the Buddha was very special... its just that when you have the patronage of kings (King Asoka) and when your membership initially are rich merchants that travel, your bound to do well! Buddhism despite its best intentions became somewhat of an elite religion... the first monastic adherents were from the Therevada (sp?) tradition and were known as "****** jumpers."

The idea was to "jump" from the cycle of rebirth, and cross the ****** of experiences into Nirbana (Nirbana is the Pali word cognate for the Sanskrit "Nirvana" and... the Buddha spoke Pali). To this day life in a traditional Thervadian order is pretty simple. You do the best you can and don't really rely on others... Others are there to help, but your on your own. You better have the time, resources, and intelligence to learn, and if you do not? oh well...

Naturally this brought up some problems. Buddhists were often looking for another aspect of Buddhism, namely what the Buddha taught! the thinking was that Buddha made great sacrifice to distinguish his teachings... Where was the love in the tradition he founded? Basically a Buddhist saint was known as an "Arhat" as opposed to many of us here on the boards often called an @ s s hat

A new breed of Buddhist was emerging that wanted to save all sentient beings, and even vowed not to "cross the ******" into Nirbana, until all sentient beings were saved. On a more practical level: Buddhism was starting to appeal to the other classes of individuals and not simply those with financial means. Even to this day Buddhist orders often become a theocracy and rule over a country... One reason the Chinese got away with destroying Tibet was because an argument could be made that Tibet was a repressive country where a few (the Buddhist order) had means, and others starved...

What finally happened was that the council of Arhat was devised as a "seminal" meeting (hold that word in your head for now) that would determine such things as Buddhist goals, who could be sainted, if women could be anything more than lay practicioners, etc.

The Arhat claim to infallibility, like many other such claims, is what opened them up for changes... Much like Egyptian soldgers who saw their comrades killed and recognized when Pharoah was injured (hence not infallible) and challenged Pharoah's claims, this meeting...Many say was decided on ONE principal issue: "Arhats claimed to have mastered the control over all human desires, yet they apparently had a problem with wet dreams (remember I told you to hold on to that word? lol).

In reality the changes were due because Buddhism was spreading... At any rate here is what happened during that meeting. Buddhism split into two vehicles, the greater vehicle so called Mahayana, and the perjaratively called "Lesser vehicle" or Hiniyana. Hinayana would go on with its limited appeal and Mahayana would go into the world and spread the teachings of the Buddha with the vow that no salvation would be taken until all sentient beings suffering was alievated.

Most traditions today are Mahayana, for example, Zen. Other forms of Buddhism are those that combine with other religions, like Tibetan Buddhism Viajreyana, a combo of native Tibetan Bon religion and esoteric Buddhism...Pure Land Buddhism in China, a combo of Buddhism and Christian principles, etc.

[billeau2]

Buddha was an atheist whereas Jesus called himself the Jesus the Son of God. This is first and the big difference between two. Buddha never did any miracle in his lifespan, but Jesus did it many times. Buddha doesn't want to pull people with magic.

While Buddhism is a tradition focused on spiritual liberation, it is not a theistic religion. The Buddha himself rejected the idea of a creator god, and Buddhist philosophers have even argued that belief in an eternal god is nothing but a distraction for humans seeking enlightenment.

What if Buddha was wrong

No your incorrect. Buddha was not an atheist and to understand why you have to understand how Sanskrit and cognate languages, such as Pali (Buddha's spoken language) work. Brahman and Kishatria cast all studied Sanskrit and argued their relevent points in that language.

You simply cannot express Buddha's explicit view on theology in a language that does not have the same amount of logical catagories to describe a point of view: It would be like you, or I trying to understand all the Eskimo words for snow: of which I believe there are 14?

The best way to approximate Buddha's position is agnostic, but that is misleading as well. The Buddha's real point was that God's existence was not categorically related to our own experiences in this world. He felt that discussing any essential soul, the good karma that deities had acquired, would put us in the wrong direction when it came to dealing with our own condition of old age, attachment and death.

Prior to Jesus there was a golden age in the world... Confucius, The great Indian thinkers, and Socrates were all preaching! kashmir was a golden area with great ****** theologians, the Sikhs were born, and the Tantra came into being... So jesus had some great materials to refer to when he came with his message which was somewhat similar in emotional affect to the Mahayana doctrine involving helping others.

[BodyBagz]

No your incorrect. Buddha was not an atheist and to understand why you have to understand how Sanskrit and cognate languages, such as Pali (Buddha's spoken language) work. Brahman and Kishatria cast all studied Sanskrit and argued their relevent points in that language.

You simply cannot express Buddha's explicit view on theology in a language that does not have the same amount of logical catagories to describe a point of view: It would be like you, or I trying to understand all the Eskimo words for snow: of which I believe there are 14?

The best way to approximate Buddha's position is agnostic, but that is misleading as well. The Buddha's real point was that God's existence was not categorically related to our own experiences in this world. He felt that discussing any essential soul, the good karma that deities had acquired, would put us in the wrong direction when it came to dealing with our own condition of old age, attachment and death.

Prior to Jesus there was a golden age in the world... Confucius, The great Indian thinkers, and Socrates were all preaching! kashmir was a golden area with great ****** theologians, the Sikhs were born, and the Tantra came into being... So jesus had some great materials to refer to when he came with his message which was somewhat similar in emotional affect to the Mahayana doctrine involving helping others.

a�the�ism
/ˈāTHēˌizəm/
noun: atheism

disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

[billeau2]

a�the�ism
/ˈāTHēˌizəm/
noun: atheism

disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

I guess what I said really went over your head.