Buddhism

that piece seems pretty sound to me

I've had some minor engagement with the mindfulness industry - it seems to be a curate's egg with the potential to become something much worse - there are ways in which it seems much more appealing than psychotherapy and some of the techniques seem to help a lot but I'm profoundly ambivalent about it and the things it seems to emphasise and downplay. the disavowals of self-help can be about as convincing as "it's not a diet" - and many people involved seem to be cagey or downright dismissive about concepts like karma and reincarnation (or feel the need to translate them into scientific materialist language) and you can forget about god(s) and other beings in other realms* - it's being marketed as more scientific and pragmatic than TM and other new age stuff but also as more authentically buddhist and there is constant equivocation between mindfulness and buddhism as such - *maybe you get more into all that stuff as you go deeper but then it all sounds a bit culty

I'm not suggesting there is or was ever a true version of buddhism somewhere in asia unsullied by western nonsense (although that's a great hook for people selling their own takes on it) but stripmining a religion for its most instrumentally or therapeutically appealing parts and then claiming to be holding the true flame is a weird thing to do (it's a bit like how nietzche and schopenhauer and all them claimed their versions of nihilism were more authentically buddhist than the buddhists). that isn't to say that many of the techniques don't work quite well as advertised so I'm deeply conflicted about it all

There are a bunch of different takes on this other than "haha this is just the latest brand of Orientalist mumbo jumbo!" There are Secular Buddhists like Stephen Batchelor, then there is someone like Evan Thompson, author of Why I Am Not a Buddhist, to take two examples off the top of my mindhead.

The Man can't bust our mindfulness.

Pop Dharma

I guess the only thing I have to add is that these questions - is X too individualistic (the concept of "spiritual materialism" is relevant here also), is Y beneficial or is this spiritual bypassing - never go away, and people that consider themselves Buddhist (hi) keep asking them.

am I correct in my impression that karma is much less central to western buddhism (and spirituality in general) than say 50 years ago? if so is there an obvious explanation for this?

and *why* is it that so many western buddhists and mindfulness advocates are so weird (almost embarrassed) about reincarnation? it sounds too religiony? are they ashamed of believing or not believing in it?

There is some dancind and tiptoing around that I have never even gotten near to so I don't have much to say.

Dancind and tiptoing = the Buddha's reindeer.

Hahaha!

But do you recall
The greatest bodhisattva of all?

lol

this dude seems pretty hardcore:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9W4SUepWOQ

it's one path, but it's not a requirement

A few years ago I read this book with the perhaps cheesy title of Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, by Paul F. Knitter. One thing I remember about it is that he seemed to make an interesting argument for why certain things could be meaningful even if one did not believe in reincarnation or any kind of afterlife at all.

I also came to the conclusion at some point that Aimless’s screenname was derived from Buddhism but I don’t know if he is cool with me saying that.

my screen name's buddhist derivation is quite indirect and was mostly unconscious when it happened, but I've kept it over the decades largely to honor those hidden roots. it's ok to peg it to that.

Ever since 1978 or so I've had a hard time deciding whether I'm a bad taoist or an easily sidetracked buddhist, so I oscillate between them, depending on which is easiest to impersonate.

bad taoist = several old roommates of mine

Why wash the dishes piling up in the sink? Let the water flow around them

That reminds me the terrible book Zen Guitar for Assholes where the guy recommends doing everything “100%, all out, all the time” or something like that, including doing the dishes. Not realizing that maybe, just maybe such a white knuckle attitude might actually lead somebody to think “Right now I don’t really feel like I can the dishes 100% so I will postpone that task until I feel up to it” instead of some more, say, self-aware approaches to handling the task with minimum wear and tear on the psyche.

"Reducing non-western culture to western paradigms - also dud" I've been wondering if the terms in English that are used to describe things like Duḥkha in the way intended or if they just make people think kof them in unintended ways.

You should totally check out this article by Carine Defoort:Is There Such A Thing As Chinese Philosophy?

Link is to a pdf file

Today’s Daily Dharma is apropos.
https://tricycle.org/magazine/special-transmission/

I guess philosophy is philosophy and even that doesnt exist

thx for that link, from the chan/zen-zone

Sure. That was intense.