Rant: buddhism.
Update: I feel compelled to issue the disclaimer that following is a polemic concerning only the more fatuous of the myriad Buddhist practices. Wanna sue? Join the class action.
Buddhism is the world’s fastest-growing non-explosive-wielding religion. It has many followers, some celebrities and some not. It teaches peace and harmony and lots of good stuff, but is it all it’s cracked up to be? I think not.
People look to Buddhism as an alternative to Christianity, but if you really think about it, it’s basically the same thing - with the bonus of being slightly more plausible. It’s just as world-denying, self-effacing and monotheistic as Christianity, except there’s no big, angry, anthropomorphic God glaring down at you from on high. You get karma instead, which is a much more deeply-rooted (and therefore less glaring) misapprehension. And bugger all that ‘no gays’ stuff. So what’s seen as a viable alternative and a lifestyle change is, when you get down to brass tacks, just an excuse to indulge in a vague spirituality with minimal ideological committment.
You may object that buddhism has many warm and fuzzy things to teach us but - so I have discovered - even these important teachings are redundant because they are already built into modern mass society:
1. Buddhism teaches loss of self in a world where loss of self is already widespread. If it’s not the disappearance of people behind their clothes and their jobs, it’s the mediation of human contact by technology and social mores. If it’s not that, it’s the evacuation from the public realm of all genuine personality and the endless procession of phony TV hosts and drab, bureacratic politicians that rob our culture of beauty and the capacity to inspire.
2. Buddhism teaches worldlessness in a society that already has no feeling for the world. We do not have any sense of ownership of our culture or public affairs - these things belong to corporations, to the very rich, and to the political machine. We each walk in our own little rented corner of life, care for our families, watch the TV and drink beer. The world doesn’t concern us and vice versa.
3. Buddhism teaches inner peace when nothing matters enough to justify anger. Due to points 1 and 2, there is precious little at stake in our lives. The suffering that buddhism tells us is intrinsic to existence is little more than a niggle, usually involving a girl or a job interview or some shit. Wanna improve your life? Don’t seek peace - get angry about something.
So in conclusion, buddhism is a 97% Fat Free substitute for Christianity, popular with people who think God isn’t politically correct. Furthermore, it is fundamentally redundant in a society where the sense of self people try so hard to rid themselves of is mostly made up of Coca-cola and Apple iPod ads.
viva nihilism
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While I applaud your right to expound on the subject of your choice, I must insist that you remove the accent from the “e” in the word “mores”.
Social mores are just fine on their own, without the accent, which does nothing good but instead changes the pronunciation from something that rhymes with “stores” to something that sounds like a type of eel frequently featured on the National Geographic channel.
It’s a zen thing - just maintaining balance in the universe, you understand.
- M
Comment by marcheline — Tuesday November 15 2005 @ 2:48 am
Wow. I feel like you are talking about something else entirely, and have just run a ‘Find & Replace’ and inserted the word Buddhism. Sorry if this is wordy.
Some of your assertions are so far off the mark that I was sitting here with my mouth open. This is not an attack on you, but I’d be very concerned if some people read this and took it as anything other than your personal opinion, because some of your assertions are factually inaccurate. Perhaps you mean to criticise people who profess to be Buddhist but don’t really practice the teachings of the Buddha, but your post doesn’t really seem to state that.
Firstly the assertion that Buddhism and Christianity are basically the same thing is quite unusual. There is no creator God in Buddhism. For me most importantly is that there is no real concept of ‘faith’ or especially ‘blind faith’. Buddhism is very experiential, and the Buddha said that nobody should take his words on faith, that they should explore and test his teachings on a personal level and see if they are true. This goes for concepts of reincarnation etc. Another difference is that there is no concept of evangelism in Buddhism, the Buddha said that teachings should only be shared with people who come asking for them. The Buddha also stated, as has The Dalai Lama for instance, that if science directly contradicts or disproves any of the teachings then those teachings should be discarded.
‘Minimal ideological commitment’ is a strange take on it. Buddhism demands more of practitioners than church on sundays, in fact the practice of being Buddhist relies on strong personal morality, on getting up every day and sitting in meditation to bring about personal change and to put teachings of compassion, of reducing anger, jealousy, greed etc into practice by working on ourselves and our own interactions with the world. In terms of ideology, the form of Tibetan Buddhism I practice has a whole panoply of ideology!
It’s not accurate to say that the teachings say that nothing is important enough to justify anger. Buddhism acknowledges that we can control anger through analysis, morality and by transforming our reactions to things. Reactions of anger, and it’s cousins such as jelaousy, are generally in response to stories we tell ourselves about why a particular situation occured. ‘He said this because’ etc. If you challenge your own assumptions and carefully analyse a situation without immediately labelling the other as ‘enemy’ then anger is not always a natural response.
I’ll stop now, but if you ever want to have a conversation about my personal experience of being Buddhist, what I believe in etc, I’m open to it!
Comment by The Other Andrew — Tuesday November 15 2005 @ 9:14 am
M - goddamn Americans, wanna homogenise everything… okay, I’ll change it.
Andrew - Oddly enough, I agree with most of what you say. The main point I’m making is that the buddhist world-view is more similar to the Christian / western-materialist world-view than people usually think. I understand that none of this matters to anyone who thinks Buddhism is simply *true*.
Comment by Mark — Tuesday November 15 2005 @ 2:36 pm
Mark, I’m not sure whether the last line of your response was a dig at me or not. I don’t think ‘Buddhism is simply*true*’, like I said it’s an experiential thing for me. I’ve spent a long time attending teachings, trying the meditation techniques, examining if the moral concepts of Buddhism make life better for myself and the people around me. I have no problem with you asserting that there is common ground, I actually agree that there is some common ground in the morality of both religions.
I don’t agree that there is much common ground in the ‘Western-materialist world-view’ as you put it. In my limited experience few religions emphasise non-attachment like Buddhism does. I also don’t agree with your assertion that Buddhism teaches ‘worldlessness’, or ‘loss of self’, I think these are over-simplifications and misunderstandings of the very complicated teachings about non-attachment, BUddhist concepts of ‘Emptiness’ and the problems with self-grasping (ego etc).
I only take issue with the stuff where you assert ‘Buddhism teaches this’ and don’t get it right. The rest of the stuff that is your opinion I have no issue with, but the factual inaccuracies I think need to be made clear. I’m nowhere near an experienced student, but I’ve done 18 months of a 2 year course in Buddhist studies, plus attended lots of other teachings, so I hope you understand that this is important stuff to me. Not something I can be flippant about, nor is it something I just take as *true* without analysing it.
Comment by The Other Andrew — Tuesday November 15 2005 @ 3:07 pm
I only take issue with the stuff where you assert ‘Buddhism teaches this’ and don’t get it right
I agree with Andrew. When each assertion you make is faulty, then your argument after that is gonna be wobbly. You define ‘loss of self’, ‘worldlessness’ and ‘inner peace’ in ways that make your little hypothesis tenable, never mind that your definitions are contrary to what the Buddhists actually espouse.
I don’t have a religion, but suddenly I feel like saying, “Ich bin ein Buddhist”.
Comment by Michael — Tuesday November 15 2005 @ 8:15 pm
[oh I am enjoying this! I’ll take my coke without sugar and my ipod in white, thanks… Otherwise….would you like a shovel, Mark?]
Comment by nailpolishblues — Tuesday November 15 2005 @ 8:30 pm
Ok, I am going turn the knife as well – but only a little bit.
I agree with Andrew: Buddhism and Christianity are very different religions. To my mind, this has a lot to do with the concept of original sin, the Christian belief that human beings are ‘fallen’ and can only be freed from sin and death by the grace of God. Unlike Karma (the sum total of your good and bad actions on earth, correct me if I am wrong), Grace is open to anyone who repents and accepts Jesus as their saviour regardless of his or her previous actions. Grace is a gift from god; it is not something that you ‘earn’. How one feels about the merit of this concept, however, seems to me an open question. On the one hand some type of spiritual, eternal experience that isn’t ‘bought’, that simply is, sounds pretty neat. On the other hand, you have to ask yourself whether you can live with concept of ‘Father’ as almighty judge and punisher. When I contemplate Christianity I often find myself wondering what kind of almighty, benevolent being would allow ‘his’ creation to deteriorate so badly that ‘he’ had to punish them with death and, for the disobedient, eternal damnation?
The problem with religion, as others have said, is that it is often a search for security rather than a search for spirituality. Words, creeds and ideology are used to define and institutionalise fear, not to transcend it. When I know who is ‘lost’ and who is ‘saved’, my sense of self is reinforced, my anxieties about death, the frailties, fears and desires that haunt my day to day existence, are lulled. What I am trying to say is the existence of the type of ideological commitment that closes off the ineffable and justifies a tribal mentality can be just as problematic as a religion bereft of ideological commitments.
One more paragraph. I agree with you Mark, I like Jesus’s teachings but find the institution that has attached itself to him misguided, condescending and, sometimes, oppressive. In fact, the best summary of Jesus I have ever read was something you posted on my website, “didn’t Jesus also say that love and faith were miracles?” (BTW, and not that it matters particularly, did he actually say that?) It made me think: Christians are so hung up on bodies rising from the grave and stones being turned into bread that they’ve forgotten that being able to love and forgive those who hate and persecute you is a miracle in itself. Finally, I wouldn’t let the consumerism and materialism of the western world get you down or deny you, or anyone else, a spiritual experience. Anyhow, when you ‘accept’ that loss of self and wordlessness are ‘realities’ created by the outside world you immediately give up your power to change those things. They pollute your inner life.
Comment by Ross — Tuesday November 15 2005 @ 10:14 pm
lol, best. post. ever.
Andrew - I’m definitely not taking a dig at you. I mean that, say, if you like the plot of a novel, you might not care about intertextual comparison. Making that comparison doesn’t mean you think the book is worthless - much the opposite.
Running it through my mind again, I guess it’s hopeless. I can’t say much of sense until I understand exactly what Buddhists believe, and that may take several rebirths. I do maintain, though, that there is a neglected, if nebulous, link between Christian ontology/theology and some aspects of a Buddhist world-view. If it’s hard to see, maybe the reason is that it’s something that even our materialistic society embraces.
Comment by Mark — Tuesday November 15 2005 @ 10:58 pm
Wow, you really started something here! How cool. I enjoy The Other Andrew’s comments - I love people who can argue a point without getting emotionally involved. That sort of thing drives people crazy, and I’m all for it.
- M
Comment by marcheline — Thursday November 17 2005 @ 1:49 am
At times it’s hard not to read Jesus and think he wasn’t a buddhist.
Buddhist trumps christainity because it encourages exploration and investigation of (a) yourself, (b) the world and (c) other people.
Christianity is little more than an exercise in egotism ie the step-by-step guide of how to get to heaven.
Buddhists don’t knock on your doors and are generally chill people rather than the wacko Christian shills you see all the time. If you appraoch Christianity philosophically then, yes, you end up with something like Buddhism, but you still have this mind-fuck of appeasing an angry father figure.
There is little inherent beauty in Christianity yet the whole Buddhist idea of finding ones path is beauteous in the extreme - a wholehearted embracement of the intellectual.
The “warm and fuzzyness” of Buddhism is only “built into western society” if your a Leftie.
Comment by harry — Friday November 18 2005 @ 2:19 pm
Ooh, nicely put, Harry.
Comment by Mark — Friday November 18 2005 @ 4:08 pm