First of all in the point of Indian Buddhism I must say that by all evidence there must have either been an extremely bloody conversion, or traditional Hinduism must have been among the weaker faiths of the world religion. When considering evidence like the Ashoka edicts one must parallel it with the conversion of the Christian conversion to Protestantism in the west. In the west, without a war that killed literally killed half of Europe there was no way that any king ever, insults and curtails the power of the priest in any form, let alone openly mocks the basis of the religion, like sacrifice. It seems that by far given the evidence, that Hinduism is an extremely weak faith to put up with that kind of abuse from what is after all simply a mortal king and therefore quite low on the celestial totem pole.
The main point I would like to address in this blog entry is something that has always troubled me about the larger topic of Buddhism and particularly at its Indian roots, when precisely does a philosophy become a religion. When did something which surely started out simply as reformist movement in the wider Hindu faith, evolved into a fully fledged faith on its own merits. And a question I actually consider much more interesting, when does summarily dismissing all the gods in a society, either directly or as irrelevancies stop becoming an organised faith and start becoming philosophy or even atheism. These sort of questions fascinate me endlessly, not the least of reasons being that it is my contention as a student of history that humans have never made a truly atheist society, none but us. First of all if one considers the original religion of the Buddha it is a very different matter than those of even those adapted even by Indian leaders like Ashoka, and bears little if any resemblance to the later versions exported to china. Therefore, I it is perfectly possible that the original Buddhism was in fact atheistic, while the religion it created was not, therefore not creating an atheistic society.
First of all in the discussion of religion versus philosophy, we must of course ask ourselves whether the mere distinction is simply a western idea. It should be noted that by what seems to be a remarkable co-incidence, almost the exact same revolution in traditional polytheistic religious procedures was happening in western Greece although of course it would be foolish to assume a significant ideological correspondence. As to the central philosophical question, it is my basic opinion that a philosophy, is something that must make all forms of the supernatural not part of the process in terms of creating a way of life. The original way of Buddhism therefore can take credit for the fact that it made the gods irrelevant in the wider process of attaining transcendent nothingness as they are simply other larger players of the same game, the fact that they do control the material world is irrelevant because of course the material world is irrelevant. However there is one snag to this theory, reincarnation, although it is the subject of constant and stimulating debate exactly to what extent, in any of Buddhism’s many, many incarnations, one soul has to do with another’s creation, whether it is just one soul lighting another or direct reincarnation, this does not jive with our modern scientific defintion of life. And so we hit the snag in our little theory, for to the people of ancient India, the word supernatural would have surely had almost no meaning, after all it was fact that the world was created by the gods, that life was suffering that the soul was reborn with no less belief than the fact that the sun set. The reason that faith wasn’t the major part of most ancient religions is because there was nothing to test it with, that is why Buddhism as a belief functioned it made rational arguments based on the basic precepts of society. Should these people be penalised or worse categorised simply because they don’t edit out what we might consider the supernatural, and what do we know any more then them anyway? No the short answer is that as far as I can tell there is no way to apply words like philosophy or religion to the belief system like Buddhism simply because there is no real difference.
As for those who call Buddhism atheism, all that they prove is that they have no idea what the word atheism means. Aethism means no god, period. Buddhism fully acknowledged the fact that there were gods, in India it acknowledged Vishnu and Brahma and all the pantheon, and wherever it went it acknowledged those gods too, because the material world still needed to be governed and ruled, there was evidence for these gods existence in the sheer creation of the world, in the fact that, with no human involvement the sun rose and set, and that with proper sacrifice the crops grew well. Buddhism tried to create a world where they didn’t, but to say that that was atheist, would be like saying that someone who believed that modern science was irrelevant in understanding the human heart, is dismissing and disagreeing with each and every scientific discovery ever conceived.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
There are many things that I noticed from the readings about Zoroastrianism. First I will discuss those ascribed to the great king Darius. This was extremely interesting, as I have often heard of the Behistan inscriptions before but never actually read them, also I have read much of Darius and the policies of the Achaemenid dynasty. The first thing I noticed was the stark contrasts between Cyrus the Great and his semi-maybe 5th cousin? Cyrus was famous not only for his mercy towards conquered citizens, but also for his religious tolerance (not hard when one is a polytheist). Darius seems to have done a complete 180 on the policy of his famous ancestor. This inscription portrays a militantly Zoroastrian figure, who portrays the conquest of conquered territories like Armenia with the same tactics as pacifying states that have gone into rebellion, with complete and utter destruction. Of course there is room for artistic license in these words. After all, if I were running a country, I would want to make it as hard as possibly for the people to revolt, but I might think twice before using words like druj (lie) to describe what was probably the vast majority of faiths in my kingdom, and allow others to destroy them.
Also on a partially irrelevant side note, it is interesting to see that on the Behistan inscriptions there is no evidence of contact with the Greeks, which suggests that Darius didn’t think them important enough to talk about. This is not unusual considering the size of Darius’s empire compared with the size of the Greek city states. I find it astonishing, how one people’s history can be so important to them, and to the whole history of western civilisation, and yet unimportant enough not to make it into another's history books.
Now concerning the real topic: the information on the Zoroastrian bible, the Gathas. I found a number of things interesting. First of all this must be the one religion most single-mindedly devoted to ritual I have ever heard of. After the required readings I looked up more on the Gathas on line, and the list is endless for the proper way to butcher cows, drink haoma, and avoid the various kinds of impurity that plague daily. Now the history of Zoroastrianism as an off-shot from early Hinduism has not escaped me, and although I can see certain similarities from my admittedly small understanding of the Hindu faith, the differences seem more prominent. For one thing, like many faiths that happen to be polytheist, Hinduism, it can be argued, is a religion that seems more tolerant of other gods, as a result of the sheer amount of gods they possess. However, it is clear that this faith is militant in all its dealings with all other faiths by the way that Darius says that all followers of the lie must be converted and equates them with generally bad people. Also I see no evidence of the caste system for which the Hindu faith is of course so famous in these writings. It seems from the Gathas that anyone who believes can not only go to heaven, but also take an active part in ceremony. It should be remembered of course that Zoroaster was an example that all people could and should follow. Also oddly enough, I see no evidence of reincarnation in either these stories or in the wider Zoroastrian mythos. If this truly was a rebel element of the Hindu faith, it is absolutely the most comprehensive revolution that I have ever seen, from origins to deity to daily life, the Zoroastrian community gutted everything but the kitchen sink when they separated from polytheism.
Of course one thing that they kept with them was the treatment of women, especially during menstruation. This emphasis on the impurity of menstruation as a contagion seems older than anything, which divides the human race. It can be found in the Bible, as well virtually every religion, and has been a key element in ensuring or justifying that woman have no real say in society. This is unsurprising but it does give you a real sense of their social structure, where even a women’s husband and children cannot go within 3 paces of her, several days a month. About the only that differs here is that there is no sense that a women in and of course herself has any control over who is near her, or even who sleeps with her at any given time. She receives neither condemnation nor punishment, when a man approaches her when she is in menstruation. This can be interpreted one of two ways the first of course is that this is a good thing, perhaps it shows that abuse or whipping of women was not tolerated in the society at large, but there is another way to interpret it, that the women was entirely passive in society and generally irrelevant. After all if someone has no control besides those that society gives one over their own body, one is not a major player in society. This tells us a lot in general about the society this was being written in. For example, in general hunter gatherer societies that we know of have rules that are far less strict for this sort of thing than agrarian. Which I find odd because all contemporary evidence points to the Gathas being written in a semi-settled lifestyle at earliest, of course, like many faiths this might merely be an addition added later.
Also on a partially irrelevant side note, it is interesting to see that on the Behistan inscriptions there is no evidence of contact with the Greeks, which suggests that Darius didn’t think them important enough to talk about. This is not unusual considering the size of Darius’s empire compared with the size of the Greek city states. I find it astonishing, how one people’s history can be so important to them, and to the whole history of western civilisation, and yet unimportant enough not to make it into another's history books.
Now concerning the real topic: the information on the Zoroastrian bible, the Gathas. I found a number of things interesting. First of all this must be the one religion most single-mindedly devoted to ritual I have ever heard of. After the required readings I looked up more on the Gathas on line, and the list is endless for the proper way to butcher cows, drink haoma, and avoid the various kinds of impurity that plague daily. Now the history of Zoroastrianism as an off-shot from early Hinduism has not escaped me, and although I can see certain similarities from my admittedly small understanding of the Hindu faith, the differences seem more prominent. For one thing, like many faiths that happen to be polytheist, Hinduism, it can be argued, is a religion that seems more tolerant of other gods, as a result of the sheer amount of gods they possess. However, it is clear that this faith is militant in all its dealings with all other faiths by the way that Darius says that all followers of the lie must be converted and equates them with generally bad people. Also I see no evidence of the caste system for which the Hindu faith is of course so famous in these writings. It seems from the Gathas that anyone who believes can not only go to heaven, but also take an active part in ceremony. It should be remembered of course that Zoroaster was an example that all people could and should follow. Also oddly enough, I see no evidence of reincarnation in either these stories or in the wider Zoroastrian mythos. If this truly was a rebel element of the Hindu faith, it is absolutely the most comprehensive revolution that I have ever seen, from origins to deity to daily life, the Zoroastrian community gutted everything but the kitchen sink when they separated from polytheism.
Of course one thing that they kept with them was the treatment of women, especially during menstruation. This emphasis on the impurity of menstruation as a contagion seems older than anything, which divides the human race. It can be found in the Bible, as well virtually every religion, and has been a key element in ensuring or justifying that woman have no real say in society. This is unsurprising but it does give you a real sense of their social structure, where even a women’s husband and children cannot go within 3 paces of her, several days a month. About the only that differs here is that there is no sense that a women in and of course herself has any control over who is near her, or even who sleeps with her at any given time. She receives neither condemnation nor punishment, when a man approaches her when she is in menstruation. This can be interpreted one of two ways the first of course is that this is a good thing, perhaps it shows that abuse or whipping of women was not tolerated in the society at large, but there is another way to interpret it, that the women was entirely passive in society and generally irrelevant. After all if someone has no control besides those that society gives one over their own body, one is not a major player in society. This tells us a lot in general about the society this was being written in. For example, in general hunter gatherer societies that we know of have rules that are far less strict for this sort of thing than agrarian. Which I find odd because all contemporary evidence points to the Gathas being written in a semi-settled lifestyle at earliest, of course, like many faiths this might merely be an addition added later.
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