Why are so many Buddhists such self righteous assholes?

I think you hit the nail on the head, Sir, with that last sentence. And that is the basis of my antagonism. If one takes the four pillars then there should be no absolute right and permanent cognition in a true Buddhist.

 

This should be statement is your agreement that it should be so or the wages you accept for your efforts. These others are under different personal contracts. Whether they meet theirs has no reflection on whether you meet yours or not. If the value of the truth of buddhism is reduced suffering
then our own sense of fine being should be our guide to right action. If we are seeing the truth then disparity is not part of our view.

You seem to interpret the source of your antagonism, anxiety, as being out there with and among them but the conflict exists in the difference between what you see and what you think should be there. These disparities are fashioned from a sliding scale and not from any standard metric as buddhism encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices. Trying to measure things for which there are no definite proportions can be maddening to say the least.

I think disillusionment can be healthy and one healthy thing you can learn from it is there is no individual or group outside of you who can fulfill adequately for you your own ideals. Fidelity in this respect can only be had when what you say and what you do are the same.

 

:2thumbsup:

 

As a Christian, I'm struck by the parallels. Substitute the words Christian and Christianity for Buddhism, and you've given us a good assessment of why so many Christians are such self-righteous assholes.

 

I don't know what this does to clarity but buddhism is regarded as a nontheistic religion. A religion being an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence. Multiples of four and eight and the cycle of birth and rebirth are certainly relating to an order of existence.

To the point of ultimately being disposed of a good teachers desire is to be no longer needed. I don't think buddhism is at all unique in this respect. At the same time I don't think learning ever ceases nor do I think that moksha is an ultimate disposition. Liberation is just the beginning of free life.

We do have to contend with the propensity to dream in cultivating ideas and we devise alarm clocks designed to awaken us but habitual practice lulls us into not paying attention or sleeping through the alarm. This is a real benefit of community that we continually challenge each other to wakefulness. There is always someone who temporarily has more and can contribute to someone who temporarily has less.

 

"Non-theistic"? Why would you say that? The training to believe in God or the truth about life experience must be realized through some sort of community belonging. There is Confucianism, for instance, which organizes the faith of it's congregation in the ideal trust to the fellowman from which theistic values are awakened to common values.

The other forms for the ways of Life for the common values, being Taoism, Zen, and etc. constantly mean that God's existence is under scrutiny for the theism of having these ways of Life or philosophies to develop the theism into the individual participation in the community.

BUddhism I always thought meant life to be realized for the theistic: the community in receiving "god"'s way.

 

Because it is regarded that way. I personally don't have a preference. Obviously there was an effort to distance buddhism from religion and I prefer to imagine it could be on the basis of equating religion and belief in deity rather than simply an irrational distaste for the word religion.

What specifically do you prefer? We have common creaturehood in nature.

They don't use the term god but more use terms like right way. Obviously to you and I those forms represent the same invocation of authority but there are some who resent any association with the concept of agod inspired religion.

Regardless in any religion there are a number of individuals with different levels of interest or commitment to whatever principles or practices that may exist. There are those who are sincere in their seeking and those who aren't.

 

Truth, in r/l, dealing with real people, is highly over-rated.

There is much to be said for the "sin" of omitting a bitter truth that is not necessary for one's life.

Truth, as far as in religion, is subjective...

There are self righteous assholes in every type of religion, spirituality, in every walk of life.

 

Ahhh, man!!, what does this do to sharpen our progressive understanding for historical change and justice for the as of yet unchanged? Subjectivity for Religion just wants to trust religion in general anyway for the faith of ultimately no Religion.

 

Thanks Meagain for that. I do forget that ideal and get caught up. Yet Buddhism is a religion and Buddha is treated as a god in much of the world and given pujas, sacrifices and all the other honors associated with any other religion.

But, my point right now, and it goes towards my original issue is that for instance in Buddhism they have scholars called 'khenpo.' These scholars are the equivalent of a PhD in Buddhism.

But what fails for me always in all this talk of Buddhism is that the reasoning is endlessly self recursive starting with the acceptance of the basic Buddha doctrine of impermanence and 8 fold path. Again, the khenpo, nor the common practitioner even compare doctrines outside of Buddhism, but rather endlessly argue minutia from within the framework. I have heard nice khenpos speak and use names of Gods like Narayana as a replacement for the concept of the shunya, but as they do so there is the undercurrent that god worshippers are at best 'shravaka, pratyekabuddha,' and so on, basically, inferior in understanding.

As they do they become ever less tolerant of differing views, and thus bigger assholes.

Even if one is completely correct and right in all ways that only works for you. And we see all through history and ecology that difference is always quashed.

If the Buddhist is the follower of ahimsa then they do not squash other believers. They do not violently squash even ignorance. In nondual tantras even ignorance has a place.

I am not making my case very clearly. The khenpo and many Buddhists start with a certainty and then argue based upon that in the same way that for instance a Catholic scholar starts with a certainty of Jesus. Do you get my point? An assumption started the system, then it is argued as if it actually has a reality. When in true scientific fact, no such fact is proven.

 

The result of academic inbreeding and a systemic affliction. We may find comfort that reality is not so afflicted but only the mind that is convinced a hierarchy exists when in fact for every action there is an equal and complementary reaction and this includes our claims on perception.

The credentials that count are your own as all things must pass your own inspection before you will regard them as consumable. I think you provide your own answer to your question here as to the why of assholiness. If your eye offends you pluck it out or at least get the obscuring speck of dirt out of it.

 

cool thedope. my eye does offend me but it's because I wear daily contacts for months at a time until they get crunchy - and it get's harder to pluck them out as they meld to the cornea (but they get more comfortable)

 

Sorry for just show up like this, but since I sadly know very little about buddhism I don't want to say something about what people above me have discussed since I have no knowledge of it but I just wanted to say good question, I have thought about it myself sometimes. Personally I have always wondered something like this too, how come Steve Jobs was a buddhist when his company made such awful things to their workers in China?

 

It's all chemistry. There is the good chemistry which claims luxury is earned through effort of talent and fine upbringing, and there is the bad chemistry in the middle management for all electronic industries which can only force improvement through environmentalist changes reducing the industrial content to mere hopes of perma-culture. The fighting Iraqians have the stuff to make progress complete towards Perma-cultural environmentalism.

 

Thank you very much for explaining to me! I think I understand what you are saying but just to be extra sure, could you try to explain the last part in a way so a person like me, sadly without any knowledge about buddhism will get it because I might be a bit slow but I am interested, will understand? Hehe.

I apologize for my stupidity. :blush5:

 

You have nothing to apologize for, but you might be aware that on sites like this we sometimes encounter beings we call "trolls", one variant of which gets perverse jollies in posting messages that sound profound but actually make no sense at all. We call this "double talk". Maybe you're already aware of this, from your concluding "Hehe"

 

Fortunately eye plucking is a metaphor for the perceptions we have formed. Nothing real is out of order but we certainly can be taken aback by our perceptions. It is important to note I would think that perception is our own nervous systems response to stimulus and reflects not the condition of things out there but our own conditional arrangements with experience. Our consensual awareness is a learned way of looking at things as we categorize what we see through an established neural net or automatic filing system. Our reasonable responses to events reflect these categorical foundations and it is in comparison to these models that we get a sense of the rightness or wrongness of things. That is the way you see things reflects your sense of what you think things are.

The sponsoring dilemma at play in the perception of assholiness is simply a fearful thought. That thought being things do not appear to be right. In real terms this is not possible. Our fear is of potential harm and not for harmful fact. In every instance this fundamental suspicion turns out to be a lie as we are ever relieved of anxiety over any situation upon seeing the truth of it.

An inspirational refection considering these things might be would you rather be right or would you rather be happy. Or do you need this quality of perception in order to organize your fine free life?

If you find a way to pass on genetically the lens to cornea implant making lenses permanent you might be on to something. In the mean time the dark adjusted eye becomes accustomed to a dim view and may find it preferable to retreat in the glare of bright light. But truly it is better to see where you are going if you are going move around in confidence.

 

Nothing in the world is permanent. We've assumed responsibility; but the world is personally not going to overwhelm you, because of the existing lack of redemption it confronts the void. I think in the uncertainty of being oneself for corporeality it is the self-recognized with another corporeality coming back into the Self. So problems of self at others determine themselves "permanent" in nothingness. And in the state of irresponsibility one's body is at the other's.