People who study and practice from a traditional temple, do u socialize with the Tibetan/ Cultural Buddhist community there? Why or why not?

For those of you hating on International Students:

Just remember that each of us paid your country $280K just to be around here for 4 yrs which is more then what some of u could ever save, and, until that OSAP cut happened, probably the reason some of u could ever afford going to college in the first place.

And even then the most of us would fail to get any minimum wage job cuz we studied some useless programs like “Mathematics and Statistics Double Major” or “Cognitive Science” and don’t speak proper English, and we have zero social network zero capital zero connections, and is introverted and is just completely clueless on navigating a new job market in a new culture, etc.

And for the few us who studied useful programs like CS & Stats or Actuarial Science or Data Science, and was able to get some internship and then some new grad job related to tech or data, well guess what that’s because those few of us are COMPETENT. We were just cold emailing people and submitting resumes online and networking at events like any of the rest of you. It’s PART OF THE DEAL when we paid our family’s life savings to be here that we could at least participate in the MERITOCRACY.

So maybe if you actually want to make money you can find SOMEWHERE around the ENTIRE globe where whatever skills you have are highly valued and in high demand? It’s a well documented phenomenon that any loser white American man could potentially become a popular “native English teacher” in some low cost-of-living country in East/Southeast Asia and sleep around and indulging in that ‘yellow fever’ lol. Not that’s what I’m suggesting, just a typical example and food for thought on how many opportunities are out there if u just put in the work, brains and judgement to seek them out.

So maybe stop being a bigoted, anti-intellectual, fact-ignoring Maple MAGA and I don’t know, get a life?

I used to think there is some form of "true Buddhism" that is textual, ethical, and philosophical, and can be extracted from the culture around it. For example, the common view held by many Masters in all traditions is that any sexual behavior that is non-PIV, or not within a socially recognized heterosexual marriage, is sexual misconduct. I was like, since the sutras themselves only broadly talked about "sexual misconduct" (邪淫 / kāmesu-micchā-cāra / kāma-mithyā-cāra) without specification, then we can interpret what that means in a present-day context and make homosexuality, abortion, BDSM, ethical non-monogamy, etc., officially acceptable from a dharmic standpoint.

But recently, I've been beginning to realize my understanding of Buddhism as described above is a fallacy. There is no "culture-free" Buddhism—the sutras were not misinterpreted by the culture. On the contrary, they were WRITTEN and TRANSLATED in the Confucian/Hindu cultural context to begin with. They don't need to explicitly address what proper sexuality "is," as Abrahamic traditions do, because the culture around it already takes care of that part.

So when a sutra, for example, like the 地藏经 / Earth Store Bodhisattva Sutra, teaches that sexual misconduct sends you to near-eternal hellfire where you will be fed to iron beasts and be repeatedly burnt with an iron pillar/bed and forced to climb a tree made of blades, it's NOT only talking about serious shit like statutory rape, as we today tend to interpret it. It means exactly: Any sexual behavior that is non-PIV, or not within a socially recognized heterosexual marriage, or conducted on various special days on the Mahayana Buddhist Liturgical Calendar.

Because it's THE understanding of what "sexual misconduct" is for the writers who composed the sutra in Sanskrit, as they and everyone they think will ever read it lived in the Indo-Tibetan cultural context. It's also THE understanding of what "sexual misconduct" is for the Masters who translated the sutra into Classical Chinese, as they and everyone they think will ever read it lived in the Confucianist cultural context.

In a sense, that IS the true Dharma. And the attempt to reinterpret it to fit a sexually liberal worldview that emerged post-1960 in the developed world is, to put it bluntly, a perversion. Much like what Quranists and Temporal-Marriage-That's-Really-Just-A-One-Night-Stand Muslims are to Islam.

I'm also coming to realize that the idea that there is some "pure religion" that is textual, ethical, and philosophical, concealed and misinterpreted by the culture around it, is in itself a fallacy. It is a very specific mindset developed by Protestants during the early Reformation who were ridiculously, mob-like hostile to ANYTHING Catholic (and maybe the modern-day liberal-Quranist Muslims). The crucifix is Satanic. The Eucharist is idolatry. The Pope is the literal Antichrist, etc. You wanna know God? Read the Bible. Take every word literally. Period. Cuz traditions and cultures and people, specifically the "Papists," misinterpret it to fit their Roman Pagan worship. But that's a fallacy. The Early Christian Church IS Semitic culture and Hellenistic culture. The history of Christianity makes no sense without that understanding. Heck, even the BIBLE ITSELF will not make 100% sense unless you understand the culture in which each book is written. Like, why the hell do Paul's Epistles sound thematically similar to Seneca's Letters? Why is Jesus the "Word"? etc.

So what does that have to do with Vajrayana? Well, given regular Sutric Buddhism (Theravada, Mahayana), which focuses on scripture, is already inseparable from culture, things will only look more gloomy for Vajrayana—a religion that is mostly about rituals, liturgy, and orthopraxy (right-practice) over scripture and right belief to begin with. In fact, for the very purpose of those ritualistic practices it was created for.

It is now my belief that Vajrayana is Indo-Tibetan-Himalayan-Bhutanese/Nepali culture, period. The practices use a LOT of Tibetan. The Praise to the Twenty-One Taras is meant to be prayed in Tibetan rather than original Sanskrit to receive the supernatural blessing. As well as the prayer for swift rebirth in the pure land, etc. And some "adaptations," such as a Lama saying homosexuality or oral sex isn't wrong (despite strong, textual condemnation of non-vaginal sex and same-sex acts in traditional commentaries, much stronger than in Mahayana and Theravada), is diluting the religion itself. The result of that in a few decades is what Christianity looks like in the West today: a total collapse of Mainline Protestantism and Cafeteria Catholicism, with fanatical evangelical-fundamentalist and tradcath nutjobs running the show as the loud minority.

Given the Old Testament Jews and Early Christians prostrated by lying face down completely flat, where did the Prohet Muhammad get his idea of a kneeling Sujood from?

We've all heard that gen z are having less sex but it's also a documented phenomenon that underprivileged, marginliazed people tend to have sex more frequently then more wealthy people thus having babies earlier. how do these two vectors interact? does the same disparity still exist among gen z? or are they all just bating to porn?