I remember reading about Buddhist cosmology, and feeling deeply unsettled and amazed. It's remarkable, alien almost. I've read of monks, who have meditated for their entire lives, and quite calmly can point to a mountain their eyes can see, as 'objective reality'.
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So here in the west, we can only see buddhist cosmology through our own lens, and interpret much of it positively, as fascinatingly metaphorical. Psychological states induced by calm thinking, etc. We are filtering it, in a well-meaning way, through belief systems of our own.
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What gets to me, is, a community of monks who, after a lifetime of (clever self-regulation of emotions and meditation) can point to a bloody mountain we can't see. What are they seeing? How? Most of us don't want to be troubled by that. "Collective hallucination", etc.
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So, I quietly and politely, feel a bit troubled by western conceptions of buddhism. It 'picks and chooses',a lot. It appropriates at times a somewhat supportive, light-weight, feel-good understanding of a confounding, sophisticated, uncomfortable anti-dogmatic 'practice'.
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I agree with the thrust of that article, but its repeated use of the word 'faith' makes me pause! Buddhist philosophy problematises and admonishes against faith. You see? That's not me being pedantic; a basic word like 'faith' undermines (and eerily proves) the dude's thesis :)
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Replying to @stgabriel @Xrayhighs
Based on what I observed in SE asia, popular Buddhism primarily exists as a faith there, not unlike Catholicism in Italy. The philosophical traditions seem to be partially different from that and at least as diverse and prone to superstitious branches as Abrahamic ones.
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Christian traditions also produced philosophies that fixed most of the epistemological issues, but they are not very relevant to the Christian laypeople. Do you think that is different for Buddhism?
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Replying to @Plinz @Xrayhighs
I'm from rural Australia; very few talked about christianity, or the bible. No christian friends until university (and then we didn't discuss it). I want to be curious about it, but all evidence suggests that I haven't been. I grew up practically at an 'edge' of western civ.
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I'm struggling to explain that I dont understand the abrahamic religions. It's Legacy Stuff; Esoteric Big Questions. I'm not buddhist, but as a working-class Australian, buddhist phil. is a bit like stoicism; it has a focus on mundane problems. It feels down-to-earth.
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Replying to @stgabriel @Xrayhighs
I am by no means an expert on Buddhism, I have read only a handful of books and talked to folks, and spent a year with among a local group. Christianity is more down to earth imho.
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The Catholics designed it specifically to run a society when the Roman secularist republic fell apart, by adapting the very successful Hebrew cult for a larger and diverse audience, picking Jesus as a human prototype, devoping saints as interface gods, lithurgic practice, etc
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Christian mysticism is partially parasitic subcults within the Christian body, and partially group psychosis caused by the attempt to reconcile superstitious esoteric epistemology with ontological exploration
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