essays-ccs/buddhism/buddhist_questions.md

Buddhist questions

Why reject our biology? Community, relationships, sex, etc.

Nature and flowers are beautiful, why is there a rejection of relationships, sex, and holding . Historical celibacy and its propaganda use in creating a rich religious organization based on donations (and later feudalism, the tibetan buddhist example), where social reproduction is still done (new converts come in and inherit the wealth), rather than biological reproduction replacing the property-owners.

Over-focus on detachment from what makes us human, and what has dominated our nature for most of our history. Do we ask that birds not sing. Must a bird avoid singing to become enlightened? If the answer is no, then why do buddhist monastic orders ask people to abstain from sex and relationships, holding this up as an admirable example to lay people?

Reread will durants critique of schoepenhauer for this.

Reread the article on misogyny in buddhism.

If we can look on a flower without selfish attachment, then why are relationships shunned?

The focus on idealist, rather than materialist goals.

Isn't the biggest source of suffering on the planet hunger, starvation, the unequal distribution of resources, the fact that 20 men own more wealth than all the women in Africa. Buddhism limits itself to the spiritual realm, yet this is not the primary realm of suffering. Without social and political organization devoted to eliminating this greatest source of suffering, which must first be sati.

The only people with time and comfort enough to engage in meditation, are those who exist outside production, or are rich enough to have the free time to engage in it. The joke is, these people are happy not because they meditate, but because they are in a financially secure enough position to have hours of free time every day to meditate if they wish: not a luxury afforded to the masses of humanity.

Focus on isolated retreat centers, why not in cities?

Ultrasociality . To be the flower in the garbage, requires that one live where people are. 90+% of people in the world live in cities, and must work to

The topics of focus, why concentration and awareness, why not more metta?

McMindfulness, capitalist use of mindfulness. Our life comes from our mind, why don't we think about compassion more? Buddhist insight and concentration is used by samurai warriors, police, and militaries, and now by companies to increase performance to extract more profit from labor.

If there are enlightened beings, why aren't they solving the largest sources of suffering?

Dipa ma for example, even claimed to have many supernatural powers, yet she used none of them to undo the horrors of capitalism or colonialism.

If all these enlightened beings are doing is alleviating spiritual or psychological suffering, then they aren't doing anything remotely as positive as someone doing work to fight poverty. All their thousands of hours spent on the cushion aren't as worthwhile as a single flawed person giving food to the homeless, or organizing against capitalism.

If you replace god with enlightenment, then why is enlightenment causeless, or outside of samsara? IE to the childs query, who created god? can't the same criticism be applied to who created nirvana?

Why is dancing, music, art, rejected?

The buddha made rules for monks to not engage in these things, making a negative value judgement on art, creativity and the diversity and beauty of human experience.

https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/10172/what-did-the-buddha-say-about-music

would an enlightened bird still sing?

Why

Defense of feudalism, and not challenging the power of kings, who keep most people subjugated.

Misogyny:

• https://sujato.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/sexism-andocentrism-misogyny/
• https://qz.com/india/586192/theres-a-misogynist-aspect-of-buddhism-that-nobody-talks-about
• https://tricycle.org/article/putting-end-buddhist-patriarchy/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Buddhism

https://tricycle.org/magazine/buddhist-renunciation/

Buddhism and violence / bullying

Whenever the buddha encountered bullies or violence (devadatta, ashoka, the serial killer who became a monk), its resolved via psychological tricks, never real-world solutions, because violence is required to fight back againstt bullies.

Bullies inflict much suffering on the world, and no amount of compassion will entice them to give up their power, or reduce the suffering they inflict on their subjects. (link pacifism article).

sri lanka is the only buddhist country which seems to have accepted anti-imperialist politics, with buddhist groups working with communists striving to free themselves from imperialism.

Why don't buddhist leaders speak out against things like US imperialism? The wars on korea, vietnam, war on iraq, war on palestine, have not evinced any public condemnation from the majority of buddhist organizations or leaders. What could be more immoral, than staying neutral, during some of the most horrific acts of the last hundred years?

Pragmatism in order to not "rock the boat" is an insufficient answer to atrocities, especially for orgs grounding themselves on moral conduct. It is extremely immoral to not oppose these things, especially as communists and anti-imperialists show themselves willing to do so by risking their lives.

In Loving kindness it plain english, gunaratana tells a story about how the buddha did nothing to prevent a neighboring farmer from slaughtering pigs for 50 years. Nor did he ask king kosala, a powerful supporter, for help to stop this. Nor did he ever ask a king to abstain from wars out of compassion for the beings killed. Instead, gunaratana says that even these killers need our loving friendliness, and only do personal wishes / self-practice.

Metta is an individual practice that others cannot be forced to participate in. We may not have any power to stop them from killing living beings, but we ourselves should neither kill nor intentionally support the killing of living beings.

Yet this contrasts directly with the story of the buddha intervening to prevent angulimala from killing more living beings. Why is there an inconsistency? Should we intervene it the world to stop killing, or not? Weapons, arms, lying, intelligence services are all needed to stop these atrocities. Look at the examples in latin america, operation condor, where right-wing governments massacred thousands of innocent people.

Buddhism and inequality

He never challenged the kings to give up power.

In fact he helped king ajatasatu conquer the lichavee people, by advising him that the ppl could not be conquered while they were unified, so based on this advice, the king's ministers hatched a plan to disunify, and conquer them, and the rest of the confederacy. This story is told as a warning against gossip and unwise words, yet ironically the buddha's words proved here to be the unwisest, naively aiding a warlord and indirectly causing death and destruction.

In another story, prince ajatasatu, lead by devadatta, attempts to kill his father, and the buddha. After being caught, the king gives his kingdom to his attempted killer, who then empowers devadatta with assassins to kill the buddha. The buddha then disarms them only with his presence, 16 soldiers in a row (utterly unthinkable).

Then the devadatta tries to murder the buddha, nearly successful.

He stops a man-killing elephant through loving kindness. Real weapons wielded by imperialists have no conscience to be receptive to such.

Only monks can achieve enlightenment?

In several places, the buddha says that lay people can become enlightened. In others, only celibate monks. In others, only the celibate.

Which doctrine and its practice has alleviated more suffering in the world... Marxism or Buddhism

The buddha tells us that we should examine a doctrine, first and foremost, by the results of its practice, the fruits brought about.

Whether poverty alleviation, saving the world from fascism, educating and feeding the poor, raising the material well-being of hundreds of millions, it is marxism, not buddhism, that has acheived these goals. Buddhism did not save the world from fascism. Buddhism did not uplift people out of poverty in the modern era. Buddhism did not end colonialism in vietnam, prc, ussr, cuba.

Buddhism and poverty

The buddha, and many of the earliest arahants, were sons from wealthy families. They took off their luxuries clothes and adorned themselves in the clothes of povetry, and took vows of non-ownership.

But did they do anything to challenge those conditions of poverty, the feudal lords of their own families? The toiling peasants, who created surplus value for the landlords, and suffered greatly thereby, are absent from buddhist scriptures. None of these monks organized peasants to empower their own class.

We have many examples of peasant rebellions and leaders who organized them throughout history. The Buddha nor any of his followers rank among them, and in many modern cases, such as in tibet, the monks served as reactionary supports to feudalism, including medieval torture.

The buddha asks the lords (and everyone) to give and be generous, but does not force them, nor take account of their class position which allows them alone to be generous in the first place.

What good is the buddhas message or its practice, if it doesn't challenge poverty, hunger, and war, which are the most obvious forms of suffering througout human history?

What is the primary contradiction in the world today? World Poverty, inequality and specifically, the division of the world into rich and poor nations. Some people born on one plot of land have to work all the days of their lives, while other people get to live in idleness and ease.

It is not, as the buddha says, spiritual poverty, or the five hindrances, but real, material, physical hunger, homelessness, lack of health care, lack of comfort, etc.

The buddha did not challenge this in any fundamental way. Feudalism is not a system that can provide for all: its a rigidly confined system where each person has no mobility, and where the majority of the population are poor peasants, and where the.

The buddha provided an escape through the sangha, but never challenged kings to share power. He suggested that they do, but never pushed.

Perhaps he is right that craving is the root of all suffering, but how does nirvana help a starving person? How can a slave, or a worker with no free time practice the noble eightfold path? These are doctrines to cure ones own ills, but the majority of society's ills are inflicted by a tiny number of rapacious capitalists.

If 99% of the population attempted to practice the noble eightfold path, it wouldn't alleviate their poverty.

Practicing the noble eightfold path will not uplift anyone out of poverty. It will not end colonialism. It will not end war. Only challenging bullies, taking posession of production, can do that.

No friends / loved ones

The buddha talks to vesaka, and tells her that holy ones have no loved ones in the world. This was after she was attending her grandchild's funeral.

In another story he talks about how dear ones bring only pain and suffering in their wake.

Compare 4 noble truths, with the marxist noble truths.

1. Suffering, yes.
2. cause of suffering. Not selfish craving, but the selfish craving of a tiny minority of exploiters, and also those who help them get away with it (which includes religious leaders who advocate against violence, and class struggle). Who dares accuse someone working 10 hours a day, exploited by capitalists, no health care, no security, that the cause of their suffering is their own selfish craving? That the suffering of hunger is just their own selfish craving?
3. nibbana? how about instead comfort, security, stability, health care, free time, friendship, comaradery, fun times.
4. The path - proletarian revolution, which takes decades. Learning the history of class struggle. Ppl working 10 hours a day don't have time to meditate, and practice the precepts.

capitalism / surplus value extraction is the greatest theft of all, stealing time, and lifetimes away. Theft is depriving another of a resource, the use of a resource.