Questions on Buddhism

[Invincible Summer]

karma dosnt exist, any simple history book will show you that doing good dosnt mean succes, and doing bad dosnt mean failure.

take gengis khan, one of the most ferocious tyran the world had endured, he ordered the rape and pillage of thousand of villages, and he died peacefully, being burried with ton of treasures and presents.

Franco, the spanish dictator, ogusto pinochet,chilean dictator, they both lived and died of natural causes, being able to fully fufill their aspirations and realize their evil deeds undisturbed.

on the other side of the coin, many good men where killed or lived sad lives despite their tremendous efforts to do good; spartacus was crucified, most of the jewish who organized uprising in the guetto where lined against the wall and shot, i seen multiples people who where good but got nothing but shit in life.

Karma dosnt exist.

I think the problem here is that Buddhist karma isn't a quid-pro-quo thing where if you do something good, the laws of the universe will bring good things to you. This (to my understanding) is how the West conceives it, but is not really correct.

I think that Buddhist karma is more about how the subject affects itself rather than how the external world will affect the subject. For instance, if you do something that is negatively karmic, there are emotions, etc that come with doing something that is negative and you'll feel some level of mental/physical suffering. Vice versa for positive actions.



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[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I think that Buddhist karma is more about how the subject affects itself rather than how the external world will affect the subject. For instance, if you do something that is negatively karmic, there are emotions, etc that come with doing something that is negative and you'll feel some level of mental/physical suffering. Vice versa for positive actions.

Isn't that down to personality, however? Sociopaths will happily screw someone over and not feel a twinge of guilt about it.

[Adi Shankara]

Isn't that down to personality, however? Sociopaths will happily screw someone over and not feel a twinge of guilt about it.

in Buddhist reasoning, sociopaths and psychopaths are deeply in bad karma, since they'll never find peace with others, nor will they ever know what it is to fully have the human experience.

[Adi Shankara]

but if you cant see or predict it, what evidence do you have to believe in it?

if everything has an equal and opposite reaction to every action, why wouldn't that be extended universally?

that a completly irrelevant exemple, children exist, karma dosnt.

missed my point entirely; future children don't exist, so why have them?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

in Buddhist reasoning, sociopaths and psychopaths are deeply in bad karma, since they'll never find peace with others, nor will they ever know what it is to fully have the human experience.

This sort of thing is why I think attributing human activities and mindsets to such nebulous concepts as "karma" is far inferior to rational reasoning using evidence gathered from the material world. Sociopaths are the way they are because their brains are different, and hopefully medical science will be able to do something about it one day.

[Invincible Summer]

I've got a question: How are the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism involved in maintaining a theocratic/feudalistic, caste-like structure?

Also in another thread, Kiev Communard mentioned that Zen Buddhism in Japan had been linked to militarism and nationalism.

What can be said about this? Is it just aberrations on Buddhist teaching, much like how some Christians see Televangelists and Prosperity Gospel preachers to be aberrations on Christian theology?

[Adi Shankara]

I've got a question: How are the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism involved in maintaining a theocratic/feudalistic, caste-like structure?

Tibetan history is pretty complex on this; the title of Dalai Lama is originally a Mongolian title given to abbots of the Dredung monastery (I think) who showed royal favor to Altan Khan; many of the Dalai Lamas were never even Tibetan, and some were sent in from the Mongol Empire, in a sort of show of support for the friendly relations between the Tibetan and Mongol empires. how it was turned into a title of Tulku (basically, a Lama who could choose his/her own rebirth) was that Sonam Gyatso, the first Dalai Lama, proclaimed his future rebirths and signs to look for. naturally, considering the original Mongolian title bestowed, it was soon manipulated into political office in order to maintain that order of Mongol-Tibetan relations.

Now what turned this office into a theocracy was the original appointment of a rival Lama by the grandson of the great Khan, and this upset the balance, and led to many invasions and periods of hardship; so Kelzang Gyatso, the original selected Tulku, absorbed power to consolidate the rule of his school of Lamas and supporters, and ever since then (I think it was in the 1700s) it was a theocracy led by a few regents who killed Dalai Lamas to prevent them from ruling, whereas before, it was pretty much just a Lama-led kingdom with strong relations to Mongolia. (sorry if this is kinda rambling, I'm a little bit stoned, and if you need me to explain any of this in depth, just ask)

So basically, a schism with Mongolia led to a dictator like Lama who enforced strict rule of Tibet, who was killed by either Chinese imperial court officials, rival Tibetan clans, and that led to the deaths of many Dalai Lama tulkus before they could obtain the age of majority to rule, thus allowing a "royal regent" to basically dictate from the palace while the very Lamas they were to be protecting would often die horribly violent deaths, thus establishing a mysterious monarchy that ruled through the Tibetan lamas as if that marked them with divine right to rule. take this quote by the Dalai Lama's brother to understand the situation:

After him [Jamphel Gyatso the VIIIth Dalai Lama (1758-1804)], the IXth and Xth Dalai Lamas died before attaining their majority: one of them is credibly stated to have been murdered and strong suspicion attaches to the other. The XIth and XIIth were each enthroned but died soon after being invested with power. For 113 years, therefore, supreme authority in Tibet was in the hands of a Lama Regent, except for about two years when a lay noble held office and for short periods of nominal rule by the XIth and XIIth Dalai Lamas.
It has sometimes been suggested that this state of affairs was brought about by the Ambans—the Imperial Residents in Tibet—because it would be easier to control the Tibet through a Regent than when a Dalai Lama, with his absolute power, was at the head of the government. That is not true. The regular ebb and flow of events followed its set course. The Imperial Residents in Tibet, after the first flush of zeal in 1750, grew less and less interested and efficient. Tibet was, to them, exile from the urbanity and culture of Peking; and so far from dominating the Regents, the Ambans allowed themselves to be dominated. It was the ambition and greed for power of Tibetans that led to five successive Dalai Lamas being subjected to continuous tutelage.

tl;dr: so basically, the Tibetan monarchy of regents ruled while telling the people they ruled with right through the Lamas even though most died horrible violent deaths, thus establishing a rule of elite lamas.

Also in another thread, Kiev Communard mentioned that Zen Buddhism in Japan had been linked to militarism and nationalism.

This is the first time I heard of this. State Shinto is almost always what manifests itself as religious nationalism in Japan which centers on a cult of the emperor as the divinity as the sun; Buddhism would never sanction the worship of a human "deity" like that.

What can be said about this? Is it just aberrations on Buddhist teaching, much like how some Christians see Televangelists and Prosperity Gospel preachers to be aberrations on Christian theology?

Pure-land Buddhism is basically evangelical buddhism which follows some elements of faith based worship; they are relatively small compared to most sects, but they aren't intrusive in their practices, and they don't really preach on TV from what I know.

[Weezer]

Newton's Third Law of Motion:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Just saying.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Newton's Third Law of Motion:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Just saying.

Newton's laws refer to physical motion, not the actions of intelligent beings. Newton also said "force equals mass times velocity", but taking that to heart isn't necessarily going to make me a better person.

Buddhists and New Agers have this extremely irritating habit of mangling scientific terms and theories to support their own kooky beliefs.

[ZeroNowhere]

Newton also said "force equals mass times velocity", but taking that to heart isn't necessarily going to make me a better person.

Acceleration? But yeah, invoking Newton's Third Law in relation to karma is as mystifying as it is mystical. When a body exerts a certain physical force on a second body, the second body exerts an equal and opposite force on the first. This is not equivalent to karma. One may as well use the second law to prove that The Force from Star Wars exists.

Buddhists and New Agers have this extremely irritating habit of mangling scientific terms and theories to support their own kooky beliefs.

Yes, although the sensible ones (?!) have moved on to quantum physics, as they're less likely to look like idiots to the average high-schooler.

[Invincible Summer]

Pure-land Buddhism is basically evangelical buddhism which follows some elements of faith based worship; they are relatively small compared to most sects, but they aren't intrusive in their practices, and they don't really preach on TV from what I know.

What I meant is that could the Zen Buddhist influence in Japanese militarism (as explored in Brian Victoria's book Zen at War and discussed in this article) and other activity such as the expulsion of Tamils in Sri Lanka be considered "aberrations" of Buddhist doctrine?


Also, just when I thought Buddhists didn't seriously think that poor/disadvantaged/disabled people existed because of their "bad karma" accumulated in past lives, I came upon this and this.

This guy teaches classes on Buddhism and meditation around my area. He claims to be an ex-Theravadin monk. I mean, how is it fair at all to blame the victim for the actions of their past lives on their current condition, especially since they can't remember their lives (as supposedly one could have lived hundreds of past lives)? It's pretty abhorrent to me when he suggests in the 2nd video that people get murdered because it's basically their comeuppance.



Also, in another video of his, he basically says that there are things that we just shouldn't bother trying to understand (the JFK assassination being one of them... ). Karma is one of them. Isn't that against what Gautama said, when he basically said that one shouldn't believe just for the sake of believing? Don't the "Four Imponderables" conflict with basic Buddhist philosophy?

[x359594]

...Pure-land Buddhism is basically evangelical buddhism which follows some elements of faith based worship; they are relatively small compared to most sects, but they aren't intrusive in their practices, and they don't really preach on TV from what I know.

On the contrary, Pure Land Buddhism is the largest denomination of Buddhism in East Asia (China, Korea and Japan.) Taken together, Chinese-American, Japanese-American and Vietnamese-American Pure Land Buddhists easily out number all other denominations in the US. (The biggest single denomination of Buddhism in the United States, however, is Sokka Gakki International, an off-shoot of the Japanese Nichiren Shoshu sect.)

The Jodo Shinshu sect of Pure Land Buddhism is the largest sect in Japan and has been since the 15th century. Further, this school started as a non-hierarchical lay movement among the peasant classes in medieval Japan and during the Sengoku era when the country was up for grabs among competing warlords the Shin sect threw off feudal rule in a small area of Eastern Japan and set up a federation of villages that lasted 90 years. They firecely resisted the re-imposition of feudal overlordship in a series of uprisings known as the ikko-ikki.

In the rest of East Asia, especially China, Pure Land Buddhism became one of the dominant schools there; in China Chan (Zen) merged with Pure Land during the Ming dynasty, and Chan's recent revival in Taiwan is a continuity of this Pure land hybrid.

As far as the Japanese Pure Land goes, it was never evangelical in the Western sense of that word. This school is non-monastic and lay oriented. The founder Shinran left the Tendai monastery of Mt. Heiei after 20 years and turned to Pure land practice exclusively. For this he was dis-robed by the civil authority at the instigation of the Tendai hierarchy. Later he married and had children and directed his message of exclusive reliance on Amida Buddha to the peasantry, low ranking samurai and marginal laborers.

[Revolution starts with U]

Ok, let us get something straight. This will clear up some confusion on Karma (btw, I find it to be a bs concept with no evidence or real practical applications).
Karma does not happen in this life, only in your next one. This life you are living now is your fault because of the mistakes you made in a past life, not the one you are living now.
My Name is Earl's view of Karma (tho an awesome sho ) is just a practice in fundamentally misunderstanding karmic philosophy.

[x359594]

...Karma does not happen in this life, only in your next one...

As others have indicated in earlier posts, Buddhist karma (as distinct from New Age karma, Hindu karma and Jain karma) is a theory of causality, no more and no less. As such it occurs in this life inasmuch as results have causes, but the Buddhists extend causality into the metaphysical realm.

Whatever its popular misunderstandings maybe among contemporary Western Buddhists the earliest canonical literature does not carry the imputation of morality to karma.

[x359594]

Since this thread is now about Buddhism in general, I think it should be examined from an historical materialist perspective that takes into consideration the various iterations of Buddhism in different historical moments and different countries. Depending on time and place Buddhism has been progressive and it's been reactionary.

For an accurate understanding of Buddhism (or any other religion) it's important not to essentialize it but rather to examine how it relates to the given socio-economic conditions in which it finds itself.

For example, in contemporary North America all the various sects of Buddhism exist side by side but have very different memberships. The attitude of Asian-Americans toward Buddhism is different from the attitude of Euro-Americans toward Buddhism. Euro-American Buddhists are mostly white and middle-class and are heavily represented in the meditative schools of Buddhism while Asian-American Buddhists come from various class backgrounds and are more likely to belong to belong to non-meditative schools of Buddhism or in the case of Theravada Buddhism meditation is limited to ordained clergy. These are only a few of many examples that could be cited.