by VorJack
Over in the forum, reader Kodie linked to an interesting article from Reason magazine: The Truth About Tibetan Buddhism. The article contains the observations from a recent trip to Tibet, a trip that apparently killed any romantic notions about Tibetan Buddhism that the author may have had.
Some observations are shallow, like noting the garish colors of the temple. One culture’s garish may be another culture’s favorite palate, though I imagine that the bright colors would startle those people who think of Buddhism as a religion in earth tones.
But I think the real point to be made is that Tibetan Buddhism shares a lot of the same problems as middle American Christianity. Sects and sectarianism, for example:
I excitedly lined up an interview with one of the monks and asked if he’s looking forward to the day when the Dalai Lama returns from exile in northern India. He patiently told me—dumb Westerner that I am—that he doesn’t worship the Dalai Lama, because he is a member of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism while the Dalai Lama is head of the Gelug school. Then there’s the Kagyu school and the Sakya school—making four in total—which have hot-headed disagreements and have even come to blows in recent years over which deities should be worshipped and which should not.
I don’t know why so many westerners idealize Buddhism so much. Maybe it’s because the bits that reach us are the good stuff. Maybe it’s just the magic of distance. But if the people involved are still human, then the religion will probably suffer the same problems that we see in more familiar religions.
I suspect that much of the appeal of Buddhism to Westerners is that it is actually a philosophy not a religion. It is also very flexible and inclusive with no book that must be followed. Unfortunately in many parts of the world this interesting philosophy about how to lead a fulfilling life has been perverted into a state religion with all the trapping that we all hate.
Well, depends of what you call a religion – it’s true that Buddhism “in natura” has no gods to be worshipped and no core books – but it is very much esteeped in magic: reincarnation, samsara, nirvana and karma to begin with. There are writings, they’re as sparse and contradictory as any religious writing, but afaik they’re not mandatory. The Buddha didn’t set himself as a messiah to be worshipped or else – unlike Jesus – but he DID set himself as some sort of guide to be believed and trusted. Of course, cultural assimilation being what it is – as mentioned in the post, it doesn’t surprise me to see people actuallh worshipping his image as if he was a god, and doing ridiculous unnecessary things. Humans will be humans.
Wh
Actually, the Buddha never set himself up as anything; for years he resisted even the idea of teaching what he’d discovered. It was only the dogged insistence of his ascetic friends that finally convinced him others might get some benefit. But it was one of his major teaching points that no one should take what he said on faith; he insisted that everyone must investigate and decide for himself if what he taught was valid. Which is a damn sight more egalitarian and enlightened than just about any other religion around, for my money.
Mm, yeah, I remember reading about that. A long time ago.
I prefer Buddhism to other religions (if we have to pick one at all) because it emphasizes personal accountability over magic man dun it.
Ugh, sorry, typing from the phone – mucked up
*shrug* So they have differences in the way they view things. Hardly surprising; they are human, after all. (As was their founder, a fact they’re happy to confirm.) Given the alternatives, they’re certainly far preferable to any other lot. When was the last time you heard about a Buddhist strapping explosives to his back and blowing up a bunch of innocent people?
Have you heard of the civil war in Sri Lanka.
Was the civil war primarily because of the Buddhist religion, or because of ethnic (and economic) tribalism? Is it Buddhism that led the Sinhalese majority to oppress the minority Tamil? And, as is true in most cases, it was the out-gunned Tamil minority (not Buddhists) which engaged in most acts of terrorism. The Sinhalese government just used the officially approved, “legitimate” techniques of regular army troops and accompanying massive slaughter. Much, much better than “terrorism” I’m sure we would all agree. (snark)
You are also forgetting about (or haven’t heard) about South Thailand. Even though it is about Muslims being oppressed by Buddhists and might seem OK to the “unenlightened”.
Is it Buddhism that is driving the oppression, though? Or tribal politics and good old ethnic chauvinism?
It’s hard to separate “culture” and “religion” so maybe the question is a moot point, especially given the totalizing character of Islam, for example. Is Buddhism a totalizing religion like Islam can be (in the latter’s politicized form)?
Brian,
It is true that any time you add religion and culture, separating the two is nearly impossible. When you add decades and centuries to the issue, the problem becomes even more tangled. From the reports that I read, the Thai govt has been attempting in recent years to “fix” the problem.
In the end all religions are human, this is just one more example of Buddhism (and a Buddhist govt) providing privilege to the member of the”in religion”. While the “other” religion feels like secondary citizens.
This was just an attempt to show that Buddhism fits vorjacks statement:
“But if the people involved are still human, then the religion will probably suffer the same problems that we see in more familiar religions.”
Funny, because I last night I was reading Emil Cioran and came across this: “Seen from the outside, harmony reigns in every sect, clan, and party; seen from the inside, discord. Conflicts in a monastery are as frequent and as envenomed as in any society. Even when they desert hell, men do so only to reconstruct it elsewhere.”
Eastern religions/philosophies welcome diverse thinking, unlike Western (esp Ibrahimic) religions. For instance, there is not one cannonical way of thinking in Hinduism, but rather many schools. The writings are mainly metaphysical, epistemological, moral, and only slightly mystic. So having differing schools of thougt in Buddhism (which also started out in India) does not surprise me in the slightest, nor does it put me off. Eastern religions/philosophies are more apt to acknowledge many answers or even that there is no answer, unlike dogmatic Western religions.
(That being said, I think their philosophies and ideas are interesting and informative, but so are other philosophies and ideas, so I feel no need to adhere to the tenets of their “faith”.)
Christianity and Buddhism would both be worth less as political tools if treated as philosophies instead of divinely-inspired religions.
Of course the religion has people involved. It sounds more like she(not westerners in general) idealizes Tibetan Buddhism and now seems annoyed that the BS she picked about the religion from Celebrities wasn’t true.
I can’t think of any religion which doesn’t have its differences. Christianity has more flavors than imaginable. She was upset because one sect doesn’t worship the Dalai Lama. All Christians believed the Pope was infallible for a century and a half. Does that make Christianity less of a religion because protestants no longer believe that and Catholics do?
Does that make Christianity less of a religion because protestants no longer believe that and Catholics do?
In the sense that it posits a pretense towards possessing the One Real Truth? Absolutely.
http://atheism.about.com/b/2010/01/25/religion-violence-recognizing-violence-in-buddhist-history.htm
First, you need to look into the various sects of Buddhism, which I think may be more different than Catholicism from Protestantism. I’m not entirely sure why Tibetan Buddhism seems to be more popular in the West than other forms at the moment- a generation ago Zen/Ch’an was the favorite, thanks to the books of Alan Watts. Within each sect there are levels of understanding. Of course “the man in the street” may be satisfied with following ritual traditions and praying for his daily needs. The Buddhists you will notice first are those who are celebrating some loud, colorful ritual. However, even at its lowest level, I don’t think Buddhism carries the same baggage of guilt and fear that Christianity does, even though there is a hell in most sects of Buddhism. Buddhists have done stupid things like extreme fasting or burning off a finger, but it was done to demonstrate mastery of the material world, not to make a deal with a god. Overall, it’s been less violent. I can’t think of a single case where a ruler had a Buddhist vision that directed him to go forth and smite a neighboring state, or of a Buddhist inquisition or witch-burning. Of course at time the Chinese Buddhist monastic system controlled lots of land and resources at one time, leading to a Henry VIII-like assault on the monasteries to replenish the imperial coffers. The baseline of Buddhism is coping with reality and ultimate integration with a spiritual state that suffuses the material universe. You can figure out for yourself what the baseline of the Abrahamic religions is.
Another factor in religious preference is art. The Zen temples of Kyoto or Bernini?
I became impressed with Buddhism when studying Chinese language and Asian culture. The key thing about Buddhism is that rather than being just a collection of tribal rules and legends, it reached intellectual heights that, if they exist in Christianity, are somehow less accessible to the modern student than, say, the Flower Ornament Sutra: http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/issues/2006/fall/phenomenal.html I suggest skipping down to “The Fourfold Dharmadhatu.”
I’m absolutely shocked, shocked, that something in Reason may have shallow observations.
Yeah, it’s like they’re staffed with humans or something.
Also… Is there a reason mystique is spelled with an ‘i’ in the title of this post??? It looks weird.
Pirsonally, I like it.
don’t you mean,
pirsonally, “i” like it
….sorry!
it’s like it’s a tique of mist… a misty-tique?
I kept waiting for someone to tell me it was the British spelling or something…
:P
Nah, it’s just me misremembering. “The Mystique Mistake” is a term from political science. It’s when you assume that one culture is completely alien and cannot be understood by folks of another culture.
I was actually referencing our odd little friend over on that other post, who kept referring him to himself as “i”; lowercase with quote marks, as if he was speaking for himself and his god or some such.
If you still think the reality of Buddhism in general is “nicer” than the other religions, read God is Not Great by Hitchens. There’s a good amount in there that will disabuse you of any such romance. Here are a few tidbits about Buddhism in particular (not all from Hitchens): 1) Buddhist complicity with whipping up patriotic war fervor in japan 2) Again Japan, the creation of an untouchable caste to handle beef products (this one is still wrecking people’s lives to some degree and is inexplicably unknown in the west – look up eta or burakumin. 3) The Dalai Lama’s continued stance against homosexuality as a moral lifestyle. 4) Again Tibet: remember that separation of church and state thing we American atheists support? In the minds of many (most?) Tibetans, church and state are and must be the same. 5) It’s worth pointing out that Sam Harris was a bodyguard for the Dalai Lama at one point, and the experience was apparently enough to make him into a New Atheist!
On the other hand, I support the Tibetan independence movement, and I display the Dalai Lama’s Facebook comments on my home page. Why? I’m much more worried about a non-democratic country whose ideology rests on another kind of argument from authority AND that has nuclear weapons (China) than I am about a small sect of Buddhism that is currently out of power. Reason magazine should be lauded for fair-mindedness, but the current alternative to Tibetan Buddhism is the nominally communist Chinese government. Personally, I find a country that is officially atheist and forces atheism on their citizens to be just as creepy as one with an official religion, but the Chinese government conveniently forgets about their official atheism long enough to install and promote their own leader of the Tibetan church. Bottom line, supporting a free Tibet, Buddhist elements and all, makes life more difficult for the Chinese Communist Party. If ever Tibet becomes independent and reinstalls a religious government, I will then start supporting the Secular Tibet Movement. But right now that’s not the top priority.
Does that include the one where he said he is a Marxist? For all its faults capitalism is the best economic system we have come up with so far. I’m not saying its perfect, and I’m not saying it is the solution to every problem, because demonstrably it is not. However in practice Marxism has proven far worse then Capitalism.
The present Dalai Lama may be a nice benign individual but that is because he has been in opposition his whole life. The truth about independent Tibet is that it was a brutal feudal society. The temples practiced conscription to maintain the numbers of months. Indeed after the communist takeover many young men left the temples, that they had had no wish to join in the first place.
Local nobility, who had an arrangement with the religious hierarchy had absolute power over their surfs. By all accounts their modes of punishment where every bit as brutal as practiced by the Taliban.
Also you might want to keep in mind that the 3rd Dalai Lama seized power in nothing less then a bloody coup, and had his immediate predecessors declared as the 1st and 2nd Dalai lama. He then went on to consolidate power by systematically persecuting the other schools of Buddhism.
Michael, you have such flimsy grasp of Tibetan/Chinese history, I may overlook your glaring misunderstanding in the whole Tibet/China issue. I will try to be charitable.
Tibetan Buddhism has always been a violently oppressive system of beliefs. In the begining of the last century, over 95% of Tibetans were either slaves or serfs tied to the land owned by very few society elites and, mostly, the powerful Buddhist high Lamas. Virtually everything, land, farms, livestock, etc was owned by them.
Prior to the infamous 1959 “revolt” that was actually instigated and financed by a CIA outfit, the Dalai Lama and most of the Tibetant elite landowners were not in conflict with the Chinese Communists who took over this medieval land in 1949, they actually ruled Tibet with the Dalai Lama with a joint administration, an agreement that was signed by His Holiness’ representatives. That was ten years of living under the communist rule and not a peep of discontent. When the Chinese government started land reform all over China in the 1950′s, where they would confiscate private land and make it public, this was the cause of much of the discontent from the elite landowners and powerful Lamas like the Dalai Lama. This was the seed of the so called uprising and the CIA provided the wellspring in funding, training and weapons.
The so called Free Tibet movement was never about Tibetan freedom, it was about returning the people in the Tibetan Government in Exile to rule over Tibet, the same people, and their offsprings, who owned virtually every scrap of everything worth owning, and enslaved virturally every living person until some 60 odd years ago.
So Michael, I suspect you are just one of those run-of-the-mill westerners who fetishicizing about a mythical Tibet that never existed, sporting your little Tibetan flag bumper stickers on your Jetta hoping to be seen as cool and enlightened, or just a fool with a made up cause.
Anyways, whenever I see a car sporting a “Free Tibet” or “McCain/Palin” pumper sticker or any other non sense, it just gives me a target to cut them off on the freeway.
Couldn’t almost any civiliization in history be damned for many of these reasons. Heck, what is the current income distribution pyramid like in the United States?
(I am not disagreeing with you really…just noting that concentrated wealth and power, be it feudalism or theocracy or Marxist dictarorship, is pretty universal in advanced civillizations….and I’m, not sure that, I, even as a self-defined semi-leftist, am that OK with the glorious Communist Party taking all of the land, either.)
To add to what Michael Caton wrote, as Buddhism spread into Northern Asia, the Buddhists persecuted and suppressed the native shamans.
As far as statements about the Buddha, there’s really no evidence he even existed. Like so many of the other legendary founders of the world’s religions, such as Lao Tzu, Confucius, Moses, Jesus, and probably even Mohammed, his biography was created long after he supposedly lived.
Check out: http://religionnewsblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/historicity-of-buddha-is-buddha-legend.html
Steve: That website is…to put it lightly, “interesting.” I stopped reading when I scrolled down to the rants about the oppressiojn of white folk. The posts about the wonders of Glen Beck and the rogue judge who stayed the Arizona Immigration law were a good clue, as well.
If this is YOUR website, then you certainly have the right to these opinions. Of course. But…
My two objects to Buddhism are
1) That it has inherited the sexism of the age it came from. The Buddha is said to have only started an order of Nuns reluctantly and said that that action would cause the teaching to be distorted faster then it otherwise would have been.
2) It endorses thought crime in a big way, Possibly more then even Christianity does.
And yes once you look at it objectively it has not been any more effective at stamping out negative human traits then any other religion.
As an Atheist I also thought that Buddhism would take me out of the funk of all other religions.
After seven years in Northeast Thailand that thought also went down the toilet.
Why exactly? I’m interested since I wanted some concrete details, not the surface stuff in the Reason article.