1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Buddhism is NOT life-denying.
Seeing life as an illusion has nothing to do with nihilism.
Nothing? I think what I'm getting at is that to nihilists there is no truth. There is no substance. There is no nothing.
If you were to think being Buddhist means “oh life is an illusion I’ll do whatever I want,” your doing almost the exact opposite of Buddhism
"you're"
but ummm... I don't know. I read a book by a certain Katagiri and he said "do not kill" - one of the precepts was basically meaningless because there never is a clear line between life and death.
I think a similar thing happens with "If you see a buddha on the road, kill him".
“ ‘If you kill your parents, you repent before Buddha; if you kill Buddha, where do you repent?’ Yunmen said, ‘Exposed.’” This case study is like a hot iron ball in the mind, and I suffered all kinds of trouble for seven years. Those of you who have studied Zen for a long time will know what I mean.
Or in this separate case. Is it possible to repent after killing buddha?
In Buddhism life is an illusion SORT OF in a sense, but knowing that doesn’t do u any good.
Maybe the specifics matter. Maybe not 🙏🏽
Comment by MrMermaiid at 21/01/2025 at 23:06 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I don’t know enough about nihilism to truly speak on it so I won’t try to.
In regards to the precepts, they are absolutely not meaningless. In Buddhism your thoughts and actions have karmic effects. You can’t really just do whatever you want, that’s the whole point of living according to the 8 fold path because it keeps your karma and thoughts in line.
There are many schools of Buddhism with their own interpretations and practices and what not, much like other religions. For example, in pure land Buddhism they see the Buddha as somewhat of a god and worship him, and the goal is to do good deeds and be reborn into a heaven realm. Ironically, all of those ideas are very antithetical to the Buddhas actual teachings. Stuff like this happens because of how religions change as different cultures adopt them.
I study most of my Buddhism from Theravada Buddhism, which is the oldest and most accurate to the actual teachings of the Buddha, however I do my practice at a zen temple and love Japanese culture so I participate in and have an appreciation for the zen practice. One thing I would say about Zen however is that it’s rather free flowing and takes many liberties. Zen practice takes a much more direct approach to enlightenment and deals more with trying to peer into the nature of reality on one’s own in a more abstract way. In a lot of ways I feel like it skips over a lot of important steps that the Buddha outlined, and cosmological aspects of the workings of karma and a lot of other practical elements.
Because of this I can see why some zen practitioners can seem somewhat nihilist to you. I can assure you though that the Buddha would never approve of any idea that nullifies the precepts, particularly the one about killing. Most of the other precepts have a sliding scale of severity and consequences, but specifically the killing one, especially maliciously and intentionally, has extreme consequences.