Can an atheist be a Buddhist?

 

This man (above) is Doug Smith. In the video I've put at the top, he's a bit headlong, and full of references to Buddhist scriptures which mindfulnessistas with no spiritual or religious attitudes may find a bit tedious. However, the question seems important to me, and he really gets a lot into ten minutes!

Some people who talk to me about meditation "and stuff" describe Buddhism as "just another religion."

Well, it is and it isn't. Or, it can be if you want to worship, but it doesn't have to be if you don't. Ideally flexible, perhaps, for our uncertain times?

This man:

as you can see, profiles practice; Buddhism as something you do to liberate yourself and live more fully and more compassionately, not Buddism as a set of metaphysical beliefs. This book:

 I found really helpful- concise, and mercifully free of complicated Pali/Sanskrit terms. (I'm grateful to all those scholars/writers who have used their tremendous scholarship to interpret ancient Buddhist texts and teachings so we can benefit from them without needing to learn ancient languages and understand polysyllabic terminology! The Interpreters.)

There's no real reason why you can't follow Buddhist precepts and also follow one of the Religions of the Book; there's no reason why you can't do so and be an atheist. Suit yourself.  It's what you do that really matters. (Though in some of the less tolerant versions of the Religions of the Book, you'd best keep quiet about your Buddism - they get very excitable about "heresy.")

This bloke's 

teachings are available to all of us, thanks to the Interpreters. You can worship him, if it suits you - or not. He said to his followers when he was close to death:

"Think not for me. I am gone. Work out diligently your own salvation. Each one of you is just what I am. I am nothing but one of you. What I am today is what I made myself" (i.e. enlightened, liberated, awakened.) 

At least, that's one version, reportedly, of what he said. After all, it was four or five hundred years before Jesus, and there's enough scholarly argument about what Jesus said. In some versions, Buddha said "light your own lamp" or "be your own lamp." Same thing.

But above all, it seems, no claims of supernaturalismo: "I am nothing but one of you." That'll do for me!

 

AA Gill on being a reluctant Christian

To fill the aching void between Christmas and New Year's Eve hangovers, here's someone (recently late and widely lamented) writing with wit and insight into a state more people than we might imagine find themselves in.

 "I am a reluctant Christian. I was once interviewed by Lynn Barber and I told her I was a Christian but not a homosexual . . . she didn’t believe either. “You can’t be a Christian,” she said, in her parlour maid’s voice, “you just can’t.” Well I can, that’s the thing with religion. Absolutely anyone can. “But you’re not remotely Christian,” she continued. “It’s another contrarian affectation.” What, like bow ties? “Yes.”

"I wish it were. Having a dose of religion, in my milieu, at this time, is as awkward and inconvenient as not having it in 17th-century Norwich. It would be so much more socially easy to be a vain fashion atheist.

"I was brought up by atheists. I honestly thought I was immune to religiosity. And I didn’t catch it in a Methodist way after signing the pledge, I began to have vague spiritual unease because of art at the Slade and that really was contrarian. I’d go and sit in the back of churches and feel wordlessly moved.

"There was a family friend, an Irish Jesuit and university professor, who occasionally took me out to lunch and I would confide in him. He was a radical libertarian theologist, which was exciting, and he said if at all possible religion was something to be avoided.

Who would willingly lumber themselves with a book full of medieval rules, superstitions and the possibility of an eternity’s agony by choice? Far better, he said, to adopt a general humanitarian goodness, be thoughtful, charitable and kind and trust in the benevolence of providence to see you all right. He pointed out that, statistically, religious belief had no actuarial benefits: you didn’t get to live longer, or have less cancer; religious people didn’t have prettier spouses, politer children, more sex — quite possibly less sex — nicer offices or better weather. They did, on the other hand, get guilt (point of order here: it’s the Catholics and Jews who get guilt, Protestants and Muslims get shame). And of course remorse.

"You don’t really believe that, do you, I said. “Adrian, I wish to God I did, but I can’t because the space is already filled with a belief in God.” I think I’ve got it too, I said. “Which flavour are you?” Well, that’s rather the thing, I’ve got a formless faith.

He said: “If you want my advice, go with what’s closest to home. Faith is ethereal, the practice of faith is cultural. If you become a Zoroastrian or a follower of Cao Dai, a marvellous Vietnamese Christianity that believes Muhammed, Moses, Louis Pasteur, Shakespeare, Lenin and Victor Hugo are all saints, then you’re going to have to learn a lot of stuff . . . and get over a whole lot of other stuff before you get to the good stuff and it’ll have very little to do with your soul.

"“Weren’t you baptised into the Church of Scotland? I’d stick with Protestantism. Actually, I think it rather suits you . . . low to middle. Anglo-Catholicism would bring out the worst in you, all the dressing-up would get out of control and you’d become an architectural pedant doing brass rubbing.”

"So that’s essentially what I am — a lazy, middle-range Protestant with a mildly pedantic crush on the King James Version and the Book of Common Prayer."

with thanks to Weeping Cross' blog "The Hearth of Mopsus"

http://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/no-blinding-light-to-be-had-anywhere.html

Sorting out some words, "God" and others - Swarthmoor 2

Acknowledging that we were from differing backgrounds and to some degree different belief systems (two of us weren't Quakers), the tutors used an excellent exercise early on. We were asked to identify terms that gave us trouble when people discuss their beliefs. "Lord," for example, is famously difficult for some feminist believers in God. We were also asked to suggest terms we felt more comfortable with when dealing with, er, well, you know - the Big Supreme Idea thing. 

 I'm well past the stage at which people talking about God troubles me, in a general way. I think I also grasp the idea that God can be a metaphor for something other than the sort of God I believed in for a while in early adolescence (that's not a sneer, just a fact.) 

But if I'm in discussions in which "God" is used a lot, it does rather push me back out of it, because behind the word still sits an anthropomorphised image like the chap above. I have no connection with him.

 Gods can be believed in as actual entities in a supernatural world, or symbols of universal forces, or...I don't know, maybe there is a god called Ganesh with an elephant's head somewhere up there, but it seems, to my efforts at rational thought, and it feels, to my emotions and intuitions, unlikely.

We discussed the concept of a Spirit, the dove descending in Christian iconography, which could never be more than a symbol to me - and that is not necessarily to devalue it. 

 We talked about prayer. That's a problematical term for me, if it means talking to God.  What God? Why doesn't he answer, when it's obviously a prayer for the general good? You'll be familiar with this feeling:

 to which believers have many answers, I know, but they tend not to work for me.

However, I felt happy with the idea of an inner light, with waiting in silence for a presence, a feeling of connection with the total isness of everything, the universe, It - a reality beyond words and concepts.

This post isn't about beliefs, mine or anyone else's, it's about belief terms.  We sorted out the ones that might get in the way of our discussions and silent explorations, and the ones that wouldn't. That was really helpful, for someone amongst believers who, by and large, shared beliefs I don't have.