Buddhism vs. Religion

Discussion in 'Eastern Philosophy' started by kr8m3r_78, Feb 25, 2004.

  1. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    When you die? or when your reborn?

    When you die you don't enter a world of delusion. You might be born into a world full of s**t Tho...
     
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  3. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    When you are reborn, you're back in the illusion, samsara.
     
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  5. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    This life may be sufferable but it is not illusional to the lucid.
     
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  7. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    :shrug:
     
  8. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    You feel it is a illusion because you have not seen Brahman?
     
  9. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    I'm saying I don't know. I lean toward "it's all illusion," but...ask me again after I've been meditating daily for a few years?

    I just don't know.

    And if I could detach, yet still be here, well, it would be like a shadow-show...
     
  10. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    If we dispense with our illusion of life, what have we left? What is it when it is not mixed with our...perceptions?
     
  11. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    Still life, just with a deeper understanding of perceptions.
     
  12. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    But there are comforts to be had in illusions, religion being one of them. Without our perceptions, we are left with a meaningless existence, which might be a relief for some, and quite disturbing for others.
     
  13. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    A meaningless existence allows a person to find meaning in their own lives. Or die trying.
     
  14. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think that the Buddhist idea is that enlightenment and samsara are different places. You don't travel to enlightenment like a Christian ascends to heaven.

    In Buddhism, they are different ways of perceiving and reacting to precisely the same thing. A Buddhist who reaches enlightnment is still right here, right now. But he or she is no longer reacting to things in the ways that generate suffering and distress.

    In other words, I think that Buddhism isn't necessarily saying that this world that we inhabit is fake, it's saying that we are entrapped in disfunctional misconceptions of what the real world and ourselves within it actually are. The Buddhists would say that our suffering is the result of our grasping at and identifying ourselves with misconceived and ungraspable psychological phantasms.
     
  15. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    Wouldn't they be creating another delusion then, giving significance to an otherwise empty concept of our lives? Everything turns to dust, eventually.

    The Four Seals:

    All compounded things are impermanent.
    All stained emotions are painful.
    All phenomena are empty.
    Nirvana is peace.


    http://buddhism.about.com/od/basicbuddhistteachings/a/fourseals.htm
     
  16. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    Fighting ones own delusions is better than handing them down to another generation. Emptiness is free from delusion and close to Nirvana. What does it mean to become empty? To loose all previous objections and thought patterns and replace them with something less delusional. To reset the mind to remember nothing of the past experience you have held as "self defining". To be empty and rebuild the way you percieve the world is not a gauranteed path to Nirvana. It is the starting point to a long journey called life. If you do not reinvent your perspective at some point in time durring your life, you are destined to fall into the same delusions already suffered around the world and pass those delusional beliefs to another generation.
     
  17. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    Trying to think of some common delusions... What might they be?
     
  18. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    In common language: sexual orientation disturbance, depression, paranoia, bipolar, adhd, autism, anorexia, bulimia, schizophrenia. wikipedia

    Then you say, "I don't suffer any of those" "click link" WTF!

    Axis II disorders are much worse.

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    But I personally think the way some people view God and science are delusional as well. God complexes and scientific difficulties on both sides. Neither one is technically qualified as a delusion by DSMV standards, but that doesn't mean people who posses said "difficulties" aren't delusional.
     
  19. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    Yeppers, those are some extreme cases, and mental illness can produce delusional thinking, but I was wondering about those thoughts that are common among the general population--unless you are suggesting that the general population is mentally ill.

    I have a copy of the DSM at home and have worked with MED folks in the past. Some of their symptoms are very severe--hearing voices, seeing things that aren't there. If only they could clear their minds of the phantoms that haunt their lives, they would be so much happier.
     
  20. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    Religion is delusional and insanity by definition, but who am I to tell a group of people what to think of God? If only there were a pill that could rid the world of insanity. Oh wait there is:m:
     
  21. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    Strangely, I find that some of my oldest friends have gravitated towards religion as they grow older while I move farther away from it. It's a peculiar thing. Anyway, I suppose that religion is a mass delusion. But what other perceptions might be false? There must be many more; I simply can't think of any at the moment.

    One might be the way we view ourselves in relation to other people...? :shrug:
     
  22. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    yes, but to compile all the variables of introspection and psychoanalysis between just two people could take years unless they first learn how to speak. It is not about winning or loosing and falling prey to a delusional state, but referencing ideas and insight from another into knowledge. True knowledge spreads quickly through word of mouth.
     
  23. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    I think that if we were to sum up the question, we would find that Buddhism didn't start out a religion, but rather, it evolved into a religion, absorbing components of other belief systems as it grew.
     

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