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Feb

2012

Why I ditched Buddhism. - Slate Magazine

All religions, including Buddhism, stem from our narcissistic wish to believe that the universe was created for our benefit, as a stage for our spiritual quests. In contrast, science tells us that we are incidental, accidental. Far from being the raison d'être of the universe, we appeared through sheer happenstance, and we could vanish in the same way. This is not a comforting viewpoint, but science, unlike religion, seeks truth regardless of how it makes us feel. Buddhism raises radical questions about our inner and outer reality, but it is finally not radical enough to accommodate science's disturbing perspective. The remaining question is whether any form of spirituality can.

www.slate.com/...buddhist_retreat.single.html

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Buddhism Science Religion Nihilism

Feb

2012

Evgeny Morozov: Form And Fortune | The New Republic

www.tnr.com/...fortune-steve-jobs-philosopher

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Apple Design Philosophy Politics Buddhism Zen

Dec

2011

http://www.alisongopnik.com/Papers_Alison/Gopnik_HumeStudies_withTOC.pdf

Abstract: Philosophers and Buddhist scholars have noted the affinities between David Hume’s empiricism and the Buddhist philosophical tradition. I show that it was possible for Hume to have had contact with Buddhist philosophical views. The link to Buddhism comes through the Jesuit scholars at the Royal College of La Flèche. Charles Francois Dolu was a Jesuit missionary who lived at the Royal College from 1723–1740, overlapping with Hume’s stay. He had extensive knowledge both of other religions and cultures and of scientific ideas. Dolu had had first-hand experience with Theravada Buddhism as part of the second French embassy to Siam in 1687–1688. In 1727, Dolu also had talked with Ippolito Desideri, a Jesuit missionary who visited Tibet and made an extensive study of Tibetan Buddhism from 1716–1721. It is at least possible that Hume heard about Buddhist ideas through Dolu.

www.alisongopnik.com/...Gopnik_HumeStudies_withTOC.pdf

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Hume Buddhism

Sep

2011

Religion: Japan's Crypto-Christians - TIME

Are the Kakure Christians? Jesuit Diego Yuuki calls their faith "a melange of Buddhism, Shintoism, animism and what Kakure think is Catholicism. They have no Bible. The meaning of the Trinity has been lost on them." Nonetheless, the church would like to bring its long-sundered sons and daughters home again. During the first papal visit to Japan last February, John Paul II pointedly embraced four Kakure who turned out to greet him and held a meeting with a number of the sect's chief priests. But one of those who greeted the Pope, Dominico Hayakichi Masuyama, 73, says they had come only to "register the fact that we exist. We have no interest in joining his church." After all, he adds solemnly, "we, and nobody else, are true Christians."

www.time.com/...0,9171,925197-2,00.html

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Religion Christianity Buddhism

Religion: Japan's Crypto-Christians - TIME

In 1865, when Japan permitted a Catholic church to open in Nagasaki to serve Western visitors, the Kakure, then numbering around 30,000 in the region, suddenly came out of hiding. But the missionaries took a hard line with the newfound faithful. "Many were bewildered when they were told to throw away everything connected with their ancestral way," explains Father Shigeshi Oyama, who runs the tiny Roman Catholic parish now on Ikitsuki. Only half of the underground Christians decided to reunite with Rome. The others persisted in their insular worship.

www.time.com/...0,9171,925197,00.html

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Religion Christianity Buddhism

Mar

2011

Rationally Speaking: The problem with atheism, a Buddhist perspective

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...lem-with-atheism-buddhist.html

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Atheism Buddhism Religion

a book recommended by a friend of mine, Brad Warner’s Sex, Sin and Zen,
Atheism, as rational and sensible as it is, will never be an adequate substitute for religion. It's like trying to substitute actual eating with a superbly argued essay on food.
The quote comes from a context in which Warner was discussing an article by Elisabeth Cornwell entitled “Why women are bound to religion: an evolutionary perspective,” which makes the commonsense argument that “in order for women to abandon religion and its securities, there needs to be something tangible to replace the support it offers.” Warner then goes on to explain that Buddha realized that “religion and spirituality were pretty much fucked up. But he also understood the very important role they play in human society. As Cornwell points out in her article on the evolution of religion, religion serves a need much, much deeper than anything the intellect can ever hope to reach.” And it is this passage that is followed by the quote I posted on Facebook.
13 more annotation(s)...
- I thought this was all obviously true, and in fact reflects a standing debate within both the atheist and secular humanist communities (they overlap, but they are most certainly not identical) to explain why religion — pace Nietzsche — is still very much alive and well in the 21st century. The response I got from my Facebook friends was somewhat surprising. There were more than 20 comments within a matter of minutes (35 as of the time of this writing), with 3,666 “impressions” (a number that Facebook provides to give you an idea of how many people have seen your post on their Wall
- If you scroll through the comments, two patterns emerge: first, most people missed what I thought was the obvious point of the quote (granted, I had the advantage of having read the full chapter, but still); second, the overwhelming majority of the posts were defensive to the utmost degree.
- The first set of quotes (and similar others on the thread) reflect an all too common reflexive attitude by several of my fellow atheists, a “(rhetorically) shoot first and understand later” sort of approach which is not exactly conducive to constructive discourse. This reflexive attitude seems to be based on two underlying assumptions: first, that whatever comes from religion must be bad, by definition; second, that atheists don’t need to do much more than point out how silly the other side is, and we are done. Both assumptions are highly questionable.
- it seems to me undeniable that religions do indeed, as Buddha recognized and Warner re-articulated, fill a fundamental human psychological niche. That niche has to do not just with explanations of how the world works (an area in which science has steadily and inexorably overtaken religion even in the mind of many religious people), but with meaning, emotions, ethics, and the specter of final and total annihilation of the self.
- It is these latter dimensions of the niche that most people refer to as “spirituality,” and neither science nor atheism can do a damn thing about them, unfortunately. Science can tell us which parts of the brain are responsible for our emotions, or are used when we engage in moral decision making, but that’s a completely different set of questions that has only a superficial bearing on the real issues.
- please pause to think that nothing I am writing here can reasonably be construed as a defense of religion. But it is a (partial) explanation of why religion persists despite literally millennia of attempts by the secular-rational community to get rid of it. It is a fact that we better face and analyze, rather than run away from.
- Which brings me to the second assumption that seems to underlie many of my readers’ responses: surely once we explain to people that there are no gods, once we break the spell to use my friend Daniel Dennett’s phrase, people will flock to atheism in droves and we’ll be done with religion once and for all
- To be fair, one can hardly expect a handful of books to change society (well, except for the Old Testament, or the Christian Gospels, or the Quran, or the Vedas, or the Theravada, or...), but the disheartening fact is that there really isn’t anything new in the New Atheism. As documented by Jennifer Michael Hecht in her super Doubt: A History we have been going at it for millennia, and yet religions persist, largely unperturbed by the barrage of rational arguments against them. Do you see why Warner is right, that we do have a problem?
- The quotes from my Facebook responses which struck closest to what I think is a good analysis are those that present atheism as the first of two punches that the secular movement is attempting to deliver to the religious juggernaut, what philosopher Francis Bacon (in the context of how science works) called the pars destruens (the project of destruction). Bacon then argued that one doesn’t get very far by just demolishing things, one has to build something in their stead, what he termed the pars construens (the construction project). Here the pars construens can be played by secular humanism, which — unlike atheism — is a philosophy with positive values.
- "A lot of people consider Buddhism a form of atheism. In a sense it is, in that it does not have a god in the usual sense of the word. We don’t have a deity figure. We don’t have a creation myth. We don’t fear reprisals from cosmic grandpa if we fail to worship him properly. Yet ... the universe in Buddhist terms is not dead matter or a cosmic void. It is a living, intelligent thing we all partake in. ... If God is a big ‘ol white dude in the sky who smites sinners and rewards football players, then I’m an atheist. If God exists outside the universe, I’m an atheist. If God cares more for one religion than another, I’m an atheist. And if God believes that women are inferior to men, I’m an atheist. ... I don’t worship God as an old man on a throne beyond the orbit of Jupiter, but I do worship the universe. The universe is more than dead matter. It’s more than insubstantial spirit."
- ianpollock said...
  
  Epic troll, Massimo. LOL!!!
  
  I actually agree with you on most of this: atheism ain't a value system or life philosophy, and if you want those things (you should), then you'll have to look elsewhere. I might suggest starting with "How shall we live" by Peter Singer.
- But the quote is still a bad one, in the same way as "science can never comfort your dying grandma" is a bad quote. Sure, they're both true, but without further clarification the hidden inference (and the author's intended meaning) is toward "therefore, you should abandon atheism/science."
- I get the impression that Buddhism postulates a universe even more more dead than Western materialism. Western atheists writes books arguing against "the god delusion," but Buddhists write ones arguing against "the self delusion." Buddhists reject the idea of a god because they question the theory of mind in general.

Nov

2010

Buddhist Warfare and The Six Perfections, reviewed by Katherine Wharton - TLS

entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/...article7167161.ece

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Buddhism Violence Religion

Have you heard about Vakkali, the Buddhist sage who attained Nirvana while slicing his own throat? Of all the major faith traditions, Buddhism is often seen as the most peaceful, but Buddhist Warfare exposes its darker side. The eight essays in the collection describe twisted teachings on phenomena such as “Soldier-Zen”, and atrocities carried out by groups such as the Buddhist cult army of Faqing. In 515 AD, Faqing declared the arrival of the new Buddha and led more than 50,000 men to war. “When a soldier killed a man he earned the title of first-stage Bodhisattva (Buddha-to-be). The more he killed the more he went up the echelon towards sainthood . . . the insurgents were given an alcoholic drug that made them crazy to the extent that fathers and sons no longer recognized each other and didn’t think twice before killing each other; the only thing that mattered was killing.” Buddhist Warfare forms an accurate history of violence in the name of religion. Its most shocking material is the studies of various sutras that justify killing with detailed reference to the Buddha’s central philosophical tenets. The book therefore presents a uniquely Buddhist “heart of darkness”.
Bernard Faure states that the aim of the collection was to press Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism to face up to the worst aberrations and silences within the tradition. Faure accuses many contemporary Buddhist apologists of taking the “high metaphysical or moral ground” rather than recognizing that in Buddhism, as in all the faiths, there is a constant struggle between light and darkness, between the promise of release and “the violence that lies at the heart of reality (and of each individual)”.
8 more annotation(s)...
- "The uplifted sword has no will of its own, it is all of emptiness. It is like a flash of lightning. The man who is about to be struck down is also of emptiness, and so is the one who wields the sword. None of them are possessed of a mind that has any substantiality. As each of them is of emptiness and has no 'mind', the striking man is not a man, the sword in his hands is not a sword and the 'I' who is about to be struck down is like the splitting of the spring breeze in a flash of lightning."
  
  This is an application of the central Buddhist teaching of no-self that sees no evil in killing. Brian Daizen Victoria’s excellent essay outlines the direct connections between Takuan’s writings and the philosophy of Soldier-Zen promoted as part of military training during the Asia-Pacific War. Should Zen itself be held responsible for the genocide of 20 million Chinese during this campaign? Brian Victoria does not just blame Takuan: he also directly implicates D. T. Suzuki (1870–1966), the most influential proponent of Zen to the West in the twentieth century. Brian Victoria asserts that Suzuki gave his unqualified support to the “unity of Zen and the sword”.
- influence of Daoism can be seen in Suzuki’s writing when he compares enlightened freedom to an untamed wilderness: “the saint must make himself as indifferent as the unconscious – innocent – forces of nature, while eliminating all personal and conscious thought”.
  
  Should we blame Daoism for the glorification of violence in Takuan? What is it exactly that discriminates Buddhism from Daoism? Daoism presents identification with the law of Nature as the highest possible freedom and most perfect attainment of power. By contrast, Buddhism argues that identification with the principle “no-self” is the highest wisdom. Buddhism, therefore, is usually centred on the refusal of any kind of self-assertion, particularly the assertion of the assailant or the assertion of predator over prey. In Mahayana Buddhism, the refusal of assertion is called the “wisdom of emptiness”. However, we have already seen how this term “emptiness”, absent from Daoism, was inherited and asserted by Takuan.
- Takuan’s militarism could be seen as an aberration, a late distortion of Buddhist teaching, but Demiéville presents similar examples from across the tradition. Most uncanny are the texts that directly reanimate the Buddha, often in slightly uncharacteristic and shocking situations. The Heap of Jewels sutra, translated into Chinese as early as 140 AD, presents the disciple Manjushri threatening the Buddha with a sword. The Buddha then praises him for this because “there isn’t any more of me than there is of anyone else. If Manjushri were to kill the Buddha it would have been a right killing”.
- Other essays in Buddhist Warfare are equally troubling. Stephen Jenkins describes an early Mahayana text that justifies “compassionate torture” as burning of the remnants of the victim’s past sins. Derek Maher describes the fifth Dalai Lama attributing the status of a Buddhisattva to his Moghul patron Gushri Khan, a war Lord who “realised emptiness”. The problem highlighted throughout Buddhist Warfare is the long history of the misapplication and misappropriation of Buddhist principles such as “emptiness”. Buddhist Warfare essentially holds contemporary Buddhist authors and scholars to account and demands that they interrogate these central principles in order to understand and prevent their misuse.
- Dale S. Wright’s The Six Perfections could be seen as occupying Faure’s “high metaphysical or moral ground”. Wright’s book sets out a detailed method for cultivating the six virtues central to the Bodhisattva way of life: generosity, tolerance, morality, energy, meditation and wisdom. Each virtue is assigned its own chapter in an eloquent, earnest, almost pastoral way. Essentially, however, Wright reiterates mainstream Buddhist teaching and presumes that once the “wisdom of emptiness” is achieved, then it is impossible to enter into conflict, act violently or wage war. Wright does not see any potential for the notion of emptiness to be hijacked or possessed by power-seeking, destructive forces. Instead, he presents the concept in terms of “interdependency”. He affirms emptiness as the idea that nothing stands alone, nothing controls its “own being”, nothing is self-established or permanent. To be empty is to be wholly contingent, wholly dependent on external factors. It is to have no core or identity of your own. It is to know that you “depend in the most fundamental sense on other things”.
- Wright’s conviction is that if we can tolerate emptiness, we can tolerate anything, nothing will cause us to retaliate. He argues that if we identify with what we most fear, then we have nothing outside to fear. Therefore we cease to define or assert ourselves against anything. We are essentially pacified. Wright sees the denial of emptiness as the root of all violence. Conflict is born of ignorance of the emptiness of our true nature.
  
  Unfortunately, as we have seen, we have the evidence of Takuan against Wright. Takuan clearly identifies with emptiness, but he is not pacified. His identification with emptiness allows him access to superhuman martial prowess. In his sword, emptiness acts like lightning. We have seen that emptiness is not always understood as a peaceful communal state of mutual interdependency, but it can manifest itself as pure will-to-power.
- Buddhist Warfare illustrates that emptiness can be anomalous – in traditional Buddhism, as in Wright’s reading, it is seen as emptying out aggression. However, Suzuki compared emptiness to the unconscious and, since Freud, the unconscious has been seen as the origin of evil. Wright ignores this tension. Underlying Wright’s ethics is the presumption that emptiness is essentially compassion. The Dalai Lama has said something similar: “We have no absolutes in Buddhism, except compassion”. But Buddhist Warfare raises the question whether identification with emptiness can always be trusted to lead to generosity, tolerance, morality, energy, meditation and wisdom.
- Although the tone of The Six Perfections is always uplifting and edifying, overall the ethical system Wright is presenting does not fully acknowledge its reliance on certain unspoken axioms, and the abandonment of the principle of karma has many negative implications that are not properly scrutinized. Mahayana Buddhism is centred on paradox and the union of opposites: the precursor of Mahayana, Nagarjuna, stated that the world of suffering (Samsara) is Nirvana. But if all opposites are combined and the clear demarcation of good and evil in karmic theory is abandoned, then how, ultimately, can we discern the difference between Wright’s central aim of identification with emptiness and the fate of the sage Vakkali?