Omninerd on Religion

Read the whole original barf-o-rama.

I agree—forced respect is not respect at all, it is tyranny; and no one has a right to demand the respect of others simply for the sake of tradition or silly power relations. But I don’t think that’s what is going on in the majority of religious discussion—at least none appearing in the current poll or the ensuing discussion.

There certainly are people that demand homage to their chosen ideals, but both sides in the religious debate are guilty of that. Atheists demand unflinching loyalty to their version of rationality as much as the religious seem to demand unflinching loyalty to their chosen God(s).

So, it’s not so much a matter of ignoring beliefs I think are wrong, as it is a matter of live and let live. But I do work to understand them and why people hold the beliefs that they do—I even came to understand, with some work, why people can get very worked up about a sports team. Religion came more easily to me, but there were some definite challenges along the way. I am not a Christian for various reasons, but I have a solid understanding of why Christians do most of what they do.

But I had to get over my dissatisfaction with both Christianity, and football, in order to understand what motivated people to engage with them….

Oh, and hey, did I mention that the Buddha taught that life is suffering? What else could be suffering, please, but to be condemned to hear nothing but this kind of drivel out of your peers for the rest of your life?

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Comment Breakthrough

I’ve added the “Comment Widget” to the bottom of the side panel, because of this comment from what appears to be Lin Mingya’s sister Meifeng:

Lin Mei Feng on Lin Mingya’s CV

What a great comment! It makes me feel like I found a missing part of my Sangha!

I’m going to translate this Curriculum Vitae. It could take a while.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

欢迎东方朋友们飘到我这儿来！Welcoming Visiting Friends from the East

昨天的击次当过本站存在的最大、是因为许多东方朋友们飘到了！ 恐怕我这个小站有点儿太偏英文的。 可是，宝贵的东方交通量要那么重要的话，我一定要多注重双语文章。誓言的了！

南无阿弥陀佛
性平

That yesterday’s hit-count was the greatest in the history of this site was because quite a few easterners drifted over. I’m afraid that my little site is too weighted towards English. But, if valuable Asian traffic is going to be that important, I will certainly put greater emphasis on bilingual material. Promise!

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Traffic Patterns

The most hit items on this blog are: The Geshe Michael Roach “Controversy”, (this content was unintentionally deleted and I have rewritten it from memory) and Meher Baba’s Response to my Buddhist Practice.

This is the kind of traffic I want. What these two posts have in common is other ways, besides traditional Asian ones, to derive authority in Buddhism.

Geshe is the most prominent case of an American Buddhist who practiced to fruition without being recognized by his Asian lineage, and that non-recognition is the result of the cultural and racist agendas of his lineage head. Geshe has done at least three times as much actual practice as the head of his Asian lineage, and was pretty close to Enlightenment when he started. “By their fruits shall ye know them.” At some point, we just stop listening to Asians with cultural and racist agendas. Geshe is the tip of the iceberg. In my opinion, there now exist literally thousands of non-recognized attained American Buddhists.

Meher Baba is an example of a modern-era Spiritual Master (the current Avatar of God, in fact), who pulled the basics out of the often self-contradicting mass of presenting Asian cultural assumptions about Buddhism. According to Baba, “Broad Buddhism” is one of five “highroads to God,” the particular one which “succeeds when driven to its extremes.” Baba asserted Himself to be the Incarnation of the same Person who was Gautama Lord Buddha and also Jesus Christ, among many others. All of His writings are consistent with Buddhism, as well as all the other major religions. And as a follower of Meher Baba, the only value in Buddhism is what was actually spoken by the Buddha. The innumerable changes to the actual teaching of the Buddha that were wrecked on it, mostly by well-intentioned individuals simply trying to survive in hostile Asian cultural environments, have no value to such persons, of which yours truly is an unutterably never-humble-enough example.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping

Administrative Decisions

After being chaotic about it for a while, I have decreed that there shall exist these categories on this blog, and that each blog entry will be assigned to exactly one category:

American Buddhism
Asian Buddhism
East Asian Language and Culture
Politics
Hawaii
Other

I’m forcing a choice between Asian and American Buddhism, because we’ve all already made that choice by our birth. The American Buddhism category is where I am placing material which is critical of Asian Buddhism, as well as articles about the indigenous American product. The reason for that is that my critical attitude is a result of an American point of view about Asian Buddhism applied to people to whom it cannot belong.* If you look at the “Category Cloud” in the sidebar, which shows the relative sizes of the categories, you will see that most of what I’ve written here is non-critical material about Asian Buddhism.

However, I consider the dominance of a site called American Buddhism by material about Asian Buddhism to be inappropriate, and I will now seek to equalize these categories by adding to the American Buddhist category. But most of that will not be criticism. I feel that I’ve voiced all the criticism that is necessary. I need to survey the state of the web on American Buddhism, which I haven’t done for several years.

*An example of this is the last bilingual post. Fo Guang Shan’s liturgy is not wrong in an Asian context. What makes it wrong is its presence in America, together with unrealistic pretensions to be transmitting to the American mainstream. The only thing that can transmit is orthodox doctrine, and this just doesn’t cut it. The only kind of doctrine that can survive systematic political oppression is also orthodox, and that is what now exists on the Chinese mainland, in a vital new modern-era mainstream society form. For that reason, I find more to the issue of American Buddhism in what now exists on the Chinese mainland than in what is coming out of Taiwan, including Fo Guang Shan. Like Taiwan culture in general, Taiwan Buddhism is comparatively reactive and subjective.

Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping