Atheists what are your views on East Asian religions?

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Honestly, by that thought process, there is basically no such thing as a Western religion, because the major strands of Christian thought are deeply tied to the intellectual tendencies of the Western world. I mean, I know it's a cute thing to say. I know there are denominations that are less tied to Greco-Roman thought, like the Eastern Orthodox church. I know that one can question whether early Judaism shared a lot in common with Western philosophy. But.... comments like this are more likely to create heat than they are to create light.

No, there are plenty of Western religions. There were advanced civilizations with religious beliefs in South America, there is the Native American beliefs, and Celtic beliefs.

Sounds like something from the movie Dune spoken by Mentat Piter de Vries...

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed,
the lips acquire stains.
The stains become a warning.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion."

Shrox, the problem is that what we call "the west" actually isn't the Americas, or even really any European belief. But rather "Western civilization" really does tend to mean "Civilization descended from Greco-Roman roots". That may seem weird, but the problem is that any other label just tends to be arbitrary geography, rather than based upon any cultural commonality.

Additionally, none of those groups are large or prestigious enough to be meaningfully talked about, and they have no heritage connecting them together. The Eastern religions we normally define as "eastern religions" actually grew up together though.

What I understand of Buddhism's beginning is that it was a search to discover why people suffered. Gautama Buddha was a wealthy prince who'd been sheltered from the woes of the world because his father didn't want him to fulfill a prophecy that he would go out and heal by walking a sacred path. He was raised to be a warrior king. But when he accidentally witnessed people suffering outside the palace, he questioned it, and started on his path to understand why there was suffering. What he realized eventually was that by desiring or being attached to material things and material existence and its pleasures, we create suffering (not always just for ourselves). It's not focus on the self that causes it but focus on the desires. Knowing the self is encouraged, indulging the self is not. It was more about controlling the desires of the flesh or reining them in, in order to expend one's focus and energy on harmlessness and compassion. I imagine that if everyone practiced harmlessness and true compassion, a lot of the suffering in the world would be resolved. No doubt though we'd still have natural problems - bad weather, volcanoes, earthquakes, disease and death. But even desiring perfect health or long life to an inordinate degree can lead one to worry more and thus suffer more. And by the way most animals don't suffer over that. It's been theorized that the conscious concept, and fear of death, and worrying about the future are uniquely human. Which always reminds me of the D.H. Lawrence poem:

Last edited by SpiritBlooms on 02 Jun 2012, 9:57 pm, edited 5 times in total.

Christianity has an Eastern foundation, but its heavily obscured by all the Greco-Roman ideals and philosophy which form almost the whole of the superstructure.

I'm a philosophically old-fashioned sort of person. For me, there are only two kinds of statements: "is" statements and "ought" statements.

"Is" statements are either correct or incorrect according to whether or not they match the true reality. Evidence and logical reasoning are the only tools we have to make a good guess at whether or not an "is" statement is correct or incorrect.

"Ought" statements, on the other hand, are statements about proposed human policies. The universe doesn't care about them; only humans do. The only way to approach an "ought" statement is to attempt to build a consensus using appeals to things like empathy and, yes, logical reasoning.

The way I think about it is this: all Abrahamic religions make a lot of "is" statements. Therefore, Abrahamic religions are either correct or incorrect. However, some forms of Eastern religion are comprised entirely of "ought" statements. That means that I can still find them morally repulsive (e.g. I think that Confucianism is terrible because of its emphasis on hierarchy), but I can't judge them to be correct or incorrect.

There is no point or reason to consider it an "Eastern foundation" though. The geographic location of Judaism is middle-eastern, which is only "East of Europe", so on geographic grounds, we have little reason to pick a different lumping.

Additionally, he foundation of the religion really has little reason to be lumped with Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, etc, and there isn't a strong reason to think that the influence of those groups was significant, HOWEVER, most Eastern religions have actually influenced each other in significant ways historically, even going on to the present. Judaism, really is much much more tied to other middle-eastern religions though. Judaism shares stories with those religions. Judaism has some shared cosmology with those religions. So on and so forth, however, the problem is that these other religions generally did not survive or maintain dominance while Judaism and it's offshoots did. If ancient Canaanite religion remained, then our understanding of Judaism and thereby Christianity would end up being very different.

I mean, this is a cute phrase, but it's difficult to take seriously. Christianity is the DEFINITIVE Western religion, all other religions that we could ever give the title to are either now dead or have basically been reduced to merely being cults, or have never gotten beyond cult status. If you don't like calling it a Western religion, then you'd have to say that Christianity is a middle-Eastern religion, or that it's a Judeo-Christian religion. But it doesn't share in any of the conversations of the Eastern religions(which are longstanding). It's foreign. I mean, if you look at TVTropes, for instance, it's been noted that the Japanese actually use Christian symbolism as symbols for the occult as narrative devices: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... oolCrosses

Does that convey my position a bit better? I just find this confusing because I feel like this is a rhetorical trick, but that this claim is difficult to make sense of? Like, what is a "Western base"? I mean, the only way to really make sense of this is to say that there is no religion with a Western base. And so I feel like odd conceptions are flowing around, but.... mostly out of a desire to associate a religion with "Western-ness".

True, and really the term "Western" in this context is more about a philosophical grouping than a geographic one. It's about as meaningful geographically as "New World" - which obviously was there all along and was only new to the Europeans who explored, colonized and exploited it. I prefer "Abrahamic" to "Western" as a way of grouping the three related monotheistic religions, but to me "Eastern" is meaningful as a philosophical grouping as well. Still that's all really academic, and I think we all knew what was meant by the term "Eastern."

"A rose by any other name..."

Last edited by SpiritBlooms on 03 Jun 2012, 1:20 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Western means of Greco Roman origin.

ruveyn

Yes.

Then maybe you just have communication issues.

Nope ive got a rainiy issue

The term "East Asian religions" can be misleading because "East Asia" is extremely diverse.

I think the #1 most well known Mahayana text in East Asian Buddhist countries is "Heart Sutra".
It was translated from Sanskrit to Chinese by the famous traveling monk Xuanzang (aka. Genjo).
It became the most popular of all, because it is short and so its "easy to digest" or easy to recite.
Some people mock Heart Sutra as "McDonald's Sutra" because its like the fast food of Buddhism.
There are some Buddhist sects which do not recite Heart Sutra, but most recite it or know about it.

Anyway here is an English translation of it.

Prajnaparamita Hrdaya / 般若波羅蜜多心経 / Heart of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom / Heart Sutra

When Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara was practicing the profound Prajna Paramita,
he illuminated the Five Skandhas and saw that they are all empty,
and he crossed beyond all suffering and difficulty.

Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness;
emptiness does not differ from form.
Form itself is emptiness; emptiness itself is form.
So too are feeling, cognition, formation, and consciousness.

Shariputra, all Dharmas are empty of characteristics.
They are not produced, not destroyed, not defiled, not pure;
and they neither increase nor diminish.
Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, feeling, cognition, formation, or consciousness;
no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind;
no sights, sounds, smells, tastes, objects of touch, or Dharmas;
no field of the eyes up to and including no field of mind consciousness;
and no ignorance or ending of ignorance,
up to and including no old age and death or ending of old age and death.
There is no suffering, no accumulating, no extinction, and no Way,
and no understanding and no attaining.

Because nothing is attained,
the Bodhisattva through reliance on Prajna Paramita is unimpeded in his mind.
Because there is no impediment, he is not afraid,
and he leaves distorted dream-thinking far behind.
Ultimately Nirvana!
All Buddhas of the three periods of time attain Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi
through reliance on Prajna Paramita.
Therefore know that Prajna Paramita is a Great Spiritual Mantra,
a Great Bright Mantra, a Supreme Mantra, an Unequalled Mantra.
It can remove all suffering; it is genuine and not false.
That is why the Mantra of Prajna Paramita was spoken. Recite it like this:

Gaté Gaté Paragaté Parasamgaté

Bodhi Svaha!

Web Page Name


It has been made into Pop, Rock, Hip Hop, R&B, Ballad, etc, many versions..
Heart Sutra: Rap
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV6VyvAHOdg[/youtube]
Heart Sutra: Hardcore
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTu3AfPClP0[/youtube]
Below are the Traditional versions:
Heart Sutra: Japanese
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWjTRgsKxIc[/youtube]
Heart Sutra: Chinese
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foxW6869qsA[/youtube]
Heart Sutra: Sanskrit, Tibetan, Bhutanese, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi5TrWNw7gQ[/youtube]

If you feel this way then you really misunderstand Atheism. Atheists do not believe in god, any god. That is it, period.

Some, maybe many, also do not believe in anything supernatural and this will include any form of the supernatural be it east,west,north or south in origin. A disbelief in gods and the supernatural is not confined by culture it is universal.

That many atheists on forums whose preferred language is English or another European Language focus on Abrahamic religion is quite simple, most people on these forums have an understanding of these religions, notably Christianity. I know relatively nothing regarding the Religions and ideologies you present, why then would I get into a debate about them, what I do know from first principles is that if they talk about a god or some from of afterlife I will not agree with that aspect of it.

You are attempting to communicate with spirits. Joker was banned from this site several years ago. This is a necroed thread.