Killing The Buddha | Hacker News Reader

Killing The Buddha

samharris.org

44 pointstokenadult15 comments

Buddhist philosophy without the religion part is actually allowed in East Asia. You can claim to be interested in purely Buddhist philosophy and not the religion here without any problems, and there are experts and communities in such too. Nobody gets offended by that. The religion part is kept for the masses, and is considered a choice.

I suspect that, since Buddhism is relatively new to the West (and mostly Zen Buddism?), the religion part is naturally more dominant. The Buddhist philosophy/religion duality will likely develop in the West too one day. It just takes time.

Why on earth is this on the front page of Hacker News? Every day this site seems further and further away from any meaningful focus. If I wanted to read Reddit I'd read Reddit.

At the end of the day, we have to recognize the fact that for a large section of humanity, it is far more comfortable to surrender part of your free will to some form of authority, rather than take responsibility for our thoughts and actions. If not religion, it would be something else, e.g. pseudosciences like homeopathy.

I don't think Siddhārtha Gautama, Confucius, et al, wanted their teachings to be institutionalized into meaningless doctrines and dogmas.

Killing the Buddha has a second deeper meaning beyond Buddha is not sacred: to detach from all past teachers / buddhas.

Buddhism (at least the Zen Buddhism tradition I am learning) teaches one to detach from all things. This is part of opening the mind and experiencing things as they are and not through one's misconceptions.

So eventually a student masters this and all other teachings by his masters and all past buddhas. At this point the student must detach even from these buddhas.

So if you meet the Buddha? Strike him down! You have no need of him anymore.

The Buddha you meet on the road is not the one you're looking for.

Consider the koan:

    Does a dog have Buddha-nature?
    This is the most serious question of all.
    If you answer yes or no 
    You lose your own Buddha-nature.

What I got from this one is that the dog question is meaningless until you can answer the real questions it implies: "Do I have the Buddha-nature?", and "Does such a thing actually exist at all?"

One thing I like about John Kabat-Zinn's meditation instructions is that, while firmly rooted in Buddhism, he uses the techniques and insights without religious undertones. This text seems to advocate the same way. This was very helpful for me, willing to get the benefits of meditation but not looking for a religion.

'Given the degree to which religion still inspires human conflict, and impedes genuine inquiry, I believe that merely being a self-described “Buddhist” is to be complicit in the world’s violence and ignorance to an unacceptable degree.'

This is why these guys find it so hard to be taken seriously. Oh, you're a Buddhist? So you belong to a tradition which has certain religious aspects, and you have done nothing to disassociate yourself from the rest of the religions of the world. Sounds pretty violent to me.

Sam Harris is one of these "new atheists" that take a hard anti-theistic stance. Religions tend to have a fundamentalist core that is intolerant of any belief that does not fit their dogma. The idea is that even moderates and other more casual observers of a religion tacitly support that religions fundamentalist core.

It's a sound argument but there are two main barriers of acceptance. First the anti-theists do not acknowledge that religious beliefs (and indeed many unfounded beliefs) are rational. Religious people are not crazy or uninformed. This is a separate issue from having an inconsistent and / or scientifically unfounded belief system.

Second, the anti-theists do not provide much of an alternative. Dawkins seems to say, you guys are obviously nuts, so you must see that you simply have to adopt my world view. It's off putting.

Anyway I've gone from bemused to agnostic to naturalist (a way of saying "atheist" without mentioning theism). I quite enjoy reading these authors ... I just don't see how they'll affect a change.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "that religious beliefs (and indeed many unfounded beliefs) are rational". How can a belief be unfounded, yet rational?

It depends a lot on how you define those words. Some people would consider that a contradiction in terms.

If all you want are true but unprovable statements, though, look no further than Godel.

  > The idea is that even moderates and other more casual observers of
  > a religion tacitly support that religions fundamentalist core.

Personally, I'd like to see the violent, fundamentalist core of Buddhism, as I've never heard of, nor encountered such a thing.

(Note, that I don't count the violence attributed to monks in SE Asia under oppressive regimes. Fighting for your right to practice beliefs has more to do with fighting for freedom, than it does in trying to declare a 'victor' between religions.)

you have done nothing to disassociate yourself from the rest of the religions of the world. Sounds pretty violent to me.

This makes no sense to me. Have you studied Buddhism? Violent? No dissociation? Read anything the Dalai Lama has written?

I think he's being sarcastic.

The great irony is that if you believe what the Buddha actually said about religion and its trappings, you should shun it.

the article reads as an appeal to anti-religious bigotry.

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