The Buddhist Survival Guide
If I am not for myself who will be?
If I am only for myself what am I?
The Conditions
In the current international environment of conflicted opinions and proselytizing religious traditions the Buddhist are the only ancient spiritual tradition that is currently endangered. The historical evidence over the last eight hundred years, and more recently over the last sixty years, should be convincing, even devastating, evidence that the Buddhist are not paying attention to world events, regional events or even local social and religious turmoil. Traditional Buddhism and Buddhist in general are not defending themselves against well financed, well educated, highly motivated proselytizing adversaries that range from the mildly self delusional to clinically psychotic despots.
A brief history of Buddhist expansion and decline is helpful to fully appreciate the current conditions as they exist today.
During the time of Ashoka (?-232 BC) The Buddha Dharma was incorporated into the Indian continent as the official ethical and cultural doctrine. Ashoka encouraged the Buddhist Sangha to travel widely and to explain and debate (academically) the Buddhist doctrine as was the tradition at the time. This spread the influence of the Buddha Dharma from the Roman and Egyptian Empires, through central Asia, onto China and eventually to Korea and Japan by the sixth century. Buddhism and its doctrines were culturally influential and supported by local citizens, merchants and diverse cultures until the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century.
Genghis Khan (1167-1227) contrived this Mongol invasion that spread through China, across central Asia to the doorway of central Europe. Due to this military, political and cultural turmoil the Iranian Muslims continued this assault on into India decimating the entire Buddhist population, except for the Janes in southern India. This was accomplished by the singular convincing argument of putting a knife to the victim’s throat and saying, “Convert or die.”
The next spiritual and cultural threat came from the expanding European empires of Spain, and Portugal (1450-1750) that brought with them inquisitional Catholic missionaries and the militaristically superior Conquistadors. Although, their usual doctrine was to divide, conquer and convert, the Buddhist must consider conversion as being the Catholics singular objective. The Catholic religious oppression was the same as the Islamic conquerors - total domination of the culture and the establishment of a theocracy predicated on their Religious doctrines. With the invasion of Islamic and Catholic absolutist’s traditions and proselytizing religious values, a significant percentage of the Asian indigenous population was forcibly converted.
The British Protestant tradition was convincingly established by the eighteenth century with the strategy of convert and prospers, which was astoundingly effective in converting numerous people to western Religious values as well as cultural standards and language.
Social conditions and economics kept spiritual and social doctrines conservative (Victorian) but somewhat stable for two hundred years until the Second World War (1939-1945) when the material wealth of the west and the oil wealth of the Mideast changed their spiritual strategies to a more aggressive and proselytizing expansion strategy.
In the more contemporary times from the 1950’s the motivation for western cultural expansion into Asia was not the attraction of Asian values but the expansion of Communism, which was significantly more devastating to the Buddhist than it was to any western society.
Remember that up until sixty years ago Buddhism could rhetorically claim that half of the world’s population was Buddhist or had Buddhism as a basic social influence. Then in 1949 Mao took over China from a decidedly stupid, oppressive and ineffective Nationalists government. What Mao did was transform China into a secular theocracy destroying thousands of years of cultural history including over half of the Buddhist followers and traditions in the world.
Buddhist Tibet fell to a Chinese invasion by 1959 when the Dali Lama fled to India changing and ancient Buddhist culture into a communist atrocity in a few short years with surprisingly little effort – by simply building a road to Lhasa. They did the same thing to India but decided to leave; concluding, India was more problem than solution (No mineral assets).
Cambodia, on Thailand’s eastern border, fell to Po Pot psychotic Communist genocide from 1975 to 1979 but the turmoil lasted until 1995, or even until today, with the complete destruction to an ancient culture including most of the Buddhist. The current problem is that American influence in Cambodia has encouraged Christian Evangelicals and Fundamentalists to sway the devastated, uneducated and demoralized Cambodian toward Christianity. One reason is that the Americans, with their typical cultural arrogance, decided that they would prefer Cambodia to be Christian rather than Islamic; who are also trying to turn Cambodia into an Islamic theocracy. I suspect the Christian will win and that Thailand will have a Christian dominated country on its eastern border within the next ten years.
Burma, or currently Myanmar, on Thailand’s western border, has a secular military dictatorship that has lasted since 1947 with no end in sight. The Buddhist Sangha there has not been able to change this condition, though at great personal sacrifice. This dictatorship is likely to fail, eventually, leaving another devastated culture to the vicissitudes of the world’s spiritual and culture predators.
There are still three countries that can be considered Buddhist theocracies; Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Thailand. There is a large Buddhist presence in Mongolia, Nepal and Vietnam but the general population is decidedly secular, Hindu or Islamic; also there are many Buddhist in Korea, Japan and Taiwan, though managed by secular democracies.
In Butan, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, due to an English education and insights into western duplicity, evicted (in 1972) all the Hippies, missionaries, European idealists and almost everyone else, out of the country and refused to let them back in; a very smart social and political advocacy. Bhutan is a small and exclusive but a singularly unique example of ancient Buddhist culture in the world today.
Sir Lanka has recently passed a law that forbids the conversion of any Sri Lankan Buddhist to any other tradition. Prime Minister Mahindra has also eliminated missionary visas. Why he has to go to these extreme measures to insure the integrity of the Buddhist tradition is a reflection of an endemic problem of traditional belief and the institutionalization of Buddhist decision making predicated on outdated cultural and spiritual conditions.
Thailand might best be described as secular Buddhism operating within a Buddhist theocracy politically managed by Parliamentarian prejudices. If it weren’t for an ethical bureaucracy and local business integrity conditions could be much worse. Unfortunately, the political stagnation extends to Buddhist traditionalists that encourages cultural and social complacency, even exclusivity, within the Sangha to hold themselves isolated from the turmoil regardless of the external, well organizes, well funded spiritual and cultural threats.
If current history is any criterion Buddhism and Buddhist traditional doctrines can be eliminated in any country in a year or less given concerted opposition, spiritual or secular, that is willing to kill dissidents; a strategy that Buddhist traditionalists have failed to appreciate. Thailand and Buddhist in general, have no obvious protection against these threats.
Buddhism in the west is in the hands of a small intellectual elite and is, at best, a strange curiosity to the general American public. Western Buddhist have not been able to save Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet, the Cambodia Buddhist culture nor traditions, nor the Burma Buddhist although there has been significant interest in doing so. They will not be able to save the Thai Buddhist traditionalists in Thailand either.
Tradition in the face of Changing Conditions
The Buddha, and early Buddhist, had to explain their beliefs and traditions to diverse populations with a wide range of intellectual skillfulness. They also had to defend and debate complicated issues against academically sophisticated completion. This constant dynamics kept the Sangha vital, healthy and informed. Currently, the Buddha Sangha seems unable to defend itself against even the most absurd delusions of competing religious doctrines. This condition is decidedly unhealthy even, disastrous, and must be addressed in order to sustain any Buddhist tradition, at all. It is not even remotely consoling to see Buddhism disappear in their traditional lands because of irrational adherence to historical, political and cultural doctrines including international pressures and values that are locally and logically self-destructive.
It is not enough for the Sangha, or their lay supporters, to endure years of servitude to acquire a position of doctrinal or political responsibility to disregard accountability. It is meditational skillful to be able to discern the difference between blind adherence to absurd doctrines, spiritual or secular, and addressing the value of managing contemporary problems. Martyring yourself to historical or political doctrines because they are old, establish and considered right does not help you, your neighbor, your culture, or future generations of Buddhist.
Proposals
Thailand is the last possible country in the world capable of establishing and sustaining a World Buddhist Sanctuary.
The authors, sponsors and supporters of this argument are not satisfied by simply criticizing existing conditions but by proposing that specific changes be adopted by Thai lay Sangha who, not only, have the ability but the responsibility to establish and protected as well as managed a Buddhist Sanctuary for all the Buddhist people and traditions in the world.
Thailand is the only country in the world today that has the possibility to sustain and managing an international Buddhist Sanctuary for all Buddhist Pilgrims. It is important for us to appreciate that the Buddha Sangha and Dharma is currently incapable of defending itself against predatory, proselytizing religious doctrines. Therefore it is the responsibility for the Thai Parliamentarians as well as the Sangha Monks to assume this responsibility by passing relevant laws that insure the preservation of all Buddhist.
Monotheistic Religion as Doctrine
By definition Buddhism in not a monotheistic religion, does not believe in a God, does not proselytize, and is antithetical to faith. Buddhism can be considered a social philosophy predicated upon rational values; although, the application of these doctrines can vary considerably, depending on the culture, historical times and countless other conditions.
I am compelled to organize a rational summery for anyone interested in appreciating the scope and range of the absurdities in monotheistic religions doctrines. It is not my intention, in this argument, to present a point by point criticism of the assumptions that have to be believed or the inconsistencies that have to be endured in religious doctrines to believe in their liturgies. Other people have done so with enormous scholastic endurance and intellectual ingenuity.
Observation;
Religious traditions create irrational doctrines and then define themselves as the only interperters.
Voltaire;
“Anyone who can convince you of an absurdity can cause you to do an atrocity.”
By definition; Religion is a belief in a single God justified by faith. The diversity of this idea specifically includes the Christian-Jewish traditions, including all Catholic orders, the Protestants including fundamentalists, evangelicals, Mormons, Jehovah Witness, Seventh day Adventists and anyone who says that Jesus is their savior; as well as the Islamic tradition of Shea and Sunni. Absolutely all of these Religious traditions have an exclusive source, the Jewish monotheist Abraham.
Only these monotheistic Religions traditions are based solely on faith and only faith. There no other criterion that is used to justify their beliefs. Unfortunately, this leads to a singular application – to test your faith you need to be subjected to increasingly irrational beliefs. The more irrational the belief the greater the faith is required to sustain those beliefs making the believer more religious and virtuous. It is then essential to make their liturgies, doctrines and traditions as irrational, illogical, dualistic and inconsistent as possible. This is done historically by conscious, even clever, design. If you point out even one inconsistency in their doctrines you may be branded a heretic and a follower of the devil and can be killed, with impunity for the murder, by all of these Religions traditions.
Pointing out irrational, illogical and inconsistent statements in their liturgies is not an efficient way to distract religious followers (all it does is test their faith). A good way to defend yourself against any conversion strategy is to ask questions – any question. Why do you believe in…? Is a completely unanswerable question, in any rational way, by any follower of any of the monotheistic religions. There is no WHY in any traditional religion (even Jesus asked why and got no answer). There is not a single statement in any of these liturgies that is not contradicted by an equally convincing contrary statement. Do not kill… accept for specific Religious reasons.
The linage connectedness of these proselytizing Religious traditions goes like this, in the Jewish Torah Moses’ first commandment says; Take no other God before me. This is only one of the problems you have to figure out…. The God of the Jewish Torah is Jehovah, the God of Abraham, who was the first monotheist. The Christian God of the Bible is also the Jewish God but kinder, which was not hard to be. The Christian monotheistic God is divided into three parts which are the Father, the son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit, which are co-substantial and not separate at all! Jesus, a rabbi, was sent to earth, as the son of God, to die for the sins that his father, which is himself, who is also omniscient, and who created the conditions for the idea of sins in the first place – to fix it. The Islamic God of the Quran is Allah, whose prophet Mohamed, says that Allah is also the God of the Jew Abraham, and that Mohamed’s prophesies fix all previous prophesies.
Another condition is that the Religious God is omniscient (all knowing), all powerful, and all good that is why there is pain and suffering, tragedy, sickness, ignorance and death in God’s perfect creation. This is a wonderful test for faith. If the proselytizers can manage this argument (which is why the condition of free will was argued by St. Thomas Augustine in the fourth century) you are in the presence of a truly deluded person.
Multiple or past lives are a problem for monotheistic religion, they don’t believe in multiple live. Although, you’re soul comes from someplace because it is eternal and apparently there are an infinite number of souls (They are unclear where they might store an infinite number of anything). Your soul has to have a life, which is this, and only this, planet, as a test, to decide where it will go in the next life (Heaven or Hell, also for eternity). Another is to accept Jesus as your savior you are reborn again in this life, if you are talking to a fundamentalist. That is three or four lives all in one breathe but they don’t believe in past or future lives, which is a heathen belief.
Intelligent design was proposed in 1994 as a scientific justification for God. All you have to do is believe that Religions are intelligently designed, that the human body is intelligently designed (please enjoy your back ache, eye glasses, arthritis and very painful births…on and on) and that everything (including politics) makes intelligent good sense! Good luck!
Indulgences, or their equivalent, are an astounding way for Religions to raise money. Lay people should have churches, temples and mosque including Priests, Rabbis, Ministers and Imams, with cemeteries and clergy that pray and care for the living and dead. But all of the liturgies say that you are judged at death and go to the heaven or hell solely dependent upon your behavior while alive! Then why pray and have ceremonies for the dead? The Catholics thought up purgatory as well as some form of future resurrections for lost souls. The more prayers and masses and good works done in the name of the dead will get them, and you, out of purgatory or into heaven faster. The Buddhist have Merit which exactly the same thing.
The Islamists have the Five Pillars of Islam which are the confession of faith, performing five daily prayers, fasting during Ramadan, paying taxes, performing Hajj. These religious practices are reasonably straight forward and would not be a problem if it were not for the spectacular misinterpretations of the Quran that has permeated the Islamic Traditions. The most outlandish is that if you martyr yourself for Islam you will go to a particularly wonderful heaven – with seventy one virgins!
Unfortunately, in the Quran, there are no virgins in Islamic heaven; there are no women in Islamic heaven, at all. The virgin part seems to be a mistranslation of – white grapes of crystal clarity. There are so many of these translation problems one can only marvel at their creativity.
The Christians have the Virgin Mary’s birth of Jesus, which was her first birth or the birth of her virginity, by Jewish tradition, that got mistranslated into that Mary was an actual virgin; quite easy for celibate clergy to do. Jesus had at least one brother (James the Just) apparently conceived in a more traditional way by the mother of God! The saddest application of Christian religious misogamy was to turn Mary the Madeline, the Apostle of the Apostles, according to Gospel of John, into a prostitute. This was done for one thousand years of Christian history until 1966 when the Catholic Church finally decided to change their mind, again.
These astounding mistranslation problems have plagued proselytizing Religions from their inception and are not intended to go away. Of course, this becomes a monumental catastrophe when the Religious fundamentalists insistence of strict, and absolute adherence, to the written doctrines which are inconsistent interpretations of the original irrational proposals but an excellent test of their faith and your gullibility if you believe then.
I contend that Buddhist have an impossible task of defending themselves against delusional people who are willing to martyr themselves, if questioned about their delusions - without being martyred themselves.
Thailand is already in peril that the enactment of any of these proposals is likely to cause considerable turmoil within Thailand but it is essential that we remind the Roman Catholic, Protestants, Islamic and Mormon and other proselytizing religious traditions that the Buddhist or the Buddhist traditions are not the current or historical problem.
Y.
