Ecology vs. Buddhism: Seeing Politics in 10,000 Years of Context.
04 November 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
hey what's up some of you may not know I
was a scholar of Buddhism for more than 10 years studied ancient canonical language blah blah blah spent time in Buddhist temples with Buddhist monks traveled by lectured I delivered lectures myself at universities and I visited and studied both in a totally religious context but also in these kind of semi-religious semi secular university context but the vast majority of what I learned I learned on my own let me tell you because the vast majority of what gets thought both institutions is dishonest and as you might already guess from the candor of that statement I made within the last 60 seconds i am not a true believing Buddhist I never believed in supernatural elements of Buddhism I never believed in hell or heaven I never believed that a meditation can have supernatural effects or magical outcomes for you but also today I identify as an ex Buddhist I do not consider myself a Buddhist at all so I do not believe in the religion I do not believe in the future of the religion however there are still people who come to this channel because they've read some of my work from the past my past research on Buddhism there's still people come to this channel hoping I'm going to record more videos talking about Buddhism as a philosophy as a religion may be in connection to politics or some of this understandable I was one of the few kind of sober voices is sober the word I want to use expressing concerns but a lot of what was going on in contemporary Buddhism in the past and it's doubtful i'm going to play that role again but it's so cool that there are people who are serious but us who respect what i have to say and you send me questions asking my opinion etcetera now these days are mostly known for talking about veganism so in this video I'm going to talk a little bit about the prospects of Buddhism in the future and naturally people watching this channel will be interested about Buddhism in connection to animal rights ecology veganism but I guess just you know Buddhism in terms of real-world practicable ethics what are the prospects I made a comment on someone else's video lately another vegan made a video which is not very well-informed he hadn't done any research on Buddhism he didn't know either historical or contemporary what the real ethical factors were but another vegan made a video complaining about the Buddhist practice of buying animals so for instance a caged bird or buying lobsters and then setting them free in ceremonies to generate good karma and all the absurdities to go into this including the fact that often they end up killing the animals but anyway um and you know observe this was for people who are eating meat every day to be buying caged birds and setting them free etc there all these obvious contradictions in it but I gave him a reply and I said look I used to be a scholar Buddhism blah blah blah I very briefly said both good and bad about what's going on but it's and one of the good things I said I said look you know unlike other religions Buddhism is susceptible to change it is susceptible to improvement to say that Buddha's of has changed a lot in the last 50 years would be a great understatement and to say it's changed a lot in the last 100 years would be an even more of an understatement Buddhism has been rapidly changing in many different directions so almost any problem you can point to within Buddhism for instance the status of women or the status of eating meat or any of these issues you can also point to you know counter currents and debates within Buddhism that have challenged the status quo when you can point to examples of Buddhist traditions that have taken radically different contradictory paths in response to those questions should women be equal should people eat meat any possible a practical ethical question you're going to get that kind of diversity and debate on going especially in the period right after World War Two something I've made many videos about and let's face it if you were living anywhere in the continent of Asia after World War 2 the spectacle of the atom bomb on the one hand and the spectacle of the rise of communism for example in China these were major inspirations for the religion to re-evaluate its past present and future so that was a period of especially rapid change and I do not think you can find a similar period of change in the last hundred years for Christianity um for example certainly their Christianity has also changed don't get me wrong I know I'm aware just look just look at the Vatican the Vatican is taking on radical new ideas every week I'm sure I realize there have been some changes but I'm saying that within Buddhism the change has been much more profound much more unpredictable and is still ongoing okay so let's break down what are we talking about if we're really looking at Buddhism now and in the future in reference to these shall we say thematic concerns of mine um I remember reading an interview with the Cambodian man who had converted from Buddhism to Christianity so he had grown up with Buddhism and convert to Christianity and one of the things he pointed out which I thought was very insightful is that in Buddhism there is a concept of virtue but not of enough virtue not of adequate virtue whereas one of the things he liked about Christianity was that in Christianity there was a very clear point at which you had done enough you believed enough you did enough you were good enough and it was certain that when you died you go to heaven that's it now I read that I didn't meet that man i read that recently here in china i met someone who was a member of one of the indigenous ethnic minorities i won't give all the details but she grew up in a culturally Buddhist setting tera vaada buddha 'the but she also she was a Christian I think I think her mother converted to Christianity someone in her family so she didn't make the decision itself and it was fascinated me because she made the same point for her also this was a big deal she said yeah you know Buddhism she sort of said worse to Buddhism is more interesting like Buddhism has more philosophy it's more nuanced that's more complex but in Christianity it's simple this is what you have to do and then it's enough it's enough virtue then you know you're saved you got the checklist of what you have to do to get into heaven and once you've checked all the boxes you're done so I think it is interesting Buddhism on the one hand is known for being very morally permissive which it is if you go to Thailand a lot of people think Buddhism has no restrictions on sexual behavior because a culture like Thailand today is so permissive Buddhism kind of stairs out of the world as in terms of infinite virtue and yet insufficient virtue this is interesting is you know interacts with things like ecology and animal rights and veganism in a very strange way to refuse to kill animals is virtuous in Buddhism so you think there there's already a powerful wonderful basis for future veganism in ecology but in the other hand it's sort of in this miasma where well you know quitting smoking is virtuous refusing to kill animals as virtuous nobody can be virtuous all the time violence is inevitable even you know torture and killing and joining the army is inevitable so you know people should kind of sort of try their best all the time and yet in a country like Thailand it seems that you're surrounded by people who are never trying their best at any time that this sense that you know individuals pursue virtue not within one human lifetime not with one goal of getting into heaven after they die not with one checklist for what's a sin and what's virtue but that they are playing this game against a millennium long epic spanning you know cycle of reincarnation that vice and virtue that indulgences and you know glorious acts they've gone on for millions of years through all your former lifetimes and your future lifetimes and thus the significance of you know eating meat at any one meal this seems to recede into the background is a tiny and trivial thing it is very rare to meet devout Buddhists who give a damn about eating meat and I've met people who quit being Buddhists for that reason who actually changed religions because they did care about ecology and veganism and so they they switch to another religion because they they got fed up with the indifference that exists within Buddhism now I could also say without getting on to a too much length the emphasis on intellectual virtues in Buddhism is more or less unique in world religions and I've also seen Christians complaining about that what they say oh well Buddhists you're a bunch of snobs you care about these intellectual virtues you don't care so much about the loving and caring kind of mom-and-pop virtues that critique has some merit to it and it's true the kind of peculiar intellectual snobbery within tera vaada Buddhism also true with in Japanese but as in many forms of wisdom there is kind of a sense often like well why would you even concern yourself with something as low as killing animals or the the mud and blood of these sorts of animal ethics issues when you can instead be directing your attention to the life of the mind the life you know these more refined supposedly refined an element into refined and elegant intellectual pursuits and concerns than bosom so that is true I think there's a sense in which the intellectual apparatus of Buddhism becomes counterproductive in reference to ethics and practical political action even when you're faced with something as obvious as let's bring it back to ecology real quick I used to live and work in Bangkok and I had a job that was a government job put it that way so you know you kind of went to a bunch of strange locations that are owned by the government the government owned a prison and everything but decommissioning the prison points I knew there they owned this historical building you know this wooden building in the word talking about renovating it so I kind of went to a few different construction sites as part of this job ahead in in Bangkok one of the government experts mentioned to me in passing he said you know the entire city the populated area of Bangkok is less than 1 meter above sea level above the ocean level and most city you're down two millimeters in Dennis centimeters and on the same day they said that to me I was standing there on this construction site and they had one of these giant machines that scoops the earth out of the way and as soon as this machine put the metal into the earth it was going down centimeters and then there was water so you know the surface of the earth of this construction site was centimeters above a semi saline sea level there the water is a mixture of river water on the way out it's a it's a river delta to be blunt and of ocean water on the way and you stand there and look at that and this shockingly fragile ecology and Bangkok periodically they flood in the whole city is under water periodically they have outbreak of disease as you'd expect and you think people can ignore this ecological threat even in this setting you know I mean even when the rising water is visible almost between your toes you know questions of adequate virtue questions of doing enough questions of having a hard checklist of what governments individuals should do with ecology it's not about what you're doing in the next ten incarnations I don't really give a what you did a thousand years ago when you were born as a slave in Egypt or some I don't believe in reincarnation at all in case you can't guess my point is a worldview that sees this society and this ecology as a transitory and trivial problem compared to the timescale of millions of years in which they sincerely believe that people are being reincarnated to get it again and indeed that the world itself regenerates again and there are multiple worlds basically the same as this one that arise and fall um the idea we have to tackle this problem now in the next ten years because we're really concerned about the next 50 years of the next hundred and fifty years actually you know even though people glorify Buddhism as somehow setting up a great foundation for ecological concern in many ways I feel the opposite and you see this even with something as simple as deforestation deforestation is in many ways a lot easier to visualize and chart out than global warming or rising ocean levels why did Thailand cut down all of its forests well looking at it in terms of millions of years I guess in that greater scheme of things elephants going extinct tiger is going to thank the last of the force being cut down whose problem is it in Buddhism whose problem is it is it the government's problem I mean obviously most religions do not have a modern democratic notion of government is it your problem is it my problem is the problem for a bunch of vegan activists whose problem is it we can't expect it to be the corporations that make millions of dollars out of cutting down the trees we can't expect it to be timber corporations and paper corporations so whose problem is it it's not Buddhist monks problem that's damned sure happy he'll get over the last years and there's been so much false excitement over the few Buddhist monks who made lectures here and they're talking about ecology I know that about that I've read about that but you know this is like you can go through Catholicism and look at the few catholic monks who supported the legal right to abortion and within every religion once you get into millions of members of religion a large religion there are going to be some outliers i drooled i think there are some catholics who support you know abortion as being legal but I don't condone construe that as something doesn't so I raised this most general problem to begin with I think if we're going to talk sincerely about the future of Buddhism in connection to the future of veganism ecology etc just the future of planet Earth um I think we also have to look at it in terms of mythology and mythology is maybe the aspect of Buddhism that white Western people tend to overlook the most or tend to avoid thinking about the most they tend to want to address Buddhism in terms of a relatively clean philosophical system and not to deal with the grubby reality of the mythology for example hell in Buddhism if you do bad things you die and you go to hell and that hell is described at great length many gory details exactly what kind of torture you're going to get and so on in the ancient scriptures and that's why if you go on vacation in Thailand you will see many gory paintings of that hell on the walls of Buddhist temples the best thing about mythology is that it can lead you to ask questions the otherwise wouldn't ask it can spark interest it can spark the mattock concern it can inspire you and shape your life and positive way and the worst thing about mythology is that it prevents you from asking questions I think this is I mean the example of Hell itself is a very powerful example I think that many many p people do not question the nature of good and evil whether it's personal sin and virtue or public policy if they believe as part of their religious view of the world oh if you do blank you go to hell it's kind of prevents any more sophisticated sociological or political you know philosophizing about reflecting on uh you know what the issues and options are yeah I don't know we could give a million examples like the history of homosexuality and religious backed homophobia or even history of you know government policy on drug use if you start off with the view using this drug means you die and go to hell you're not going to ask questions that lead to a more sophisticated harm reduction approach or questions of what's effective blah blah blah and you know i mean the the united states of america went through the ultimate experiment in that through what's called prohibition when they briefly made alcohol illegal but yeah i mean if you believe something is evil and results in you diane going to hell that is probably not going to inspire you to have an open-minded yeah to engage in open minded original research into really understanding the problem politically ethically socially or otherwise well now what where does that lead us why is it that the role of mythology in human society and culture is so often to provide a kind of halt to the progress of free inquiry and understanding and so rarely to raise and open up new and positive question in dealing sincerely with the prospects of Buddhism as a religion for the future I think we do have to look at the mythology and that mythology includes hell and the mythology in a very real sense is not going to change people's attitudes towards the mythology change the philosophy can be very fast changing um epochs in an abstract sensitive what gets preached or what have you the mythology and the worldview is not going to change and you have to understand the core mythology the core myth of reincarnation even though it has built into it the concept that killing an animal is a bad thing that an animal in a former life could have been a few being or in its next life could have been a human being you also have to recognize this has built into it a real application of personal responsibility and in a sense of real annihilation of the dignity of the particular animal or the importance of the particular animal to some extent it also destroys the sense of dignity or importance of a particular human life although less so partly because it holds up human life as the apex of this pseudo evolutionary cycle of incarnation every incarnation that the ultimate thing that an animal can become as a human being and by the way even though human beings can be reincarnated as gods gods or angels sometimes pronounced but really we're talking about gods gods in the plural even the gods ultimately would like to be reincarnated as human beings because the opportunity to achieve nirvana the opportunity to do virtuous deeds that lies entirely with human beings so it makes us very much the center of the moral universe firmer side of the intellectual universe and also in Buddhism the gods are not wise a bit like ancient Greece the gods don't really know anything that we don't know use big contrast to Christianity so you know the gods some of them are kind of buffoons like Zeus and Hercules they're just not it is not particularly intelligent they have the same intelligence of a human being or less and they is very clearly established many times that the gods no less than the Buddha knows that they're less wise than I you know wise Buddhist monk what have you uh you know when I made this comment on this other youtubers video um III closed it by saying okay look you know so I was a scholar but isn't for more than 10 years and have a lot of of autism I can see both good and bad in it I can see the potential for positive change do I have any optimism for the future not enough to be able to myself so I not only to have the choice to be a Buddhist I was a Buddhist I mean it was a member of the religion and I quit I became an ex post you know I've made other videos reflecting on that uh you know I don't want to hear repeat what I've said in other videos my reasons for not being a Buddhist are not the subject of this video that the subject of those videos I made in the past however I do think it is foolish in the extreme to assume that the aesthetics of Buddhism when the mythology of Buddhism is going to provide a powerful basis for veganism the reality of what we're doing in Asia with veganism is actually competing with Buddhism we're actually offering people an alternative that caters to some of the same ethical impulses that many modern Buddhists are seeking in Buddhism and are being disappointed with you know like there are modern Buddhists who really care about animal rights who really care about ecology and then they go to the temple and they hear all this horseshit that either pays instance your lip service to those themes or fails to even do that I have seen that myself study that myself etc I mean the the basic the fundamental evasion of this worldly responsibility the the fundamental advocate abdication of the sense of we do this now or never it's got to be this life it's got to be this generation it's got to be this decade you know to be blunt me me me now now now that's that that's the undercurrent in all like illogical politics including veganism and that's totally antithetical to the Buddhist world view if there were if there's anything that is not going to fly a tone nobody wants to strike when giving a morality lectures about as monk it's me me me now now now there instead constantly emphasizing selflessness a sense of selflessness that is I think evasive and advocates responsibility and a sense of timelessness so it's not me me it's not now it doesn't have to be this generation it doesn't have to be this year that's very much built into the mythology the world view the aesthetics etc of Buddhism even though you know certainly you can see culturally if you compare Buddhism to Islam Buddhism culturally is a much better preparation for for veganism and ecology both it's much better than Islam infinitely better no no question there's you know it's 10,000 times better but nevertheless when we're looking ahead when we're looking at the next step in the twenty percent we're not looking back we're not evaluating 500 years ago or even 50 years ago say okay now I'm moving forward it does seem to me very obvious that in reality vegans and ecologically concerned people are inviting Buddhists to step away from Buddhism and to join them to join us in being vegans in being ecological activists in being otherwise engaged in this world and again with this tremendous sense of urgency me me me now now now I'm worried about Bangkok being underwater I'm worried about this last forest where there are a few elephants still alive a few wild elephants a few wild tigers I'm worried about this stretch of river where there are a few wild dolphins I need action I need government resolutions I need activism I need this worldly this generation concern and yeah you know there's also egoism there's also self-centred activity involved and so on and I need to and I also need you to take seriously the suffering of particular animals you know that the death of this one cow matters that it's not just that we shrug our shoulders and say well all of existence is a cycle of suffering and the only solution is nirvana blah blah blah no no no no no no I want you to look into this cows eyes I want you to deal with the reality that to produce meat that is not necessary and not healthy you are causing this animal to live its whole life in a concrete shed and then die a miserable meaningless death no this cow this life today now face it feel it oh and then let's get organized let's get involving political activism that whole direction even though I think Buddhism may prepare people for it the reality is that that is a direction that leads away from Buddhism it's an exit from Buddhism and I think it contradicts the fundamental impulses aesthetics and mythology of Buddhism because definitely the cycle of reincarnation inclusive of heaven and hell and gods and angels and demons that is the central mythology of Buddhism no matter how much weight Western Buddhists might want to choose to ignore it in trying to address their interest to a sanitized westernized modernized secularized and dishonest misrepresentation of what Buddhism is and why Buddhism has had such tremendous tenacity over the last two thousand five hundred years give me up
was a scholar of Buddhism for more than 10 years studied ancient canonical language blah blah blah spent time in Buddhist temples with Buddhist monks traveled by lectured I delivered lectures myself at universities and I visited and studied both in a totally religious context but also in these kind of semi-religious semi secular university context but the vast majority of what I learned I learned on my own let me tell you because the vast majority of what gets thought both institutions is dishonest and as you might already guess from the candor of that statement I made within the last 60 seconds i am not a true believing Buddhist I never believed in supernatural elements of Buddhism I never believed in hell or heaven I never believed that a meditation can have supernatural effects or magical outcomes for you but also today I identify as an ex Buddhist I do not consider myself a Buddhist at all so I do not believe in the religion I do not believe in the future of the religion however there are still people who come to this channel because they've read some of my work from the past my past research on Buddhism there's still people come to this channel hoping I'm going to record more videos talking about Buddhism as a philosophy as a religion may be in connection to politics or some of this understandable I was one of the few kind of sober voices is sober the word I want to use expressing concerns but a lot of what was going on in contemporary Buddhism in the past and it's doubtful i'm going to play that role again but it's so cool that there are people who are serious but us who respect what i have to say and you send me questions asking my opinion etcetera now these days are mostly known for talking about veganism so in this video I'm going to talk a little bit about the prospects of Buddhism in the future and naturally people watching this channel will be interested about Buddhism in connection to animal rights ecology veganism but I guess just you know Buddhism in terms of real-world practicable ethics what are the prospects I made a comment on someone else's video lately another vegan made a video which is not very well-informed he hadn't done any research on Buddhism he didn't know either historical or contemporary what the real ethical factors were but another vegan made a video complaining about the Buddhist practice of buying animals so for instance a caged bird or buying lobsters and then setting them free in ceremonies to generate good karma and all the absurdities to go into this including the fact that often they end up killing the animals but anyway um and you know observe this was for people who are eating meat every day to be buying caged birds and setting them free etc there all these obvious contradictions in it but I gave him a reply and I said look I used to be a scholar Buddhism blah blah blah I very briefly said both good and bad about what's going on but it's and one of the good things I said I said look you know unlike other religions Buddhism is susceptible to change it is susceptible to improvement to say that Buddha's of has changed a lot in the last 50 years would be a great understatement and to say it's changed a lot in the last 100 years would be an even more of an understatement Buddhism has been rapidly changing in many different directions so almost any problem you can point to within Buddhism for instance the status of women or the status of eating meat or any of these issues you can also point to you know counter currents and debates within Buddhism that have challenged the status quo when you can point to examples of Buddhist traditions that have taken radically different contradictory paths in response to those questions should women be equal should people eat meat any possible a practical ethical question you're going to get that kind of diversity and debate on going especially in the period right after World War Two something I've made many videos about and let's face it if you were living anywhere in the continent of Asia after World War 2 the spectacle of the atom bomb on the one hand and the spectacle of the rise of communism for example in China these were major inspirations for the religion to re-evaluate its past present and future so that was a period of especially rapid change and I do not think you can find a similar period of change in the last hundred years for Christianity um for example certainly their Christianity has also changed don't get me wrong I know I'm aware just look just look at the Vatican the Vatican is taking on radical new ideas every week I'm sure I realize there have been some changes but I'm saying that within Buddhism the change has been much more profound much more unpredictable and is still ongoing okay so let's break down what are we talking about if we're really looking at Buddhism now and in the future in reference to these shall we say thematic concerns of mine um I remember reading an interview with the Cambodian man who had converted from Buddhism to Christianity so he had grown up with Buddhism and convert to Christianity and one of the things he pointed out which I thought was very insightful is that in Buddhism there is a concept of virtue but not of enough virtue not of adequate virtue whereas one of the things he liked about Christianity was that in Christianity there was a very clear point at which you had done enough you believed enough you did enough you were good enough and it was certain that when you died you go to heaven that's it now I read that I didn't meet that man i read that recently here in china i met someone who was a member of one of the indigenous ethnic minorities i won't give all the details but she grew up in a culturally Buddhist setting tera vaada buddha 'the but she also she was a Christian I think I think her mother converted to Christianity someone in her family so she didn't make the decision itself and it was fascinated me because she made the same point for her also this was a big deal she said yeah you know Buddhism she sort of said worse to Buddhism is more interesting like Buddhism has more philosophy it's more nuanced that's more complex but in Christianity it's simple this is what you have to do and then it's enough it's enough virtue then you know you're saved you got the checklist of what you have to do to get into heaven and once you've checked all the boxes you're done so I think it is interesting Buddhism on the one hand is known for being very morally permissive which it is if you go to Thailand a lot of people think Buddhism has no restrictions on sexual behavior because a culture like Thailand today is so permissive Buddhism kind of stairs out of the world as in terms of infinite virtue and yet insufficient virtue this is interesting is you know interacts with things like ecology and animal rights and veganism in a very strange way to refuse to kill animals is virtuous in Buddhism so you think there there's already a powerful wonderful basis for future veganism in ecology but in the other hand it's sort of in this miasma where well you know quitting smoking is virtuous refusing to kill animals as virtuous nobody can be virtuous all the time violence is inevitable even you know torture and killing and joining the army is inevitable so you know people should kind of sort of try their best all the time and yet in a country like Thailand it seems that you're surrounded by people who are never trying their best at any time that this sense that you know individuals pursue virtue not within one human lifetime not with one goal of getting into heaven after they die not with one checklist for what's a sin and what's virtue but that they are playing this game against a millennium long epic spanning you know cycle of reincarnation that vice and virtue that indulgences and you know glorious acts they've gone on for millions of years through all your former lifetimes and your future lifetimes and thus the significance of you know eating meat at any one meal this seems to recede into the background is a tiny and trivial thing it is very rare to meet devout Buddhists who give a damn about eating meat and I've met people who quit being Buddhists for that reason who actually changed religions because they did care about ecology and veganism and so they they switch to another religion because they they got fed up with the indifference that exists within Buddhism now I could also say without getting on to a too much length the emphasis on intellectual virtues in Buddhism is more or less unique in world religions and I've also seen Christians complaining about that what they say oh well Buddhists you're a bunch of snobs you care about these intellectual virtues you don't care so much about the loving and caring kind of mom-and-pop virtues that critique has some merit to it and it's true the kind of peculiar intellectual snobbery within tera vaada Buddhism also true with in Japanese but as in many forms of wisdom there is kind of a sense often like well why would you even concern yourself with something as low as killing animals or the the mud and blood of these sorts of animal ethics issues when you can instead be directing your attention to the life of the mind the life you know these more refined supposedly refined an element into refined and elegant intellectual pursuits and concerns than bosom so that is true I think there's a sense in which the intellectual apparatus of Buddhism becomes counterproductive in reference to ethics and practical political action even when you're faced with something as obvious as let's bring it back to ecology real quick I used to live and work in Bangkok and I had a job that was a government job put it that way so you know you kind of went to a bunch of strange locations that are owned by the government the government owned a prison and everything but decommissioning the prison points I knew there they owned this historical building you know this wooden building in the word talking about renovating it so I kind of went to a few different construction sites as part of this job ahead in in Bangkok one of the government experts mentioned to me in passing he said you know the entire city the populated area of Bangkok is less than 1 meter above sea level above the ocean level and most city you're down two millimeters in Dennis centimeters and on the same day they said that to me I was standing there on this construction site and they had one of these giant machines that scoops the earth out of the way and as soon as this machine put the metal into the earth it was going down centimeters and then there was water so you know the surface of the earth of this construction site was centimeters above a semi saline sea level there the water is a mixture of river water on the way out it's a it's a river delta to be blunt and of ocean water on the way and you stand there and look at that and this shockingly fragile ecology and Bangkok periodically they flood in the whole city is under water periodically they have outbreak of disease as you'd expect and you think people can ignore this ecological threat even in this setting you know I mean even when the rising water is visible almost between your toes you know questions of adequate virtue questions of doing enough questions of having a hard checklist of what governments individuals should do with ecology it's not about what you're doing in the next ten incarnations I don't really give a what you did a thousand years ago when you were born as a slave in Egypt or some I don't believe in reincarnation at all in case you can't guess my point is a worldview that sees this society and this ecology as a transitory and trivial problem compared to the timescale of millions of years in which they sincerely believe that people are being reincarnated to get it again and indeed that the world itself regenerates again and there are multiple worlds basically the same as this one that arise and fall um the idea we have to tackle this problem now in the next ten years because we're really concerned about the next 50 years of the next hundred and fifty years actually you know even though people glorify Buddhism as somehow setting up a great foundation for ecological concern in many ways I feel the opposite and you see this even with something as simple as deforestation deforestation is in many ways a lot easier to visualize and chart out than global warming or rising ocean levels why did Thailand cut down all of its forests well looking at it in terms of millions of years I guess in that greater scheme of things elephants going extinct tiger is going to thank the last of the force being cut down whose problem is it in Buddhism whose problem is it is it the government's problem I mean obviously most religions do not have a modern democratic notion of government is it your problem is it my problem is the problem for a bunch of vegan activists whose problem is it we can't expect it to be the corporations that make millions of dollars out of cutting down the trees we can't expect it to be timber corporations and paper corporations so whose problem is it it's not Buddhist monks problem that's damned sure happy he'll get over the last years and there's been so much false excitement over the few Buddhist monks who made lectures here and they're talking about ecology I know that about that I've read about that but you know this is like you can go through Catholicism and look at the few catholic monks who supported the legal right to abortion and within every religion once you get into millions of members of religion a large religion there are going to be some outliers i drooled i think there are some catholics who support you know abortion as being legal but I don't condone construe that as something doesn't so I raised this most general problem to begin with I think if we're going to talk sincerely about the future of Buddhism in connection to the future of veganism ecology etc just the future of planet Earth um I think we also have to look at it in terms of mythology and mythology is maybe the aspect of Buddhism that white Western people tend to overlook the most or tend to avoid thinking about the most they tend to want to address Buddhism in terms of a relatively clean philosophical system and not to deal with the grubby reality of the mythology for example hell in Buddhism if you do bad things you die and you go to hell and that hell is described at great length many gory details exactly what kind of torture you're going to get and so on in the ancient scriptures and that's why if you go on vacation in Thailand you will see many gory paintings of that hell on the walls of Buddhist temples the best thing about mythology is that it can lead you to ask questions the otherwise wouldn't ask it can spark interest it can spark the mattock concern it can inspire you and shape your life and positive way and the worst thing about mythology is that it prevents you from asking questions I think this is I mean the example of Hell itself is a very powerful example I think that many many p people do not question the nature of good and evil whether it's personal sin and virtue or public policy if they believe as part of their religious view of the world oh if you do blank you go to hell it's kind of prevents any more sophisticated sociological or political you know philosophizing about reflecting on uh you know what the issues and options are yeah I don't know we could give a million examples like the history of homosexuality and religious backed homophobia or even history of you know government policy on drug use if you start off with the view using this drug means you die and go to hell you're not going to ask questions that lead to a more sophisticated harm reduction approach or questions of what's effective blah blah blah and you know i mean the the united states of america went through the ultimate experiment in that through what's called prohibition when they briefly made alcohol illegal but yeah i mean if you believe something is evil and results in you diane going to hell that is probably not going to inspire you to have an open-minded yeah to engage in open minded original research into really understanding the problem politically ethically socially or otherwise well now what where does that lead us why is it that the role of mythology in human society and culture is so often to provide a kind of halt to the progress of free inquiry and understanding and so rarely to raise and open up new and positive question in dealing sincerely with the prospects of Buddhism as a religion for the future I think we do have to look at the mythology and that mythology includes hell and the mythology in a very real sense is not going to change people's attitudes towards the mythology change the philosophy can be very fast changing um epochs in an abstract sensitive what gets preached or what have you the mythology and the worldview is not going to change and you have to understand the core mythology the core myth of reincarnation even though it has built into it the concept that killing an animal is a bad thing that an animal in a former life could have been a few being or in its next life could have been a human being you also have to recognize this has built into it a real application of personal responsibility and in a sense of real annihilation of the dignity of the particular animal or the importance of the particular animal to some extent it also destroys the sense of dignity or importance of a particular human life although less so partly because it holds up human life as the apex of this pseudo evolutionary cycle of incarnation every incarnation that the ultimate thing that an animal can become as a human being and by the way even though human beings can be reincarnated as gods gods or angels sometimes pronounced but really we're talking about gods gods in the plural even the gods ultimately would like to be reincarnated as human beings because the opportunity to achieve nirvana the opportunity to do virtuous deeds that lies entirely with human beings so it makes us very much the center of the moral universe firmer side of the intellectual universe and also in Buddhism the gods are not wise a bit like ancient Greece the gods don't really know anything that we don't know use big contrast to Christianity so you know the gods some of them are kind of buffoons like Zeus and Hercules they're just not it is not particularly intelligent they have the same intelligence of a human being or less and they is very clearly established many times that the gods no less than the Buddha knows that they're less wise than I you know wise Buddhist monk what have you uh you know when I made this comment on this other youtubers video um III closed it by saying okay look you know so I was a scholar but isn't for more than 10 years and have a lot of of autism I can see both good and bad in it I can see the potential for positive change do I have any optimism for the future not enough to be able to myself so I not only to have the choice to be a Buddhist I was a Buddhist I mean it was a member of the religion and I quit I became an ex post you know I've made other videos reflecting on that uh you know I don't want to hear repeat what I've said in other videos my reasons for not being a Buddhist are not the subject of this video that the subject of those videos I made in the past however I do think it is foolish in the extreme to assume that the aesthetics of Buddhism when the mythology of Buddhism is going to provide a powerful basis for veganism the reality of what we're doing in Asia with veganism is actually competing with Buddhism we're actually offering people an alternative that caters to some of the same ethical impulses that many modern Buddhists are seeking in Buddhism and are being disappointed with you know like there are modern Buddhists who really care about animal rights who really care about ecology and then they go to the temple and they hear all this horseshit that either pays instance your lip service to those themes or fails to even do that I have seen that myself study that myself etc I mean the the basic the fundamental evasion of this worldly responsibility the the fundamental advocate abdication of the sense of we do this now or never it's got to be this life it's got to be this generation it's got to be this decade you know to be blunt me me me now now now that's that that's the undercurrent in all like illogical politics including veganism and that's totally antithetical to the Buddhist world view if there were if there's anything that is not going to fly a tone nobody wants to strike when giving a morality lectures about as monk it's me me me now now now there instead constantly emphasizing selflessness a sense of selflessness that is I think evasive and advocates responsibility and a sense of timelessness so it's not me me it's not now it doesn't have to be this generation it doesn't have to be this year that's very much built into the mythology the world view the aesthetics etc of Buddhism even though you know certainly you can see culturally if you compare Buddhism to Islam Buddhism culturally is a much better preparation for for veganism and ecology both it's much better than Islam infinitely better no no question there's you know it's 10,000 times better but nevertheless when we're looking ahead when we're looking at the next step in the twenty percent we're not looking back we're not evaluating 500 years ago or even 50 years ago say okay now I'm moving forward it does seem to me very obvious that in reality vegans and ecologically concerned people are inviting Buddhists to step away from Buddhism and to join them to join us in being vegans in being ecological activists in being otherwise engaged in this world and again with this tremendous sense of urgency me me me now now now I'm worried about Bangkok being underwater I'm worried about this last forest where there are a few elephants still alive a few wild elephants a few wild tigers I'm worried about this stretch of river where there are a few wild dolphins I need action I need government resolutions I need activism I need this worldly this generation concern and yeah you know there's also egoism there's also self-centred activity involved and so on and I need to and I also need you to take seriously the suffering of particular animals you know that the death of this one cow matters that it's not just that we shrug our shoulders and say well all of existence is a cycle of suffering and the only solution is nirvana blah blah blah no no no no no no I want you to look into this cows eyes I want you to deal with the reality that to produce meat that is not necessary and not healthy you are causing this animal to live its whole life in a concrete shed and then die a miserable meaningless death no this cow this life today now face it feel it oh and then let's get organized let's get involving political activism that whole direction even though I think Buddhism may prepare people for it the reality is that that is a direction that leads away from Buddhism it's an exit from Buddhism and I think it contradicts the fundamental impulses aesthetics and mythology of Buddhism because definitely the cycle of reincarnation inclusive of heaven and hell and gods and angels and demons that is the central mythology of Buddhism no matter how much weight Western Buddhists might want to choose to ignore it in trying to address their interest to a sanitized westernized modernized secularized and dishonest misrepresentation of what Buddhism is and why Buddhism has had such tremendous tenacity over the last two thousand five hundred years give me up