I sometimes wonder how the celibate monks cope.
They jerk off. There are pretty strict rules against actually having intercourse but jerking off is tolerated. At least it is like that in Japan.
In Thailand, I have heard stories about monks who fuck housewives in the villages while their husbands are out in the fields ...
I'm not (yet) fully on board with stoicism, but it does help.
Stoicism, like the cynics from whom they borrowed a lot, were almost certainly influenced by Buddhism. Buddhist influence in Greece traveled through many Channels: Buddhist traders from Afghanistan when this province was part of the Acheaemenid Empire, the campaigns of Alexander, Maritime Trade between Alexandria and Gujarat, the Seleucid Empire, which had Buddhist subjects in the East and whose capital was Antioch in Syria, Indo-Greek traders who traveled between Punjab and the Hellenistic kingdoms, etc.
In the book we discussed in this thread,
Last week, I was in Dubai with my folks and I met a curry guy who showed me this thing that is sort of half a book, half a website. I read through some of it and it looks pretty based. It can be accessed in website form here or as a stand-alone PDF document. It is like novel and it explains how...
incels.is
it is even claimed that even Chirsitianity was influenced by the Indian Sramana ascetic movements and that Paul was taught by a Greek master from Punjab before he founded Christianity (the book subscribes to the "mythicist" idea that JC was a fictitious character)
Imagine a burglar entering your house and you say : "oh well, I guess I'll leave you this place and go live in a forest from now on."
That's what monkmaxxing sounds like to me
I think that this is a misconception, although an understandable one.
Being a monk is more like being a guy who is told by a friend: "come, let us burglar this house" and he replies "no, I prefer to stay here. Your desire for what is in the house will disappoint you. It is not worth it"
Monks have always been very active in the world, in fact. Both in Buddhism and in the West, monasteries were always large agricultural enterprises. Whether or not the monks themselves worked the land, they were the administrators, the accountants and the decision makers. Generally, they were quite good at it and their estates thrived. In the West, monasteries cleared large areas of forest and greatly increased the food supply.
Of course, in a monk's life, there are periods of retreat, which are necessary to conquer one's demons. But that is not the whole point.
becoming enlightened is harder than achieving worldly success
I really do not think so. Success in the world depends on a great many factors that are beyond your control. Enlightenment is a purely internal goal and you have therefore all the tools at your disposal.
I hate narcissistic roasties who identify as buddhist to be hip and unique for social media points.
That is the big problem with Buddhism in the West. It has become a joke.
I don't see it as a form of giving up either, Buddhists understand suffering, they understand that others get things that they can't and they prefer to stop thinking about it to get rid of suffering, because that's what they believe, but I see it as something better than being the average bluepilled simp
Agreed. But I think we can do even better than that.
See this thread:
Inceldom is already a quasi-religion. We have saints and we bicker like true religious people about orthodoxy (what counts as Inceldom) and about excommunications (who should be banned). Why not got the full distance and create a full-blown order of Monkcels. It's over anyways. This thread is...
incels.is
