Originally posted by Lanny
I haven't offered any particular viewpoint, I'm just saying buddhism is a life denying philosophy. I guess I'll go further and assert that any philosophy that relegates essential aspects of our existence like existential anxiety of care about the world to "illusion" either abuses the term illusion or fails to understand what it is to exist in the world. Like sure, you can end suffering by not existing, either through suicide or slowly dismantling yourself through a contemplative detached philosophy, but that's not a profound insight into life, it's a near tautological observation about the absence of life. Trying to dress it up as logical is silly too. Show me the propositional structure that leads from "there doesn't need to be life" to "everyone kill yourselves".
You don't understand Buddhism and I can't give you a concise explanation (No, this is not a cop out, fundamental aspects work in conjunction and only make sense when understood as a whole.)
You have an extremely limited understanding of it and it's presumptuous for you to make statements such as " I guess I'll go further and assert that any philosophy that relegates essential aspects of our existence like existential anxiety of care about the world to "illusion" either abuses the term illusion or fails to understand what it is to exist in the world. "
By any chance did you ever cover Buddhism in school? Because if so it's extremely likely that the presentation of it was highly inaccurate and very limited, insubstantial and inadequate for even understanding the basic tenets of it. Of course I can't simply claim that only my views on Buddhism, whatever the term for people (and there is much writing on this) who share them is, the original teachings and interpretation, are correct and all other schools (Developed substantially later in time) are false/fundamentally-critically flawed, without supporting it. I will say that it does away with any mysticism or need for it and there's very strong evidence and sound comprehensive articles supporting the view that this was closest to the original.
For example, one source of common profound misinterpretation stemmed from the fact that Buddha taught for 40 years along with his disciples. He regularly taught to poor illiterate peasants/farmers (Remember, this was India around 500-400 BCE (most likely)) and of course he understood their limitations, that he had to alter his methods to allow them to achieve the best understanding they could attain of certain concepts in the limited time he spoke to them.
Around this time belief in:
-Reincarnation, returning to life in another form after death and the process of it. Similar to the Hindu belief.
-Karma, once again the version similar to the modern Hindu belief and what some stupid white people, generally a certain subset of leftists (not that it necessarily has anything directly to do with leftist ideology) or at least SWPLs (People who conform to the stereotype presented by Stuff White People Like, it's an actual term some use because of what it encapsulates, the accuracy, despite being simplistic and satirical.), claim to believe. The idea of some universal system, not entirely sure why it allegedly exists or how it was created, who created it, passes judgement on people or somehow automatically enacts what can be described as essentially some moral point system that affects your next life when you reincarnate.
-The belief in gods, supernatural spirits/other entities, realms beyond our own. Something that existed in practically every place on earth.
All these concepts were ubiquitous and standard beliefs at the time. The reason misinterpretation arose and became so common stems primarily from 2 key concepts:
-The Buddha regularly used parables when teaching others, such as the common poor illiterate peasants/farmers I mentioned before. He used their own beliefs, common beliefs and aspects/concepts from them, to illustrate his own. This is a very common issue that has plagued many systems, conflict over whether to interpret founding literature/teachings literally or metaphorically.
-People were practically bound to lead to this common misunderstanding/misinterpretation due to the traits of the common man, low quality people. Their low level of intelligence, knowledge, and the vast array of profound cognitive biases that plague them. A desire for some assurance that there will be punishment and rewards for all (punishments generally focused upon other in their minds, rewards for themselves and those they value, mainly their own family) even if it eludes them in this life, primarily via the systems humans have created or other human beings, in general an occurrence in their current life, some deifying the Buddha, leading to a belief that he was special in a mystical manner, a lack of understanding of material reality and what occurs at death, the difficulty of grasping non-existence, which is impossible to experience and of course difficult, if not impossible (remember how stupid most people are), for them to relate to, fear of death, one of the strongest innate fears, the desire for loved ones to continue to exist, to be able to meet them again, and of course there's already an enormous amount of literature on what leads to the third point being so universal among human cultures (Excluding relatively recent history when atheism spread, although there are still quasi-religious/"spiritual" and in general mystical concepts commonly believed (Bring to mind some of the ideas people who like Alex Jones, some who like Joe Rogan, or are into conspiracies and the "supernatural" believe in, or concepts cherry-picked from other belief systems, such as the karma I mentioned.), unscientific beliefs, beliefs without any genuine support of scientific evidence or which they consider, really regardless of what they claim it almost always effectively is, unfalsifiable.
Also, the Buddha wasn't even familiar with religion!, even the contemporary beliefs of the time, the most common. Along with suffering it was actually one of the things his father shielded him from, that he didn't want him to learn about. He didn't even leave home to go on his quest for enlightenment/truth/an understanding of life and reality, until he was 29-30. Initially he seeked certain goals by adhering to a type of aestheticism, reaching the extreme levels some practiced, which he later rejected.
As for "illusion", this is a critical concept of the Buddhism and it simply means that people's perception of certain critical aspects of life, the nature of it/reality, is deeply, sometimes fundamentally or inherently, flawed. Who would argue against this? It doesn't simply state them without supporting evidence, there is illusion in the vast quantity of literature. Which branch of Buddhism are you basing your views of the concept of "illusion", commonly referred to as Maya in multiple major schools?
Oh boy, I'm gonna get sent on an aspie Einstein and Schopenhauer research binge. I became aware of the connection some months ago. Schopenhauer strongly ties into my views on Buddhism. The two subjects (Einstein and Schoppy, Buddhism and Schoppy) really contain some fascinating information, excerpts from literature. I'm cutting what I wrote below this and pasting it as the start of a new post.
