RA Rips on Buddhism (Or not…)
September 28, 2007
Buddhism. That bastard-child of a religion. (And I say that with a smirk on my face and a grin in my heart)
“Embrace Nothing:
If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.
If you meet your father, kill your father.
Only live your life as it is,
Not bound to anything”
I love Buddhism. I really do. But really, Buddhism is a joke with a “groaner” punchline. Just read some more zen quotes:
The student approached the master
He asked “What is zen?”
The master picked up a club
and beat the student upside the head.
After three strokes, the student was enlightened.
Or suffered a concussion.
(Ok, Ok, that’s not really a zen quote… But it probably could be 
One cannot say (or even think) of what Buddhism is. (By making that statement, and this one, and every other statement that follows, I demonstrate my lack of “enlightenment” - Oh well. Or maybe not.)
Buddhism can only be arrived it in a roundabout manner. It’s a paradox: speaking of it means you have not mastered it. It is simultaneously the most and least important aspect of the adherent’s existence. Maybe.
Or maybe not.
My personal philosophy is consistent with Freethought. The pure antithesis of Freethought is Dogma. Any concept that is considered exempt from refutation is dogmatic. (I’m pretty sure of that. Perhaps, though, I should abandon that line of thinking and just be…)
Buddhism has nowhere near the dogma of other mainstream religions. (I think… It might have the most. How does one quantify dogmatism? Is it the sound of one hand clapping? My brain hurts)
I do like Buddhism. I admire it. I love it for the same reasons that I hate it. I love it for the same reason I like a good joke, and hate it for the same reasons that I hate frustration and confusion. And I think that most Buddhists would understand that. Or Not. Damnit.
So why am I ripping on it? (Am I ripping on it?) Why not? There is nothing any more special about Buddhism than anything else, and (quite frankly) I’m doing it because the more I try to do so, the more it evades my criticism.
Now, I’m not sure if I’ve ended up criticizing Buddhism, or praising it. What’s even stranger is that I’m not sure if I STARTED this article with an intention to criticize or an intention to praise. And I think that’s the strongest criticism/praise I could give of this elusive religion.
Buddhists: I would love to hear from you. Or not. I’m not sure anymore. Or am I?
Confuzzled,
Rival
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I’ve said before that I have spent a fair deal of time studying different religions. I have similarly studied Buddhism, but not nearly to the same extent as others - and I admit that it leaves me feeling even more confused than when I started.
It’s difficult to understand, I think, because it tries very hard to keep from being understood. All religions do, but - now this really is a gut feeling - in the case of Buddhism, it doesn’t feel so malicious. I get the impression that Buddhism is difficult to understand in order to make us understand that a lot of things are difficult to understand. Understand? Yikes.
There are some very supernatural aspects to Buddhism, including reincarnation. Or not? As it turns out, many Buddhists see reincarnation as sort of a morality tale, not a literal belief in coming back to life as an animal. Okay, so there’s the fact that Buddhism accommodates a metaphorical understanding instead of a literal one - even though the idea of keeping such supernatural tales around still irks many atheists. But still, looking at the scale of reincarnation from Bodhisattva and Pratyeka Buddha to Preta and hellish beings seems like a fairy tale of ethereal existence, but without much inspection, it’s clear that each of these states can mean different kinds of people, and the different ways that they live their lives, and the different desires and goals they have. And better, there’s a lot of truth to it, in that light.
But the supernatural aspects - the real stuff of religion - isn’t the emphasis in Buddhism. Sure, they have a central figure, a prophet of sorts - the Buddha - but that doesn’t refer to a single son-of-god or speaker-of-god person the way that other religions do. These aren’t holy gods worthy of worship; they’re teachers worthy of study - and that’s a big difference to those of us that were raised in a Christian-dominated culture. There were 28 Buddhas, with slightly different names in Pali or Sanskrit, but the idea is that they were enlightened people. Not godly, not supernaturally powerful, not able to grant wishes or smite enemies, just enlightened. The idea is that instead of worshiping power, Buddhists are revering wisdom. Again, huge difference, and one that makes Buddhism all the more appealing.
It almost makes you wonder what kind of place the United States would be if, rather than being dominated by those worshiping a god of power, conquest, and blood, we instead put all that effort into understanding the wisdom of the Buddha, attaining enlightenment, and living in harmony. That ought to make anyone pause for a moment of reflection.
At any rate, as an “angry atheist,” I make a habit of holding Buddhism off to the side of my rants against religion. It’s better than religion, it’s philosophy geared towards the heights of wisdom. It doesn’t breed the same kind and magnitude of religious fervor as do the major Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In fact, Buddhism is as much of a religion as atheism - only so far as it concerns matters of faith, not that it has some great god to worship.
In other words, for everything there is to despise in the evil triplet fruits of the twisted tree of Abrahamic religion, there’s as much to respect and honor in Buddhism.
I think.
My mother, a Pantheist, made Buddhism “her” religion. That doesn’t mean that she’s adopted all of it… but most of it. She likes that there is no god to be worshiped, that Buddhists accept and love everybody… and they don’t try to convert you.
What bugs me about Buddhism: I spent several long vacations in Sri Lanka, where 95% of the population are Buddhist. And while they don’t worship a god, their behavior does come across as worshiping. Our bus driver could not drive past any Buddha statue without getting out, standing there and mumbling something at the statue. And then there is the temple with Buddha’s tooth that apparently lies there in a little box, that lies in a bigger box, that is locked up… so you don’t actually get to see the tooth but only the box that covers the box that holds the tooth. We went there as tourists of course, us women having to put on sarongs, because our legs were bare. Many others weren’t there as tourists. Some came to this temple every single day to get in a line that is 30 minutes long to walk past the box and to mumble a few words in the 30 seconds that you had with the box.
I avoided the discussion back then. I was only in my early 20s and not brave enough to ask. But my impression was that this is worshiping. If it’s not, then what is it? Meditating? I didn’t understand.
I’ll keep it with the words of Buddha:
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
I like that buddhism, like shinto, jainism, and a few other asian religions, are actually atheist in their philosophy, but I think miss PDX hits the nail on the head when she says that even though in theory there’s no place in buddhism for worship, in practice for most people it comes down to the same sort of worship rituals that theists center their lives around.
long story short - i like some of the ideas of buddhism, at least in theory. in practice, however, it’s based on exactly the same negation of self and giving away power to an imaginary ‘other’ that is at the core of the abrahamic religions, and that just plain sucks. Siddartha, like jesus, seems like he was probably a pretty cool guy. it’s just too bad his followers had to turn his ideas into a religion.