So if this guy got into those first, then his view of Buddhism is skewed.
"What’s worse, Buddhism holds that enlightenment makes you morally infallible—like the pope, but more so"
-> Said no Buddhist ever.
I’d read someone, somewhere (maybe here), write about their pilgrimage to somewhere in Asia. He was very disappointed by the monks he’d met and their lack of answers and felt Hinduism or Buddhism was really no different from Christianity.
I too had been disillusioned by religion and considered myself an atheist. Later, though, I found the Dao De Jing, Bhagavad Gita, Dhammapada & Suttanipata* to be life changing. I read them on their own, without seeking further discourse or spiritual guidance, after listening to Duncan Trussel’s podcast for a long while. It’s even changed my perspective on Christian and Jewish theology.
All that to say, it’s personal. It’s my strong opinion that if you go seeking enlightenment from a person or an institution and cannot separate the art from the artist (or the message from the messenger) and do not read the source material you will always come away disappointed.
* haven’t finished the whole book yet
I understood it like.. just as there are people who's dharma is to reduce suffering in the world there are people who produce it and that's fine and normal.
LE: I think Ram Dass used the Hindu meaning for dharma which afaik means "path in life" not "teaching" like in Buddhism
> But what troubles me most about Buddhism is its implication that detachment from ordinary life is the surest route to salvation.
The response from the Thai Forest would be to engage in your life skillfully while paying attention to what causes you happiness or suffering and adjusting what you’re doing based on that. Maybe you discover a certain level of detachment is optimal, maybe you find you need to be more involved in your life. You go where the practice takes you.
I think at the time the author(John Horgan) was a kind of a 'religion debunker', and maybe he had latched onto a few sects of Buddhism that sound kind of 'Christian' and 'debunkable'.
He has some follow up writings that indicate his views on Buddhism may have shifted.
From 2023
https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/a-buddhism-critic-goes-on...
"But I’m glad I went on the retreat. The Lama, during our private chat, said Buddhism isn’t true, but it works. Something worked during the retreat, but what was it? "
The quote from the lama is excellent as well and a very common type of expression that Dzogchen masters make.
The big point that Buddhism has been stripped of the metaphysical religious aspects is true though, but the article lays that on the west misunderstanding Buddhism, but in fact it was intentional - Trungpa Rinpoche said Buddhism will come to the West as psychology, and Suzuki had a similar approach.
And the idea that Buddhism of any kind promotes leaving the material world is just wrong - lay practitioners are part of the original writings. Siddhartha leaving his wife and kid isn’t what brought him enlightenment, the whole point is left one extreme where he partied and lived in luxury, to another extreme, aestheticism, fasting and self denial, only to realize that neither way reduced suffering.
Sounds like the author was just shocked that a lot of religious BS is tied up in many types of Buddhism and threw the whole thing out. But it’s hard to find a good group to practice with that matches your outlook, and I sympathize with that
And then if it succeeds in eliminating like a bad aura that envelops each moment of perception, you almost forget it ever existed and then one can throw the baby out with the bathwater, stop practicing altogether what brought one back up and then beyond to the level of pride where one can dismiss it all, only to three years later or so need to adopt a certain level of spiritual practice whether that's contemplative or practical or community-oriented.
As criticism it's completely valid on a personal plane and multiple times we can all see we've had to dismiss ideas as not fitting our lives anymore, but I also can't help but notice a certain negative tint to the entire article and leaps in logic in the criticism. This is obviously indicative that maybe the author had their fair fill of fruit and on a slightly filled stomach moves on to science etc. But it's not a debunk or a representation of the faith and practices beyond the personal journey of the author.
I've seen people at buddhist retreats suggest some wilds benefits to meditation (magic powers etc). Thats clearly nonsense. But one thing I've noticed about meditation (and yes, it is just sitting still) is that it makes it harder to lie to yourself. And thats really important because Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self
I think the author here is right to point out the problems of enlightenment (its a sortof fictional ideal that no-one ever achieves but we might as well critique it). The Buddhist point of view is that wanting leads to suffering and so the ideal is not to 'want' anything. But really, if you truly achieved 'not wanting anything, that wouldn't be much different from being dead. We need wants. Its more about getting wants in balance.
Im self aware enough to observe the traits I picked up from my parents. I've thought about all the suffering I've been through. If I dont have children, I can be the end of the thread. I can stop the cycle of suffering.
/armchair
What happens with Buddhism in particular, especially in the West, is that people pick and choose what they want to believe from it to the point that whatever they're left with is hardly Buddhism at all, and it does end up being a philosophy.
For an example, ask the next white person you meet who identities as a Buddhist if they believe that there are 8 hells. They're going to tell you that's, to use your word, "nonsense".
Pretty sure this is SOP for basically every religion. :)
The first sentence here is no coincidence, that "Buddhism seems remarkably compatible with our scientifically oriented culture." This is because early Western science developed with a strong influence of secular Buddhism in the form of Pyrrhonism, which informed and merged over time with the Empirical school that led to the modern scientific method.
Western audiences should understand how secular Buddhism is not a new aspect of their civilization but a fundamental pillar of it. This does not mean that understanding the secular aspects will inform someone on the religious aspects, but it is a cultural starting point.
Beyond that, I would only consider sources like the author of this piece as a good source of common misunderstandings to investigate.
So to say "this teaching isn't true, but the traditional contextual background to this teaching (under another name) is" makes you wonder if he really understands the concepts involved at the necessary depth.
For example, this explanation of karma:
> Together, these tenets imply the existence of some cosmic judge who, like Santa Claus, tallies up our naughtiness and niceness before rewarding us with rebirth as a cockroach or as a saintly lama.
That is not at all how karma should be understood. If I go give out $10,000 to the homeless, I'm a damn fool if I think I'm going to get $100,000 back in the mail!
That's no surprise. If your type of meditation is just sitting still, that's fine. You don't need a guru voiceover to get the benefits
Is this a surprise? It's not magic. You're essentially giving your brain and mind the space and time it needs. That doesn't make it any less helpful with regards to stress, anxiety, focus etc
If we start realising all it is is sitting still (as in no music, podcast, iPad), maybe meditation can become more popular and we can get our attention spans back.
And nonetheless, every second, when not sleeping, the author is trying hard to make sense (... notice how close to "science") of his actual space and time. Throughout the ages, most prominent scientists have managed to do this, with great success, knowing that the universe, and themselves as a part of it, were the opposite of incidental or accidental: they believed their existence had a Reason.
Instead of judging Buddhism, just practicing the simplest form of it by just meditating daily and consciously trying to be mindful and kind throughout every day usually does a great job. The same can be considered a simple form of Christianity as well though.
To an uninformed external observer perhaps. But to be Christian means to accept Christ as your Lord. There is no Christianity without Christ. Not even a “simple form” of it.
Okay, why not? Then comes all stuff about what does this mean in practice and theory. And there are so many forms of Christianity arguing. The simplest one of them still is just be mindful and kind, for the sake of the Lord who was and is.
> Although many non-practicing Christians say they do not believe in God “as described in the Bible,” they do tend to believe in some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/05/29/10-key-fi...
We all pursue our quest to understand the universe and to better ourselves. To me, this is what matters, and, fortunately, this is something often shared between religions.
There’s plenty of misguided rubbish that’s been knocking around for millennia — I would imagine Buddhism has other selling points.
If the author had put enough serious time in meditation, he would notice that meditation doesn't exacerbate negative emotions, it just makes you aware of the negative emotions that were already there and that you were ignoring by social media, alcohol, drugs, tiktok, etc. Meditation makes you aware of where the problem is and why the negative emotions come up. Think of it like a very good debugger. It's no substitution for solving the problem. It gives you the tools to solve the problem. Imagine your boss gave you a buggy code but seemingly it seems to compile and work but he keeps saying the code has errors, it's not supposed to work that way. You will go nuts if you don't know where the problem is. You don't even need the solution, just knowing the problem is enough to save you a lot of trouble. Meditation on the initial stages works that way. Later, you'll figure out as you go. Buddha said just do it, don't analyze l, just do it. The author here didn't have the patience to just do it and see it for himself, instead he focussed on the philosophy too much.
Meditating on a cushion for hours everyday is no substitution for being kind to strangers. Meditation brings you clarity even if the clarity is something you don't like. Hell, even Buddha was enlightened when he actually left meditation and gave up meditation altogether (which the author seems to have completely miss it here). Buddhism may not be perfect(what's perfect anyway?) but as George Box put it "All models are wrong, some are useful" Buddhism tries the best to be the most right and the useful model of the world.
Perhaps the author just haven't heard of Madhyamapratipada, that insignificant bit in Buddah's first sermon ever.
That there were Greek states and colonies in Norther India/Gandhara that spoke Greek for generations is not given enough scrutiny imo. The cultural impact of that transmission not always clear outside of something concrete. Like the most obvious being the Greco style Buddhist statues in Gandhara.
So Stoicism is probably similar because of some cultural link that's lost. This is especially likely considering that the rise of Stoicism coincides with Alexander's conquest and lateral cultural contact.
There is a lot of crossover of ideas.
And of course, both have been re-interpreted a lot in the modern age. Lot of intermixing continues today.
Stoicism has always felt more “human scale” to me. It talks in terms of human virtues, and how a good life is only found in virtue. Buddhism always felt more focused on the mechanics of the mind and how understanding can be converted into attaining happiness/enlightment.
That being said, I’m not nearly as knowledgeable about stoicism.
soto-zen emphasises something like this too.
the tl;dr in my very limited and general understanding seems to be — keep sitting zazen, try to not be an arsehole, you’ll work it out eventually.
This kind of response always sounds like victim-blaming to me.
If your system of <whatever> is so complicated that someone can't even hope to get the basics right in four years of study, maybe the right thing to do is, in fact, to ditch it.
Joke aside, Buddhism is a classic "ten year study" similar to certain martial arts or plastic arts. Four years is hardly any time.
But it does read like someone that has just gotten into Buddhism recently, has become lost in the 1000's of different sects and writings, and his 'takeaways' after a brief exploration seem very wrong. He is arguing against Buddhism for things that aren't Buddhist, more misunderstands of something he heard once, and sounded Christian.
Since in Buddhism there is no central authority, and every monk can write up some hot take on their views. It can be very difficult for newbies to wade through it.
A hundred years after Alexander the Great we have Ashoka the Great who sent Buddhist missionaries to the four winds and if you squint Christianity sort of resembles a mesh of Jewish and Buddhist philosophy.
> if you squint Christianity sort of resembles a mesh of Jewish and Buddhist philosophy.
Buddhism originated the entire concept of a "savior" and for the first time introduced the idea of conversion in religion.
This Kumbaya Collective you describe is a behavioral pattern that many folks take part in. Some of them may happen to be Christian, others may not.
But to observe that some Christians are part of the Kumbaya Collective and then go on to imply that being part of the collective is a “simple form” of Christianity is a categorical error.
Behaviour does not imply Faith.
I myself was raised in a Christian organization that did not believe Christ was lord, but rather a person sent by god to show us by example, how to be, spiritually, in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. They also don’t believe in the holy trinity.
So do consider that you do not speak for all Christian’s and not all Christian’s hold the same beliefs.
I see your point, but also think we're already past the threshold where the term's ownership has moved away from the Church.
It is, for instance, rather common to believe Genesis 1 is more of an allegory than an explicit recounting of God’s work, but that does not preclude someone from accepting Christ as their Lord and choosing to live as His disciple.
I understand it goes against the very defintion of the term, but that's a thing.
I'm trying to steer away from my personal anecdotes, so for instance:
https://www.gotquestions.org/what-is-a-Christian.html
> Unfortunately over time, the word “Christian” has lost a great deal of its significance and is often used of someone who is religious or has high moral values but who may or may not be a true follower of Jesus Christ. Many people who do not believe and trust in Jesus Christ consider themselves Christians simply because they go to church or they live in a “Christian” nation.
Suit yourself but I find this reasoning cyclically brain-dead.
That's the same logic regarding any concept at that scale ("American" would be the same case, there is a tight definition, but the wider usage has almost nothing to do with it)
To me that's just how language works.