Is the Future of Buddhism Hopeless? No, Not In My Opinion.

is the future of Buddhism completely
hopeless is it more or less hopeless than it seems I'd always get complaints when I'd open my videos talking about myself my academic background my research background and so on they say why you talk so much about yourself in your videos but for me it's really weird to open a video like this without telling people a little bit about myself and how many years I was involved in Buddhism that I was a scholar of bosom that I lived in Buddhist monasteries that I studied the ancient scriptural language called pali pali one which is really the only language we have two teaching of the buddha extant in not sanskrit oh if I don't say something with the years and years that put into Buddhism in Sri Lanka Cambodia Laos Thailand and I'll say something then I'm just some bold guy on the Internet although boldness boldness really does qualify you to have an opinion but is that based on appearances right now yeah gee I didn't realize that putting on this jacket I might look like I know something about what look um I have one supporter and longtime follower on YouTube and patreon and he really lost faith in Buddhism because of the critique offered on my channel he should start his own YouTube channel and tell his own story in his own terms and look dude I'm not even saying you should come on camera with your own face you can do animation you can draw stick figures you know you can use hand puppets there are lots of ways to tell your story on YouTube without ruining your life the way I have both putting your putting your purse like that Diddy on camera but anyway it is a dramatic story that the videos on my channel really led him to start asking serious questions about supernatural elements of Buddhism and ethical elements too and a lot of what said about meditation what's ironic is that when he talks to me now I seem like I'm way more optimistic about the future of Buddhism than he is he seems like his perspective he seems like from his perspective Buddhism is just as hopeless as Islam just as hopeless as Christianity or Judaism or more so and we all know in some sense Buddhism is different and this video is going to question how or how much what are the prospects for the future of what isn't this way and maybe my answer is a little bit different that it would have been a couple of years ago in the recent past we are right now packing up to leave for Taiwan we literally have suitcases on the floor just off-camera I do not think I will get involved with any Buddhist temple or any Buddhist organized religion when I'm there I do not think I will get involved with any Taoist temple or any organized religion there but I could it's it's it's not unthinkable I have some interests in common with those people there's some common ground something like ecological activism vegan activism animal rights activism even pro-democracy activism and anti-communist activism I could have those things in common with people who are part of organized Buddhist groups today or in theory even Confucian groups Confucianism is not as big as that wisdom in Taiwan there is some common ground to be built on there okay when I first first first got involved with Buddhism Theravada Buddhism I met a man who was a sin Alize immigrant to Toronto so still in Canada before I left for my many years living in Asia and I remember what he said was that he felt totally disgusted with the authoritarian attitudes of the Buddhist monks this is a really interesting point that seems shallow but if you've been involved for dozen for four years this actually cuts really deep now he spoke English as a second language so I'm really paraphrasing and restructuring the point he made but it was a good point even if he couldn't couldn't state it clearly in English what he had to say was that when you actually read the original philosophical scriptures in the Pali Canon there in an open-ended skeptical dialogue format people cross examine each other they doubt each other they debate things and then they come to conclusions and you know he sees this as the essential defining feature of as a religion and Buddhist philosophy okay so the story of Noah's Ark is not in that format the story story of Noah's Ark does not invite doubt and cross-examination and disagreement and debate it's someone it tells you this is the truth it doesn't really say it's the right thing the gates either you believe it or you don't and you go to hell story of Noah's Ark the story of Moses you know fighting against the Egypt's it's probably fighting from Egypt fighting against the Egyptians the story of Jesus on the cross if this were true though if really the defining essential element of Buddhism as philosophy were open-ended skeptical dialogues of this kind then obviously the religion would have continued to progress over time and it didn't it ossified right at the start during the lifetime of the Buddha it came to one set of fixed conclusions and that was it game over now why is that this is what almost nobody will be will be honestly about the reason is very simply that the authors of the ancient scriptures they did not have the concept of hallucination as something different from real experience so that whole corpus of scriptures is based on the concept people engage in highly rational skeptical philosophical dialogues and then sooner or later they come to an understanding or some of them end acrimoniously but that the fundamental truth of Buddhism would be self-evident to people as soon as they had the solution genic experiences that they would hallucinate they would see the same things the buddha saw they would see the same things that other but as monks saw and then they would know the truth now whether you think of this as a kind of guided meditation or kind of hypnosis experience or I mean it's just the fact that most people in their dreams and their hallucinations they see the things they expect to see we believe it or not remembering one specific dialogue with the put up what he's being asked by a skeptical follower why is it that I had the SaLuSa nation and I could see the gods but I couldn't hear what they were saying this kind of thing it's very very clear these people absolutely believed in hallucination so parallel history if really this was about skeptical dialogue and open inquiry and if still today that was what Buddhist monk said they stood for say look we're part of a tradition that began with the Buddha asking tough questions the Buddha rejecting blind faith in Hinduism blind faith in the Vedas blind faith and the authority of what everyone's grandparents I believed it and said no we're starting from scratch we're asking all the fundamental questions we're asking what is the meaning of life how was the world created what's the creation of the universe we're gonna start right we're gonna start a whole new religion here we're gonna reject all the preconceived notions of our ancestors and we're gonna come to new conclusions through philosophical dialogue enquiry that's a great story and it's it's partly true I mean it is partly true that's why it's such a compelling narrative but if that had been what Buddhism was about at the time of its founding and it continued to be what it's about today nobody in Buddhism would believe that the earth is flat nobody would believe that there are demons nobody would believe that they could communicate with gods and angels nobody would believe that hell at heaven are real places you can go after you die so on and so forth and these two narratives the narrative of Buddhism as philosophical dialogue and the narrative of Buddhism as faith they compete in one in the same place of one of the same time there was a very moving autobiographical account I read about six years ago of a Buddhist nun in Malaysia and so she wrote this herself was from her own perspective and she was trying to help a man and it's it's written in very careful compassionate terms she was trying to help a man whom she obviously regarded as insane and this man was seeing demons and seeing ghosts of dead people I don't remember if he saw angels or gods will give you so more benevolent apparitions also and some other Buddhist monk might have encountered this man and said oh like you're naturally gifted with clairvoyance oh wow you're seeing exactly the stuff that's in the scriptures oh great some other Buddhist monk might have affirmed his idea that these were real things he was seeing and this Buddhist nun she was taking the approach of trying to explain to the man that he was having extreme mood swings he was having kind of extreme anger or an extreme dejection extreme depression and he was seeing these things because of his own emotional state and she was kind of taking baby steps and trying to get across to him the concept that he was seeing things that weren't that were not real of course we don't know the whole story about why why that guy was hallucinating as as well as he was but obviously the particular hallucinations he had sown they're all culturally programmed what it is you see and what is you you think you see but that scenario has the Buddhist monk debunking Buddhism for the sake of of Buddhism right so the question of you know can what ISM you know have a future I I don't think it comes down to something as cynical as cherry-picking the the ancient sources I think that's that's the problem and that's not the solution I think that basically there's a difference between looking at the historical sources and accepting them as a monument to that time in that moment in history and then regarding in a sense the book has as closed on that right so I mean you guys know this with me I do have some respect for the historical figure of Socrates but Socrates neither asks nor answers most of the ethical questions I'm interested in most of the political questions of interestin do you know of any source in which Socrates is opposed to slavery I don't I mean it's possible there's a lot of but I've never seen anything refer to saw you standing up and saying slavery is immoral and it's wrong all right now do you know of any source in which the Buddha stands company in India and says he's opposed to slavery well I have actually looked at all the pastors in the Canada mention slavery there are definitely some kind of satirical social commentary passages that are indeed heaping scorn on the institution of slavery but no the the religion doesn't stand for the abolition of slavery you could say more there's a kind of I know shrewd awareness that slavery is a bad thing that kind of gets guest talked about and don't put them fasting here and there but that's that's very different isn't that so you know in the same sense that nobody would look to these ancient texts really with the answers to modern questions you know the question becomes it is it possible to look back at those texts and say okay today we are going to stand for the same higher principle that they stood for just as the Buddha in his own time rejected the crass ignorance of ancient Hinduism he rejected sacrificing cows he rejected starving herself he rejected drinking the milk from only one nipple of the cow while fast it's really bizarre ancient Hindu rituals that we get described in detail in the Bali Canon by the way uh-huh we rejected I mean animal sacrifice was a huge part of Hinduism at that time you know that the elite level of the Hindu religion the kings were part of and he rejected most shockingly the authority of the Vedas and he rejected the beliefs of his own parents and grandparents and his whole society and said I'm starting something new and I'm starting with these these fundamental questions very obviously in our time most of the beliefs most of the tenants he arrived at through that inquiry an inquiry that included hallucination and believing in hallucinations is real it's a bedrock assumption throughout the polygons most of the answers he came to are things that we would reject today so the only thing that remains for us is to verify the questioning itself the questioning the rebellion the idea of standing up as a man of principle and I think the Buddha does you know fairly enough you know embody that and so on the idea of striking out and taking your own way rather than respecting established Authority and tradition in little things and in great and in a lot of ways what I've just described is the same kind of respect we can have for Socrates you know Socrates is wrong sorry he's wrong about a lot of things Socrates is guilty of the crimes he was charged with sorry it's topic for another video there's not a lot I would agree with Socrates on if he came through a time machine and we're sitting here talking today right but there's a question of method there's the defiance the principle the questioning the coming new conclusions there's that that he represents so you know yes there is potential for Buddhism to become a good and an even great religion not in the distant future but right here now it can happen like a tease play most of the Buddhist intellectuals I ever knew believed exactly the same thing as I did they were just at very varying degrees of denial about it I feel you can't study these texts and actually believe I mean go to any temple in Thailand and they have the statues depicting people being tortured in hell like you know is this your religion do you go around preaching to people oh you know if if you do this you're gonna be reincarnated in hell where you're gonna be forced to climb a giant tree with iron spikes that pierce your body and yes I've seen statues very accurately depicting what that experience is supposed to look like you know do you actually believe that the Buddha spoke to Indra do you actually believe that the Buddha walked through the mountains and spoke to a Yeti named su Chi Loma let you know all these supernatural things you could believe you could shoot lasers out of his hands and thighs and all that all the crazy miracles enough is that it's what you believe in is that what you want your children to believe in your grandchildren I believe in do you want your children performing these these religious rituals well the challenge ahead for Buddhism as hard as that may may sound it's it's a lot easier than even sitting down with a circle of Jewish rabbis and saying look guys circumcision cutting off part of the penis it's got a hand and sky and now that's the conversation that's very very hard to have it was it's basically impossible for anyone to sit down in Islam and say hey look guys jihad slavery in a huge part of what you know the Quran and the hadith they're all about hey how about animal sacrifice let's throw that in - hey guys you know it's 21st century garbage most of the world's major religions really have no capacity for amendment and because we use the word amendment in American politics so often I think we forget just really what it means but Buddhism is very radically and fundamentally open to amendment because it began as the most radical and fundamental attempt at amending the religions that existed before it in ancient India