Disappearance of Buddhism From India: An Untold Story

ashoka's bloodlust was sated when he was born again. his empire was subject to his proselytizing of irrational bullshit

 

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now the idea is to attain equilibrium of self deprivation of senses by lessening the impact of materialistic sense such as pleasure of food or sex or hate, that all must be suppressed. and replace it with higher sense of feelings of love or unison and understanding/appreciation.

 

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ahh
ja? nein?

 

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ja
the Africans shall inherit the earth

 

Well, then you didn't read my tagline "In pursuit..."

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Btw, I am a guy.

Also, I do not believe the ultimate is depressing or pessimistic. I believe we are part of a larger game of cyclical creation and destruction and we just do our jobs. That might sound buddhist (and it is no different from bhagadgita), but I also believe we are supposed to enjoy what we have to and not turn ascetic.

 

Exactly, you are basically asking not to enjoy what you see, which is not so easy.

 

Actually, it was with the onslaught of foreigners that superstitions came into existence. It was the easiest way to preserve and pass on a tradition to the next generation, without actually delving into the logic.
Again, women were a target of the invaders after killing the men, and self-respecting families preferred to perish than be taken by the foreigners.

Also, Buddhism was not insulated from being corrupted either - it is humans at work after all. My native village was a buddhist hub a few centuries back (even today has a dilapidated archaeological remain of a vihara), and I know all was not well in the later stages for the religion.

Buddhism was popular in India at a time, but for a typical hindu who finds variety and contradiction an accepted and celebrated part of his religion, buddhism is just another sect and not something one has to convert into to embrace. Many hindus even today see Buddha as one of the numerous notations of God, and many consider him one of the incarnations of Vishnu.
Thanks.

 

The way I see it is this: (and this is no secret) The whole religious side of religion is all bullshit. I am referring to the "supernatural" which is to say nothing. However, I accept that people want to believe in the pixies for whatever reason. With this in mind I think that the Buddhist "faith" is much better than a monotheistic one - especially one that instills so much BS into the practitioner's brain that they can no longer even accept that the possibility of someone else's belief being correct could even exist. Me as a mere atheist am happy to say all and any of the BS may be correct I may be completely wrong. Ergo the BS I refer may not Bee BeeES.

Lastly, Buddhists seem to focus on meditation. Meditation increases happiness by up regulating neurogenesis in the hippocampus. Assuming Buddha was a wise fellow, it may be that his "epiphany" was that meditation causes happiness for whatever reasons and that the best manner of reaching this mental state is to strive towards removing desire - knowing full well 99.99% of people will never achieve such a state but also knowing that in this endeavor they may find happiness nonetheless.

In short, if we look at the population as a whole and accept that people by nature are bigoted arseholes I think Buddhism or polytheism does the best job at creating societies of people who are open minded enough to maybe find some peace with other people. In general. After all, I've never had a Buddhist refuse to shake my hand because touching me could somehow taint their very soul. I've never heard of a Buddhist refusing to eat food simply because it was cooked by a Muslim.

Michael

 

If Buddhism were competitive or evangelical, it wouldn't be Buddhism.

 

Buddhists have taken their theology and philosophy to other people.
There is a competition of ideas. As soon as Buddha started to teach people, those people would have automatically compared this new teaching to whatever their reference base was. If it seemed reasonable then they'd accept it - and probably pass it along to someone else. If it seemed stupid then they'd reject it. That's what I mean by competition - more like a survival of the fittest meme.

 

Are you referring to the apostasy in Islamic countries? It's totally backwards isn't it? Can you imagine a bright theologian intensely studying all the literature surrounding a religious subject - basically dedicating their entire life to finding out religious truths and coming to the sick conclusion that if a person where to make the personal decision to leave the faith - that such a person should be murdered?!?! To me - this says something about the basic tenets in the faith itself. That someone could even come near such a conclusion - little own arriving at it, really does say something doesn't it?

Michael

 

So what is the summation of the reasons behind India's vanishing Buddhism?

 

Well if it matters, Buddhism's original ideas of Nirvana are from Upanishads, and the idea of absolute truth union are vedantic in nature.

Buddhism was a great "Sponsored" religion in India at a time when Ashoka was ruling. This is because of his own guilt for invading and killing so many people, and since at that point in time this was the only religion that asked you to "relinquish" violence completely, he embraced it and then sent out missionaries to other parts of world.

It was after Adi Shankaracharya and Sufi saints that Buddhism started reducing its might. Adi Sankara, revived hinduism completely and did write some commentaries from upanishads. Remember though Sankara's ideas were derived from classical indian philosophy aka upanishads.

More so, i agree with one of the statements made here ... that is it hardly matters if the religion is popular or in decline , as long as your personal belief is strong you will be good

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Rick

 

So Hinduism is a black hole?!

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Thanks, UltiTruth. By the way, are you a Hindu/Buddhist?