Fundamentalist Buddhists, Fundamentalist People
 

I found this article ( 2 small pages) and wondered if others might like to comment on the article. I'd also be interested in what your thoughts are regarding the last sentence in the quote below, which states that "Buddhists, as human beings, can be just as fundamentalist as the next religious person."



Fundamentalist Buddhists, Fundamentalist People


by Scott Mitchell

"Fundamentalism" for most folks conjures up images of ultra-conservative Christians on the one hand or Islamic extremists on the other. I'd hazard a guess that most folks don't associate "fundamentalism" and Buddhism. Notable scholar of American religions Thomas Tweed once asked, in the journal Material Religion, "Why are Buddhists so nice?" In that article, he documented portrayals of Buddhists in American media as peaceful, pacifists even, and generally accepting folks who seem immune to group-think and fundamentalist extremism.

That's not true, of course. Buddhists, as human beings, can be just as fundamentalist as the next religious person."


Continued here:


http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Add...st-People.html

I still have not read the article. I will do. But I wish to advance an opinion: When buddhism is taken as a religion there is a big chance to end in fundamentalisms as any religious (and also any kind of "ism") doctrine is about.

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I think Kaarine has the right of it. Dharma practice is one thing, and potentially a very useful thing. However, codifying the whole cultural system into a religious dogma is asking for trouble. None of the other religions escaped that process unscathed; why would Buddhism?

Maybe it is better to say "I practice what Buddha taught" than "being a Buddhist..."

"Isms" are allways dangerous because they can end in golden jails.

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Shure Cobalt

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The writer says:

"Of course, from a certain point of view, none of these thinkers is right. And none of them is wrong because none of these positions or opinions is "provable" in some objective, scientific sense."


What the writer fails to grasp is that there is indeed a "position" that is clearly falsifiable ("provable") to be found here: Both the claim of reincarnation and karma, and the claim of "No-reincarnation and no-karma", are speculative views, irrelevant to the Buddha's liberative teachings.


Further, the writer asks the question, "Without a time machine, how does one "prove" what the Buddha really taught? We are all just making educated guesses. "

That might seem like a valid (albeit self-serving) question and proposal to a Jodo Shinshu-ist, but for one who pays attention to the Buddha's liberative teachings in the Nikayas it is quite clear what the Buddha really taught, and that we are not "making guesses" at all.

His characterizations of "anyone who holds this-or-that to be 'fundamental' to Buddhism" seems rather a crowd of straw men. Also, his characterizations of Batchelor's position are inaccurate.