Divine Comedy

[eggomaniac]

I hope a bit levity can be allowed. When I read that 95% of Thais are Buddhist, you know, peace loving, non materialistic souls; it paints a cartoon picture in my mind of the other 5% running the country. [military coups, red shirts, yellow shirts, Pattaya, border disputes, genocide of refugeees, and so on]

[camerata]

Being born in a Buddhist country doesn't automatically make one peace-loving and non-materialistic. Unless they actively practise what the Buddha taught, Thais are the same as the rest of us. However, the politicians who run Thailand do seem to be the worst of the worst when it comes to materialism.

The one famous politician who espoused Buddhism in politics was Chamlong Srimuang, but would you really want him as PM?

[ScubaBuddha]

Sorry to say eggomaniac, but the people you mentioned are part of the 95% that claim to be Buddhist. (Perhaps you knew that and that was part of your levity) The other 5% being mostly Muslim and mostly concentrated on the south on the boarder with Malaysia. The percent of Muslims in Phuket is also greater than the national average, as they tend to enclave in coastal areas.

Edited March 27, 2010 by ScubaBuddha

[phetaroi]

As with virtually any religion, there are those who do not appear to be "active" (for wont of a better term), but on the other hand, I'm not sure it's good for another person to judge someone else's commitment to their faith. There are a couple of regular posters with whom I differ almost totally with the way Buddhism is perceived. But I feel we're still all under one big tent.

[eggomaniac]

Sorry to say eggomaniac, but the people you mentioned are part of the 95% that claim to be Buddhist. (Perhaps you knew that and that was part of your levity) The other 5% being mostly Muslim and mostly concentrated on the south on the boarder with Malaysia. The percent of Muslims in Phuket is also greater than the national average, as they tend to enclave in coastal areas.

Yes, scuba, it was part of it and you seem to be the only one who got the gist. Even if one doesn't score very well on mensa tests, it would be a matter of normal 'common sense' that one would know the difference between registered and practicing Buddhists. Perhaps encyclopedias should have a fiduciary responsibility to quantify their figures and facts.

It would be much more interesting, to me anyway, to have an idea of what % of Thais are 'practicing' Buddhists, if I can use the term of a few of the other posters. A number jumps to mind, which I will not disclose.

I would belly chuckle just as much if someone told me 85% of Americans were 'Christian'. [in name only - I can comprehend]

[phetaroi]

It would be much more interesting, to me anyway, to have an idea of what % of Thais are 'practicing' Buddhists...

I think this kind of speculation is pointless. What is a practicing Buddhist. Well, as one monk told me, "If you think like a Buddhist and act like a Buddhist, then you are a Buddhist."

Are they a Buddhist only if they meditate daily?

Are they a Buddhist only if they go to the temple weekly?

Are they a Buddhist only if they give alms to the monks on a regular basis?

Are they a Buddhist only if they follow the precepts perfectly?

Are they a Buddhist only if they do seek enlightenment?

Are they a Buddhist only if...

Perhaps we can have grade AA Buddhists, and grade A Buddhists, and so forth.

It's not all or nothing at all. Although there are some who disagree with this, several sources suggest you learn about Buddhism, accept what you can and incorporate it into your thinking and behavior, the rest may (or may not) come later.

[eggomaniac]

Perhaps we can have grade AA Buddhists, and grade A Buddhists, and so forth.

It's not all or nothing at all.

When I first visited Thailand in 2003, there were some large portrait paintings of monks in a gallery, all by the same artist, all the same size, all the same quality. Most were a few hundred dollars and one was in the thousands. When I asked why that was more expensive, it was because it was the portrait of a more revered, head monk, as you crudely put it, a triple AAA Buddhist.

In the OP I hoped some 'levity' was allowed, I guess not.

Maybe if even 40% were B levels this stupid mess would not be happening in Thailand.

Is Thaksin an all or nothing at all?

Maybe I'm wishing somebody or something would get ahold of Thailand and shake some sense into it. If I could draw a picture, it would be a cartoon, 95%!?

If you let go of 'self', you would see the humour.

Edited March 28, 2010 by eggomaniac

[PhilHarries]

I think you got your numbers round the wrong way. Ignoring the other faiths and athiests I think only about 5% are true Buddhists in thought and deed, triple A if you like. The rest are convenient Buddhists of varying degrees, they follow the teachings of the Buddha as they fit into their life styles and also how they can increase their status in the community. These form the grades from double A to triple Z.

It's no different to other faiths in other countries, they/ all have inconvenient tenets that most people choose to ignore, how many muslims go on holiday to Thailand and go on the p1ss. Also religion is losing favour with the youth and I thinnk you'll find the same with Buddhism, just go to the Wat and check out the average age of those who go there of their own free will (not the kids taken by the parents).

[fabianfred]

In the Vinaya Mahavagga it says that when the Buddha

was about to teach the Dhamma, he thought, “This truth

that I have realised is very profound. Though it is sublime

and conducive to inner peace, it is hard to understand.

Since it is subtle and not accessible to mere intellect and

logic, it can be realised only by the wise.”

He also compared the wise to the number of horns on a cow....and the unwise to the number of hairs on a cow.

90% of Thai Buddhists are content to make merit and hope for a better rebirth....

This was not what the Buddha struggled all those aeons as a Boddhisatva for.... but to teach how to escape all rebirth.

If the whole world kept the five precepts it would be like heaven..... but although the five precepts are a basic foundation to all other practice they are still difficult to keep.

Most do not really bother if it is awkward to do so and generally believe that either nirvana is something for the monks...or a very distant future goal...to be reached after many lives gradually getting better. These misunderstandings are often taught by monks who know no better themselves....or are not that devout about keeping their own 227 precepts.

The percentage of Thai Buddhists who go to learn meditation and then continue their practice with nirvana as their goal are probably less than 1 percent..... and maybe 3 percent of the monks are the same.

[Xangsamhua]

Being born in a Buddhist country doesn't automatically make one peace-loving and non-materialistic. Unless they actively practise what the Buddha taught, Thais are the same as the rest of us. However, the politicians who run Thailand do seem to be the worst of the worst when it comes to materialism.

The one famous politician who espoused Buddhism in politics was Chamlong Srimuang, but would you really want him as PM?

You could do a lot worse.

[Xangsamhua]

Also religion is losing favour with the youth and I thinnk you'll find the same with Buddhism, just go to the Wat and check out the average age of those who go there of their own free will (not the kids taken by the parents).

According to a 2008 survey conducted by the Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, 39% of young people in Thailand believe in God. Are they still Buddhists?

[phetaroi]

According to a 2008 survey conducted by the Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, 39% of young people in Thailand believe in God. Are they still Buddhists?

Where does it say one may not believe in God and be Buddhist?

[Xangsamhua]

According to a 2008 survey conducted by the Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, 39% of young people in Thailand believe in God. Are they still Buddhists?

Where does it say one may not believe in God and be Buddhist?

I think the rejection of an absolute, creator God in Buddhism comes from the teachings on anatta (non-self), anatta (non-permanence) and dependent co-arising. If there is no essential self, all things arising from a previous cause, coming into being and passing away, then the idea of an eternal, essential uncaused cause is not possible. However, perhaps one could be an "ethical Buddhist" or practitioner of Buddhist meditation and believe in God. The question then arises: What does one believe in if one believes in God?

Negative (apophatic) theology can only define God in terms of what God is not, and orthodox theology in the Abrahamic religions acknowledges that God is not another phenomenon (not even a very big, Monty Pythonesque one). Hence there is not much difference in descriptive terms between atheism and theism, or deism. It's just that the theists accept that there is Something and not Nothing and the "Something" must amount to something - must have some dynamic and generative force. The rest is culture, hope, desire for closure, etc.

The wishful thinking element in religious theism (not deism) is a form of attachment to permanence and the self, a cause of suffering in the Buddhist view, not only to oneself (the Angst), but potentially to others (religious intolerance, prohibition of certain medical procedures, opposition to artificial contraception etc.) and, hence, needs to be combated. However, if one genuinely believes in God, as opposed to just really wanting to, c'est la vie. With right view in other respects, I suppose one could be a Buddhist, at least by the duck test, and a theist, too. There is a German nun at Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village who on joining the community did not wish to disavow her Protestant faith - she had completed studies to become a pastor - and she has lived there and practised as a Buddhist nun for some years now. There was no test to see if she'd ditched God before ordination. I don't know what her thinking is now, but the community and its abbot, TNH, was happy for her to work things out for herself.

[phetaroi]

According to a 2008 survey conducted by the Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, 39% of young people in Thailand believe in God. Are they still Buddhists?

Where does it say one may not believe in God and be Buddhist?

I think the rejection of an absolute, creator God in Buddhism comes from the teachings on anatta (non-self), anatta (non-permanence) and dependent co-arising. If there is no essential self, all things arising from a previous cause, coming into being and passing away, then the idea of an eternal, essential uncaused cause is not possible. However, perhaps one could be an "ethical Buddhist" or practitioner of Buddhist meditation and believe in God. The question then arises: What does one believe in if one believes in God?

Negative (apophatic) theology can only define God in terms of what God is not, and orthodox theology in the Abrahamic religions acknowledges that God is not another phenomenon (not even a very big, Monty Pythonesque one). Hence there is not much difference in descriptive terms between atheism and theism, or deism. It's just that the theists accept that there is Something and not Nothing and the "Something" must amount to something - must have some dynamic and generative force. The rest is culture, hope, desire for closure, etc.

The wishful thinking element in religious theism (not deism) is a form of attachment to permanence and the self, a cause of suffering in the Buddhist view, not only to oneself (the Angst), but potentially to others (religious intolerance, prohibition of certain medical procedures, opposition to artificial contraception etc.) and, hence, needs to be combated. However, if one genuinely believes in God, as opposed to just really wanting to, c'est la vie. With right view in other respects, I suppose one could be a Buddhist, at least by the duck test, and a theist, too. There is a German nun at Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village who on joining the community did not wish to disavow her Protestant faith - she had completed studies to become a pastor - and she has lived there and practised as a Buddhist nun for some years now. There was no test to see if she'd ditched God before ordination. I don't know what her thinking is now, but the community and its abbot, TNH, was happy for her to work things out for herself.

And I think your last sentence is the key...one must work things out for himself or herself.

On Buddhanet there's one place where it says, "No, we do not" believe in God. When I read a flat statement like that I feel like saying to the person, "How died and made you GOD?"

One cannot say that Buddhism is a thinking man's "religion" and then say Buddhists may not think about and/or believe in God. Of course we may. Or may not.

I doubt very much that Buddha said, "You may not believe in God, but you must believe in multiple heavens, hells, devas, etc."

I've yet to see any religious philosophy that has it all figured out. And that is just as true about Buddhism.

[Brucenkhamen]

According to a 2008 survey conducted by the Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, 39% of young people in Thailand believe in God. Are they still Buddhists?

The problem with statistics like that is what is your definition of "God", were the students who where asked given a definition or just a word. The majority would not have grown up with an abrahamic definition of God so how would they have interpreted the question. "Do you believe in Buddha-jao" most probably.

[Xangsamhua]

According to a 2008 survey conducted by the Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, 39% of young people in Thailand believe in God. Are they still Buddhists?

Where does it say one may not believe in God and be Buddhist?

Still thinking about your question, I was reading this morning Thich Nhat Hanh's Peaceful Action, Open Heart (Parallax, 2008), in which he talks about what we can learn from the Lotus Sutra, especially its representation of the Buddha in his ultimate dimension (as well as his historical one). At one point, in speaking of "the supernatural power, or spiritual energy, of the Tathagata", he says "We have already seen that the Tathagata cannot be placed in a frame of calculable space and time. The Tathagata is beyond our conception of the bounds of space and time. The Tathagata is not one but many; the Tathagata is not only here at this moment but everywhere at all times, in manifestation bodies as numerous as the sands of the Ganges." (127) This sounds like the sort of thing Theists say about God - his centre everywhere and boundary nowhere, etc.

A little further on TNH says: "Just as when we look deeply into a leaf, a cloud, or any phenomenon, we are able to see its infinite lifespan in the ultimate dimension, and we realize that we are the same." (128) This sounds like the Hindu identification of Atman and all that is (Sarvam) with Brahman and perhaps with panentheism, a popular way of thinking about God in liberal Christianity (not to be confused with pantheism).

So if one accepts Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching, and I'm impressed by it - in writing, that is (I fell asleep in both of his lectures I attended) - it doesn't seem to matter at all if one has and professes a belief in "God". In fact, in one of TNH's videoed lectures at the Friends' Hall in London, a Quaker asks him what he thinks about God and Christ and TNH responds "Everything I've been saying is about God and Christ".

Perhaps TNH is a little unusual, and Mahayana sutras are inclined to engage in flights of fancy (as a teaching device, according to TNH), but it seems a belief in an ultimate empowering force generating consciousness and a sense of moral law, be it the Tathagata, Brahman or God (triune or otherwise), is not incompatible with Buddhism. A further question might be: In what way does a belief in God help?

Edited April 13, 2010 by Xangsamhua

[phetaroi]

Still thinking about your question, I was reading this morning Thich Nhat Hanh's...

...

A further question might be: In what way does a belief in God help?

It's been some time since I read any TNH. I remember being quite impressed with "Living Buddha, Living Christ", and in fact I gave it to a dear friend who is a born again Christian, and it made her take a more open-minded look at Buddhism. I may need to go back and do some more reading on TNH.

Your last question is an interesting one. And i guess the answer is almost a philosophical one...and I do think that over recorded history (and probably before) man has always wanted to learn the answers to the great questions of life -- where did we come from, where do we go, is there a heaven and hel_l, is there a god (or God). It's not appropriate here to say, "Vince believes that...." However, I will say this -- belief in God allows me to be more satisfied or comfortable about "the unknown". How was man created? I don't know. But I know that I don't believe that stromatolites (blue green algae) coincidentally ultimately evolved into your sight and hearing. I think people feel more content when they see a beginning, a middle, and end. And I think that a sense of contentment allows one not to become attached.

[Xangsamhua]

Still thinking about your question, I was reading this morning Thich Nhat Hanh's...

...

A further question might be: In what way does a belief in God help?

It's not appropriate here to say, "Vince believes that...." However, I will say this -- belief in God allows me to be more satisfied or comfortable about "the unknown". How was man created? I don't know. But I know that I don't believe that stromatolites (blue green algae) coincidentally ultimately evolved into your sight and hearing. I think people feel more content when they see a beginning, a middle, and end. And I think that a sense of contentment allows one not to become attached.

Thanks, Phetaroi. That all sounds pretty reasonable, though in an eternal and boundless universe, which seems to be assumed by both atheists and theists (except for William Lane Craig and the medieval Islamic Kalam philosophers), the evolution of stromatolites may well be feasible, if not inevitable.

I don't really follow the God vs Evolution/No God discussions, as all the arguments on both sides seem to end up as reductio ad absurdum, i.e. ending up in a logically absurd position, particularly if actual infinity is assumed, but your position looks to me like Intelligent Design, a position much opposed by hardline evolutionists. Jean-Francois Revel and his son, Matthieu Ricard, in The Monk and the Philosopher (Shocken, 2000) have some good discussion of the limits of the creator god concept as viewed from both the secularist and Buddhist perspectives, but I wonder, if the "intelligent designer" were part of the cosmic package from the "beginning" (even if there isn't one), as in Process Theology, rather than something that created the cosmos out of "nothing", as in traditional Christian/Muslim theism, whether an intelligence behind evolution may be more acceptable to Buddhists who shy away from a fixed and therefore permanent creator.

Edited April 14, 2010 by Xangsamhua

[agent69]

Perhaps it is easier to describe the indescribable as God. How could you convince people to believe in something no one can comprehend. Ask a Buddha, he will refuse to answer the question.

Now we have a better understanding of how old our universe is. but what was it like before that? incomprehensible, it is. God would be a nice packaging for deistic religions. In Buddhism, we deal with practical believes. There would be no way for a person to make any sense while they are still susceptible to distractions.

A Buddha will say the answer is not relevant. Other religions say there is God. Just the different tricks for us to stick to what matters.

God or no God. I guess we all are blind men trying to guess an elephant.

[phetaroi]

...but your position looks to me like Intelligent Design, a position much opposed by hardline evolutionists...

Yes, it is Intelligent Design, and in my own head I began formulating that well before it was very well known. Back at university my first two degrees were in the geosciences, at one point specializing in paleontology. I simply never believed that evolution was all a big coincidence. Stanley Miller's pioneering work back in the 50s (?; I've gotten rusty) would support coincidence, and I do admire his work. But I meant it literally in my last post when I said that I couldn't stromatolites (which some believe was probably close to the very first complex life form...if you want to call blue-green algae complex) could evolve into your eye by coincidence.

Before we get too far away from Buddhism, I want to point out that when I first began discussing Buddhism with various people, including a few monks, the general drift of the answers I got when I asked about god (God) was that it's not so much that we don't believe there may be a god, as we can't prove it or disprove it, therefore we begin our thinking after that point. Now, that may not be the official Buddhist position, but then again if we all have to believe official Buddhist positions or be excommunicated from thinking of ourselves as Buddhist, then we might as well go back to that other church many of us left.

The Dhamma includes many simple stories/analogies. Let me give you mine.

A man selects a place in a field. He throws there wood, nails, glass, bricks, pipes, and so forth. Does he have a house? No, someone still has to build the house.

[phetaroi]

Perhaps it is easier to describe the indescribable as God. How could you convince people to believe in something no one can comprehend. Ask a Buddha, he will refuse to answer the question.

Now we have a better understanding of how old our universe is. but what was it like before that? incomprehensible, it is. God would be a nice packaging for deistic religions. In Buddhism, we deal with practical believes. There would be no way for a person to make any sense while they are still susceptible to distractions.

A Buddha will say the answer is not relevant. Other religions say there is God. Just the different tricks for us to stick to what matters.

God or no God. I guess we all are blind men trying to guess an elephant.

Yes. Very good.

[Xangsamhua]

The Dhamma includes many simple stories/analogies. Let me give you mine.

A man selects a place in a field. He throws there wood, nails, glass, bricks, pipes, and so forth. Does he have a house? No, someone still has to build the house.

This might be of interest.

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari...-8&oe=UTF-8

John Wisdom (1904-1993) was a Cambridge philosopher. Good name for a philosopher!

Antony Flew had a chapter on the parable in New Essays in Philosophical Theology (1955), a wonderful book I read first as an undergraduate in 1965 and have subsequently read twice. Flew, now in his 80s, announced in 2004 that he had become a Deist (not the same as a Theist - Deists believe in a hands-off God).

[MrE]

Why is that any more comedic than the behavior of people and governments in so-called "Christian" countries who proclaim their faith while ignoring the words of Christ, like "turn the other cheek" in Matthew 5:38:45 or caring for those most in need in Matthew 25:41-45. (war, homelessness, racism, violence, poverty). I am an American Buddhist and have read the Old and New Testaments and the Koran. I see the same "convenience" adherence to belief systems in all of thirty countires where I have stayed. None of it is very amusing.

[eggomaniac]

Why is that any more comedic than the behavior of people and governments in so-called "Christian" countries who proclaim their faith while ignoring the words of Christ, like "turn the other cheek" in Matthew 5:38:45 or caring for those most in need in Matthew 25:41-45. (war, homelessness, racism, violence, poverty). I am an American Buddhist and have read the Old and New Testaments and the Koran. I see the same "convenience" adherence to belief systems in all of thirty countires where I have stayed. None of it is very amusing.

never said it was... .............. or hinted it ............ or thought it

same same