[Buddha-l] Questions

[Curt Steinmetz]

Richard Hayes wrote:
> Indian Buddhism
> and what people now call Hinduism are hardly distinguishable.
>   

And this has even translated to an appreciable extent outside of India. 
One can find Buddhists in Japan who worship Saraswati - they even have 
the choice of worshipping Her explicitly as the Hindu Goddess Saraswati, 
or, for the less daring, as the Buddhist Bodhisattva Ben-ten (whom 
everyone readily acknowledges is none other than the Hindu Goddess 
Saraswati). Since Saraswati is the patron Goddess of intellectuals, 
poets, artists and other unsavory sorts, and since Buddhism has always 
been something of an egghead religion - it all kinda makes sense.

The Japanese Bodhisattva Jun-tei ("the mother of all Buddhas") is also 
routinely referred to as "the Japanese Durga". Jun-tei's counterpart in 
Korea, Junje Bosal, is referred to matter-of-factly by Robert Buswell 
using one of Durga's Sanskrit appellations, Candi (see Buswell's 
translation of the Thousand Hands and Eyes Sutra, in his "The Zen 
Monastic Experience").

Much of Miranda Shaw's book "Buddhist Goddesses of India" revolves 
around the inextricable interconnectedness of Buddhism and Hinduism in 
India. I even read somewhere that Dr. Ambedkar went so far as to insist 
that Lakshmi was never a Hindu Goddess at all - but was really a 
Buddhist Goddess from the very start and the Hindus usurped Her!

>
> One of the aspects of the FWBO about which I have been vociferously
> critical is their (our, since I'm in that organization) prevalent
> culture of antipathy toward Jewish and Christian faith and practice. The
> belief seems to be that one brought up in a Christian household can't
> possibly be a Buddhist until one has renounced Christianity. That
> strikes me as profoundly unhealthy.
>   

Sometimes something is just wrong. Christianity being a case in point - 
or at least the form of Christianity that wiped out all the other forms. 
But I have serious doubts about the Arians, Gnostics, etc, as well - I'm 
not willing to let them off the hook just because they lost.

Obviously this is something about which people disagree (or so I have 
heard) - but as a general principle I would say there is nothing wrong 
with drawing the line somewhere. Every ideology, philosophy, religion - 
whatsoever - need not be accepted on an equal footing or even accepted 
at all. Christianity has done more than enough to draw special attention 
to itself - especially when approached from the point of view of Asian 
religions, such as Buddhism, which Christianity has sought, and 
continues to seek, to utterly extirpate (and even more especially when 
one considers Christianity's very long record of successes in the 
extirpation business).

"Therapeutic Blasphemy" is both my favorite form of blasphemy and the 
only form of therapy to which I subscribe.

> It is not just the anti-Christian attitude of the Western Buddhist Order
> that I observe as slightly unhealthy. It seems to me that one is
> regarded as not quite fully Buddhist if one holds on to one's
> orientation to scientific method, humanism, depth psychology or any
> number of other aspects of Western civilization. 
>   

Well, now - THAT is going too far. I suppose I feel that way, though, 
because I don't much care for Christianity, but I do happen to like 
science, Jung, and "other aspects of Western civilization".

> Asians seem to feel comfortable with going for refuge to the Buddha
> among other refuges. Westerners are more inclined, it seems to me, to
> see going for refuge to the Buddha as fleeing from everything else.
>   

Here I agree almost wholeheartedly. I would just repeat (and reword) my 
contention that even though one need not flee from "everything else", 
there might be one or two things that one might want to consider fleeing 
from - Christianity being one.

> Mind you, I think these attitudes are changing as Western people become
> more secure in their going for refuge to the three jewels. I am
> encouraged to see some Unitarian-Universalists and a few Quakers working
> out the implications of their commitments to both Buddhism and a
> tradition with Christian roots. 

Since when are UU's and Quakers Christians!?

> Sadly, the result so far has been a
> largely ABC (Anything But Christianity) form of Unitarianism or
> Quakerism, rather than a healthy mixture of traditions of the sort that
> one sees in East Asia. 
>   

I'm pretty sure that the last thing one will ever see in East Asia is 
any kind of mixture (healthy or otherwise) of Christianity and Buddhism. 
The East Asian Buddhists are too smart for that - they know that any 
such "mixing" is just more Jesuit trickery. At least that is my hope.

Curt Steinmetz