Buddhism. And the Bipolar God.

Hi Atheist Hussy,

Buddhism is a “life philosophy” stuffed with supernatural nonsense and peppered with dogma. Any worthwhile assertions it offers can be offered independently of all the trappings and absolutely free of any mention of Siddhartha Gautama or any alias. Differentiating between a life philosophy and a religion seems rather pointless in this case as whatever you call it does not change the baggage it inevitably carries.

In the passage thezennist has quoted from the Bhuridatta Jataka attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, does it not strike anyone else as rather fortunate that the text rhymes so well despite it’s translation in to English? Regardless, the quote simply states the problem of evil – hardly ground breaking stuff.

Buddhism is marketable crap just like the rest of the religions (sorry, life philosophies) and any wisdom it contains should be extracted, cleaned of stupid labels and attachments to some special “awakened” being, and the rest of the nonsense thrown away with the trash before yet another generation of idiots have it recycled and marketed at them as alleged ancient wisdom with another stupid label attached.

I’m surprised you fall for it.

All the best,

CD

I don’t agree with CD, though I appreciate his aversion to religious trappings.

It’s true that most Buddhism as practiced today is the supernatural kind: believing in all sorts of metaphysical absurdities that attend to the monotheistic faiths.

But the crux of the matter, at least for me, is that the diagnosis and subsequent prescription by the original Buddha – or whatever you want to call him – is essentially correct: life is full of suffering, both mental and physical; the cause of this suffering is the craving of a self that doesn’t even exist (as modern neuroscience strongly suggests); and that the ‘cure’ for this suffering is to not only understand this state of affairs, but to experience it; i.e., engage in some form of mindfulness practice to arrive at the feeling of selflessness and detachment from desire and craving. There’s nothing ‘religious’ about that at all. It’s true subsequent Buddhist ‘schools’ have bastardized it beyond recognition, but that doesn’t mean we can’t practice it. And if calling it ‘Zen’ so that people understand what the hell you’re talking about (instead of trying to explain in detail what it is you do and why you do it), then so be it.

I like the way Sue Blackmore describes it when she says:

“I am not a Buddhist. I have not signed up to any beliefs, joined any groups, or taken any formal vows. This is mainly because I fear that the memes of Buddhism can be as pernicious as those of any religion and because I dislike dogma in any form. I mention this because nothing I have written should be taken as having the authority of a Buddhist. I do, however, value the Buddha’s insight, the teachings that have been handed down, and the practices I have been taught.”

Cheers,
Juno

Hi Intergalactic Hussy,

Can I ask you to be a little more specific about what actual knowledge has helped you? Yes, I do mean knowledge. If a specific practice has aided you then the prerequisite of undertaking that practice is the knowledge of how to do so. There are plenty of other religions with adherents who claim to have been aided by various beliefs or practices that are components of said religions.

Such claims serve in no way to verify the truth of a belief and anecdotal evidence does not verify the effectiveness of a therapeutic method. Your claim to have been helped can be treated no differently.

If a specific practice has helped you then that practice can be isolated from the rest of the dogma and independently tested. If a specific belief has helped you then you may be either incorrect in attributing the benefits to that belief or you may simply be benefiting by succumbing to delusion. The assertion of the belief may also be independently examined and verified or discounted but whether it has helped you or not goes nowhere towards evaluating its truth.

Sorry to be so picky but it worries me when atheists promote religions, even if it is not their intention to promote a religion as a whole but only a specific point. I’d like to try and get to the point.

Hi Juno,

This idea that detaching from desire and craving will remove all suffering is rather absurd. Killing everyone will remove all suffering. Dosing everyone up with morphine will remove all suffering. There are many ways to remove all suffering.

On the other hand desire has been a prerequisite for your existence. Without it your ancestors would not have bothered to breed. Craving kept them fed. In fact I cannot think of a single example of our progress (which has in many ways reduced suffering) that has come about as a result of us successfully making our minds inert and our ambitions null. I’m sure you must mean something else but I cannot see what that is from what you have written.

If one were to detach from desire then both personal and third party suffering become irrelevant. The suffering of third parties may therefore be liberally caused yet only casually and coincidentally cured. There is neither motivation nor restraint.

Beside that the philosophy contradicts itself. Is it a desire to not desire so that one can achieve this state? Why achieve the state at all? A desire for less suffering or no suffering is indistinguishable from the desire that this philosophy alleges causes us to suffer in the first place.

Larro,

We don’t all look for help. I don’t. I look for knowledge. If a “life philosophy” contains any useful knowledge then that knowledge is independently worthy. As you say, you are not Buddhist but you are vegan – incidentally, the Dalai Llama was not vegetarian until late in life but that’s beside the point. Just as dietary practices can be separated from a so called “life philosophy” every other practice can also be separated. So what is a “life philosophy”? It’s nothing but a catch all phrase for a pulp-filled, marketable, padded-out compendium of vagaries that possibly includes a select few independently valuable snippets of information that almost certainly already circulate without the bloated, hierarchy-supporting, guru-making branding attached.

Cheers all,

CD

Hi Intergalactic Hussy,

Thanks for the increased detail. Last point first – how many times have you honestly questioned a Christian or tried to express a criticism of their point of view with absolutely no intention of personal insult or malice and the Christian has immediately labelled you as aggressive/angry/rude/argumentative/etc? If this hasn’t actually happened to you (highly unlikely) I’m certain that you must have noticed it on forums and other blogs. The thing is that this isn’t limited only to Christians. Most people consider an inquiry or criticism of their ideas to be at least a partially personal attack. By using “Cheers” and other phrases I was hoping to offset some of the “personal attack” perception by being informal and friendly.

Back to Zen.

So essentially you believe you benefit from relaxation techniques. I like the way you say “My thoughts have thoughts” as I find extrapolating on as many thoughts as possible with seemingly no preference of direction to be a personal obsession (it’s why I use the nick I use), extremely rewarding and a cause of my own forays into depression, anxiety and some would say outright madness. Although some of the side effects of this can be personally unpleasant (anxiety, loss of relationships, social isolation, etc) I have to accept that I have no reason to suppose that the thoughts I have in these unpleasant states (in fact I think the unpleasant states are the result of the thoughts, not the other way around) are disposable by default. To attempt to avoid such states seems to me to be an arbitrary preference to spare myself discomfort which necessitates an attempt at self imposed ignorance. I would have to censor my thinking arbitrarily. It is no different to the Christian who must think “Jesus loves me” to keep the smile on his face. Why should intellectual honesty not be uncomfortable for emotional minds? Why think I can think honestly and keep the smile?

I think that people confuse looking for peace with looking for truth. Those that look for peace whilst claiming to look for truth are rapidly railed onto various “paths”, all of which seem to lead rapidly into the go-nowhere circular reasoning of trying to accept ignorance as bliss. Such paths are easy to spot. They are the routes that have shown absolutely no advancement in the years, centuries, or millennia for which they have been marketed as truth. Zen is no different. Dogma does not aid contemplative thought. Sitting to imitate Gautama is not a prerequisite of understanding anything other than perhaps why the practice of kinhin (walking meditation) is also a regular meditative exercise (cramps – deep hey). Aspiring to the attainment of no attainment without aspiration is just a loop around which to spin whilst accepting confusion as clarity. The gerbil running in its wheel is really getting somewhere, right? Keep running. Sorry, I just don’t buy it and it’s not for lack of experience. I’ve run around my own share of wheels and found it interesting to note how the wisdom achieved by doing so is either trite or simply “something I cannot put into words” which means it is a feeling and not an actual statement or realisation of the actual nature of reality. It is vacuous.

All Zen sects incorporate Dharma transmission, a claim of authority due to lineage alone. Chanting the lineage is a common practice. Ridiculous – as if understanding is legitimized by it’s chain of “ownership”. Argument from authority anyone? Deep indeed. Thinking needs no authority and no direction. It works best when it is free.

Nothing is an interesting concept though and I think it is very worthwhile to consider. We can have a far better idea of it thanks to the advancements of having learned so much more about what it is not – i.e. anything else. I think that the concept of nothing is crucial in actually figuring out what reality is. I’m currently working on a post on this topic which I hope to finish within a couple of weeks. The post is actually my idea of what I suspect reality is. I think you might find it interesting as on a basic level I can see that some Buddhist ideas have some similarity to early conclusions one might leap to before seeing the bigger picture. There are also some Taoist similarities. The similarities are quite coincidental and arbitrary but I suspect that the ideas will be of interest to you because some of the same ground is covered. It also says absolutely nothing about how you should live your life or what you should aspire to – 100% guru free.

Yours dispassionately,

CD