>>8445

>Religious beliefs have no access to a factual truth.

That's not necessarily true. One of the most oft cited examples is the Big Bang. Which is pretty approximate to what current science says happened, minus the "God did it" part of religion whereas science says "we dunno what caused it"

>That's why it is so similar to "what you like": you think it's true only because you feel and like it on an emotional level ("resonated with you").

Again this is a falsehood. You merely presume as such, as opposed to others wherein for much of history theology was a scholarly thing. The idea that religious or mystical beliefs and conclusions come solely from the fuzzy wuzzies probably says more about you than it does theology.

>Not because you discovered undenieable evidence which proves that truth.

I've had enough spooky experiences many of which are not even plausible given the known material reality for me to state otherwise. I simply have neither the tools nor the knowledge to conclusively verify it, let alone scientifically reproduce many of these instances.

>As you avoided the question, here it is again: What resonated with you that made you become a buddhist?

I answered your question. I am not a Buddhist. I studied it (albeit in a more cursory manner, officially I think I had two classes on Buddhism notwithstanding reading outside of it). You merely presumed that I was a Buddhist.

>Hinduism however is a huge clusterfuck of gods, endless stories and happenings.

Like I said, depending on which sect and interpretation you get the same thing with certain strands of Buddhism.

>So regarding my questions (purpose of a human life/what did god do) or related to a "simplified Buddhism", i was specifically aiming for the teachings of Siddharta, the root of Buddhism.

The eightfold path is a good start. Right mindedness, right living, right conduct etc. with the goal of being free of desirous attachment which in modern Western parlance would be termed addictions. Addiction to fast food, addiction to sex, addiction to gambling, addiction to drugs, things of that nature, and to escape the perpetual wheel of reincarnation and suffering, and to aid others in escaping suffering. That's the best tl;dr I can give you.

>but i was only interested in the root. Or does he not play a prominent role for a modern buddhist?

Most of the time the personhood of Buddha is irrelevant to you and your path. Buddha was basically just a wayshower. This is very distinct from Christianity for instance, because he was not some god or a prophet, merely just some guy who's said to have pondered and discovered great truths and wisdoms and helped show others the way. There's the saying "if you meet the Buddha, kill him".

>What does a buddhist respond with?

Actually the fact that most Christians--and by most Christians I really just mean retarded American Protestants--mindlessly parrot verses from the Bible irks me, particularly because very few of them seem to have any concern for the wisdom or underlying substance of that verse. Buddhism is less strict in a sense, in that you're not so bound up in reading from a script. Although, in terms of ethical guidelines and conduct, that exists plentifully.

I think that part of the problem is also Westerners got used to Papal Christianity, wherein basically God gets posited as some distant ruler, who sends his princeling emissary, Jesus, to man to issue orders and those orders are absolute and not necessarily open to interpretation. Then you get an added middleman, the Pope, who acts like some kind of feudal lord to the emperor. Much of this is derived from mortal politics and political apparatus bullshit. Then you have Saints in Catholicism, so it becomes less and less about the heavenly and divine and more about following some kind of hierarchy, and I think that that likewise paints the impressions and expectations of a lot of average Westerners who simply expect something to tell them what to do and boss them around. I have in fact encountered this mindset numerous times and it always confounds and startles me, although women seem more prone to it.

Such a thing as Zen Buddhism is specifically meant to snap your mind out of this. It is deliberately designed to break your compulsions and force you to actually reflect on who you are, where you're going, what you're doing, why you're doing what you're doing, and not just spoon feeding you an answer. I can't find a download atm but there's this book which is pretty decent https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/596076.Alone_with_Others
I think I recommended the Dhammapada? I can't remember. And in terms of understanding a lot about Buddhist thought I would highly recommend the Bhagavad Gita, which is essentially a foundational approach in the same sense I would tell a Christian to read and interpret the Torah to understand a basis for Christendom and Islam. I think that the Bhagavad Gita conveys the mindset really well in order to understand Buddhism later.

Here is an example of I think what you're asking and looking for
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrinal_background_of_Zen#Sudden_and_gradual_enlightenment
The similarities between Christianity and Buddhism are there, however Christianity teaches you can only be saved from suffering by following this guy who's a god-form and literal avatar of the one God, as opposed to Buddhism which is more about finding your own salvation rather than having it given to you. The process has more similarities with Gnostic Christianity, and takes a similarly dim view of material reality as a realm of illusion, falsehood, and suffering. This is also closer to various mystical schools where in sense "enlightenment" means basically the same thing as attaining illumination.

These are not the same things as psychology, whatever the surface congruence, and in fact a great deal of modern psychology has been influenced by certain older philosophical systems like this. For example, the whole idea of "self actualization" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization which is in a real sense the non-mystical goal or objective of psychology is pretty much in line and clearly at times borrowed from Eastern philosophy.

Here are some other discussions on that matter
https://www.religiousforums.com/threads/is-enlightenment-the-same-thing-as-self-actualization.12809/
https://www.buddhismwithoutboundaries.com/showthread.php?3197-How-does-Maslow-s-Hierarchy-of-Needs-relate-to-Buddhism

>>8480

>Which is pretty approximate to what current science says happened, minus the "God did it" part of religion whereas science says "we dunno what caused it"

You are going quite astray... Current science is an explorative search for theories and their evidence. A theory lacking full evidence or having parts unknown has nothing to do with religion, it's just part of the process.

>The idea that religious or mystical beliefs and conclusions come solely from the fuzzy wuzzies probably says more about you than it does theology.

Religions are mostly dogmatic - statements and stories deliviered by prophets or spiritually "enlightened" individuals or groups. I'm surprised at your attempt here as most religious people don't question that there is no factual truth within religion as in evidence, proofs. I'm not saying this to insult religion. Theology is not trying to compete with natural science, as it is instead mostly studying the religion itself, in terms of history, archeology, sociology etc

So to get back to my original statement: You don't come across some factual evidence that proves that a religion is true, and therefore join the religion. That's why "resonating with" a religion is an emotional, personal, psychological process IMHO. I understand that comparing it with enjoying and buying a song or a political idea must be insulting to you, as your religious beliefs have a much more strong, life-changing meaning to yourself. But if you try to see it from an outsider perspective who has no emotional attachement, maybe you understand what i was trying to say.

>I've had enough spooky experiences many of which are not even plausible given the known material reality for me to state otherwise.

That works as a proof for yourself only and even then you should have reason to question if you can deduct an unambiguous, correct interpretation of what you "witnessed".

>I am not a Buddhist

Alright, my misunderstanding then. I didn't 100% assume it though, as you responded at one point: "It's what resonates with you and most adequately seems to express and explain the world", which i took was you talking about why you turned to Buddhism.
Now the whole discussion actually is rather pointless as my original question and curiosity was about "Why does somebody decide to become a buddhist?".

About my other statement of "buddhism being about the inner world, therefore potentially replaceable by psychology":
While your previously stated that "It's like saying Christianity or Judaism or Islam is nothing but a self help group" you now mention overlaps between buddhism and psychology yourself, and also everything else mentioned about buddhism by you was about the inner world again. Looking more into it i also found stuff like this:

>Buddhism and Western Psychology overlap in theory and in practice.
>if we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism, we do not find either philosophy or religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more nearly resembling psychotherapy
>Buddha was a unique psychotherapist.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705677

On my question if Buddhism does most of the things other religions do, you answered "Buddhism literally does all that", but you didn't go into my follow up questions of how or what Buddhism (Siddharta) explains about the "outer world" (like the bible does, for example).

My personal summary now is:
Siddharta was a philosopher and very early psychotherapist. Hinduists embraced his theories and created buddhist sects, adding their religious elements. The actual core of buddhism however shares more with psychology than religion. Therefore my (maybe bold) statement, that modern psychology is better at improving and understanding your "inner world" than buddhism (as it is further developed) is essentially true.

>>8483
Wait no that is not what I meant apparently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking
hmm http://chuckslamp.com/index.php/2009/04/11/non-linearthinking/
It is like there are spiderwebs of neural connections from which each starting point is only linearly subjective from its own non-objective viewpoint, ergo necessitating the usage of all points of light on the spectrum in order to see and analyze a particular situation or object of inquiry. It is a process by which you are not so easily duped by your own inherently flawed and subjective perceptions whereby multiple blindfolded people would touch a part of an elephant and come to wildly different conclusions as to the nature of an animal. When you see a hologram you are only looking at it from one vantage point, and likewise, a person on the other end of the room would see a very different static image from which only a vague conjecture and stipulations are possible based on predictions of what you expect the other side to look like, which is necessarily subjective. As such, this is the problem with looking at both God and the self, or Soul, and is a problem with understanding what is the geist of life and creativity and reality generally. In other words, you have to look at the system as a whole, which the main problem is looking at a puzzle and knowing the ultimate picture you're going for, it's just the tedium of finding the right pieces to fill it in.

>Thich Naht Hanh compares such instances of knowing God, or becoming enlightened, like a dialogue between a land turtle and a fish. One might represent enlightenment/believing in a God and the other perhaps with their own way of seeing the world and obtaining enlightenment/God.

>Fish- Look here turtle, how I can drink this water and breathe it to give me life. Breathe this water, shelled friend and surely you can believe/become enlightened.
>Turtle-Look here fish, how I can inhale this air and breathe it to give me life. Breathe this air, scaled friend and surely you can believe/become enlightened.

>As you can see, both have defined their own type of enlightenment but neither seem to understand the other's tactics of doing so. Just as humans. We can try to explain all we want on how to believe/disbelieve in this or that or even on how to become enlightened.

And so on and so forth.