[Buddha-l] Question for academic teachers of Buddhism

[Richard Hayes]

On Fri, 2008-06-27 at 10:14 -0400, Curt Steinmetz wrote:

> I think it's interesting to look at where this phenomenon comes from: 
> that of people being attracted to Buddhism based on the idea that it 
> "doesn't seem like a religion".

Think about it. It comes from people who are sick and tired of being
told not to mix their meat dishes with their milk dishes and not to turn
on light switches on the sabbath, and people who are sick and tired of
being told that a thimble full of grape juice and a wafer are the blood
and body of Christ and that his death on the cross is a redemption for
Adam's sin of disobedience. In my case it comes from sitting in high
school science classes and having to listen to my biology teacher tell
brain-damaged kids in the class that, despite what their ministers may
tell them, believing in evolution through random mutation does not
necessarily require spending an eternity in the flames of hell. 

Think for a moment about society in the United States. In a society in
which 92% of the population claim to believe in god, 70% pray at least
once a week, 65% believe in angels, and 30% believe in evolution or
geological time scales, the prospects of a discipline taught by a guy
who reportedly said "Believe only what you yourselves have tested in the
crucible of your daily lives" and who leaves it up to each person to do
just those practices that are found to be beneficial SOUNDS a lot like a
welcome antidote to both irrational religion (is there any other kind?)
and hedonistic consumerism. 

The last Pew poll reports I saw on the subject suggest that the only
society on the face of the earth more overwhelmed with religiosity than
the United States is Nigeria. (Another survey suggests that the
educational system in the United States is almost as good as that of
Nigeria, although our health care system lags far behind.) 

> Buddhism is not only 
> obviously very much a religion, but one of the oldest and largest 
> religions on earth.

For some people Buddhism is a religion, if by religion you mean a set of
unnecessary practices in which people engage because of either blind
faith or through the bullying and intimidation of an authoritarian
teacher. For many it is not. One of the many influential Buddhist
teachers in my life was a monk from Sri Lanka who had a masters degree
in science and who taught that the vast majority of what Asian Buddhists
do is counterproductive superstition that gives them nothing but false
hope. Once, when interviewed by the biggest newspaper in Canada, he said
that one of the most pernicious misconceptions about religion is that it
is a religion. This particular monk is only one of several I have heard
saying such things. People who speak in this way can point to a large
body of canonical texts to support their position. 

So if it is true that Buddhism is one of the oldest religions on earth
(being about 1800 years younger than Judaism and 500 years younger than
what we now call Hinduism and about 1000 years younger than the basic
ideas on which Chinese religions are based), it is also true that it is
one of the oldest anti-religious disciplines on earth. Surely it is as
silly to argue about whether the religious or the anti-religious forms
of Buddhism are more authentic and efficacious as it would be to argue
which size shoe is the right one for the human race.   

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico