A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#161

Post by lilsunnybee » Fri, Aug 01, 2014, 4:43 PM UTC

javert wrote: post #87

chaostheory wrote: post #79

When a candidate presents himself for training, he must prostrate himself and declare that he is willing to do anything that needs to be done to solve the great matter of life and death. By tradition, he is scowled at by the head monk, who orders him to leave. He persists, he continues to prostrate himself, and after two or three days he is taken in. Apprentice monks are treated like slaves on a brutal plantation. Th…

Maybe he just made it up. Maybe the monks got the idea from him.

> Maybe the monks got the idea from him.

Not really possible since these are centuries-old traditions in many monasteries.

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#162

Post by lilsunnybee » Fri, Aug 01, 2014, 4:48 PM UTC

apozem wrote: post #41

God damn. Sometimes I forget how powerful The New Yorker's writing can feel. Superb.

The New Yorker has a pretty strong history of publishing often fascinating, thought-provoking stories.

A journalist from Slate did a piece recently pointing out some of the standouts, since The New Yorker and it's archives are temporarily free until October i think.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/07/22/new_yorker_on...

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#163

Post by mentat » Fri, Aug 01, 2014, 4:54 PM UTC

GotAnyMegadeth wrote: post #132

milesf wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but how many folk tales do you know of have our calendar measured after the life of one man? 2014 AD or more fully "Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi". How many of those tales give you a single point of failure, that if you can explain away one point then internally the whole belief system collapses? ( http://bit.ly/1uNpRwT with a modern explanation at http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-resurrection-of-jesus ) Se…

That's one of the main problems with your whole argument. "How many folk tales do you know...". Just because you only know one, doesn't mean there is only one. You believe the one you are told, as do the other people else where in the world and in time. The Gregorian calendar does attempt to count the number of years since Jesus. The Bahá'í calendar counts since Báb had his first religious experience [0] The Bengali…

Systematic theology tries very hard to lay out a self coherent view of Christian theology. As much as I think that some of the conclusions it comes to are abhorrent, it is possible to do. American Christianity has a less strong relationship with rationality.

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#164

Post by jqm » Fri, Aug 01, 2014, 4:59 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #124

jqm wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are getting down voted but honorable suicide was a practice in more than ancient Japan. Socrates died by his own hand for instance. https://suite.io/arash-farzaneh/4sa32c7 I'm not saying suicide is good thing but there is a cultural perspective that is different from our own in the modern West.

Socrates was sentenced to death and chose to accept the judgment of the law and drink the poison himself rather than escape (or, I guess, force an executioner to become more directly involved). That hardly counts as suicide.

He could have left. But he decided to take the "honorable" path instead.

Because someone suggests you kill yourself doesn't make it any less killing yourself. This applies to ancient Japan as well. That was my point. The custom of "honorable suicide" wasn't confined to ancient Japan.

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#165

Post by NAFV_P » Fri, Aug 01, 2014, 4:59 PM UTC

milesf wrote: post #88

I was suicidal for an extended period of time many years ago. Doctors weren't sure what was wrong. The hospital emergency ward gave me clonazepam and ativan, but that was only a band-aid, and didn't help long term. Although I wanted to die, my fear of death and an eternity in the Lake of Fire was a far greater fear (Revelation 21:8). I'm not asking you to believe what I do. I'm just relaying what I went through, and…

Revelations 21:8 (King James Version)> But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

It mentions sorcerers, other versions of the bible mention practitioners of magic. So basically most people who read HN are condemned to the Lake of Fire.

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#166

Post by StavrosK » Fri, Aug 01, 2014, 5:11 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #154

audiodude wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a moderately fun video game?

Train Simulator is, in practice, mostly about micromanaging your steam levels.

Surprisingly, Steam is also mostly about micromanaging your Train Simulator levels.

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#167

Post by walruscop » Fri, Aug 01, 2014, 5:12 PM UTC

For anyone who hasn't seen this, this is both beautiful and heartbreaking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FDSdg09df8

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#168

Post by milesf » Fri, Aug 01, 2014, 5:16 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #140

milesf wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but how many folk tales do you know of have our calendar measured after the life of one man? 2014 AD or more fully "Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi". How many of those tales give you a single point of failure, that if you can explain away one point then internally the whole belief system collapses? ( http://bit.ly/1uNpRwT with a modern explanation at http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-resurrection-of-jesus ) Se…

I don't want to pile on, but you're failing to see the implicit cultural bias in your argument. Primarily, that calendar was created and implemented by the Church, at a time when that Church dominated political and cultural life in the Western world. Of course they decided to divide the calendar there, they accepted Christianity as a first principle. >How many of those tales give you a single point of failure, that i…

If I had believed what you are saying, I'd be dead. Would not have been worth pushing through what I went through. Just sayin'.

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#169

Post by krapp » Fri, Aug 01, 2014, 5:32 PM UTC

milesf wrote: post #168

krapp wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to pile on, but you're failing to see the implicit cultural bias in your argument. Primarily, that calendar was created and implemented by the Church, at a time when that Church dominated political and cultural life in the Western world. Of course they decided to divide the calendar there, they accepted Christianity as a first principle. >How many of those tales give you a single point of failure, that i…

If I had believed what you are saying, I'd be dead. Would not have been worth pushing through what I went through. Just sayin'.

Fair enough, religion has had a use for you - many religions clearly have a use for many people. But that doesn't make what you believe in objectively real.

Re: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture (2013)

#170

Post by Snhr » Fri, Aug 01, 2014, 5:49 PM UTC

lilsunnybee wrote: post #143

Estragon wrote: post #65

He had spent seven years sacrificing himself, driving himself to the point of breakdown, nearly to death, trying to help these people, and they didn’t care about him at all. What was the point? He knew that if you were suicidal it was difficult to understand other people’s problems, but still—he had been talking to some of these people for years, and now here he was dying and nobody cared. When I volunteered on a sui…

If they had BPD (borderline personality disorder), in all likelihood they were not acting manipulative at all, and were just very often in distress and experiencing very strong, dysregulated feelings and emotions. BPD people being "manipulative" is a negative and inaccurate stigma, based on misunderstanding. It is also highly harmful, as people are told to always hold in their emotions, always be wary of trying to be…

Thank you for this comment, I don't know why but I decided to do a google search on dysregulated and the first link was

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_dysregulation

Hours of browsing similar wikipedia articles to find out something but nothing describing exactly the issue only to come across an unrelated comment on hacker news unexpectedly that helps a ton.