Religious Fog

[ourmanflint]

Suddenly it all seems to make sense, the fog is lifting from mine eyes. I have always had a problem with "so-called" Buddhism in Thailand, because I did not recognise it as Buddhism, but some concieved theatrical peformance of Buddhism, but now I see why.

It's Thai Animism.... that's the veil between me and my version of Buddhism, and the Thai version.. animism it seems is the fabric upon which Buddhism is woven, the spirit houses, the head/foot thing.. all animist not buddhist! In the same way that early Christians integrated earlier druidic beliefs and festivals into the Christian calendar, animism, the primal layer of all religion in Thailand, was integrated into Buddhism when it arrived.

It all sort of makes sense now, it does not diminish it in anyway, in fact I feel more understanding for seeing it.

[robitusson]

Why is Thai Buddhism a theatrical performance? They have helped preserve a lineage going back to the Buddha bringing the teachings to us today. Without it we may not have the privilege of knowing about Buddhism at all. We should be grateful to Thai Budhism surely?

[Sheryl]

With any religion, in any population, there's apt to be a big difference between the original teachings and its popular practice. Human nature and human failings, as well as an inevitable dilution of the original content with the passage of time, probably account for this.

The majority of people do not, unfortunately, approach religon or spirituality in a really serious and committed manner. Some don't pay it any attention at all beyond going through whatever motions social norms require; the majority simply follow what they've heard or seen done without really giving it a critical analysis. In addition, people demand certain things which no true religion provides, and invariably somehow the religion adapts to meet that demand. The corrupt Thai politician making "merit" through a lavish donation to a temple, or the hi-so person having their new Mercedes blessed by a monk, are just manifestations of the desire for a "quick fix" combined with lack of willingness to actually change oneself. The magical amulets worn likewise aren't much different from the dashboard Virgin Marys that were popular in the US a few decades back -- meeting the human desire to feel magically protected and unwillingness to face the unpleasant truths of existence. And then there are intentional religious distortions created for ulterior motives e.g. by politicians.

This is no more true of Thai Buddhism than it is of other religons in other countries. Indeed, if anything I would say that the distortions that have crept into Islam and Christianity (particularly among so called "fundamentalists") represent a far more egregious distortion of the original teachings of those religions than anything that has (thus far -- knock of wood!) occurred in Buddhism.

Anyhow -- never mind! It happens everywhere, but likewise everywhere there are those who take the time and trouble to actually try to understand and practice. Personally, I pay no mind to the conventional folk practices, and when Thai friends ask me why I am Buddhist but don't participate in certain practices, I explain tio them my understanding of the relevant Buddhist teaching. Usually gets a laugh and a "yes, you're right".

[ourmanflint]

Why is Thai Buddhism a theatrical performance? They have helped preserve a lineage going back to the Buddha bringing the teachings to us today. Without it we may not have the privilege of knowing about Buddhism at all. We should be grateful to Thai Budhism surely?

This is just the way I see it... as a performance, I suppose I think that all religions are performances of their original core values, as Sheryl has already said. I am not trying to attack Thai Buddhism per se, but just expressing my happiness in understanding why it is the way it is!

I'm sure Buddhism would still be as well known as it is without Thailands contribution to maintaining one vestige of it. But I'm also sure that Thailand is that much a better place for having kept it.

[BlackJack]

An interesting view of religion by film maker Josh Becker ... written about the time that Gibson's strange movie was to be released:

Religion is Evil

by

Josh Becker

I've just read the second article in two days about Mel Gibson's upcoming, self-financed film about the death of Jesus, "The Passion," and the controversy it's already causing before almost anyone has seen it. I just want to add in my two-cents' worth before I've seen it, either.

In point of fact, I don't give a good Goddamn about Gibson's movie or Mel Gibson, for that matter. I think he's a third-rate director and a second-rate actor who's never had the ability to master his American accent, and sounds like he comes from America's 51st state -- the state of anemia.

As these articles keep pointing out, Mel is part of a religious sect called "Catholic Traditionalists," who didn't even have a church in Los Angeles, so Mel went and built one. These nuts only perform their services in Latin, and have broken from the Roman Catholic Church over the Vatican's 1965 accord wherein they finally exonerated the Jews for the death of Jesus. But Mel's not willing to go there. He and the other Traditionalists obviously still harbor a grudge that the Jews were culpable for the death of Jesus.

Perhaps if the Jews actually ran Israel at the time of Jesus' death they would have been responsible, but of course they didn't. The Romans ran Israel and most of the world at that time and it was their rules everyone was following. Which isn't to say that the Jews themselves might not have executed Jesus for being a rabble-rouser, but they certainly wouldn't have crucified him -- that's a Roman tradition, and the Romans were rather traditionalists in their own way.

You know what? Who gives a flying ######? Hello! This was 2,000 years ago.

But all of this meaningless hoopla just brings up other issues for me. First of all, Jim Caviezel plays Jesus in "The Passion." One more time a gutless mother######er has cast a gentile as a Jew. Doesn't this offend anyone else but me? Jesus was Jewish. He was born a Jew, raised a Jew, and died a Jew, and all in the land of the Jews, Israel. His parents were Jews, all of the apostles were Jews, everyone he knew was Jewish, and if he returned today he wouldn't go to church he'd go to synagogue. The fact that over a billion Christians get down on their knees and pray to a dead Jew has always amused and fascinated me from the time I was a little kid.

But I'm going to take this whole issue one big step farther. Religion, of any denomination, sect or ilk, is the basis of nearly all that's evil on our lovely planet. Religion is not here to make anything better, it's only purpose to divide and separate us. We're the chosen people, you're not. Our God is the real God, yours is false and profane. Although we must show love and compassion for other members of our own religion, those of any other can be killed, tortured, and maimed because they're infidels. Religion, at its very heart, means I'm right and you're wrong, or you're right and I'm wrong, but someone's always got to be wrong.

I say that religion is the pretext for evil on our planet. Religion is the method whereby humans can rationalize their awful behavior to other humans and pawn it off as good deeds.

The basis of all Judeo-Christian religions, which includes Islam, is the old testament bible, which states very clearly "Thou Shalt Not Kill." Although I didn't know it at the time, nor is it even my title, the name of my first film is really much more appropriate: "Thou Shalt Not Kill . . . Except." As George Carlin so aptly put it, except "if you believe in another invisible man than I do." In which case the root and basis of all these religions, the ten commandments, can be happily and easily be tossed out.

Evil does not run around in a red devil suit with horns. Evil runs around as fundamentalists of every kind, Christian, Jew, Muslim or Hindu. I'll leave out the Buddhists and the Quakers because I don't think they have ever bothered anybody. But they certainly aren't joining in with the rest of us, either. Religion is about separation, me and you, them and us, it has nothing to do with living with the rest of humanity in peace. Therefore, religion is the basis of evil.

Catholic priests have been seducing and raping young boys for over a hundred years, but are adamantly against homosexuality. Muslims say they believe in the ten commandments and that Abraham, Isaac, and Moses were all holy men, but all Muslims believe in the jihad and that anyone who is not a Muslim ought to be, and eventually will be, killed. Fundamentalist Christians, who also purport to believe in the ten commandments, really believe that when the apocalypse comes and Jesus returns, all the Jews will either have to convert to Christianity or will be killed, and that's perfectly okay. Of course, Jesus will be in the nearest synagogue praying to Yaweh while this mass murder is going on. And the Jews and Hindus all believe that they are the real chosen people and everyone is just screwed anyway.

This is all moronic, simple-minded, idiotic, pre-civilized, childish thinking. Any name that we knuckleheaded humans can give to this incredible animating power that we call God, be it Jehovah, Jesus, Krishna, Allah, Buddha, or Zoroaster, are all ridiculous bullshit.

As Joseph Campbell, the great historian of mythology, so clearly pointed out, anyone that takes any of these old books of mythology literally has completely missed the point. The bibles old and new, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Book of Zoroaster, and all the rest of the "holy" books are merely collections of mythology. They are metaphors and parables about how to live your life and how to face death. They are highly imperfect users manuals on how to get through this veil of tears we call life. If you actually believe that Jehovah is an old (white) man with a long beard who is watching each and every one of us over six billion humans and judging us, you're an imbecile. If you literally believe that Jesus is Jehovah's son, you've decided to turn off a big portion of your brain and not deal with reality. If you literally believe that if you kill an infidel that Allah will bless you with seventy-two virgins in the land of milk and honey, you've definitely got a screw loose. These are all myths. Period.

Yes, there probably were guys named Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha, but they were humans just like the rest of us. The fact that a lot of other desperate, unquestioning people gathered to them doesn't make them anything other than plain old humans.

Religion is all based on weakness and laziness. It's the throwing in of the towel on the mysteries of life. It's saying, I can't make head or tail out of any of this shit, so I'll just go with what everyone is doing. If they're all getting down on their knees, eating a cookie and believing it's the body of Christ, then I will too. If they're all wrapping themselves in leather thongs, covering their heads with beanies, and rocking back and forth, that's what I'll do. If everybody else is bowing to Mecca six times a day, I guess that's what I must do, too. This is the behavior of lemmings following other lemmings off the edge of the cliff. There is absolutely no difference between praying to Jesus, praying to Jehovah, bowing to Mecca, or lighting incense to Krishna, than there is sieg heiling to Hitler, blindly following Pol Pot into the killing fields, or chopping up Tutsis with machetes. It's all called thoughtless behavior.

It's part of our job as humans to think about and consider our place here on the planet and our position amongst all these other people. The second you abnegate this responsibility, you've fallen into an evil trap. As the writer Harlan Ellison has said, "We're all the same person under different skins," and that's truly a holy thought. All the religions on Earth want to point out is that we are all different, and we of our religion are better than those other unholy blasphemers. That's evil. And that is what all religion at its core is all about. Us and them. We're holy, they're infidels.

A word religions seem to really like, particularly the Jews is "tradition," which is the handing down of beliefs or customs from one generation to the next. This is another form of acceptance without questioning. For several hundred years an American tradition was, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." A good old Australian tradition was "the Abo-hunt," where they tracked down and shot the Aboriginal people for amusement. A good old European tradition was the pogrom, where, if your luck had turned sour, go kill some Jews. The Russians loved this tradition, but the French and Germans thought it was a pretty swell tradition, too. And it's always been a tradition of the Serbs to hate the Croats, the Hutus to hate the Tutsis, whites to hate blacks, Christians to hate Jews, Jews to hate the Palestinians, Hindus to hate the Muslims, and Muslims to hate everybody.

Well, let's just thank God for tradition, sing songs in its praise and dance the Hora.

Karl Marx said that "Religion is the opiate of the masses," and he couldn't have been more correct. Religion is a drug that encourages you to not think for yourself, and, in my very humble opinion, is much worse and far more deadly than heroin, pot, cocaine, and alcohol all put together. None of these other drugs breeds contempt for other people, but all religions do in one way or another. Religion is the insidious evil of our planet, and the sooner people start to wake up to that the sooner we can get on to bigger, more important issues like peace and goodwill toward others.

[suegha]

What a polemic! Is it just me or does anyone else see the irony in the self-righteousness and vindictiveness in the above post?

It proves its own point perfectly well! 'All you morons are wrong for believing what you believe, what I believe is right'. It made me laugh. And not only did the op post his own rant but quoted other self-righteous ranters who all agree with each other. Check this quote...

"If they're all getting down on their knees, eating a cookie and believing it's the body of Christ, then I will too. If they're all wrapping themselves in leather thongs, covering their heads with beanies, and rocking back and forth, that's what I'll do. If everybody else is bowing to Mecca six times a day, I guess that's what I must do, too. This is the behavior of lemmings following other lemmings off the edge of the cliff."

So if they are all having a rant I'll have a rant and tell them all that they are wrong and I am right.

Get real BlackJack!

[suegha]

What a polemic! Is it just me or does anyone else see the irony in the self-righteousness and vindictiveness in the above post?

It proves its own point perfectly well! 'All you morons are wrong for believing what you believe, what I believe is right'. It made me laugh. And not only did BlackJack post his own rant but quoted other self-righteous ranters who all agree with each other. Check this quote...

"If they're all getting down on their knees, eating a cookie and believing it's the body of Christ, then I will too. If they're all wrapping themselves in leather thongs, covering their heads with beanies, and rocking back and forth, that's what I'll do. If everybody else is bowing to Mecca six times a day, I guess that's what I must do, too. This is the behavior of lemmings following other lemmings off the edge of the cliff."

So if they are all having a rant I'll have a rant and tell them all that they are wrong and I am right.

Get real BlackJack!

Sorry, edit op changed to BlackJack.

[chownah]

Is this the Buddhism Forum?...or what?

[Galong]

Why is Thai Buddhism a theatrical performance? They have helped preserve a lineage going back to the Buddha bringing the teachings to us today. Without it we may not have the privilege of knowing about Buddhism at all. We should be grateful to Thai Budhism surely?

My guess as to why the poster thinks it's a 'theatrical performance' is because of the following of rites and rituals that have very little to do with the basic tenets of Buddhism, that being, the abolishment of a personal identity. How can one overcome the desires confronting oneself if caught up in the rites and rituals that promote personal identity?

I find many of the temple practices confusing and a bit odd (not wanting to sound like I'm slamming Thai Buddhism here I hope).

"We should be grateful to Thai Budhism surely?" But what are they teaching? It sometime almost seems like the exact opposite of the doctrine of the Anatman. Sidharta's awakening was to the fact that we don't have a personal identity. Thus, he negated the Hindu 'Atman' doctrine.

[camerata]

An interesting view of religion by film maker Josh Becker ... written about the time that Gibson's strange movie was to be released:

It wasn't interesting for me. Becker is a little-known independent film director (Alien Apocalypse, etc) and yet as a director he thinks Jesus must be played by a Jew. Presumably Hitler must always be played by a German too. Whatever happened to the idea of acting?

Becker conveniently ignores Buddhism since it doesn't fit his theories about religion in general. But then he probably doesn't know anything about the the first trans-national religion in history.

Taken on its own terms (a wake-up call for lapsed and non-practising Christians), Gibson's self-financed Passion was a brilliant success - probably the most successful religious movie of all time and certainly the most authentic. Any independent director would be envious of that.

I just wish someone could do the same for the Buddha and Buddhism. If the upcoming film based on Old Path White Clouds was aimed specifically at a Buddhist audience, it might have a chance. But as "Lawrence of Arabia meets Gladiator" (the producer's words) aimed at mainstream Western audiences, I doubt it will.