Was Buddha an autist?

[daddysmutantkid]

Note: The following might hurt your religious feelings.

Due to external circumstances I noticed that I actually have a very concentrated mind and very little empathy and a weaker notion of "myself". It's not that I have no desires but they are flat and sporadic enough to alienate me deeply from "the world".  I've come to suppose that my state of

Comments

[hk2999]

I don't think so.

Accounts say he leaved a normal or even greater than normal childhood.

[hk2999]

Sorry, I mean lived.

[yeshe_choden]

Well, he did leave it! ;-)

[doclabyrinth]

"wisdoms of the East teach to get rid of feelings"

No, this is a common misconception. Mainstream Eastern traditions do not teach that feelings are to be eliminated. In general they teach how to not be carried away by one's feelings.

[kwanboa]

Arrogance is not something the Buddha taught.

"Autist"...do you mean "autistic"? Autist is, from what I understand, a rather loaded word that many autistic people do not like and is best left to the artists on the Autist Records label.

Getting rid of feelings and having compassion are not mutually exclusive, either. It is a delicate balance and a subtle one.

As for the Buddha being autistic, who knows? That's the interesting thing about people who lived a long time ago...you can ascribe to them personalities or traits that you find comfortable and pleasing, because there's no way to know! Although really, haven't they linked autism to modern vaccines? Unless Buddha got his TDP boosters, he probably wasn't autistic ^.~

[bodhimian]

Getting rid of feelings is not the goal of the buddha or the bhagavad gita, or most eastern religions that i know. Neither is feeling alienated. no one is enlightened by birth in this world man....

[the_urban_monk]

No bondage of emotion doesn't mean no emotion, it just means no bondage. Far from Buddhist practice being about getting rid of feelings, the practice makes you feel more, not less.