What are the differences between Theravada Buddhism and Yogacara?

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
Pulsar
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Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2019 6:52 pm

Re: What are the differences between Theravada Buddhism and Yogacara?

Post by Pulsar »

Quite interesting! your take on the various buddhists. Thanks for educating me. Coëmgenu wrote
Now, I've also used a word people might not be familiar with: a microlabel. A microlabel is a deeply-personalized characterization of someone's sexual
or gender identity that applies only to them and a few others. Being "moon-gendered" is a microlabel, being "arbosexual" is also a microlabel. I think that the various overly-individualized Buddhisms people generate out of the Pali suttas and other buddhavacana has an analogue in these microlabels, these over-particularized identities.
Do people have sex with trees "arbosexuaul?"
First I thought you were writing of microbial stuff (I am a microbiologist) but the word you used is micro label... which I did not understand ...had to look it up. You should have been in academia, with your analytical skills..
Then I read some more and found out more about the sexual lives of people which is beyond my imagination.
What is more curious is the way you use such microlabelling as a simile for folks who read the canon and walk away with different Buddhas? Am I right? A Buddha who agrees with the variety of ways they interpret the canon. For instance a Buddha who agrees with 4 buddhist jhanas and another Buddha who agrees with the methods Alara Kalama and Uddkaramaputtha taught, (the Arupa samapathis), or a Buddha who taught one Nibbana and another who taught two nibbanas?
I know people express various ideas, but I did not think they really felt this is how Buddha thought. I thought they were just having fun saying stuff to make discussions quite long. Folks like to socialize and engage in Papanca. That is a common human weakness.
mapping the mind of Buddha using Yogacara abhidhamma or Theravada abhidahmma? So do you think if Buddha walked into our midst and said "hey guys, you got it all wrong, I did not teach abhidhamma, all I taught was plain old Dhamma,
the Origination of suffering and doing away with suffering"
that these folks would look the other way, and carry on with their Abhidhamma? thinking that the real Buddha taught abhidhamma, not that there is no support for even that in the commentaries.
With love :candle:
PS thanks for the following too. Food for thought.
I think a lot of the constant autodidactic reinvention of the Buddha that happens on this forum is driven by this -- that autodidactic reinvention process that causes the birth of new perverted kinds of Buddhism that are neither Theravada nor Mahayana,
nor are they any kind of revival of a historical dispensation.
Instead of a kind of actual real Buddhism, such reinventions merely end up being over-personalized
mush, like a microlabel that only applies to one who is so labelled.
Even worse, there are a smaller number who I think have actually damaged their ability to recognize truth through their embracing of the inflation of their own egos.
Truth, to these, is what brings intellectual pleasure and gratifies the ego.
It gratifies the ego to have the Buddha agree with you, so they "make sure"
he does. Instant gratification.
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