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Good to be back Brain. :) Hi Wil Your post doesn't really have any supporting argument, except to disagree, but you're no doubt under the impression that Buddhists are quite a reserved lot. The silence of the Buddha is not a lack of opinion, it is actually quite profound. Suppose I...

I can’t say much about Stoicism except that not judging externals as evil or good sounds very much Buddhist, so it looks like they’ll go together well. You’ll excuse my bias toward the teaching of the Buddha, but embodying Buddhist teachings enables one to overcome this ‘problem’ before it...

Hello You make it sound like having passions is a disease. From the Mahayana Buddhist perspective, passions are natural, it is only when you try to cage them that they get out of hand. I'm thinking of an analogy where a country has citizens rules by a government. Now the government...

Namo human1111 To fully understand the differences, you would have to look at the view each takes about issues such as how karma works or the nature of samsara. Meditation is simply the technique, based on the view. In the same way that you can use a scalpel to kill someone, you can use it...

Perhaps that the Brahmin religion had no solution to the issue of sentient beings suffering. This is the Buddha's goal, to end suffering.

Namo The whole issue of Shugden and the efficacy of his supplication aside, the point of the matter is that Gyatso has chosen to defy the incumbent authority - HH the Dalai Lama. It is important to understand how Tantra works and the importance of trust, the unbroken lineage, the guru...

A copyright mantra?! ;) I hope that's for your name?

Hi Pseudoanonymous and everyone else. I'm leaving Taiwan and heading back for South Africa unexpected early, so I'll lose my half decent connection. I don't know how often I'll be able to visit again, so sorry for that. Hopefully I'll get me dream job working at an Internet Cafe. :D I...

Great. So what's the spirit? Is it ones intention?

The Buddha taught that all phenomena, this includes the self, the ego, a grain of sand, are all dependently originated. This means that they are not inherently real. Everything is, if you will, an illusion.

I guess you could equate that with what Buddhists call a stream-enterer; someone who has found the path, and has chosen to walk it / someone who has discovered that there is illusion and decided that it needs to be uncovered in order for one to be happy/enlightened. I understand. Thing is that...

In Buddhism there are three levels of understanding the self. The first is that there is a self. Once someone comes to this realisation, they are ready for the next, which is that there is no self. The third and final level is that the self is dependently arisen and that it neither is nor...

The actual language the Buddha spoke was A*-Magadhi. I can't for the life of me remember what the A word is though. Something like Ardha? :confused: AH!!!!!!!!!

I have a very good book on the subject which I will quote from when I get back to South Africa. It's called Buddhism from the Christian perspective. It's a very good historical account. I think adding 'from a Christian perspective' is just to make it sound less...you know what I mean.

I was under the impression that sanskrit was the language of the aryan invaders/immigrants, the written language, while prakrit was a general term for the languages of India.

The Buddha didn't only speak one language, but he chose Pali when giving a discourse.

I usually equate old with wise. A school of Buddhism, Theravada, means path of the elders.

I don't necessarily consider the two the same, and if you look at the quote, you won't find the word Theravada, so you're standing on water.

I hoped I had explained clearly what I meant by skillful means. Whatever your definition or anyone elses, my intended meaning was of methods which lend themselves to attachment. Hinayana don't use these methods to the best of my knowledge (or I certainly wasn't taught them anyway), in general...

And when not? So if someone shows that they are learned, you suppose that they lack experience? Books only hold the conclusions of others' awareness. Why should quoting a book be any different to quoting oneself? Do you really think your admittingly reactionary style of rhetoric is...