Tagged: secular Buddhism Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 2:36 am on September 6, 2026 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , secular Buddhism,   

    Buddha Talk 2026: the case for a Modern Unified Buddhism  

    Hi, I’m Hardie and I’m here to talk about the possibilities for a new modern Buddhism, based on the original ancient principles, but free of any superstitions, and thus perfectly compatible with science. At first glance, that may sound like Secular Buddhism, but that would only be partially true. Because secular Buddhism places little value on religious experience, i.e. feelings, which can be a very valuable addition to any religion, and very important to most. Philosophy is a good substitute for religion, of course, but that doesn’t always help when your life is in danger, and you’re clinging desperately to hope. At times like those it’s nice to believe in something, almost anything will do sometimes. But that is superstition, magic, and sometimes pleading to an extra-terrestrial God to appear in the flesh to interfere in conditions upon our beloved terrestrial Earth. And there is no scientific basis to that, of course. Or is there? 

    Many Asians act like that is normal, while many Westerners are repelled by the thought, but what did the Buddha believe? It always revolves around karma and rebirth, and while it is clear that the Buddha accepted much of that, it is also clear that those were not his ideas, but borrowings, mostly from the Jains of his place and time, India c. 500 BCE. And you certainly can’t blame him, given the popularity of the notion, which persists to this day. Buddhists hem and haw about what it is that is ‘reborn’ without ever really answering the question, given the strong no-self anatta sentiment, which is central to Buddhism, especially in comparison to the Brahmanistic ‘Hindus’ of his time, who elevated Atman to the Cosmic Self that rules supreme with Brahman. So, if the celebrated Middle Path of Buddhism was a path between luxury and lack, asceticism and celebration, it was also a path between Hinduism and Jainism. 

    And from that humble beginning, Buddhism divided and conquered until it had spread to almost all Asian countries and became the majority religion of at least seven, which is considerable even if not as many as its rivals Islam and Christianity, and not counting China, Japan, Taiwan, Tibet, and Korea(s), all with sizeable numbers and percentages, but not a clear majority. But that may not be as impressive as it sounds at first if you consider that Buddhism has had longer to develop than most other religions. But that is not what matters now. What matters now is that Buddhism is on a rapid rise, and just when we need it most. Because the earth is in crisis, and the representatives of Buddhism are not pontificating (pun intended), nor sitting idly by. They are walking thousands of miles and even more kilometers. You know who I’m talking about. Yes, I’m talking about those monks walking for peace who caused such a stir in the USA recently. 

    Their timing was spot on, and their PR was even better, since they managed to win the hearts and minds of many, with their fresh approach and non-political orientation. The politics were always in the background, of course, but fortunately, that’s where it has stayed, for the most part. Others quickly followed suit, since this is part of an age-old tudong tradition in Thailand, if now expanded beyond the original pilgrimages to more symbolic excursions. The best part is that this is more what I call ‘soft Buddhism’, a la Thich Nhat Hanh, i.e. meditation and mindfulness, than the fire and brimstone of Tibetan Buddhism, i.e. Karma (of retribution) and Rebirth (reincarnation). Because the issues of karma and rebirth have always divided modern and traditional Buddhists, just like modern Christians can still believe in Heaven and Hell (as long as they don’t talk about it too much). 

    Because there is not much difference in the ‘soft Buddhism’ of TNH and W4P’s Bhikku Pannakara, even though the former is from Zen and the latter Theravada, even though the latter also talks about his dog Aloka being reborn as a human. That’s not even Buddha-flavored ‘rebirth’. That’s Hindu reincarnation, just like Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, while I favor the Christian ‘rebirth in Spirit’. A Godless world does not have to be an evil place, if Buddhism can unite with Christianity and Hinduism to provide a sympathetic approach to society and politics. Just leave the Karma and the dogma behind. Buddhists have already borrowed ‘lovingkindness’ from Christianity, just as Christians have borrowed meditation from Buddhism and Hinduism. So, Buddhism gets warmer, while Christianity gets cooler, helluva deal. It’s already happening. Stay tuned. Join us. 

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 4:09 pm on September 25, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Japan, , , , secular Buddhism, , , ,   

    Buddhism and the Dialectic of Deliverance… 

    Buddhism needs no fancy metaphysics nor linguistics, multiple hells nor forty-two flavors of emptiness. Kindness and compassion are enough, metta and karuna and all that jazz. Which is one of the singular beauties of the faith, of course, that almost nothing is required up front, but some goodwill and a policy of non-aggression, ahimsa, such that oftentimes simply doing nothing, absolutely nothing, is the preferred path to advancement, simply because all other options are of lesser benefit.

    Some sects of Buddhism prefer a more elaborate presentation of gods and goddesses, but this is entirely optional and the historical Buddha himself had none of it. In fact, I’m not sure that the historical Buddha would even recognize Tibetan Vajrayana, or Japanese Zen, as something of his own inspiration. But such is the evolution of culture and language, so that a random mutation can be almost guaranteed to occur every eighty years or so, just like the DNA from which we all descend.

    But that doesn’t mean that Tibetan and Japanese Buddhists have nothing in common. They do. It’s just that these two almost-opposite branches of Buddhism are poised like the horns of a dilemma to offer themselves up as starting points for the next phase of dialectical Buddhism. So, given the superstitious and elaborate nature of Vajrayana and the sparse linguistic and meditation-oriented nature of Zen, what would be the next logical step for Buddhism to advance, at least in the West, that great field of dreams left to conquer?

    It just might be the original Theravadin style, with or without the religious trappings, so a more secular but traditional Buddhism, for lack of better terminology. And this is the current situation in the West, where those two extremes have found highest favor with the freedom-loving West, while the more disciplined original approach has found little favor—until now. Because the current acceptance of secular Buddhism goes back to the Early Buddhist roots in many important ways, but without karma, rebirth and past lives. The only question is how all of this will play out I the long run. My fingers are crossed. We are in need of some new synthesis to advance forward…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 6:59 am on December 5, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , secular Buddhism,   

    The Ways and (Skillful) Means of Buddhism… 

    ‘Skillful means’ is not about telling people what they want to hear. It’s telling them what they need to hear, in a way that’s acceptable to them. And if this sounds obvious, it can be more complicated than it seems. It can even contradict one of the main precepts in the Eightfold Path, in fact, if it fails to acknowledge the importance of Right Speech. One of the Buddha’s later commentators, in fact, even bragged about how the Buddha could preach about cosmic Self to the Brahmanists, while preaching non-self to the already-committed Buddhists. Fast-forward to the future and a prominent senior Buddhist monk today claims that Buddha, in fact, was never committed to a doctrine of non-self, but was undecided about it (so that we can now accept rebirth with no issue of what it is that gets reborn). But this is not ‘skillful means.’ And this is not Right Speech.

    As the New Testament of the Christian Bible is often paraphrased: “Let your yes be yes; and let your no be no.” Bingo. That Buddhism is an open doctrine is fine, and to be commended. That it sometimes gets twisted almost beyond recognition is not always so good. But that’s exactly what happened when Mahayana went in two almost opposite directions from its shunyata (emptiness) starting point, one leading to the Vajrayana of Tibet, the other leading to the Zen of Japan. And for a long time, that’s where Buddhism stood, and stalled, and those are the two extremes that made the biggest impact in the New World—until now. Because now there is a new dialectic to that interplay of magic and trance, and it should be no surprise that the only realistic synthesis would be a return to the primal roots of early Buddhism. So, Theravada now finds its best messaging in its simplest Forest Temples, and the debates in the background resume.

    Only this time it is not the background of Brahmanism and Jainism, but dozens of so-called ‘New Age’ ideas and the general air of conspiracy. But for me Secular Buddhism is the rightful heir to the debate with religiosity, something which original Buddhism had not the luxury, because Science as we know it did not exist. But Reason and rationality did, embedded in the nature of cause and effect, the words for which define ‘reason’ in more than one Asian language. And that’s how Buddhism won the original debate, for me, at least, because it was the rational option. And it still can be, if it can find its peace with Science, because that is the air we breathe in this day and age, logic and testing. We only need a belief system to make sense of it all. If not, then ‘belief’ becomes a bad word, synonymous with ‘faith,’ and we are left to our own devices to find succor and solace. I find no contradiction between my Buddhism and the best science we know. If forced to choose, then I will refuse, and let the chips fall where they may.

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 11:24 am on July 11, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , inanition, , , , , , secular Buddhism, , ,   

    The Rocky Middle Path of Buddhism in America… 

    “Give me liberty or give me death” is America’s battle cry for independence, of course, as so brilliantly elucidated by Patrick Henry, and seconded by many others, notably the license plate slogan ‘Live Free or Die,’ among many others of similar emotion. And by ‘America’ I mean the USA, not the lower 40, though they are largely complicit, as is Europe the mother country, in the case of North America, which lacks the large indigenous base of many of the other more southern countries. Even Mexico is around 65% indigenous the last time I checked.

    And freedom is all well and good, as long as we know the details of the liberties and freedoms referred to, but which can be detrimental, and even deadly, if left for imaginations to run wild and machinations to double down in derailing the original intent of a simple life without a lord and master to serve at every beck and call. So now we consider mask-lessness as an inalienable right, even during a pandemic, ditto vaccines, and any restriction on movement during the same world emergency to be a violation. So the Western insistence on freedom to the maximum extent comes very close to an implicit death wish.

    (More …)
     

c
Compose new post
j
Next post/Next comment
k
Previous post/Previous comment
r
Reply
e
Edit
o
Show/Hide comments
t
Go to top
l
Go to login
h
Show/Hide help
shift + esc
Cancel