It may not be obvious in principle, without understanding, but I would think even if it isn’t obvious why it is true, it would at least be obvious that it is extremely prevalent if you actually spend a lot of time around Buddhist communities.
I’m not sure how to explain to you why, especially if you are determined not to believe, but there is a real distinction between Buddhism and nihilism, despite all the talk of emptiness and no self. Buddhism is partly the end product of the Buddha purposefully exploring asceticism as a means to end suffering and found that it wasn’t fruitful. I suspect you might be miscontruing neutrality with negativity.
Also, enlightenment isn’t a single thing. It is a series of awakenings or awarenesses that build on each other. While the central dogma about the cause and end of suffering is seemingly simple, the eightfold path shows that actually achieving that simple understanding behaviorally is a subtle and broad art and science.
Maybe we can look at it another way. Compassion is just the natural state of things and it is only suffering which causes that natural state to be out of balance. So saying there is no connection between ending suffering and being compassionate is sort of like saying there is no connection between removing a dam and the river flowing.
Except compassion isn’t the natural state of things. Trying to end suffering and being compassionate are not really related to a river and a damn. Bear in mind that using the word “natural” is useless since everything is pretty much that way. Beavers make damns just like humans. Balance is more of a concept humans made to make sense of some vague notion of equilibrium. Suffering is also the natural state of things. You still don’t answer why something should be done about it. If good and bad are just creations of the mind then compassion is out the window too.
From what I see, enlightenment doesn’t actually exist. The sensations that such Buddhists experience are merely a product of meditation but not the truth of reality. They have been replicated in the lab through the use of magnets and drugs. There isn’t anything revelatory about them, only what people assign to them.
There is no awakening, there isn’t really insight. The fact that you use the word believe makes me think Buddhism is more dogma than people want to admit. All that can be said about it is that the methods and teachings yield a reaction, not that the reaction is truth or wisdom.
The only way Buddhism skirts past nihilism is to shoehorn in compassion and kindness.
All that can be said about it is that the methods and teachings yield a reaction, not that the reaction is truth or wisdom. The end result is people believing such sensations or “revelations” to be wisdom rather than just products of a certain worldview. It’s similar to cult indoctrination (but obviously not as extreme) in which belief is more powerful than whether it’s true or not. After all, the only thing the people have is their own experience and that varies. People react differently and there is no standard to compare with, all they have is self reporting and the stories they tell to make sense of experience.
You seem determined to dislike Buddhism for some reason. There are differing opinions within Buddhism itself as to how to interpret the experiences that result, as well as differing branches that emphasise different aspects of it as their focus. Sure, maybe everything involved is just training the brain to act more efficiently. How that is supposed to make it incompatible with compassion I can’t imagine.
It could even be as simple as the fact that people that are consistently in a better mood tend to be more empathetic in general, and even people who are determinedly selfish can be convinced to do something nice just so sad people don’t harsh their buzz. It also works in reverse, being compassionate leads to feeling good. Even if you don’t buy that anything about Buddhism actively encourages compassion, there is nothing that makes them incompatible.
Certainly being the opposite of compassionate, being a jerk, should be obvious as being obstructive to maintaining a state of mind conducive to nonsuffering.
Enlightenment again, is not a single thing. It can refer to the particular insight the Buddha achieved, but it can refer to other component insights, and other peak states. Have you never had a “eureka” moment? Well someone had a eureka moment in which they realized in a deep sustainable way the cause of the experience of suffering and how to never experience it again, and a way to train other people how to have that understanding.
I find it weird that you believe that if you figured out a fairly simple and inexpensive way to make large numbers of people happy that you wouldn’t want to share it.
Also, strictly speaking, certain Western ideas of Buddhism get mixed together with Zen, Taoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, etc.
If natural state bothers you, try unecumbered by poor health.
To be clear: I’m an atheist with no dog in this fight. However, while neither defending or assailing the overall concepts of Buddhism, I do find them fascinating, and have found that reading (books) extensively about such has been… enlightening! I offered a reference to a quick read that would answer the specific question you posed in the OP. Unfortunately, this thread has decomposed into your overall indictment of Buddhism and the subsequent defense of the belief by others, and my reference does not address all of your preconceptions… it is not all-encompassing.
Your comment above indicates a strong bias on your part, whereas your lack of interest in what the Dali Lama (for christ-sakes!) has to say on the subject, because he is just a man! (This begs the question: Why waste time on SD?) It’s as if you are looking for “word of God proof” found in other (perhaps your) beliefs to assign some degree of legitimacy in your mind. Believe what you choose, but I don’t think you will find answers that you seek concerning Buddhism unless you are willing to read and understand the words of man.
I have read books by him before. But that was before I began to think about the why behind his words which he doesn’t answer. I don’t like how Buddhism hides behind ego and mind as a defense when they get questioned. I used to think universal ethics was a thing until I realized ethics is just a human concept. That there isn’t anything universal about it. His words sound like wisdom if you just accept them, which I used to do. He doesn’t really answer questions so much as tell you what things are without much explaination.
Thing is it doesn’t answer why you would want to make others happy. It could be argued that some religions make many happy but only through believing something, Buddhism is the same. As I said it skirts the nihilistic conclusions by trying to horn in compassion.
I have had eureka moments, but they have been wrong in the past. People never consider if the Buddha was wrong.
A few years back, there was a UK drama series called Skins that focused on the lives of a close-knit group of teenagers. One kid, Maxxie, was gay, and wanted to know whether his friend Maxxie’s father (a devout Muslim Pakistani man) would object or shun him or whatever. So Maxxie told Mr Kharral directly. The father responded, “It’s a fucking stupid, messed up world. I’ve got my God; he speaks to me every day. Some things I just can’t work out, so I leave them be. Okay? Even if I think they’re wrong. Because I know, one day he’ll make me understand. I’ve got that trust; it’s called belief. I’m a lucky man.” I think that’s a good way to think of things, no matter what your beliefs are.
The best thing to remember about Buddhism is that what is practiced in the West as Buddhism is largely unidentifiable to what is practiced in the East. The West’s version has become infused with Western sensibilities and a fair helping of 60s New Age thought. Western Buddhism is like if someone decided to read the Bible and make a religion out of it while ignoring 3000 years of history, practice, exegesis and tradition so didn’t know what they were on about. Ask an atheist to give you their rundown of what Christianity is and pretty much you get the same gobbledy-gook as if you ask a Western Buddhist what Buddhism is - although instead of villifying it in the former case, they lionize and romanticize it in the latter. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, we all have our path to trod, but it’s best to make the differentiation about the two before making broad pronouncements.
The reason Buddhism exists is because the Buddha decided to care about other people. He became Enlightened, was going to head off to Nirvana, and then decided “you know what, I’m going to hang around for a whlie and teach others so that they can also maybe learn not to suffer”. So the story says, anyway. Compassion is a central tenet of the religion because without it, Buddhism never happened.
You have had threads before about if everything is empty, how can you make any decisions. Compassion is an answer there (i.e., you make decisions based on compassion). Maybe that is a practical reason why it is included.
I’m sure there are better answers out there, if your goal is really to understand and not simply to refute.
A simple search for Buddhism and nihilism will show you that it’s a common question, and people have tried to explain it in different ways, but the overwhelming consensus is that thinking Buddhism is nihilistic is based in a misunderstanding of different usages of the terms nihilism and self and so forth.I haven’t found strong support anywhere from those who have seriously explored both who still consider Buddhism to be nihilistic in the same sense as nihilism proper conceives of it.
I think the basic misunderstanding comes from the ideas of no self and emptiness - they aren’t about annihilation of the self and replacing it with a depressing meaningless nothingness. They are just about recognising that the self as most people conceive of it is more like a mask we wear under which is the true self, which is a sort of neutral but blissful witness.
Buddhism is anti nihilistic in several senses - there is a specific goal that is considered meaningful, the end result still has what we might considered positive qualities, and so forth. Also, there is an important distinction between removing desire and attachment, and not caring about anything because nothing matters.
Buddhism is kind of like an onion, there is the core precept, which is the nature and ceasing of suffering, then there are layers of the eightfold path which is basically a how to, then there additional learnings that deepen understanding of how our mind and self operate, then on top of that are the various traditions which may go into further details, mix in other philosophical systems, or focus on a particular aspect.
The core aspect is the ending of suffering. And not just the suffering of the self, the suffering of others, and more generally, the complete eradication of suffering even conceptually. That’s not just a result, it’s the primary goal. The whole premise is that this rich pampered prince who had everything he could ever want for the rest of his life snuck out and discovered other people have shitty lives, and found that he could not feel right with himself unless he conquered this problem at it’s very roots.
So compassion for others, while there are reasons and explanations, the best of which is simply ending suffering even just in oneself is simply not compatible with non compassion - even without explanations it doesn’t matter because it’s the primary goal, or assumption. Buddhism assumes you want to end suffering, its goal is not to convince people suffering sucks. It seems self evident to me, but if for some reason you aren’t opposed to suffering, then Buddhism simply isn’t for you.
Now there’s a fork in the road. The Buddha basically tried to end his own suffering as a sort of guinea pig experiment in order to succeed the ultimate goal of ending all suffering. If that’s your goal, then following a successful example is a pretty clear path. On the other hand, it is true, some people explore Buddhism with the smaller goal of only ending their own suffering. But even though this wasn’t Buddha’s primary goal, it was obviously an import sub goal, so following his example is still useful.
I suppose you could, hypothetically, end your own suffering but then completely ignore other people’s suffering. That would be sort of like hitchhiking with someone who is going to California but getting out in Texas. And some people and some branches do settle there and focus on personal Nirvana for an extended period. But there is a strong sense in which it is very difficult to truly understand the concept of no self, commit to the cessation of personal suffering, and still determinedly spite the suffering of others. It’s like swimming upstream. You could do it, but there’s not much point to it. It’s just being defiant for the sake of proving you can overrule your intentions. Cutting off your nose to spite your face. Like starting an environmental non-profit and then ordering all your members to pollute.
Of course the Buddha could be wrong. It’s not really a religion the way other religions are. While there a sort of general consensus as to what’s more or less canonical, it is in fact more of a scientific philosophy and art. Buddha was a scientist. He tried a bunch of things, and fine tuned his theories until they worked consistently, and then shared them. There’s an expression, “if you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him”. Buddha was adamant that people not simply follow him dogmatically but instead experiment for themselves and come to their own conclusions and paths. The reason Buddhism is so popular is not because people are frightened into accepting dogma. It’s because they perform the experiments for themselves and get similar results.
As far as eureka moments, can you give personal examples? Otherwise it is hard to comment.
I suspect it was less faulty than just as unhelpful as a poorly worded Google search, but it is hard to say without specifics.
There is also a phenomen where truths are dependant on current world view. If your world view changes, old insights will obviously be less relevant, but that doesn’t make them false, just contextual.
Also, while Buddhism does sort of get branded as a path towards understanding, in a much stronger sense it is just a set of DIY instructions, with a preface that says, do what works is the primary goal, and whatever evolution of understanding results in entirely in service to that.
On the other hand, while Buddhism isn’t really compatible with nihilism, overcoming nihilism isn’t really near to its core purpose. So if your main goal is to overcome your own personal fight with nihilism, Buddhism is not the quick and easy path towards that specific goal. I would look into other branches of philosophy to focus on that goal.
It was likely included because otherwise the conclusion to it is nihilism. Wanting to liberate others doesn’t really square with the no self and emptiness teachings.
Unless you have some original version that doesn’t have all the stuff you think was added later, then all your speculation is without merit. We can only look at the religion as it is presented to us.
I offered a reference to a quick read that would answer the specific question you posed in the OP. Unfortunately, this thread has decomposed into your overall indictment of Buddhism and the subsequent defense of the belief by others, and my reference does not address all of your preconceptions… it is not all-encompassing.