No, baker, that statement doesn't make sense. Cultural "venerations" and "gods" in countries wherever Buddhism has taken root are not – could not be – central to Buddhist practice as taught by Buddha. — 180 Proof

I replied to your post saying

I think nontheistic (i.e. "devotion (attachment) to deities" is irrelevant for – perhaps even hinders – 'moksha') best describes Buddhism. — 180 Proof

Indeed, in some Buddhist schools/lineages, "devotion (attachment) to deities" is considered relevant for liberation.

Such devas are neither "eternal" nor "karma-free" and, like all other living beings, "gods" are also working out their own salvations in Buddhist terms. Religious accretions of "gods" merely reflect, IMO, karmic attachments (re: samsāra) of local adherents. — 180 Proof

Like I said:

In Buddhism, a deva is not a permanent identity, it's a type of body that one can be born into if one has the merit. — baker

and a passage on Buddhist cosmology quoted in the post.


As for whether deity worship is "central to Buddhist practice as taught by Buddha" -- ha ha, I dare you to take this up with a Vajrayani!

Sure, all cultures have limits and taboos and encourage suppression of emotions. But in Buddhism you have a complete disidentification with them. — Bylaw

Could you reference a Buddhist source that teaches this? What you're describing sounds like what could be found in some modern secular Buddhist teachings (my knowledge of them is not very good), but I think it would be too much of a stretch to read the Pali canon that way. And I'm not saying this out of sympathy with the Pali canon or trying to defend it or present it as "normal". At best, the practice you're describing is skipping several important steps.

It's how we use it in my native language, to denote something shapeless or which changes shape, something undefined, non-specific. I've noticed English dictionaries don't point out this meaning. I thought it was an international word that has the same meaning everywhere.

But look what they're doing to us!!!!!!

An amoeba (/əˈmiːbə/; less commonly spelled ameba or amœba; plural am(o)ebas or am(o)ebae /əˈmiːbi/),[1] often called an amoeboid, is a type of cell or unicellular organism which has the ability to alter its shape, primarily by extending and retracting pseudopods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba

Well, Buddhism does separate emotion from expression Instead of a natural feeling----> expression with sound, facial expression, posture we have a witnessing process. A disidentification. Expression of emotion is a part of life. Now, of course, Buddhists do express emotions, but in practical terms it is frowned upon more than in many other subcultures (judgements of emotions and their expression is pretty common) and at the practice level one is disconnection emotion from expression. So, there's a facet of life that is cut off. — Bylaw

Not sure what you're talking about. Controlling the expression of one's emotions is common in traditional cultures, as well as in modern times ("emotional intelligence").

Well, that's the issue - the West doesn't know enough about them. — The Opposite

While the West is too amoebic to be known.

Maybe you should try living in both? Compare and contrast?

Too small a sample for analysis.

My question is, is it necessary to postulate intuition as a mental faculty that allows us to obtain metaphysical knowledge? — Wheatley

Doing so appears to be specifically religiously motivated, as a retrospective (presumably, retroactive) justification for holding a particular religious belief.

Make no mistake: I resent China. I just resent the West more.

“Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.”
― George Carlin — Tom Storm

Yet none of the people who believe "there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe" do so because George Carlin told them so. He's just making misleading hyperbole.

Better the devil you know!

Good luck with reducing the work week!

Pessimism does not entail unhappiness; neither optimism, happiness. — Alkis Piskas

The working term is defensive pessimism.

It's strange though, because in psychological research, defensive pessimism appears to be implicitly conceptually conflated with good work ethics.

What would it take to reduce the work week? — schopenhauer1

Death.

Winning the lottery.

A pandemic combined with global warming wiping out life as we know it and the remaining humans left with very little work to do, simply because there won't be much work to do left.

Becoming a monk.

Dramatically changing the values people live by, so that everyone works 20 hours at most, but everyone has a job, albeit a low paying one, and people live in modest cirumstances, three generations per home. And have fewer or no children, until the human population reduces to an economically viable level.

Well, Murican culture is shapeless, shape-shifting. China at least has definition.

And it was the Muricans who started the 1918 influenza pandemic and let the damn thing spread.

Yes, because the US is too amoebic to blame.

So Buddhism has gods but no Supreme God we are trying to get too. Nirvana itself could seem to be atheistic to a Westerner looking for loving union with his creator. — Gregory

I think nontheistic (i.e. "devotion (attachment) to deities" is irrelevant for – perhaps even hinders – 'moksha') best describes Buddhism. — 180 Proof

That depends on the school of Buddhism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_deities

See Tara worship, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(Buddhism)
People worship her for the purpose of making spiritual progress.

Firstly, wrong thread, — unenlightened

No, the question of whether the Buddha was sourgraping is often on my mind, it pertains also to topics that nominally don't seem related to it.

and secondly, nothing I have said is sceptical of Buddhism or its founder.

Of course you do:

Try it, and find out. No point in asking a bunch of amateur, mainly Western philosophers to speculate in ignorance, no point in trying to understand Nirvana from the outside, as a theory. That's like sitting in the cafe in the valley wondering about the view from the top of the mountain. Save your breath and get your boots on. — unenlightened

Try the practice that leads to Nirvana and experience what it is. — unenlightened

I pursued this, at length, but neither you nor @Wayfarer who agreed with you offered any actual answers, other than admitting that you aren't enlightened.

I am sceptical of much of the Western interpretation of Buddhism, and perhaps of the beliefs of some Buddhists that have a supernatural or magical turn. I lean more towards the Zen schools and a practical, psychological understanding of an end to the narrative self as a projection from memory to imagination, or past to future, a thought construction of the self that creates desire and suffering.

All this ego talk is a "Western interpretation of Buddhism", but you're not skeptical of that one.

If it is a lab leak and how China dealt with that then I'd like my 45 billion EUR spend on Covid measures back. — Benkei

Right. It's about the money. A powerful motive for blaming.

And we'd probably be far less relaxed next time something like this happens.

As long as people can blame others, their egos are satisfied.


But why doesn't anyone blame the US for leaking the 1918 influenza pandemic?

My concern is establishing the truth.

When a person is acting suspiciously, it is the duty of the police to investigate them and the same applies to state actors: the international community must investigate suspicious state activities for its own security.

In China’s case, no proper investigation has been conducted. So, pressure must be put on Western governments to take appropriate action. — Apollodorus

The desire to blame someone is strong. These days, China is the usual suspect for everything bad, so let's blame China ...

If they are mired in dogma I wouldn't bother. If they are open to other ideas then they must acknowledge the role of interpretation. — Janus

But what if they actually know, and are above and beyond interpretation?

But it isn't sufficient evidence as far as I'm concerned.

Here's what I'm proposing, regardless of whether it comports with anyone's idea of naive realism or direct realism. There are many constituents of the world. Some are human, some are bees, some are flowers. None of them exist in an "external world" apart from anything else. None of them is an "external object" in that sense. — Ciceronianus

This is Stoic doctrine, and we know you're a Stoic. Okay.

There is no "thing" called a perception which exists somewhere inside of us.

But this I don't understand.
Are you referring to Stoic epistemology, epistemology according to Stoicism?

Then sketch out how it is appearances that deceive us.
— baker

Naive realism simply isnt backed up by recent research in perceptual psychology or the more sophisticated thinking in A.I. — unenlightened

I asked you to sketch out how "appearances deceive us". I've never felt "deceived" by an appearance, I don't know what that would be like.

In what you say, I hear the echoes of Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ajahn Sumedho. But not the Pali canon.

Do you believe there are any conditions that leave a person feeling powerless to achieve happiness?

It's a supposition that is impossible to substantiate, other than by an appeal to faith; ie. making a statement of faith, rather than a statement of fact.

As for my agreeing or disagreeing with it: All I can say is that I wish for it to be true, but I see no conclusive evidence for it to be true.

I meant the other now elderly lady. Not mentioning any names.

When I say 'numinous' I simply mean people's sense of mystery, awe or majesty when out in nature, say, or listening to some music. I meant nothing philosophically or spiritually intricate.

I'm pretty sure this feeling of wonder is hard-wired in humans. — Tom Storm

I'm not sure about that at all.


What I am sure is that people tend to love to zone out, and then call that "bliss", or "a sense of the numinous" or some such.

depression — Tzeentch

So failure to find satisfaction in things which, by their very nature, cannot provide satisfaction, is evidence of mental illness?

I way of living by denying what many consider to be life - ie. no sex, no pain, no desire. It's just a warped nihilism. — I like sushi

Denying?

How did you get to the point where you hold that Buddhists deny "what many consider to be life"?

Did I say it was all that matters? I said that interpretation is significantly involved in areas other than in directly observed events where, it could be argued, interpretation is of no significant significance. I have no idea where this conversation is going. — Janus

I am anticipating some usual courses of discussion of this topic, and addressing them early on to avoid dead ends.

Regarding experience there may be an 'as it is', but as soon as it is spoken about interpretation enters. Ideas are always open to interpretation. — Janus

I'd love to see you take this up with a Hare Krishna devotee!

I have no doubt of this. And I've noticed that for many Westerns who are rebelling against the religious culture of their parents and grandparents, Eastern faiths, particularly Buddhism, give them an opportunity for retaining a sense of the numinous whist virtue signalling their penchant for cultural diversity. — Tom Storm

Pffft. Westerners, a sense of the numinous? When an aged Western celebrity chants some Eastern mantra, and does so for "inner peace", that isn't "a sense of the numinous", that's just commercialisation, consumerification of religion. She might as well pray Our Father, but, oh, those words she understands!

Unless, of course, having no clue what one is doing should pass for "a sense of the numinous". Yes, Westerners are very good at that when it comes to Eastern religions.

Think you may find that religions argue about definitions all the time and have schisms over them on a regular basis. Philosophers are somewhat inclined to do the same. — unenlightened

Unless we have all been teleported to Humpty Dumpty Land, one still cannot make words mean whatever one wants them to mean.
Conceptual clarification is one of the main purposes of philosophy.

If the op wanted a doctrinal definition, a buddhist website would be the place to go for no doubt several lengthy ones.

From what I've seen, even self-identified Buddhists often can't find their way around Buddhist scriptures and other Buddhist sources. Some self-identified Buddhists also flat out ridicule the foundational Buddhist scriptures and consider them irrelevant. What to speak of non-Buddhists and their knowledge of Buddhism.
I asked the OP about his sources for his knowledge on the topic of Buddhism. From his answer to this, it is clear to me whence his OP.

But what is your beef?

I want to know whether the Buddha was sourgraping, so I question everyone who claims or implies that he was.

Meanwhile, lighten up dude, I'm not trying to steal your throne.

Oh, I have a throne that I don't know of?

Confusing "the moon" with the moon doesn't strike me as a self-reference issue. — T Clark

It can, depending on one's epistemic theory. The problem is also known as "confusing the map for the territory".

Also, more generally, it points to the possibility of saying one thing and meaning two things.
— baker

I don't understand what you mean.

Saying "There's a draft" when you're in a room with another person and there is a draft, can mean 'There's a draft' and 'Close the window'.

The desire to give up desire, is also a desire, so it doesn’t work. It’s like trying to wipe off blood, with blood or trying to stop thinking by thinking. — Present awareness

Then you need to read more "Buddhist literature". There, what you now claim "doesn't work" is very well worked out as working.

So whence the idea that rare and fleeting makes life worth living?
— baker
One's own lived time is (a) good in itself, no? — 180 Proof

What is the basis of your claim?


(It is at least inconsistent to praise rugged individualism to other people.)

I think this is true but does it not also remain that any account of anything becomes an interpretation? — Tom Storm

Back to issues of naive realism and direct realism.

So any attempt to answer the op's question is as theoretical as this one, and not based on experience. So there is a jolly little game that goes on of calling each other out over various issues and expertises about stuff that bears some relation to what none of us knows from experience. — unenlightened

In religious doctrines, terms have definitions.

Some people have been trying to bypass those definitions, and insist on using terms in idiosyncratic ways. What use is doing that?

Since when are empirically observable events or empirically observing events the priority or even all that matters?

You're just detracting from the logical consequences of your idea.

There can be no up without down, and no value without cost. — unenlightened

We can surmise you beat your spouse, so that they can appreciate your tendernesses.