[Buddha-l] authoritarianism, totalitarianism, religions

[Piya Tan]

Dear Dan,

Religion has always been a powerful tool of influence and instruction.
And as a tool of power, it can almost always be exploitative and
destructive.

Yet to abandon religion is only to concentrate the negative forces
that define and use it. Lord Acton spoke out against Papal
infallibility in his letter to the Bishop of London, that "absolute
power corrupts absolutely."

My point is that scholars, especially academics who profess Buddhism,
are invaluable in investigating and informing thinking people and
perhaps those who are able to influence social and political process
to give us all a better deal.

There are also those who see Buddhism in mostly a negative way, maybe
this would consolidate their tenure (wrong livelihood, actually), esp
when their facts are convenient hypotheses and oversimplifications, as
shown by Schopen recently:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/onecity/2009/05/buddha-as-businessman.html

May the light not blind us too long.

Piya Tan




On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Dan Lusthaus <vasubandhu at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> I have no desire to wade into this any more than to note the following.
> Religions generally -- not just Asian religions, and certainly not Buddhism
> exclusively -- are by nature authoritarian. This cannot be camouflaged or
> ameliorated by claiming there are "masters" (how about "my master") who
> treats me like a horse, and lets me have relaxed reins in terms of my degree
> of participation (because, of course, in the West, few of us enter actual
> monastic communities with the regulations, stipulations, controls, etc.
> those typically require -- instead we've devised sort of monastic half-way
> houses where we can psychologize and self-justify our submission to
> authority by claiming it is lessons in humility, ego-reduction, faith, and
> whatever). Our experiments with these halfway houses quickly revealed their
> were seedbeds for all sorts of abuse. Not a new Western phenomena, but an
> age-old one, institutionalized over many centuries.
>
> Again, not just Buddhist. From today's NYTimes, concerning Irish
> reformatories:
>
> Report Details Abuses in Irish Reformatories
> By SARAH LYALL
> Published: May 20, 2009
>
> LONDON - Tens of thousands of Irish children were sexually, physically and
> emotionally abused by nuns, priests and others over 60 years in a network of
> church-run residential schools meant to care for the poor, the vulnerable
> and the unwanted, according to a report released in Dublin on Wednesday.
>
> The 2,600-page report paints a picture of institutions run more like
> Dickensian orphanages than 20th-century schools, characterized by privation
> and cruelty that could be both casual and choreographed.
>
> (the rest, including a link to the report, at)
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/europe/21ireland.html?hp
>
> Members of an e-list such as buddha-hell must have a certain affection and
> fondness for Buddhism, or they wouldn't continue to loiter in its nether
> regions. That fondness inclines one to be defensive of that which one
> idealizes. Conversely, one finds it deeply disturbing to learn unpleasant
> truths about one's idols. A century ago reports like the one above were
> being published and disseminated in Japan -- except they weren't about Irish
> reformatories, they were about Tibetan monasteries, where pederasty (and
> other problems) was institutionalized to a degree that Japanese traveling to
> Tibet were scandalized and troubled -- not that the Japanese clergy has
> lacked in major scandals and outrageous abuses and misbehaviors over the
> centuries as well. Even so, what they saw in Tibet disturbed them.
>
> See
> http://www.japanese-religions.jp/publications/assets/JR33_a_Shimatsu.pdf
> Yoichi SHIMATSU's "A Hidden History: Free Tibet, the Lost Crusade of
> Buddhist Japan"
> (a pdf)
>
> Buddhism, esp. its actual, historical, institutional history, may NOT hold
> the answer to all of life's problems nor the best prescriptions for how
> things should be done. Mindless Buddhism -- regardless of the sentiments
> motivating participation -- easily lends itself to these abuses.
>
> Not only Nansen's cat was a victim of lethal pedagogy (and valorized for
> decapitation); it was acceptable -- even highlighted in the edifying
> narratives -- for Zen "masters" to lie in wait on the Temple wall for the
> naughty students who snuck out at night to return from their partying,
> meeting them on the wall with a heavy stick, knocking them off the wall to
> their deaths -- setting examples ("Zen is a matter of life and death" -- no
> joking!). Accepting that sort of pedagogy continues in present day Japan,
> where annually a dozen or more elementary school children are killed by
> overzealous corporal punishment inflicted by their teachers. Generally, the
> teacher is not reprimanded; rather the "shame" falls to the parents for
> having raised such a miserable kid deserving of such treatment. (A recent
> case may have begun to challenge that tradition, but traditions die hard in
> that part of the world.)
>
> Because of the seriousness of such abuses (and more), these are not trivial
> issues to be swept under the rug with wishful, romanticized sentiments. They
> need to be thought about -- critically and deeply.
>
> Dan
>
>
>
>
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