Why are so many Buddhists such self righteous assholes?

The question stands. I have known some great patrons of Buddhism who treat service the same way as a cafeteria worker serves mush. They live in their little loka and have a smug world view like they are holier than thou, even when they work next to you they are like, 'see how I lower myself so as to serve.'

Then there are the scholars, the khenpos, who in point of fact only know about Buddhism. They can argue Buddha dead but they are just recursively circumambulating the same flogged dead horse.

Even within and amongst Buddhists some talk about their supreme guru, lama, school, teacher, tantra, ability to potentially conquer up to 399 lokas beyond mere nirvana.

Even that guy Darryl Kitchen who used to be here was such a fucking know-it-all. He's not the worst either by far.

So, I mean, we all fucking die and nobody comes back to tell us otherwise (and I don't believe a smid of those who say otherwise). How much do they cost for the insight? First ten minutes free?

I mean, fuck me right? I'm just a downgraded pathetic Sravaka.

 

Lots of people are self righteous assholes.

Cuts right across state lines, religions, race and a whole bunch of other stuff.

 

That Is true I once thought all people who drove Prius are assholes
because the majority of Prius drivers I came across were assholes....
Yet I have to believe there is a nice Prius driver out there somewhere:auto:

 

How about people from other religions? Generalising is not cool in this case... ;-)

 

I think it's because it's hard to focus on the inherent pain of life as your basis of metaphysical doctrine and then see all the happy go lucky people having sex and owning escalades who couldn't give two fucks about starving kids in africa and are living lives that would be easily characterized as heaven by our ancestors.

Bitterness is a natural result of a buddhist who is in a (hopefully temporary) slump.

 

LOL. The other day while driving to work i thought to myself "sheesh, people who drive prius's are such fucking assholes"

 

wtf is a Prius? Sounds like a car a daddy bought for his littl princess.

 

Its a hybrid electric car thingy

 

Gay.

 

power is power and if not generated in an increasing curve then it is sucking power from somewhere - a Prius is half gas half electricity and unless your generator is clean energy you're just still making pollution. And driving half as fast. Thanks for commenting peeps.

 

No, hybrid.

 

I don't know why buddhists are such self righteous assholes but I know the question comes from an insecure view. Why for example would you want to be a buddhist?

 

Most people see what they believe they will, not realizing that they are thereby flavoring their view on reality
Being cynical helps what ? It has been said that a wise man is someone who has learned that most often it helps to keep ones mouth shut, beside you don't attract as many flies that way.
Are You being the Being you Know you could be , getting back up when you fail: or does it feel better to belittle others and ignore how you Are ?! ?

 

my guess in answer to the topic question, would be the same diversity of reasons, the followers of any other belief or lack of belief are.

ah yes, and of course as oldwolf was saying, perception is frequently in the eye of the perceiver.

 

Thanks Chodpa, Noted.

 

Well I wanted to be part of a religion formally. And I liked Buddhism best because it stressed ahimsa. Also the doctrine of everything changing seems pretty much my experience. I wanted to belong somewhere. So other religions would stop bugging me. I felt like a Buddhist already. When I was a preteen I used to wear a saffron colored beach towel and watch 'Kung-Fu' sitting cross legged. And nobody forced my decision but myself. I liked how I could choose my own religion in this time period. So much of the past we all had to conform or be persecuted.

But also for that reason I feel like doing a variety of practices some of which may be proscribed by my Buddhist tantric teachers. Though my root lama is passed on. I feel pretty good that I got sadhanas from a teacher who left no major lineage because I love that my sadhanas are super personal and rare so I don't have to really listen to anyone else about it. If I don't want to.

At the same time I only do one Buddhist sadhana and one Hindu and I love them equally and they are both different flavors of peacefulness. That itself can be confusing.

There was some useful things to ponder for me in this thread and I thank Theeses.

 

I dont know, why are you?..

 

In my opinion you are arguing over which finger should be used to point at the moon on the basis of your personal experiences with the faults and strengths of how people other than yourself point at the moon . . . so there's a lot of energy being spent on these matters and I wonder if you have forgotten that the point is the moon? It doesn't matter what finger you use, or if someone else's is crooked, bent, used to tell you off . . . get back to the wonder and awe of the moon.

 

A big part of it seems to have to do with a combination of factors. A big part of it is that while schisms in the sangha have rarely caused much violence, it has led to a number of wildly different worldviews, belief systems, and practices, all of which wish to trace their lineage back to the same figure and consider themselves to be "Buddhism," so everybody who knows much about their given affiliation has a clear idea (in their mind) of what "REAL" Buddhism is actually all about, then you have the enthusiasm of converts (and while demographics are changing, most "Western" Buddhists are still converts unless they are of Asian descent), and you get a situation where everyone wants to be a gatekeeper and an evangelist, telling others that they don't know what Buddhism really is when they have an extremely narrow picture of it themselves. There is also a very widespread movement in modernity, which cuts across most schools and most countries with noteable Buddhist populations, especially industrialized countries with large urban centers, to describe Buddhism as being intimately linked with democratic thought, egalitarianism, scientific thought, rationalism, and other things which are particularly esteemed in today's world. The fact is not that this is a wrong claim (these are justifiable interpretations, though I would assert that most of them are fairly novel, having arisen within the past two centuries and heavily influenced by imperialist-Orientalist scholars and the Romantic movement) so much as it is a claim which places Buddhism in a position of being the quintessentially most suitable religion for modern minded people. This can lead to -some- adherents to this line of thinking to assuming a position of superiority.

A large part of it has to do with Buddhists simply being people, though. Most Buddhists are no better or worse than most other people. People, on the whole, can at times be unlikeable.