Criticism of Buddhism
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Criticism of Buddhism has taken numerous different forms, including philosophical and rational criticisms, but also criticism of praxis, such as that its practitioners act in ways contrary to Buddhist principles or that those principles systemically marginalize women. There are many sources of criticism, both ancient and modern, stemming from other religions, the non-religious, and other Buddhists.
Doctrine[edit]
Karma[edit]
Buddhist karma and karmic reincarnation are feared to potentially lead to fatalism and victim blaming. Paul Edwards says that karma does not provide a guide to action. Whitley Kaufman, in his recent book, cross-examines that there is a very tense relationship between karma and free will, and that if karma existed, then evil would not exist, because all victims of evil just get "deserved".[1]
Whitley Kaufman offers five criticisms of karma:[2]
- The Memory Problem: People have never found reliable evidence for the existence of reincarnation, and therefore people have no way of knowing the specifics of the evils they have done in their past lives, and naturally they cannot atone for them, which brings the whole theory closer to the theory of vengeance.
- The Proportionality Problem: It is difficult to determine the evaluative relationship between a person's good and bad behavior.
- The Infinite Regress Problem: Karma leads to the problem of infinite regression, where one cannot know where the first karma came from.
- The Problem of Explaining Death: Since death is often viewed as the greatest evil in Buddhism, but everyone inevitably experiences death, this may weaken the rigor of the karma discourse.
- The Free Will Problem: Karma's existence is somewhat contrary to free will.
Miracles[edit]
Buddhist texts contain a range of paranormal phenomena, such as the Buddha's mysterious origins, and some Buddhists claim that the Buddha himself levitated while meditating. Scottish philosopher David Hume, in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, was skeptical of all religious miracles and advocated treating them in the same light.[3][4]
Women in Buddhism[edit]
Women are often depicted in traditional Buddhist texts as deceitful and lustful. The Buddha himself said in an early text[a] that a woman's body is "a vessel of impurity, full of stinking filth. It is like a rotten pit ... like a toilet, with nine holes pouring all sorts of filth."[5] Isaline Blew Horner and Diana Mary Paul are worried about the discrimination against almswomen and laywomen in Indian Buddhism.[6] Kawahashi Noriko observes that the contemporary Buddhist community in Japan is rife with two views, one that women are inherently incompetent and the other that women need to be dependent on men for their liberation; and that the Japanese Buddhist community has consistently ignored women themselves, as well as feminist critique.[7]
See also[edit]
- Bulssi Japbyeon
- Index of Buddhism-related articles
- Secular Buddhism
- Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism
- Naraka (Buddhism)
- Nichirenism
- Buddhism and violence
Notes[edit]
- ^ The text is from the 转女身经 (Transfiguration of the Female Body Sutra), one version in Chinese originally reads: "此身[女身]便為不淨之器，臭穢充滿，亦如枯井、空城、破村[...] 此身如廁，九孔流出種種不淨".
References[edit]
- ^ Burley, Mikel (June 2014). "Karma, Morality, and Evil". Philosophy Compass. 9 (6): 415–430. doi:10.1111/phc3.12138. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
- ^ Kaufman, Whitley R. P. (2005). "Karma, Rebirth, and the Problem of Evil". Philosophy East and West. 55 (1): 15–32. ISSN 0031-8221. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
- ^ Rockwood, Nathan (December 2023). "Locke and Hume on competing miracles". Religious Studies. 59 (4): 603–617. doi:10.1017/S0034412522000464. ISSN 0034-4125. Retrieved 21 April 2024.
- ^ The Cambridge Companion to Miracles. Cambridge University Press. 2011. pp. 11–12. ISBN 978-0-521-89986-4.
- ^ Faure, Bernard (2003). "The Rhetoric of Subordination". The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity, and Gender. Princeton University Press. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-691-09171-6.
- ^ Yuichi, Kajiyama (1982). "Women in Buddhism". The Eastern Buddhist. 15 (2): 53. ISSN 0012-8708. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
- ^ Noriko, Kawahashi (2003). "Feminist Buddhism as Praxis: Women in Traditional Buddhism". Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. 30 (3/4): 293–294, 300–302. ISSN 0304-1042. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
Further reading[edit]
- Tenzin, Kencho (2006). "Shankara: A Hindu Revivalist or a Crypto-Buddhist?". Religious Studies Theses. Georgia State University. doi:10.57709/1062066 – via ScholarWorks.
- Baskind, James; Bowring, Richard (2015). The Myōtei Dialogues: A Japanese Christian Critique of Native Traditions. Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-30729-2.
- Glenn Wallis (2018). A Critique of Western Buddhism - Ruins of the Buddhist Real. Bloomsbury Collections. ISBN 9781474283557.
