Five mildly anti-Buddhist essays
sashachapin.substack.com
sashachapin.substack.com
Many of the teachers and students I knew were not rising above their neuroses. Many of them were masking their life problems with the Buddhist aesthetic as opposed to really working with them. We would cycle through the same concerns repeatedly without any progress. I started to figure out that the process was to drop the issue and disengage with it. The problem is that does not work outside of a sheltered monastic community because you need to face your problems constantly in the real world.
I agree that many modern Buddhist schools stray away from the Buddha’s original teachings (as we know it from the Pali Cannon). Many branches won’t even really teach what Buddha said; only interpretations from later traditions. We did not talk about Buddha much in Zen practice at all. Much more time was given to Dōgen, and the Chinese masters than to Buddha. In Zen everyone is a Buddha so Siddhartha Gautama (O.G. Buddha) gets marginalized. There is also a pantheon of Buddhas which dilutes things even more. Buddhism has a pretty straight forward thesis (Four Noble Truths), but it has become esoteric after centuries of appropriation and reinterpretation.
Modern Western Buddhism pushes meditation above all of the other practices. We spent more time meditating than anything else, which was different than how the early Buddhists and even how most Buddhists in Asia practice. This leads to people thinking that all they need to do is sit and not change anything about their lives and it will magically work out. In fact in Japanese Zen Dōgen essentially states that sitting with the correct posture (zazen) is enlightened practice itself. This enlightenment is transitory, so one could imagine that the longer you sit zazen the more time you get to stay in this enlightened state. You can see how this could become an obsession. This in practice leads to a lack of engagement which would have you thinking you are actually putting in the work, but you are just eschewing reality.
Buddhism has a rich tradition of debating and challenging teachers. In fact the Pali Cannon is full of these debates. However, these days if you bring up a question or objection to some teachers they don’t really engage with you. In Zen you can cover up inconsistencies with esoteric vocabulary and wave it away. Just sit and it will be okay.
Buddha in the Pali Cannon was actually more human than we give him credit for. He made mistakes and learned from them (even after nirvana). He got old and died. He scolded his monks for breaking monastic rules. The Buddha represented in the Pali Cannon can be raw at times which goes against the ideal Buddha archetype.
+1 from a long time fan of the Buddha
The phrase "spiritual bypass", which I'm sure you know (it is a cliché by now) is often used to describe this phenomenon. I recently learned that it has a specific origin: it was coined in the early 80s by the psychotherapist (and Buddhist) John Welwood, who had a lot of experience with it in spiritual communities. There's a great interview with Welwood from 2011 about this. I have a pdf somewhere, but all I can find online at the moment is this excerpt: https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/on-spiritual-by....
The relationship between spirituality and therapy is endlessly fascinating to me. (Edit: it's no coincidence that the OP eventually ends up talking about IFS.)
Most valuable to me is his for lack of a better term non-violence. I've never read or heard him say negative things about other schools or teachings. He simply puts out his approach to things and lets you free to take, pick, choose, whatever. For example he gives _criteria_ for a practice, a teaching, a community.
The other extremely valuable aspect is his explicit approach to trauma, to overcoming deep rooted early onset trauma, little by little.
He fluently moves between traditions, if he is teaching a Christian audience then he'll use Christinesian lingo, if he is in a neutral settings (like training therapists) he'll "translate" concepts, like "contemplative church" or "sangha" or Ashram"; or "blind" and "see" vs "unknowing" and "awakened". Like a stream enterer would know that rituals are valuable (to some or many) but interchangeable or not useful to some. Which leads me to the third valuable thing: I'm rooted in a very liberal Catholicism and it's rituals, noises, smell and lingo feel "home" to me while the Zen noises, smells and lingo confused me, while not being _substantially_ different.
so in summary I was happy to find someone in the intersection of being trauma sensitive (healing even), being open minded and seeing Jesus-as-Zen-teacher-not-mage.
:-)
on the cac.org site they host some podcast, teaching series, really, with nice transcripts even:
https://cac.org/podcasts/instructions-for-the-practice/
https://cac.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/TTTM_Transcript_I...
Seems like the Zen school wouldn't be such a threat if they just sat inside all day working on their posture.
anyway, to cite "zen mind beginners mind" regarding just sitting around all the time:
> Zen is not something to get excited about. Some people start to practice Zen just out of curiosity, and they only make themselves busier. If your practice makes you worse, it is ridiculous. I think that if you try to do zazen once a week, that will make you busy enough. Do not be too interested in Zen. When young people get excited about Zen they often give up schooling and go to some mountain or forest in order to sit. That kind of interest is not true interest. Just continue in your calm, ordinary practice and your character will be built up. If your mind is always busy, there will be no time to build, and you will not be successful, particularly if you work too hard on it. Building character is like making bread—you have to mix it little by little, step by step, and moderate temperature is needed. You know yourself quite well, and you know how much temperature you need. You know exactly what you need. But if you get too excited, you will forget how much temperature is good for you, and you will lose your own way. This is very dangerous.
Do I understand it correctly that you’re saying that such people only try to practice samādhi instead of sīla, samādhi, and paññā? So that they neglect most of the noble eightfold path?
The Thai forest tradition has been very meditation-focused (as was, in my reading, the Pali canon) but they emphasize the importance of the rest of the eightfold path too. The Pacific Hermitage had good discussions uploaded to YouTube for example.[1] And the UK and Australia branches seem to have had a similar sutta-centric and practical focus.
His very first attempt to transmit the Dhamma ended up in failure (the guy before the first five) - and that made him to question, worked on and fixed the way it was delivered.
I am not sure whether I'd agree with everything you said, but simply because I only tangentially got exposed to "western" zen and buddhism, through some zen monasteries in California. But you put certain things/concepts in words that I didn't manage to express clearly by myself, so thanks for that.
In a study where no-self is an objective, it is no mystery why problems with a particular ego are not always addressed.
Insight meditation is not supposed to solve your petty life problems, heck it might even exacerbate them if you do it badly. Stick to practicing sila if you feel like you aren't ready for the more challenging practices.
While Stoicism comes from a different tradition it's actually a great introduction to a good frame of mind for sila and even for the more rational-adjacent kinds of meditation practice like Zen, and one that will be especially familiar to a Western audience. Of course it's also true that many people resort to therapy in order to address these same challenges, and there's nothing wrong with that if it's your preference.
I can recommend Jack Kornfield's modern classic, A Path With Heart.
Just as you say, he spent years practicing with the much-loved Ajahn Chah and the formidable Mahasi Sayadaw - and then came back home to find his old patterns still there. Of course, the insights and experiences he'd had helped him, but the patterns still had to be worked through.
There is a lot to be said for lay practice. Instead of running off to a monastery, do a couple retreats a year and maintain a daily practice. There is plenty of dukkha to encounter in a normal life.
This is really hard to remember if you've had some dramatic meditation experiences or you're really eager to make progress, which is one reason the Soto folks are always emphasizing patience.
CBT is both.
Not so! The problem is that disengaging is much more difficult outside of a sheltered monastic community, not that it is impossible. It becomes a balance engaging and disengaging; you spend as much time as necessary engaging so you can set up your environment to allow as much time for disengaging as possible, and find relationships which will be able to support you in this. Stopping the process of disengaging to deal with something like dealing with a difficult social interaction or rearranging your finances can be very painful and frustrating. But in the end, dealing with these interruptions is a part of the process of awakening.
Yes - that's why I'd value a _true_ master (Zen terminology) regarding maturity higher as a monk. In terms of ML monks risk overfitting their trained mental strategies to a monastic context which then turn out to be unsuited for chaotic urban environments. OTOH of course it shows maturity IMHO to turn your back on modern urban environments and withdraw into a monastery. Then there is no need to steelman yourself for the next dozen disappointing Tinder dates and how they'll affect you.
https://libgen.is/search.php?req=vimalakirti%27s+advice&lg_t...
To wit, even the whole notion of "prophet" and the "original teachings of Buddha" and how Zen and more broadly Mahayana are "not the original teachings" as compared to that in the Pali canon etc. that are brought up again and again by Western practitioners are hallmarks of Christian, and more fundamentally Abrahamic, thought process.
No one in Asia cares that this is so. Period.
Alas, Indians, and most Asians too are increasingly turning into half baked Christians today (see 'Navayana'), so the above is a bit of lie. The traditions too are all dying much like their country and culture of their birth... Way to go occidental monoculture!
To your point specifically, the Pali Canon is really not philosophically sophisticated. The Nalanda school which is now preserved in Tibet after the Islamic destruction of India has very deep philosophical roots as compared to those traditions in the periphery like Zen and do make very compelling arguments against the old schools of Buddhism.
The development of Mahayana has a parallel on the Hindu side of the tradition, but of course, since us brown-skinned heathens are infinitely uglier, the Europeans have made it their goal to demonize us vis-a-vis the white-skinned E-Asian Buddhists (lol). I'm not surprised to see books claiming that Siddhartha was a Scytian, and hence Buddhism is Greek (also, lol). I wonder what they'll next claim about Nagarjuna. At some point, you just laugh and move on (instead of debating endlessly with idiots on listservs).
Sadly, Mahayana and Advaita never had much debate within themselves, so the typical view on the Hindu side (prototyped by Madhava) of Buddhism is also quite outdated.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Please tell me you are making a pun and you didn't just misspell canon 4 times.
I've come to the conclusion after a lot of reading, practice, and contemplation that there is NO form of buddhism that makes any sense to engage with unless you believe in rebirth. The point of buddhism is to escape rebirth, not achieve some psychological state like happiness or well-being. If you're expecting the later out of buddhism, you're probably better off putting your energy into more "worldly" endeavors. I've been much happier since I stopped meditating and started using that time to focus on friends, hobbies, career and dating.
Traditional buddhists would probably facepalm at this and say something like "no duh, rebirth is buddhism 101". But a lot of American buddhist traditions present rebirth as an optional belief which is nonessential to buddhist practice. I even watched an American zen teacher call rebirth "bullshit" publicly in a talk once.
What's sad to me is that therapists have started recommending meditation as some universal good, despite the research on it still being pretty young. It seems they've been influenced by the American buddhist/mindfulness movement and are being rather uncritical. I'm sure small amounts of meditation can help some people with stress and anxiety, but it shouldn't be viewed as something to automatically recommend to every patient like sleep and exercise.
His father started the Lindisfarne Association, which was a sort of highbrow hippie ecumenical colony, well known in the post-60s counterculture (somebody here will know a lot more about this than I do!), where the likes of Stewart Brand and the Dalai Lama would rub shoulders on panels. So he grew up around spiritual luminaries and consciousness-raisers. The American adaptation of Buddhism matured in circles like this, so he had a front-row seat, but from a child's perspective.
There's an interesting discussion at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heSq98tNTlM&t=9s between Thompson and Robert Wright, who wrote "Why Buddhism is True" and who, although he oddly insists he isn't, seems exactly the sort of well-intentioned Buddhist modernist the OP (and Thompson) are writing about.
Right now I am reading quite a lot of stuff by Christopher Hitchens, which as you might know was very vocal about religious topics (and very much against most of it).
I haven't found much that he has said about Buddhism [0], but I'll check Thompson's book very soon.
[0]: https://trueancestor.typepad.com/true_ancestor/2007/05/chris...
He seemed to dismiss it because it was a religion rather than address any of its positions in a substantial way. Probably because he couldn’t give as forceful or witty a counter argument to it as he could Christianity.
I suspect the absence of (m)any proximal adherents willing to publicly debate him on the topic is why we don't have the same wealth of quips and ripostes from him around this pseudo-religion as compared, say, christianity.
1. The goal is to end suffering, so if a practice is making you suffer stop doing it.
2. Do what works for you. The only truth is what you can directly experience in the laboratory of your life. All the other teachings are just suggestions.
And if you'd like a concise overview of Theravada Buddhism (which is somewhat easier to grok without the added teachings of Mahayana, Vajrayana, Zen, etc.) I highly recommend [1] and [2], the second of which can be read in a day or two.
[1]: https://a.co/d/iiAtDs5 [2]: https://a.co/d/asUIQUR
Appreciate it in any case.
That's correct: the goal is to end suffering - by means of understanding it.
Thus the understanding is important to distinguish there's indeed suffering that leads to the end of suffering -- like Ajahn Chah using analogy of going to the dentist (in itself is a suffering) to end the suffering of dental pain.
Do you remember the book or teaching that that analogy came from? Ajan Chah comes highly recommended from others as well.
Edit: oh I guess the exception is clinging to the Dhamma, like the sutta about the raft.
This would be a huge misunderstanding of the article. I read the whole article, and I found it to be positively re-affirming of Buddhism. Unfortunately the submission title is potentially misleading and possibly even clickbaity.
It's a very good article. I've read many critiques of Western Buddhism and they can mostly get a bit samey after a while. However -- after the first few paragraphs, which are admittedly pretty run-of-the-mill -- this article elevates itself to a much more interesting level. It also raises solutions, anecdotes, and references that go way beyond what you normally hear.
I will say that some of Sasha's criticisms don't vibe well with my understanding, though. For example, we don't renounce pleasure because Buddha tells us we should, but because we directly observe that clinging to desire inherently feels bad. Our subconscious mind, when confronted with this info, naturally drops the object like a hot coal.
Telling newbies that traditional Buddhism is about giving up everything that makes you happy is a mischaracterization imo.
I also think his understanding of clinging is more narrow than what's described in the Abhidhamma. The interludes of TMI[1] give a pretty approachable introduction to this model of conscious experience.
I think it's unfortunate its gone to the front-page because it makes a mess of the dharma and communicates Buddhism as a mass of contradictions.
People will latch on to anything that confirms their biases without practicing and seeing for themselves what it really is. I encourage more people to go out and practice the way we have the teachings preserved not in Zen, not in Tibetan but early Buddhism, where we're closest to the teacher. Start there, practice ethics first, then move on to stability of mind, then real insight practice always with an eye to, "is this thing improving my relationships to myself and others?" If it doesn't, if you become more egoic, more like Sasha, abandon it, seek help. Do not declare enlightenment, do not foster a following of people who will then spread your confusion to the four corners of the earth.
I do however agree that a lot of folk seem to get into esoteric stuff like Tantra and Dzogchen very early before understanding basic things.
> Its conclusions stand in stark contrast to the fundamentals of Buddhist practice. It's message is confusion from an author who is not accomplished in practice but writes eloquently.
Some famous Buddhist teachers are a bit like this to me. Chogyam Trungpa, for example... I can't make head or tail of the man. Sometimes I think Crazy Wisdom is great, other times I think he's been a disaster for the spread of Buddhism to the West. I raise the spectre of CTR because the article we're discussing has a Crazy Wisdom feeling for me, and that's why I like it.
> I think it's unfortunate its gone to the front-page because it makes a mess of the dharma and communicates Buddhism as a mass of contradictions.
The whole Internet is a mess of contradictions regarding Buddhism. It is literally the worst place you can go to learn about what Buddhism really is, because the only way you learn properly is to trust a teacher by knowing them on some kind of personal level or teacher-student level.
For a tradition with such emphasis on sangha, practice, and lineage of teaching, it's ridiculous to submit to the thoughts of online Buddhists who you don't even know. I think this is a reason for all the disagreement; arguments are conjured up out of thin air with no reference to the actual practice of the person who says it.
I'm not saying the article is correct in all aspects, but rather that it goes beyond the trite and predictable criticisms of Western Buddhism, and for that alone it's more interesting than most articles. It raises anecdotes that I haven't much of before, it's slightly abrasive, and I like that.
> I encourage more people to go out and practice the way we have the teachings preserved not in Zen, not in Tibetan but early Buddhism, where we're closest to the teacher.
This is a very Western Buddhist attitude. In the Western tradition we love to get as close as possible to the primary canonical source when learning something, possibly because Western Buddhism tends to be quite dry and academic and admits very Protestant attitudes. I think a lot of Western Buddhists have this mistaken notion that Theravadans have some monopoly on what Real Buddhism actually is.
My most recent teacher said it doesn't matter whether you start out in Zen, Pure Land, Tibetan, or Theravada, just pick one and stick with it for a while otherwise you'll get your wires crossed and end up getting a jumbled message that is inconsistent with any sect. He acknowledged the desire for people to study early Buddhism as the "purest" form of Buddhism, but he said that IF you want to study early Buddhism or Theravada, then you need to stick with it. So, much like you're saying, yes the Theravada teachings are more direct and simpler, but maybe it's not necessary to start out with this form. Maybe it is, I don't know. I'll figure it out as I go along. But I don't disagree in principle.
Personally I like the simpler, warmer approaches to Buddhism, and I do often appreciate irrational, supernatural aspects when I encounter them. I do appreciate Theravada, not because it's the purest form, but because the practitioners I've met so far seem to be a bit warmer. Plus, Theravada is a bit more like, "do this, do that, keep it simple".
I've been very curious about Zen but I notice that a lot of Zen practitioners tend to deflect real-life problems into clever Buddhist aphorisms, which is just evasive and doesn't really engage with the world. Plus I don't really love meditation that much so maybe it's not for me. I'd prefer to do active physical exercise in my limited time (and when I'm not writing on HN) because I know this benefits my mind and body more than extended sitting. On the other hand, I like Alan Watts a lot, I think he had had a much more positive influence on Western Buddhism than CTR had. So AW a good, positive advertisement for Zen.
Pure Land sounds cool because I like chanting, but I like Nichiren chanting more (plus I met a lot of cool people in Nichiren circles). Tibetan Buddhist sanghas around where I live seem to be a bit, oh I don't know, I just can't really get into it.
Cool, so I just walk away from anything causing me stress? *leaves wife and kids*.
Thanks, Buddhism!
This was the real "sudden insight" I got from trying meditation off and on for a few years: that the complete detachment they try to achieve and the complete detachment I've been feeling for most of my life are the same thing. The only difference is they did it on purpose.
I have been enlightened, and it is the biggest source of suffering in my life.
What you are reminded of, regarding ptsd and detachment, is called dissociation (in psychology). It's an unhealthy, but working, coping mechanism for something that a mind decides it cannot face. A major difference with the detachment I'm trying to explain is that the Buddhist / stoic practice is conscious, but dissociation is unconscious.
We should all follow this, and also use it as a basis for being more kind to others - what worked for us might not necessarily work for others, let’s be less judgemental and more understanding.
That's a non-sequitor. Following this advice will lead you into a local-minimum of suffering at best.
That would run counter to what Zen practice is about. Suffering can be, among other things, an unconscious experience of pain. If the practice brings pain, whether physical or psychological, the way to deal with that is to continue with the practice and be unshaken by whatever comes, just staying with the practice (i.e. counting, or staying watchful) - while avoiding a desire to be in a better state or questioning the current state, just keeping on doing it under a firm belief that it will lead to an improvement in the long term (and not necessarily right now). Doing so leads to a development of an internal balance, sort of a way to operate beyond thoughts and emotions, which allows to blow away unnecessary mental clutter that contributes to suffering here and there on an ongoing basis, as well as having more mental strength to deal with unpleasant things in life with less suffering.
However, given that qualification, I still believe that practice should be a smooth descent of the gradient of suffering. You may increase your conscious awareness of pain or unwholesome states, but you should always feel less suffering after you do that. This is because letting go to the reality of the present moment is the opposite of clinging. So you should always feel better* when you practice than when you don't.
I will admit, though, that perhaps my perspective is colored by my experience and this is not true for all people.
*by feeling better we mean less suffering (dukkha), not more pleasure and less pain
This is just your own opinion at this point. It's not buddhism. Buddhism has specific teachings that it posits as being true, regardless of whether you've personally experienced them.
I'm not sure what the problem is here? Someone took a vow of celibacy and broke it. Should he be praised? Are we looking for something more middle class and passive aggressive from the Buddha? He makes his point.
> And here is the Buddha on whether you should be resentful if you’re being dismembered: “Monks, even if bandits were to savagely sever you, limb by limb, with a double-handled saw, even then, whoever of you harbors ill will at heart would not be upholding my Teaching.”
Rhetoric is not helpful now?
It's certainly possible to criticise Buddha, Buddhism, any of the Buddhist religions etc but I would start with my most important or best criticisms, and I don't see these hitting the mark at all.
The example is extreme because it is meant to put the problem into context. Everyone can immediately think of someone harmed by religious sexual abuse, but the idea that it's the context of the sex and not the sex itself is still difficult for us to understand because of our preconceptions. Buddhist morality always focuses on intention and context. The rules for monks and lay people are completely different for a reason.
RIP quantum mechanics, economics, public policy, law school, etc..
I do think this is good advice regarding many things however. Cryptocurrency and NFTs, for example.
You can also disagree and that's fine too. There is plenty still up for debate even if you are believing the so called "experts".
If one traces back Christianity historically, it grows more like a sponge taking in concepts and practices from its cultural rich surroundings. Before becoming the official "religion" of the Roman Empire it was wildly heterodox. Early Christianity is a wild ride. Even after being domesticated, latinized, canonized, homogenised and ultimately politicized looking back on the time line it unfolds like a fractal of cultural manifolds (e.g. "negative theology" [0] or more recent "existentialism" [1]).
"Buddhism" was spread - locally more limited - similarly through conquest and enforcing social order but never gained the momentum of "Christianity" or "Islam" and thus in its smaller and more fractions contains more "diversity" and is harder to point to as a monolithic block.
The exercise of bringing something to the table by being even mildly anti-Buddhist, anti-Christian, anti-#insert_religion_here# strikes me as fruitless in these globalised times and kind of weirdly pre-anthropological echoing theological reasoning.
The observations obviously stem from personal experience with different facets of modern/westernized Buddhism and is more descriptive of the author's resistances than the subject which is put sneakingly forward.
My view of this article: while I appreciate anyone writing about religion today, I don't really love what the article says and it sounds a bit like a general criticism of organized religion from someone hoping it's something it of course isn't.
What does it matter that your friends aren't serious or religious enough for your liking? This is ultimately a solo pursuit. What does it matter that you can find a sutra from Gautama that sounds sexist? This isn't about Gautama. What does it matter that an interpretation of what Gautama said is 'modern' or 'original'? This isn't about that.
This (religion) is about your personal religiousness. Your spirituality. There's a lot of beauty in the world of Buddhism to experience. It isn't for me, either, but I'm not angry or resentful about that.
That is so interesting to me and I wonder if you could answer just a couple of questions, with as much or little detail as you feel comfortable with.
Do you still consider yourself a follower of Osho?
What did you think of Wild Wild Country?
Of course! What's interesting to you about it, out of curiosity?
I do still consider myself a follower of Osho. I technically haven't taken sannyas (this is the name of the process of formally joining Osho as a disciple and receiving a new name -- eg 'Sheela' or 'Devaraj' -- and mala), but these days, in my opinion at least, that isn't a critical aspect of being part of the community. (FYI, sannyas is also a term in hinduism for renouncing your life and becoming a monk, basically, but 'neo-sannyas,' created by Osho, is renunciation-free; you're basically just saying, I'm serious about this meditation thing).
I thought Wild Wild Country was an excellent documentary about a really, really juicy and evocative topic. I'm bummed that they didn't spend at least a LITTLE more time on the question of "why do these people like Osho so much" (and what does Osho have to say), but I understand that that wasn't really the point of the documentary, which was to focus on a wild, explosive story. To me, an equally interesting story is why the heck were a bunch of highly-educated, independent doctors and lawyers moving out into the middle of nowhere to be self-sustaining and celebratory? Why did they seem so much happier than everyone else in our society, at least at certain points? But the story that sells better is 'why did this lady try to kill this other guy.' I'm hoping there will be a sequel that goes in greater depth.
Have a blessed day!
I am not an Osho follower but I have read some of his book and thought they were insightful.
Also, I can't tell you how many times this video has cheered me up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D7rWLzloOI
It really must have been something being there studying with him. Thank you for sharing about your experience!
I imagine that almost every kid from Boulder goes through a Buddhist phase. Some come out the other end with useful introspective skills. Hopefully, they also managed not to acquire the odor of self-righteousness in the process. But the chances of avoiding this actually seem pretty slim. I knew a lot of folks in the scene who came off like caricatures. And of course their practice didn't seem to bring them any recognizable successes in life.
That being said, it still feels like Buddhism has more of an empirical quality than any other major belief system I've encountered. But, practically speaking, the difference ends up seeming marginal. At the end of the day, it's still a religion. It takes an unusual kind of personal to distill something useful from becoming involved with it.
I'm not sure the author of the article has managed that.
There was this documentary I saw (forgot the name) that had a zen master who was making fried dough and he was extremely neurotic. Made me wonder if the neurotic types are the ones who seek out Buddhism. The real laid-back types are already ‘Buddhas’, which ironically is why they don’t seek it out.
Not just boring, it's rather menacing, as it's a device to torture-kill a person. Why the hell would I plaster that everywhere? What's wrong with people???
Schopenhauer thought his pessimistic philosophy was similar to Buddhism. Negation of desire or denial of self is a tricky thing. You can see the issue here with this table (from the article): https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_...
It's not clear that someone who doesn't "grasp" would want to have sex...or to eat. That's the conclusion that Schopenhauer comes to: someone who is enlightened would just chill without being attached to anything (think Meursault not crying at his mother's funeral). Though it may avoid suffering, that state doesn't seem worth pursuing. Maybe temporarily.
Buddhists respond to that critique by making some distinction between "bad desire" and "good desire" (implicit in the table). But the line is unclear and the insightful kernel of Buddhist teaching is that desire, full stop, is what leads to suffering. Besides, Buddhist monks are ascetics, not programmers who dabble in meditation.
Buddhism makes a lot more sense as a cultural practice where you have the monks who are practicitions and the lay-people who give them alms. The idea, then, isn't that everyone pursue enlightenment. It's enough that some people are pursuing it and the general population supports them.
This is the part that resonated the most with me. Never understood this (western) obsession with meditation. I have a few friends, born and raised in Buddhist homes; not a single one of them was taught to meditate.
In any case, I still have a lot of respect for Buddhism. Remember your good friend, breath.
Whether or not you learn it at home is complicated, as it'd depend on so many things -- lineage/yana, caste/social class, country/region, etc.
There’s a lot of churn around meditation. In my experience it’s not something you do unless you really want to. Even then, do not stress. I started meditation at around 25 and have been doing it for about 20 years now. You do how much you can. Sometimes 30-35 mins, sometimes just 5. But you do it daily. There is no magical peace that comes with overdoing it. It’s not that there is no benefit though. I have noticed I can better control my emotions and let go of irritations a lot better.
"The point is that we should experiment with everything and pick what best fits our situation, reverence be damned"
It is the same conclusion that Hermann Hesse makes thru Siddhartha talking to his friend Govinda in one of my favorite books https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhartha_(novel)
-xu yun
Unfortunately this article is hard to really agree or disagree with because many of the foundational claims just don’t make sense.
Just one example, it mentions indifference as a problem with Buddhism. Yet indifference is often called out by Buddhist’s explicitly as what not to do.
I’d definitely recommend searching up Buddhism indifference and reading (any of?) the results.
It’s not too hard to find a good amount of misinterpretations like this in the piece.
Indeed, I usually see indifference being referred to as the enemy. The “near enemy” of equanimity.
Here is one Western leader specifically addressing the point:
> "Buddhism is often treated with special regard, as if it is a superior philosophy that correctly identifies the source of all human misery, and correctly lays out the path to its elimination."
Isn't that basically the premise of any religious tradition one could care to name, from the Abrahamic offshoots (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) to every other system of belief one can think of (Hinduism, European paganism, animism, etc.)?
If people find comfort or psychological support by adopting this or that philosophical-religous tradition, (aka the utilitarian argument), there's not really any point in trying to poke holes in their beliefs. The only thing that's unacceptable is when members of one tradition use their belief system as an excuse for persecuting or waging wars on other groups.
And yes, the "superior philosophy" assumption is pretty widespread in the West, especially compared to eg. Islam. I've gotten some very surprised looks when mentioning things like how Kyoto's sohei warrior monks had violent battles between competing temples and regularly extorted both nobility and populace, the role of Buddhism in ultranationalist mob violence in eg. Myanmar [2] and Sri Lanka [3], etc.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dhei
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotic_Association_of_Myanm...
I think on the left there is a tendency to explain away a lot of Islam's problems too, whereas on the right there is a tendency to exaggerate them. I'm not sure what else to make of This event at Hamline College.[1]
The whole Myanmar thing is quickly turned into a No True Scotsman conversation any time you bring it up.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/08/us/hamline-university-isl...
If you are not getting the answers that you are seeking with meditation, then go deeper. Street relief, take deep breath meditation is not what true meditation is supposed to achieve. Deep layers of meditation, which can achieve ego-death are not calming but rather unsettling.
You should also try to read up some texts like Mulamadhyamakakarika(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C5%ABlamadhyamakak%C4%81rik%...) by Nagarjuna(who lived around the time of the buddha). There are many english translations of this book ( the path of the middle way) and it takes a logical approach to subjects like time, space, entities etc.
- Life is filled with suffering
- The root cause of mental suffering is attachment or aversion
However, the Buddhist solutions to these tenants is completely misguided.
Buddhists suggest that the solution to mental suffering is to get rid of all attachments and aversions. If you actually practice this, life is extremely boring and lacking of motivation.
The true middle path is to focus your attachments on things that are both authentic and within your control. I call these attachments 'intrinsic values'. Examples include: integrity, hard work, perseverance, pursuit of excellence. Intrinsic values are the opposite of extrinsic values such as wealth, power, fame. If you chase after extrinsic values, you are setting yourself up for failure because they're, by definition, outside your control. However, focusing on intrinsic values is resilient to external circumstances and results in higher levels of satisfaction.
Their YT is great https://youtube.com/@BuddhistSocietyWA
Related is https://suttacentral.net
Some resources I liked: Alan Watt’s book on Zen Buddhism talks a bit about Taoism in the beginning since it’s an important foundational aspect of zen.
The Tao Te Ching translation by red pine, which pairs each verse with a sampling of interpretations for various scholars. It’s been a fantastic way to learn, by far my favorite translation.
Maybe OP and I have been reading different Buddhist texts, but for me the whole point of anattā is that you affirm your life and emotions as part of a greater interconnected whole. You lose the transcendent conception of yourself, get rid of the whole 'soul' thing, you relax fully into the immanent, you realize that you're dirt - but you're dirt that breathes and thinks and feels.
You don't ignore your anger and sadness and hurt, as much of Western meditation teaches for some reason, you let it pass through you, appreciated and unharmed, as you realize that our species and many others ultimately developed those emotions because they were beneficial in some way. You don't ignore suffering, as that behaviour is itself an attachment - an attachment to happiness! You have to 'challenge the question' per se. Get rid of the root problem by realizing that life is suffering.
We along with many species developed the ability to realize and to feel suffering because we evolved to deal with life, not to cast ourselves away from it, physically or spiritually. This process of development ties you into the larger part of nature, and the earth in general, as a system of indefinite change in which you are a small part, like a drop in a coursing river. You're a living example of nature in action, and every time you're angry or sad or hungry or hurting or even happy or excited, that's nature working. That's not life-denying, that's affirming what it truly means to be alive.
To provide a more pragmatic and less flowery note, my friends and colleagues often sow an incredible amount of dismay and frustration into their lives trying to avoid anger or avoid pain, when they could just allow themselves to feel the feelings that are already in their bodies in the first place. Oftentimes sadness is less sadness-in-itself and more like a frustration at an unmet desire to not feel sad. This desire, this attachment, is ultimately misguided. It's like seeing your check engine light flashing and thinking "I really need to stop that light" instead of "I need to check my engine". Do away with all that attachment and then feeling one's feelings simply becomes being mindful of those emotional 'indicators' and realizing that they're impermanent. The feelings are still there, there's just no attachment.
Following that, I don't think the OP's list of individual contradictions which vary by culture and belief system constitutes a meaningful critique of the whole idea (insofar as there even is a 'whole idea', which, maybe there isn't). "Someone somewhere else thinks differently than you, so what you think sucks", like, what? That obviously doesn't follow. I'm not and have not been talking about Pure Land Buddhism, so any critique of Pure Land Buddhism, is not a critique I'm responding to.
The final part of the article criticizes the form of 'western meditation' I was talking about, where you simply try and make yourself not feel things, rather than accepting those emotions as a part of life and let them flow in and out of you while acknowledging them for what they are. I agree with the author that 'self-scolding' is a terrible approach to meditation, but this is something I see more commonly in Buddhist-appropriation rather than actual Buddhist teachings. So, to my original point, I think OP and I are simply reading different texts.
I don't think OP is wrong in any capacity, I just think they've misidentified the target and are scoping a bit too broad - OP has gripes with certain schools of Buddhism and the way certain people practice it. But the whole article doesn't really contain a criticism of like, the whole thing.
I also appreciate all the other thoughtful comments here. Plenty of food for thought. Thanks all.
--
My interest in Buddhism has recently been renewed. Was very interested as kid. Taoism, Zen, reading a lot, learning how to meditate.
Then I got diagnosed as terminal. Being a baby monk was very useful for coping. I wasn't freaked out about dying and everything was cool. (My stoicism was misinterpreted as suicidal or defeatist, which amped other people's freak out.)
I was ready to die.
Then I survived a bone marrow transplant (and all the complications). Oops.
Now what?
Buddhism, as I was able to understand it, was just such a bummer. When all life is suffering and nothing matters... How was I supposed to recover, rejoin the world of the living, pay rent, and strive?
For me to keep going required a suspension of disbelief, some nugget of hope, to reacquire the fear of death. (YMMV.)
Recently started reading again. To compliment some new skills I learned thru Swedish Pain Services, what I call "Pain College". Mostly because I'm curious about the "theory" behind my mindfulness "practice".
The most beneficial so far as been Jon Kabat-Zinn. Even so, wow, these Buddhists are a real group Eeyores.
I'm not interested in '90s New Age styled pabulum. I don't need anything sugar coated. I just want a better (layperson's) guide for self-improvement.
For example... We've all heard of phantom pain syndrome, right? At Pain College I learned about Graded Motor Imagery. During the lectures, I was like "ya ya ya, bullshit. No way I can just think my way to a cure." But I followed along and did what I was told.
Holy shit! It worked on one of my chronic conditions. It still feels like magic. The weirdest part is that it worked despite me not believing it could.
So now I'm wondering what other awesome sauce techniques am I missing out on? Because I don't have the awareness or mental models?
--
Swedish "Pain College" https://www.swedish.org/services/pain-services
“Buddhism is often treated with special regard, as if it is a superior philosophy that correctly identifies the source of all human misery, and correctly lays out the path to its elimination.”
Not to mention, neither Islam, Christianity nor Judaism even purport to address human suffering (in this world). The first two do at least promise that suffering will stop after death if you follow their tenets - Judaism doesn't even do that (this is not a criticism of Judaism, just an observation of how it doesn't fit with the quote).
Also, I don't think that Hinduism receives any significant respect from European or American scholars, especially in the many-gods forms. Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Shinto are too obscure for most to even have an opinion.
So no, I think Buddhism is the only one that really fits in that sentence, if we're talking from a mainstream secular European and American discourse point of view.
But suffering is not something that is in your power to control: suffering happens to you for reasons you may not understand, and you can only pray that God will take mercy and end your suffering. That is essentially all that Christianity at least has to say on ending (physical) suffering.
The perfect soldier, citizen, human, is a faceless, egoless pupil.
With enough propagandistic scholars I’m sure any religion could become pro-capitalist, pro-Japanese, pro-socialist, or what have you. Because we’ve certainly seen some insane religious justifications throughout history.
But “corporate mindfulness” seems to mostly be about mind training. It’s not about submitting to the boss per se (other things are used to instill that attitude). And if Buddhism then is reduced to just that (better resilience through mindfulness meditation), then I don’t really get the complaint? Because it seems like complaining that a workplace offering free gym membership is corrupting the human activities of cardio and weight training in order to make more efficient worker bees/soldiers. And while that’s what the workplace wants, for sure, it’s not like the employee won’t also get some benefits from doing regular weight training and cardio.
We do? That’s not my experience.
And this isn’t the only sweeping generalization in this essay that doesn’t jibe with my experience… though I’ve not spent time jamming on Zen Buddhism, so maybe I’m missing the point.
> whenever i harsh Buddhism's vibe, some fucker brings me a "well actually Buddhists believe the opposite of that", which is way too easy given what i have now decided is the Third Law of Buddhism:
> for every Buddhism there is an equal and opposite Buddhism somewhere in Asia
This. Very important insight.
> Athletic Buddhism
I love this term! (Competitive Buddhism)
> My friend Jake, reading this section, correctly pointed out that I am engaging in Salad Bar Criticism.
Jake's a good friend and the author very reflected.
> First of all, it can lead to, essentially, a scolding relationship with the mind, in which you dismiss all of your desires and fantasies as undesirable “ego mind.”
Interesting point - didn't think of that, yet.
> Then, a few years ago, I started using introspective techniques and engaged with my self-hatred directly. This lead to an incredible increase in my mental clarity and overall well-being, which, funnily enough, made gainful meditation practice possible for me for the first time.
It seems to me that the author is mostly digesting his own rather naive and dogmatic approach to Buddhism. He makes several good points, though. But generally his essays appear to me more as criticism of how the West tries to shoehorn Buddhist teachings into a culture which causes the problems we try to solve by means of Buddhism and meditation in the first place. That can't work, of course.
> But the standard frontline meditation advice is still to ignore your thoughts and leave it at that. I think it’s tragically incomplete advice.
But with an emphasis on "frontline". I never got the impression from modern introductory texts that thinking in general is bad or should be discarded. Quite the opposite. I enjoy thinking more during phases where I am able to successfully quiet my monkey mind interfering with sound thinking.
> The aesthetic of modern Buddhism gives you the impression that being nice, quiet, and simple is the way to be, that this is Buddhist-ish living.
This definitely seems to be a preconceived notion by beginners or outsiders. But as far as I am concerned I quickly realized how quiet meditation practice (without compassion, empathy exercises - which I still neglect) make me rather confident, loud, entertaining and sometimes even mean (though, 99% in justified situations - those situations where you think afterwards that a more aggressive reaction to some a*hole would have been totally warranted)
This last part doesn't make much sense because this attachment is the default state of most beings. There is no effort needed to form 'deep attachments' nor is it any special when you why get wounded by these attachments because that's the expected outcome.
If you want to understand buddhism, learn its history, its relationship with Bon, learn how it advanced from India to Tibet and China, read the debate between Kamalashila and Hashang, and learn about the three branches of buddhism: sutra, tantra and dzogchen.
All buddhists have the same goal: understand what the true reality is, but their methods differ. When you hear about ascetic monks - these are mostly caricature western views on the sutra followers, they indeed have many rules that they follow religiously. Tantrics believe that working with energy is a better way, so they have elaborate rituals, they use emotions and other forms of energy, and they aren't shy of sex; quite the opposite: many lose control and slip into black magic. Dzogchen followers take the steepest direct path, and reach the top "within one life within one body"; the famous matrix movie, even though a caricature, captured many dzogchen ideas right: by observing your perception carefully, with utmost attention and presence, you'll notice something, and by completing treg-chod and thod-gal practices, you'll reach direct perception in one life.
Like Agile Software Development - you can make it work, but it won't solve your problems. You still have to solve your problems. See also test driven development.
I was raised in a strict Christian Fundamentalist religion, then I fell in love with rational skepticism, now I think I'm a humanist (whatever that means)
I think humanity has evolved religion uncountable times over the centuries - our minds strongly desire an organizing principle. It is highly inefficient to avoid coming to a conclusion; but many important details hide behind things that are both true and satisfying (see Field Guide to Human Error by Dekker for how this applies to airplane crashes).
I would ask that at least once a week, identify a thing that is satisfying and true, and list details that hide behind that conclusion.
I have heard the word "observant" used to describe someone who participates in a religion without believing. There can still be psychic benefits from community membership and directly from religious practices. It's also common for people to be observant for decades, so it's not necessarily a temporary state.
Not sure if this is what you're looking for.
https://vividness.live/traditional-buddhism-has-no-ethical-s...
Modern Buddhism does have ethics, partly as a marketing campaign designed to make you think the Dalai Lama is the world's #1 expert on them.
This isn't true. Acting in certain ways is not to be done because it causes misery to those you inflict it upon. The Buddha explains why you should act ethically: because it causes you distress and others distress.
This article is of poor quality. It appears most critiques of Buddhism wish to misunderstand it right from the beginning. Quoting other academic scholars who also misunderstand Buddhism, as your article does, is not making sound arguments.
Here's just one entire sutta on good and bad ethical action and why one should act in this way:
> ‘If someone were to distort my meaning by lying, I wouldn’t like it. But if I were to distort someone else’s meaning by lying, they wouldn’t like it either. The thing that is disliked by me is also disliked by someone else. Since I dislike this thing, how can I inflict it on others?’ Reflecting in this way, they give up lying themselves. And they encourage others to give up lying, praising the giving up of lying. So their verbal behavior is purified in three points. [1]
[1] https://suttacentral.net/sn55.7/en/sujato?layout=plain&refer...
One of the benefits that western buddhists have is that the can pick any sect or version they want. It was interesting to hear some scholars talk about how the pure Pali Cannon has been turned slowly over thousands of years into more of a common ritualized religions with heaven, hell, demons, saints, etc. of other religions.
My own take is that of the Thai Forest tradition, Vipassana, and others, which is to go with the original Pali Cannon and treat everything after that as suspect. Somehow this gets used against the western practitioners as cherry picking and insincere since Buddhism is completely different to people living in many parts of Asia, where they will have to light incense to get good luck at X life event, for example. So, no, I have absolutely no interest in those sects even if they are the most widely practiced in southeast Asia.
However, I feel that Westerners sticking with the sects that place all emphasis on original Buddhist texts and ignoring the changes and resulting sects over the years is actually more true to the buddha even though that idea may fly in the face of someone practicing a more ritualized diety-based buddhism.
I feel some of the arguments made in the article are a bit straw-man-y, cherry picking some ideas and texts from sects that aren't really practiced in the west. For instance, "First of all, it can lead to, essentially, a scolding relationship with the mind, in which you dismiss all of your desires and fantasies as undesirable “ego mind.” (I have been there. It is horrible.)" Find me a buddhist school that says you should be scolding yourself?! This would be engendering the hindrances that are in opposition to the path. This is a core teaching you would get anywhere, even a 10 minute mindfulness guided meditation - "go back to the breath and don't be upset with yourself about having lost it."
There is a very real critique of buddhism which is when meditation is successful but things go wrong. I feel this is due to the Western way of stripping TOO much away, and I agree with the author here. For instance, S.K. Goenka in his Vipassana teaches to watch the body sensations but stresses over and over again about equanimity to all sensations. Some people can get carried away with the awareness of their body to a point they can't function. It seems that they missed the equanimity part of it. Staying in the tradition and having someone to help guide you would keep that pretty small percentage of people from experiencing negative effects like the one the author faced. Perhaps the answer here is better training, more monasteries, better teachers, etc.
I wholeheartedly agree with the bad way western buddhism is taught as "ignore your problems and they'll go away," kind of garbage. It's subtler than that. The dumbing down and commercialization of the dhamma/"mindfulness" I blame for that. Personally, I find that I couldn't go deep in meditation unless I got through some personal issues, the more the better. Most of meditation is about bringing these issues up (for instance, negative self talk) and dealing with them in reflection. Sounds like the author didn't engage in that practice.
The last point the author makes I believe is misguided. Buddhism can be a bummer, but it's based on some deep truths. I say "truths" because you can experience them. The issue is 99% of buddhists won't experience them for themselves because they can only be accessed through very advanced states of meditation and are rarely talked about. The Thai Forest tradition talks about these Jhana states quite openly. They also like to reference how the buddha talked about them all the time in the Pali Cannon but are somehow overlooked by many today. After coming down from these advanced meditation states you have an unmatched clarity of mind and can experience all the truths of buddhism - immaterialism, nonself, etc. I do understand the feeling of the lay person getting less-than-excited about buddhism due to these truths being told to them in the face of an interesting world out there. However, if you experience these states and these truths there is a very high likelihood of you losing your hair and wearing robes.
I don't know if Buddhism is the best way to go about things, for instance, I think of very happy people I know who are very engaged in the world and clinging to loved ones and food, and other sensual pleasures. I'm just having a hard time doing that at the moment and Buddhism is giving me some answers - enough to have me continue the path for now.
And later posted about jhanas.
Having read those, I do think his understanding of meditation is deeper than it might appear from reading this article alone. I don’t think his position is really that different from what a lot of critics here are arguing.
Look folks, I know it's vogue in a post post post world to deconstruct all the things but there's a reason why Buddhism has thrived for thousands of years producing good, kind people and rebel dharmas have withered on the vine. Yes, there are exceptions but overall, it's been wildly effective as a method for awakening that also spares others violence. That said, there are good rebel dharma people out there like Daniel Ingram who do promote ethics as an essential cornerstone of practice (and it is, try it).
The Twitterati of dharma are not it. They do not come bearing the gift of conscious revolution, they come bearing more poisoned seeds of self delusion because that's what Twitter thrives on: the grand illusion of Self thrumming to the crowd of their creation.
In this particular article, Sasha declares that endgame meditation looks like more neuroses, pride and immoral acts and that's the dirty secret of the community. Well, yes, when your community looks like Twitter and you think you've endgamed Buddhism, that is what it will look like because you are not actually attained in anything other than building shrines to self.
Sasha then declares at the end that one should build strong attachments to things and allow them to wound you, the exact opposite of craving and bondage, which the Buddha asks us to avoid. This person is playing games with the Buddha, playing games with dharma, and writes for a crowd that will pay them to continue playing these games.
My ultimate point here, which weaves in with some of the rebukes I've been writing lately here, is more focus needs to be placed on fundamentals and really grokking them with the aid of actual accomplished teachers who have spent decades endgaming your chosen practice. People of real ethical fiber. People who do not need your money to continue existing, do not want it, and have no motive to take it. People like Thannisaro Bhikku [2] or honest to God forest monks or other renunciates who demonstrate supreme compassion, generosity, and whose actions are blameless. These are people worthy of giving advice on the topic.
[1] https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/my-recent-divorce-andor-d...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%B9%ACh%C4%81nissaro_Bhik...
When it is seen clearly how the mind is delusion, then the rest of the teachings fall naturally from that observation.
It's an incredibly depressing religion. The premise is basically get off the wheel(of samsara) and exist or cease existing in Nirvana and or keep suffering.
The depression is assuming life has the lasting qualities we're seeking and continuing to be disappointed until we are crippled. People try and put that on Buddhism because they refuse to see it. The Buddha was actually offering an incredibly hopeful message: see this mass of aggregate sensations for what it is and be liberated, be truly happy without dependence on conditions, without dependence on the world to offer you anything.
All it takes is to see people, interacted with people who are living examples of this, paragons of whatever is furthest away from this "depression" you ascribe to Buddhism. They walk around with huge smiles on their face. Every interaction with them is pure love, pure compassion. They do not have bad days and here they are with nothing more than a robe and a bowl to their name.
May all people know real kindness, real happiness. I'll tell you here and now, what Sasha is peddling is not it. I strongly condemn what Sasha is offering and other teachers who assume the mantle of power for their own egos. He has abused his position of authority to distort the message of the Buddha, to bring confusion to the path and has brought confusion to his own life that is disharmonious, a life of more attachment not less, a life of imbalance not balance and he is passing out this message to anyone who will listen. This is very bad practice, very bad ethics, because he condemns not only himself, he condemns anyone who buys into his poison.
What do you consider the paragon of Buddhist practice? Maybe I can check them out online. I've hung around DhO and people complain that Buddhist practitioners have more of an emptiness dryness aspect to them as opposed to lively joyous qualities of other traditions like Advaita. I'm not impressed with Zen masters. They espouse very dry rigorous qualities and they don't appear to me carelessly joyous and happy.
You can if you're doing a "no true Buddhist" argument.
Those people wouldn’t for one second judge a person who wanted to practice a “less advanced” form of Buddhism. It’s all about what the person is ready for, according to them.
So anyways the vajryana is the racecar. The point of that metaphor wasn't to flesh out which schools corresponded to a sedan or anything, but more like to point out how few people drive racecars, how few tasks or challenges are well solved by racecars, how much training, respect, and caution you might want to have before you started driving racecars at full speed, the conditions under which you would consider driving a racecar, etc. etc. And like you said, there's no judgement for not driving a racecar -- if anything there's a lot of respect and/or demand for people to drive more practical vehicles.
tho idk, personally, even though in my material life I prefer a bicycle, in my spiritual life I'm still trying to train to drive the racecar, so maybe it needs an even less sexy anology.
Personally, I don't think there is a paragon of Buddhist practice. If you're looking for one I think you might be doing it wrong, so to speak. All three yanas have great teachers, just use your discernment as you follow your path.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%B9%ACh%C4%81nissaro_Bhikkh...
As a fraction of worldwide Buddhism, using a low end estimate of 488 million, that's about 1.3 percent.
So, by analogy, if you're looking for a Christian denomination that's about that size proportionally within the larger religion of Christianity: think of the Amish, the Mennonites, etc. (distinctive because of their dress). Numerically that's a close comparison. Maybe throw in the Quakers too. All together that's about the same size, fractionally.
The point is that, when you're dealing with such a small & unique subgroup, you run the risk of misunderstanding the larger group. You might have complaints about the Amish & the Quakers, but as a subgroup they are so small & unique that it seems a little off to use them as a proxy to criticize Christianity. I would suggest the same is true of Tibetan Buddhism as compared to Buddhism globally.
That is not the impression one gets from looking closely at the history of East Asia: numerous examples of mostly-Buddhist leaders and elites, and even states with Buddhism as a state religion / ideology, engaging in brutal wars of conquest, exploitation of the poor etc. Just like everybody else.
You can argue that this was all "not true Buddhism". But it's not a sustainable argument when this represents the majority of historical societies that self-identified as Buddhist and were acknowledged as such by basically everybody else.
Much of what we know about his words and lessons were memorized by his followers, some of which had perfect audio recall. Buddha himself was purported to be capable of projecting imagery into the minds of others.
Buddha likely indicated asceticism should be avoided and most would find some ease in the work they must do to be satisfied with life by following a middle way, or measured and balanced approach to living life as a householder. His followers were the exception to this guidance, as they sought a higher understanding and ability to teach others the dharma.
This middle way is mostly derived from the logic of ethical behavior, and these truths may be discovered without assistance if one considers and puts attention on them. The Four Noble Truths are just a means to remember the pickle we find ourselves in with our thoughts and conditions and give way to the Noble Eightfold Path which indicates where we tend to wander from the path of understanding and peace with ourselves and others.
Past that, the only way to see the truth of things is to sit and note breath until you see the truth for yourself. Then, suffering is reduced and you continue on, as if having seen the solution to a puzzle you didn’t know the answer to a moment ago. This is the more advanced route and not suggested for householders, nor should householders attempt to teach the dharma to others.
In short, being a householder following the path means you be present with your thoughts. Here. Now. Avoid negative emotions. Speak your truths. Avoid dissonance. Break it where it helps the most people. And, above all, die well.
From a Christian point of view – see Romans 11:11-31 – the Jews/Israel is seen as the cultivated olive tree, and all Christian Gentiles – i.e. all Christians that are not Jewish – are seen as "a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree" i.e. the Jewish/Israeli tree (Romans 11:24). So as a Christian Gentile you therefore take part in God's words and promises to the Jews/Israel as a grafted olive tree.
But Jesus Christ brought something completely new to the table. He say about Himself that He came to fullfil the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament (Matthew 5:17-20). He also said: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).
In this way Christianity is not Judaism stripped for export, Jesus Christ is the culmination of all that was said in the Law and by the Prophets.
Islam says the same thing about Muhammad and the Quran. WarGames got it right: The only winning move is not to play [religion].
Except a fundamental pronouncement of Buddhism is "anatta" or "anatman", which is aggravatingly translated as "no-self". There are many layers to this "no-self" but one of them is that it is direct stated opposition to the Hindu Atman, the highest Self, which can be experienced as a kind of unitive state. The Buddha was effectively saying "Hinduism practice, yes, and Atman is along the path, but don't stop there, beyond this Big Self is No-Self".
Gotama Buddha tried to defend himself from Mara before the Bhodi tree, until he stopped in realization that the earth himself would protect him. I believe that is the most violent act of Gotama Buddha, but I am not certain.
There is a profound difference here.
- Buddhist monks being celibate is well-known
- Being comically (to a normal person) non-violent (the mutilation example) as an ideal is also known
- Either you accept Dukkha as self-evident based on your own life experience because you realize that all good things are temporary, or you have to go deeper and have to consider the implications of eternal “rebirth” (a belief that you cannot use your experience to interrogate)
- If merely “the doing of non-evil” is too simple and unpassionate to you you can merely take on the small task of being a Boddhisattva and save all beings from Samsara
- “Meditation didn’t solve all my problems” (paraphrase)–you should have read the “chop wood carry water” fine print
> If the conclusion you take from this story is that you should be Buddhist, you are absolutely missing the point. The point is that we should experiment with everything and pick what best fits our situation, reverence be damned.
The author critiques Western Buddhism[1] and yet gives a firm “should” for individual ecclecticism, the ultimate Western spiritual-but-not-religious lifestyle. Might be nothing wrong with that, but it is for sure not a should. There are benefits to trying to stick to one or a few traditions. Maybe, for example, the tradition fits your personality and you trust the teachers.
> There is a giant hole in the middle of Buddhist contemplative teachings. This is the disinclination to engage with mental content. […]
> However, as a default meditative stance, it is an overcorrection. First of all, it can lead to, essentially, a scolding relationship with the mind, in which you dismiss all of your desires and fantasies as undesirable “ego mind.”
See the slight of hand? “A giant hole” in the teaching becomes “can lead to”. The first part is what is taught, while the latter part is the interpretation of the student. Of course that often does happen, but having a “scolding relationship with the mind” is never recommended by any meditation teacher. It is a common trap that the student is taught to watch out for and avoid.
> However. My friend Jake, reading this section, correctly pointed out that I am engaging in Salad Bar Criticism. People who like Buddhism point at some areas of the giant Buddhist meme cloud—the giant mass of traditions, observations, and modern derivations—and nod approvingly. I am pointing at other areas of the giant Buddhist meme cloud and making grunting noises. I can only hope that some of us are learning something along the way.
How postmodernist to critique your own essay before we do.
[1] But “Asian Buddhism” is also bad so… or maybe he gives it one point for authenticity and deducts one point for backwardsness, evening things out?
The op was hard to finish after the immediate misunderstanding of the sutta on metta and bandits cutting you limb from limb. If you're interested in these topics, there are people who practice and understand them. As a general rule, it's probably not a good idea to form your opinions on meditation practice from self help blogs.
Edit: countries to people
But this is how it always goes with religions. There is never a definitive core belief or core morality that everyone agrees with. Religions are meta-moralities that allow participants to feel credible and sincere because they're doing whatever they're doing under the cover story of a tradition.
Sometimes the results are humane, sometimes they're horrific. It's exactly that flexibility and the lack of clear unquestionable definitive absolutes that allows these belief systems to persist.
Everyone assumes their interpretation - or at least their process - is the only correct one, and all those other people are misguided at best and just plain Doing It Wrong at worst.
Personally I have more time for Buddhism than for any of the Abrahamic religions. But even fundamentals like the details of the Noble Eightfold Path are still debated and even contested, so nothing about it is as clear and straightforward as it might seem to be.
If you mean to use the word “everyone” literally here, then what you are asserting is unfair to human nature (people dissent). If “everyone” is a matter of virtue-based consensus for example, then I beg to differ.
The vast majority of Christians would say that belief in the existence of God is a core belief of Christianity. They'd say an atheist is by definition not a believer in Christianity. And, up until the 20th century, there was universal agreement on this. Then, along came some people who claimed they could be "Christian atheists". However, even today, those people are a tiny minority of (self-described) Christians, the vast majority of Christians don't accept that as a valid form of Christianity. In fact, even most non-Christians, even most atheists, don't accept that as a valid form of Christianity. I expect you'll find Christian atheists to be greatly outnumbered by those atheists who consider "Christian atheism" to be a silly oxymoron.
Similarly, in Buddhism, up until the 20th century, pretty much everyone agreed that rebirth was a literal phenomenon – not just some kind of metaphor – and that was seen as a core belief of Buddhism – they would say that a person who does not believe in literal rebirth, by definition does not believe in Buddhism. Nowadays, there are a lot of people – especially in the West – who disagree with that, and think that "there is no afterlife, rebirth is just a metaphor" is a perfectly legitimate variety of Buddhist belief – however, I'd be surprised if people who define "Buddhism" so broadly are any more than a small minority of all Buddhists globally.
If you are arguing that the way Christians behave today is very removed from how the original Christians behaved, well that is a different point to make, albeit much more difficult to evaluate. This is in a sense nothing new, just look at the opprobium Jesus lays down at the beginning of the book of Revelation.
Separately, there was also Docetism, which said that Jesus didn't suffer on the cross because Jesus only appeared to have a flesh and blood body. The gospel writers may have been trying to argue against such an interpretation by having Jesus eat fish and Thomas touch his wounds, which would have been ridiculous to Paul given Tabor's interpretation (although Paul was about transformation or exchange of the body for the spiritual).
That does not mean that Paul is teaching "transformed into a spiritual being". "Resurrection" doesn't fit for that. That's "died, and there's an afterlife". But over and over, Paul says "resurrection" - not just that there's life after death, but that there's resurrection.
Tabor's view seems to be forcing Paul's writing into a pre-conceived position, not letting 1 Corinthians 15 speak for itself.
If Jesus "just" ascended into the heavens (as a spirit), Paul's discussion makes no sense. Paul clearly thought that Jesus had a body after the resurrection, no matter what Greek word for resurrection he was using.
Is it really?
Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism put great emphasis on following the teachings of the Saints and the Church, much more so than trying to understand the religion by yourself. Many strands of Protestantism are the exact opposite.
Many protestants believe that the Church should be an active part of people's lives and guide them in all decisions, while Eastern Orthodoxy believes the Chruch must limit itself to spiritual matters and mostly even avoid things like charity.
Catholics believe that much of the Bible is entirely allegorical and should be interpreted only as such (most notably, Genesis). Many American Protestant traditions believe that everything in the Bible is literally true, leading to Creationism and an opposition to the theory of evolution, and sometimes even to New Earth Creationism.
Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Calvinism, Lutheranism and others believe that the teachings of Jesus and the early Church Fathers make the Old Testament mostly obsolete (especially in regards to dietary and clothing restrictions, the Shabbat, or circumcision), while some Protestant churches hold some or all of these as still part of Christian cannon.
There are many other major differences - the effects of God's favor in this life (leading to ideas like the prosperity gospel in Protestantism), the belief in saintly miracles, the very existence of saints, faith healing, trinitarianism, filioque, fasting, the dates of Christmas and Easter and many others.
The best we have really are a few of the letters of Paul and Paul himself was an apocalyptic preacher who never met Jesus when he was alive (he only 'met' Christ from revaluations). And he was clearly in conflict and had disagreements with other followers.
Then the next reasonable documents is Mark and Mark is basically a classically written stories parables that are pretty clearly a bunch of myth making and a lot of stories that are just adapted from Greek or Jewish texts. And then Matthew is just Mark with some additional insertion done. And then Luke just adds even more stuff in. And then John just invents even more even crazier stuff and add on that.
There is no evidence what so ever that Mark had any sources, his text has non of the hallmarks of an actually history as was practiced at the time. Its only much later that writers claim to have eye-witness accounts, and at that point those claims are simply not credible.
So pretty much all Christians have a massive problem. Even things as basic as if the what we now call the Old Testament is valid is highly questionable.
The gospel are absolutely not eyewitness accounts. Not sure if you learned that in Church or something, this is very much not what any scholar of those text believes. Even the 'scholars' in religious fundamentalist schools mostly don't agree with that.
The gospel were not written by the people in the title, the titles were not even in any of the older scrolls, titles like 'Gospel of Mark' were later additions.
And they are also not independent documents either. They are very clearly written with knowlage of one another.
Mark is the template for all of them. Matthew previously thought to be independent is increasingly seen as Mark with some additional stuff insert into it. Luke clearly had both Mark and Matthew to work with and basically tried to make a fusion.
John is clearly much considerably later and clearly had the other three.
The only documents that are in reasonable living memory of a potential Jesus are the non-fake letters of Paul (most of them are not by Paul). And Paul himself even says that hadn't met Jesus (outside of visions) and Paul letters also don't give us much that matters in terms the historical accuracy of what went on in the region as he wasn't there.
And don't believe the 'Acts of the Apostles' in the bible those are even less historical then the gospels.
Still better than what we have for Siddharta Gautama. Buddhist sources can't even agree on which century he lived in. Christian sources are unanimous in dating Jesus of Nazareth to within a decade, and the Jewish historian Josephus (writing approximately 60 years later) also confirms his existence. One of the two references to Jesus in Josephus has obviously been tampered with by Christian copyists, but the majority of scholars believe there was a genuine reference there prior to the tampering; and most scholars believe the second reference is entirely genuine.
Also, the majority of secular scholars believe we can work out roughly what Jesus taught – although it seems likely that what he actually taught was much closer to 1st century Judaism than what Christianity later evolved into
> So pretty much all Christians have a massive problem.
Some Christians are big on arguing for Christianity based on the claimed historical accuracy of the New Testament – an approach called "evidentialist apologetics". You have correctly pointed out the massive problems with that approach. However, not all Christians argue for Christianity in that way – indeed, I think it is historically a minority, despite the huge fad for it in 20th century Anglophone Christianity (and especially evangelical Protestantism). Other Christians put greater emphasis on other arguments – philosophical arguments, arguments from religious experience, historical arguments that rely on the broad sweep of Christian history rather than just its first decade, etc. Maybe all those other arguments have problems too–but not these problems.
> Jewish historian Josephus
In general we have a history in this field where early on almost everything was accepted and for decades more things have been stripped. Once upon a time it was consensuses that there was an empty tomb and that wasn't that long ago.
This is a field absolutely dominated by fundamentalist scholars and a historiography that mostly made by strongly believing Christians.
The history of the field is basically one of attempting to prove that Jesus existed, that Gospels are historical and so on. It took decades to remove and change the field an some things are still in flux, such a Q.
Even if Josephus did write those things (or there were earlier things later changed) it would most likely have been writing based of reports from Christians so even if he the reference are real and refer to the actual Jesus as we understand it, its not great evidence because of course Christians tell him that. There is no evidence Josephus did any independent study or had any source other then Christians or maybe some of the Gospels like Mark.
As I said, Jesus most likely did exist but the evidence isn't that great.
> Also, the majority of secular scholars believe we can work out roughly what Jesus taught – although it seems likely that what he actually taught was much closer to 1st century Judaism than what Christianity later evolved into
Even scholars don't have a unified agreement on what he taught. Most likely some for of Apocalyptic Judaism as you said. There were many of those kinds of Jewish cults during that time. And there is also evidence that these were partially overlapping and so on.
The issue is that after his death and supposed resurrection he apparently appeared in vision to the Apostles and gave them knowledge (that is what they believed). And its very likely that they all at different kinds of visions that likely changed what he would have taught in live.
So basically the very reason there is a Christianity (the believe in supposed resurrection) basically implies changes to the theology.
Geza Vermes was never a "fundamentalist" scholar. Although he was once a Catholic priest, he left the priesthood and stopped believing in Christianity. Both his parents were Jewish by birth, but had converted to Catholicism–which didn't stop the Nazis from murdering them in the Holocaust. He went back to identifying as a Jew–at first as a purely ethnic/cultural non-religious identity, but he later accepted Liberal/Reform Judaism as his religion.
And yet, he was one of the scholars who agrees that Josephus contained original references to Jesus of Nazareth, prior to any Christian tampering. In his reconstruction of the original text, Josephus' brief discussion of Jesus was mostly neutral, albeit slightly negative/sceptical, but nevertheless affirming the historical reality of his existence. Vermes argues that Christian scribes replaced Josephus' slightly negative/sceptical attitude towards Jesus with expressions of Christian belief which a believing Jew such as Josephus could never have written.
Vermes was convinced that Jesus was a real historical figure – but he saw him as a Jewish teacher, whose actual teachings had little in common with the doctrines of Christianity. Most of his scholarly career was after he'd left Christianity, so it is not like he had any religious motivation to believe in the historical existence of Jesus – on the contrary, as an ex-Christian, you'd think if he was biased towards anything, it would be towards the opposite.
> Even if Josephus did write those things (or there were earlier things later changed) it would most likely have been writing based of reports from Christians so even if he the reference are real and refer to the actual Jesus as we understand it, its not great evidence because of course Christians tell him that.
Why couldn't Josephus have had independent knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth? Some Jewish apocalyptic teacher turns up in Jerusalem, causes a stir, the authorities (both Roman and Jewish) get rid of him. Why wouldn't people in Jerusalem remember that? Even though it happened 5-10 years before Josephus was born, why couldn't his parents have remembered it and told him about it? Josephus' parents were members of the Jewish elite in Jerusalem–his father Matthias was a senior priest at the Temple–so it seems entirely plausible that his father (or grandfather, uncles, etc) may have had some firsthand knowledge of the incident.
Jesus was surely not the only apocalyptic teacher to be executed for causing a stir – but the fact that his followers endured and grew rather than dying out likely helped stick him in people's memory.
> There is no evidence Josephus did any independent study or had any source other then Christians or maybe some of the Gospels like Mark.
There is no good evidence that Josephus had access to the Gospel of Mark or any other Christian source. We have no real idea where he got his information from. It could have come from Christians, it could have just as easily have come from independent Jewish sources – we just don't know.
And the Church own historical record and assumption was the jumping of point for all modern scholarship. So the universal trend of the secular field is to basically dismantle many of these things.
So what I am saying is that anything that can be interpreted as pro-historicity has received about 1000x more study and attention, while every counter point gets pushed of or dismisses and could even get you fired, even into the 1980s. Even today many schools that claim to be un-bias have faith requirements. The same was true with the history of the gospel, there are whole fields of 'scholarship' just to prove the gospels true.
So its pretty clear where the focus of scholarship is and was on all these issues. There are simply far fewer secular scholars on this topic. And scholarship has already moved on from Geza Vermes.
Josephus reliable mention of Jesus is pretty clearly added and claims that was rewritten of an earlier version are far less credible then somebody simply adding a Christian creed to the text. That is what the evidence points to.
The second mention of Jesus in Josephus is incredibly brief and is also increasingly being questioned.
So overall I would simply don't Josephus is good evidence. In fact, if anything, its evidence that Christians were really just not that important or relevant to most people. Ken Olson makes these points very well if you want to look up these debates.
I said its 75%/25% and in general the field seems to be continuously moving in the direction of removing evidence for history, rather then adding it.
Who was the founder of modern biblical scholarship? Not any "fundamentalist" – many say it was the 17th century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza [0], who was excommunicated by Amsterdam's Jewish community for heresy, because he questioned traditional Jewish doctrines – most significantly in this case, he argued that the Torah contained inaccuracies and historical errors, that most of it was not written by Moses, that its transmission had been imperfect and had allowed the text to become corrupt – all positions which were just as heretical to the Christians of his day as they were to his own Jewish community. And although, as a Jew, his arguments were about the Jewish scriptures only, not the New Testament, it wasn't long before the debate he started about the former grew to include the later.
The 18th/19th German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher was no fundamentalist either – he is often called the "Father of Modern Liberal Theology", but he also made major contributions to the development of biblical scholarship – in particular by arguing that the only correct way to interpret the Bible is to start out by treating it like any other text, to seek to find general principles applicable to all texts (even non-religious ones) and then seek to apply those general principles to the Bible in particular.
One of the founding figures of the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" was the 19th century German liberal Protestant theologian David Strauss – who rejected the traditional Christian belief that Jesus was divine, and argued that any attempt to discover the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth must begin by rejecting all supernatural explanations. A very long way from Christian fundamentalism.
The word "fundamentalism" was coined in 1920 to describe those Christians who were fans of the essay series The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth, published in Chicago between 1910 and 1915 – one of the major themes of those essays was a rejection of the tradition of modern biblical scholarship, as taught in leading academic institutions (especially Princeton.) So, rather than modern biblical scholarship being founded on fundamentalism, fundamentalism arose as a reaction to it.
And, claiming there were "universal default assumptions for 1500+ years was that Gospel were historically true" completely ignores the long history of Jewish and Islamic scholarship on the New Testament, none of which ever assumed it was true. The earliest surviving detailed Jewish criticism of the Gospels is the 10th century "Book of Nestor the Priest", which quotes extensively and critically from the Gospel of Matthew; similar mediaeval Jewish works include Jacob ben Reuben's Milhamoth ha-Shem (12th century); the Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne and Sefer Nizzahon Yashan (both 13th century); and Ibn Shaprut's Touchstone (14th century). Similarly, there was a voluminous mediaeval Islamic literature attacking the credibility of both the Jewish and Christian scriptures, which extensively quoted from them and sought to expose their absurdities and inconsistencies – important authors in that literature included al-Baqillani (d. 1013), 'Abd al-Djabbar (d. 1025), ibn Hazm (d. 1064), al-Djuwayni (d. 1085), Samau'al al-Maghribi (d. 1175), al-Qarafi (d. 1285) and ibn Qayyim al-Djawziyya (d. 1350). [1]
[0] https://janes.scholasticahq.com/article/2348-the-father-of-m...
Yes, so what does that tell you about all other biblical scholarship? And all the other scholarship that happened since.
Literally since this modern scholarship has existed a larger group has been attacking it. There is a whole field based around that.
And as I pointed out, many who claim to do modern scholarships do it at schools that have a faith requirement for these positions.
There are literally cases where people got removed for advocating the wrong ideas. This is simply a reality.
How Terrifying.
Edit (let me explain): This comes across as a very democratic way to describe something that is predominantly undemocratic.
What sort of contradictions? Genuinely curious.
Some of the most obvious differences are the rules for the monks. In vajrayana once you reach a certain state of enlightenment or convince your followers, you've reached a certain state. You essentially can do whatever you want and claim it's for the benefit of the students. In the pali canon, an arahat would follow the same rules as a monk who had been ordained for one day. Which would be no inconvenience to them, because there would be no desire to break any of the rules. Which is a direct contradiction. In vajarayana, a monk could have sex with his student as a means of helping them. According to the historical Buddha, that person is immediately no longer a monk. They essentially dismiss the entire pali canon as a lower teaching.
They also think that personal enlightenment/arahatship is a bad thing and that you should keep being reborn to help others. There are entire books written about why that doesn't make sense, but it's against the entire purpose of what the Buddha taught.
There are also a lot of teachings about the self that are categorically listed as wrong view in the pali canon.
I don't want to come of like I'm hating on the school or anyone who practices in it, but it's far from 'Buddhism' in a historical context. There are still many wise and compassionate people who have dedicated their lives to it.
> There are also a lot of teachings about the self that are categorically listed as wrong view in the pali canon.
Do you remember what exact things they teach about the self that is in contradiction with the Pali canon? Asking out of curiosity.
One thing that I cannot quite square with the Pali canon is the idea of Buddha mind, and the related concept of the “true self” and the “small” vs. “big ego” that certain Zen lineages talk about. According to the Pali canon, these are all wrong views because of there being no self whatsoever (anattā). Perhaps Zen and Vajrayana folks see these concepts as falsehoods that still help with practice and are thus skillful means (upāya).
> In vajarayana, a monk could have sex with his student as a means of helping them. ... According to the historical Buddha, that person is immediately no longer a monk.
I don't think a monk would be able to if they're ordained and would similarly lose their status in most Tibetan lineages, but a ngagpa could. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen of course and there's definitely a lot of abuse happening. A teacher I took some karmamudra training from wrote a book about these topics that I found very interesting [1].
I'd love to read more about the atman/anatman contradictions, I'll have to do some searching -- thanks!
That's a Mahayana belief, not an exclusively Vajrayana one. You aren't making a clear distinction between Mahayana and Vajrayana here.
> Vajrayana is essentially Tibetan bon mixed with Hinduism.
"Bon" is an ambiguous term. It refers to the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet, which apparently was a form of shamanism or animism. It is impossible to know much about it with any confidence – although there are some references to it in Tibetan Buddhist texts, we can't really know how accurate they are. However, whatever it was, it is likely rather different from contemporary "Bon". Contemporary "Bon" claims to be historically independent of Buddhism, even a continuation of that pre-Buddhist religion, but most scholars don't accept those claims. Rather, most scholars think it is actually an unusual derivative of Tibetan Buddhism, in which the core beliefs and practices were kept, but the names/symbols/geography/etc were intentionally altered to give it the appearance of being a separate religion with an independent history. Given that, rather than Tibetan Buddhism being based on Bon, it is actually the other way around. Most of Vajrayana – including all the elements you object to – can be traced back to India, and the obvious similarities (and mutual influence) between Tantric Buddhism and Tantric Hinduism
Also, criticising Mahayana and Vajrayana for being influenced by Hinduism ignores how much Theravada was influenced by Hinduism. Consider all the stories about Hindu deities in the Pali canon – which Theravada traditionally accepts as really existent conscious supernatural beings, albeit mortal and limited in power
But something caught my eye, and I think this is how I became biased toward Buddhism. Monks, supposedly the most innocent creatures in the universe?, were begging commercial shops in the street. In Thailand metro, monks have their own priority seats. In Phnom Penh, the religious ministry has a massive establishment with security/guard escorting the "minister?" everyday.
I think, and might be wrong, that the "Buddha" was not really much different from any other prophet. A highly deranged individual. His writings were made up with time, and given the size of Asia, it had multiple bifurcations. The religion itself got used by the establishment to establish and exercise power.
Not really much different from the world today. And not really different from a militaristic order. Religions benefited from a less structured and modern world, because being loose (vs. a military rule for example) made them evolve with generations and mutate into the powerful institutions that exist today. The spiritual meaning deriving from a religion might be an artifact (a side-effect?) rather than the reason of existence of religion itself.
That's a pretty wild leap to make from your observations. So wild, in fact, that I'd say you really wanted to make it rather than caring about the facts. Why would the imperfect nature of modern Buddism as practiced in Cambodia be proof that the Buddha was "deranged"?
Why would the behavior of any living person be proof of the mental state of someone who died thousands of years ago, for that matter?
Rather different from Christianity. I've never heard a Catholic claim "Protestantism is the lowest level of Christianity, Orthodoxy is in the middle, Catholicism is the highest". That might not be a bad statement of how some Catholics think, but I'd be rather surprised if any Catholic would ever actually put it that way.