Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

Buddhism is popular among the rich and celebrity in America for this reason. It reduces any of their bad actions to technique and inherently controllable choices.

 

That's true as far as it goes. It's pretty popular with non-celebrities and upper middle class suburbanites who want to crib peaceful Zen indifference without any of the rigor.

So Westerners leave out the effortful stuff. Nobody is hitting them with a stick if they fall asleep while "meditating."

This is now referred to by most major retailers as 'mindfulness.'

But the real struggle with Buddhist practice in America is that all suffering is attributable to wanting - and our entire economy is based upon wanting.

 

As a species, our ingenuity always gets out front of our philosophy.

Always.

 

Edward Larson made a career out of asking how science and Protestant Christianity work in America. "Summer For The Gods" is a good read and an eye-opener for anyone who bought the hype about The Scopes Trial.

FWIW, the UMC was one of the denominations that was making an effort to foster a love of learning before the mess in Rhea County, TN.

edited to add: @Alma, well yes and no.
@Azrael, if we demanded rigor based on sacred texts and wisdom, America would be a very different place.

 

The modern era wasn't really about ingenuity, even if it leveraged ingenuity. It was the fusion of the industrial and enlightenment ages going to its logical, deadly terminus. We damn near annihilated ourselves more than once trying to perfect the world and mankind.

Postmodernism is absurd for any number of reasons, but its general rejection of a uniform truth at least backed us down from total war. My fear is we're inching back to an embrace of scientific modernism, again, with the climate change strike cults. The cheap moralism of that scientific movement just might spawn a real lunatic leader who plays out evolution to the conclusion of selective extermination and mass infertility to "save the planet." Just as analytics has helped render baseball more and more artless, science, I fear, will produce of a bottom line of a meager existence in service of "survival of species."

 

That's a struggle for Christians as well - coveting thy neighbor's wife and/or possessions.

 

It’s not my impression your take - the predominant Western take - bothers hard core Buddhists much.

 

So is Scientology.

 

Arew you suggesting this is cafeteria Buddhism?