"The central message of Buddhism is not 'Every man for himself.'"

[sabrinamari]

So, this post is not really about my favorite quote from "A Fish Called Wanda."

That was just the perfect title.

Recently, on the the_wildhunt, our intrepid Pagan reporter noted that Reverend Dennis Terry said this:

“I don’t care what the naysayers say. This nation was founded as a Christian nation. The god of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. There is only one God. There is only one God, and his name is Jesus. I’m tired of people telling me that I can’t say those words. I’m tired of people telling us as Christians that we can’t voice our beliefs or we can’t no longer pray in public. Listen to me. If you don’t love America, and you don’t like the way we do things, I’ve got one thing to say, get out! [...] We don’t worship Buddha, we don’t worship Mohammed, we don’t worship Allah. We worship God. We worship God’s son Jesus Christ."

He and many others have covered the deeply ethnocentric nature of this comment and others like them. I'm not even going to address that. I'm also not going to point out that Reverend Terry contradicts himself.

Instead, I want to point out something much, much smaller, just to make sure that folks understand.

Buddhists do not worship Buddha.

The Buddha was just a human being. An ordinary person who was more reflective than most, and who reached an awakened, fully conscious state often referred to as enlightenment.

The whole point of Buddhism is that this is available to anyone.

Some hybrid forms of Buddhism recognize gods and goddesses. Others don't.

The most essential and streamlined forms of Buddhism---mostly those that have not morphed with other belief systems---don't have that much to say about the gods.

That's not what's important in Buddhism.

Buddhism is about how to be a fully awake human being. That's it. It doesn't spend much time on the gods, or on demons, or on other kinds of beings at all. I mean, it's got nothing against them, its just that its focus is totally on understanding human nature, coming to know the human mind, and learning to actively shape one's conscious self.

If you accept Dion Fortune's definition of magic as "...the art and science of changing consciousness according to the Will," then Buddhism is absolutely a kind of magic.

It offers a systematic method for observing the human mind in action (via several varieties of sitting and active meditation). During these observation periods, it asks practitioners to test a range of basic principles (hypotheses) against their own experience and then suggests several ongoing practices for achieving conscious control of/detente with/peace with a whole bunch of different neuroses.

That's it. That's Buddhism at its core, as I understand it.

So, just in case you were wondering: Buddhists do not worship Buddha.

They steal his methodology and mimic his practices in order to become saner.

That's it.

Comments

[wgseligman.livejournal.com]

Hmm... therefore, Buddhism is about being self-aware and finding ways to to become your own advocate to improve your inner life.

In other words, every man for himself!

I knew Kevin Kline would never lie to me.

[bobby1933.livejournal.com]

But doesn't "too much" acceptance, kindness, compassion, and overflowing joy make that mantra somewhat impossible?

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

I do love Kevin Kline---funny!

[showingup.livejournal.com]

T's immediate response: "Show her this!"

Did I Stutter?

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Love it! You find good stuff.

Sitting in the congregation of a pentecostal church last week---which was really fun, by the way---I kept thinking. "Damn, Jesus was a good Buddhist!" Every other quote used by the pastor could have come straight out of Buddhist lingo.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

There is a theory that he spent time in India. I believe there's a tomb of Jesus and Mary in one part of India, though I don't remember where.

Basically, though, I reckon that mysticism gets us to roughly the same place, regardless of tradition.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

And another thing...

It really bothers me that he assumes that everyone who calls themselves Christian shares his views on:

* The divinity of Jesus and the triniatrian approach
* The conflation of Jesus and Christ
* The sense of being besieged and persecuted
* Other belief systems

When I stood up and told Friends that I frankly don't know or care whether Jesus is THE Christ or A Christ, A son of A God, THE son of THE God, more or less a child of the Divine than any of us, or a profoundly spiritual man who spent much of his time in his integrity and some of the time really struggling with it, because the real issue was his example of struggling to be a peace-full, honest, compassionate person who sees the world riven by fear and wishes to heal it - and that belief in the essential goodness of his teaching in no way contradicts my personal Paganism, the response was, "Welcome to membership of the Religious Society of Friends."

The remarks he made are just so distressing. I hate to see someone so terrified of losing control and so abjectly afraid of not being right that they miss out on the messy, ambiguous, difficult, enriching experience of just being in the world. He feels besieged and persecuted, and his comments reek of un-self aware panic. It's a shame. And it's a shame that he turns this panic outwards to lash at others.

Everything we do ripples outwards. Which, I suppose, makes us all more powerful than we imagine. And in need of good Buddhist-style exercises in sanity.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

"Everything we do ripples outwards. Which, I suppose, makes us all more powerful than we imagine. And in need of good Buddhist-style exercises in sanity."

This is so important! I think most of us feel powerless and afraid, and so we act out or speak out in ways that have unrealized profound impacts, because the truth is that we are each very powerful, and the more power that you have the more you must learn to use it carefully.

If we could each see how much power we actually hold in the world, how much we are seen and actually listened to, we would be so, so much more careful! I think so, anyway...

[showingup.livejournal.com]

Yes. We're obsessed with Doing The Big Thing (I know I get caught in that trap), when the Big Thing is being who we are - everything else flows from that. We have it arse about, really.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

"When I stood up and told Friends that I frankly don't know or care whether Jesus is THE Christ or A Christ, A son of A God, THE son of THE God, more or less a child of the Divine than any of us, or a profoundly spiritual man who spent much of his time in his integrity and some of the time really struggling with it, because the real issue was his example of struggling to be a peace-full, honest, compassionate person who sees the world riven by fear and wishes to heal it - and that belief in the essential goodness of his teaching in no way contradicts my personal Paganism, the response was, 'Welcome to membership of the Religious Society of Friends.' "

This is so awesome. Really, really awesome.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is. By the way, I was at a national Quaker conference last weekend, and one of the long-time Friends was wearing pentacle earrings :)

[rio-luna.livejournal.com]

It shows how very limited that view is--it doesn't even allow for a "deity" you don't worship.

It was like how years ago I was discussing gay marraige with a friend who said, once gays can marry, what's next? pedophilia beocmes legal?" Look at the short step and see what's missing: consent. Consent is not even on the radar. straight sex = good, everything else =bad, and all the bad is equivalent so gay sex = sex violence = pedophilia = everythign we dont want to do.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

That is a good point, rio. This kind of thinking skips a lot of important steps as it evaluates systems.

I hadn't really seen that yet.

Hmmmm...onward, cognitive chunking!

[hypanebliss.livejournal.com]

I follow young nubile women. Is that the same thing?

[mage-imbroglio.livejournal.com]

Not at all the same thing, but a hell of a lot more fun. We should form a club around this and call it.... Mormonism? Oh wait, that one's already taken and I don't have no stinkin gold tablets anyway.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

My sweet, I do not have any idea where your mind came from.

Or where it goes.

Or anything like that.

But I love you.

[hypanebliss.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. But what if we did have gold tablets? What then? I'd probably use them on my nightstand to hold up my clock radio. Seems a good use of a heavy and shiny object. :)

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Steve, I think you are wonderful, and at times, I find you utterly incomprehensible. But you should feel good about that.

: )

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Oh wait...was this a comment on the Reverend Terry's list of practices he doesn't do?

Confused...

[hypanebliss.livejournal.com]

Maybe I was accidentally rolling my metaphorical dice to see if I could get Michael to come out and play. Which I did. That only worked precisely because I didn't have any intentions at all other than to interject an amusing anecdote.

Or would that be an occidental happenstance? :) Don't make it a Habit man.

:) Never assume I am making any attempt at sense.

Well, actually Buddhist do worship the Buddha!

[mage-imbroglio.livejournal.com]

Sort of... since a Buddha simply means enlightened one, and we are all attempting to achieve that state, we hold the ideal of our enlightened selves as the ultimate goal. And since no one can really help anyone else get there, and in fact the standard Buddhist teaching methods are to pit you against yourself, I think Kevin Klein and Bill might both be right.... the central tenant of Buddhism could very well be every man for himself.

Re: Well, actually Buddhist do worship the Buddha!

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

You are a big dork, honey!

[mage-imbroglio.livejournal.com]

Just stirrin the pot man.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Silly man. Come give me a neck rub, please.

Re: Well, actually Buddhist do worship the Buddha!

[showingup.livejournal.com]

worship (n.)
O.E. worðscip, wurðscip (Anglian), weorðscipe (W.Saxon) "condition of being worthy, honor, renown," from weorð "worthy" (see worth) + -scipe (see -ship). Sense of "reverence paid to a supernatural or divine being" is first recorded c.1300. The original sense is preserved in the title worshipful (c.1300). The verb is recorded from c.1200.


In the Anglican wedding service, one of the vows is, "With my body, I thee worship".

If you revere someone/thing, you do indeed, in the broadest sense, worship it.

Re: Well, actually Buddhist do worship the Buddha!

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

In this sense of worship, you are right: "revere." But the whole deity thing, in the Christian sense, doesn't really apply.

Re: Well, actually Buddhist do worship the Buddha!

[showingup.livejournal.com]

In the modern, mainstream Christian sense.

Quakers are open to "deity" meaning all sorts of things (there are nontheist and humanist Quakers in the UK); early Christians didn't agree on the concept of deity or whether or not Jesus was in any way divine as opposed to wholly human - I believe one of the major early Christian denominations utterly rejected the idea that he was any more divine than anyone else.

I've found that when I press mainstream Anglicans and Catholics on the nature of God, they come up with all sorts of overlapping, different, interesting views of what God is, what deity means.

It seems like a very narrow view has mostly prevailed, and made out like it is the only way of looking at things - and that it is the way its tradition has always looked at things.