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Who Was the Buddha?

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Re: Who Was the Buddha?

#71

Post by ghthor »

tim333 wrote: post #61
Iv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a religion, it's a framework that other religions have taken on. Same can be said about the Torah, the teachings of Jesus and Muhammad. Each has a plethora of religions built on top of them, that we group into big families (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) despite some members of these families having tried to kill each other for centuries. I think that what makes Buddhism a bit apart is that it is also a fra…

I think Buddhism is special for atheistic, humanist philosophies in that the foundational writings didn't go on about God. Of course people may have tacked stuff on subsequently. The Torah, the teachings of Jesus and Muhammad on the other hand all recognise Genesis and "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..."

The torah as commonly translated does, but there is an interesting work from a physicist that brings a very atheistic/geometric translation of the torah to light that has been blowing my mind.

https://youtu.be/OJGW2UANWRE

Re: Who Was the Buddha?

#72

Post by rajekas »

brainless wrote: post #58

A side nitpick: I find it surprising the author mentions "pre-imperial India" to mark the era when Buddha was alive. There is a couple thousand years of rich history between the life of Buddha and "pre-imperial India". I would really like the Western authors to stop using Imperialism as a bookmark, as if India had nothing else significant before.

From the context it seems clear that "imperial" refers to the Nanda/Maurya empire - seeing as Kapilavastu and more generally, the Terai are at the periphery of the Gangetic plain. Is it accurate to call Pataliputra based regimes imperial when they ruled over Takshashila? I would think so - what else would you call Ashoka's conquest of Kalinga?

Re: Who Was the Buddha?

#73

Post by sombremesa »

tasogare wrote: post #59
sombremesa wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about this? "Bhavana" most certainly does not mean "a place" in modern parlance (see: "Rashtrapati Bhavan", which is the president's residence), and a lot of the other words have extant meanings in Hindi which differ significantly from what you've said here. Either Hindi has diverged a whole lot from Sanskrit and the meanings have changed (vimana literally means flying vehicle, and I'm pretty sure it's t…

> Either Hindi has diverged a whole lot from Sanskrit and the meaning have changed Yes it changed significantly. That’s why philology exists. And also why languages with long existence are classified in different strata.

I doubt philology exists specifically because Hindi and Sanskrit diverged. Anyhow, have the meanings of extant words common to both languages significantly diverged? Do you have a source?

Re: Who Was the Buddha?

#74

Post by brigandish »

Iv wrote: post #35
brigandish wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always fascinated by the use of the word religion in connection with Buddhism. I can see why, people are always mislabeling things in a way that makes sense in a quick-and-dirty way that reuses existing models of thought, but they're ultimately a drag on any deeper discussion, and this happened long ago with Buddhism. It's not a religion, it's a framework that other religions have taken on. Hence there are Buddhi…

> It's not a religion, it's a framework that other religions have taken on. Same can be said about the Torah, the teachings of Jesus and Muhammad. Each has a plethora of religions built on top of them, that we group into big families (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) despite some members of these families having tried to kill each other for centuries. I think that what makes Buddhism a bit apart is that it is also a fra…

I also live in and have lived around Asia, and I won't deny that there are aspects of the Buddhisms there that are full of the kind of nonsense you can see in any other religion (or pretty much anything humans touch) but that doesn't make any part of Buddhism, i.e. the 4 Noble Truths, a religion or having any of those aspects. It's quite clearly a framework (a set of observations, philsophies and methods applied to a particular domain) that is at once abstract enough to be pluggable yet comes with an initial implementation (thanks, Buddha).

To labour the point I made earlier (somewhat), I can build you a terrible database using 4th normal form, that is called upon by a web framework using any number of patterns like the Active Record or Data Mapper patterns, pushed into an MVC pattern that is full of tacked on bits that make no sense (if you know what you're doing) and spewed out into an utter mess of a web page, but that wouldn't make 4th normal form bad, or MVC etc or the framework encompasing them a bad thing.

Zen Buddhism (Daoism + vestiges of Indian Buddhism) is not Theravada Buddism (Indian Buddhism) is not Tibetan Buddhism (Bon shamanism + Indian Buddhism). It's always spliced into something. Non-Asian Buddhism does the same thing but often bringing in the extraneous parts tacked on.

Where, for example, is there any doctrine in the 4 Noble Truths? Any part that says you need a guru? Any part that says to follow a book or a god (or gods) or the need to chant…? It simply doesn't have any of those things.

Re: Who Was the Buddha?

#75

Post by davidgay »

brainless wrote: post #70
jdale27 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you assuming that they are referring to the British Empire? They could be referring to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurya_Empire , which covered most of India not long after Buddha is said to have lived.

Oh the Maurya dynasty is exactly one part of the rich history I mentioned, that is non Imperial. Edit: Imperialism means to extend over "foreign nations". Mauryan empire is not foreign, it is as Indian as it can get.

The comment you responded to used "imperial", which is the adjective derived from empire.

There's no other adjective for empire, and there's really no reason to assume that use refers to modern meanings of imperialism (which is itself the noun derived from imperial...), meanings which are themselves derived from specific behaviours of recent empires.

Re: Who Was the Buddha?

#76

Post by ithinkso »

brainless wrote: post #70
jdale27 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you assuming that they are referring to the British Empire? They could be referring to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurya_Empire , which covered most of India not long after Buddha is said to have lived.

Oh the Maurya dynasty is exactly one part of the rich history I mentioned, that is non Imperial. Edit: Imperialism means to extend over "foreign nations". Mauryan empire is not foreign, it is as Indian as it can get.

Imperialism does but not the adjective 'imperial' which simply implies relation to an empire. Imperial Japan has nothing to do with the British and yet it is 'imperial'.

Re: Who Was the Buddha?

#77

Post by riskneutral »

sombremesa wrote: post #73
tasogare wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either Hindi has diverged a whole lot from Sanskrit and the meaning have changed Yes it changed significantly. That’s why philology exists. And also why languages with long existence are classified in different strata.

I doubt philology exists specifically because Hindi and Sanskrit diverged. Anyhow, have the meanings of extant words common to both languages significantly diverged? Do you have a source?

The practice of Buddhism has nothing to do with arguing on the Internet about the exact meanings of words in an ancient language that Gautama Buddha didn't even speak (we are told he spoke Magadhi Prakrit, not Sanskrit).

Re: Who Was the Buddha?

#78

Post by brainless »

ithinkso wrote: post #76
brainless wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the Maurya dynasty is exactly one part of the rich history I mentioned, that is non Imperial. Edit: Imperialism means to extend over "foreign nations". Mauryan empire is not foreign, it is as Indian as it can get.

Imperialism does but not the adjective 'imperial' which simply implies relation to an empire. Imperial Japan has nothing to do with the British and yet it is 'imperial'.

Yes you are right about the phrase "Imperial Japan" not having any relation to the British. But "Imperial India" does.

Any reader searching this phrase online or looking up any common reference will find the British relation. Unfortunate, but that is how it is. As an Indian, I have always known that. That is why the phrase jumped at me.

Is it too much to expect an author writing such a detailed article from this region to know that?

Re: Who Was the Buddha?

#79

Post by nsomaru »

jaldhar wrote: post #62
ma2rten wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that some scholars actually believe that Pali is an artificial language, a mixture between different dialects that was intelligible to people from different regions. There is no question that there are some later additions. There are even some contradictions. But by comparing different passages and comparing with the Chinese Agamas, we can get a pretty good idea of what the Buddha actually thought.

Yes I have read that Pali could have been a trade language. Interestingly this method of textual comparison has also proven useful in tracing the history of the “Hindu” Samkhya school; one of whose early works, lost in Sanskrit, is preserved in the Chinese (Mahayana) Buddhist canon.

I’m interested in the Sankhyans! Any reference?

Re: Who Was the Buddha?

#80

Post by sombremesa »

riskneutral wrote: post #77
sombremesa wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt philology exists specifically because Hindi and Sanskrit diverged. Anyhow, have the meanings of extant words common to both languages significantly diverged? Do you have a source?

The practice of Buddhism has nothing to do with arguing on the Internet about the exact meanings of words in an ancient language that Gautama Buddha didn't even speak (we are told he spoke Magadhi Prakrit, not Sanskrit).

Look, this is a discussion forum. I was under the impression that we were having a good faith discussion and I'm genuinely curious about my question, whether extant words in Hindi and Sanskrit have significantly diverged in meaning. You can antagonize me if you like, but you can also choose not to participate in this specific thread if you don't have a meaningful contribution.
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