A Buddhist look at the West

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

(Keep in mind, I am not Buddhist,
but I can play one on TV, so here
is a working out how a Buddhist might
view the west)

One of the key points of Buddhism is that we
‘‘suffer’’ from certain things… now this suffering
can take a couple of different forms…
We suffer from bodily disabilities… we age,
we get disease, we die, we break our bones…
that is one form of suffering…

But Buddhism also offer this: that suffering also
comes from an attachment to things… we want
something and when we can’t get it, we ‘‘suffer’’…
much of people’s problem stem from our
desire for or wanting things… we want a new car,
a new girlfriend, a new house… we desire the trapping
of wealth, but without realizing that desire is the path
to suffering… Has this quest for the trinkets of society,
wealth, power, fame, titles, material possessions, brought
our selves or our state/society any type of happiness?
desire for material goods, or people, or money, ever
bring about happiness, true happiness?
NO, the Buddhist would argue…
and I agree… this search for ‘‘ad hoc’’ things, things
of the moment, temporary things like money or titles
is what leads us to be unhappy… what should we
be pursing if not the trinkets of existence?

the question of what we should be pursuing comes
down to the question, what does it mean to be human?

We have two tracks… one is the personal, individual track,
where I seek out what it means to be human via
my search for what is possible for me… As Nietzsche
noted, we are not fixed, set beings… we are travelers
on the path going from animal to becoming human…
Nietzsche called it a ‘‘tightrope’’ going from one to
another… Human beings are in transition…
and we are always in transition…

and the second brick in the wall is our communal
transition… we human beings, as human beings
are transitioning together… an example of this
is the change in our collective belief system that
being homosexual is acceptable… that Gays should
marry… 25 years ago, that was unacceptable…
we have had a collective change…
another collective change has been the collective
change in our drug laws… I go to the dispensary
the next town over and get my edibles…
and that is the new reality… but it took a
collective mind set change to make this happen…

so, we have two moving aspects of change…
one is individual and the other is collective…
and the two sometime matches, sometimes, not
so much… or to say it another way, our transitions
can be individual and/or collective… the path to
becoming is not just an individual one, but also
a collective one…we can see today, right now
the problem if one group of people move faster
than another group… liberals are moving
faster than conservatives in terms of transitional
changes such as in terms of drugs and homosexuals…
conservatives believe in ‘‘slow walking’’ any sort of
social or political change… and they do so in the
name of ‘‘tradition’’… but in a society/state moving
as fast as ours, we can’t ‘‘slow walk’’ every single
action or belief… and it is this fear of change,
fear in general that drives the conservative…
and one of the reasons they seem to support
conservative organizations like the Nazi’s and
MAGA… they hope these organization can slow
down the speed of change or even nullify the
changes that have already taken place…
the 2025 project has called for an end to laws
protecting gays and the legalization of drugs,
and the return of women to being property…
and the nullification of the equal voting right acts
of the 1960’s…to turn back the clock on
political and social rights… but let us look at this
in terms of the Buddhist belief…

they, the conservatives want/desire something…
and if they don’t get it, they are unhappy, they suffer…
and the cause of suffering, at least according to Buddhism,
is desire or want… you want to remove suffering,
then remove want and desire… that is the Buddhist
method…suffering is caused by want/desire, so
remove this want/desire and one doesn’t suffer anymore…
This is true if, if we were to accept the idea that
the point of existence is to avoid suffering…
whereas I disagree… the suffering we all have,
that is part of the price of admission to life…
you want life, then you have to suffer… physical
pains, suffering such as disease and old age,
is the cost of life… we suffer as surely as
we breath and think and sleep… if we are
alive, we are suffering… for every single day,
we grow older, we come closer to the final
suffering, which is death… and I don’t consider
death to be suffering… it is just the next step,
and final step of my life… and there is nothing,
but absolutely nothing I can do about my impending
death… but accept and acknowledge it…
fear of death isn’t going to stop my future death…
I will die… and my suffering from
illness or a physical ailment like a broken arm,
is suffering I cannot control…
I recently had a lot of pre-cancerous cells scraped
from my face… I suffered, scraping cells off of
one face is painful… and certainly something
I didn’t want to happen… but I have no control over
the growth of cancer on my face…

The suffering we face, from physical ailments,
for the most part, can’t be helped, it can’t be
stopped nor can it be wished away…

So, the only control over suffering we have, is
by our control over our wants and desires…
the more we want and desire, the more we suffer…
for as the Stones say, ''You can’t always get what you want"
and that leads to suffering because you can’t always
get what you want… remove desire and wants, and
you can control your suffering…

Kropotkin

2

Buddhism is a lie and the +=- and -=+ philosophy that is derived from it is also a lie .It strips an individual of their SELF.

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3

Jupiter123:
Buddhism is a lie and the +=- and -=+ philosophy that is derived from it is also a lie .It strips an individual of their SELF.

K: ‘‘striping the individual of self’’ is the point of Buddhism… for the
self is what creates suffering by wants and desires… end self,
end suffering… or so goes the theory…

Kropotkin

4

I know what it claims.

Its claims are false because +=- and -=+ philosophy and the science derived from it is false and proven to be so.

This false religion lies about the true nature of reality.

God unites both the atheistic philosophy +=- and -=+ and the theistic philosophy +=+ and -=- into one formula for his creation.

+/-=+/- is the correct starting philosophy for his creation.

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5

its a nihilistic delusional idealogy.

No wants and desires = watching paint dry.

its probably not a great philosophy.

Only me, Ecmandu and a few others reached the true philosophy

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6

The true philosophy is +/-=+/- futureone.

You haven’t reached anywhere true.

The religion of Buddhism is cognitively biased when it comes to CONSCIOUSNESS.Its all about INWARD only knowledge data gathering to the neglect of OUTWARD consciousness.Its a load of nonsense.All of it.This false religion does not reveal the true nature of reality.

It’s nothing more than an out of consciousness synch meditative practice.

That’s it.What it claims is a LIE.

Steer well clear of this false religion.It knows nothing about the I am,Awareness,Control or Consciousness.

It’s a cult who’s members are totally lost.

Inward only meditation DOES NOT reveal truth.

This religious cult is empty and promotes meaningless and has its scientific HQ at CERN near Geneva.There is a statue of Shiva outside which is representative of this false religion.It denies SELF and therefore strips the individual of their hopes,their dignity and in some cases their physical life because many of this cults members go from a deep deep depression and anxiety to committing suicide just as the devil wants.

The religion of atheism and its cognitively biased INWARD ONLY meditative practice is the religion of the devil.

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7

Look at it this way. If you take a very strong microscope that follows matter down to the smallest particles known to man, we come across energy and space, and ‘matter’ is nowhere in sight.

If you meditate and manage to disengage with your thoughts, you come down to the point that you realise the physical existence you appear to be is not your self, but a persona that we put on, like a mask in theatre.

Instead, there is a watcher, which sometimes gets caught up in the issues of the body, engages with futile and repetitive thoughts, is prone to illusion and bias, and suffers because it identifies with all the things it is not, clings to ephemeral things and tries to stop the eternal change that is going on.

If you stop these compromising habits, you discover that a new freedom emerges, and your core nature is being itself.

8

An inward only meditative practice does not reveal the true nature of reality Bob.Flee from it.The devil is very clever at deceiving people.

If all matter were to disappear into all the “glassy” holes from which it all came then all that would be left is lots of spinning “glassy” holes with N and S poles within the electromagnetic fields which permeate the cosmos.

The “I am” resides within and between these “glassy” holes because the “I am” is separate from matter.

The lifeless binary processing biological machine physical body generates automated thoughts that the individual “I am” SELF chooses to either engage or not engage with.

The “I am” SELF can think for themselves in the manual neutral STILL state of consciousness.

The “I am” SELF should control this lifeless binary processing biological machine.This machine should not control the individual.

Automated thoughts are generated from vibrating matter.

The electromagnetic fields which permeate the cosmos are the energy source for the spin of all objects and particles within it.All these objects and particles have N and S poles all of which interact in the following combinations NN,NS,SN,SS.It’s impossible to cancel out these electromagnetic force interactions.God has balanced them out by the formula N/S=N/S revealing the true philosophy for everything which is +/-=+/- philosophy and not +=- and -=+ philosophy.

Vibratory balancing electromagnetic force ABSOLUTES in this way holds all mater together conserving all energy within it.All matter vibrates at varying frequencies depending on the spin speed of the particles which make up the matter which in turn regulates the frequency of the NN,NS,SN,SS electromagnetic force interactions that have been balanced out.

All matter emits varying frequency electromagnetic waves of energy from the vibrating particles that make it up therefore which contain unique binary code characteristics specific to the matter type.

The physical biological machine body’s mechanoreceptors (senses) pick up these waves of electromagnetic energy and converts them into binary digital signals which this lifeless binary processing machine then converts into binary software which is used to convert electromagnetic energy waves into sounds;visions and sensations which the individual SELF interprets,

This lifeless AUTOMATED biological machine physical body which operates on binary code software computes that it exists and doesn’t exist.It exist because it needs to exist to claim that it doesn’t exist and it doesn’t exist because it doesn’t possess life.

It’s spiritually DEAD.

You need to balance consciousness Bob and not engross yourself within a cognitively biased out of the moment consciousness state, data gathering knowledge only.

Persue life not knowledge.

9

I live and learn; you can’t separate the two.

You are selecting one ideology over a perceived other, but you do not discern the way you ask me to. Abrahamic theism is an anthropomorphism of experience, talking as though it were an entity. Whereas what we call God is the basis of all entities, and barely accessible through the fundamentalist baggage we have gathered.

10

You don’t live though Bob.That’s the point.You merely exist and don’t exist.There is no life in existence and non existence.

Existence and Non Existence is the binary processing output of a lifeless biological machine that is operated with binary software which believes that its an illusion.

This lifeless machines electromagnetically generated sounds and visions are the illusion not you.

Rene Descartes got completely confused on this point.Don’t follow his lead.He was lost.

You need to learn more about consciousness and how you interact with it.

Remember the scientists that you worship have no idea about consciousness either it’s their “hard problem” and yet they arrogantly claim that we are nothing more than it.

These fools have no idea about how science explains the true nature of reality because they adopt a cognitively biased +=- and -=+ atheistic starting philosophy neglecting a cognitively biased +=+ and -=- theistic staring philosophy.

They only use half the components of the true philosophical formula which is precisely why all their +=- and -=+ philosophy science has failed .i.e cosmology and particle physics.

11

Descartes described the human body as a kind of machine, especially in its biological and physiological functions. He compared the body to automata—mechanical devices that could mimic life—and saw bodily processes as mechanical, governed by physical laws. However, Descartes was a dualist: he argued that the mind (or soul) is immaterial and fundamentally distinct from the body. For Descartes, while the body operates like a machine, the mind is not a machine and cannot be reduced to mechanical processes. He believed that reason, language, and consciousness are unique to the immaterial mind and cannot be replicated by machines.

Iain McGilchrist, a contemporary psychiatrist and philosopher, has critiqued the mechanistic view of human beings, suggesting that treating humans as mere machines is symptomatic of a divided or “schizophrenic” thinking, where one aspect of reality (the mechanical, analytical) is privileged at the expense of the holistic, lived experience. McGilchrist’s critique is directed at the legacy of Cartesian dualism and the tendency in Western thought to overemphasise mechanistic explanations at the expense of subjective, conscious experience.

Your post frames existence and non-existence as binary states—outputs of a “lifeless biological machine”—and treats consciousness as if it were a computational illusion produced by a self-contained system. This view emphasises discrete, isolated entities and processes, rather than the primacy of relationships or interconnectedness.

I argue with McGilchrist that “relationships must be primary, since entities become what they are only through their situation in the context of multiple relations,” and that “things are secondary properties of phenomena that emerge out of the web of experience”. Your post, by contrast, treats existence as a static, machine-like state, not as something constituted through dynamic relations with others, the world, or consciousness itself.

McGilchrist asserts that reality is participatory—there is no “view from nowhere,” and consciousness is always in relation to something else. The post’s language suggests a detached, observer-independent reality, where subjective experience and relational context are illusions or byproducts, thus missing the relational and participatory essence that McGilchrist sees as foundational.

Your post’s focus on binary logic, mechanistic metaphors, and the reduction of consciousness to outputs of a machine aligns with the kind of left-hemisphere thinking McGilchrist critiques. He warns that when the analytic, isolating tendencies of the left hemisphere dominate, we lose sight of the interconnected, flowing, and relational nature of reality, which is grasped by the right hemisphere.

Therefore, your post’s mechanistic and binary framing stands in direct opposition to relational ontology, which holds that things, including consciousness and reality itself, emerge from, and are defined by, their relations rather than by isolated, intrinsic properties.

12

The binary processing physical body is a biological machine Bob that computes that it exists and doesn’t exist.It exists because it needs to exist to claim that it doesn’t exist and it doesn’t exist because it doesn’t possess life and therefore computes that it’s an illusion.

There is no life in the physical Bob only existence and non existence.

I have explained the science behind its construction and workings above.

The physical cosmos is constructed and operates based upon a foundational +/-=+/- philosophy and not a cognitively biased +=- and -=+ atheistic starting philosophy nor a cognitively biased +=+ and -=- theistic starting philosophy.

God adopts 2 force ABSOLUTES in his physical creation.Attractive and Repulsive electromagnetic force absolutes.

The individual SELF either rejects gods plans or they don’t.

It’s black and white Bob.

There is no spiritual life in the physical.

The individual is either spiritually alive or spiritually dead.

13

You Are Not a Buddhist — That’s the Key

(The Only Thing Worth Noting)

Dear Peter,

Your post is thoughtful and sincere. It’s clear you’re attempting to interpret Buddhism through the lens of Western thought — a mix of Stoicism, existentialism, progressivism, and even social conservatism. However, there are several crucial differences between your depiction and actual Buddhist doctrine that deserve clarification:

  1. Dukkha is not just pain or dissatisfaction.
    In Buddhism, dukkha is the fundamental unsatisfactoriness embedded in all conditioned existence. It’s not merely emotional or circumstantial suffering, but an existential structure: even joy carries the seed of suffering due to its impermanence.
  2. The root of suffering is not desire in general, but taṇhā (craving).
    Craving for pleasure, for existence, or for annihilation — these are what generate suffering. Not all desires are problematic. The desire for awakening, for compassion, for understanding — these are part of the path itself.
  3. The end of suffering does not come through suppression, but insight.
    Buddhist practice is not about eliminating desire through sheer willpower. Harmful cravings naturally subside through ethical conduct, mental discipline, and wisdom — the Eightfold Path. It is transformation, not repression.
  4. Death is not escape, and not the end.
    In Buddhism, death is just another link in the cycle of samsara. Without realization, death solves nothing. It perpetuates ignorance and rebirth. Freedom lies not in dying, but in awakening.
  5. Buddhism is fundamentally apolitical.
    The Buddha did not advocate political reform or revolution. Attachment to ideologies — left or right — is still attachment. And attachment is suffering.
  6. The aim of Buddhism is not to avoid suffering, but to transcend its illusion.
    Liberation comes not from avoiding pain, but from realizing the impermanence, non-self, and emptiness of all phenomena. One does not escape the world — one sees through it.

Conclusion:
Your reflections are valuable but align more with secular ethics or Stoic endurance than with Buddhist insight. That’s not a flaw — just a categorical distinction. Buddhism is not a philosophy of “coping,” but a method for realizing the unconditioned mind beyond duality.

Respectfully,
a student of Buddhist philosophy

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14

A fool is one who serves folly

Folly is not mere silliness — it is an idea or ideology that dominates reason.
It does not tolerate doubt, rejects definitions, and clings to collective dogmas.
Reason seeks, questions, and defines — folly believes, defends, and excludes.

A fool lacks reason but may have intelligence.
Often sharp, fast, and effective — but mind without reason is just a tool of folly.
It explains everything — but only within the framework of accepted lies.

Thus:

Exposing folly is useless.
The fool does not feel like a fool — he feels righteous.
He does not hear, he defends. He is not seeking truth — he is serving.
Serving a folly that rules in place of reason.

15

I said me and Ecmandu have found the true philosophy.

I offer no grandiose claims on solving a “theory of everything”, or finding the true science, or an explanation of what consciousness is, or what quarks are.

16

The true philosophy is +/-=+/- because if you have two unknowns + and - then philosophically,scientifically and psychologically you place one on each side of the equation to ensure that you have a balanced equation and a certainty.

I would have thought that that was obvious futureone.

You don’t even understand the basics because you are so hung up with a nonsense +=- and -=+ philosophy.

Can you know see why mainstream cognitively biased +=- and -=+ scientists are wasting their time smashing rocks at CERN.

Their science is nonsense.All of it.

17

Collectivism is much stronger than individualism and it would seem radical individualists are always the last to figure this out. Stay mad, collectivism is superior.

[Also, you can still have an individual sense of self working within the much larger context of collectivist social organization.]

18

Not everybody is a Buddhist monk within some monastery meditating on a mountain peak somewhere, in Buddhism there are the common average regular people full of wants and desires who live day to day life just like everybody else.

For the average Buddhist like myself the point is to not let your own desires and wants to control you.

Also, Buddhism is not at all about nihilism solely, this is purely a western misinterpretation.

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19

In death there is reincarnation, don’t forget that part.

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20

Buddhism is all about inward only meditation.The individual goes inward and data collects.

Inward only meditators concern themselves more with the data collected than learning about themselves.

Buddhism does not concern itself with the individual who decided to go inward in the first place.

Inward only meditation takes the individual out of consciousness synch and should be balanced with outward meditation.

When it comes to meditation and balancing inward and out outward consciousness the correct philosophical formula is,

In/out=in/out (+/-=+/- philosophy).

Inward only meditation is not good for your mental health.There is no truth to be found in this practice.