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Ask HN: Those who respect/follow/enthusiastic about Buddhism, why do you do so?

2 points by nerdyadventurer ↗ HN
Namo Buddhaya! Today is a special day(5th of May) for all Buddhist all around the world.

As person born in Buddhist country and as a Buddhist practitioner I have immense respect for Buddhism, because it explains certain things even science cannot explain and it is amazing to know about tremendous good deeds of Lord Buddha. And there are lot of other things to be said which will take lot of time, so I'll stop.

As I observed on HN there considerable number of Buddhist enthusiasts / practitioners since posts about Buddhism get considerable attention.

So my question to those people, why do you respect / follow / enthusiastic about Buddhism? And as an additional question what drew you in to Buddhism in the first place?

Note: This post, does not mean I do not respect other religions.

5 comments

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eimrine
There are five countries in the whole world for the whole time which were "developing" and become "developed", such as South Korea (sorry I forgot another examples). I clearly remember that all of those were Buddist countries.

> It is because it explains certain things even science cannot explain

You are having a poor understanding of what the science is. If Buddism or Blablaism of Whateverelseism explains what science can not explain, it becames a part of science immediately.

nerdyadventurer
> There are five countries in the whole world for the whole time which were "developing" and become "developed", such as South Korea (sorry I forgot another examples). I clearly remember that all of those were Buddhist countries.

Yes I am from a such country.

You are speaking about science in general sense, where science everything is science based, my intent by science mean "science as a tool to explain things around us, where that tool has limitations." ex: Is there anyway science could explain why a particular person born in a certain way, why a particular thing happen to specific person. I think you will say that there is always a reason, which is correct indeed, but what is the root causes that lead to that reason/s in the first place, To explain that we have to step out of this life in to Sanasara, which does not belong to realm of what we called modern science. I have heard some people misunderstand everything based on Karma, so we do not have free will but this not true according to Dhamma.

My native language is not English, so forgive me if I disrespect you in anyway since I am not fluent in subtleties of English language.

50
metaphysics is one of the best games in town for we are all at a existential disposition. and buddhism holds it's own: not only does it have a powerful and credible metaphysics but a well-grounded epistemology and ethics which has inspired many from bashō to schopenhauer. nāgārjuna, dōgen, niguma, bodhidharma, to name a few, are on par with the manifestations of jc, laozi, and ramakrishna

if only assimilation came easily! unfortunately in modernity, we are cursed with reducing our psyche to a smooth glossy surface where everything just slides off and nothing is taken in and allowed to reshape us

but buddhism brings forth countless of interesting questions, e.g., paraphrasing žižek: not can we really break out of this wheel of desire into the primordial peace of nirvana but how did this primordial peace get disturbed in the first place? how did appearances emerge? or rather, is there a deeper tension in nirvana itself of infinite self-contradiction?

otherwise, i assume, like many people in the west, i was introduced to buddhism via alan watts when i was an early teenager

nerdyadventurer
> but buddhism brings forth countless of interesting questions, e.g., paraphrasing žižek: not can we really break out of this wheel of desire into the primordial peace of nirvana but how did this primordial peace get disturbed in the first place? how did appearances emerge? or rather, is there a deeper tension in nirvana itself of infinite self-contradiction?

I am not proficient enough to answer this question, but I'll explain my thinking. what you are thinking is similar to chicken, egg problem or how the universe came to bee in the first place. I think world is what it is due to it nature and there are principles in the universe which governs how it operates.

But I think it is better question to ask is "Does Buddhist teachings bring pieces to the world? ex: does following five precepts establish piece in the world?" For me the answer is yes. And answer to this question is within our reach, unlike beginning of the world. If your answer to previous question is yes, then you can ask more questions based from that ex: "4th of five precepts ask you to refrain from lying, if you experience and seeing not lying is good, then you can trust other Dhamma pieces by sitting on the foundation of truth" Yes there can be misinterpretations, lies said about Buddhism by people but use your wisdom to filter those incorrect teachings. And you may also be able find out how the universe came to be when your mind reach higher levels, but questioning those things at lower levels is fruitless in MHO, since we would not be able to grasp it at lower levels.

50
> questioning those things at lower levels is fruitless in MHO, since we would not be able to grasp it at lower levels

rings true