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Comment by DasCorCor | Hacker News Reader

The author is projecting his Catholic upbringing on the religion. Buddhism is not a singular hierarchical institution in the way Catholicism is. It has evolved and changed as it migrated from India through Tibet, China, Japan, then the USA. Does it have people that take bad actions - yes. Every human institution does.

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Exactly. This sounds like he got exposed to some esoteric branch that itself was influenced by Christian Missionaries. Back when the east was being explored by the early colonial powers. Christian Missionaries were doing their thing, and converting all the local religions to Christianity. And out of that came a few Buddhist sects that have real Christian leanings, like the metaphysical ideas, gods, heaven, hierarchy, a perverse interpretation of karma, etc...

So if this guy got into those first, then his view of Buddhism is skewed.

"What’s worse, Buddhism holds that enlightenment makes you morally infallible—like the pope, but more so"

-> Said no Buddhist ever.

While I've never heard it put exactly that way I have been listening to a lot of Ram Dass and he has a few talks where he discusses Trungpa Rinpoche ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%B6gyam_Trungpa#Controver... ). The way I remember it for Ram Dass he saw Trungpa as enlightened so all the "bad" stuff he did was sort of ok because that was Trungpa's dharma and he did it in a detached state.

I understood it like.. just as there are people who's dharma is to reduce suffering in the world there are people who produce it and that's fine and normal.

LE: I think Ram Dass used the Hindu meaning for dharma which afaik means "path in life" not "teaching" like in Buddhism

Or maybe his brutal exile from Tibet due to Chinese invasion traumatized him in some way. I’m not a fan of rationalizing abusive behavior or hypocrisy. People can gain a lot of skill at something but it doesn’t make them a good person. Elon Musk falls in a similar category IMO.

I don't think enlightened beings can be traumatized. A better theory I've heard it's that it is easy to keep vows when you live in a temple and never been tempted.

My memory is that he had to escape through the Himalayas as a teenager. I don’t think teenagers can be enlightened beings. He failed to keep 2 of the 5 layperson Buddhist vows - a temple has nothing to do with it. From what I understand jhana >> booze, so why choose booze?

Most everyone I’ve encountered in my personal life has been introduced to Eastern beliefs through some western reinterpretation or a “guru”.

I’d read someone, somewhere (maybe here), write about their pilgrimage to somewhere in Asia. He was very disappointed by the monks he’d met and their lack of answers and felt Hinduism or Buddhism was really no different from Christianity.

I too had been disillusioned by religion and considered myself an atheist. Later, though, I found the Dao De Jing, Bhagavad Gita, Dhammapada & Suttanipata* to be life changing. I read them on their own, without seeking further discourse or spiritual guidance, after listening to Duncan Trussel’s podcast for a long while. It’s even changed my perspective on Christian and Jewish theology.

All that to say, it’s personal. It’s my strong opinion that if you go seeking enlightenment from a person or an institution and cannot separate the art from the artist (or the message from the messenger) and do not read the source material you will always come away disappointed.

* haven’t finished the whole book yet

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