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My favorite Buddhist tale is that of the Chinese monk Birdsnest, so called because he always hung out in a tree.
Now, Birdsnest was famous and highly regarded, and a governor heard of him and decided to seek him out. The governor travelled for days to reach birdsnest, and when he arrived, he asked “hey, birdsnest, what was it that all the Buddhas taught?” Basically, dude was asking for a one sentence summary of religion, like the famous tale of economic study resulting in the one sentence summary of “no such thing as a free lunch”.
Birdsnest answered “Don’t do bad things, only do good things.”
The governor scoffed, and said “my three year old nephew knows that!”
“Easy enough for the three year old to understand,” Birdsnest retorted, “but still very difficult for the sixty year old to do.”
A monkey was in a tree above a river and plunged into it. He came out with a fish and scurried up a tree. Once safe in its branches he said to the fish, “Holy shit, good thing I was here. You were about to drown!”
Intention without awareness can be harmful.
Another one is the two monks.
Two monks are traveling. Their sect of Buddhism doesn’t allow them to touch women. They came across a river and when they crossed it they saw a woman who capsized her canoe. The elder Monk swam to the woman and helped her to the shore. She hurt her leg so he carried her to the rest of her party.
Once they were traveling again, the younger monk continued to badger the elder Monk on why he thought it was okay to touch that woman. The elder Monk said, “I am no longer carrying that woman. Why do you insist on continuing to carry her?”
Finally some good ones, so far down the list, relayed by Fender Rinpoche no less. The best of these parables should be a bit of a brain teaser imo, have an element of surprise at least. Open up new ways of thinking about the world, and leave some room for contemplation.
Highly regarded indeed.
Add meditation and thats the succinct version of the 8fold path.
Meditation might be implicit tho, and therefore not worth mentioning.
Bible stories are the same way, we’ve just heard them a million times so they don’t seem weird
“Hey Jesus what toppings do you want for pizza?”
“Plain with cheese”
Later the disciples are eating pizza with Jesus
"“Hey Jesus why did you say you like cheese pizza when you normally order pepperoni?”
“You dumb fucks how dare you not understand my hidden meaning, I am the true pizza and you are the pepperoni, the grease is my blood”
“Oh of course, sorry boss”
“Jesus… when you say ‘get me off this fucking cross, so help me God’… is that a test? Or should we actually get you off the cross?”
( More ranting and screaming and moaning )
The disciples nod wisely at their leader’s self-sacrifice for… their sins maybe? And he will always be immortal in their hearts, because they’ve already eaten him or something.
The disciples go home, wiser and holier and warily eyeing each other in confirmation of the deeper meaning behind their saviour’s last words: “Guys, please, I’m not fucking around, get me down, please, I’m so fucking thirsty… Jesus fucking christ”
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Thought that one always tied back to the whole “you shall know them by their fruits” thing.
As in those who talk nice but don’t produce anything useful (like a fig tree that doesn’t produce figs, just leaves) are not really doing what Jesus said. Don’t be like the Pharisees hollering out in the streets, just love God and do good in the world.
There is a story in the Apocrypha (decanonized Bible books) where childhood Jesus turns another kid into a tree. I like to think it’s the same tree.
Yes but it’s still weird because it wasn’t the right time of year for it to have fruit. The tree would have if Jesus hadnt been a dick.
Well then you’re back to Ecclesiastes. Everything in its season etc.
Idk, I was just trying to put the best argument forward, but l’m not really a fan of the New Testament in part because of its inconsistency.
I think you’re confusing the testaments, Jesus was ultimately a great guy as far as I can tell. The God used to be extremely cruel and vengeful in the old testament, though.
This is a common misconception, if you dig into it you’ll see that God is basically the same in both old and new testaments. Nobody talked about hell more than Jesus.
You mean Gehenna, the literal place that was just a garbage dump around the corner? “Don’t go to that place, man, it sucks. Somebody lit a trash pile on fire two weeks ago and it’s still burning now. It’s gross.”
Or did you mean Hades, the place John (no, not that John (probably)) wrote about many years after Jesus’s death? In the book of Revelation, the whole of which is full of obvious symbolic imagery? A) not Jesus and B) still not “hell”.
Ohhhhh you were talking about Dante Alighieri, the guy born twelve hundred years later, who invented our modern concept of hell whole cloth.
“Hell”, a translation of any of the three words Gehenna, Hades, and Tartarus, show up anywhere between 13 and 23 times in the entire new testament. That wide range is due to differences in translations and source texts.
Nobody talks about Jesus talking about hell more than modern preachers who profit off of making people fearful. You know, the exact people Jesus would have thrashed out of the temple with a whip.
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I never told you he wasn’t goofy, ay!
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You’re right, I somehow must’ve been distracted when replying to your second comment and totally lost a grip on what we were talking about
In response to calling a prophet bald:
“So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the LORD. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.” -New King James bible, 2 Kings 2:24
This is the real way to turn the other cheek
Its almost like nonsensical parables are a recurring theme in religions in general and we shouldn’t be assuming a bunch of mystical morons from a thousand years ago knew any better.
A lot of the “nonsensical” comes from translation issues.
You’re not a Hebrew farmer living in the middle east 2000 years ago, and the parable has been translated from ancient Hebrew to Greek, then to Latin, then finally into English.
The same goes for buddhist parables
I’ve read that some of these parables originally had clever word play.
That’s a really good point, thanks for bringing that up
Clearly you just failed to grasp Jesus’s message. And truly I say unto you, there shall be no pizza but through him, and occasionally at work to prevent unions from being discussed.
I think I can explain. In Buddhism, you have to understand if he didn’t the last into the pizza, but from where I stand it simply is. I hope that helps.
What
If you have to ask, then you don’t know
Induction technique
The fool asks ‘What?’
The wise man interjects ‘What’
The enlightened silently nods and thinks ‘WTAF’
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I certainly recognize most of them.
I suddenly feel enlightened.
Realistic yakub is frightening
Peace be upon him 🙏
Buddhism’s “Life sucks? Be nice and die and you’ll get a better one” sucks but it’s still better than “you should be nice to others, but that’s too much to ask so go be as awful as you want and just regret it later and that’ll be fine”. But even that was better than whatever the fuck people are interpreting from religions these days.
Before Christianty it was also a lot of “killing people is just really fucking cool, actually”, which even as an atheist I still admit was worse.
Not that Christians didn’t.
But they made some sort-of-safe havens.
Yeah. Personally I don’t see life as being “sacred” or anything and I think people should ultimately be free to choose to end their own if they really want to (provided they also get good support for trying to deal with whatever leads to that choice) - but it kinda scares me that this “sanctity” that is attributed to life is the only thing stopping people from being casually OK with murder.
The Spanish missions have entered the chat. They actually sent people back to Spain when they said “yo, maybe Jesus wouldn’t be cool with us enslaving and murdering the locals”.
“Entered the chat” is a stupid phrase.
Ok
I’m not sure if Buddhism is particularly concerned with being nice
What the actual fuck are you talking about? Go educate yourself
Excuse me, if you actually understand the path and believe the point is being “nice”, then why the fuck are you talking to me like that? And if you don’t understand the path, then again, why the fuck are you talking to me like that?
The eightfold path concerns “right” or “wise” or “virtuous” action… but what do those have to do with being “nice”?? Haven’t you heard that light and dark create one another?
I felt a bit sympathetic to Buddhism up to the point when I actually visited a Buddhist temple and listened to the speeches of monks.
The amount of brain rot disguised as wisdom has made me feel Christianity ain’t that bad after all.
Sorry in advance to any Buddhist out there, but it struck me how the common perception of it differs from the actual thing.
It depends really. I grew up Buddhist and things were chill. Speeches I heard at temple were just telling us to be good people, be nice to people no matter their race or gender stuff like that, don’t do harm to people or animals.
Even Abrahamic religions have good and bad spiritual leaders, some are cult like and others are just trying to get people to have decent morals.
Fair point!
I kinda lost my interest in Buddhism when I learnt that according to traditional Buddhist lore, women can’t reach Nirvana.
When they’ve collected enough good karma, they are reborn as a man.I mean aint that different from what the old testament teaches. Not saying the choice is between Christianity and Buddhism, but I’d assume most religions have patriarchy vibes baked into them. Not that I agree with religion, I see them all as means of various levels of crowd control for the masses, and somebody trying to benefit from it, be it a spiritual leader or an orange clown.
As a Buddhist it definitely varies like any religion. There are some bozo temples out there
Late to the party, and no offence to buddhism, but i always loved this quote from Terry Pratchett
“Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?"
Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: “A fish!”
And Clodpool went away, satisfied.” ― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time
(copies the quote from https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/46982-thief-of-time?page=2 but i’m rather sure its correct, so i didn’t check my copy).
That’s like saying, “I used to be a fan of pizza until I had one in Altoona, PA.”
There’s better pizza out there.
Wow, that’s an actual place. Is that Buddha’s favorite pizza joint or something?
Look up Altoona pizza.
Altoona pizza
Their body, their choice.
More power to them, but that is NOT what i would choose lol.
American cheese? What’s wrong with those people…
A lot, they also framed Luigi
Out of curiosity, which Buddhist tradition was this temple out of? I’ve had similar experience, but I get the feeling like Buddhist thought might be about as diverse as Christian.
It’s much more diverse than Christianity, actually. Buddhism isn’t so much a religion in the judeochristian sense as a characteristic that many religions have. There are Buddhist traditions that worship gods, there are godless Buddhist traditions that worship the Buddha, and ones thay don’t even worship the Buddha but just think he was a pretty wise dude. Some require you to meditate daily, others to chant some mantras, and there are Buddhist traditions like Zen that worship nothing and are all about getting your head out of your ass.
Monk was passing through. Some villagers saw him pissing on a statue of Buddha so they grabbed their pitchforks and went to pitchfork him. “Show me where Buddha is not, and I shall piss there.” said the monk.
Some Buddha once told me Rebirth was gonna roll me…
Isn’t Buddhism at least partially about a lack of desire? Buddha is enlightened, meaning he has no desires, therefore if you asked him what he wanted on his pizza, he’d be like “Eh, whatever’s fine”
are they just trying to fuck with white people?
Not just white people, but people in general.
That’s Hinduism, not Buddhism.
TIL the Kama Sutra is just an average Netflix show released 140 years too early.
What kinds of Netflix shows are you watching?
Also, Zeus
It is better to cum in the sink than to sink in the cum
The word of the Lord, amen. 🙏
Before enlightenment, shitpost daily
After enlightenment, daily shitpost
The Buddhist Monk walks up to the hot dog vendor and says: “make me one with everything.”
The monk pays with a twenty, which the vendor pockets.
“Where’s my change?”
“Change comes from within.”
The hungry tiger jataka is my favorite
"One day, the Bodhisattva and one of his disciples decided to take a stroll in the forest nearby. This had become a regular practice. They often went for strolls.
While they were walking, the Bodhisattva notices something extremely terrifying. He saw a tigress, which looked weak and hungry. The tigress was about to devour her own cubs. Now, that moved the Bodhisattva’s heart. He did not want the poor animal to suffer the guilt of eating her own cubs. So, he came up with an idea.
He sent his disciple back to do something. The Bodhisattva had decided that he would offer himself as food to the starving tigress. He simply could not let her eat her cubs. And he knew if his disciple had seen this, he would definitely stop the Bodhisattva from offering himself. You may also like to read, The Tiger And The Golden Bangle.
After the disciple is gone, the Bodhisattva approached the tigress. With the utmost compassion in his heart and no malice, he let the tigress devour him. The tigress ate him and fed the cubs as well. After a while, the disciple returned. When he saw the Bodhisattva’s blood stained clothes, he realized what had happened.
He knew the Bodhisattva well. So, he knew the hermit had offered himself to save the tigress. He went back and told his fellow disciples of the Bodhisattva’s sacrifice out of love and compassion. "
Upon seeing the blood stained clothes, the disciple said ‘Hey I was hungry, too! Fucking weirdo.’
The disciple was named Colonel Sanders and this was his inspiration to invent the hamberder and never be hungry again.
