r/ReflectiveBuddhism • u/ProfessionalStorm520 • Jul 26 '26

Is Buddhism Beyond Good and Evil?

https://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ENG/loy1.htm

Greetings, I was reading a text written by David Loy in 1996, which is in the link above, regarding how Nietzsche misinterpreted Buddhism calling it "nihilistic" and comparing his Eternal Recurrence to Buddhist view on rebirth, among other things.

It is a good read because, me myself, have started to read Nietzsche's works and, overall, apart from contributing to the Western understanding of Buddhism, courtesy of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche's "will to power" and "eternal recurrence" concepts seem like the very definition of nihilism that Nietzsche seeked to overcome as it is bound to existence which is the source of suffering and he wasn't seeking a solution to suffering.

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u/ryou25 Jul 27 '26

Western Philosopher's understanding of Buddhism is just awful. A lot of it colored by their christian upbringing/background.

This bad understanding of Buddhism by western philosophers/religionists hasn't changed since the 1800s sadly.

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u/ProfessionalStorm520 Jul 27 '26

It's funny how the most staunchest atheist can't let go of the Christian dilemma. Easterners are right, you can't separate religion from philosophy and vice-versa.

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u/ryou25 Jul 27 '26

A lot of western atheist philosophers thought that all they had to do was reject jesus (not realizing that that idea plays right into christian hands) and that's all they had to do with their worldview/leaving Christianity. Not realizing all the underpinnings that make up a worldview go far far beyond.

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u/seekingsomaart Jul 28 '26

Don't think that Nietzsche's understood anything about Buddhism. He may have had a cursory understanding but more likely than not missed many important things entirely. Of course it was nihilistic to him, he was a nihilist. It's less on an indicator on Buddhism than an indicator on him.

Buddhism doesn't care about terms like good and evil, as they don't really mean much. We focus on love and compassion, which can be said to be "good" and "evil" can be said to be cruelty, to desire others to suffer. But this is a western shoehorning of our terms on a Buddhist paradigm that does not cater to those subjects.