Random Buddhist Rant
Sep. 21st, 2006 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusSometimes as a Tibetan Buddhist I heartily sick of the anti-religious attitudes I encounter in the gay, slash, and feminist community. (It's particularly bad when I'm talking to someone who's all three.)
You know, I realize that the religious Christian right has taken over this country -- okay, been callously used by cynical politicians -- who've attacked things I believe in, like gay marriage, separation of church and state (hello? the point is to allow a pluralism of religion, a Muslim shouldn't be forced to read a Christian prayer in school). But I'm looking at it from another perspective here.
The freedom to practice your religion as you see fit is fragile. So when I see that snide dismissive arrogance towards religion, I don't think of Jerry Falwell. I think of Tibet.
My monastery is still in the process of being rebuilt from when it was leveled. You see, Communist China used artillery against the monastery, and the several thousand monks inside at the time. I have friends who had to leave other friends who were wounded and dying, because they couldn't get to them over the machine-gun fire.
Why was China shelling a monastery and gunning monks down with machine guns? Because religion is "the opium of the people," according to them.
My Tibetan friends who grew up under Chinese rule... one can barely walk because he was a monk and sentenced -- for that alone -- to spend most of his life in a work camp. He was tortured repeatedly and Communist China's soldiers broke the bones in his feet so many times they didn't set right. Another was taken from his family as a kid and raised at a Communist boarding school in an effort to stamp out Tibetan culture -- mostly his religion. (He's only found one uncle since then, and they don't know what happened to the rest of his family.)
It hasn't stopped. It's been forty years and it's still going on. It's perpetual and subtle, the attempt to erase Buddhism from both Tibet and China's history. Communist China is revising its history to emphasize the secular Confucianism and ignore that it was ever Buddhist (or Taoist for that matter).
The effort of Communist China to erase religion extends far outside China and Tibet.
It's invaded academia. I just took a class on Ancient Asian Civilizations with a professor who studied for years in China, whose husband is Chinese. She skipped Buddhism entirely. She gerrymandered the course content so that Ancient China ended just before Buddhism began in that country (100 C.E.), Ancient Korean studies started after the reassertion of Confucianism (1600 C.E., no shit), we studied Japan through secular literature, ignoring Buddhist references, then studied only Hinduism in India. As if Buddhism never existed in the region.
A Korean scholar told me this was typical of people trained in Communist China, that there is a massive amount of historical revisionism pouring out of China right now.
Meanwhile, colleges with Tibetan Buddhist programs have moved to an ecumenical approach. Those accepting Chinese grants have moved the Tibetan programs under their China studies and pretty much squelched them. Columbia's program is now under Chinese studies, which only makes sense for post-1959 Tibet.
The Library of Congress has been pressured by China. I worked with the U.S. Library of Congress, and Communist China kept pushing us to include the Tibetan archive under the Chinese section, despite the fact that the languages you have to master to read that stuff are Sanskrit and Tibetan, not Chinese. Tibet is linguistically and culturally part of the India/Nepal/Bhutan region.
Last I heard, the librarians stood up against this, but they told me it was only a matter of time.
The monasticism is being erased from American Buddhism. The positive side of Tibetan Buddhism is its popularity worldwide, but the drawback is that this came out of the 60s and the beat poets. Not to say that having Kerouac write Dharma Bums and Ginsberg die with a Tibetan Lama at his side isn't too-cool-for-school. Not that having women across the U.S. become Buddhist (and join New Age religions) largely due to the feminist movement isn't a-okay with me, because, hey, rare to have a religion dominated by women, right?
But the staggering amount of Tantric bullshit is… staggering. Ladies, "I want you to be my tantric consort" is a pick-up line, not a religious message. You want to practice tantra? Wonderful! It begins with 100,000 prostrations, and you have at least ten years of other spiritual disciplines ahead of you, no kidding. There's a reason why people who've done Indian sweat lodges, advanced yoga, and kung-fu are the ones who seem to stick it out in tantra.
And guess what? Buddhism doesn't believe in killing anything, so while you put away the bug-zapper, toss out the pro-abortion literature, too. Don't worry, you won't be required to bomb any abortion clinics. We don't do that either. But keep the birth control for Pete's sake. As the Dalai Lama put it, "we only believe in non-violent forms of birth control."
To the woman who told me (as a former Buddhist nun) that "monastic vows are abusive to women" because of all the feminist "goddess" crap she learned, rethink your logic: you just defined your purpose and worth as a human being by the use of your sexual organs. That sounds pretty sexist to me. Believe what you want, but don't call it Buddhist.
All the American Buddhists who take tantric initiation and then run away when the genyen lay ordination vows are offered: You need them. They're not that hard, it's just no killing, no lying, no stealing, no adultery, and no getting completely plastered (you can drink a little). If you're a soldier you can take just the no lying, no stealing, etc., and take the no killing vow when you can keep it. Without such simple discipline, how can possibly hope to accomplish anything? Is the tantric stuff just for show, just because it's cool?
I could say more. But this is what I think of when I read that quasi-tantric goddess-based "sex on an altar" story *eyeroll*, or the rant against "religion!" as if all religion were embodied in George Bush and his shoe-phone conversations with God. /exasperation
I told you this was a rant.
You know, I realize that the religious Christian right has taken over this country -- okay, been callously used by cynical politicians -- who've attacked things I believe in, like gay marriage, separation of church and state (hello? the point is to allow a pluralism of religion, a Muslim shouldn't be forced to read a Christian prayer in school). But I'm looking at it from another perspective here.
The freedom to practice your religion as you see fit is fragile. So when I see that snide dismissive arrogance towards religion, I don't think of Jerry Falwell. I think of Tibet.
My monastery is still in the process of being rebuilt from when it was leveled. You see, Communist China used artillery against the monastery, and the several thousand monks inside at the time. I have friends who had to leave other friends who were wounded and dying, because they couldn't get to them over the machine-gun fire.
Why was China shelling a monastery and gunning monks down with machine guns? Because religion is "the opium of the people," according to them.
My Tibetan friends who grew up under Chinese rule... one can barely walk because he was a monk and sentenced -- for that alone -- to spend most of his life in a work camp. He was tortured repeatedly and Communist China's soldiers broke the bones in his feet so many times they didn't set right. Another was taken from his family as a kid and raised at a Communist boarding school in an effort to stamp out Tibetan culture -- mostly his religion. (He's only found one uncle since then, and they don't know what happened to the rest of his family.)
It hasn't stopped. It's been forty years and it's still going on. It's perpetual and subtle, the attempt to erase Buddhism from both Tibet and China's history. Communist China is revising its history to emphasize the secular Confucianism and ignore that it was ever Buddhist (or Taoist for that matter).
The effort of Communist China to erase religion extends far outside China and Tibet.
It's invaded academia. I just took a class on Ancient Asian Civilizations with a professor who studied for years in China, whose husband is Chinese. She skipped Buddhism entirely. She gerrymandered the course content so that Ancient China ended just before Buddhism began in that country (100 C.E.), Ancient Korean studies started after the reassertion of Confucianism (1600 C.E., no shit), we studied Japan through secular literature, ignoring Buddhist references, then studied only Hinduism in India. As if Buddhism never existed in the region.
A Korean scholar told me this was typical of people trained in Communist China, that there is a massive amount of historical revisionism pouring out of China right now.
Meanwhile, colleges with Tibetan Buddhist programs have moved to an ecumenical approach. Those accepting Chinese grants have moved the Tibetan programs under their China studies and pretty much squelched them. Columbia's program is now under Chinese studies, which only makes sense for post-1959 Tibet.
The Library of Congress has been pressured by China. I worked with the U.S. Library of Congress, and Communist China kept pushing us to include the Tibetan archive under the Chinese section, despite the fact that the languages you have to master to read that stuff are Sanskrit and Tibetan, not Chinese. Tibet is linguistically and culturally part of the India/Nepal/Bhutan region.
Last I heard, the librarians stood up against this, but they told me it was only a matter of time.
The monasticism is being erased from American Buddhism. The positive side of Tibetan Buddhism is its popularity worldwide, but the drawback is that this came out of the 60s and the beat poets. Not to say that having Kerouac write Dharma Bums and Ginsberg die with a Tibetan Lama at his side isn't too-cool-for-school. Not that having women across the U.S. become Buddhist (and join New Age religions) largely due to the feminist movement isn't a-okay with me, because, hey, rare to have a religion dominated by women, right?
But the staggering amount of Tantric bullshit is… staggering. Ladies, "I want you to be my tantric consort" is a pick-up line, not a religious message. You want to practice tantra? Wonderful! It begins with 100,000 prostrations, and you have at least ten years of other spiritual disciplines ahead of you, no kidding. There's a reason why people who've done Indian sweat lodges, advanced yoga, and kung-fu are the ones who seem to stick it out in tantra.
And guess what? Buddhism doesn't believe in killing anything, so while you put away the bug-zapper, toss out the pro-abortion literature, too. Don't worry, you won't be required to bomb any abortion clinics. We don't do that either. But keep the birth control for Pete's sake. As the Dalai Lama put it, "we only believe in non-violent forms of birth control."
To the woman who told me (as a former Buddhist nun) that "monastic vows are abusive to women" because of all the feminist "goddess" crap she learned, rethink your logic: you just defined your purpose and worth as a human being by the use of your sexual organs. That sounds pretty sexist to me. Believe what you want, but don't call it Buddhist.
All the American Buddhists who take tantric initiation and then run away when the genyen lay ordination vows are offered: You need them. They're not that hard, it's just no killing, no lying, no stealing, no adultery, and no getting completely plastered (you can drink a little). If you're a soldier you can take just the no lying, no stealing, etc., and take the no killing vow when you can keep it. Without such simple discipline, how can possibly hope to accomplish anything? Is the tantric stuff just for show, just because it's cool?
I could say more. But this is what I think of when I read that quasi-tantric goddess-based "sex on an altar" story *eyeroll*, or the rant against "religion!" as if all religion were embodied in George Bush and his shoe-phone conversations with God. /exasperation
I told you this was a rant.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 09:01 pm (UTC)I did religious studies in school, over two semesters. First was Western (Zoroastrianism, Jewdaism, Christianity and Islam), Second semester was Eastern faiths.
We covered hinduism, buddhism, confcious (sp?), shinto, some First Nations faiths. We covered most of them in depth, with at least one required reading or more.
I find it so sad that China's completely erasing a country, faith and history because of their stupid government.
The more and more people go on about religion, especially in the US, the more and more I get sick of them twisting it to suit their personal and political purpose.
Faith can be part of your life, and rule your life in certain faiths, but don't mangle it so that it fits you, and you don't fit it.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 09:03 pm (UTC)Icarus
no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 09:04 pm (UTC)Icarus
no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 10:24 pm (UTC)As a Roman Catholic, I get heartily sick of the same things. Some people just want to paint religion as an all-oppressive force so they can have something to fight against so they'll feel like they're doing something good.
I think the one that annoys me the most is when people in the gay community hate religion. (Probably because this is the one I encounter the most.) Oscar Wilde ended his life as a Catholic convert. Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo did religious art. Millons of gay people throughout history have belonged to one religion or another. And a lot of them have liked it. Pretty much the only non-eastern religion it's "okay" to be if you're gay is Jewish, because no one's going to say anything bad against the Jews. (Not saying they should.)
And guess what? Buddhism doesn't believe in killing anything, so while you put away the bug-zapper, toss out the pro-abortion literature, too. Don't worry, you won't be required to bomb any abortion clinics. We don't do that either. But keep the birth control for Pete's sake. As the Dalai Lama put it, "we only believe in non-violent forms of birth control."
I didn't know Buddhists didn't approve of abortion. (Then again, I hardly know anything about Buddhism.) It's always "those evil Catholics who don't believe in 'choice'", never the same thing with Buddhists in place of Catholics. Catholicism and evangelical Christianity seem to be the two religions it's always okay to insult.
You know, I think I'm going to write a rant now...
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 01:30 am (UTC)I will get back to you though. And as a queer religious (very) Jew, I have to say that it may be okay with the queers if I'm Jewish, but the Jews? they don't like me so much.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 01:31 am (UTC)I'll try to get back to you later, but as a queer religious (very) Jew, I have to say that it may be okay with the queers if I'm Jewish, but the Jews? they don't like me so much.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 02:12 am (UTC)If you're a western Buddhist (American, Canadian, European) the beatnik roots of Buddhism makes for a very liberal view. I know a lot of western Buddhist nuns who were lesbian (now they're what a gay monk friend of mine jokingly calls "no-mo sexual"). That is one good side of American Buddhism. There's nothing in Buddhism that has an opinion about your orientation, although homosexuality gets covered in the monastic celebacy vow (under the list of "not with a woman, not with a man, not an animal, not with a doorknob..." I made up the doorknob part, but those vows were thorough).
The traditional Asian societies -- including the Tibetans -- think homosexuality is weird. They seem to have the idea that westerners invented it, too. *laughs*
Icarus
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 02:18 am (UTC)The more and more people go on about religion, especially in the US, the more and more I get sick of them twisting it to suit their personal and political purpose.
That's the word for it. Twisted, or perhaps mangled.
I find it so sad that China's completely erasing a country, faith and history because of their stupid government.
*sigh* The Chinese are picking the new religious leaders of Buddhism and raising them to be "good communists." The Dalai Lama has said that he might be the last Dalai Lama (he's the 14th) probably partially because he doesn't want his successor to be under China's thumb.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 02:24 am (UTC)At the Orthodox church we pray often for the new martyrs in China and Russia. It's a little odd - when I was younger, I thought of communism broadly as a better option - in a sort of utilitarian way. China and Russia were hellish places for the majority of their populations when the revolutions began. But the older I get, the more I think that once you sacrifice a few, you undermine the total. Omelas will not survive.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 02:27 am (UTC)sorry, sometimes i let me admiration for you get out of hand...lemme know when it gets to be too much. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 03:08 am (UTC)I grew up vaguely Christian, but my family wasn't one that talked about it much. My parents never really mentioned God in everyday speech, so now when I see faith discussed publicly, I have a slightly negative gut reaction. But when I think about it, I really don't agree that it should be that way. I don't think that freedom of religion should mean that people have to keep it locked up inside for private times. Religion has so much to offer, and it's not right that people look down on it or feel that they have to keep it hidden.
On the other hand, it can be a touchy subject, and sometimes overwhelming majorities can, well, overwhelm.
I'm a pantheist who doesn't know if I'll ever decide to join an organized religion or not, but that doesn't mean I don't find them really interesting. I haven't considered myself Christian for a long time, because I feel like . . . if it's something I'm going to be, I don't think I can be half-assed about it. I know a lot of people are, and hey, if that works, go them, but I couldn't.
A lot of the New Age stuff looks cool, but at the same time I get the impression that it lacks depth. There's a lot of "ooh, shiny!" and I like shiny things as much as the next person, but I want more out of a religion than a playground, too.
So I feel like religion should be a huge serious commitment, but at the same time I don't know if I can do that. It scares me a little. Plus I'm old enough to have worked out some spiritual ideas of my own, and I'd find it really difficult to give those up.
And now that I've rambled waayy too much . . .
Oh! I really liked the Out of Bounds chapter, too. Somehow the idea of John cooking for Rodney is making me grin.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 06:25 am (UTC)Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, yes. And it's not just Tantric or Buddhism, or religion or politics. People have a tendency to take on things out of "coolness" but just the bits that they like. If it's something they don't care for (i.e. Thou shalt not commit adultry, voting the party line, etc) they just skip that part. It's human nature, I believe.
As an atheist, I find myself with a negative attitude about religion most of the time. I try very hard not to. You and my sister constantly remind me that I can't stereotype. You both live your beliefs as truely as possible. I will find myself ranting about closeminded, biggotted Christians (and Pagans) and then my sister will do something so kind and thoughtful that it will jar me back to reality. You and I can have a disagreement on a subject and still like each other. You don't judge me and I don't lie to you about what I think. While you are at it, you make me examine my beliefs. Sometimes I change them, sometimes I don't. But, that's okay with you.
Everyone, including myself, wants to be special and right. And, they want it to be easy to be right. They forget that they still have to deal with everyone else.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 10:53 am (UTC)Word. I have my own beliefs and it pisses me off when a few friends go LOL I'M ATHEIST CUZ RELIGION IS LIKE DUMB.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 01:19 pm (UTC)Apart from being terribly jealous of your courses (we only get offered Asian history from after 1940, which pisses me off because hello it did exist before then!), I think we are in agreement on China's policies. It really is terrifying what, in the way of history, is coming out of there at the moment. I did a lot of Chinese studies in my political science major and it was very disturbing to see the gap between what academia is being presented with and what is actually happening.
As for religion? I am an atheist, but half the time others who say the same distress me more than anything else. Possibly because they treat their lack of belief as an evangelical crusade, much like Communist China. What they are trying to enforce is as much a system of belief as any organised religion, just much more dangerous because it is masquerading as objectivity and the 'truth' without any concern for reality. Personally I find belief systems fascinating (uh... that would be why I study religious history and am jealous of your courses) and revealing, even if I do not participate. Certainly, I have the greatest respect for those who are truly devout in whatever their respective religion of choice is, if very little for those who aren't.
Hmm. *goes off to think*
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 07:34 pm (UTC)So people with one bad experience with one religion (through parents, pastors, what-have-you) project that experience onto the cotton balls -- in this case all religion everywhere.
Likewise, Tibetans have to struggle to differentiate between Chinese people and the oppressive communist government.
I didn't know Buddhists didn't approve of abortion. (Then again, I hardly know anything about Buddhism.)
Join the club. The large number of Buddhists out there are clueless. It's paritally because a lot of Buddhist teachers are only interested in teaching monks. The eastern tradition is that the lay people get a superficial line, it doesn't matter if they get it wrong so long as they give donations to the monks who are the actual practitioners of Buddhism.
Icarus
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 08:48 pm (UTC)BTW, Icarus, I followed a link here from one of your stories. Is friending you ok? Don't bother adding me back. I use my lj account as a reading list. I comment but I don't post.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 09:00 pm (UTC)*nods* I think this is one of the downsides of the postmodernist movement & the effect it's had upon the way that many people think and live.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 09:02 pm (UTC)Icarus
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 09:30 pm (UTC)I think I may have a few comma issues there but I got a bit carried away...
no subject
Date: 2006-09-22 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 02:06 pm (UTC)I was brought up in the Church of England where I saw enough of the parishioner's behaviour to be very cynical. Most seemed to oscillate between religion for the sake of tradition, religion for the sake of a moral high ground to bludgeon from and those who actually had a deep seated conviction. It fascinates me though, across boundaries and different systems, and makes me want to poke at people to reveal their secrets.
Bah. I'd not know correct comma useage if it leapt up and bit me.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 11:25 pm (UTC)