Question For Buddhists?
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Post #11
My wild guess is that Buddhists are a bit like the Stoics?
Suppose you have an accident and end up in wheel chair.
The solution to that loss of walking and running and less
variety of jobs you can take on. This combined with physical pain
from sitting still too much? and the emotional pain of losing your
former freedom what would a Buddhist say?
I trust they would say that one can accept any condition and just feel good.
Will be interesting to see what someone being able to quote sutras
would say?
Suppose you have an accident and end up in wheel chair.
The solution to that loss of walking and running and less
variety of jobs you can take on. This combined with physical pain
from sitting still too much? and the emotional pain of losing your
former freedom what would a Buddhist say?
I trust they would say that one can accept any condition and just feel good.
Will be interesting to see what someone being able to quote sutras
would say?
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Post #12
Well it's actually more complicated than this.ndf8th wrote: My wild guess is that Buddhists are a bit like the Stoics?
Suppose you have an accident and end up in wheel chair.
The solution to that loss of walking and running and less
variety of jobs you can take on. This combined with physical pain
from sitting still too much? and the emotional pain of losing your
former freedom what would a Buddhist say?
I trust they would say that one can accept any condition and just feel good.
Will be interesting to see what someone being able to quote sutras
would say?
The idea isn't that you can just quickly remove all suffering by understanding the Four Noble Truths.
After all, they do believe in Karma, and Karma needs to be worked out. So in the scenario you proposed above they could argue that the person who is suffering in the wheelchair is working out previous karma.
Philosophically this makes sense, especially if you believe in karma from past lives. However, if secular atheism is true, then all it's doing is basically laying 'blame' for all suffering on the person who is suffering.
Karma basically means that your own fate is ultimately due to your own actions.
If secular atheism is true, then real life is not so fair. A lot of people would be suffering without having anything to do with the cause of it.
So whether or not a concept like Karma has any truth in reality, is indeed a major issue.
