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I’m always baffled by Buddhism getting such a free pass from otherwise perfectly sensible westerners. Many Buddhist societies are amongst the worst slave state

by mtts 6y ago

I’m always baffled by Buddhism getting such a free pass from otherwise perfectly sensible westerners. Many Buddhist societies are amongst the worst slave states know to history (the Tibet from this article, but also Burma and oh-so-beloved Thailand). And this is not despite Buddhism but because of it. In all societies where it is dominant misfortunes such as being born poor (or worse) are seen as being justified somehow, leading to astonishingly callous mistreatment of the poor and unlucky - think the wholesale enslavement and transport of complete populations such as in Thailand not too long ago and in present day Burma. Zen Buddhism, too, is a spectacularly nasty piece of work. It originally existed in two variants: one for the peasants, which taught them to accept their miserable lot, and one for the warrior class which taught it that life is fleeting and death inevitable (it is this variant of Buddhism that was used to indoctrinate Kamikaze pilots in WW2) So why we in the west should think that this is an especially enlightened religion is beyond me. If you must do religion, why not Christianity or Islam? At least these two make a point of encouraging charity and kindness towards others.

ArtDev 6y ago
Well they certainly aren't fairing very well under the iron fist of China either.
- trasz 6y ago
  [citation needed]. Compared to their previous situation, of course.
  - indigo945 6y ago
    The thing with feudal Tibet was that the monks didn't actually interfere with the average Tibetan's life too much. Unlike authoritarian China, dissenters in Tibet were by and large tolerated. For example, the newspaper Tibet Mirror was widely circulated in Tibet before the Chinese invasion, particularly among the ruling clerical strata, despite propagating Christian ideas and calling for political reform. That stopped very quickly after 1950.
    - trasz 6y ago
      Another thing largely tolerated in pre-Chinese Tibet was slavery. Which also stopped very quickly after 1950. There are priorities. Chinese broke something of a lesser priority (free press), while providing something of a much higher priority (abolition of slavery).
      - aspenmayer 6y ago
        It’s funny that in America we got those values inverted - freedom of the press first, and equality for other races and cultures much later. Both China and America are still dealing with their legacies of human rights violations, which continue in both countries today.
      - sbmthakur 6y ago
        True but that came at the cost of being subservient to the CCP.
  - ginko 6y ago
    I don't think comparing 1950 feudal Tibet to modern day Tibet under Chinese rule is entirely fair. The assumption being that an independent Tibet wouldn't have changed at all in the last 70 years.
    - trasz 6y ago
      They were feudal country in the fifties. That suggests being rather slow at social changes. Also, "figures show that since the early 1960s, the Tibetan population has been increasing, probably for the first time for centuries" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Tibet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Tibet).
      - ginko 6y ago
        My guess is that an independent Tibet would have developed at about the same pace as neighboring Bhutan, which abolished slavery in 1958 and turned into a constitutional monarchy in 2005. There are still human rights issues in Bhutan, but it's a far cry from where they were 70 years ago.
        trasz 6y ago
        Okay. Is there some comparison of living conditions between modern day Bhutan and Tibet?
        ginko 6y ago
        I guess such comparisons are hard to make and bound to be subjective. According to [1] Bhutan's HDI was 6.17 in 2018, while according to [2] the regional HDI of Tibet was 5.85. So at the very least they're not particularly far apart from each other. [1] http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/BTN http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/BTN [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisions_of_Greater_China_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisio...
    - greencore 6y ago
- bildung 6y ago
  You mean beside not getting raped by the feudal lords anymore, the end of punishments like gouging out eyes and severing hamstrings, the doubling of life expectancy, access to healthcare and education? I'm all for criticising lack of democratic progress in China, but Tibet really is a bad argument for that.
  - watwut 6y ago
    The period in question involves cultural revolution period. That was not exactly a small thing nor a nice thing.
tasogare 6y ago
It’s especially glaring in the Tibet case where the 20% monks living in temples exploit the rest of the country and redirect the wealth towards them. I’ve read numbers in an academic book, that was astonishing. The system is also a theocracy. While not as bad as other living examples, this is clearly not as "enlightened" form of government than the pop-culture would like us to think. I disagree on your point about Islam though. Islam encourages charity within it’s own community only. For non believers it encourages the holy war (jihad), which causes many problems. In this case, it’s indeed better for a country to have bouddhism than islam as state religion, from the point of view of neighbors if not muslim themselves.
- cygnusxvega 6y ago
  This is actually not true and another common misconception. Islam does not encourage Jihad as a form or spreading the religon, that word is consistently mistranslated. Islam specifically encourages giving charity to the most needy, AND starts with your own community and family and works outwards to the larger good and society. The same Christian beliefs of taking care of your neighbors. Islam also encourages in enjoining in good wherever you find it. Muslims in America donate to local food banks and soup kitchens. You clearly are just repeating what the current false narrative is and have little understandinf of the religon. If you made the point that people dont practice the way the religon is taught I might agree, but this is just false.
  - MaximumYComb 6y ago
    I spent 5 years living as a minority white person in a majority Middle Eastern area (in a western country). My take on it is as follows: Muslims in the west are literally like white Christians. Some are culturally Muslim but don't practise the faith. Others are strongly Muslim. Some are amazing people and some are bigoted. Among the religious ones you have the ones who use religion to do good and those who use it as an excuse to be bigots. It's the exact same I see in white people. I would take my son, aged 3-4, into a really dodgy barber (this whole area is low socioeconomic). Drug dealers and unsavoury characters. My little blond-haired, blue-eyed son and me in a sea of black hair. And we would be treated exactly as what we were, a father taking his son for a haircut. They would give him a lollipop and call my daughter over to make sure she got one too.
goto11 6y ago
> If you must do religion, why not Christianity or Islam? At least these two make a point of encouraging charity and kindness towards others. You are comparing the historical reality of one religion to the ideals of other religions. In such a comparison the ideals will always look better. If you compare the ideals of Buddhism with the historical reality of Christianity and Islam (war, slavery, genocide etc.) I'm sure Buddhism will look better. You will typically see people compare the ideals of their own religion with the realities of other religions and come to the conclusion that their own religion is best. The imperfect reality is explained by flawed people misunderstanding or misusing the religion, while the real-world problems of other religions is attributed to faults in the religion itself.
- kinleyd 6y ago
  Spot on.
- arethuza 6y ago
  Or you can go one step further and conclude that all religions (and indeed anything that is based on non-scientific dogmatic infallibility like communism or Austrian economics) are all a bit wanting.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    >and indeed anything that is based on non-scientific dogmatic infallibility There's no such thing as a scientific ethical system. Science tells us how and why the universe behaves as it does, it cannot make a judgement about what the world should be. This has been known since antiquity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      So what is the realistic alternative - all I'm stating is that I get deeply suspicious when a political system is based on beliefs that you are not even allowed to question.
kranner 6y ago
> If you must do religion, why not Christianity or Islam? At least these two make a point of encouraging charity and kindness towards others. If we're only talking about what religions superficially encourage, Tibetan Buddhism also encourages charity and compassion towards all beings, endlessly extolling the Bodhisattva ideal. The religion in theory is different from the religious state with living, breathing humans in charge.
- danieldk 6y ago
  The religion in theory is different from the religious state with living, breathing humans in charge. Indeed. I practiced Buddhist meditation for some years and was very interested in Buddhism. However, what I always found difficult was the relation between teachers and students. On the one hand, someone who has many years of meditation experience is better at detecting typical pitfalls during practice and can help people move forward. On the other hand, this sometimes results in a strong division between laypeople and monks/teachers (typically ex-monks). A subset of teachers use their perceived religious authority this to go on power trips, or worse, physically abuse people. Once religion becomes organized it becomes a very powerful tool to subject people.
- bulla 6y ago
  Recommended Reading: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0863V3617 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0863V3617
toshk 6y ago
Spending a lot of time with Tibetan Buddhism it led me to conclude our Western view on human rights is very very special and not natural at all. We should really cherish it. It is probably, and often, tied to the evolution of Christianity and Western humanism that led to a special view on the rights of the individual. Which for instance led to the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. Which to us is baffling someone even ever though slavery was ok. Yet it was the standard for millennia. When you read a summary of the Buddhist doctrine this Western view of individuality seems to fit perfect. Yet the cultures housing buddhism didn't yet seem to have evolved to support this view of the individual. This might have something to do with the fact Buddhism started in a more complex society in India and then moved to more tribal places like Tibet. Yes India had a feudal type of cast system, but also had a very high level of philosophy. This is an argument that's also sometimes made by scholars to explain certain differences between the word of Jesus and the more tribal verses of Mohammed. Coming back to Tibet, even though it was far from perfect, there a still gems to be found in Tibetan Buddhism. And to give them some credit there have definitely been attempts to reform in Tibet. Not every monastery was about politics, some teachers created their monasteries far away in hard to reach places to avoid the politics. For centuries the Tibetan writers already speak of dark times, so at least a few were aware.
- artem247 6y ago
  I would disagree with the point of "evolution of views on individuality" effect on slavery. After fall of Roman Empire slavery was in a serious decline in western kingdoms and after some time in Bysantium and Eastern Europe too. Slavery became a bit more legal in XV century [0], and the peak of slavery (involving Christians) came on XVII century[1], somehow co-existing with those ideas of human rights, freedom, secular state and so on. Again slavery could have been abolished due to economic reasons in XIX century. For example humanism didn't stop Scramble for Africa [2], nor Opium Wars and subsequent colonization of China. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dum_Diversas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dum_Diversas [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#Slavery_in_British_colonies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#S... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa
bildung 6y ago
> I’m always baffled by Buddhism getting such a free pass from otherwise perfectly sensible westerners. Romantization of the exotic certainly plays a role, but additionally there were projects like the CIA Tibet program: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program * https://www.historynet.com/cias-secret-war-in-tibet.htm https://www.historynet.com/cias-secret-war-in-tibet.htm
vekker 6y ago
Humans are always going to be humans. Governments will appropriate religious beliefs and buy out corrupt religious leaders as is convenient and beneficial for them. That's not unique to Buddhist countries. As for the teachings: you have to look at them for what they are. I personally find much more value in Buddhism than in any other religion or philosophy (barring perhaps stoicism, which has many similarities).
jsmonkey 6y ago
I fail to see this charity and kindness in practice, especially in case of modern Islam. The country which contains the most holy places of Islam has a reputation for treating its foreign workers like trash, and has some of the highest income inequality in the world. Their funding of hate preachers abroad isn't a very nice behaviour either. It's not just the teachings that matter, but the actual reality and practice. Unfortunately many of those with most power in Islamic world prefer hate over kindness. Historically, same has often been the case with Christianity as well.
- p_l 6y ago
  It's also a country intertwined in ruling level with a sect that is considered the most radically fundamentalist and considered "bad idea" even across many other Islamic factions.
  - jsmonkey 6y ago
    True. Unfortunately they have plenty of money, which has allowed the influence of this sect to grow in other parts of the world as well.
- foldr 6y ago
  >I fail to see this charity and kindness in practice, What about Zakat? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat That is a pretty concrete and practical example of kindness and charity.
  - jsmonkey 6y ago
    I wasn't aware of it, seems like a good practice indeed.
    - foldr 6y ago
      If you weren't aware of one of the basic tenets of Islam, then you might want to consider, say, reading the Wikipedia page on Islam before adding noise to discussions like these.
nabla9 6y ago
As a Zen Buddhist (and completely secular naturalist at the same time) who has practiced with the tradition and teachers for two decades I somewhat agree. To me Buddhism is two completely different things and I only belong to one of them. (1) Religion for 400 million people that is just like any other religion. Religion as social hierarchy and cultural phenomenon. (2) Spiritual practice. Something you do, not something you think or identify with. It's more like going to gym or eating healthy than reading scriptures. Social hierarchy is teacher/student level. You want to have teacher, but he should keep your own head. Just like you don't allow gym trainer to run your life outside the gym, teachers are just good at what they are good at. They have more practical experience. Zen/Chan Buddhism has long written record with teachers writing autobiographies that record how it really was in those "good old times". In every era, it seems, constant lament from teachers is that Buddhism is in decline, monks are lazy and seek only fame and status. As Buddhist practice is human activity, every human vice is known in Buddhist monasteries. Against this background strict discipline in remote training monasteries starts to make sense. It's harsh enough that bullshitters can't take it, but if you are there to train you thrive. Small list of current bad things happening in Buddhism: Myanmar and Sri Lanka have huge problems with supremacist movements where the leaders are Buddhist monks. Tibetan Buddhist tradition has problems with sexual abuse of young boys (and nuns) probably at the similar level as Catholic church.
- mtts 6y ago
  Thank you for this reply. I actually agree with you (except in not being Buddhist): we should differentiate between Buddhism the organized religion and Buddhism the spiritual practice. Unfortunately, too many people are only familiar with the latter - and only with a variant of the latter that is much cleaned up and stripped of its folksy roots and made palatable for Western consumption - and then transfer the positive feelings they have about that to the former.
- sorokod 6y ago
  The distinction between religion - the organization and religion - the spiritual practice can be applied to most religions. What makes Buddhism special?
japanoise 6y ago
> If you must do religion, why not Christianity or Islam? I'm amazed this aside isn't getting you downvoted. Have you been under a rock for the last 2000 years? The horrors of Abrahamic religion far outstrip anything Buddhism is responsible for.
- josinalvo 6y ago
  I have, apparently. Can you substantiate that claim? I never saw the death count per population of each religion and to know that one is higher than the other. Or the slave count per population. Was Christianity worse, or just larger?
- MustrumRidculle 6y ago
  The Soviet and Maoist precedents (among others) show that atheism can mass-murder as well as any other religion.
MustrumRidculle 6y ago
Societies organize and stabilize given their own environment, history and ethnic composition. I disagree with judging how people on the other side of the globe manage their lives and their beliefs, as long as they can do it on their own. If a traditional Tibetan saw American society, he could tell that they "live in a slave state, having to bear the burden of debt and interest for the most part of their lives" - because it may be unnatural for them. They would be quite astonished to see the amount of atheists. Promotion of humanism everywhere in the world is another piece of the occidental imperialism. It's useless to claim you are against racism and else if you do not understand that people from around the globe are perfectly right not sharing your set of values.
- belly_joe 6y ago
  Not sure why this is getting downvoted. It strikes me as the highest form of chauvinism to assume your own society has discovered the One True Ethics. Still, I think some conception of Western Human Rights should be universalized (like slavery is always bad, for example) but a lot of thought should go into what values are important enough to always impose on others.
aorth 6y ago
> So why we in the west should think that this is an especially enlightened religion is beyond me. If you must do religion, why not Christianity or Islam? At least these two make a point of encouraging charity and kindness towards others. The Prophet Muhammad owned, traded, and raped slaves according to the sayings and actions attributed to the Prophet and his companions (hadith), which is very highly regarded in the Islamic tradition (second only to the Qur'an). :\ https://sunnah.com/abudawud/20/70 https://sunnah.com/abudawud/20/70 https://sunnah.com/bukhari/51/28 https://sunnah.com/bukhari/51/28 https://sunnah.com/urn/1268350 https://sunnah.com/urn/1268350 https://sunnah.com/nasai/36/21 https://sunnah.com/nasai/36/21 https://sunnah.com/nasai/37/84 https://sunnah.com/nasai/37/84 https://sunnah.com/nasai/37/87 https://sunnah.com/nasai/37/87 https://sunnah.com/bukhari/95/17 https://sunnah.com/bukhari/95/17 Anyways, I'm not sure why this is on HN.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  > Anyways, I'm not sure why this is on HN. I guess it is interesting to people who aren't aware that atrocities were present in all societies, no matter what the official religion was. But I wonder if this could be a pro-Chinese source.
  - thomasz 6y ago
    Michael Parenti? No. He makes it pretty clear that he supports independence but not the restoration of the medieval social order.
- foobar_ 6y ago
  As a modern society we would like to assume that human sacrifice doesn't happen but just try to blaspheme a nation state and see how quickly people get ready with the pitch forks. The semantics have merely shifted. Rene Girard talks a lot about this. Projecting collective dissatisfaction onto others is how a society renews itself.
mlang23 6y ago
I can't say anything about Islam. But I made a point of reading parts of the Bible. And I was schocked, to be frank. It is xenophobic (only israel is loved by god, all others are apparently some unworth form of accidental life), misogynistic (cheating women and those that were discovered to be no virgin are to be stoned by more or less the whole village), and many more things I dont even want to mention or even think about. I am ashamed to be born a christian. What I have learnt in my excursions into religion is that I truely belief that all of them are fundamentally broken and have no right to exist in the 21st century. Humanity would be way better off if it finally managed to get rid of its very brutal and hate-ridden legacy.
- josinalvo 6y ago
  The jump from "they have a horrible history" to "they should all be abolished" is a but much, I think The history of the state is also nasty. The history of engineering is also not that glorious, given that it was mostly for war. You can even go to the history of writing... The question is: what each religion is doing, of harm and good, today. And what we expect they can do tomorrow. On those grounds, you might even be right. But the question is more complex. (but I agree: the bible does not fit with our values today at all)
  - mlang23 6y ago
    My point is that the bible (old and new testament) are still considered the basis of christianity. Priests and religious teachers still pick and choose stories from the old testament. And its not just the old testament. Ever read the book of revelations? Still wondering why Israel has a pretty hardcore military? Or, lets talk about the split-offs. Ever talked to a Seventh-day Adventist? Do you know what keeps them going? The book of revelations is what keeps them going. Because it promises them that all their enemies will be roasted by god at some point. Pretty fucked up as the fundamental driving force in a belief-system. My opinion still stands: All the major religions on this planet have such a broken legacy that all we can do is to get rid of them completely.
    - trasz 6y ago
dragonwriter 6y ago
> And this is not despite Buddhism but because of it. In all societies where it is dominant misfortunes such as being born poor (or worse) are seen as being justified somehow, leading to astonishingly callous mistreatment of the poor and unlucky This is very much historically true of places dominated by Christianity, and streams of Christianity still actively seek to advance this in the developed West, where it has faded somewhat largely due to secular economic developments associated with the weakening of Christianity, rather than due to Christianity itself. Sure, there have been streams within Christianity working against it, but they've always been working against the broader society even where Christianity has unquestioned dominance.
pritovido 6y ago
Most of the Wealth the West has comes from industrialization, and industrialization required a lot of capital in order to happen. It happened in England powered from the money of traffic of slaves in the Atlantic. Those slaves went to the South of the US and also created lots of capital producing cotton that was very expensive at the time. That capital went into machines which powered industrialization too in the North of the US. After that the US expanded to the West exterminating the native population. The native did not agreed on new cultivation methods that made their buffaloes and bison population stagnate. In Germany they tried to copy the Americans but exterminating people at the East instead of the West (the "Lebensraum"). Japan tried to do the same "expanding"(and exterminating) to surrounding Asian countries. In theory those that exterminated the native populations in the US and had black slaves were Christians. Most of the German population supported Hitler and they were(in theory) Christians. It is human behavior, humans are predators and they predate other animals or Humans from other tribes. Religion does not remove our canine and incisors teeth. Our nature remains there and it could be dangerous.
timwaagh 6y ago
A lot of things that came from Buddhism have found appeal among the west and especially in progressive/liberal circles. Especially among people who are not otherwise religious. The Dalai lama is even regarded as a hero. It becomes difficult to categorically reject something when you take inspiration from it at the same time.
alexmingoia 6y ago
As someone living in Myanmar (Burma) nobody justifies being poor with Buddhism. > wholesale enslavement and transport of complete populations such as in Thailand not too long ago and in present day Burma. Nobody is being enslaved because of Buddhism in present day Myanmar. That’s ridiculous. The violence here has very little to do with religion. None of the ethnic independence armies are theological (like ISIS for example). Nobody is picking up guns because they read some sutras. The emperor that had a huge influence marrying Buddhism with government in Myanmar and Thailand and who at one time ruled the Indian subcontinent, Ashoka the Great, abolished the slave trade (3rd century BCE). Slavery was practiced throughout the subcontinent before Buddhism became intertwined with the state.
- kranner 6y ago
  The same Ashoka continued to slaughter en masse people who seemed to disagree with him, even after his conversion to Buddhism and taking up ahimsa (nonviolence) as a governing principle [1]. Except after his conversion he restricted the genocide to non-Buddhists. Though this may have been an improvement from before his conversion to Buddhism when he executed or enslaved the entire population of Kalinga [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashokavadana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashokavadana > Ashokavadana mentions two incidents of Ashoka turning towards violence after adopting Buddhism. In one instance, a non-Buddhist in Pundravardhana drew a picture showing the Buddha bowing at the feet of Nirgrantha Jnatiputra (identified with Mahavira, the founder of Jainism). On complaint from a Buddhist devotee, Ashoka issued an order to arrest him, and subsequently, another order to kill all the Ajivikas in Pundravardhana. Around 18,000 followers of the Ajivika sect were executed as a result of this order. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalinga_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalinga_War
  - alexmingoia 6y ago
    Yes, he was a warring bloodthirsty emperor that used the popular religion at the time to consolidate his power. Like most other empires on the planet two thousand years ago. I’m not sure what that is supposed to prove about Buddhism in particular.
netcan 6y ago
I agree about the naive free pass buddhism gets from those critical of christianity. Ultimately though, religions tend to develop similar memes regardless of differences in philosophy or theology. "Accept your misery, peasant" is a highly recurring meme. It's not hard to find grounds for it in the christian gospels. Victorian anglicans printed prayer books for household maids enforcing exactly this message. These were very young girls sent (sometimes sold) from villages to the cities. Many tried to escape. Religion was used as a chain. The liturgical themes in these prayers trace back to aurelian stoicism. That nasty work (meditations) was highly influential on christianity. Originally intended to help the upper crust accept their misery, it's been recycled for millenia to help the truly miserable to obey their masters and accept their masters' cruelty... literally and in those words.^ This is just one small example of christianity re-enforcing slavery, meekness & servitude. Modern "secular religions" entirely grounded in liberty and equality develop these themes too. 20th century communism(s), objectivism, etc. They all have (had?) ways of justifying "astonishingly callous mistreatment of the poor and unlucky." It doesn't seem to matter what philosophy you build from, it ends up in the same place. Western philosophies of racism, imperialism & monarchy had both religious and secular justifications. The abolitionists also had both religious and secular justifications. "Fundamentalism" is generally accepted as bad, dangerous and morally corrupting by many westerners today. Very few take the next logical step: Fundamentals don't matter. It doesn't matter what Jesus said, what the philosophy says, etc. Those things don't determine how the religion is practiced or what the operative day-to-day beliefs are. ^https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/a-pamphlet-for-servants https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/a-pamphlet-for-servants
enugu 6y ago
OTOH, I am surprised that a comment like this is first on the page. Lets look at some of your points > 'not despite Buddhism but because of it.' This is your main thesis and to support this you say - > At least these two make a point of encouraging charity and kindness towards others. Directly, (not subtly), implying that Buddhism does not do this. A basic search would give you something like the basic virtues of Buddhist teachings - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmavihara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmavihara and how these virtues are popularized via stories where the protagonist gives up lives to save tiger cubs or say, the story of Angulimala. Note that there is no condemnation of non-believers to eternal hell - a belief which has caused tremendous violence and looks at lot of cultures as essentially devil's work- a belief is still not repudiated today (it cant as it is a core doctrine). Also, modern industrialized societies are still having a hard time accepting an elementary insight that animals can suffer intensely and creating montrosities where this is noted quite early in Buddhist and similar traditions. > misfortunes such as being born poor (or worse) are seen as being justified somehow Another point you bring up is karma and the word you use is 'justified'. When a thief or a killer attacks and causes suffering to a Buddhist, they might take it as the result of past bad karma, but that doesnt make the action 'justified'. Indeed, that action itself generates bad karma. A ruler inflicting suffering on people also gets bad karma. The notion that people are fatalistic about misfortune is false can be seen at multiple levels - Firstly, at the whole point of the tradition itself is to overcome karma, secondly, popular cultures are filled with practices aimed at changing karma. At the political level, try reading James Scott on how peasants resisted states which became tyrannical https://www.amazon.com/Art-Not-Being-Governed-Anarchist/dp/0300169175 https://www.amazon.com/Art-Not-Being-Governed-Anarchist/dp/0... A more subtle but important point is that 'justification' is bringing in a different framework - the notion of normative ethics which is inherited from Christianity - whereas the concept of karma is seen more like a natural property like a bodily sickness.
- mtts 6y ago
  Interesting that you bring up that James Scott book because that paints exactly the unflattering picture of Buddhist states I’m talking about: rice growing states in the valleys waging war on their neighbors and capturing their populations wholesale to put them to work (a practice that is very much still current in Burma where the military occupies villages in the periphery and forces everyone to work, either in the fields or in factories that work for companies like Pepsi). This kind of violence hasn’t been common in other parts of the world for centuries. It’s also a phenomenon that is distinct to states in South East Asia - and, in fact, to the Buddhist states in South East Asia ( it was not practiced in what is now Malaysia in Indonesia - which are now Muslim and before that practiced a religion that mostly resembles Hinduism).
DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
Buddhism is romanticized in the West for the same reason Christianity is becoming so popular in China: it's easy to romanticize other people's superstition. In the West, people are very familiar with Christianity. It's mundane, and a good portion of the population views it as backwards. But most people have no idea about Buddhism and what role it has played in Asian societies. In China, people are exposed to Buddhism all the time, and it's not exotic in any way. But many people in China view Christianity as some sort of trendy Western religion, and don't know how it's viewed in the West. Other people's superstition isn't laden with the same baggage as one's own society's superstition.

by mtts 6y ago

ArtDev 6y ago

Well they certainly aren't fairing very well under the iron fist of China either.

trasz 6y ago
[citation needed]. Compared to their previous situation, of course.
- indigo945 6y ago
  The thing with feudal Tibet was that the monks didn't actually interfere with the average Tibetan's life too much. Unlike authoritarian China, dissenters in Tibet were by and large tolerated. For example, the newspaper Tibet Mirror was widely circulated in Tibet before the Chinese invasion, particularly among the ruling clerical strata, despite propagating Christian ideas and calling for political reform. That stopped very quickly after 1950.
  - trasz 6y ago
    Another thing largely tolerated in pre-Chinese Tibet was slavery. Which also stopped very quickly after 1950. There are priorities. Chinese broke something of a lesser priority (free press), while providing something of a much higher priority (abolition of slavery).
    - aspenmayer 6y ago
      It’s funny that in America we got those values inverted - freedom of the press first, and equality for other races and cultures much later. Both China and America are still dealing with their legacies of human rights violations, which continue in both countries today.
    - sbmthakur 6y ago
      True but that came at the cost of being subservient to the CCP.
- ginko 6y ago
  I don't think comparing 1950 feudal Tibet to modern day Tibet under Chinese rule is entirely fair. The assumption being that an independent Tibet wouldn't have changed at all in the last 70 years.
  - trasz 6y ago
    They were feudal country in the fifties. That suggests being rather slow at social changes. Also, "figures show that since the early 1960s, the Tibetan population has been increasing, probably for the first time for centuries" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Tibet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Tibet).
    - ginko 6y ago
      My guess is that an independent Tibet would have developed at about the same pace as neighboring Bhutan, which abolished slavery in 1958 and turned into a constitutional monarchy in 2005. There are still human rights issues in Bhutan, but it's a far cry from where they were 70 years ago.
      - trasz 6y ago
        Okay. Is there some comparison of living conditions between modern day Bhutan and Tibet?
        ginko 6y ago
        I guess such comparisons are hard to make and bound to be subjective. According to [1] Bhutan's HDI was 6.17 in 2018, while according to [2] the regional HDI of Tibet was 5.85. So at the very least they're not particularly far apart from each other. [1] http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/BTN http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/BTN [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisions_of_Greater_China_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisio...
  - greencore 6y ago
bildung 6y ago
You mean beside not getting raped by the feudal lords anymore, the end of punishments like gouging out eyes and severing hamstrings, the doubling of life expectancy, access to healthcare and education? I'm all for criticising lack of democratic progress in China, but Tibet really is a bad argument for that.
- watwut 6y ago
  The period in question involves cultural revolution period. That was not exactly a small thing nor a nice thing.

tasogare 6y ago

It’s especially glaring in the Tibet case where the 20% monks living in temples exploit the rest of the country and redirect the wealth towards them. I’ve read numbers in an academic book, that was astonishing. The system is also a theocracy. While not as bad as other living examples, this is clearly not as "enlightened" form of government than the pop-culture would like us to think. I disagree on your point about Islam though. Islam encourages charity within it’s own community only. For non believers it encourages the holy war (jihad), which causes many problems. In this case, it’s indeed better for a country to have bouddhism than islam as state religion, from the point of view of neighbors if not muslim themselves.

cygnusxvega 6y ago
This is actually not true and another common misconception. Islam does not encourage Jihad as a form or spreading the religon, that word is consistently mistranslated. Islam specifically encourages giving charity to the most needy, AND starts with your own community and family and works outwards to the larger good and society. The same Christian beliefs of taking care of your neighbors. Islam also encourages in enjoining in good wherever you find it. Muslims in America donate to local food banks and soup kitchens. You clearly are just repeating what the current false narrative is and have little understandinf of the religon. If you made the point that people dont practice the way the religon is taught I might agree, but this is just false.
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  I spent 5 years living as a minority white person in a majority Middle Eastern area (in a western country). My take on it is as follows: Muslims in the west are literally like white Christians. Some are culturally Muslim but don't practise the faith. Others are strongly Muslim. Some are amazing people and some are bigoted. Among the religious ones you have the ones who use religion to do good and those who use it as an excuse to be bigots. It's the exact same I see in white people. I would take my son, aged 3-4, into a really dodgy barber (this whole area is low socioeconomic). Drug dealers and unsavoury characters. My little blond-haired, blue-eyed son and me in a sea of black hair. And we would be treated exactly as what we were, a father taking his son for a haircut. They would give him a lollipop and call my daughter over to make sure she got one too.

goto11 6y ago

> If you must do religion, why not Christianity or Islam? At least these two make a point of encouraging charity and kindness towards others. You are comparing the historical reality of one religion to the ideals of other religions. In such a comparison the ideals will always look better. If you compare the ideals of Buddhism with the historical reality of Christianity and Islam (war, slavery, genocide etc.) I'm sure Buddhism will look better. You will typically see people compare the ideals of their own religion with the realities of other religions and come to the conclusion that their own religion is best. The imperfect reality is explained by flawed people misunderstanding or misusing the religion, while the real-world problems of other religions is attributed to faults in the religion itself.

kinleyd 6y ago
Spot on.
arethuza 6y ago
Or you can go one step further and conclude that all religions (and indeed anything that is based on non-scientific dogmatic infallibility like communism or Austrian economics) are all a bit wanting.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >and indeed anything that is based on non-scientific dogmatic infallibility There's no such thing as a scientific ethical system. Science tells us how and why the universe behaves as it does, it cannot make a judgement about what the world should be. This has been known since antiquity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    So what is the realistic alternative - all I'm stating is that I get deeply suspicious when a political system is based on beliefs that you are not even allowed to question.

kranner 6y ago

> If you must do religion, why not Christianity or Islam? At least these two make a point of encouraging charity and kindness towards others. If we're only talking about what religions superficially encourage, Tibetan Buddhism also encourages charity and compassion towards all beings, endlessly extolling the Bodhisattva ideal. The religion in theory is different from the religious state with living, breathing humans in charge.

danieldk 6y ago
The religion in theory is different from the religious state with living, breathing humans in charge. Indeed. I practiced Buddhist meditation for some years and was very interested in Buddhism. However, what I always found difficult was the relation between teachers and students. On the one hand, someone who has many years of meditation experience is better at detecting typical pitfalls during practice and can help people move forward. On the other hand, this sometimes results in a strong division between laypeople and monks/teachers (typically ex-monks). A subset of teachers use their perceived religious authority this to go on power trips, or worse, physically abuse people. Once religion becomes organized it becomes a very powerful tool to subject people.
bulla 6y ago
Recommended Reading: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0863V3617 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0863V3617

toshk 6y ago

Spending a lot of time with Tibetan Buddhism it led me to conclude our Western view on human rights is very very special and not natural at all. We should really cherish it. It is probably, and often, tied to the evolution of Christianity and Western humanism that led to a special view on the rights of the individual. Which for instance led to the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. Which to us is baffling someone even ever though slavery was ok. Yet it was the standard for millennia. When you read a summary of the Buddhist doctrine this Western view of individuality seems to fit perfect. Yet the cultures housing buddhism didn't yet seem to have evolved to support this view of the individual. This might have something to do with the fact Buddhism started in a more complex society in India and then moved to more tribal places like Tibet. Yes India had a feudal type of cast system, but also had a very high level of philosophy. This is an argument that's also sometimes made by scholars to explain certain differences between the word of Jesus and the more tribal verses of Mohammed. Coming back to Tibet, even though it was far from perfect, there a still gems to be found in Tibetan Buddhism. And to give them some credit there have definitely been attempts to reform in Tibet. Not every monastery was about politics, some teachers created their monasteries far away in hard to reach places to avoid the politics. For centuries the Tibetan writers already speak of dark times, so at least a few were aware.

artem247 6y ago
I would disagree with the point of "evolution of views on individuality" effect on slavery. After fall of Roman Empire slavery was in a serious decline in western kingdoms and after some time in Bysantium and Eastern Europe too. Slavery became a bit more legal in XV century [0], and the peak of slavery (involving Christians) came on XVII century[1], somehow co-existing with those ideas of human rights, freedom, secular state and so on. Again slavery could have been abolished due to economic reasons in XIX century. For example humanism didn't stop Scramble for Africa [2], nor Opium Wars and subsequent colonization of China. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dum_Diversas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dum_Diversas [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#Slavery_in_British_colonies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#S... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa

bildung 6y ago

> I’m always baffled by Buddhism getting such a free pass from otherwise perfectly sensible westerners. Romantization of the exotic certainly plays a role, but additionally there were projects like the CIA Tibet program: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program * https://www.historynet.com/cias-secret-war-in-tibet.htm https://www.historynet.com/cias-secret-war-in-tibet.htm

vekker 6y ago

Humans are always going to be humans. Governments will appropriate religious beliefs and buy out corrupt religious leaders as is convenient and beneficial for them. That's not unique to Buddhist countries. As for the teachings: you have to look at them for what they are. I personally find much more value in Buddhism than in any other religion or philosophy (barring perhaps stoicism, which has many similarities).

jsmonkey 6y ago

I fail to see this charity and kindness in practice, especially in case of modern Islam. The country which contains the most holy places of Islam has a reputation for treating its foreign workers like trash, and has some of the highest income inequality in the world. Their funding of hate preachers abroad isn't a very nice behaviour either. It's not just the teachings that matter, but the actual reality and practice. Unfortunately many of those with most power in Islamic world prefer hate over kindness. Historically, same has often been the case with Christianity as well.

p_l 6y ago
It's also a country intertwined in ruling level with a sect that is considered the most radically fundamentalist and considered "bad idea" even across many other Islamic factions.
- jsmonkey 6y ago
  True. Unfortunately they have plenty of money, which has allowed the influence of this sect to grow in other parts of the world as well.
foldr 6y ago
>I fail to see this charity and kindness in practice, What about Zakat? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat That is a pretty concrete and practical example of kindness and charity.
- jsmonkey 6y ago
  I wasn't aware of it, seems like a good practice indeed.
  - foldr 6y ago
    If you weren't aware of one of the basic tenets of Islam, then you might want to consider, say, reading the Wikipedia page on Islam before adding noise to discussions like these.

nabla9 6y ago

As a Zen Buddhist (and completely secular naturalist at the same time) who has practiced with the tradition and teachers for two decades I somewhat agree. To me Buddhism is two completely different things and I only belong to one of them. (1) Religion for 400 million people that is just like any other religion. Religion as social hierarchy and cultural phenomenon. (2) Spiritual practice. Something you do, not something you think or identify with. It's more like going to gym or eating healthy than reading scriptures. Social hierarchy is teacher/student level. You want to have teacher, but he should keep your own head. Just like you don't allow gym trainer to run your life outside the gym, teachers are just good at what they are good at. They have more practical experience. Zen/Chan Buddhism has long written record with teachers writing autobiographies that record how it really was in those "good old times". In every era, it seems, constant lament from teachers is that Buddhism is in decline, monks are lazy and seek only fame and status. As Buddhist practice is human activity, every human vice is known in Buddhist monasteries. Against this background strict discipline in remote training monasteries starts to make sense. It's harsh enough that bullshitters can't take it, but if you are there to train you thrive. Small list of current bad things happening in Buddhism: Myanmar and Sri Lanka have huge problems with supremacist movements where the leaders are Buddhist monks. Tibetan Buddhist tradition has problems with sexual abuse of young boys (and nuns) probably at the similar level as Catholic church.

mtts 6y ago
Thank you for this reply. I actually agree with you (except in not being Buddhist): we should differentiate between Buddhism the organized religion and Buddhism the spiritual practice. Unfortunately, too many people are only familiar with the latter - and only with a variant of the latter that is much cleaned up and stripped of its folksy roots and made palatable for Western consumption - and then transfer the positive feelings they have about that to the former.
sorokod 6y ago
The distinction between religion - the organization and religion - the spiritual practice can be applied to most religions. What makes Buddhism special?

japanoise 6y ago

> If you must do religion, why not Christianity or Islam? I'm amazed this aside isn't getting you downvoted. Have you been under a rock for the last 2000 years? The horrors of Abrahamic religion far outstrip anything Buddhism is responsible for.

josinalvo 6y ago
I have, apparently. Can you substantiate that claim? I never saw the death count per population of each religion and to know that one is higher than the other. Or the slave count per population. Was Christianity worse, or just larger?
MustrumRidculle 6y ago
The Soviet and Maoist precedents (among others) show that atheism can mass-murder as well as any other religion.

MustrumRidculle 6y ago

Societies organize and stabilize given their own environment, history and ethnic composition. I disagree with judging how people on the other side of the globe manage their lives and their beliefs, as long as they can do it on their own. If a traditional Tibetan saw American society, he could tell that they "live in a slave state, having to bear the burden of debt and interest for the most part of their lives" - because it may be unnatural for them. They would be quite astonished to see the amount of atheists. Promotion of humanism everywhere in the world is another piece of the occidental imperialism. It's useless to claim you are against racism and else if you do not understand that people from around the globe are perfectly right not sharing your set of values.

belly_joe 6y ago
Not sure why this is getting downvoted. It strikes me as the highest form of chauvinism to assume your own society has discovered the One True Ethics. Still, I think some conception of Western Human Rights should be universalized (like slavery is always bad, for example) but a lot of thought should go into what values are important enough to always impose on others.

aorth 6y ago

> So why we in the west should think that this is an especially enlightened religion is beyond me. If you must do religion, why not Christianity or Islam? At least these two make a point of encouraging charity and kindness towards others. The Prophet Muhammad owned, traded, and raped slaves according to the sayings and actions attributed to the Prophet and his companions (hadith), which is very highly regarded in the Islamic tradition (second only to the Qur'an). :\ https://sunnah.com/abudawud/20/70 https://sunnah.com/abudawud/20/70 https://sunnah.com/bukhari/51/28 https://sunnah.com/bukhari/51/28 https://sunnah.com/urn/1268350 https://sunnah.com/urn/1268350 https://sunnah.com/nasai/36/21 https://sunnah.com/nasai/36/21 https://sunnah.com/nasai/37/84 https://sunnah.com/nasai/37/84 https://sunnah.com/nasai/37/87 https://sunnah.com/nasai/37/87 https://sunnah.com/bukhari/95/17 https://sunnah.com/bukhari/95/17 Anyways, I'm not sure why this is on HN.

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
> Anyways, I'm not sure why this is on HN. I guess it is interesting to people who aren't aware that atrocities were present in all societies, no matter what the official religion was. But I wonder if this could be a pro-Chinese source.
- thomasz 6y ago
  Michael Parenti? No. He makes it pretty clear that he supports independence but not the restoration of the medieval social order.
foobar_ 6y ago
As a modern society we would like to assume that human sacrifice doesn't happen but just try to blaspheme a nation state and see how quickly people get ready with the pitch forks. The semantics have merely shifted. Rene Girard talks a lot about this. Projecting collective dissatisfaction onto others is how a society renews itself.

mlang23 6y ago

I can't say anything about Islam. But I made a point of reading parts of the Bible. And I was schocked, to be frank. It is xenophobic (only israel is loved by god, all others are apparently some unworth form of accidental life), misogynistic (cheating women and those that were discovered to be no virgin are to be stoned by more or less the whole village), and many more things I dont even want to mention or even think about. I am ashamed to be born a christian. What I have learnt in my excursions into religion is that I truely belief that all of them are fundamentally broken and have no right to exist in the 21st century. Humanity would be way better off if it finally managed to get rid of its very brutal and hate-ridden legacy.

josinalvo 6y ago
The jump from "they have a horrible history" to "they should all be abolished" is a but much, I think The history of the state is also nasty. The history of engineering is also not that glorious, given that it was mostly for war. You can even go to the history of writing... The question is: what each religion is doing, of harm and good, today. And what we expect they can do tomorrow. On those grounds, you might even be right. But the question is more complex. (but I agree: the bible does not fit with our values today at all)
- mlang23 6y ago
  My point is that the bible (old and new testament) are still considered the basis of christianity. Priests and religious teachers still pick and choose stories from the old testament. And its not just the old testament. Ever read the book of revelations? Still wondering why Israel has a pretty hardcore military? Or, lets talk about the split-offs. Ever talked to a Seventh-day Adventist? Do you know what keeps them going? The book of revelations is what keeps them going. Because it promises them that all their enemies will be roasted by god at some point. Pretty fucked up as the fundamental driving force in a belief-system. My opinion still stands: All the major religions on this planet have such a broken legacy that all we can do is to get rid of them completely.
  - trasz 6y ago

dragonwriter 6y ago

> And this is not despite Buddhism but because of it. In all societies where it is dominant misfortunes such as being born poor (or worse) are seen as being justified somehow, leading to astonishingly callous mistreatment of the poor and unlucky This is very much historically true of places dominated by Christianity, and streams of Christianity still actively seek to advance this in the developed West, where it has faded somewhat largely due to secular economic developments associated with the weakening of Christianity, rather than due to Christianity itself. Sure, there have been streams within Christianity working against it, but they've always been working against the broader society even where Christianity has unquestioned dominance.

pritovido 6y ago

Most of the Wealth the West has comes from industrialization, and industrialization required a lot of capital in order to happen. It happened in England powered from the money of traffic of slaves in the Atlantic. Those slaves went to the South of the US and also created lots of capital producing cotton that was very expensive at the time. That capital went into machines which powered industrialization too in the North of the US. After that the US expanded to the West exterminating the native population. The native did not agreed on new cultivation methods that made their buffaloes and bison population stagnate. In Germany they tried to copy the Americans but exterminating people at the East instead of the West (the "Lebensraum"). Japan tried to do the same "expanding"(and exterminating) to surrounding Asian countries. In theory those that exterminated the native populations in the US and had black slaves were Christians. Most of the German population supported Hitler and they were(in theory) Christians. It is human behavior, humans are predators and they predate other animals or Humans from other tribes. Religion does not remove our canine and incisors teeth. Our nature remains there and it could be dangerous.

timwaagh 6y ago

A lot of things that came from Buddhism have found appeal among the west and especially in progressive/liberal circles. Especially among people who are not otherwise religious. The Dalai lama is even regarded as a hero. It becomes difficult to categorically reject something when you take inspiration from it at the same time.

alexmingoia 6y ago

As someone living in Myanmar (Burma) nobody justifies being poor with Buddhism. > wholesale enslavement and transport of complete populations such as in Thailand not too long ago and in present day Burma. Nobody is being enslaved because of Buddhism in present day Myanmar. That’s ridiculous. The violence here has very little to do with religion. None of the ethnic independence armies are theological (like ISIS for example). Nobody is picking up guns because they read some sutras. The emperor that had a huge influence marrying Buddhism with government in Myanmar and Thailand and who at one time ruled the Indian subcontinent, Ashoka the Great, abolished the slave trade (3rd century BCE). Slavery was practiced throughout the subcontinent before Buddhism became intertwined with the state.

kranner 6y ago
The same Ashoka continued to slaughter en masse people who seemed to disagree with him, even after his conversion to Buddhism and taking up ahimsa (nonviolence) as a governing principle [1]. Except after his conversion he restricted the genocide to non-Buddhists. Though this may have been an improvement from before his conversion to Buddhism when he executed or enslaved the entire population of Kalinga [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashokavadana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashokavadana > Ashokavadana mentions two incidents of Ashoka turning towards violence after adopting Buddhism. In one instance, a non-Buddhist in Pundravardhana drew a picture showing the Buddha bowing at the feet of Nirgrantha Jnatiputra (identified with Mahavira, the founder of Jainism). On complaint from a Buddhist devotee, Ashoka issued an order to arrest him, and subsequently, another order to kill all the Ajivikas in Pundravardhana. Around 18,000 followers of the Ajivika sect were executed as a result of this order. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalinga_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalinga_War
- alexmingoia 6y ago
  Yes, he was a warring bloodthirsty emperor that used the popular religion at the time to consolidate his power. Like most other empires on the planet two thousand years ago. I’m not sure what that is supposed to prove about Buddhism in particular.

netcan 6y ago

I agree about the naive free pass buddhism gets from those critical of christianity. Ultimately though, religions tend to develop similar memes regardless of differences in philosophy or theology. "Accept your misery, peasant" is a highly recurring meme. It's not hard to find grounds for it in the christian gospels. Victorian anglicans printed prayer books for household maids enforcing exactly this message. These were very young girls sent (sometimes sold) from villages to the cities. Many tried to escape. Religion was used as a chain. The liturgical themes in these prayers trace back to aurelian stoicism. That nasty work (meditations) was highly influential on christianity. Originally intended to help the upper crust accept their misery, it's been recycled for millenia to help the truly miserable to obey their masters and accept their masters' cruelty... literally and in those words.^ This is just one small example of christianity re-enforcing slavery, meekness & servitude. Modern "secular religions" entirely grounded in liberty and equality develop these themes too. 20th century communism(s), objectivism, etc. They all have (had?) ways of justifying "astonishingly callous mistreatment of the poor and unlucky." It doesn't seem to matter what philosophy you build from, it ends up in the same place. Western philosophies of racism, imperialism & monarchy had both religious and secular justifications. The abolitionists also had both religious and secular justifications. "Fundamentalism" is generally accepted as bad, dangerous and morally corrupting by many westerners today. Very few take the next logical step: Fundamentals don't matter. It doesn't matter what Jesus said, what the philosophy says, etc. Those things don't determine how the religion is practiced or what the operative day-to-day beliefs are. ^https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/a-pamphlet-for-servants https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/a-pamphlet-for-servants

enugu 6y ago

OTOH, I am surprised that a comment like this is first on the page. Lets look at some of your points > 'not despite Buddhism but because of it.' This is your main thesis and to support this you say - > At least these two make a point of encouraging charity and kindness towards others. Directly, (not subtly), implying that Buddhism does not do this. A basic search would give you something like the basic virtues of Buddhist teachings - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmavihara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmavihara and how these virtues are popularized via stories where the protagonist gives up lives to save tiger cubs or say, the story of Angulimala. Note that there is no condemnation of non-believers to eternal hell - a belief which has caused tremendous violence and looks at lot of cultures as essentially devil's work- a belief is still not repudiated today (it cant as it is a core doctrine). Also, modern industrialized societies are still having a hard time accepting an elementary insight that animals can suffer intensely and creating montrosities where this is noted quite early in Buddhist and similar traditions. > misfortunes such as being born poor (or worse) are seen as being justified somehow Another point you bring up is karma and the word you use is 'justified'. When a thief or a killer attacks and causes suffering to a Buddhist, they might take it as the result of past bad karma, but that doesnt make the action 'justified'. Indeed, that action itself generates bad karma. A ruler inflicting suffering on people also gets bad karma. The notion that people are fatalistic about misfortune is false can be seen at multiple levels - Firstly, at the whole point of the tradition itself is to overcome karma, secondly, popular cultures are filled with practices aimed at changing karma. At the political level, try reading James Scott on how peasants resisted states which became tyrannical https://www.amazon.com/Art-Not-Being-Governed-Anarchist/dp/0300169175 https://www.amazon.com/Art-Not-Being-Governed-Anarchist/dp/0... A more subtle but important point is that 'justification' is bringing in a different framework - the notion of normative ethics which is inherited from Christianity - whereas the concept of karma is seen more like a natural property like a bodily sickness.

mtts 6y ago
Interesting that you bring up that James Scott book because that paints exactly the unflattering picture of Buddhist states I’m talking about: rice growing states in the valleys waging war on their neighbors and capturing their populations wholesale to put them to work (a practice that is very much still current in Burma where the military occupies villages in the periphery and forces everyone to work, either in the fields or in factories that work for companies like Pepsi). This kind of violence hasn’t been common in other parts of the world for centuries. It’s also a phenomenon that is distinct to states in South East Asia - and, in fact, to the Buddhist states in South East Asia ( it was not practiced in what is now Malaysia in Indonesia - which are now Muslim and before that practiced a religion that mostly resembles Hinduism).

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago

Buddhism is romanticized in the West for the same reason Christianity is becoming so popular in China: it's easy to romanticize other people's superstition. In the West, people are very familiar with Christianity. It's mundane, and a good portion of the population views it as backwards. But most people have no idea about Buddhism and what role it has played in Asian societies. In China, people are exposed to Buddhism all the time, and it's not exotic in any way. But many people in China view Christianity as some sort of trendy Western religion, and don't know how it's viewed in the West. Other people's superstition isn't laden with the same baggage as one's own society's superstition.