Thoughts on Buddhism

[passionatefool]

In other words, one becomes enlightened when one overcomes the gifts of evolution and the dictates of growth and progress to wait placidly to become a corpse while economically consuming food - vegetarian presumably, producing excrement, and precious little else. No passion, no ambition, no striving, no curiosity. A supreme Buddhist would seem to be a stoned mental vegetable.

You know I'm not really qualified to respond to that because I forgot half of the stuff I learned about buddhism but that isnt exactly how it is.

The fundamental belief of buddhism is that the world is full sufferings, so they aim to reduce it. One cause of suffering is ignorance or denial. For example, death, buddhism accept it as just another aspect of life and there isn't anything to fear of. So it is more of accepting things for what it is such as impermanence, everything change, come and go, wealth is all temporary, nothing is everlasting. So I suppose by accepting it as something natural in life, they aren't as attached to it. So it is not that they are emotionless, they just expect it....... Buddhism also teach of no self, as another way of letting go of ego, they believe self-ego result in suffering so instead of selfish passion or ambition/striving, they promote selfless ambition, passion, and striving to benefits the mass. And all of these go with Buddhist idea of emptiness which mean nothing is permanent, everything is interconnected, there is nothing that exist independently of everything else, there is no self, just a collective result of consciouness or something like that. So the enlightened one is the one that realize emptiness and selflessness.

Well you know, go to a buddhist community and ask that question and see what is their answer. I'm no longer a Buddhist but I will say most buddhist will give you more thought-provoking answers. Tibetan monks are trained to debate each other given a short period of time for each response.