2.9 KiB
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.
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 es worthwhile as a single flawed person giving food to the homeless, or organizing against capitalism.