Many Buddhist societies are amongst the worst slave states know to history (the Tibet from this article, but also Burma and oh-so-beloved Thailand).
And this is not despite Buddhism but because of it. In all societies where it is dominant misfortunes such as being born poor (or worse) are seen as being justified somehow, leading to astonishingly callous mistreatment of the poor and unlucky - think the wholesale enslavement and transport of complete populations such as in Thailand not too long ago and in present day Burma.
Zen Buddhism, too, is a spectacularly nasty piece of work. It originally existed in two variants: one for the peasants, which taught them to accept their miserable lot, and one for the warrior class which taught it that life is fleeting and death inevitable (it is this variant of Buddhism that was used to indoctrinate Kamikaze pilots in WW2)
So why we in the west should think that this is an especially enlightened religion is beyond me. If you must do religion, why not Christianity or Islam? At least these two make a point of encouraging charity and kindness towards others.
To me Buddhism is two completely different things and I only belong to one of them.
(1) Religion for 400 million people that is just like any other religion. Religion as social hierarchy and cultural phenomenon.
(2) Spiritual practice. Something you do, not something you think or identify with. It's more like going to gym or eating healthy than reading scriptures. Social hierarchy is teacher/student level. You want to have teacher, but he should keep your own head. Just like you don't allow gym trainer to run your life outside the gym, teachers are just good at what they are good at. They have more practical experience.
Zen/Chan Buddhism has long written record with teachers writing autobiographies that record how it really was in those "good old times". In every era, it seems, constant lament from teachers is that Buddhism is in decline, monks are lazy and seek only fame and status.
As Buddhist practice is human activity, every human vice is known in Buddhist monasteries. Against this background strict discipline in remote training monasteries starts to make sense. It's harsh enough that bullshitters can't take it, but if you are there to train you thrive.
Small list of current bad things happening in Buddhism:
Myanmar and Sri Lanka have huge problems with supremacist movements where the leaders are Buddhist monks.
Tibetan Buddhist tradition has problems with sexual abuse of young boys (and nuns) probably at the similar level as Catholic church.
Unfortunately, too many people are only familiar with the latter - and only with a variant of the latter that is much cleaned up and stripped of its folksy roots and made palatable for Western consumption - and then transfer the positive feelings they have about that to the former.
The Prophet Muhammad owned, traded, and raped slaves according to the sayings and actions attributed to the Prophet and his companions (hadith), which is very highly regarded in the Islamic tradition (second only to the Qur'an). :\
https://sunnah.com/abudawud/20/70 https://sunnah.com/bukhari/51/28 https://sunnah.com/urn/1268350 https://sunnah.com/nasai/36/21 https://sunnah.com/nasai/37/84 https://sunnah.com/nasai/37/87 https://sunnah.com/bukhari/95/17
Anyways, I'm not sure why this is on HN.
I guess it is interesting to people who aren't aware that atrocities were present in all societies, no matter what the official religion was. But I wonder if this could be a pro-Chinese source.
If we're only talking about what religions superficially encourage, Tibetan Buddhism also encourages charity and compassion towards all beings, endlessly extolling the Bodhisattva ideal. The religion in theory is different from the religious state with living, breathing humans in charge.
Indeed. I practiced Buddhist meditation for some years and was very interested in Buddhism. However, what I always found difficult was the relation between teachers and students. On the one hand, someone who has many years of meditation experience is better at detecting typical pitfalls during practice and can help people move forward. On the other hand, this sometimes results in a strong division between laypeople and monks/teachers (typically ex-monks). A subset of teachers use their perceived religious authority this to go on power trips, or worse, physically abuse people.
Once religion becomes organized it becomes a very powerful tool to subject people.
Romantization of the exotic certainly plays a role, but additionally there were projects like the CIA Tibet program:
The history of the state is also nasty. The history of engineering is also not that glorious, given that it was mostly for war. You can even go to the history of writing...
The question is: what each religion is doing, of harm and good, today. And what we expect they can do tomorrow. On those grounds, you might even be right. But the question is more complex.
(but I agree: the bible does not fit with our values today at all)
In the West, people are very familiar with Christianity. It's mundane, and a good portion of the population views it as backwards. But most people have no idea about Buddhism and what role it has played in Asian societies.
In China, people are exposed to Buddhism all the time, and it's not exotic in any way. But many people in China view Christianity as some sort of trendy Western religion, and don't know how it's viewed in the West.
Other people's superstition isn't laden with the same baggage as one's own society's superstition.
Lets look at some of your points
> 'not despite Buddhism but because of it.'
This is your main thesis and to support this you say -
> At least these two make a point of encouraging charity and kindness towards others.
Directly, (not subtly), implying that Buddhism does not do this.
A basic search would give you something like the basic virtues of Buddhist teachings - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmavihara and how these virtues are popularized via stories where the protagonist gives up lives to save tiger cubs or say, the story of Angulimala.
Note that there is no condemnation of non-believers to eternal hell - a belief which has caused tremendous violence and looks at lot of cultures as essentially devil's work- a belief is still not repudiated today (it cant as it is a core doctrine).
Also, modern industrialized societies are still having a hard time accepting an elementary insight that animals can suffer intensely and creating montrosities where this is noted quite early in Buddhist and similar traditions.
> misfortunes such as being born poor (or worse) are seen as being justified somehow
Another point you bring up is karma and the word you use is 'justified'. When a thief or a killer attacks and causes suffering to a Buddhist, they might take it as the result of past bad karma, but that doesnt make the action 'justified'. Indeed, that action itself generates bad karma. A ruler inflicting suffering on people also gets bad karma.
The notion that people are fatalistic about misfortune is false can be seen at multiple levels -
Firstly, at the whole point of the tradition itself is to overcome karma, secondly, popular cultures are filled with practices aimed at changing karma.
At the political level, try reading James Scott on how peasants resisted states which became tyrannical https://www.amazon.com/Art-Not-Being-Governed-Anarchist/dp/0...
A more subtle but important point is that 'justification' is bringing in a different framework - the notion of normative ethics which is inherited from Christianity - whereas the concept of karma is seen more like a natural property like a bodily sickness.
This kind of violence hasn’t been common in other parts of the world for centuries. It’s also a phenomenon that is distinct to states in South East Asia - and, in fact, to the Buddhist states in South East Asia ( it was not practiced in what is now Malaysia in Indonesia - which are now Muslim and before that practiced a religion that mostly resembles Hinduism).
As for the teachings: you have to look at them for what they are. I personally find much more value in Buddhism than in any other religion or philosophy (barring perhaps stoicism, which has many similarities).
You are comparing the historical reality of one religion to the ideals of other religions. In such a comparison the ideals will always look better. If you compare the ideals of Buddhism with the historical reality of Christianity and Islam (war, slavery, genocide etc.) I'm sure Buddhism will look better.
You will typically see people compare the ideals of their own religion with the realities of other religions and come to the conclusion that their own religion is best. The imperfect reality is explained by flawed people misunderstanding or misusing the religion, while the real-world problems of other religions is attributed to faults in the religion itself.
> wholesale enslavement and transport of complete populations such as in Thailand not too long ago and in present day Burma.
Nobody is being enslaved because of Buddhism in present day Myanmar. That’s ridiculous. The violence here has very little to do with religion. None of the ethnic independence armies are theological (like ISIS for example). Nobody is picking up guns because they read some sutras.
The emperor that had a huge influence marrying Buddhism with government in Myanmar and Thailand and who at one time ruled the Indian subcontinent, Ashoka the Great, abolished the slave trade (3rd century BCE). Slavery was practiced throughout the subcontinent before Buddhism became intertwined with the state.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashokavadana
> Ashokavadana mentions two incidents of Ashoka turning towards violence after adopting Buddhism. In one instance, a non-Buddhist in Pundravardhana drew a picture showing the Buddha bowing at the feet of Nirgrantha Jnatiputra (identified with Mahavira, the founder of Jainism). On complaint from a Buddhist devotee, Ashoka issued an order to arrest him, and subsequently, another order to kill all the Ajivikas in Pundravardhana. Around 18,000 followers of the Ajivika sect were executed as a result of this order.
This is very much historically true of places dominated by Christianity, and streams of Christianity still actively seek to advance this in the developed West, where it has faded somewhat largely due to secular economic developments associated with the weakening of Christianity, rather than due to Christianity itself.
Sure, there have been streams within Christianity working against it, but they've always been working against the broader society even where Christianity has unquestioned dominance.
It happened in England powered from the money of traffic of slaves in the Atlantic. Those slaves went to the South of the US and also created lots of capital producing cotton that was very expensive at the time. That capital went into machines which powered industrialization too in the North of the US.
After that the US expanded to the West exterminating the native population. The native did not agreed on new cultivation methods that made their buffaloes and bison population stagnate.
In Germany they tried to copy the Americans but exterminating people at the East instead of the West (the "Lebensraum").
Japan tried to do the same "expanding"(and exterminating) to surrounding Asian countries.
In theory those that exterminated the native populations in the US and had black slaves were Christians. Most of the German population supported Hitler and they were(in theory) Christians.
It is human behavior, humans are predators and they predate other animals or Humans from other tribes.
Religion does not remove our canine and incisors teeth. Our nature remains there and it could be dangerous.
It is probably, and often, tied to the evolution of Christianity and Western humanism that led to a special view on the rights of the individual. Which for instance led to the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. Which to us is baffling someone even ever though slavery was ok. Yet it was the standard for millennia.
When you read a summary of the Buddhist doctrine this Western view of individuality seems to fit perfect. Yet the cultures housing buddhism didn't yet seem to have evolved to support this view of the individual.
This might have something to do with the fact Buddhism started in a more complex society in India and then moved to more tribal places like Tibet. Yes India had a feudal type of cast system, but also had a very high level of philosophy.
This is an argument that's also sometimes made by scholars to explain certain differences between the word of Jesus and the more tribal verses of Mohammed.
Coming back to Tibet, even though it was far from perfect, there a still gems to be found in Tibetan Buddhism.
And to give them some credit there have definitely been attempts to reform in Tibet. Not every monastery was about politics, some teachers created their monasteries far away in hard to reach places to avoid the politics. For centuries the Tibetan writers already speak of dark times, so at least a few were aware.
For example humanism didn't stop Scramble for Africa [2], nor Opium Wars and subsequent colonization of China.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dum_Diversas [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#S... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa
I'm all for criticising lack of democratic progress in China, but Tibet really is a bad argument for that.
Ultimately though, religions tend to develop similar memes regardless of differences in philosophy or theology. "Accept your misery, peasant" is a highly recurring meme. It's not hard to find grounds for it in the christian gospels.
Victorian anglicans printed prayer books for household maids enforcing exactly this message. These were very young girls sent (sometimes sold) from villages to the cities. Many tried to escape. Religion was used as a chain.
The liturgical themes in these prayers trace back to aurelian stoicism. That nasty work (meditations) was highly influential on christianity. Originally intended to help the upper crust accept their misery, it's been recycled for millenia to help the truly miserable to obey their masters and accept their masters' cruelty... literally and in those words.^ This is just one small example of christianity re-enforcing slavery, meekness & servitude.
Modern "secular religions" entirely grounded in liberty and equality develop these themes too. 20th century communism(s), objectivism, etc. They all have (had?) ways of justifying "astonishingly callous mistreatment of the poor and unlucky." It doesn't seem to matter what philosophy you build from, it ends up in the same place.
Western philosophies of racism, imperialism & monarchy had both religious and secular justifications. The abolitionists also had both religious and secular justifications.
"Fundamentalism" is generally accepted as bad, dangerous and morally corrupting by many westerners today. Very few take the next logical step: Fundamentals don't matter. It doesn't matter what Jesus said, what the philosophy says, etc. Those things don't determine how the religion is practiced or what the operative day-to-day beliefs are.
If a traditional Tibetan saw American society, he could tell that they "live in a slave state, having to bear the burden of debt and interest for the most part of their lives" - because it may be unnatural for them. They would be quite astonished to see the amount of atheists.
Promotion of humanism everywhere in the world is another piece of the occidental imperialism.
It's useless to claim you are against racism and else if you do not understand that people from around the globe are perfectly right not sharing your set of values.
Still, I think some conception of Western Human Rights should be universalized (like slavery is always bad, for example) but a lot of thought should go into what values are important enough to always impose on others.
I'm amazed this aside isn't getting you downvoted. Have you been under a rock for the last 2000 years? The horrors of Abrahamic religion far outstrip anything Buddhism is responsible for.
Can you substantiate that claim? I never saw the death count per population of each religion and to know that one is higher than the other. Or the slave count per population.
Was Christianity worse, or just larger?
I disagree on your point about Islam though. Islam encourages charity within it’s own community only. For non believers it encourages the holy war (jihad), which causes many problems. In this case, it’s indeed better for a country to have bouddhism than islam as state religion, from the point of view of neighbors if not muslim themselves.
Islam specifically encourages giving charity to the most needy, AND starts with your own community and family and works outwards to the larger good and society. The same Christian beliefs of taking care of your neighbors. Islam also encourages in enjoining in good wherever you find it.
Muslims in America donate to local food banks and soup kitchens.
You clearly are just repeating what the current false narrative is and have little understandinf of the religon.
If you made the point that people dont practice the way the religon is taught I might agree, but this is just false.
I met some Tibetan exiles working in the market in Dalhousie in India, 20+ years ago. They had fled Tibet to seek freedom and opportunity. If the border guards had seen them, they would have been shot.[1] So, I am not a huge fan of Chinese control of Tibet.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nangpa_La_shooting_incident
I also met quite a few Tibetan exiles in India. Those who had fled by spending their life savings to be guided across the Himalayan border had tales to tell of running out of food on the journey and eating snow, but no specific details of persecutions in China: they came because the Lama was in India. (I also met a Tibetan who arrived via a visa for overseas study who fully intended to return). But the risk of being shot was still a real one.
You need to actually visit Tibet to see how brutal the occupation actually is.
Once there were these drunk Chinese soldiers who stole this old Tibetans tractor and were doing broodies in the center of town.
That was wild I wish I had it on video (though if I had would I be here today?).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_Feudal_Tenure_etc...
It's easy to oppress people you never see, who are just numbers in a ledger. People you see every day and must rule face to face is another matter.
This guy is a Buddhist Goebbels: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashin_Wirathu
what _is still_ happening
This is very similar to how “the Family” (of the congressional prayer breakfast) reasons. Except in their it’s because they are “the chosen”, not that they had past lives.
It is hard to be oppressed when you make $50,000/annum. It is hard not to be if you make $365/annum. Culture is a problem insofar as it makes it hard to add 0s on the end of your income, and a matter of taste otherwise.
To me some of the more backwards Arab states are the exception that proves the rule; it took wealth literally welling up out of the ground to have a dominant culture that is both wealthy and unable to let women drive cars. And even then the ban was eventually ground down.
I'm not sure that's true. A decent amount of disposable income certainly means one is unlikely to consider indentured servitude a possible means of survival, but it doesn't pay for law enforcement to remove their knee from your neck. The last century saw relatively prosperous industrialised countries carry out genocides of certain subsets of their middle classes.
It's certainly true it's hard not to be oppressed on starvation incomes though.
A helicopter ride like that probably costs $500 a head, in a country where the average annual income is $862.
I think it was so surprising because my naive western viewpoint was that monks live a simple life. I'd love to know more about the reality of organised religion in that region!
So there is a distressing symbiosis between religion and violence but the Cultural revolution was a "mistake".
So the most violent and murderous event in Human's History was just a mistake.
Communism has the biggest distressing symbiosis with violence and murder ever:
Lenin killed the highest number of religious people ever, and they did not defend themselves.
In Spain the communist also killed from 6.000 to 10.000 religious people that by the way did not apostatize or defend themselves.
Stalin killed millions of their own people.
Pol Pot millions.
Mao killed hundreds of millions.
This article is a piece of propaganda in order to defend the invasion of China of a foreign country.
Now the big lords are the Chinese communist and Tibet and Nepal continue being extremely poor.
Engaging in genocide olympics is bad enough, but this is probably the most overt example of bad history I've ever seen. You've managed to even surpass the black book of Communism (100 million claimed) in your reaction.
But I believe the truth is somewhere in the middle, otherwise dozens of Tibetans wouldn't self-immolate every year in protest agains the Chinese regime.
Overall a very biased, slanted piece, written in an interesting way but without any credence from well-linked citations and fails to take into account the reported atrocities committed by the Chinese after their occupation.
