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[SalmonGod]

Don't know where you guys are getting these ideas.

Buddhism is overrated. In practice, is just as woman oppressing and patriarchal as most other religions.

Maybe where Buddhism is practiced by conservative cultures.  Can't think of anything I was taught that was patriarchal in nature in Buddhist beliefs themselves.  When my teacher went over the situation in Tibet and the Dalai Lama's succession process, he predicted that his next incarnation would be a girl in the Midwest, just to throw everyone for a loop.

The same shit that happens with Christians misinterpreting or deliberately ignoring scripture to use their religion as an excuse for shitty behavior happens with any other religion.  And Buddhism varies a lot, with every region having a flavor or two of its own.  I mainly learned about Tibetan and Rinzai.

The thing that makes me the most leery about Buddhism is that to have a chance to achieve desertification you basically have to live off of other people's labour. Never trust a religion that says that you, the peasant, have to support the Priviledged Class, but that you as a peasant have no chance to nirvanise because you spend all your time labouring instead of sitting with your head up your arse in a temple somewhere.

I was taught that meditation isn't required or a direct path to enlightenment.  It's just one tool.  Its main purpose is to teach oneself mindfulness (their term for being mentally focused and pure in the present moment, instead of scattered and fractured over a million thoughts about the past and future).  Mindfulness can be maintained at any time, doing anything.  Meditation is just a means of practicing and improving your mindfulness, and it's difficult to realize enlightenment without mindfulness.  I was told dozens of stories about how different people became enlightened, and not a one of them was during meditation.  Several of them were during menial labor.  Others were random eureka moments.  IIRC some of those eureka moment stories were people who didn't even have much background of temple life or meditation.

Of course, these teachings weren't given to me in the manner that I'm paraphrasing them here.  Being direct isn't something they like to do.  These are the people who gave us koans, after all.  This is just how I came to understand it.

[scriver]

Don't know where you guys are getting these ideas.

Buddhism is overrated. In practice, is just as woman oppressing and patriarchal as most other religions.

Maybe where Buddhism is practiced by conservative cultures. 

Lol yeah, the modern, liberal, western hobby Buddhists do Buddhism better than the actual Buddhist cultures themselves.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah, but what does that have to do with Buddhism?

One of the biggest problems people have with disputes over religious stuff is the idea of compartmentalizing culture vs religion.  People have a religion, and they have a culture.  Those two things interact with each other, but they are not the same thing.  Just like the behavior of shitty fundamentalists in the United States is not Christianity itself.  Getting people to stop conflating these things just turns out to be really fucking difficult.

Asia, like most of the world, is emerging from a very rigid conservative history.  On that basis, I challenge you to find a single religion in the region that doesn't suffer any associations with local customs that are sexist by today's standards.  Unless there is some minor religion I'm not aware of that was written specifically for the purpose of "Fuck y'all's conservatism".  Which... still wouldn't mean much, because that's exactly what much of Christianity's scripture is all about and we see how that works out.

[scriver]

One of the biggest problems people have with disputes over religious stuff is the idea of compartmentalizing culture vs religion.  People have a religion, and they have a culture.  Those two things interact with each other, but they are not the same thing.

No. Religion is culture. All culture is not religion, but all religion is culture.

[TD1]

Yea, it's a body of literature, or an oral tradition. Mixed with rituals and stock-sayings. To a (true) believer it's not mere culture, it warrants being said. However, with the clinical eye of an outsider that's what I'd say it is.

[SalmonGod]

Now you're just being obtuse.

Yeah, it's a cultural input, but it doesn't completely make up that culture.  Local traditions tend to have a larger effect on religion than vice versa.  For example: the adoption of pagan traditions into Christianity.

[TD1]

Of course not. It's a national, sometimes continental, facet of culture.

[Dunamisdeos]

No, all religion is not culture. Something like 10% of the population of Hawaii is Buddhist, and yet somehow nobody thinks of Hawaii as a Buddhist state.

The belief systems and traditions, including religion, can have an effect on culture. But it's hardly Religion = Culture = hard stop.

[hector13]

Go to elsewhere with your faff.

[Dunamisdeos]

..Faff?

Well uh, faff you too. So there.

[martinuzz]

Syrian government confiscated all surgical equipment, and 70% of all other medical supplies from the UN convoy that was heading to deliver aid to East-Ghouta.
Assad claims he does not want the rebels to be able to receive medical aid.

Bah, who needs Geneva conventions anyways, right?

[redwallzyl]

Syrian government confiscated all surgical equipment, and 70% of all other medical supplies from the UN convoy that was heading to deliver aid to East-Ghouta.
Assad claims he does not want the rebels to be able to receive medical aid.

Bah, who needs Geneva conventions anyways, right?

The guy has concentration camps complete with incinerators for his enemies. I think he is a bit passed caring.

[martinuzz]

Oh yeah, no surprise about Assad. Surprise at the lack of UN response though at the open and clear breach of Geneva.

[Lord Shonus]

The Geneva Conventions apply in wars between two or more sovereign states. This is a conflict between a sovereign state and a domestic insurgency. The only article that applies to such conflicts is Article 3, and that doesn't appear to come in here.

[martinuzz]

Next to several thousand rebel fighters, there are 400 thousand civilians in East-Ghouta, of whom 200 thousand children, with many wounded after endless bombardments by the Syrian airforce.
You think that sending a handful of empty busses for evacuating civilians is enough to comply with Article 3 (2), 'the sick and wounded shall be collected and taken care of', and that depriving those civilians that don't fit in the busses of much needed, and UN sanctioned medical aid cannot be considered an outrage upon personal dignity, and a degrading treatment, as mentioned in 3 (1c)?