Theravada Buddhism

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OP - April 22, 2015, 10:17 AM

pdf of Theravada Buddhism by Richard Gombrich

http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/Theravada%20Buddhism_Gombrich.pdf

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Reply #1 - April 22, 2015, 10:32 AM

"Gods are nothing to do with religion"

https://mobile.twitter.com/iandavidmorris/status/590409583438495744/photo/1

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Reply #2 - April 22, 2015, 02:17 PM

Articles by Gombrich

http://www.ocbs.org/richard-gombrich-library-ocbsmain-148

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Reply #3 - April 22, 2015, 06:15 PM

There are no written sources about Buddha anywhere near the time he lived. Buddhists cannot even agree when Buddha lived. Muslims have sources for Muhammad that are written a little over 100 years after his death, and yet liberal Muslims today will ignore these sources and reinterpret Muhammad to have been a hippie type that preached peace and equality.

So if this is how much believers will reinterpret a message when they actually have comparatively early sources, how far will they go when they do not?

Wouldn't it be ironic if the real Buddha was a tribal leader who fought wars, beheaded people, took slaves and raped children, but all those parts were forgotten about?
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Reply #4 - April 22, 2015, 06:39 PM

I guess the difference is that Buddhists aren’t typically all about going around trying to relive the life of the Buddha – brushing their teeth the way he did, peeing the way he did, styling their facial hair the way he did, enforcing his views on cosmology or evolution, etc. The details of his life almost don’t matter. Those things that have been attributed to him regarding his teachings aren’t seen to be “good” simply because the Buddha did them, but because the philosophy of those teachings actually have some benefit to them in and of themselves.
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Reply #5 - April 22, 2015, 07:16 PM

That is an interesting observation in it's own right HM, not sure how it relates to what I was saying though.
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Reply #6 - April 22, 2015, 07:25 PM

Because it doesn’t really matter if he did those things (though I doubt he did) because no one is trying to emulate his personality as such, at least not in the way many Muslims try to do with Muhammad. The reason why so many Muslims have to make Muhammad into the peace-loving hippie is because they also believe they need to follow his example. With the Buddha, though, he is not seen as a perfect example to be followed. He could have owned slaves and believed that the entire earth was suspended on the beak of a giant cockatoo and it would not take away from the philosophy attributed to him.

And to be fair, there are certainly sources from within the Islamic tradition in which Muhammad behaved pretty nicely. Without getting into the debate about whether or not these things are unique to him, teachings like “spread peace, give out food, and pray at night while people are asleep” are pretty good. So are things like, “make things easy and don’t make them difficult,” or, “a smile in your brother’s face is a form of charity." Etc.
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Reply #7 - April 22, 2015, 08:01 PM

Well I think it does matter if he did those things, because it would make him a hypocrite if he preached about peace whilst fighting an aggressive war. And I agree he probably did not do those specific things I mentioned, but he may have done other things we would judge as unethical that we do not know about.

The point is that seeing as there were no written records for the first few hundred years, or possibly even a thousand years, depending on which stories you believe about when he lived. Each generation has probably reinvented Buddha to better reflect the dominant value system of that generation. This has also been done with Jesus or Muhammad but because the written sources are so much earlier (comparatively) it is harder to stray so far from the original teachings.

With reinventing Buddha's message it was a free for all for so long that we can only speculate on what this mysterious figure might have actually been like.
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Reply #8 - April 22, 2015, 08:38 PM

Quote from: happymurtad on April 22, 2015, 07:25 PM
And to be fair, there are certainly sources from within the Islamic tradition in which Muhammad behaved pretty nicely. Without getting into the debate about whether or not these things are unique to him, teachings like “spread peace, give out food, and pray at night while people are asleep” are pretty good. So are things like, “make things easy and don’t make them difficult,” or, “a smile in your brother’s face is a form of charity." Etc.

To me actions speak louder than words, any dictator can preach about feeding the poor and supporting the common man, and most have. It’s hypocritical for Muhammad to talk about spreading peace and freeing slaves whilst also attacking other communities and taking people away as slaves, or to say “to me my religion, to you yours” and then smashing up their religious symbols.
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Reply #9 - April 22, 2015, 09:15 PM

Buddhism ain't perfect, but so many parts of it are awesome. TBH, I don't care if Buddha lived or not. I'm not going to hate a sensible, beautiful, rational, helpful set of ideas just based on a strawman. I'm definitely a Buddhist in some ways. Not in the 'worship Buddha' way, but in more mindful, less dogmatic ways. It's 1 of the many things I study & practice what I like out of it. I wouldn't call myself "Buddhist" as I have done no initiation rituals and would not join any kind of hierarchical religious institution. As a philosophy though, Buddhism is brilliant.

"Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused."
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Reply #10 - April 22, 2015, 10:02 PM

Who said anything about hating it? I like it a lot, it is my favorite religion. But it does seem too wise and enlightened to have been created by one guy, which makes me skeptical that all these great sayings originated from the Buddha. I expect that 95% of them were added in by other wise men. Does that mean people shouldn't follow its teachings? No. I am just engaging in intellectual speculation for the sake of curiosity. But I do think it would be the height of irony if the real Buddha had been a tyrant.

One of my favorite historical characters was Ashoka the Great, who did a lot of work assisting Buddhist missionaries in spreading the word. In fact i would not be surprised if he and his religious ministers made the whole thing up.
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Reply #11 - April 22, 2015, 10:50 PM

Charles Allen's book on Ashoka is definitely worth reading.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ashoka-Search-Indias-Lost-Emperor/dp/0349122385

Review

http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1286

There's also an In Our Time episode on Ashoka featuring Richard Gombrich.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0511tm1
Quote
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Indian Emperor Ashoka. Active in the 3rd century BC, Ashoka conquered almost all of the landmass covered by modern-day India, creating the largest empire South Asia had ever known. After his campaign of conquest he converted to Buddhism, and spread the religion throughout his domain. His edicts were inscribed on the sides of an extraordinary collection of stone pillars spread far and wide across his empire, many of which survive today. Our knowledge of ancient India and its chronology, and how this aligns with the history of Europe, is largely dependent on this important set of inscriptions, which were deciphered only in the nineteenth century.

So maybe Ashoka was for Buddhism what Constantine was for Christianity and Abd al-Malik for Islam.

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Reply #12 - May 06, 2015, 06:23 PM

William Dalrymple - The Great and Beautiful Lost Kingdoms

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/may/21/great-and-beautiful-lost-kingdoms/

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Reply #13 - May 23, 2015, 11:51 PM

Stephen Jenkins - Of Demon Kings and Protestant Yakṣas

http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/2015/05/21/of-demon-kings-and-protestant-yakṣas/
Quote
Let me begin by saying that this is not a critique, but an effort to contribute to a conversation about issues that have affected me personally as a scholar. In particular, I want to suggest a few approaches that might be straws for the fire in the evolving discourse regarding “Protestant Buddhism” and the general influence of colonialism on Buddhism in Sri Lanka.

My most personal experience in regard to the issues raised by the Religious Studies Project interview with Stephen Berkwitz came while doing research on warfare with Pāli scholars. Again and again, as I directed their attention to jātakas in which the Buddha was a warrior, they would tell me that no such jātaka could exist. Their impression of Buddhist pacifism was so strong that, even though their knowledge of Pāli literature was vastly superior to my own, it had created a blind spot for aspects of their own tradition. It is my impression, [one that might be fruitfully disputed], that that blind spot is a result of the war-weary West’s idealization of Buddhists as the perfect pacifist other.
....
Sometimes it seems that we mix up our own romantic Protestantized image of Buddhism with what we are pointing toward in Sri Lankan culture. There are useful and intelligent reasons to use the descriptor “Protestant” in describing modern changes in Theravāda Buddhism, but any observer expecting to find Rahula’s Buddhism in Sri Lanka is much more likely to be shocked by how un-Protestant, even un-Theravādin, Buddhism in Sri Lanka really is. It is hard to fit Avalokiteśvara, an obsession with yakṣas, the integral worship of “Hindu” deities, and so on into an image of the bare white New England church. On the other hand, the Theravāda Buddhism that became the stock in trade of every Introduction to Buddhism class strikes me as very Protestant indeed.
....

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Reply #14 - June 01, 2015, 09:23 PM

The darker side of Buddhism: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32929855

Radio 4 report on iplayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05wnrkx

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