Buddhism is just Communism from before it was cool.

[stuckathuntermtn]

Discuss.

[wooley12]

BUDDHISM is cool. I see them monks at the truck stop salad bar.

[highangle]

"Come'on fuckers!" -- Natural Born Killers

[GeezerSteve]

one is a political theory, the other a religion (sorta) or a philosophy or both (sorta), apples oranges

[highangle]

Not much difference between economic theories and religions.

[Core Shot]

Mahyana or Theravada



Discuss



Seriously

[MarcusBrody]

I mean, the Gospels and Acts aren't exactly devoid of passages that could be taken to encourage communism either. And yet communism (or other forms of radical egalitarianism) has never been closely associated with mainstream Christianity. in most places, Buddhism has been the same.

[kootenayskier]

Bhuddhism is a perceptive ontological insight, that has been perverted into a religion. Communism is an economic fairytale, that has been perverted into a political system. You don’t need either one to understand that greed is bad, and that sharing and caring is good.

[Peruvian]

[Mudfoot]

Buddhism at its core is metaphysics and has nothing to do with politics or religion, but like all other "religions" it has been perverted and misinterpreted for many uses.

[stuckathuntermtn]

So the whole no property thing?
No wants or desires?

[dunfree]

you may wish to learn about the transition of buddhist thought to the west, short bit here:
https://info-buddhism.com/Buddhism_i..._Garfield.html

or not.

[stuckathuntermtn]

I feel like it's at least a little bit ironic that the 2 opposite ends of the economic spectrum were developed by agnostic to athiest Jews.

[Kenny Satch]

Buddhism recognizes we are beings of light and energy and we are all connected to a higher power. If not for distraction and greed understanding or utilizing this power would improve life on this planet. Thought is a power tool of our existence and Buddhism teaches us this. It also acknowledges that suffering is a part of life but living in harmony with others as well as yourself will easy this unavoidable truth.
Also, life in its present form is a transient and never the end but only the beginning. We are in a cycle of reincarnation until we evolve into a higher state of existence.
Enlightenment is the ultimate goal but it takes hundreds or thousands of life times before we can reach Nirvana and no longer require a physical existence.
Sounds simple enough to me that Buddhism help to change my life but this rat race makes it difficult to practice. I fall back to old habits.
It's OK I have many more life times to get it right.

[sruffian]

buddhism way more radical than communism

the concept of the gift economy more directly mirrors the establishment of monastic orders run on dana, the prohibition of monastics from householding/handling money, and imho the emphasis on giving rather than possession

Ontologically speaking, the notion that all laws arise and all laws pass sheds some interesting light on the pigs (both popo and capitalist overlords)

I love the two truths doctrine / madhyamaka understanding of the order of existence. In one truth, all reality has dependent origination, and thus no object exists independently of every other. In the other truth, the phenomenal world as we see it presents itself. The struggle of bringing knowledge of dependent origination into the phenomenal realm mirrors (phenomenologically only) the challenges of transcending capitalism in a world seemingly fully engulfed by it

tldr communism only speaks to social phenomena, buddhism speaks to human existence beyond social phenomena

[stuckathuntermtn]

ZzZzZzZz

[carpathian]

Uhhh, hologram?

The individual and the group
The ego and the Buddha
The alpha and the omega
The quantum and the cosmic
The atman and the Brahman
The son and the father

33,000,000 seems arbitrarily large, might as well be 1 with all things considered

[Svengali]

Will Volkl reincarnate the Gotama?

[old goat]

Lot of different kinds of buddhism? Are we talking Zen, Tibetan, what?
In Tibet they put solar powered little prayer wheels on the dashboard--like a plastic Jesus only different. I've had one going on my deck for about a month and Trump is still president so I don't think it works.

[MarcusBrody]

Lot of different kinds of buddhism? Are we talking Zen, Tibetan, what?
In Tibet they put solar powered little prayer wheels on the dashboard--like a plastic Jesus only different. I've had one going on my deck for about a month and Trump is still president so I don't think it works.

What about the situation in Tibet made you think the Buddhists' prayer wheels were good for influencing politics?

[old goat]

What about the situation in Tibet made you think the Buddhists' prayer wheels were good for influencing politics?

Good point.
I was at a rally yesterday and they had prayer flags hanging behind the speakers. We'll see if they work any better. Prayer flags are big around here--at the top of McConkey's for example and a couple of places where people died at Squaw although I doubt if any of the people they're for were Buddhists. I think Buddhism is for a lot of Americans who don't believe in god, who want to feel "spiritual", and who don't actually understand Buddhism. (I'm not sure anyone understands Buddhism.)

[huckbucket]

All I know is that I dig what the Dalai tweets, and that he's a big hitter.