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If You Meet the Buddha on the Road... Kill Him. [1]
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Date: 2022-07-24
This Zen kōan is attributed to Master Linji Yixuan. It is over 1000 years old. A monk deep in meditation experienced what he thought was enlightenment – the awakening, the Buddha-mind – and reported this to his master.
The master explained to the monk that this is nothing special at all, and can even hinder his real progress. The master then instructs: “If you see the Buddha, kill him.”
Even though you will find Buddhism listed as a “religion” all over the internet, the internet is rarely correct or accurate. So we get to the matter of definition and meaning, and nuance. There are no gods of any type in Buddhism. No beliefs. In a God or a belief that there is no God. Atheism is not scientific. And anti-theism or hostility to all religions is the source and cause of all “religious” wars: Bigotry. It is the absence of belief in anything other than the truth and living a life without fear of anything like Hell, or Heaven. The Sanskrit term is Dharma. All dharmas are forms of emptiness. Your truth may be No Truth. Or even Many Truths, and that’s how Hemingway put it, or rather his editors did, in the posthumously published Islands in the Stream. I read it was a compilation of three unpublished texts cobbled together, an excellent work. All gods are false, even your antigod or null god. That’s the teaching of Buddhism. Atheism itself is based on a belief that no one can prove nor disprove. Period. It’s a grift like anything else. And Buddhists are far more serene than any Anti-theist.
The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion As secularism grows, atheists and agnostics are trying to expand and diversify their ranks.
Atheism is faith in the belief that there is no God (or gods). In fact, it is considered one of the fastest-growing religions. No Religion, according to an article in The National Geographic. Atheism is not Anti-theism, a term Chris Hitchens coined and self-identified as, an anti-theist. And probably Richard Dawkins as well is hostile to all religions. That hostility towards religion, or the beliefs of others, is another word for bigotry.
No one is immune from behaving in a bigoted manner. Bigotry is the cause of all religious wars. End of story. I have respect for Hitchens, in spite of his peculiar idiosyncrasies, or maybe even because of them. Dawkins is allegedly a scientist, so he should know better. Hitch was just a journalist, much like Hemingway. I would have been interested in discussing Marx with Hitchens. He retained his identification as a Marxist, but largely realized as he got older that this meme explains the difference between the genius of Marx and Historical Materialism vs. the complete imbecility of Marxism as an ideology. And for many reasons not even related to the banning of free thought and/or belief.
To paraphrase Dr. Victoria Harrison from the University of Glasgow in her 2006 paper The Pragmatics of Defining Religion in a Multi-Cultural World, she states that as Theravada Buddhism is atheistic, it would otherwise have to be classified as non-religious. This fact alone puts Atheism in the category of “a religion.” But don’t despair, even some Christians claim Christianity is not a religion, but “a relationship with God.” A parallax view.
12 Step Programs, like the prototype, Alcoholics Anonymous, are often considered nondenominational “religion,” because of the faith in a “Higher Power” for your salvation. In the study of addiction, we know that AA is not evidenced based. It can’t be evidence-based and still remain anonymous. I doubt the majority of the public realizes this simple fact. It was never useful to me, but I would recommend it to clients. We all did it out of desperation because we still rely on outmoded models of “addiction” that make the notion of a cure “quaint.” Originally, it was the moral failing model. You are weak and amoral. This led to AA. We have slowly moved to the medical or disease model of addiction. This is because we as a society are still ignorant, and by we, I mean science. Some have found help in AA and there are a number of reasons for this unrelated to its efficacy which can never be tested based on actual evidence which can never be collected. Anecdotally, we use it out of desperation. In the field, you will even find 12 Step Groups for people who are “addicted” to 12 Step Groups. Or Porn, Sex, Drugs, even shopping, (or what we call “retail therapy”), but never addictions to money, or greed. Food, Power, however…
If I refer to the 7 Heavenly Virtues or the 7 Deadly Sins, it does not make me a Christian or even a Catholic. The Catholics even still include Liberality as one of the Heavenly Virtues. Many others have substituted Charity for Liberality. They are not the same thing. And I often suspect that’s intentional. See? Even the Catholics aren’t all bad. But that depends on how you define bad. This is the original Padre with a machine gun: Father Camilo Torres Restrepo. Maybe Thomas Merton is more your style, no machine gun. Both are often considered bad Catholics by the Church.
I can’t really say the same about Scientologists. All bad. And a joke only a few people get.
Bigotry is defined as an “obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction; in particular, prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.” As with most words we use each day, relatively few of us really have a clear and present definition of the terms we toss around. It is always easier to recognize the bigotry of others than our own, especially when you are the target of that bigotry.
For myself, I have always preferred Ambrose Bierce’s definition of a bigot.
“One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.”
At the root of every conflict, you will find bigotry. Think about it. In fact, truly religious wars are very rare. About 7 %, but 10% are the deadliest. In military science, this is known as a force multiplier. Twitter and Facebook are force multipliers, all so-called “social networking platforms” are, for disinformation and propaganda. “Holy Wars” are a morale multiplier also. Zealotry. The desire to eliminate all false beliefs but your own limited understanding of your own personal false beliefs is different from this lunatic how? Please tell me, I want to know. And the Romans tried this. Look around, there are millions of them now so it was as effective as Feynman’s Cargo Cult Science. It’s not even “scientific.”
Wars, and conflicts, are still caused by the same thing they have always been caused by, as Marx understood: Class Conflict, but whip up any zealots or fanatics and there are your front line Storm Troopers, like the SA, the forerunners to the SS.
And The founder of American Atheists started out with a noble endeavor that quickly became a grift. And she toyed with holocaust deniers. Another belief she couldn’t abide. So considering the way she lived her life, and how she died, I’d be hesitant to adopt her as anything more than another crackpot.
Atheists are not the ones you’d expect to be engaged in wars about something they claim does not exist. None of the beliefs in our heads exist.
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