Is Buddhism a religion? The question that won’t go away. August 29, 2009
Posted by James Shaheen in : General , trackbackDoes it really matter whether Buddhism is a religion or not?
Whatever you might think, the discussion, sometimes heated, sometimes sedate, isn’t going to disappear any time soon. Today Barbara O’Brien over at about.com weighs in, while at the Vancouver Sun Douglas Todd takes on the arguably related discussion about the religion/spirituality split (you know, “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual”). Tricycle has addressed our queasiness about the word “religion” pretty fully, once in an article by Robert Bellah (referenced in Todd’s article) and again in a column by Huston Smith.
But back to my original question: Does it matter whether we call Buddhism a religion? Well, as Barbara O’Brien points out, we’ve got to call it something. But whatever we decide to call it, I don’t expect it to change my practice much.
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I still go with individuals being able to call it what they need to call it for their practice to succeed. What seems strikes me is that most of the practioners in India and Asia probably see this whole debate as ridiculous since every religion has some philosophical base to it and many philosophies have a dogmatic elements to them.
In the long run I think it goes back to why most western converts turn to Buddhism in the first place - a dissatisfaction with the mainstream Judeo-Christian religions (whether for ideological of contemplative reasons). It is a move away from hierachy and dogma which are attached to the term religion. So if you like the concept of Buddhism but want to avoid the things you dislike then you call it a religion.
Which leads back to my original point - If it works for you then great call it whatever you want. But the issue of what to generally call buddhism is silly.
I started my practice as viewing Buddhism as a philosophical supplement to my original orthodox tradition. I began to move slowly away from that original tradition and into Buddhism as more of a primary way of looking at life and eventually into what I would call a religion. For my purposes at least.
For any one else, I would never wish guess.
Cheers,
Jack
My practice over 30 years has always been religious.
A comment I read on a blog once “Every religion has a philosophy but not every philosophy has a religion”.
Douglas Todd’s explication of the term religion as “a “system of faith” that may serve to “bind together” humans with each other, the world and a transcendent reality” points to a broader context.
The issues of faith, human existence and reality are ultimate questions. Buddhism as a religion leaves nothing behind, especially those kinds of basic human experiences that philosophy doesn’t generally encompass like faith, disillusionment, fear, loneliness. And as a religion it encompasses those things that psychology doesn’t address such as ultimate reality, nature of being, etc.
The systematic nature of the Dharma, the inspiration of the first teacher Buddha and the comfort of the relationship within Sangha provides a complete package. Not only is nothing excluded but there is ample room for acceptance of much else such as science, arts, medicine, technology.
I think of it as a great gift. And have chosen to accept it all as fully as my life’s circumstances allow.
I’ve only heard Westerners say, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” and I think it is usually 1st gen Western “seekers” who seek to see Buddhism as not a religion, or to pick and choose, taking from Buddhism aspects that seem to them to be the least like what they think a religion is. Buddhism as a whole and in a global context is a religion if the other “great religions” (with the usual possible exception of Confucianism) are, but Buddhism as followed by many Westerners might not be one, if only because so many of them don’t want it to be. But I, too, don’t think it matters.
The only reason that it might matter is when either spiritualists denigrate other’s personal religious preferences or when religious folks go full on fundamentalist. I don’t care what others choose to call it but listening to long lectures about the “evil” of “religion” including Buddhist religion does get tedious. To be told repeatedly one’s almost-life-long religion is a philosophy or psychological technique can be a little irksome. Ditto with the fundamentalists and those attempts to force feed opinions.
I’d like to weigh in on the “it matters” side. There are philosophies and ideologies that try to answer the basic questions of human life that are not religions. What makes a religion is metaphysics — the claim to some non-empirical truth that answers the unanswerable, such as why we’re here or what the afterlife is like, who God is and what He wants. Because these “truths” depend on believing untestable things, religion demands that we see our rational minds as suspect — not just unreliable, but evil and dangerous (”The fool leaneth unto his own understanding.”) As a result religion is a very useful device for getting people to do things that don’t make any sense, from ingesting the body of God to flying planes into buildings for His glory. Buddhism, if we understand it as seeing and responding to the causes of human suffering, does not require metaphysical beliefs. The Buddha himself told us to test everything and not to believe anything simply because some authority presented it as true. This is what attracts me to Buddhism, and what makes it decidedly not a religion, although it has certainly become the basis of religious beliefs over the past two and a half millenia.
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When I studied Buddhism it was not a religion. When I practiced Buddhism it became a religion.
For many of us, the word “religion” has political overtones, that Buddhism happily does not have.
Well, I’m a Christian and I don’t call it a religion, so I suppose that if you want to call Buddhism religion, you can, but you don’t have to. In the Bible we (Christians) are told what true religion is, and it has nothing to do with politics and the like. It’s sad that this is what we’re known for. If it weren’t for my faith, I’d abandon my religion myself.
You call it what you want. That’s what I say (as an outsider looking in).
for those who categorize Buddhism as a religion, this essay from B Alan Wallace might stretch your perspective http://bit.ly/YjH27
~C
Why does a “religious” person’s perspective require stretching? Why does religion have to prove itself by empirical means? Why do those of us who are content with our religious beliefs and who are not trying to foist them on others irk the “nonbelievers” so much?
There are a lot of presuppositions in Wallace’s essay. If one does not choose to buy into those presuppositions or those of the authors he cites then much of the argument is lost. Early on he states “whether Buddhism can properly be categorized according to modern Western notions of religion” . If one uses other terms of reference regarding religion the hypothesis and any subsequent proofs can be quite different. And so on. Whether one chooses to view Buddhism through the lens of science or if one chooses to view science through the lens of Buddhism it is all an interesting intellectual game. One I enjoy myself.
As a religious person I have no quarrel with science. As my deeming of Buddhism to be religious in nature is due to my own experience and testing of it and having obtained satisfactory results it would be rather difficult to change my view. Such efforts to persuade are always interesting and do tend to make good blog fodder.
I found that when I practice buddhism there is nothing left to believe in and it has manifested into a religion. I bow in deep respect to ALL! I may not chose to call ALL God but I do chose to bow with ALL. I’m not sure of all the definitions I’ve seen as to what constitutes a religion however if the real goal of most religions is to reunite, merge become one with god or the eternal or the universe due to some perceived separation from god, the eternal, All … then how could Buddhism not be a religion. I do not sit to feel good I sit to know reality, unity, harmony as do all religions. I do not have to belive any dictates and have belief in something to practice religion ….
Leaving aside all those contentious religion v. spirituality or religion v. science debates (which are fun, but, let’s face it, abstract, theoretical, and hypothetical), there are a host of reasons why it matters what Buddhism is “classified” as, most of which have to do with the fact that we do not practice Buddhism in a vacuum. We practice it here in the real, everyday world.
To whit: if we stopped classifying Buddhism as a religion we would immediately lose First Amendment protections, our non-profit retreat centers would have to start paying taxes, and Buddhism would suddenly become an institution that could as well-regulated as any other secular organization.
So, uh, yeah, it matters what we call Buddhism.
It matters for one other reason.
It is an insult to hundreds of thousands of monks and nuns who currently dedicate their lives to the dharma. And even more so it is to forget the hundreds of thousands who have given their lives for the Dharma throughout history. In India there have been many persecutions of Buddhists throughout history. As well persecutions have and in some cases currently are underway in China, Tibet, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Mongolia, Korea, Soviet Union, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Japan, America.
That the Buddhist religion has survived concerted efforts to eradicate it speaks strongly about the resilience of the Dharma and it’s adherents and their faith.
To me, a religion implies a relationship with a God or Gods:
* Beliefs
* Metaphysical or Supernatural Reality
* Faith
* Dogma
* Ritual
* Prayer
* Salvation
* Eternal reward
or at least that’s what I learned in Comparative Religion about a half-century ago.
My practice has some of those, but is most definitely lacking in others. And I simply don’t care what you call it. Naming is just more grasping.
[...] a religion? The question that won’t go away. Posted on Monday, August 31, 2009 by Bill Tricycle » Is Buddhism a religion? The question that won’t go away. Does it really matter whether Buddhism is a religion or [...]
Maybe that’s the beauty of it - its up to our experience
Buddhism would certainly seem to meet the conventional definition of a religion, and I would think that every practitioner who takes refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha at a time of need is exercising something equivalent to faith. I therefore question whether those who react to Buddhism being called a religion aren’t just overly rejecting towards other religious belief systems that they don’t like, and somehow holding themselves above what they associate with “organized religion.” To me this seems misguided: Buddhists do not have a monopoly on spiritual experience, nor do I feel that one must be an atheist in order to be a Buddhist… I’m just saying…
When you look at Asia, you clearly see that Buddhism is treated as a religion. Many seek request/favors from the Buddha and Kuan Yin.
When we look back at what Shakyamuni Buddha said, didn’t he say that he only taught the reality of suffering , the path and end of suffering?
I don’t think the historical Buddha set out to start another “ism” but rather to guide us to freedom. It’s been said before that Buddhism is a finger pointing to the moon. Don’t get caught on the finger.
In gassho, Namu Amida Butsu.
I tend to call it a “practice”. In Europe our group just practices and studies suttas, which sometimes involves discussions which sound like philosophy but are actually utterly practically based, so it’s not a philosophy in the sense of “academic” thinking.
However, to my surprise I also find myself being a member of a Vietnamese religious sect, which is not something that I would have wanted since it gets us sucked into religious and political discussions, disagreements and conflicts which I find to be irrelevant to the practice, a distraction from the Dharma, nothing to do with my life and a complete waste of time. However, I find the practice of my friends who are Vietnamese “religious” Buddhists to be really helpful, so I just keep my mouth shut, don’t get involved in the religious and political arguments, and focus on practicing together.
The point an earlier contributor made is enormously valid- you may find the term ‘religion’ icky but if Buddhism is not that, freedom to practice it is not guaranteed under any western democracy that I’m aware of. It could and probably would be harrassed by cruel and unusual taxes, persecuted as a danger to government, attacked as an evil cult, just about anything along those lines that you can think of has already happened somewhere. So I’ll keep Buddhsim as a religion thank you very much, and specifically mine.
BTW: dictionary definition of the word (Random House College Revised version): ‘a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe….”
If Buddhism isn’t that to you then it isn’t your religion, no??
Buddhism may be “set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe….” to some, but the Dharma as taught by the Buddha simply just isn’t. Buddha spoke out against “belief”.
As BlindRob has pointed out, having “Buddhism” defined as a religion can be politically expedient in the West where, for some reason groups labelled as “religions” are given privileges that other diffferently defined groups are not, whether that’s freedom of expression, legal immunity from or even government money. It can also be helpful for groups like the Dalits in India who use “conversion” to “Buddhism as a a religion” as a way of getting out of the Hindu caste system.
On the otehr hand, at the risk of going over very old ground, “religion” can also lead to conflict. Northern Ireland, the Middle East and India/Pakistan are the obvious recent examples but it’s not just the Abrahamic religions and Hinduism with which this happens. When the Dharma is turned into a “Buddhist religion”, the same thing happens.
In Vietnam Thich Nhat Hanh’s non-orthodox Buddhist monastics being targetted. (Most of his Western students actually have no interest in being part of a Vietnamese sect, they just think he’s a great dharma teacher. Some Order of Interbeing members are surprised to find that in the USA they are licensed to perform marriages because they are “religious minsters”, not something that they ever really wanted!)
In Sri Lanka some Theravada teachers took sides in the civil war, and some make hostile remarks about Christians in the country. In Japan the Zen establishment actively supported Japanese aggression in WWII.
It seems to me that as soon as the Dharma gets defined as a religion, it gets sucked into the mess of religious discussions, arguments or even wars. Buddha himself would never get sucked into religious discussions and the Dharma he taught is certainly not a belief system and therefore not a religion in the way that most people understand it.
PS apologies for the typos
NellaLou
You said “Why does religion have to prove itself by empirical means?”
How else could it do so? I don’t know any other way.
Tamanan
Subjective experience.
re:Comment #23
Religion being co-opted by personal or group politics, that is the exercise of power, has far more to do with the greed of the participants than their religious leanings. It is not then the practice of religion that is the problem but the practice of politics.
re: Comment #24
The real question is: Why does religion have to prove itself at all by any means?
[...] earlier post (”Is Buddhism a Religion? The Question that Won’t Go Away“) garnered plenty of comments. And it turns out it’s true that it won’t go away. [...]
“That the Buddhist religion has survived concerted efforts to eradicate it speaks strongly about the resilience of the Dharma and it’s adherents and their faith.”
Well said, NellaLou.
But, you know, this question is only being asked outside of Buddhist Asia. Buddhist Thais, Buddhist Koreans, Buddhist Japanese, etc are most certainly not having debates on whether their religion is a religion!
Perhaps the question to ask is “Is western Buddhism a religion”. LOL
Marcus
A wise person once wrote that a “religion” is an argument extended through time. Sounds like a fit to me.
Most of all, let us be grateful for its presence in our lives and in the world.
The words “Religion” and “Philosophy” are constructs, illusions, sunya, empty… Just more attachment. This whole debate is reminiscent of the Parable of the Poison Arrow, the Buddha’s response would be the same, “I teach suffering and the end of suffering,” to put it another way, “What you chose to call it is irrelevant, just sit your butt on the cushion.”
Religion seems to provide Answers, Spirituality seems to provide Questions. Both seem significant. That’s what it seems like to me!
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[...] is a question that has come up in this space several times in the past year (read about it here and here) and it now gets examined by Gary Gach, writing in Patheos. Gary, the author of The [...]
[...] discussed the debate plenty on this blog with plenty of references and responses to other bloggers (see Barbara O’Brien’s post) [...]
[...] year ago I wrote a post I called, “Is Buddhism a Religion? The Question that won’t go away.” It certainly won’t. Along with “religion vs. spirituality,” it seems to [...]