Opinion of Buddhist Modernism
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  Opinion of Buddhist Modernism
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Question: Opinion of Buddhist Modernism
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Horrible Buddhism
 
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Author Topic: Opinion of Buddhist Modernism  (Read 1413 times)
World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« on: May 01, 2015, 03:46:30 PM »

Buddhist Modernism was a movement, and is the legacy of a movement, within traditionally Buddhist societies that has attempted to produce a Buddhism that functions within a modern rationalist discourse by divorcing itself from social, ritual, and in some cases even ethical context and content, presenting Buddhism in entirely or almost entirely metaphysical, and usually also psychological, terms. Although it began life as an attempt to incorporate Western ideas into Buddhism, it's also associated, in Japan, with a type of cultural supremacy based on presenting to the world the notion that Japanese Buddhism can incorporate modern rationalist discourse more easily than Western religions and is therefore superior.
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Mopsus
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« Reply #1 on: May 01, 2015, 04:22:37 PM »

It doesn't sound bad in the abstract, but I'm not familiar enough with its major proponents or with its practical implications to be able to offer an informed vote.
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Clarko95 📚💰📈
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« Reply #2 on: May 01, 2015, 07:49:55 PM »

I don't see too much of a problem with presenting the ideas of Buddhism in metaphysical terms, but to fully understand pretty much any religion, I feel that you'd need the cultural context. Not sure what they mean by withdrawing the ethical context, though?


FB, I guess?
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #3 on: May 01, 2015, 08:29:08 PM »
« Edited: May 02, 2015, 02:05:08 AM by sex-negative feminist prude »

It's not so much that metaphysics were involved as that very little else was. The idea was to provide a form of Buddhism that served a therapeutic function for the individual practitioner and supported rationalist and scientific discourses by situating them in a vaguely spiritual way. In its most extreme forms (there were more conservative types of Buddhist Modernism that only exhibited some of the above-listed features, or didn't exhibit them all to the same degree of salience) the temptation that some people seem to have is to treat it as a form of some sort of analytic philosophy that happened to use religious terms, but I'm not sure that's quite right.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
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« Reply #4 on: May 01, 2015, 09:21:05 PM »

Overall, FB tho like anything, it can be taken too far. Like many belief systems, Buddhism has gotten a lot of cruft attached to it over the centuries. Returning to the core provides a starting point which can then acquire new cruft to adapt it to new cultures. That said, I don't find even a stripped down Buddhism attractive.
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
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« Reply #5 on: May 05, 2015, 07:40:53 AM »

How does secular or atheistic Buddhism relate to Buddhist Modernism?

The level of intolerance towards atheism in the US is appalling, but that is a little
off topic. The point is that Buddhism is primarily an atheistic religion. Anything else
is an add on, which probably would not have been approved of by Buddha himself.

As for the poll, I am undecided at this point in time.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #6 on: May 05, 2015, 12:33:19 PM »
« Edited: May 05, 2015, 12:38:45 PM by sex-negative feminist prude »

How does secular or atheistic Buddhism relate to Buddhist Modernism?

The existence of deities is kind of orthogonal to it. It wasn't really a question that most of the leaders of this movement were very interested in. I don't know what 'secular Buddhism' is but it sounds depressing.

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That's at best a strongly Theravadin view that entirely discounts the Mahayana tradition's insights into what Shakyamuni did and did not teach, and at worst an outright misconception, similar to the misconception that he didn't teach literal transmigration of souls. The sutras present him in conversation and argument with people who did deny the existence of deities and souls. Buddhism elaborates the concept of dependent arising partly as a way to provide a 'scientific' (in the broadest sense of the term) account for things like deities and souls that doesn't involve denying their existence. There is not a single Buddhist tradition of which I am aware that is in fact atheistic. At most they don't purport to address the question.

It needs also to be reminded that the average South or East Asian person's conception of what a 'god' is is, or historically was, not ours.

The idea that 'add-ons' are definitionally undesirable or would inherently not be approved of by the religion's founder is also itself one that I think is a lot less obvious than a lot of popular discourse about religion, especially in societies that pay lip service to the ideals of the Reformation, would have us all believe.
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
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« Reply #7 on: May 05, 2015, 07:39:29 PM »

a more common description of Buddhism is nontheistic; the word implies something broader than atheism.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #8 on: May 05, 2015, 07:44:12 PM »

a more common description of Buddhism is nontheistic; the word implies something broader than atheism.

That's a fairer assessment, but still only really true of a surprisingly small number of Buddhist traditions, mostly within Theravada.
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