I am interested in Buddhism as a philosophy, not a religion*.

>>9282586
>>>/x/

You want to desire things that will end all desires. so yes you have to have an initial desire to end suffering. It's not paradoxical, it's practical. Without desires there would not be an initial path.

>>9282586
google "paradox of desire" for info on the first one, the answer to the second one is obviously no.

>>9282607
>the answer to the second one is obviously no.

well, then I will meditate every day (been doing it for some months already) and do everything in my power to become a better person (above all more serene, peaceful and happy), but without enlightenment in mind. To write and keep writing is more important to me, even if this decision is extremely stupid.

>>9282586
If you are truly interested in Buddhism, start meditating. Studying scripture is neither good nor bad, but to truly understand the teachings, meditation is necessary. Atleast thats what has been taught by the masters.

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>>9282672


I am meditating for about 3 months now and I feel great.

I bought a book that is proving to be of enormous value. It is very down-to-earth, very practical. It is called “The Mind Illuminated” (pic related).

I will just keep meditating and writing every day. Right now I don’t seem to be capable (or willing) to abandon any of those two activities.

>>9282586
Buddhism is the high class escourt to your everyday newage street whore. Bit more dolled and tighter but just as much empty and fascile horseshit when you press into their flawed epistemological presuppositions and naive idea of the psyche

The issue, with the Buddhist philosophy, is that pacifism lets evil run free. This lesson, is seldom followed in india today, and if Pakistan were to nuke them, or take their share of Kashmir: like any normal country would do, they would fight till Pakistan was dust. Religion fails every time when it comes to the reality of the situation. Prayer is the only way to have a *slight chance of experiencing god, and only if he deems it necessary.

>>9282692
>naive idea of the psyche

Considering most psychologists find use in CBT from mindfulness I'd hardly say the Buddha was naive about the nature of human psychology

>>9282715
CBT is a joke, you're only proving my point

>>9282727

Despite what you think of it, it has many tangible and beneficial effects.

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>>9282732
>a system constructed to thought police people into reporting that all is well results in people reporting that all is well

>>9282738
How can you pretend to even know what CBT based on Mindfulness is?

>>9282748
Because I was prescribed it when I was in treatment for anxiety-depression. Absolutely nonsense, its amazing its given a penny to pass as anything resembling medicine

>>9282727
>CBT is a joke, you're only proving my point

Not him, but Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) saved my life. I was suffering with extreme anxiety and phobia for more than 6 years, and had tried medication and psychotherapy whit no results.

I started to feel phobia from writing, some form of performance-anxiety. Whenever I sat down to write I felt dizziness, chest pain, difficult breathing and tachycardia. I couldn’t work anymore and that was making me terrified and depressed.

What saved me was a book I discovered, Freedom from Fear, from Howard Liebgold, whose major treatment-technique was CBT. This book changed my life and made me overcome anxiety once and for all.

So CBT is actually very effective.

>>9282760
Placebos do amazing things too, come back with a real argument dipshit.

>>9282689
Keep meditating and never skip a session. Great determination, great practice, great feeling. Buddhism is a load of bullcrap, but meditation is fantastic.

Sometimes reading seems to be necessary. So if you have to: read. Reading is OK. Talking to a master is even better. Meditation is much much better than both. Maybe you read something and go: this is bonkers, I dont like this at all! Stop reading, keep meditating.

Also: not having enlightenment in mind is very very good. Keep it that way. Actually, dont keep anything in your mind :3

True Buddhism is everyday mind. Just do what you do 100%, like a mirror reflecting a thing. Coming and going in the mirror without hindrance. True Buddhism is everyday mind and save-all-beings mind. So do what you do 100% and always: how can I help you?

>>9282692
Aye! aye! stop hitting my ass. Even buddhists fart, that much we know.

>>9282764
Not him
But you haven't said a single argument if you were this anon >>9282759

>>9282773
>hurr sitting and doing nothing is magic

Please stop shilling your mysticism on a literature board

>>9282764

Yeah, well I have tried some 5-6 different drugs, with no result.

The major thing with CBT and phobia is just to face your fear, and eventually it will go away. Is that simple. When you became sensible to something (the object of the anxiety/phobia) whenever you have contact with it (or think about it) your brain starts to flood your organism with adrenaline, what causes the discomfort. It also produces dopamine after a while, that can make you dizzy and with a foggy-brain.

What CBT teaches you to do is to gradually face your fear, feeling the terrible symptoms, but enduring them. When you do this time after time after time your brain “learns” that the situation is not a treat, that you don’t need to be injected with adrenaline to fight or flight.

In other words: if someone has a phobia of cats, you expose the person gradually, day after day, to cats, and encourages her to endure the bad feelings (the adrenaline in the system). Gradually the brain will learn how to “behave” in such a situation, and then you will be cured.

It is very simple, yes, but it is also extremely helpful and scientifically proved. CBT is valid, wheter you like it or not.

>>9282780
>hurr sitting and doing nothing is magic

It just really irks when peple think they know something but really all they know is what they've heard or read.

Let me point you to the number of physical benefits of meditation. It turns out giving the mind a place to rest does wonders for things liek managing blood pressure and stress. Makes sense since every part of the body has neurological connectors.

>>9282773

OP here.

thank you, you are very kind and wise. I am feeling better with your post.

>>9282779
I have already given my argument and I will expand on it.

CBT as a treatment method relies on nothing but a flawed concept of both hermeneutics and the human mind in which statements interpreted as negative by the therapist are arbitrarily designated as "irrational" by bullying the subject into a state of doubt through pressing on the epistemological uncertainty of any proposition imaginable and the contingent position of authority they hold until they capitilate into skepticism of their own expressions for which the therapist in turn arbitrarily proposes an exchange thought.

What is missed of course is that the expressions that the patient reports to others does not necessarily reflect the patients own beliefs of what his thoughts are and his beliefs of what his thoughts are may not reflect his actual emotional relationship.
But of course it results in short term reports of effectivity exactly because the subject is trained in a borderline pavelovian fashion towards reporting exactly what the therapist desires to hear. That is to say exactly what psychometrics deem "successful" in their laughably restricted and philosophically naive attempt to measure such a nuanced end as an effective treatment.

>>9282786
I'm resting in a hot tub will have the same effect. Meditation and resting are not synonymous will all the pseudo-mystical baggage associated with meditation as an ideological construct.

>>9282784
Dude I give all of zero shits into your apparent one man case study.
I for one don't believe anxiety is ever so simple of an emotion that we can speak of facing "it", nor what "facing" entails or further still whether it is desirable for it to be "faced" towards whatever what ends we seek from facing it.

You are right though that it does boil down to brute force training as you would with a dog but I hardly consider that to be treating anxiety so much as sandblasting a symthom of it.

>>9282801
There are no authentic feelings. Every single one of our thoughts and actions are conditioned by our environment.

Why is being conditioned by thought patterns into depression authentic, but being conditioned out of them by other methods inauthentic?

Can you show us a "true" standpoint of the mind which is completely untainted by the actions of others?

>>9282803
>I'm resting in a hot tub will have the same effect.
Why do you feel confident to talk of something you obviously have no idea about?

>>9282817
I never stated any such thing as an "authentic" feeling existing. What I stated is that there are feelings which is self obvious, there are feelings we think ourselves to have and there are feelings we report we have. None of these three things necessarily may align. My issue with CBT is not with what it aims to do but what it actually does which simply deals with what people think they feel at best and what they report to others at worst.

>>9282812

Well, all I wanted was to be able to work again, to be functional again.

Yes, it was a kind of brute-force process. I needed to rewire my brain, to change it biologically, with so simple a lesson that it really is like dog-teaching, but it worked. I am happy again. I don’t suffer with irregular discharges of adrenaline anymore.

Also: I read about it. I am just one of thousands of people who got cured with CBT.

I am not interested in the philosophical or moral values of it. All it interests me is that you can get yourself cured with this treatment.

If you were one of the general anxiety disorder patients, or suffering with a major case of phobia that was really damaging your life, you would see this in a new perspective.

>>9282823
When was the last time you were in a hot tub?

>>9282827
>I needed to rewire my brain

Please stop speaking utter drivel
Your idea that you were "cured" by CBT is speculation at best, you have absolutely zero idea at where you would be today if you never picked up that book.
I'll have you know I was a general anxiety patient so I'm very familiar with the mechanisms of the treatment though I don't wave my particular case as any evidence one way or the other since that would be retarded.

>>9282833

how did you treat your anxiety?

>>9282842
Lacanian psychotherapy

>>9282826
Your point is that there is some "self-obvious" feeling which is more authentic and more in need of fixing than "self-reported" feelings. Even if we agree with this characterisation, why do you privilege one over the other?

If people have been trained by CBT to live more functional lives, from what standpoint can you tell them that it has not been beneficial to them?

>>9282848

And what makes you think that the treatment that was best for you is the best to everyone?

>>9282828
Last summer?

No one who knew even the slightest thing about meditation would compare it to relaxing in a hot tub, lol. The point of meditation is not to "relax" but to train the mind to observe itself.

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>>9282586
Hi.
(I havent read the thread).
Your first greentext is the result of a misunderstanding. Buddhism is not a philosophy, but a way of living. Meditation by itself will lead you to the right path. You have to understand that theres no path, no way, no road -enlightenment is available to you NOW..youre only too blind to see it, too attached, too egotistical. But theres no means to an end, theres no 'looking for something'. You can be free in this very moment. But you dont know it yet. To understand this, you have to meditate with no goal in mind,with no future. You will get to understand that you ARE a buddha. First it will be ONE experience and it will last a few seconds only: complete desatachment, only joy in being in the now.. look up Osho on youtube, watch his videos.

The rest of your post is the result of the same misunderstanding, Im sorry to say. Eastern 'philosophy' is NOT philosophy at all. Here we are looking for truth. There they want to know how to live,and every doctrine is just a way to achieve a specific state of mind, an 'enlightenment'.. it is not about what is, but about how to be..

Tl;dr buddhism is not a philosophy. Meditate and understand what it is about, or think, keep thinking and thinking and thinking, and understand nothing at all beyond surface level.

t. I practiced meditation for years, it worked and I got the fuck away from it immediately.

Read Nietzsches Antichrist.. Kierkegaard is also very 'eastern' at his core, in his way to understand Christianity. Read fear and tremble.

>>9282849
Because all the others emerge from that feeling, its not that its more authentic, its that its the only which which exists in any sense and the rest are simply interpretations and reports of it.
Beneficial is a relative term. I'm sure many people did benefit from sitting down with people and talking about their problems and being told to analyze whether their reported displeasures can not be critically re-assessed.
I'm sure in turn many people who go for any sort of therapy all the way to crystal treatment also benefitted in a similar way.
The issue is whether the treatment is legitimate, whether we can logically trace how it is benefitting people and not just an utterly arbitrary ritual around which people are benefitted.

i am Japanize (。・ω・。)ゞhi
do you read daisetsu suzuki?
i like to read him(*￣∇￣*)
by the way,i think Buddha is nobody.
i remember Emily Dickinson 's poem.
「i'm nobody! who are you?」
i like this poem (///ω///)
you should write so that it will rain.
rain is nobody,and world is nobody.
you should write a sentence that will please those who are sad,because they need it.(´・ω・`)
you should write what you need.
(￣ー￣)
i think this is the existence of a Buddhist writer.
i am happy if it becomes reference.
please do your best and be a good writer v(・∀・*)i support you.
finally(ФωФ),it should not be misunderstand that the Buddha is not even a nobody、fluff……
see you soon(*￣∇￣)ノ

haiku

perfect moon.
dead,dead,dead,Nietzsche too.

>>9282848

Psychotherapy is much more prone to charlatanism than CBT.

With CBT there is even the knowledge what you are doing with your brain, what you want to change, how will you affect it biochemically.

When it comes down to Freud and Lacan and Jung you mostly have some guy’s views about the world. Is much more pure philosophy than science.

I would take CBT every day over psychotherapy.

>>9282859
I don't deal in silly notions like "best", I believe that it can legitimately deal with subconscious traumas and antagonisms that CBT can not though I base that on the innate mechanisms of the treatment I researched before choosing it rather than my own results within it which are irrelevant.

>>9282868
>>9282873

Thank you, guys, thank you very much

>>9282874
Absolute nonsense. There is no more awareness of what is happening in the subjects brain during CBT as any other moment in a persons life, in psychoanalysis or otherwise.
You'll find practically all of Cognitive-Behaviourists models and presumptions were developed long before Neuroscience was in its infancy, as restricted as it is today and are just as much inductive and philosophically based as psychoanalysis. The only difference between them is that the philosophy in Psychoanlysis is extremely more sophisticated by virtue of its admitting to being so compared to the Victorian tier positivist conceptions of desire and expressions present in CBT

>>9282862
Were you still taking pills during your discovery of meditation too?

>>9282870
>its not that its more authentic, its that its the only which which exists in any sense
That is the literal definition of authenticity.

Look, it doesn't matter if there is some "ding-an-sich" Anxiety floating about somewhere, if everything the patient believes and reports is healthier than before therapy.
>I'm sure in turn many people who go for any sort of therapy all the way to crystal treatment also benefitted in a similar way.
Okay, now we're getting somewhere because this can be empirically tested. Does CBT have a greater success rate than placebo treatments?

>>9282891
My pleasure. What did you like about >>9282868 ?
Is it so nonsensical that you find it funny?

piensa mal y aciertarás

>>9282910
Huh? I've never been on pills other than recreational ones. You must be confusing me with another anon

>>9282912
> if everything the patient believes and reports is healthier than before therapy.

Except it does. And the long term diminishing returns on CBT speak for themselves in this regard. Your emotions don't just disapear because you wish them away and have a strong tendency to return. And this is all within as you say "the success rates" which I find to be a crude and laughable notion, that we can measure subjective well being much less define what on Earth that is.
In either case, yes the treatment that specifically trains patients to report that they are feeling well report that they are feeling well.

>>9282586
Owen Flanagan wrote a lovely little book titled 'The Bodhidattva's Brain' and it might address your interest in a naturalized Buddhism.

>>9282803
>I'm resting in a hot tub will have the same effect.

You can meditate anywhere. You can do it at a hot tub but you can do it just by walking.

>Meditation and resting are not synonymous

Depends on the type of meditation and its intentions.

>meditation as an ideological construct.

Of course it is. It's literally studying the Mind first hand through direct experience. The Mind and its formulations, patterns, responses, etc. Which is observed through one's thoughts and actions.

>all the pseudo-mystical baggage associated with it

I can't blame you. mystical experiences are hard to verify or question. Meditative techniques are use by various belief systems all over history.

>>9282862

>No one who knew even the slightest thing about meditation would compare it to relaxing in a hot tub, lol. The point of meditation is not to "relax" but to train the mind to observe itself.

Well that's a pretty gay opinion, since relaxation usually follows from meditation and training the mind to observe itself, since that usually quietens the incessant, pointless and usually stressful mental chatter.

>>9282966
>. It's literally studying the Mind first hand through direct experience. The Mind and its formulations, patterns, responses, etc. Which is observed through one's thoughts and actions.

I fail to see how you can not be said to be doing that at literally any moment in time.

>>9282868
Anon, what about art, creativity, and, in this case, writing? Isn't writing just a way to feed our ego? We want recognition and approval from whar we write, so does writing could be negative in the search of illumination?

>>9282972

>I fail to see how you can not be said to be doing that at literally any moment in time.

Exactly. Targeting meditation, you need to be more specific. Because many people see running as a form of meditation (setting intentions, observing and reacting to pain, being mindful of intentions, etc). What's great is there's literally no way to be not be able to do some sort of meditation. In the broadest sense, it's just keeping a reflective journal with commentary on anything.

>>9282973
>Anon, what about art, creativity, and, in this case, writing? Isn't writing just a way to feed our ego?

this

>>9282586

this is not a paradox. this is obviously a lie. imagine you not desire anything. imagine it now. ok. if you do, that is the "enlightment" thing. that is the moment of nothing. there is no more into it. you want that state of mind to live better?. ok, then you are like the people who play videogames and do drugs, you just need to relax. thats okay, but dont go thinking you are experiencing something grandiose and eternal only in order to chill yourself.
you can not desire to not desire because there is a motive previous to do that, and you are inside that motive, you are looking to answers to a little tiny personal motive and you are giving answers to that motive. the not desire method is a question of faith. the buddhist training themselves in order to believe this bullshit, to broke her deffenses and her rationalizations, and then they cant criticize well why they are looking for this, theyre addicts to it. the buddhism is a religion and not a philosophy for a reason.

you want to be a master of literature and a buddhist at the same time?. this is another fucking contradiction that you may reconcile with some bullshit. and you go all proud of yourself saying that you believe in a "personal buddhism".

>sorry for my english.

>>9283064
There is no Ego.

Nobody forbids you from doing art.

>>9282973
Yes, it could.
Reading, writing, knowledge, literature, philosophy.. Thought in general is 'against illumination'. There lies its scary nature. I dont think theres anything on earth scarier than Illumination. Its a suicide that will keep you alive. ((You))will disappear, but (()) will continue living. You will be everything and nothing, you wont be you anymore.

I would advice forgetting about buddhism and tantra, just walk away anon. I felt the deepest emptiness following that path. Dont go there..

>>9283016
Thats horseshit and a vast stretch of the term

>>9283074
>I would advice forgetting about buddhism and tantra, just walk away anon.

There are safer ways. Vipassana and samatha is enough.

>>9282970
You don't understand anything about what you are critiquing. Sorry. The point of meditation is awareness, not relaxation.

>>9283085
Meditation is like taking a shit... siting down to release some shit

>>9283129
and why is good the awareness?

>>9283100
You may very well be right. I dont know anything about Vipassana or Samatha. What I know is that I experienced something that I wish I didnt have to experience. And I've been running away from meditation ever since. I saw the abyss and ran the fuck away from it, and I still haven't recovered. Meditation can very seriously fuck with your sense of identity, with the core of your being, of what-you-think-you-are, of yourself..
Words are useless to express this kind of stuff, as usual. As I said before, this is not philosophy..

>>9283139
because it brings you closer to the death of the ego. being unconscious of your true being is what makes us egotistical. constant, intense awareness, brings us to the realization that we are one with it all, that we are nothing.

t. different anon.

>>9283069
You, likewise, do not understand the first thing about Buddhist thought.

>>9283074
>Its a suicide that will keep you alive.
Guess what? Life is one long suicide. Every step is a march towards the grave.

Why does abandoning the fiction of the self scare you when it will die anyway? This is just vanity.

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>The older the texts, the simpler and down-to-earth they seem to be.

So in other words you haven't read any "older" texts or done any research? good god this thread is an embarrassment.

>>9283144
>the abyss
Are you talking about emptiness as in Sunyata?

>Meditation
can be dangerous but seriously you need to only watch the breath. That's all there is to it.

>>9283167
Shut up /pol/tard

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>>9283144
>I saw the abyss and ran the fuck away from it

lel you can never see the abyss you retard, what you seen what your imagination of the Real

>>9282973

You have a big problem indeed. You think too much. What about this, what about that. Haha! Many questions. Meditation means to put it all down and just do it. Since you are a beginner, maybe you get some rest mind while meditating, but after your meditation you soon get caught again by thinking mind. 'How can I be free of desire if I desire to be free of desire?' 'How can a monk write a poem about his hut?' 'What about this, what about that?'. That is your bad karma. Its like carrying a big cube of ice inside your guts. You want to write but inside your mind thoughts and feelings float around and you cannot see clearly, write clearly. Meditation means melting that ice, melting your bad karma. Right now, you are not the boss of your mind. Thinking mind should be your clerk but he is bossing you around in your own factory. It seems to me that some correction is necessary. So empty mind steps in: Quiet or I kick you out, stupid!

Practice, practice, practice. Now you do only sitting meditation, soon you will begin to further your practice: standing meditation, driving my car meditation, writing meditation, watching tv meditation, thinking meditation, sleeping meditation: just keep your mind clear like an empty page, clear like space or a mirror: one thing comes, stays a while, and then makes room for the next thing.

A hat maker makes hats. A shoemaker makes shoes. A writer writes books. Maybe you want to impress other people with your writing. Thats your bad karma. So meditation helps melting that desire. If you write, just write. Dont think about other stuff. Thats simply not important. The only important thing while writing is writing.

If you cant stop thinking, more meditation is necessary.

Thinking mind is like a fisherman throwing a hook with bait on it in front of your nose. One false move and he caught you, so be careful! Even thr smallest nibble and you'll die.

>art
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn42/sn42.002.than.html

Its almost like you want a bad rebirth.

>>9283151

>brings us to the realization that we are one with it all, that we are nothing.
i respect this conclutions. and i valuate them because i feel good with them. i literally dont know if it´s true at all this realizations. i dont know why you valuate this "realization" without a feeling attached to it. you use the awareness to feel the "we are one and with all", not because awareness in itself.
anyway you cant be totally consistent with "we are one and with all" and live a limited carnal life.

>>9283159
You only have words here, anon.
If you had had a similar experience you would understand. I have no argument and I dont feel the need to convince anyone. And I know life is basically a state of not-being-dead-yet and not much else. Thats nothing new to me.

>>9283176
Am I talking about emptiness as in Sunyata? I have no idea, I don't know what Sunyata is.
>meditation can be dangerous but you only need to use X (simple and intuitive method)
methods (means) dont matter, the end is the same. I had an experience (more than one actually) and I didnt like how it was fucking with my mind. Maybe Im just not built for it.

this post is mostly pretentious empty words, dont mind me anons.

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>meditation can be dangerous

This thread has gone beyond /x/ territory

>>9283192
>bad karma
Just a quick correction, there's no such thing as "good" and "bad" karma. Karma is simply *all* our thoughts and actions, the way we keep ourselves yoked to the wheel of suffering.

>>9282705
Buddhism doesn't espouse pacifism, in particular the Buddha himself believed violence could be justified, and believed in the use of soldiers to protect the Dharma and a Monarchs kingdom.

>>9283159
>You, likewise, do not understand the first thing about Buddhist thought.
maybe is true, i admit it. what is the first thing about buddhist tought?.

>Why does abandoning the fiction of the self
scare you when it will die anyway? This is just vanity.
that is one good thought. if your life if a march towards the grave why not abandoning?. (please dont tell me you believe in reincarnation)

>>9283220
What a violent hypocrite, this is why Christ is the superior moral figure

>>9283217
>there's no such thing as bad karma
Yes there is, if you collect enough of it you'll have to burn it off in hell (naraka).

>>9283200
>you cant be totally consistent with "we are one and with all" and live a limited carnal life.
The opposite of this is true. There is no carnal life, life is one: there's the material world and there's consciousness, more of it in the superior creatures, less in the inferior, but consciousness in it all. '''''Achieving''''' illumination means becoming FULLY aware of yourself and the world. And this is supposed to come with the realization that you (body with consciousness that comes from it, but NO ego) are part of the whole.. that youre the whole itself, like everything else that exists. Everything is necessary

What is meditation?

>>9283242
>What is meditation?
A state of mind? No.
A state of no-mind.

>>9283226
However there's debate on if the Karmic is minimized or not; in another sutta somebody murders a robber to stop him from murdering a butch of Buddhas so he doesn't amass a ridiculous amount of bad karma, this is a good deed and he's perfectly fine knowing he's going to hell for murdering the robber because the robber isn't going to hell of a gorillian years.

>>9283230
You miss the point. Even good karma yokes us to the suffering inherent in the corporeal world. Yes, heaven is better than hell, but it all burns off anyway and comes full circle.

The point is not to cultivate good karma and reject bad karma, but to cleanse ourselves of all karma, both good and bad. The distinction is immaterial.

>>9283242
>>9283246
A state, NOT a process.
Meditation is something that can happen to you, eventually, when you're practicing a "method of meditation". It HAPPENS, you cant DO it.

>>9283232
ok, be happy. you are in fully religious mode now. (wich is not bad in itself, only astonishingly boring.)

>>9282586
Don't listen to these morons OP. If something catches your attention, like Buddhism, then investigate it fully, see how deeply you can understand it without judgment (this is what a mature mind does after it understands the silent depths of its ignorance) - Because there are things in life worth understanding, yourself being the most significant, and buddhism is a polished mirror.

>>9283254
You realize meditation isn't considered selfish because whilst doing it you literally breath in bad karma and breath out good karma right?

You don't know what your talking about, stream-enterers can be reborn into higher realms as a result of good karma generated whilst being a monk.

>>9283277
Don't listen to these morons, listen to this moron

>>9283254
Although there is nothing wrong with what you have said (except the fact that you opened your mouth at all), sometimes bad speech is necessary to give someone the right kind of lesson. 'Bad karma', 'good karma', '*all* our thoughts and actions karma' are not important in this case. Only 'keep practicing' is important.

>>9283262
I dont even believe what I said.
Im talking from experience and what I remember from reading about all this mess three years ago. Be happy you too

>>9283304
>Lay person
>Thinks he's practising Buddhism
Yeah no, something like 2% of the Tipitaka is even applicable to you.

>>9283324
It's hard to become a Buddha in normal society but it doesn't mean you should not being doing what is skillful.

>>9283344
>Now I will tell you the layman's duty. Following it a lay-disciple would be virtuous; for it is not possible for one occupied with the household life to realize the complete bhikkhu practice (dhamma)

You should try living virtuously instead.

>>9283070
I am not talking about being forbidden.

Many people I know are artists, poets and writers (not talking about the value of their works), and most of the times I keep wondering why I don't feel that impulse to make popular my own creations, why, somehow, I feel is a futile intend of nothingness?

People look at me like I am an annoying arrogant, or that I am scared about what would happen next. But I just can't understand why I would care about the next.. I mean, putting your work into the market, trying to make a profit, gaining some fame and hence creating opportunities of work or relationships, is mostly feeding your ego and mere survival. How is that... art?

What's the difference between printing 500 copies of your book that, with some luck, would be bought by 500 persons, instead of just give 500 copies of your manuscript around, so, with some luck, 500 persons would get it too? The profit?

>>9283353

Yeah, I do try my best to follow the Five Precepts. I accept that the how one lives affects the meditative life.

>>9283375

Why do Buddhist create beautifull mandallas and erase it ?

>>9283397
Andsoitgoes

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>>9282812
>Dude I give all of zero shits into your apparent one man case study.
What about multi-man case studies? The science shows it works, get over it.

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>>9283199
This doesn't seem right, there are tons and tons of wonderful buddhist art in all fields (I'm especially fond of thai sculpture). Are artist wrong for doing it or can art be beneficial to buddhist

>>9283401
Art for the sake of art is all that matters.

>>9282773
>Buddhism is a load of bullcrap

I love how people who have no idea what the fuck they are talking about think they can just make these assertions. Probably the most frustrating aspect of practicing Buddhism is people read some pamphlet and think they understand it. When in actuality it takes shit tons of patience and perseverance on and off the pillow to experience the truth behind something as simple as the five aggregates.

>>9283192

great post.

thanks

>>9282942
>long term diminishing returns
Would you care to cite this please?

t. Different anon

>>9282780
>mysticism
You know nothing of mediation. How about you research topics you wish to give your opinion on?

Fuck off, pseud.

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this is boring .

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1968/kawabata-lecture.html

>>9283492
Duh if you say so

OP here

Thank you so much for your cute post:

>>9282873

Here, this is from me to you. I worked upon a previous poem of mine (sorry for the ad english, is not my first language):

Siddhartha, the Buddha, the master of renunciation,
The king with the immensity of the mind for kingdom,
He who walks over the clouds, who walks in the slime of the abyss;
The emperor who has a beating magnolia - tumid with
The sap of empathy and complacency - as his heart.
Siddhartha, the prince of the sweet features
That kiss and caress the soul of the beholder
Making him imagine the hives of emotional gold nested beyond his retinas
The treasures that breathe behind his eyelids
Siddhartha, a man of bones and skin and blood,
Siddhartha, a homo sapiens, a primate,
That, with a warm smile, carries
The whole cosmos on his flesh,
Compassion itself condensed in a human-shaped diamond.

This is also for all the helpers and supporterson this thread. Thank you all so very much for your time and attention.

>>9285583
Kill yourself

>>9285589
You're mean

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>>9285583

im so buddhist im not buddhist

Reminder that Daniel Ingram has super powers
https://soundcloud.com/buddhistgeeks/a-pragmatists-take-on-the-powers

>>9283523
>can art be beneficial?
Beneficial in which sense? Any sense? Earning respect, money, power or calm through art is equally beneficial? What is calm? Calm for having respect, money, power? Or just an empty calm?

>>9285583
That's nice anon.

Still, I don't know how trying to bring a character to my level is feeling better. Trying to ensure that Siddhartha was also flesh and bones doesn't make me feel better or worse by comparison. It makes me feel too far away from whatever I want to achieve.

>>9282586
>>>To eliminate desire one must desire to do so, so how is it possible to do it?

also, the only natural way, where you do not need to force anything, to be good at concentration is to have pleasure, but non-sensual

Bhikkhus, for a virtuous person, one whose behavior is virtuous, no volition need be exerted: ‘Let non-regret arise in me.’ It is natural that non-regret arises in a virtuous person, one whose behavior is virtuous.

“For one without regret no volition need be exerted: ‘Let joy arise in me.’ It is natural that joy arises in one without regret.

“For one who is joyful no volition need be exerted: ‘Let rapture arise in me.’ It is natural that rapture arises in one who is joyful.

“For one with a rapturous mind no volition need be exerted: ‘Let my body be tranquil.’ It is natural that the body of one with a rapturous mind is tranquil.

“For one tranquil in body no volition need be exerted: ‘Let me feel pleasure.’ It is natural that one tranquil in body feels pleasure.

“For one feeling pleasure no volition need be exerted: ‘Let my mind be concentrated.’ It is natural that the mind of one feeling pleasure is concentrated.

“For one who is concentrated no volition need be exerted: ‘Let me know and see things as they really are.’ It is natural that one who is concentrated knows and sees things as they really are.

“For one who knows and sees things as they really are no volition need be exerted: ‘Let me be disenchanted and dispassionate.’ It is natural that one who knows and sees things as they really are is disenchanted and dispassionate.

“For one who is disenchanted and dispassionate no volition need be exerted: ‘Let me realize the knowledge and vision of liberation.’ It is natural that one who is disenchanted and dispassionate realizes the knowledge and vision of liberation.

>>9286125
>disenchanted and dispassionate.
This is what confuse me more, I tend to see those as a disappointment hence disgust towards the mundane, when it looks more like not even a lack of, but an absence?

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What kind of LARPing shitfest is this thread? I'm laughing my arse off here. Do buddhists have no self-awareness? Oh wait, shit, don't answer that.

>>9284332
Different anon. That anon might be referring to CBT's success rates for patients in crisis. You can find more by searching phrases liker CBT benefits duration or stuff like that.

CBT is a neat trick but it's creating a divide in the therapeutic and psychological fields, who have seen patients and analysands revert to old behavior in as little as a few months after completing their CBT 'courses'. Health insurance companies like CBT because it presents wellness as a practical, results-oriented system and allows the insurers to say they're solving the insured's problems. CBT costs substantially less than an intensive, long term supportive listening therapy, or any other long term therapeutic approach meant to address core issues.

None of this should suggest that CBT is not useful as psychic triage. I've heard way too much anecdotal evidence from former CBT patients to think otherwise, but we need to drill down on the specifics of why it helps, and understand why it only seems to offer benefits that don't last for much longer than a year or two. Though for that year or two of efficacy, all the research I've seen indicates CBT is as useful as an anti-depressant regimen over the same period. Kind of related, but as our imaging technology advances, we'll get further away from our reliance on patient self-reporting, and create multiple objective metrics for the symptoms of depression and addiction.

Aside from psychic triage, it's safe to consider CBT as a secular, ritualized, and variable form of acceptance. This is slightly ironic given that the harshest critique found in this thread was that CBT is arbitrary. That's not a bug in Tara Brach's thinking, but a feature that allows practitioners to use her therapeutic perspective (which has made her quite successful academically, financially) as a sort of clay to be formed and fired at-will as the practitioners needs. Are you sad? Accept it. Are you angry? Accept it. This is absurdly reductionist, obviously completing the coursework gets patients closer to the desired state of acceptance.

Anyway, Radical Acceptance is a good book to read if anyone's interested in the CBT trend, is training to be a mental health professional, or is a potential patient who is looking for some self-help that might pull them outside of themselves. I think the activity book is available for free on various CBT sites if you're curious. Psychoanalysis and Buddhism is also good if you're interested in less mainstream, more academic perspectives of healing. A few cool cases, and the analysts talk shit to each other via rebuttals/critique. Useful.

tl;dr: CBT isn't a panacea, but it is useful. We need to find out why it's effective and how to make it more so.

>>9286205
no, they have no-self awareness ayyy

>>9285994

But the fact that Buddha was a person and not a god or demi-god is actually quite liberating.

If he was above humanity then no matter how much dedication you put in your practice you would still never be like him. But since he was a person of flesh and blood and subjected to disease and decay and all things human, he is an example of what can be achieved with wise work and effort.

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>>9286955
>Trynna b liek buddha
Y u no jus be urself?

Is there a creator God in Buddhism? If not then how do they explain the existence of the universe?

>>9286330
I find it hilariously absurd that the same retards who believe that the ego is an illusion presume that thought correction can alter neurochemistry in any signiticant sense. The only thing that neuroscience is revealing is the flimsy delusional apprehensions of both Cognitivism and Buddhism

>>9286973
>Is there a creator God in Buddhism?

When such kind of questions were made to the Buddha he usually remained silent. When Buddhism was propagated through the world it was mixed with the religions of the fertilized regions, and so you see some branches of it with some strange forms of deities.

As for the Buddha, one can say that he admitted his ignorance of such questions, and since he didn’t know it was better simply to be silent. He said that what he was teaching was suffering and the end of suffering. He was much more down-to-earth than mystical.

>>9282868
>The idea of nibbāna as the ultimate goal of human endeavour will no doubt strike the common man, innocently enjoying the pleasures of his senses, as a singularly discouraging notion if he is told that it is no more than 'cessation of being'. Without actually going so far (overtly, at least) as to hope for Bradley's Absolute ('It would be experience entire, containing all elements in harmony. Thought would be present as a higher intuition; will would be there where the ideal had become reality; and beauty and pleasure and feeling would live on in this total fulfilment. Every flame of passion, chaste or carnal, would still burn in the Absolute unquenched and unabridged, a note absorbed in the harmony of its higher bliss.' [Op. cit. (A.&R.), Ch. XV]),—without perhaps going quite so far as this, even a thoughtful man may like to expect something a little more positive than 'mere extinction' as the summum bonum. We shrink before the idea that our existence, with its anguishes and its extasies, is wholly gratuitous, and we are repelled by the suggestion that we should be better off without it; and it is only natural that the puthujjana should look for a formula to save something from (as he imagines) the shipwreck.
- Nanavira Thera

>>9287213
Like the guy in the matrix said: It aint no real steak, but it tastes damn fine to me.

>>9283375
I mainly do art because the process of creation excites me and keeps me sane. In the moment, I feel free, like I can create anything that I want. I am flowing with the universe in a creative motion, with no need for anything else.

>>9286990
This is absolutely true and more practitioners would consider the implications of this statement if it didn't involve ad hominem. We should all be asking, "What is the self that is being enlightened?"

The way new agers have married secular Western Buddhism with cognitivism sidesteps inconveniently behaviorist, constructivist liturgical excerpts (Kodhavagga, Kolyana-mitata) and practices (breathing meditation, alms-giving). This marriage also misrepresents the traditional Buddhist concept of self, emphasizing thoughts and intentions, which are parts of the aggregated self, but not superior to it in the skandhas model.

CBT is still better than nothing, crystals, placebos, etc. You believe in the persuasive power of neuroscience, but all evidence suggests CBT won't be going away soon. Not until we develop and promote a cheap, effective way of treating depressives in the short term, preferably with fewer side-effects than anti-depressants.

>>9286964
agree desu senpai. i don't think buddha would be buddhist if he were around today, he'd be a trustafarian deadbeat dad, meditating and camping in parks with his friends. we need to think of why we put people on pedestals

>>9282586
>>I like to write and one of the main goals of my life is to become better as writer, little by little, day by day. I practice this art and I honestly want (I desire) to get better, to achieve more mastery. Can I achieve more profound states of wisdom (maybe even enlightenment after many years, who knows) and still keep striving each day to become a better writer? The process of writing, to me, is not always pleasurable, and many times I feel great discomfort while trying to polish up my drafts or when trying to imagine new things out of nothing. Is great-wisdom/enlightenment possible when one has this artistic-drive in ones life?
no, hedonism is the opposite of the path

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>>9288126
>...pedestals
Exactly. The difference between any leader and any of his followers is: the leader just wants to be what he is or what he aspires to be for himself, and any follower just wants to be a copy of someone else.
Create your own path, gentlemen

>>9282596
Oh, go to, anon!

>>9282801
Only two sentences in and I know your therapist was a hack or your understanding was shot.

The starting place of any cognitive therapy is that NO thought is irrational. They are adaptive mechanisms used to make sense of the world. They are all valid because they derive from real experience.

Problem is, at some point we need to look at the ones we got used to as a child, because most of them do not apply to adult life and a lot were brought about in response to shitty circumstances.

So you change your circumstances, and then you need to also change your habits of thoughts so that you don't apply the same cognitions to the new situation.

>>9282801
>reporting what the therapist wants to hear
So did you ever get around to actually trying CBT (e.g., six sessions at least) without doing this?

>>9285959
>Reminder that Daniel Ingram has super powers
>https://soundcloud.com/buddhistgeeks/a-pragmatists-take-on-the-powers
please comment