Buddhism and stoics?

betaboy

They both encourage indifference to emotions. Are there other similarities?

Jason

You might be interested in reading this, which is a blog post I wrote a few years back.

Zayl

@Jason that link just leads to this thread man :P

betaboy

@Jason that link just leads to this thread man :P

Maybe, it is a zen-like answer, lol.

vinlyn

yeah...i thought i was doing something wrong

Jason

You might be interested in reading this, which is a blog post I wrote a few years back.

Fixed.

Jason

@Jason that link just leads to this thread man :P

Maybe, it is a zen-like answer, lol.

A Zen thing. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Floating_Abu

They both encourage indifference to emotions. Are there other similarities?

I don't know much about stoicsm (sic) but it strikes me that Buddhism does not encourage indifference to emotions, rather it seeks to clarify our relationship to emotions.

andyrobyn

My understanding of the Stoic school of philosophy is that it has some similarity with Buddhist understandings in that it holds that our experience of both pleasure and pain are independant of outward circumstances. However, it places more importance on the idea that emotions are of no significance in themselves.
One of the things which belonged to my father that I have, 27 years after his death, is his bound copy of Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caeser and it includes his study notes, written in pen and ink.
His notes include a comment that Brutus, as a stoic found it "cowardly and vile to suicide" yet he found he could not submit to "go bound to Rome". His suicide shows that" honour and the fear of shame were more binding than the philosophical creed he had cultivated."

Tosh

One of the things which belonged to my father that I have, 27 years after his death, is his bound copy of Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caeser and it includes his study notes, written in pen and ink.

Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet:

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

How 'Buddhist' is that?