Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation
guernicamag.com
guernicamag.com
She writes from a race-essentialist framing to a degree and that drives me crazy.
"white Americans" "white Westerners" x6
There's a sort of cultural appropriation shame being layered here---as if it's bad to have light skin and be interested in Buddhism, or adapt Buddhism to your existing worldview.
If it were non-white people who predominantly led this movement in the US, she would be praising their adaptability as they syncretized a religion to meet their needs.
And are there really no black or latino or asian practitioners of this kind of Buddhism? Of course there are.
There's a "cool" factor of foregrounding race these days and I don't think it's healthy. Westernized Buddhism isn't exclusive to any race, nor is being "Western". Why reinforce the lines between racial categories like this, further reifying them?
That said, I appreciate the critique of corporation-as-organized-religion. The decline in institutional religion in America has left exactly the void that is being filled here, but with probably more fucked up motives than your typical church. At least when you would leave your employment, you wouldn't get kicked out of your congregation. But if your employment _is_ your "congregation"...
Separation of church and work might not be a bad principle.
* it may have actually been reacting first to Zoroastrianism and its idea that the absolute Truth and Lie can be known: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691176321/gr...
* even if not, then it was either a reaction against Brahmanism (https://ahandfulofleaves.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/how-bud... (PDF)), or at the very least an independent development: https://www.academia.edu/63732680/Early_Buddhism_and_its_Rel...
> We come to the conclusion that early Buddhism as a whole has developed independently from Brahmanism, with selective influences from Brahmanism and non-Vedic spiritual movements, altering and utilizing these influences for its own growth against its religious competition.
Setting that aside, cultural appropriation is something that just happens; it's not a moral good or bad, despite the way that it often gets talked about in culture war rants. It's an emergent phenomenon of different cultures mingling.
There are negative aspects of appropriation, such as decontextualizing something to the point of erasing its original meaning, or using it as window dressing to be "exotic," or to make fun of people. These things can feel especially crass to people when they're present in a system that denigrates or oppresses the people that they are appropriating those things from.
I can't speak for everyone, but to me it makes sense that the issue people have against appropriation of sacred customs or ornamentation of some cultures is that it seems disrespectful to the people who hold it sacred. I'm not even sure that's what the original article is saying, though.
Then, it's pretty hard to culturally appropriate Christianity when it's setup with a doctrine of expansion and push to fit everywhere it can. That was basically the premise of colonialism in the early days. Same way we wouldn't be crying rivers because Asians countries embraced Coca Cola.
> germ theory of disease
Hasn't that been a two-way street for basically the beginning of times ? The Silk Road was as much about exchanging theories and culture than exchanging goods. There's no discussion the very base of our own culture and science is heavily influenced by the early advancement of eastern countries.
Companies trying to make trademark, patent and copyright claims seems like an entirely different matter from people complaining about cultural appropriation. The former is typically by people who may have a legal basis for claiming ownership over an idea (the merits of which is a different conversation, in my opinion).
I don't get the sense that the article's author is attempting to make a copyright claim on Buddhism here. This is just ethnic turf staking.
On the article itself, I went through most of it, but have a very hard time being emotional about corporate culture getting crossed with institutional religious entities. I see both as kinda toxic, and if they can spend some time fighting each other we might actually get a break for once.
They call it colonization.
White liberals prefer nonwhites to be quaint, uneducated, and poor.
I feel like this deserves a response. I am going to try to avoid veering into flame war territory, if I fail feel free to downvote/flag.
Also, I'm currently on mobile. I'll try my best on formatting and spelling, but no promises.
Ok, on to the response.
I am a white liberal. What you have listed is the last thing I want - what I want is to ensure we continue to maintain a functioning democracy, ensure that social mobility is possible for the largest number of people possible, help as many people as possible become educated, and ensure companies do not gain too much power.
Verbiage like you just used is very comparable to verbiage like ACAB and "All republicans are fascist".
To be fair, until very recently in history, failure to convert to Christianity and assimilate into the colonial culture was illegal and practicing one's native culture or even speaking the language could get one killed. On the other hand, one could only assimilate so far before the pitchforks came out. Contrast that to today where if you transgress a cultural boundary, somebody might exercise their free speech in your general direction. It is a pretty one-way thing, but us white westerners aren't being oppressed.
>I want to clarify, by the way, that I’m not necessarily critical of American Buddhist entrepreneurs. The problem is if you mistake this white American Buddhism for all Buddhism, or claim that this is the “right” or “only” way to practice Buddhism.
The idea that American Buddhism has been divided between Asian immigrants and white converts has been mainstream in buddhist studies for at least a decade or two now (and anyone who practices Buddhism in the US will see this divide immediately). This isn't anything Chen came up with on her own.
This sort of attitude, at the time, was lampooned because it was limited to the upper echelons of society (sure enough, the only buddhist in my extensive family was a corporate manager). I bet such a sketch would cause outrage these days.
Belson spends some time at a Buddhist retreat which seems to impart nothing from his experience. The attraction to Buddhist ideas are only at shallow, surface level.
He also employs a full-time spiritual adviser. Even the adviser looks out for opportunities advantageous to him and manipulate situations.
It's a cynical (but honest?) look at personality traits in tech.
> GB: Have I just surrounded myself with sycophants, who tell me whatever I want to hear, regardless of the truth?
> Spiritual advisor: <swallows awkwardly> ... no?
> GB: Thank you Denpok, I really needed to hear that.
And doesn't Gavin kill someone at his Buddhist retreat?
I remember the times when people whose pastime was to get offended at stuff were ridiculed by most of the society.
For all our social progress in this millennium, we regressed in many ways people don't readily notice. This was mostly an American thing in the past; but it spilled into Europe over time.
Which specific time period are you speaking about? The time period when the existence of gay people (not even speaking about married gay people) was offensive to the point of intolerance? Or perhaps the time period when interracial marriages offended the majority of the United States? Or maybe the time period when half the country was offended by a black person sitting in the front of a bus? Or by a flag hanging upside down?
People taking offense at stuff that does/doesn't affect them isn't some woke 21st century invention.
I came of age in the late '90s. I don't think most people were offended by any of your list. A few churches would complain about gay people, but they were ridiculed for it.
> People taking offense at stuff that does/doesn't affect them isn't some woke 21st century invention.
It isn't, but it's something that we had seemed to be finally moving past. It's frustrating that only a few years after casting off the oppression of religious attitudes we now seem to be diving back into much the same thing.
More accurately, the US Supreme Court returned the situation in the US to the status quo in most advanced countries: regulating abortion as a legislative matter, not a “right.” It did what the EU Court of Human Rights has repeatedly done in declining to recognize a “right” to elective abortions,[1] that can override legislation. A putative right that, 100 years from now, may well be seen alongside eugenics (alongside which it originated) as a mistaken wrong turn in the arc of progress.
[1] In a series of cases, most recently RR v. Poland, the EHCR has declined calls to overturn Poland’s near ban on abortions, deciding them on narrow grounds that the government had prevented abortions that were legal under exceptions to Polish law. It has gone only so far as to suggest there is a right in case of risk to maternal life.
Essentially you will notice a lot of European Supreme courts and constitution is very different than usa.
But besides that, there are now calls in multiple European countries to make abortion a right.
If you read Italian, I'd recommend tracking down his short comedy novel L'Uomo di Marketing e la Variante al Limone, which satirizes the milanese advertising industry of the '90s (but I bet it's still mostly like that, lol).
https://www.facebook.com/MaiDireGol/videos/tutti-vorremmo-pe...
https://it-it.facebook.com/MaiDireGol/videos/la-filosofia-de...
It was one of my favorite as well!
A well known video of him for example on changing the world https://youtu.be/kYfNvmF0Bqw?t=7 He was a complex character
This isn't strictly limited to the West: at least two of Taiwan's Four Great Mountains (i.e. schools of Buddhism) are similarly inclined, with additional cultish elements thrown in for good measure.
The cultish elements had already developed independently within corporate cultures, but adding Buddhist slogans and techniques (rather than the philosophical and devotional elements), has given it a new edge.
Buddhist cults focus on fate, inevitability, acceptance, detachment. You are helpless against the world, which by the way, works the way we say, because we are the enlightened bearers of the great tradition. And because of this helplessness, here's a set of doctrines you should follow. Corporate Buddhism additionally tries to appropriate mindfulness as "focusing on work".
And, yes, that stuff is historically there, in Buddhism. It's present in many many of the fractally complex historical branches of the Buddhist taxonomic tree. But too many people only ever see one leaf on that tree, and think "oh so this is Buddhism".
Except Buddhism is also a philosophy of action, and a set of guides for correct action. Acting rightly entails seeing rightly, and so Buddhism includes an appreciation for and guide towards empirical inquiry. This was always terrifying to authority figures, and Asia only didn't develop modern science first because Buddhist logic and experimentation were among the casualties of The Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars.
And here, in the 21st century culture of global megacorporations, we see this pattern again; the pleasant, passive parts of Buddhism are allowed in, while pretending the other parts don't exist.
But Buddhism did have rebellious warrior monks. Ashoka, the greatest Buddhist King, made it clear that the law would be enforced, and his borders protected. Acting correctly always requires brutality towards oppressors, but this part of Buddhism is unpalatable within corporate culture.
A friend of mine was concerned about a similar (mis)use of psychedelics in the service of productivity. Except that neither Buddhism, nor psychedelics discriminate in the kind of insights you end up with. So as workers are encouraged to boost creativity through microdosing, employers might be surprised to see some employees quit after they got curious, took a bit too much Ayahuasca one weekend, like it's described in some part of the microdosing forum, and started reevaluating their life as a result.
Similarly with mindfulness, first you dip your toes with some guided stuff, organized twice a week by HR. Next thing you know YouTube is suggesting you check out this Osho guy and Thich Nhat Hanh, where you find out you've only been scratching the surface. Then one day you quit your job because it disagree with your conception of right action.
A way in.
I'm always amazed to see westerners, who are otherwise very weary of cultish behavior within Christian denominations, embrace and praise Eastern cults.
Osho is not a wise man, given his actions.
Thich Nhat Hanh deserves history's attention.
A horrible and oppressive introduction to Buddhism is actually worse than no introduction.
Regarding Osho specifically, I might not have heard or read enough from him, but I have yet to come across something he's said or wrote personally, that contradicts anything said by the likes of TNH or J.Krishnamurti. And vice versa. His life has concluded, and with hindsight it's easy enough for anyone to put his words and actions in the context of his times and to deliberate as to the rightfulness of thence judgments. If you've avoided his words based on popular sentiments, do yourself a favor, listen for yourself and make up your own mind.
Yep. and five years later i'm working for non-profits making a quarter of what i used to while watching my old friends climb the tech career ladders and buy multiple properties in the bay area. and doing a far stretch better than I was when i got exposed to MBSR.
Marcus Aurelius' Meditations includes a sentence that, in a translation I read long ago and no longer have, read something like:
"You can pass your life in calm flow of happiness—if you learn to think the right way, and to act the right way."
It took me way too long to realize that the "think the right way" is, by far, the easier part, and how dangerous it can be without the "act the right way". It also feels better. Fresher. Trendier. The "act the right way" looks and feels an awful lot like following all the advice your grandpa gave you. Very "gods of the copy-book headers" stuff. And isn't as immediately gratifying as the "think the right way" bit.
Reading this, it struck me how closely this fits with the popularity of Lovecraftian fiction in our current era. If we see corporations as monolithic, inhuman, malignant entities that trample humans simply for being in the way, with little concern for consequences for themselves (because "they" are too far beyond "us", too big to fail), and if we see the universe as ultimately not even apathetic towards humans, because there is no mind there at all, just incomprehensible vastness that swallows us all in eventual oblivion -- then this superficial Buddhist take makes a great deal of sense. An inevitable fate, nothing to do but accept it and detach ourselves to try to minimize the unpleasantness.
But then, accepting this perspective personally makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy for oneself.
This directly contradicts a central tenet of Buddhism: ahimsa (or non-violence).
Having met quite a few Buddhists (also my partner) who were raised by Buddhist parents, I'm yet to find a single one who meditates at all. That's not even that big of a part of "mindfulness".
After reading a monk's book (Essential Chan Buddhism by Guo Jun), I have a feeling it's all cargo-cultish in the west.
I asked a friendly volunteer outside the Global Vipassana Centre (which emphasises the secular universal nature of its meditation practices, but also contains holy relics of the Buddha) how often he personally meditated. He paused for a moment, looked a bit sheepish and then said "not very often".
It's easy to find teachings and scattered accounts of some elements, but I'd be very interested in this kind of thing even for relatively familiar-to-me things like various Christian sects (to be any good, this would surely need a bunch of entries for every major religion, including Buddhism, because there are so many difference in how they're experienced by different traditions or in different cultures)
Material about priestly or monastics experience of religions is easy to find, but the experience of lay practitioners and their views on the religion (which may differ a lot from what the priests or monastics say) seems harder to come by, especially any kind of systematic or cohesive treatment rather than just scattered pieces here and there.
The thing that fascinated me was his exploration of the realness of experience among practitioners and where that experience seems to comes from.
As a child of Christian fundamentalism who ran away as fast as I could, it was eye opening to start to see the basis on which many of these religions were founded, which religion manifesting as a symptom of something deeper within ourselves. Not a mystical or metaphysical deeper, but remnants of tens of thousands of years of evolution and humanity’s wrestling with consciousness and meaning.
As an atheist, I find it fascinating.
To me it seems completely rational and expected that the west would be drawn to the varieties that don't carry as much religious dogma because that is more incompatible with western thought. Of course we can take some aspects from it which we find useful. So I don't find it weird at all.
Despite this, I still absolutely think that 'mindfulness' is often becoming bastardised and a lot of the value is being lost in the process of translation. People will of course try to take advantage of it and try to profit from it.
Your comment also makes me imagine picking a random barely religious American that never goes to church and using them as a model for 'real Christianity'
Zen does not traditionally focus heavily nor entirely on meditation practise, for example it has a heavy amount of ritual and chanting. The idea of a return to Zen being just meditation is a modern resistance in the early 20th century by certain Japanese teachers (many of whom brought Zen to the west) who thought that the spiritual aspects of the tradition had been lost entirely to public service rituals (basically becoming "the people who do funerals" in Japanese society). I agree with those modern teachers, but it isn't representative of Japanese Zen in general, and certainly not of Chan, Seon, or Thien.
Overall there is no Buddhist lineage over a century old that I'm aware of that has its primary focus on meditation.
> Scientific research suggests that meditation has a real effect on the brain.
I don't see how that's relevant to the rest of your comment. It seems kind of like a subtle materialism insert.
> To me it seems completely rational and expected that the west would be drawn to the varieties that don't carry as much religious dogma because that is more incompatible with western thought. Of course we can take some aspects from it which we find useful. So I don't find it weird at all.
That's not really true, since all forms of Buddhism require some kind of "blind faith". For example, in Zen we have the three pillars of Zen practise: great faith, great doubt, and great endurance. Great faith means that we should have faith in our practise and Buddha-nature, even if we have not yet realised it directly. Letting go is an act of faith after all. There are purely faith-based sects of Buddhism, like Pure Land, or like Tibetan Buddhism (not well in my realm of knowledge) which generally has more faith required than Zen, and I think you'll be surprised how popular those traditions are in the west. I don't personally see western thought as being incompatible with dogma or faith at all
> Despite this, I still absolutely think that 'mindfulness' is often becoming bastardised and a lot of the value is being lost in the process of translation. People will of course try to take advantage of it and try to profit from it.
I agree, there is a lack of good teachers and instructions, but I want to point the finger more at the students than at the teachers. They don't want to learn, they don't want to practise. They want a quick release or an easy way out. If a doctor prescribes a mindfulness program to a patient struggling with anxiety, it's an absolute miracle if they stick at it for even 10 minutes a day for more than a year. Doubly so for the ethical principles, which are even harder to stick to (as I know from personal experience). The problem isn't so much that Buddhist principles are bastardised, it's more that very few people have a strong intent to follow them. That's why the faith based practises above are generally so useful for the laity: Pure Land Buddhism can be done by anyone at any time, you simply recite the nembutsu (namo amida butsu) whenever you remember. It isn't clear to me what an equivalently easy and straightforward practise would look like for someone who can't handle the faithful aspects
> Your comment also makes me imagine picking a random barely religious American that never goes to church and using them as a model for 'real Christianity'
I think the idea of equating a Buddhist who doesn't meditate to a Christian who doesn't go to church is a bit strange, since likely you think that it is somewhat essential for the latter to go to church, and therefore do you think that meditation is essential for Buddhism? I don't quite get this point
Do you mean specifically in Japan? Because many of the Tibetan lineages have Dzogchen [1] or Mahamudra [2] meditation as their primary focus and go back a thousand plus years. There are even lineages of householder or itinerant yogis called Ngagpa [3] that have long traditions of meditation training, going back to Tilopa, Saraha, and the other Mahasiddhas of Bengal. I practice with a Tibetan Ngagpa from time to time (Dr Nida) [4] and have also gotten a chance to practice with a Baul teacher from modern Bengal [5], and it's interesting to note how even though the lineages have split in their outward appearances, there are quite a lot of similarities in their teaching of meditation.
Anyway, that's all to say that in many Tibetan Buddhist lineages the meditation practice has been an unbroken, primary focus of the teachings. It wouldn't be surprising if that wasn't the case in other traditions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzogchen
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahamudra
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngagpa
[4] https://perfumedskull.com/2017/05/30/the-white-robed-dreadlo...
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JZ4__GTbjA -- here Parvathy Ma is performing a doha attributed to Bhusuku aka Shantideva and is referencing the burning Nalanda.
When Western imperial forces began to systematically take over regions of Asia for trade, the Buddhist monks in areas such as Burma/Myanmar felt that this was the second time their tradition would die out, and sought to preserve the parts that they felt were essential. In their case, it was the path of vipassana meditation, and though Buddhism didn't die out there, from then on it was strongly influenced by this more refined, less faith-driven teaching.
So when Westerners started to go over to these regions of Asia, this is what they were taught, not the religious faith of the local lay practitioners, which existed mainly to support the monks in their vipassana.
Vipassana meditation is mindfulness practice.
I was very curious about the article. I am wondering if it treats ideas such as “hire fast fire fast” - In a way a concept related to the Buddhist ideas of detachment, or the opposite, “bing your whole self to work” which in a way seems contradictory - you have attachments, continue to have them even at work.
But it is a genuinely off putting sensation to see someone referring to cultural exchanges and transformations as “appropriation”. Adopting and transforming ideas is the bedrock of humanity. Opposing or denigrating this seems like a fundamentally evil thing to do. It feels anti human.
You do not need to be of a skin color, creed, gender or class to take refuge in the Buddha's teachings. The dharma is for all.
As long as you don’t pretend you created Buddhism or are an infallible authority of Buddhism it’s not appropriation.
Personally I find the word not really appropriate with what we are trying to convey which I assume would be something along the lines of “disrespectful usage of other peoples cultures or practices.”
Cultural appreciation = wearing a chinese cheongsam in a culturally appropriate situation because you think it's beautiful and you love the dress.
Cultural appropriation = wearing grass skirts and coconut shell brassiers and getting wasted at a "tiki" frat party.
If someone said that to me (also a Buddhist) I would probably burst out laughing :)
She says that meditation is for some monastic elites, but that is far from the truth. Who even chose to publish her book?
Buddha himself said to Ananda that several thousand of his household desciples attained Nirvana. Not only did these "laymen" did meditation, they even attained Nirvana.
She did not quite say that. She said that it was only practiced by monastic elites up until the early 20th century:
"Meditation was not at all a mainstream lay practice in Buddhism. It only became popular in the early twentieth century, when Buddhist reformers such as the Burmese monk Mahasi Sayadaw, founder of modern Vipassana meditation, promoted it as a lay Buddhist practice. Mindfulness, as it was practiced for most of its history in Asia, was a very elite practice reserved only for advanced monastics."
Agreed on all points! The Buddha's teachings are foundational to my world view, and I too am "from the West."
I do want to push back a little bit though (gently). Your coworker's critique is not necessarily wrong (even if they were making it from a place of ignorance). When I was a practicing Zen Buddhist, I saw a lot of teachers appropriating the dharma to sell their own teachings. Buddhist teachers consulting on the side to corporations (selling the teachings is inappropriate in Buddhism), starting companies to sell services, etc. The teachings were so far removed from the original ideas that they are incomprehensible. Vague spiritual statements, go with your gut morality, confusing dialog, going through the motions (rituals) was all that mattered. How could it be any other way? The West's values are counter to the teachings in just about everyway possible. It could not possibly be transmitted to the West without this kind of modification.
Cultural appropriation has happened with every culture Buddhism has encountered from it's origins in North India, through China and Southeast Asia, Korea and Japan, and now the West. We all have changed it somewhat and now claim what we have is more original than the original.
However, none of these adaptations can compare with the basic insight of the original teachings in my opinion.
Until your get a call from HR, the twitter mobs decides to target you, or when that "woke" person gets promoted and starts dictating policies in the office.
Is this co-worker a peer, a superior, or are you their superior?
I'm far from an expert, but it seems like a reasonable argument to advance that the linkage of Buddhist practices with corporate and material advancement--and the removal of spiritual or ethical content--is "appropriation", and not merely respectful mixing.
In your view, is this appropriation or cultural mixing or exchange?
[1]: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/theres-no-alternative-t...
That said, since you asked, no, it's never occurred to me that jazz is appropriation.
[1] Amusingly, the folks who admit to not actually, you know, reading the thing they are debating, are the ones who claim to be defending the free exchange of ideas. I think. Or maybe they're just angry online.
This is how ideas work. And it’s not just religion. Think of left wing thought. The original communist ideology was revolutionary. Social democrats appropriated ideas from them but believe working within the system. Many hard left people despise social democrats and believe they do more harm than good.
It's clear hardly anyone commenting here has any idea what appropriation really is. It's not just disrespecting existing cultures.
It's destroying them by removing the meaning from them. And then repackaging the symbols - usually with a vague implication of profundity and exoticism - as a marketable commodity.
The purpose isn't to spread the original culture but to use the trappings to promote the usual Western corporate neoliberal value system.
Corporate Buddhism is a perfect example. It's clearly a lot more corporate than Buddhist. The goal isn't enlightenment, detachment, or compassion, it's cultural conformity with the aim of increased productivity and a higher share price.
This shouldn't be controversial. All you need to do is look at how people behave to see what motivates them.
This is peak HN.
Edit: I take it back. What's peak HN is that this is the top voted comment on the entire post.
If people from a traditionally Buddhist country like Nepal disrespected Buddhist ideas, it would presumably be just as disrespectful as if people from America did, so I don’t think “cultural appropriation” is the right way to analyze this.
By the way, practically every religion has been transformed and warped so much over time as to be almost unrecognizable. This again is normal human behavior.
---
Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from minority cultures.
According to critics of the practice, cultural appropriation differs from acculturation, assimilation, or equal cultural exchange in that this appropriation is a form of colonialism. When cultural elements are copied from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, and these elements are used outside of their original cultural context ─ sometimes even against the expressly stated wishes of members of the originating culture – the practice is often received negatively.
---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation
EDIT: instead of more stupid downvotes people could bother reading the wikipedia page.
For example, famous BLM activist Blair Imani is convert to Islam. After her religious conversion she soon after came out as a proud queer woman and upon being questioned she claimed there is no conflict between homosexuality and Islam. She subsequently gave media tours proudly proclaiming to the world her marginal view of Islam. This idea obviously only exists in some marginal Muslim communities in the west and goes against the beliefs of 99% of Muslims in the global south. Is this not blatant cultural appropriation? She took Islam and warped it to fit her western morality much to the anger of its emotional adherents.
Obviously we will never see an article calling her or the Nation of Islam cultural appropriators.
I think you jumped the gun. The extended interview with the book author showed that her position is aligned, or even the same as yours (your comment is naturally too brief to tell whether I should have used only “aligned” or “same”).
And indeed it’s Buddhism we’re talking about: a belief system appropriated by other cultures to the point where its origin in India was forgotten for centuries.
"What we see in American religion, even if it is practiced in a corporate setting, is often the question, “How can the group help the individual realize themselves?” Whereas in other cultures this question tends to be reversed: “How can the individual help realize the goals of the group?” Interestingly enough, I think that companies have been able to command great self-sacrifice from Americans in a way that no other institution can today. I would argue that companies or workplaces have become the new faith communities that are replacing organized religion."
I agree with that. I don’t see the problem though. Why is modifying an idea a bad thing?
> Carolyn Chen is arguing corporatized Buddhism is a new religion that celebrates 70+hour work weeks and the celebrity CEO.
I agree with this too. I am also left asking, why is this considered bad? To clarify, I don’t refer to the ethics of working 70 hours per week, I refer to the emergence of this new religion. Why is the emergence of a new religion bad?
The language of appropiation implies a sort of 'property'-like dynamic for ideas.
If I learn, get to know, understand an idea from somebody else, I have not appropiated them in any way. I merely have adopted their idea.
This way of copying/adopting of other's ideas is what makes a cultural society thrive. On the other hand, a society where all idea transfers are in fact an exchange of something, is exactly what I consider the essence of a market.
The critical difference is that in a market, widgets are exchanged. And whenever somebody takes a widget from somebody else, only one widget remains.
However when somebody adopts another's idea, the idea is now it two places (and quite possibly, with a slight difference); that it, until "the idea" becomes a digital artifact, then it's the exact same "digital" copy which exists in more than the one original instance.
It's the dumbest action to try and enforce that digital artifacts (and later on, ideas themselves) behave like widgets in a market.
In that metaphor, maybe appropriation is when people go around selling dumbed-down or distorted copies that ignore the complexity and fullness of the original ideas. The original ideas are still out there, but for the people who only see the stupid copies, the majesty of the original idea is masked/overshadowed.
And my understanding is that part of the complaint around appropriation involves outsiders profiting from their use/misuse while the originators of the culture see none of the spoils.
https://apxhard.substack.com/p/every-complex-idea-has-a-mill...
I agree this is happening. Why is this an intrinsically bad thing? It seems to me to be just how cultural exchanges work. An idea comes, parts of it are kept, others removed, and others modified. Why is stripping an idea of it’s “original meaning” ( I don’t think that exists) and changing it, even beyond recognition an intrinsically bad this?
> I’m imagining how I would feel if my company hosted prayer sessions where you speak to your unconscious mind rather than God and the sign of the cross represents the intersection of personal and professional responsibilities
I’m going to assume the comment means “I imagine how I would feel experiencing a twisted version of christianity”. Under that assumption, the answer would be the same way a conservative christian feels when seeing a church displaying the gay flag. Just like you in the hypothetical scenario, they feel weird.
Are you as sympathetic to the conservative christian as you are to the traditional buddhist? After all, in both cases, “surface level of religious practice while tossing out all the parts that make it meaningful to the person” seems to apply.
But that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as appropriation, or that it doesn't occur in Silicon Valley.
I've participated in multiple work-place meditation trainings. In each case, the teacher was American, spoke English as a first language, and had done teacher-trainings at American institutions, and I think they were always white. Would my company have been equally willing to hire a Thai immigrant who spoke English but not with an American accent, whose credentials were years of monastic training? Or, is there an institutional preference for hearing Buddhist practices from someone who, as Chen says, looks just like the people they are teaching?
If one population is able to profit off of communicating the cultural practices of others who are not able to access the same opportunities, would you agree that could be called "appropriation"? If not, what should it be called?
No. Let me answer your second question first before formulating the answer.
> If not, what should it be called?
Getting lucky
—-
So, I don’t understand how “Buddhism isn't owned by any one people or place” can go together with “communicating the cultural practices of others”. Is buddhism “owned” by a people or not?
I am going to assume the answer is no. This transforms your statement into:
If one population is able to profit off of communicating an idea and another population is not able to access the same opportunity, would you agree that could be called "appropriation"
Certainly you can see now why no, it is not “appropriation”. Some people have an opportunity to do something, others do not. The conversation on access to opportunities is a separate topic.
Hence the answer to the second question. The first population got lucky.
For me, there is a distinction:
- Adapting, mixing, etc. is (as you said) the bedrock of humanity. It is learning from other cultures.
- Claiming that one is doing "real Buddhism" (when it is a version far from any tradition) or serving pepperoni pizza as "genuinely Italian", or being a "true Christian" for having Xmas with a Coca-Cola Santa Claus.
The latter is essentially a Cargo Cult of some other traditions and cultures.
I asked a few Italians about "pizza as an international dish". One opinion was that there is nothing wrong with baking "bread with other ingredients". What pissed her off was when people said such a dish was similar to one food prepared by her mother or in her town.
Most people overestimate how old traditional recipes are, anyway. Italians didn’t have tomatoes or potatoes before Columbus; nor did Indians, Thais or Chinese people have chile peppers… is all global cuisine just a huge cultural appropriation from the Mexicans and Peruvians?
For others that are curious about meditation and Buddhism, I would suggest reading the article and making up your own mind, rather than the comments here.
But then again I would not know how those of the religious tones of Buddhism might look upon my non-religious practice of the Buddhism teachings except that they might see it as neither wrong or right but hope for my future progress towards Nirvana
Well, there's part of your problem right there. I have great scepticism about businesses getting involved with things like Buddhism. From what few anecdotes I've heard, it ends up being some kind of twisted take on the source religion.
Buddhism is not some kind of pill that you swallow to move from working 70+ hours per week to 80+ hours a week.
Ultimately, Buddhism is a withdrawal. You become nobody in particular. This is the opposite of the Cult of Personality, and Manifest Destiny, that seems to permeate the tech industries (I'm looking at you, Google, Microsoft, etc.).
As I've always feel, most traditional religion teachings doesn't fit with modern way (globalization, capitalism) of living.
So what? Corporatism fucks up and subverts everything it can get its hands on. Buddhism remains a powerful and compelling religious practice.
Like most religious practices most people dip their toes in or only take the parts they like the best. It’s not like most Catholics are running around washing the feet of the poor.
Not sure exactly what insight this story thinks it’s conveying.
This article basically says Buddhism has two key elements, the more important devotional worship that westerners are ignoring, and meditation, which is sort of a fringe practice.
That’s pretty confusing as I think most people would say the main concept of Buddhism is the teachings of the Buddha. This article appears silent on the concept of dukkha, enlightenment, the eightfold path, the four noble truths, and so on and so forth.
As such it is utterly and completely missing the point.
> This article basically says Buddhism has two key elements, the more important devotional worship that westerners are ignoring, and meditation, which is sort of a fringe practice.
Re corporate America, meditation and mindfulness were waiting to be incorporated into the corporate 'feel good' mantra.
I mean, have you tried reducing workload first?
Second, no person is obliged to adhere to a standard defined hundreds of years ago (or otherwise). Buddhism, and all cultures, are allowed to evolve according to our better understanding of science, the universe, ourselves, even philosophy, etc.. And also to fit well into people's lives and local culture. Most of the spirit of the Buddha is that of finding the truth and achieving enlightenment -- being too stuck to his every word is contrary to the spirit of his teachings. Secularity (I am a secular Buddhist) wasn't even too well defined in the time of Buddha I think.
If you don't want to learn anything about Buddhism, only the basics of meditation, no one should stop you. I think most teachings are very beautiful and well worthy of study, but that's ultimately up to yourself.
If you want to learn more, I thoroughly recommend masters like Thich Nhat Hanh and reading (perhaps commentated) Buddha's original thoughts (I believe Dhammapada summarizes many of them).
There's no gate keeping there, but an analysis of how Buddhism as a concept evolved in the US and "the west".
A few relevant excerpts:
> The Dalai Lama was instrumental in advancing the secularization of meditation. For him it was in part a political calculation. He wanted to make Buddhism relevant and useful to the West.
> I think all the teachers had some qualms about being forced to leave the ethical aspects of Buddhism out of the workplace. They were not being hired to make the employees more ethical; they were being hired to make them more productive.
> Interestingly enough, I think that companies have been able to command great self-sacrifice from Americans in a way that no other institution can today. I would argue that companies or workplaces have become the new faith communities that are replacing organized religion.
> But there are downsides to this. We start to organize our selves, communities, and spiritualities around capitalism’s goals of efficiency and productivity, ignoring other possible ethics of justice, kinship, and beauty. Ultimately, companies, which are driven by the bottom line, cannot offer us a “solution” for a flourishing life.
When I think of the startup I left, and which took so much of my life, it’s easy to characterize it as a quasi cult.
The Buddha of the Pali Canon explicitly and unambiguously rejected racial classifications; the Dharma is for all sentient beings, full stop. Vasettha Sutta (Sn. 3.9); Kannakatthala Sutta (MN 90); Assalayana Sutta (MN 93). From these and from suttas like the Tama Sutta (AN 4:85) and "An Outcaste" (Sn 1.7), the message is clear: one's birth (or social status) can neither exonerate immoral acts nor negate virtuous conduct. I find it notable that Chen pauses to point out how Western individualism contradicts the "Buddhist principle of no-self" but apparently never pauses to think whether she is herself reifying the concept of race beyond what the Buddha-word can support (race is closely related to concepts of self and identity, if you believe Intersectionality.)
Possibly the reason "white Buddhism" is an "unregulated market" is that in America we have the freedom to worship as we choose without the intervention of busybodies checking our skin color.
edit: I follow Theravada and recognize that most of the converts to Buddhism she is criticizing, follow an Americanized form of Mahayana.
I don't think that's true; or at least, it depends on what you mean by "mindfulness". That claim is made in the context of vipassana, which can be an advanced practice. But mindfulness as such is one of the spokes of the Wheel of Dharma; it's simply paying attention, and it's a necessary pre-requisite to doing anything right. You can't maintain any kind of morality, for example, if you don't really know what's going on around you.
McMindfulness is not a trend that I admire.
>Traditionally a monastic practice, meditation was even then considered a specialty of only certain monks. Furthermore, it is only since the 20th century that meditation has been considered a practice appropriate to teach to laypeople.
https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/biggest-misconception-about-...
But I didn't speak of meditation; I was speaking of mindfulness. Everyone that hopes to follow a Buddhist path needs to practice mindfulness. The idea that mindfulness is a meditation practice is pretty-much western, and modern.
"Mindfulness" could simply be not drifting off; it could be a practice you do while walking, or programming, or whatever; or it could be a rather intense investigation of your whole experience, with the goal of exposing what you think your selfhood consists of. I think the latter is usually referred to as "vipassana". In the West, vipassana is taught to newbies and non-Buddhists, as a relaxation technique. But it can be strong medicine.
I'm pretty sure you're right that it's only recently, and in the West, that meditation has been widely taught to laypeople. But, for example, Shaivite and Buddhist lay yogins have been practising meditation for centuries. Not very many of them, sure; but these yoga practices are not monkish specialties at all.
That Tricycle article is, I'm afraid, full of speculation. And in the early paragraphs, the article notes that solitary meditators sitting under trees were scorned by the monks; they didn't follow the vinaya. So if we're allowed to speculate, I'd speculate that most meditators were not monks, at least in the mediaeval period.
The stories about Shariputra and Ananda are instructive, but they're 2,500 years old, and were not written down contemporaneously. An outstanding example of a monk-meditator is Shantideva, who lived in the 8thC, and was a monk at Nalanda University. His work is remarkable on its own merits, but he's also remarkable for being a monk; most of the famous meditation teachers were lay people. And Shantideva was criticised, because as a monk he was practicing tantra. Tantra calls for behaviour that is not permitted for monks.
Transcendental Meditation (TM) has been doing this for a while now[1]. But it's not a big deal because outrage bait articles didn't make it a big deal. Please argue about gun control or roe, or some other hot button issue. Leave the Buddha's teachings out of it.
Why? Why is modifying an idea, even by twisting it to be the very opposite of it’s “original meaning” ( I don’t believe that exists, everything is a modified version of something else) an intrinsically bad thing?
If it’s not, what’s the problem with corporations twisting buddhism to suit their needs?
Quite obviously yes. The purpose of Christianity is to serve God or something like that. You cannot change it to serve God and Elon Musk as you cannot have other gods.
>Your religion can be anything you want it to be.
Well yes but it will be your own personal religion, not a religion that is shared by anybody.
The idea that Christians should serve God and the poor was popular in my day.
But a religion could be molded gradually by a series of tiny steps, especially if given time to develop apologetic explanations to cover for what seem like contradictions. I remember reading that a prominent Christian leader proclaimed Donald Trump to be sent by God to rule us, and his idea gained some popularity. I prefer to let the religious sort out for themselves what's consistent with their doctrines.
“Well sure, womens rights might be good, but you see, the feminists twisted a good message and now they use it to push women away from motherhood and into corporations so the corporations make more profit and sell them more things”
Is it also bad when feminists encourage womens participation in the workforce?
Because you know what happens here is not a big deal. You will get somehow rewarded for your hardships after you kick the bucket.
Also it’s a great tool to rally people to a cause. And can generate cash!
Best idea ever.
This paragraph is so so wrong. Where do I even start?
She says that others are appropriating Buddhism, and she goes on to do just that.
Yuck.
And no, meditation wasn’t reserved for the monastic elites. Did she even study Buddhism at all?
Buddha said in his address to Ananda, that thousands of his disciples who are in households, and not monks, have attained Nirvana. Not only did they meditate, they attained Nirvana- the highest goal.
This person is saying all sorts of wrong things.
If you go by Gautama Buddha's teachings only, you will know that none of the common practices nowadays are kind of forbidden by Buddha. The bowing down, the incense sticks- these are later additions, and never encouraged by the Buddha.
For the language at the end of your comment, this kind of sola scriptura [1] approach is valuable and worthwhile, and it is part of how lay meditation traditions were revived in Asian Buddhism [2] -- but when you describe Asian Buddhist traditions as "later additions ... never encouraged by the Buddha," isn't this what the author has in mind with her next paragraph? Copied for your convenience:
> I want to clarify, by the way, that I’m not necessarily critical of American Buddhist entrepreneurs. The problem is if you mistake this white American Buddhism for all Buddhism, or claim that this is the “right” or “only” way to practice Buddhism.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_scriptura [2]: https://vividness.live/protestant-buddhism
Then it is fair.
> The problem is if you mistake this white American Buddhism for all Buddhism, or claim that this is the “right” or “only” way to practice Buddhism.
But she wants to make the readers believe that her version of Buddhism is the "right" way to do it? And she is rebuking the white Buddhists for deviating from it?
I have read another which I cannot remember the name for.
Buddha, with the help of ten directions, tells a layman to do his ten-fold duties.
One of them is keeping his wife happy, another one is about having friends, another one is about earning money and growing wealth.
Please read Walpola Rahula's "What the Buddha Taught".
My point in bringing up Ugra was to show that many/most sects of Buddhism have been predominantly focused on monasticism. In the sutras, advanced lay people are the exception, not the rule. And the surrounding societies understand that there's a difference. But in the west, lay people have higher expectations for spiritual attainment...
> Where do I even start?
Start with a claim you think is wrong, and explain how it is wrong with enough information that I don't have to trust you.
Buddhism is a very rational philosophy. If you study Buddhism in the light of it being a protest against established thiestic, ritualistic religion in India, these will start making much more sense.
As far as McMeditation is from Buddhism, the same is true for regular people worshipping Buddha like a god.
Religion might have democratic elements, but truth isn't democratic.
Did you?
https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/biggest-misconception-about-...
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/ten-misconceptions-about-b...
https://vividness.live/the-making-of-buddhist-modernism
The book you are referring to means nothing because it is a recent interpretation exactly as the author of the article is describing. From The Making of Buddhist Modernism:
>1. Rahula selects from the vast corpus of Buddhist literature certain features that can be interpreted in such a way as to resonate with a modern worldview, especially the Enlightenment, Protestantism, Transcendentalism, and science.
>2. This selection excludes or obscures other features of Buddhist literature, for example the many stories of miracles, magical feats, supernatural beings, and literal heavens and hells.
>3. When Rahula does address these, he tends to present them as ethically significant myth, symbol, or allegory.
>4. By focusing on elite literature, Rahula’s presentation occludes many features of the tradition on the ground, such as ritual, devotion, and exorcism, that are actually more central to many Buddhists’ lives than abstract doctrines. >Many ordinary Buddhists would not recognize much of what Rahula presents as their practices, attitudes, and beliefs. What he suppresses would give a fuller picture of Buddhism in its various historical manifestations. His emphasis on tolerance of other views, for example, is certainly not reflected in the many Buddhist polemical texts savaging opponents’ positions, or the religious conflicts in his own Sri Lanka that Buddhists themselves have participated in. What he refers to as “the Buddhist” is an idealized figure having little to do with living Buddhists. For example, in contrast to the pervasive practices among Buddhists for accruing merit in order to gain a higher rebirth, Rahula claims, on the basis of the doctrines of ana tman and impermanence, that “the Buddhist” is “never worried about” the problem of life after death. Rahula’s Buddhism is the idealized, textualized Buddhism of the orientalist scholars.
and it goes on.
SEAns can live their life as they see fit, they just shouldn’t demand that everyone conform to their version.
> occludes many features of the tradition on the ground, such as ritual, devotion, and exorcism, that are actually more central to many Buddhists’ lives than abstract doctrines.
Same goes here. Just because hundreds of thousands of people are practising Buddhism in one way, that doesn't become the only way or the actual way.
They shouldn’t want conformation from white western buddhists. That's what this Chen person is demanding.
If white western buddhists want to draw from Dhammapada and Buddha's teachings only, and want to completely ignore what SEAns do on the ground, then that's fine.
Again, please stop treating what actual Buddhism is in the lense of anthropology.
Treat it as a Philosophy like it was originally intended by the Buddha and fellows like Ashvaghosa, Buddhaghosa, Nagarjuna, etc.
Please do not let the SEAns determine what actual Buddhism is.
I have seen and studied Buddhism in the context of Indian philosophy, and it matches the white buddhist version (like Robert Wright) far more than the worshipping, thiestic SEAns.
Please study some Buddhism. And read debates of Nagarjuna (you need some level of rigor, experience in STEM/logic, to get them).
When you read the logics of Buddhists versus Nyaya and Nyaya-Vaisheshika, you will start to get how right western buddhists are.
Theistic, worshipping, candle-lighting Buddhists of SEA are nothing like what these guys were.
What SEAns practice as Buddhism is no more actual Buddhism than the white western Mindfulness guys.
You are so out of depth.
While you might be able to construct a philosophy from the Buddha's teachings, Buddhism is not it. The Buddha never created Buddhism; he never said these are my teachings and this is Buddhism. Buddhism was established by the people who listened to him. It also contains aspects such as the vinaya and rebirth, which make it not a philosophy but a religion (or are rules on robes philosophical ideas?). Therefore it is entirely appropriate to look at it from an anthropological lens. And from that lens, it is not inaccurate to claim that lay people did not generally practice meditation, and there has been reform, by people who likely had to invent their meditation practice as it did not come by lineage.
Surely you won't claim that Jack Kornfield himself read the scriptures or whatever and got closer to the Buddhism as Buddha intended it! And he left stuff out to make it palatable in the West, unless he teaches about the realm of hungry ghosts? That makes what Chen wrote entirely accurate both in the paragraph you quoted and in a wider sense as well.
I want to say, this article is very good.
The buddhism as practiced in the west has very little to do with actual practices in the east. But, Buddhism is also very confusing, and it’s hard to say “what is the true buddhism” (mahayana, therevada, vajrayana and zen buddhism in Japan (formally mahayana) are all very different)
When you read the Mahayana (later versions) it stops making sense at a fundamental level, because the ancient Mahayana were pessimistic and did not believe you could actually resolve the issue of suffering in human timespans. It inherits the early texts, but downplays them with newer texts, themes, and ideas. It adds a worship element (Bodhisattvas). After several interpretations and cultural adaptations it becomes less comprehensible and more performative. Zen is an example, it operates on the principle that you cannot understand the content logically, so you need to perform the rituals (mediation, chanting, etc.) to get to the ground unadulterated truth. It is non-rational, partially because it integrates Taoism which cannot be grasped conceptually. This is mainly what makes Buddhism so confusing.
The same thing has occurred with Christianity. Started as a Jewish sect of Judaism, Gentiles introduced newer ideas, becomes Catholic Church, series of church schisms (Council of Nicea, East West Split), hundreds of years of commentaries, Martin Luther triggers Protestant Reformation, the Church adapts to new ideas and becomes less and less comprehensible. Pentecostalism is a example of how far this can go (speaking in tongues, faith healing, ordinances, snake handling, etc.).
That seems to to be the case with most major religions. It always boggles my mind how different the conclusions of different Christian groups from the reading the same Bible are. Same for Islam.
Really it depends on your specific sect. If you join a Pure Land sect in the west I think that it is generally quite similar to the east
Many things we notice in our minds are just labels and people are crazy easy to get hung up on them as being the thing in themselves.
Same, and I'd like more exchanges! I may not know “what is the true buddhism” but enough of us discussing the issue could give even rought directions!
Is it possible to make a more sweeping statement?
This is so wrong.
The current practices in SEA is so far from what the Buddha actually taught.
But I still see that there is a problem with Buddhism being used in corporate America. It smacks too much of a kind of "spiritual materialism" for want of better words, which is precisely the kind of thing that won't work.
Rather than say "appropriation", I'd say that Buddhism has been "misappropriated" would be an apt description in this instance. I reiterate that words like "appropriation" and "misappropriation" must be used only in rare cases.
Buddhism does have a place in the West, but I'd prefer people to seek guidance from genuine monks rather than laymen who style themselves as "trainers".
Zen Buddhism (from Japan/China) can of course vary greatly from Theravada Buddhism (found in South and South-East Asia). However I would say, that there seems to me much more variety of Buddhist schools in zen Buddhism (Japan) and what they believe and practice than in Buddhism as practised in Thailand, Cambodia etc.
Buddhism is quite fluid even in Asia - but I do think that its right that the Buddhism that is in the west (mostly influenced from Japan zen schools - e.g. soto) came from a more idealised version than is practiced often in the east.
There was an article in the BBC a while back (can try and find if people want) that noted that Buddhism as practised in the west had issues as it promoted a 'cold selfish' side of Buddhism (it pointed to some studies of people that meditate feeling less guilty if they commited a crime). This differed from how its mostly used in Asia where compassion/karmic practice/social works and community are more encouraged.
Personally I wouldn't trust any Buddhist practice organized by a company - the stink of zen would likely be pretty unbearable
They don’t “stink of zen”; they stink of capitalism.
> The book also explores the actions of Japanese Buddhists who opposed the growth of militarism.
That hits hard
Well it works both ways with many Asians appropriating Christianity
/sarcasm
What?
>"turn workplaces into productivity-centered 'faith communities.'"
Huh?
>"Silicon Valley is the latest player in a history of Western appropriation of Buddhism"
Appropriation feels like a strong word. Are we not supposed to try new ideas from outside the tech industry? Ever? Chen's thesis in this article feels like a dramatic take.
I don't feel like I can speak to the usage of appropriation or other wokespeak though.
If one scarcely has the time to be informed about the state of the world, then forget being engaged or even organizing others.
The Bhagavatam mentions 22 avatars of Vishnu. The arbitrary selection of 10 which sometimes include Buddha is a later day invention.
> never meant to be a separate religion but just took Hindu teachings on meditation and enlightenment and got adapted into another "ism".
This is revisionist nonsense.
Ah the revionist calling out revisionism , the irony of the comment on isms
Right, so well known that there isn't even a consensus as to which of them constitute Dashavatara. You have no idea what you're talking about.
What does "scripture" mean in this context? Scripture normally means messages 'directly' from the 'Abrahamic God' received by certain 'special individuals' (prophets, etc), such as the Bible, Quran, Torah. I thought Hinduism did not have any belief in any messages being sent from "God" to humans. So could you give some examples on what would be Hindu scripture and other examples of what would NOT be Hindu scripture?
Oxford disagrees: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...
And Hindu scriptures is the example the lexicographers chose. Besides, the Old and New Testaments are traditionally attributed to specific authors. Only the Quran qualifies as scripture by your definition, not even the Hadith.
> I thought Hinduism did not have any belief in any messages being sent from "God" to humans.
The Vedas are considered revelation from the ultimate reality. There are other scriptures considered apauruseya i.e. of non-human origin.
As far as I can tell from googling, they are just considered to be stories from Aryans that entered India. "The Vedas are considered the earliest literary record of Indo-Aryan civilization"
I'm guessing you got that quote from: https://www.learnreligions.com/what-are-vedas-1769572 Just a few paragraphs down, it says:
"Tradition has it that humans did not compose the revered compositions of the Vedas, but that God taught the Vedic hymns to the sages, who then handed them down through generations by word of mouth. Another tradition suggests that the hymns were "revealed," to the sages, who were known as the seers or “mantradrasta” of the hymns."
You could start to increase your understanding by reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_deities or https://www.learnreligions.com/atheism-and-devotion-in-buddh...
It’s good corporate marketing but only skin thin: He’d still fire your ass in a millisecond if he needs to or wants to, regardless of your personal predicament.
"Compassionate management" should be the norm, and I'm suspicious of anyone who considers their own brand of management to be special for adhering to such a principle
I understand that Weiner has probably dealt with a lot of uncompassionate managers, but that should be treated as the exception to the definition of management and not the rule.
I've seen this a few times; companies live by their values, until it comes down to money, then it's "just business". It's the public marketing face, and plenty of people are happy to live under its delusion, only to be confronted with the hard truth when it's time for reorganizations.
> “But, Ānanda, if women had not obtained the Going-forth from the home life into homelessness in the Dhamma & Vinaya made known by the Tathāgata, the holy life would have lasted long, the true Dhamma would have lasted 1,000 years. But now that they have obtained the Going-forth from the home life into homelessness in the Dhamma & Vinaya made known by the Tathāgata, the holy life will not last long, the true Dhamma will last only 500 years.
Source: AN 8:51 Gotami Sutta, Pali Canon: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/AN/AN8_51.html
Curiously, this sutta is left out of accesstoinsight.org, which is the leading source on the Internet for deriving the Buddha's authentic words (translated to English). What's your agenda, Bhikku Ṭhānissaro? Certainly not truth if your way is the way of omission.
*Then, what is it that is being practiced today that is called Buddhism? Or are Buddhists unaware of the mentioned sutta of the Buddha... or do they reject it?
But regarding this, and other, anti-women references in the Pali canon, the passages could be corruptions that don't reflect what the Buddha actually said. Or they could be authentic statements the Buddha made due to genuine beliefs and/or wanting better cultural acceptance to help the survival of early Buddhism. In either case it's not a disaster for Buddhism, which emphasizes the need for individual wisdom & compassion, rather than blindly following some real or imagined leaders.
Personally I think these are most likely to be corruptions because the suttas contain many more passages that are respectful of women & nuns. For example https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.044.than.html
I'm not sure if pointing out there are contradictions in the suttas helps the case.
In any case, whether through having contradictions or through rejection via cherry picking, modern Buddhists are eating the fruits of a poisoned tree.
See also, Digha Nikaya 16, the Mahā Parinibbāna Sutta, one of the foremost suttas detailing the Buddha's awakening, in which he refuses to achieve full enlightenment in the presence of Mara unless his monks and nuns, male and female lay followers were fully established in the dhamma.
There's the now-famous Kalama Sutta where the Buddha specifically encourages people to not rely too much on canonical texts: https://suttacentral.net/an3.65/en/sujato
Sutras are just teachings. You may learn from them and value them, but Buddhists are not "people of the book" like Abrahamic religions are. You don't have to parse everything Buddha and ponder it endlessly. Sometimes he just wondered about the future of the discipline. He also changed his mind when others presented arguments, just like in this case.
Buddhism as a religion is considered just a vehicle for some truth that people can discover, not the goal itself. Requiring perfect gym to practice is not for people who really want to train.
This was not just old books, which nobody cared about, but pervasive everyday practice.
I very much believe that you had different experience and am happy for it. There’s a lot of Buddhists and different traditions and it’s very difficult to generalise. I myself also practiced in - more western - communities, where there was no noticeable gender imbalance. But I am also sure, that there are Buddhist traditions and communities, which are sexist.
1) You did not see nuns. Formal lineage of nuns died in Theravada lineage hundreds of years ago. Women were wearing white robes right? Those are the robes of novices. You need 5? female nuns to ordain a new nun. Sri Lankan monk, Bhante Henepola Gunaratana (aka Bhante G) asked Tibetan nuns so bootstrap the tradition in Theravada, but it's just starting and there is resistance.
2) Women are considered less than men in Asian cultures (equality of sexes is new in the West too). Religions are not separate from the culture around them.
>But I am also sure, that there are Buddhist traditions and communities, which are sexist.
Yes there are and that is to be expected. (Unless you believe that Buddhism makes people somehow perfect. "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path" by Jack Kornfield is a good book that explains how full of shit Buddhists are no matter how much they train.
Buddhism is not about creating perfect world in this world or in afterlife.
> "It is extremely important to note that world religions [...] are, naturally and inevitably, in large part compendia of rules for managing daily life." - John A. Hall, Ideas and the Social Sciences, 1993
This is why I think it's a good thing that western Buddhism exits. It gets rid of all the bad stuff. And there are really interesting insights in Buddhism, like the concept of non-self or the four noble truths.
You mean modern Buddhists aren't. Early Muslims considered the Buddhists they encountered as "people of the book."
Source: https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2018/14...
Given the context, he probably meant they aren't "by the book", not strict about their scripture.
Well, there are many things the Buddha said that they could not care less about. That would just be one more.
A religion is not about precisely what some founder said, but how it was adopted, intepreted, and developed (including what parts were given precedence and which were ignored).
Buddha said it is super hard or impossible to achieve Nirvana or became Arahant after 1500-2000 years.
But if you never practice, you'll never achieve anything.
Even Buddha needs 4 Asaṃkhyeya to become a Buddha. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asa%E1%B9%83khyeya
Well, that I can agree with. Also according to the Buddha, there are signs that an enlightened being can display to prove their enlightenment. A simple one is that fire does not affect them. To prove his enlightenment, "Ānanda performed a supernatural accomplishment by diving into the earth and appearing on his seat at the council (or, according to some sources, by flying through the air.)"
This is the only modern evidence of anyone meeting the criteria: https://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads...
We do not care at all.
Buddhism is not a philosophy based on a magic book or some unprovable god; it’s just people. The Buddha was a normal person, and absolutely could and did make the kinds of mistakes common in his time.
I don’t think that stops it being useful, personally.
I don’t believe this is the gotcha that you think it is.
Every single school of thought, religion or otherwise, has good and bad parts. Taking the overwhelmingly good aspects of Buddhism to understand how to lead a better life, is not invalidated because the Buddha said one thing you dislike. It’s naivety to desire 100% perfection from everyone/thing.
I don't understand why people still consider literature written by human with nowadays language to must be either perfect or it's worthless.
Also how they see a form of government that declared they're adopting one religion teaching and using it as argument proof / point.
We will spiralling down to whataboutism soon like this. Cherry picks the good ones are fine, and people do that everyday. Just don't cherry pick a bad one to justify your agenda and your bad action.
Here's a religious code people can live by: "Don't be a dick". I'm sure that summarizes all the good parts of organized religions and philosophies. It's also the most difficult one to adhere to for a lot of people.
Sutta central has it https://suttacentral.net/an8.51/en/sujato?layout=plain&refer...
As for that sutta, the Pali canon is absolutely huge, the Mahayana sutras even more so, the majority of the latter haven’t been translated into English even. Most Buddhists, even historically, do not follow the sutras to the word, they use them as teaching guidance. There is nothing wrong with not accepting a sutra because you don’t think it is a good teaching or one that is helpful to you
EDIT also Buddhists I’ve spoken to generally reject that sutta, Mahayana Buddhists see all Pali suttas as lesser and provisional. The founder of my sect, Dogen, rejected the idea of mappo (age of dharma decline) entirely.
It is not historically accurate to think that all Buddhists generally accept all Buddhist texts and concepts, unless you specifically only mean some of the more hardcore Theravada who accept all of the Pali canon. Unfortunately in the west Buddhism is often conflated with just the Theravada, since the Mahayana seems scarier and more difficult to get into, however the latter is more popular and has developed more historically
My teachers favoured more "modern" texts, such as Asanga's works, and the Prajnaparamita literature. They have practice lineages that can be traced back to their authors. Statements from the sutras/suttas were met with remarks of the form "Very interesting; it may be true, or it may be not true".
Because it is. The zeitgeist on the left (so, academia) is consumed by personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing, and a great deal of intellectual work has been done to post hoc rationalize these feelings and package them in catchy phrases. Terms like "cultural appropriation" and "privilege" or "systematic racism" or "toxic masculinity", may have some technically useful meanings to anthropologists, but within the public sphere they function only as a combined virtue signal and rhetorical weapon. What makes these weapons difficult is that they are so tightly wrapped in an image of compassion such that even those that wield them may not understand their true nature. A clever design.
This is a good example of how anything can be used as a weapon, even compassion. I really wish all these academics pushing the narrative of privilege etc would chill out for a second and just enjoy the world as it is, in all it's messiness. To stop seeing the world as purely an evil constructed on the mass graves of the innocent. Even if it were true (and in some sense it is) this is still the world we have. This is where kids are growing up, people are falling in love, where discoveries are being made. Sometimes you gotta just say 'fuck it' and enjoy the world you have without constantly speculating about how it should be, how it should have been, about whether the fruits you are enjoying were earned with blood. We cannot, in each successive generation, reform ourselves to undo the injustices of the past, not only because it's practically impossible but because the meaning of injustice changes. And society is finite in its malleability. To be sure, some things can be done, within a generation or two. Maybe three. But after a while, what's done is done and you have to move on.
EDIT: It's curious how sometimes a post gets upvoted, then downvoted, then several more cycles. Now its at 1. I'd be curious to know the "velocity" on this one, dang.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32068220.
This is so true. It’s a very beautifully expressed feeling I had trouble articulating before. Thank you for putting it into words like this.
It’s also ridiculous to me there is a push to “teach” these concepts to kids when it’s fairly obvious they’ll just abstract them away to something stupid like “man bad” or “white people bad”. I feel like it’s sort of like trying to explain to kids with no CS experience some nuanced tradeoff like, I don’t know, the CAP theorem for example. They’ll probably understand that if you go with AP instead of CP you risk losing data and that’s bad so now we always use CP. All they’ll be left of with is “AP bad, CP good”.
There was an interesting article about some social inequalities where when we talk about something more -is actually making it worse-. Apparently doing sensitivity and diversity trainings have the effect of making outcomes worse or ineffective , counterintuitively (its this part of your comment I find most sympathetic) https://hbr.org/2019/07/does-diversity-training-work-the-way...
That is absolutely true. And there has even been some pushback from the academics who coined these terms. But, in the end, words are tools, and tools meet a need, and there was apparently a great need for a new narrative that explained personal feelings of failure and self loathing. So it was inevitable that these terms would be used in this way. These words, as tools, are also potent for those who desire power, and look for any means to win, including invocation of race and gender stereotypes. It is galling for anyone who values liberty to see this, when the goal has always been to deprecate the prejudice function, and not merely to call the same function with different arguments.
It is fascinating, though, how the desire to improve, to be more virtuous than before, can turn out so badly! It's a real slippery slope situation - we made progress, civil rights, women's rights, interracial marriage, gay marriage, sexual identities, gender identities acknowledging the momentum of racist policies in our demographics...but then it turns into: gender is purely a construct, lets modify children's bodies if they think they're trans, lets force people to use certain pronouns, lets have teachers share their sex lives with kindergarteners, lets give women and students of color the power of professional life and death over white teachers, lets teach reverse CBT. And if you try to make this point, you're called a racist and a bigot! Social justice warriors push an insidious form of injustice that harms everyone. Because, as the GGP put it, it's anti-human.
His arguments about religion and society's collective unwillingness to have an honest conversation about it are compelling. But what's fascinating to me is that he manages to piss off both the religious right and the SJW left, and I think he's onto something important.
The reason he pisses them off is that his fundamental position boils down to: dogmatism is the problem. And no one wants to admit they are dogmatic.
The same instinct in a right-wing pro-life person to shut down any consideration whatsoever that their position is suspect is the same instinct in the SJW who can only see the world as an unjust manifestation of the patriarchy, or systemic racism, etc. This is not to say that those things don't exist or have no impact, but it seems those things have been used to harness the same base behavior we're all capable of, to effectively form what resembles an entirely new religious dogma.
This dogmatism shuts down substantive dialog, and perpetuates the same kinds of problems one finds with folks who insist Jesus is coming back to earth in the next 50 years.
A mindset that removes willingness to engage in conversation - even if the person holding the mindset happens to be right (or at least closer to right than some others) - is a mindset every bit as dangerous and problematic as the mindset held by right-wing extremists.
I'm not trying to just parrot Sam's message here, but he's saying things that I've long believed, and didn't know how to articulate, and the basic takeaway is this: dialogue is the only thing that can change the collective consciousness.
The current trends around identity politics, cancelling people for the things they say, creating taboos so strong that people don't feel comfortable even touching on some topics is the antithesis of liberalism, and I'll repeat what you and GGP said - anti-human. If dialogue is the only path forward, and our current path involves the complete demonization of certain dialogue to the point that you are no longer allowed to participate in the conversation, we are at what can only be called an impasse as a culture.
We should properly put bad ideas to bed, absolutely. We should address systemic issues where they exist, absolutely. We should learn from our major mistakes, absolutely.
But the current climate is somewhat terrifying. One need only try to make the argument I just made on Twitter, Facebook or Reddit to see what I'm talking about. You'll quickly be branded a right-wing or alt-right sympathizer (despite the fact that in terms of policy, I'm about as liberal as they come, identity politics notwithstanding). People will manufacture a version of you that they believe to be true, and then abuse you for it, while feeling righteous and justified in the process.
It's a sad state of affairs.
The parts of academia that are relevant to this discussion (humanities and social sciences) are certainly dominated by the left.
I would be careful not to confer this to issues of culture, where dogma currently reigns supreme, and liberals are no less susceptible than conservatives to the kind of thinking that leads absolutely nowhere productive.
Putting aside the rhetorical tools you're discussing, what would you say to people who currently feel the effects of these historical, and contemporary oppressions? People with unwanted pregnancies who find themselves unable to access abortions, African-Americans who are descended from families that were unable to purchase property they would have been able to afford due to redlining and are thus at a disadvantage, Gen X Jews whose parents were denied entry to elite schools and whose families thus suffered economically, gay and trans people who are currently, in the US, facing a government that has all but stated it wants to eliminate even the tenuous hold on legal existence they have?
I am all for telling people to find the good in the world. There is a lot of it! But some of these negative phenomena that sociologists describe have real consequences for real people in the present day, and I don't really see how "just stop thinking about it" is a solution for them.
I would have quoted me a bit more generously. This is what I would tell them (and myself, since we are all oppressed, and all of our ancestors were oppressed, at some point, by someone):
>We cannot, in each successive generation, reform ourselves to undo the injustices of the past, not only because it's practically impossible but because the meaning of injustice changes. And society is finite in its malleability. To be sure, some things can be done, within a generation or two. Maybe three. But after a while, what's done is done and you have to move on.
Am I correct, then, in thinking your response to people currently harmed by social structures they have no choice in interacting with is, basically, "I agree that this sucks, but I don't support changing anything to fix it."?
I’d suggest that it’s not about those things for the accusers themselves. It’s simply about gaining power. And they do it by preying upon “personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing” in other well-meaning people. They’ve discovered that yelling “cultural appropriation” works quite well with people who are constantly looking for other people to feel sorry for - which of a kind of projection.
I've slowly come to the opinion that it is about a power play / emotional manipulation, because there is no way to atone. If you're white (for example), you're just an oppressor by the structure of society you were born into, so the sin is membership in a structurally advantaged group defined by race. You can't change your race nor change the past, so the best you can do is hope that supporting the political agenda of your accusers is good enough.
Do you think the Christian concept of "original sin" planted (at least some of) the seeds for this mental model? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin
CCC 405
“ Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants.
It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin — an inclination to evil that is called “concupiscence.”
Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.”
Because that's what it takes to ignore abusive levels of inequality and systemic threats to the continued survival of the species.
The point is not about what happened in the past, it's about what is still happening now - and how the narratives from the past continue to be used to justify it.
Ignoring this is neither compassionate nor realistic - although it is toxic, pretty much by definition.
Complaining without action is equivalent to ignoring it. Sharing the same news headline everyone's already read with your "This is bad!" caption isn't helping. We all know, we can read the words and see it's bad.
Enjoying the world in all its messiness means engaging with it - not this woke schtick of avoiding touching the entire subject because of some trigger word, then spewing generic, inactionable drivel like "did you know the world is bad?"
Yes, we know. We all know. Every single one of us. Welcome to the conversation. Work on yourself so you're not bringing more misery and uselessness into an already-miserable world that needs help.
(Have you tried meditation? /s)
I do not believe myself to be a narcissist and I think I am at least somewhat aware of the world and it’s problems.
Yet, despite this, I do “ enjoy the world as it is, in all its messiness”.
I think what is preventing you from doing the same is ideology and close mindedness. From the comment, you come across like a fundamentalist christian refusing to enjoy life because “the world is sinful”.
Enjoy life man. Since we’re on the article, take a page from the Buddhist philosophy and let go, for a moment at least :)
Sounds like you’ve had some bad run-ins with Christian fundamentalists. Sure the world is broken, but most Christians realize the world is inherently beautiful (not to be confused with ‘good’).
If the God of the universe died to save it, there’s got to be fundamental value there. Therefore if someone thinks the world is ugly and can’t enjoy it, that’s an internal thing they gotta fix, not an immutable, self-evident truth about the world… again it’s precisely because of the Bible that I believe these things.
I don't know if you meant to come off as harshly as you did, but this is needlessly reductive, which is especially ironic in a discussion about Buddhism.
What you propose is that there are two extremes: enjoyment of the world while ignoring suffering and self mortification while trying to solve it. These are, in essence, the two extremes which the Buddha argued against in favor of the Middle Path[0]:
> There is an addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is an addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Perfect One has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana.
I don't think that OP is saying we should ignore suffering and not try to address it, but they are saying that self-flagellation is unhelpful and toxic, and we should approach suffering with a forward eye not a backward one.
I think you’ve missed the commenters main point which is that all this hand-wringing about how terrible things are—isn’t actively solving any problems we have today, or any problems we had yesterday. I would even dare to guess it won’t solve the problems we’ll have tomorrow.