Pedro de San Patricio
Gold Member
- Thread starter
- #21
It's probably worth pointing out that "Buddhism but without samsara and enlightenment" isn't much different than "Christianity but where Jesus is just some dead Jewish guy". It utterly misses the point of the entire system. Buddha taught that even the gods died and were subject to the law of rebirth according to their karma (which doesn't mean what dumbass hippie-influenced Westerners think it means) and the only way out of this otherwise endless cycle of suffering and death is to achieve the state of nirvana, which is essentially spiritual suicide. Even its name comes from the word for dousing a bonfire. Kill the passions. Kill the ego. Kill yourself at the most fundamental level. That's the basis of the entire faith. Take it away and you get vapid upper middle class white kids using it as a way to look exotic and interesting and annoy their Christian parents.Like this. This is genuinely sad to me. I mean, it's amazing that someone could attain that level of self mastery, but it's still a total rejection of our most basic needs and desires. It's a conscious choice to turn one's back on life and its gifts in the hope of attaining special advantages in an afterlife that most likely doesn't exist.
If this image is legit and is not just from some crazy satirical Japanese reverse gangbang porno, it is very likely that this monk does not even believe in an afterlife at all. Unlike Chistians, Buddhist monks tend to focus on the moment/ present instead of dwelling on the idea of some outrageous afterlife scenario. Also, there is a profound difference between "needs" and "wants".
And the abilities of Buddhist monks have impressed me faaaar more than those of their Abrahamic counterparts.
You're the only one using the term "idiots" in this thread. You're the only one comparing a discomfort with an institution that seems to exist pretty much solely to trap the most faithful and intellectually oriented into a more oppressive and austere form of the faith to a desire to throw people into death camps and take over Poland. My issue isn't with your Catholic monasticism. It's with the very idea of monasticism. I'm not more okay with the Buddhist monasticism that led to monks setting themselves on fire in the 60s or the Scientologist Sea Org.The church gave everyone always a chance - not only idiots. Why do you propagate Nazi-nonsense? Do you like to breed Sheldons?
This is part of what I'm saying. If you lived in the West, and you wanted to be an educated person, then you were going to become a priest or monastic. If you had any intellectual curiosity, and you decided to exercise it, then you were going to take the unbreakable vows of poverty and chastity and unwavering obedience to Pontifex Caesar in all things. This only became less true as the church became increasingly unable to persecute heretical notions like freedom of religion and secularism. It put up a damn good fight to keep its utter monopoly on education and intellectual thought though. Just look what they did to the Bavarian Illuminati for expressing blasphemies like the equality of man and inherent freedom of thought. Not only were they murdered by elector and church but their very name was dragged through so much mud people are still taking the old propaganda seriously.Only in the christian monasteries and other institutions of the church was knowledge and education important for a long row of centuries.
Again, you miss my point entirely if you think this is about eugenics. It's not. It's about how an oppressive institution still thrives throughout the world under various guises. My problem with the chastity element is that it's mandatory. There are still large regions of the world where becoming educated requires you to forsake any hope of settling down and raising a family. It's just disturbing. It honestly is. It's disturbing that someone would have to choose between learning to read and write and gaining academic employment or maintaining personal autonomy and the right to satisfy basic biological needs.An idea like to breed people with a copernicanian spirit is one of such unbelieveable stupid ideas. Such ideas are not only nazistic - such ideas don't fit with anything what we know about the real biology of human beings, their spirit and the dignity of human life in general. It's not only impossible to do so - we even don't know what will be important for all mankind in a hundred years and what kind of man or woman we will need to solve this problems. And we also don't know what will be the best ways for their individual lifes.