Re:Five Mildly Anti-Buddhist Essays
by emptysongglass on Sunday January 08, 2023 @10:50PM
(#34306520)
Human beings will twist anything to be consumed in the furnaces of their desire. This is human frailty. Of every religion twisted to serve the abominable fantasy of our appetites, the framework of Buddhism has produced the least bloodthirsty, the least violent. Who is there to sacrifice to? The altar of the Buddha? There is no Buddha to war in the name of. He's not a god up there in space to consecrate our murders to.
In sheer body count, none rivals that of the Abrahamic religions and, unexpectedly to some, those with no religious or ethical framework at all.
Please don't cross into religious flamewar.
Re:Five Mildly Anti-Buddhist Essays
by emptysongglass on Sunday January 08, 2023 @11:37PM
(#34306799)
Oh come on, dang, this is an overstep. Historical fact is not a religious flame war. We know of the pogroms and other crimes committed in the name of political atheism. We know of the Crusades and Jihads. We know, roughly, of the numbers involved. I am defending what I stated, that is all.
I don't hate Abrahamic religions and I am not espousing hatred. But it starts to look like a false equivalence when people say look Buddhism has been violent too without taking stock of the numbers.
If you start invoking "body count" of religions you're definitely doing religious flamewar. If you prefer, we could say it's perilously close to the edge. The moderation call is the same either way.
Re:Five Mildly Anti-Buddhist Essays
by emptysongglass on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:58AM
(#34307609)
I probably should have just left out the Buddhism is a more peaceful religion part and would have had a stronger argument. Fair enough! Sorry for the inflammatory language.
That is not the impression one gets from looking closely at the history of East Asia: numerous examples of mostly-Buddhist leaders and elites, and even states with Buddhism as a state religion / ideology, engaging in brutal wars of conquest, exploitation of the poor etc. Just like everybody else.
You can argue that this was all "not true Buddhism". But it's not a sustainable argument when this represents the majority of historical societies that self-identified as Buddhist and were acknowledged as such by basically everybody else.