Am I Still Buddhist? (Or, to what extent…)

when we're not on camera when we're not
on YouTube my girlfriend and I talk a lot about the history of Asia politics of Asia but inexorably and inevitably my background as a scholar of Buddhism comes up again and again and yesterday Melissa asked me a question after a long conversation that covered and included not just Buddhism but Taoism Confucianism other ancient philosophies from China that don't fall into any of these categories except for the hunt fates uh the origins of the Han Dynasty if your conversation like this Melissa asked me in effect I think you you worded it as how comfortable are you now talking about Buddhism or even how comfortable I be visiting Buddhist temples talking about as monks having those interactions there talking to two Buddhist professors you also asked me interesting question you asked me this is a really good question actually just do I feel that I could make a positive difference in the world if I went back to university and got a master's degree or even a PhD in input of studies and my answer that was yes like yeah I actually do think that's an important and positive then you in the world so the question is gonna ask you for the sake of the audience and obviously this is put in my head partly because you know I have some fans of the channel who are experts and some of them are pretty strident critics of Buddhist Buddhism or even kind of ante Buddhists um I was going to what extent do you feel that I am still in effect you know a Buddhist or that I'm secretly Buddhist I may be more Buddhist you know then I then I Sam and like look I think like I think there's a real sincere question someone like Jordan Peterson how Christian is he and how atheist is he sometimes the answer can't be found by just quoting the guy himself you know I think I think there were a lot of historical figures like that you know even even someone less extreme as Mao Zedong at the same time that he's burning down Buddhist temples and destroying historical literature we know that privately he was really interested in and inspired by and postulated that stuff new new archaeological discoveries happen during the life of Mao Zedong he was really interested to read exactly these ancient texts that were at the same time banned for the general public to read and were some extent being burned and destroyed the question of you know what is someone's real ideological persuasion because i you know i don't i don't feel like i'm anti buddhist any more than I'd say I'm like 80 Shakespeare you know what I mean like I think this is a literature that's really kind of meaningful and it's a philosophy it's an ancient philosophy there's a lot of flaws but you know you know Aristotle has a lot of flaws well the wrong with theirs though so my question is how Buddhist is isomers are also in that conversation I asked what do you think the role of Buddhism today is or should be yes in society if you were actually inspiring people to go back and read the pally Canon and if they were if Buddhism really was taking on you know the aspects of the original Canon versus what it's become today in Zen Buddhism for example not not terrible Buddhism which is what you used to study but I mean you know so there are different sects so it's hard for me to say like oh well I mean you you're vegetarian or vegan so in this way like I associate this with Buddhism but you've also told me that the Buddha didn't explicitly say to not eat meat the Buddha ate meat yeah so in this way like I think in some people's perceptions of Buddhist I think you do embody some of the some of the characteristics like you don't drink alcohol you you don't you don't smoke cigarettes you you live a very pious lifestyle in some ways yeah well you know we have this word within veganism people talk about abolitionism and being an abolitionist vegan as opposed to ameliorative or reduce to tearing about their schools of a vegan thought I mean I think it's clear to say I'm not calling for the abolition of Buddhism in the same way that I do openly call basically for the abolition of Christianity you know so that that's interesting and that's something you see even within the last couple videos on this channel and you see in my interactions with a couple of supporters on patreon of God who are really you know more hard disillusioned exploit assignment oh but in the same way you've been very critical of actual practicing Buddhist what people say about Buddha's on you because you've read manuscripts you've read stone inscriptions you've done this hard work that so many people don't do in learning the original languages oh well saying like you you are critical even more so that like us particular aspects of Buddhism right and how it's like you know I'm not asking about critique because as you know I've had to say this getting in the channel if if you do film critique it doesn't mean you want to abolish the film industry it doesn't mean you want to end a cinema or even that you want the particular film to fail or be taken to the theaters like critique almost by definition is something productive and positive like when you're right I do I have critique of Buddhism both Buddhist doctrine you know what's in the Buddhist philosophy was in the Asian text and the religion is this today but I see the function of that pratik as positive and as helping Buddhism I think almost nobody would would engage in that country if they didn't have a positive view of the future of Buddhism and the film critic I think as a positive view of the future of cinema sorry I wanted to break into to make that clarification you have this kind of contradiction I wouldn't say it's no surprise to say it's hypocrisy but you know you don't believe I don't think you ever were a believer in Hell in how it's described in the patty cannon what you're not somebody that believes in supernatural aspects of religion but there there is some of this in Buddhism so I think you would be an abolitionist and right and this exactly nature of it but you know so look if you're opposed to circumcision know to be explicit what we mean by circumcision is cutting off part of an infant's penis or with a female connector if you are morally opposed to circumcision then you have to be opposed to it in Islam in Christianity and Judaism in any other well and there are other religions there are indigenous religions of Australia there are some indigenous tribal religions that aren't part of any of the larger religious groups they have their own in South Africa of right about that indigenous travel religions of that involve not exactly the same type of mutilation but you know they have their own tradition this way so if you're against it in one you're getting against another I think you know that's really hitting the nail on the head if you're someone who basically wants to abolish the misconceptions within Christianity then you'll also want to abolish those same misconceptions when you encounter them in Buddhism so if you don't think if you don't think it's psychologically healthy for children to grow up believing in hell in heaven let's put it that way if you think that's bad to teach people that hell when heaven are a real place that people go to after they die then you must also believe it is bad to teach that to children in Buddhism right so I mean that puts a real fine point on it but I think the difference is like when I look at Christianity and I look at Buddhism I can't look at Christianity and say okay even if I delete these things I really think are bad then there's still something really positive important left over and with Buddhism I do feel that way I think most modern people do they've just not comfortable saying it like if we like to use the word delete if we delete hell if we delete heaven even if you delete meditation and reincarnation if you delete kind of all the supernatural stuff hey there's still a body of literature or body of philosophy here that I think is a value that something positive could come out of in the future or something positive something positive could be done with right now and it probably probably is somewhere I don't know of anywhere being honestly I don't know I don't know any good Buddhist monks I don't know any good Buddhist authors I don't know a single good Buddhist University professor in the Western world it's that bad it's that bad the state of the state of the religion the state of even the scholarship and I an academic side yeah okay sorry what you know III cut you because I think I think that's really the crucial point is if you don't just look at it as a category you know put it well look the history of Buddhism for example Tibetan Buddhism included human sacrifice and you know like manufacturing a bowl out of a human skull after the person is dead and magical so if you're against if you're against human sacrifice but you know obviously everyone in the modern world has to say well I don't believe in hell and human sacrifice but there's still some value in Buddhism they think right now again I I can't say this I can't make this kind of statement about Islam I can't say that if you if you just you know remove the things I object to in the in the Quran and the hadith that there's still some philosophy there I value or you know or even even cultural commentary or something like even even the material in the Pali Canon that's just kind of reflecting on slavery and poverty that's how I mentioned that recently you know the role of poverty in how I approach Buddhism yeah poverty and desire and you know is life fundamentally about happiness and self-indulgence or is life about something else and self-discipline there's a lot there morally and aesthetically I relate to thusly and let's point out I relate to those same doctrines positively when I encounter them in ancient Athens in ancient Rome in other contexts so again it's the same thing where you break down the category into particular philosophies or something and then you can the question was do you feel like you married a Buddhist life with me is is it kind of Buddhist tea or not yeah nobody that's you know and that's okay that's a really good example so I mentioned this to Melissa before I met a particular woman in China who although she was born Chinese she really converted to tera vaada orthodox buddhism which is very rare she did the research and she realized that it's really the pali canon authentic Buddhism and she and her family they would chance Palli together and they you know she admitted they really didn't know how to pronounce pally so they were kind of chanting patli in a Chinese accent er in Chinese ma no souls I would imagine so people who chant ancient texts you know I would study ancient texts but like even if it were Shakespeare do you really want to memorize Shakespeare you know memorization is a powerful tool you know okay are you just studying this text were saying to memorize it you may not know this the vast majority of people engage in those practices 'm in buddhism they believe that there is literally magic being released by the words by saying them out loud to give an example a Buddhist monk who will write out sutras in Pali now su tanta is the correct word but it will write out a scripture in Pali using chalk on a chalkboard they will then collect the chalk dust and make that into a kind of magical it looks yes so the chalk dust that's been formed into the words of the Buddha and you know naturally this lends itself to a I've read a really tear-jerking so really heartbreaking story about a guy in Cambodia a guy was fighting against communism in Cambodia and he had he had a magical Buddhist piece of cloth with words words from the Pali can and written on this cloth that he was wearing to give himself you know and vulnerability or you know that that was that was the purpose of it you know to save your life in war that if you wore this you know give you some magical powers his belief in the words and when he was condemned to death he was going to be put in a firing line firing squad by the communists he took off the he took off the magical magical piece of cloth and he handed it to a Frenchman who was standing there Frenchmen was it was a scholar not a special pal he said oh no I want the Frenchman out and that's he's the witness who wrote the story of this happening and he was shot and killed but in a sense you know it's the ultimate kind of pathos of wanting the magic to survive you know if he dies wearing this amulet that gives him invulnerability then you'll lose faith in the invoker but if you takes it off and goes to his death then the belief in the magic power of the word is still there so you know people people chant you know again I I would disagree with that if it's magical chanting if it's not just like studying the same way you'd study Shakespeare or study Aristotle or study Plato and maybe maybe you want to maybe you want to memorize the words of Aristotle or Plato or or you know just for the philosophical value of it or for some other reason you really want to commit to the text that way but you know a Catholic monk in Ireland marching back and forth and chanting the same words in Latin again and again if there are a few monasteries and I understood that if I object to that belief in magical chanting and Catholicism then I've got to object to it also in in Buddhism right so this is how but I mean these examples for people who know and care about Buddhism this is where it cuts it so close where some Buddhists would feel that I'm anti Buddhist if you don't believe the words are magical why do you study them and my answer is maybe if you study them you'll figure out that they have real value that's not magical you know and again I can't say that about all religions I really can't say that there's some I don't feel there's any great philosophy to be discovered and reading the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament I don't feel that Moses was a great philosopher well I don't at all I would really say the opposite it's kind of there are some historically interesting things about you know studying Moses in though I cannot say that but where with Buddhism when you delete all these things and have a kind of secular or analytical attitude that there is is still really some positive value there