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       #Post#: 32644--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Westernized Hedonist "Buddhism" vs Real Buddhism
   DIR By: 90sRetroFan
       Date: May 22, 2026, 8:36 am
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       "isn't Buddhism about reducing suffering (dukkha)?"
       I would say that Buddhism is not necessarily about
       quantitatively reducing suffering per unit time, which is how
       you seem to be visualizing it here:
       "Sympathetic grief is a problem, because in feeling it, you're
       essentially adding your own suffering on top of the suffering of
       the person that you feel compassion towards."
       Instead I think you got it correct in this part:
       "The entire purpose of the Noble Eightfold Path is the cessation
       of suffering."
       Buddhism aims to eventually reach an endpoint characterized by
       absence of suffering. But this endpoint is not necessarily
       reached via a trajectory where suffering is only ever on the
       decrease. It may indeed even be that such trajectories cannot
       lead to such an endpoint. To use a graphic analogy, we solve a
       maze by finding a path from the entrance to the exit. Such a
       path does not necessarily involve only steps that move us closer
       to the exit; on the contrary, we may often have to take many
       intermediate steps that move us further from the exit in order
       to ultimately reach the exit.
  HTML https://smartkidworld.com/worksheets/mazes/picture/mazes-picture-leaf-caterpillar-01.png
       "Wouldn't going out of your way to feel emotional distress
       contradict the intended purpose of the religion?"
       No, given the above.
       "The aim is to feel compassion unhindered by grief."
       I would argue that compassion without grief is mere academic
       awareness that a victim is undeservedly suffering as a matter of
       fact. I feel suspicious towards this, because it is a condition
       that can result merely from becoming accustomed to each
       particular form of victim. For example, the first time I
       witnessed fishing as a young child, I definitely felt a strong
       emotion of what you call sympathetic grief. I am also ashamed to
       admit that, having witnessed many more instances of fishing over
       subsequent decades, while I still feel some sympathetic grief,
       it is considerably weaker in intensity. This is how I know that
       much of my Original Nobility has been lost. Of course no number
       of instances of witnessing fishing will ever persuade me that
       fishing is unproblematic behaviour, so by your standards I am
       doing well spiritually. But subjectively it is obvious to myself
       that where I am now is worse than where I used to be.
       "I don't think that establishing inner peace is necessarily
       contradictory to the goal of removing suffering from the world."
       It would be uncontradictory only if the maze happens to have a
       path from the entrance to the exit that involves only steps that
       move you closer to the exit:
  HTML https://mazymaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/simple-maze-design.jpg
       I hardly need to add that this subset of mazes within the set of
       all possible mazes is an extremely small subset.
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