W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dhamma

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
Shaswata_Panja
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by Shaswata_Panja »

visitin wrote:
Shaswata_Panja wrote:Nobody.not even Buddha, can transcend his era...something along those lines was also said by the philosopher and later president Dr.Radhakrishnan----all spiritual leaders seemed to have been heavily limited by the geography and knowledge of their respective era...I find it incredulous to believe the historicity of the earlier Buddhas, given the time span involved.
yeah! but veda can transcend all the eras, right? Gotta love the fundamentalists.

when did I say that? who is talking about the Vedas? stop putting words in my mouth...and as if people who believe in the Vedas are fundementalists...I personally never learnt the Vedas as I never visited Gurukul, chanted Sanskrit or administered fire rituals
visitin
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by visitin »

Shaswata_Panja wrote:and as if people who believe in the Vedas are fundementalists...
Well, anyone who sees other religions as a threat to his own religion, is a fundamentalist. Hindus are no exception.
Shaswata_Panja
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by Shaswata_Panja »

visitin wrote:
Shaswata_Panja wrote:and as if people who believe in the Vedas are fundementalists...
Well, anyone who sees other religions as a threat to his own religion, is a fundamentalist. Hindus are no exception.


Hindus are more of an ethno-religious group akin to the Jews..Hindus donot proselytize...so no insecurity...Hindu societies promoted Mahavira,Ajita Kesakambali,Purana Kassapa,Pakhudha Kaccayana,Sanjaya Belathhaputta,Makkhali Gosala and Gautama Buddha...whereas Jewish society killed religious innovators (Jesus), Hindu society protected them

Hindus are least insecure, therefore they donot proselytize,,cant say that for other religions....you are trying to create a fight where there is none
Shaswata_Panja
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by Shaswata_Panja »

tiltbillings wrote:
Shaswata_Panja wrote:Hindu societies promoted Mahavira,Ajita Kesakambali,Purana Kassapa,Pakhudha Kaccayana,Sanjaya Belathhaputta,Makkhali Gosala and Gautama Buddha...whereas Jewish society killed religious innovators (Jesus), Hindu society protected them
That is the usual Hindu nationalism cant. The history of the time of the Buddha is richer and more interesting and more difficult than what is claimed here. The Hinduism that arose after the death of the Buddha certainly adopted and adapted quite a bit from the Buddha's teachings, but there is also very much a history of working against Buddhism.
Hindus are least insecure, therefore they donot proselytize,,cant say that for other religions....you are trying to create a fight where there is none
Least insecure? That "least insecurity" certainly became manifest during the struggle for independence, much to Gandhi's horror and sorrow.

well You certainly cant make 340 million people act like realized Beings....The Direct Action Day was started by Jinnah and his thugs who proclaimed themselves Muslims....Hinduism rose from the Indus Valley Civilization and even earlier perhaps when men were monkey/ape-like hunter gatherers.....and every ideology that works itself out on the Earth plane, be it Communism,Islam,Hinduism,Buddhism----need a secure Geography for itself----its neither good or bad--its how things are....call it evolution if you will...see what Buddhists are doing against Muslims in Burma or against Hindus in Sri Lanka....I donot necessarily term it is bad or evil...i see it as unfortunate.....because every nation, race or ideology will protect its turf...which is not bad per se..what is bad is when Abrahamic religions through violence or surreptious means want to spread their ideology among other people---be it Norse and Germanic Pagans, or Thai Theravada Buddhists

Why more people of the West flock to Theravada compared to Mahayana or Vajrayana? simple because in Theravada the pure teachings of Buddha has been preserved without dilution with Confucianism/Taoism/Shintoism in case of Mahayana or Tantrism/Bon in case of Vajrayana..There are no other homegrown religions in Theravada countries to dilute the message

You see Theravada countries have had a secure Geography for themselves which Vajrayana or Mahyana hadn't


Buddha is one of our own...One of India's Brightest Sons.....Nobody can take Him away from us and say that we are not inheritors of Buddha's legacy...He walked around in my Neighbouring state...spoke the ancestor of my language....ate the same food that I enjoy...These give me goosebumps

In the West, Buddha is used as a decoration object in brothels, strip clubs and Alcohol bars.....That is ALSO an agenda against Buddhism, a Smear campaign
Last edited by Shaswata_Panja on Wed Feb 05, 2014 11:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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tiltbillings
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

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Shaswata_Panja wrote:Hindu societies promoted Mahavira,Ajita Kesakambali,Purana Kassapa,Pakhudha Kaccayana,Sanjaya Belathhaputta,Makkhali Gosala and Gautama Buddha...whereas Jewish society killed religious innovators (Jesus), Hindu society protected them
That is the usual Hindu nationalism cant. The history of the time of the Buddha is richer and more interesting and more difficult than what is claimed here. The Hinduism that arose after the death of the Buddha certainly adopted and adapted quite a bit from the Buddha's teachings, but there is also very much a history of working against Buddhism.
Hindus are least insecure, therefore they donot proselytize,,cant say that for other religions....you are trying to create a fight where there is none
Least insecure? That "least insecurity" certainly became manifest during the struggle for independence, much to Gandhi's horror and sorrow.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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tiltbillings
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by tiltbillings »

For those who are interested in a more accurate portrayal of Buddhism and Hinduism than given us by those who buy into Hindu nationalism, as has been quoted at length in this thread, see these two lengthy essays:

http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh195.pdf

http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh150.pdf
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
Shaswata_Panja
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by Shaswata_Panja »

tiltbillings wrote:For those who are interested in a more accurate portrayal of Buddhism and Hinduism than given us by those who buy into Hindu nationalism, as has been quoted at length in this thread, see these two lengthy essays:

http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh195.pdf

http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh150.pdf
Sinhalese have a chip on the shoulder regarding Indians...especially N.Indians...dont understand why really
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tiltbillings
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by tiltbillings »

Shaswata_Panja wrote:
tiltbillings wrote:For those who are interested in a more accurate portrayal of Buddhism and Hinduism than given us by those who buy into Hindu nationalism, as has been quoted at length in this thread, see these two lengthy essays:

http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh195.pdf

http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh150.pdf
Sinhalese have a chip on the shoulder regarding Indians...especially N.Indians...dont understand why really
Lal Mani Joshi, the author of the essays I linked, was an Indian (not Sinhalese), and he was an internationally very well regard scholar.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
Shaswata_Panja
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by Shaswata_Panja »

tiltbillings wrote:
Shaswata_Panja wrote:
tiltbillings wrote:For those who are interested in a more accurate portrayal of Buddhism and Hinduism than given us by those who buy into Hindu nationalism, as has been quoted at length in this thread, see these two lengthy essays:

http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh195.pdf

http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh150.pdf
Sinhalese have a chip on the shoulder regarding Indians...especially N.Indians...dont understand why really
Lal Mani Joshi, the author of the essays I linked, was an Indian (not Sinhalese), and he was an internationally very well regard scholar.


He might be one of those closet cultural Marxists/Left-Liberals who want to do their bid to paint falsities and truths to destroy Hinduism ...(Look at his design to push all Upanishads post Buddha)


Says whether Upanishads are better philosophies than that of Buddha is a matter of personal opinion...but makes a bold unreferenced assertion that most philosophers hold Buddha's philosophy as higher than that of Upanishads


To me both are equally good or equally bad..who is to say?

and Hindus donot self-reference themselves Brahminical----they either say themselves as Dharmiks, Vedics/Vaidik or Sanatana Dharmiks

It's quite disrespectful to use terms that Hindus object to
Last edited by Shaswata_Panja on Thu Feb 06, 2014 1:58 am, edited 2 times in total.
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tiltbillings
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by tiltbillings »

Shaswata_Panja wrote:


He might be one of those closet cultural Marxists/Left-Liberals who want to do their bid to paint falsities and truths to destroy Hinduism ...(Look at his design to push all Upanishads post Buddha)
He might be? In other words, you have no real response other than trying to impugn with ugly, unsupported innuendo a highly regarded Indian scholar of Indian history and Buddhism.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
Shaswata_Panja
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by Shaswata_Panja »

tiltbillings wrote:
Shaswata_Panja wrote:


He might be one of those closet cultural Marxists/Left-Liberals who want to do their bid to paint falsities and truths to destroy Hinduism ...(Look at his design to push all Upanishads post Buddha)
He might be? In other words, you have no real response other than trying to impugn with ugly, unsupported innuendo a highly regarded Indian scholar of Indian history and Buddhism.

I gave quite a few reasons---and they are enough......please stop creating false fights between my Dharmic brothers and sisters....Its enough of a battle already fighting Western Christian and Muslim racists and imperialists
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tiltbillings
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by tiltbillings »

Shaswata_Panja wrote:
tiltbillings wrote:
Shaswata_Panja wrote:


He might be one of those closet cultural Marxists/Left-Liberals who want to do their bid to paint falsities and truths to destroy Hinduism ...(Look at his design to push all Upanishads post Buddha)
He might be? In other words, you have no real response other than trying to impugn with ugly, unsupported innuendo a highly regarded Indian scholar of Indian history and Buddhism.

I gave quite a few reasons---and they are enough......please stop creating false fights between my Dharmic brothers and sisters....Its enough of a battle already fighting Western Christian and Muslim racists and imperialists
All you have done in regard to Lal Mani Joshi, other than your suggestion that this Brahman scholar, born north Indian, from Uttarakhand, Lal Mani Joshi was Sinhalese unsympathetic towards northern Indians, is to spew out an unfounded defamatory suggestion of his being a Marxist. The falsity and fighting going on here is coming from you.

Again, for those interested in an excellent study of Indian history (and not Hindu nationalist revisionism) of the time of the Buddha and how Buddhism and what was to become Hinduism (that is, Brahmanism) interacted at the time of the Buddha and after, Joshi's two essays are worth reading:

http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh195.pdf

http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh150.pdf
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
Shaswata_Panja
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by Shaswata_Panja »

tiltbillings wrote:
Shaswata_Panja wrote:
tiltbillings wrote:
I gave quite a few reasons---and they are enough......please stop creating false fights between my Dharmic brothers and sisters....Its enough of a battle already fighting Western Christian and Muslim racists and imperialists
All you have done in regard to Lal Mani Joshi, other than your suggestion that this Brahman scholar, born north Indian, from Uttarakhand, Lal Mani Joshi was Sinhalese unsympathetic towards northern Indians, is to spew out an unfounded defamatory suggestion of his being a Marxist. The falsity and fighting going on here is coming from you.

Again, for those interested in an excellent study of Indian history (and not Hindu nationalist revisionism) of the time of the Buddha and how Buddhism and what was to become Hinduism (that is, Brahmanism) interacted at the time of the Buddha and after, Joshi's two essays are worth reading:

http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh195.pdf

http://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh150.pdf

what abt his unreferenced assertion that Buddhism being better than Upanishadic thought?
what abt his deliberate post dating of the Upanishads?


What is with all this Brahminism...95 out of 100 people in India who have a hold of English wouldnot recognize the word Brahminism...this is just not how we reference ourselves in the present or ever did in the past.......................time to learn Hinduism from Hindu sources just as I am learning Buddhism from Buddhist sources...That was my fallacy in my initial approach in Buddhism..was depending too much what Westerners had to say about my native ancient tradition...I cut out the middle man effeciently..and can see Buddhism for what it is...read Upanishads as pure translations without second layer of comparative commentary...Radhakrishnan and Nikhilananda are good places to start
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tiltbillings
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by tiltbillings »

Shaswata_Panja wrote:

what abt his unreferenced assertion that Buddhism being better than Upanishadic thought?
Why don't you quote his statements, giving page number of the text in question?
what abt his deliberate post dating of the Upanishads?
Again, cite the pages involved in the texts in question. Looking at his book, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Hinduism An Essay on their Origins and Interactions, chapter IV, "Date of the Oldest Upaniṣads" he gives a great of scholarly support for his position.

What is with all this Brahminism..
First of all, Brahmanism refers to what was found at the time of the Buddha, deriving from the brahmanical literature and practices. The Buddha clearly distinguished between the Brahmans and samanas. We see this repeatedly throughout the suttas.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
pulga
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Re: W. Buddhism is based more on Atheism-materialism than Dh

Post by pulga »

I'd recommend reading Buddha and the Sahibs by Charles Allen.

From William Dalrymple's review of the book:
What is perhaps especially valuable about The Buddha and the Sahibs is Allen's gentle reminder of exactly how and why Buddhism died out in the land of its birth. Every child in India knows that when the Muslims first came to India that they desecrated temples and smashed idols. But what is conveniently forgotten is that during the Hindu revival at the end of the first millennium AD, many Hindu rulers had behaved in a similar fashion to the Buddhists.

It was because of this persecution, several centuries before the arrival of Islam, that the philosophy of the Buddha, once a serious rival to Hinduism, virtually disappeared from India: Harsha Deva, a single Kashmiri raja, for example boasted that he had destroyed no less than 4,000 Buddhist shrines. Another raja, Sasanka of Bengal, went to Bodh Gaya, sacked the monastery and cut down the tree of wisdom under which the Buddha had received enlightenment.

According to Buddhist tradition, Sasanka's "body produced sores and his flesh quickly rotted off and after a short while he died". At a time when Islamaphobia is becoming endemic in both India and the west, and when a far-right Hindu government is doing its best to terrorise India's Muslim minority, the story of how an earlier phase of militant Hinduism violently rooted out Indian Buddhism is an important and worrying precedent, and one that needs very badly to be told, and remembered.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/s ... ianreview4
"Dhammā=Ideas. This is the clue to much of the Buddha's teaching." ~ Ven. Ñanavira, Commonplace Book
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