…so the bullshit continues.
Like Muhammad- everyone else wrote it down… oh, but they were inspired to keep the “word of these guys blah blah blah”…
Another common denominator?
They all are from fucking royalty! Lol
Moses - raised in Pharaoh’s house
Jesus - royal line of King David (
)
Buddha - left his Royal responsibilities
@Whitefire13 I can’t see it coming already…the debate as to whether Jesus even existed or not. I better run and hide in my storm shelter, before the shitstorm starts. LMAO! 
I don’t have a horse in that game (is that the saying???)
He could have lived for all I care. Doesn’t make him god. Fuck, I’m alive now, doesn’t make me god.
BREAKING NEWS: Categr
@Whitefire13 I think the saying you are looking for is “I don’t have a dog in this fight”. But yeah, I am the same way. I just live my life, regardless of whether Jesus or God even existed or not.
@Whitefire13 Wow…a pug! Those are pretty cool. One day, I am hoping to adopt a dog myself, from a SPCA shelter. And by the way, Dog > God any day,
Well, I did say I read about them in 1963. That’s 58 years ago I did nothing about it, because it was too alien too me, a practising Catholic at the time.
It does help, in that I suspect that ‘ego’ and ‘self’ are constructs which do not exist.
Freud invented his model of consciousness (Ego, ID, Superego) without any empirical evidence. It’s a model still implicitly accepted at least in western culture. I think it’s time it was dropped.
It seems to me that the self may be no more than the dynamic of the human brain a process, not an objective reality. The closest I can come to demonstrating that is; damage the brain, damage the person.
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Question: Buddhism also teaches reincarnation. We do not remember past lives, although some have made that claim. What is it that is reincarnated?
@boomer47 This is something that has also perplexed me about Buddhism. They talk about reincarnation, and enlightened masters, especially in Tibetan Buddhism, remembering their past lives, and yet, deny the existence of any spiritual substance like a soul or self, by which such is possible. I mean, if there is no soul or self, then who reincarnates, and recollects one’s past lives, and the circumstance that one subjectively experienced in those past lives? Hmm…
Okay … so that’s a no. Thank you @Cognostic for breaking it down. You didn’t get to the good part - the escape.
@BigNeerav - just an FYI - this is ORIGINAL Buddhism. From the mouth of the Buddha. Theravada Buddhism - straight from the Pali canon.
You mention “sutras”. That indicates your knowledge of Buddhism may be Mahayana. No big deal. I am a Hinayana fan.
Thanks for the big response! Just know … there’s a lot of experiential stuff in there
So he wrote this???
You are talking about the “Triptika”, which is the basket of discourses by the Buddha, I assume.
@Whitefire13 Maybe it came from Ratty’s rumpus? Ratty’s rumpus…that’s a new one! 
This is an oral tradition. The Buddha’s sermons were originally commited to memory.
At the first council after the Buddha’s death - the Buddha’s close assistant - Ananda recited all of the discourses he had heard.
Of course, it is convenient that Ananda has a picture perfect memory.
The sermons were put to bark in writing and that is how the canon survives today.
If you read a few - you’ll notice that they were discussions. Not mere preaching.
Yeah. Of course. And the Samyutta Nikaya is part of the “bundle” - and the sutta I quoted is a part of that nikaya.
Such a good knowledge of Buddhism! Where did you acquire it?
Of course they were 
None of the royal folks knew how to write back then.
Well. Common.
It was 450 BC - oral traditions were a part of that Indian society.
The sermons are very repetitive for that very reason.
The royal folks didn’t know how to write?
One little niggle; although the Buddha is said to have until age 80, he wrote nothing down as far as I’m aware. Writings claimed to be his utterances were not written down until centuries after his death. Similar to all of the Abrahamic faiths.
Oral tradition may be accurate, but this is far from a general principle. The form seems to be crucial. Eg epic poems. I’m unable to simply accept claims of sacred discourses with the Buddha having been preserved centuries by oral tradition. I think such claims are unfalsifiable and should be treated as such.
Suffering is a very personal experience. The assertions are open to verification. The Buddha encouraged all of his followers to verify his insights. And to not merely accept them.
For example. If you merely attempted some of the things in this sutta - your back pain would disappear.
Back pain is a result of inflammation. Once you have settled the inflammation there is an opportunity for healing in the muscles.
Settling the inflammation is a mental and physical process.
The Buddha abandoned his royal lineage and preached his word to the mostly illiterate people of the country side.
As I said. It wasn’t until he died that his words were put to bark.
When you’re as old as him, sometimes you need an extra one! 
