Is Buddhism new age?

[TheAtheist]

Well first i’d like to thank the rest of the CAF community for not sweeping 5,000+ years worth of philosophy, tradition, and spiritual practice underneath a vast generalization that stretches not over that period of time but geography and cultures which show much in terms of local variations.

No i’m not a Buddhist. But a segment of my family is, as are another Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs… (Yeah, take a wild guess where i’m from ).

I did want to make a comment about both the whole New Age and Religious Atheism bit that seems to always pop up as a lingering assumption on so many boards.

Anyone kinda notice how this is all coming from the same source?

Both groups are essentially rejecting what I guess could be called “standard” Western religious culture - Christianity and Judaism.

“Why” that is occurring could fill up several books. But I wanted to point out something:

To quote an American friend of mine, “You can take the girl out (insert a state you dislike), but you can’t take (state) out of the girl.”

The religious atheist and the New Ager left the boundaries of your cultural sphere, hopped on a mental boat and found something that resonated with them…

…and then proceeded to twist either the teachings or intentionality/focus of the practice to favor their specific hobby horses…

ex 1: A friend of mine is an adherent of Tibetan Buddhism (for those of interest, a Gelug like the Dalai Lama). I visited his lama and had a very long conversation about a Western convert…who…well… could not stop talking about “theistic hatred.”

He dragged his “issues” with you guys into his new vocation/belief to the point that it started to twist his own understanding of what they were trying to teach him. Or to use the language they might subscribe to, his obsession became a type of “mental poison.”

He eventually dropped out and started practicing “Buddhism, the Right Way.”

Sounds a lot like your “Cafetarians” doesn’t it?

ex. 2: Swap the Buddhist Lama and the Atheist with a Daoist Priest and a New Ager and you have the same exact story. New Ager I guess read the DaoDeJing and Chuang-Tzu, hated Southern Baptists ( I guess he was on?e), wound up in Sichuan province in China learning from a legitimate Daoist priest.

Except that when the Daoist priest in question started talking about socio-moral values of the family (aligns quite closely with you guys conception of Natural Law)…well… New Ager wasn’t going to have any of that.

So he went of practice, “Daoism, the Right Way.”

And so… when Mr. “Buddhism, the Right Way,” and Mr. “Daoism, the Right Way” show back up in your neck of the woods and declare themselves to be Buddhists or Daoists…

…well a ton of you start believing it.

And that’s the part I find rather disturbing.

 

[aspirant]

And so… when Mr. “Buddhism, the Right Way,” and Mr. “Daoism, the Right Way” show back up in your neck of the woods and declare themselves to be Buddhists or Daoists…

…well a ton of you start believing it.

And that’s the part I find rather disturbing.

Agreed!

I especially know what you mean about that “ax to grind” mentality. I perceive it in a lot of disaffected converts-from-one-religious-group-to-another (and sometimes disaffected converts-to-none). (Not all converts, of course, have such an attitude.) I have even been in that mental space before, myself. And you are quite right to say that people still in that attitude are often poor representatives of the religions they have joined, because they are often overrepresenting some elements and underrepresenting others. I don’t mean to ascribe bad faith here-- they do not necessarily intend this. They’re just not fully integrated yet. Whether they will become so depends a lot on what they do from there. It can be a long and in some cases difficult road.

I’m rambling now. Anyway, thanks! Good post.

 

[Denise1957]

I think that the New Age movement is fairly recent, while Buddhism has been an organized eastern religion for a long time. I agree that there are those New Agers who borrow from buddhism. Many New Agers don’t like or agree with the idea of a personal God, so Buddhism, which also doesn’t believe in a personal God, might resonate with some New Agers. Also, there’s reincarnation, which is another common point of reference between New Agers and some (I don’t think all) Buddhists. The Dalai Llama believes in reincarnation, though.

The thing about New Ageism is that its adherents believe that they can believe whatever they like, unless they join a group which stresses specific beliefs. And many of the New Agers that I know don’t ever settle on a specific belief system, but rather they spend a lifetime just exploring new ideas, religions, and belief systems, meditatons, etc. I think, though, that some Buddhist groups do have very specific beliefs, which goes against the “anything goes” aspect of many New Age adherents. In this respect, there may be Buddhist beliefs that some New Agers will balk at.

 

[aspirant]

Also, there’s reincarnation, which is another common point of reference between New Agers and some (I don’t think all) Buddhists. The Dalai Llama believes in reincarnation, though.

Some Westerners who believe in reincarnation seem to view it as a positive, desirable thing, though. Hindus and Buddhists tend to view rebirth as something which can and probably will happen but which one should seek to end or transcend.

I think, though, that some Buddhist groups do have very specific beliefs, which goes against the “anything goes” aspect of many New Age adherents. In this respect, there may be Buddhist beliefs that some New Agers will balk at.

Definitely.

 

[Denise1957]

Some Westerners who believe in reincarnation seem to view it as a positive, desirable thing, though. Hindus and Buddhists tend to view rebirth as something which can and probably will happen but which one should seek to end or transcend.

I agree. I think that most New Agers, at least here in the U.S., tend to see reincarnation as a pausible explanation for the reality of suffering, or why we suffer (which ties in with the idea of karma). They don’t necessarily care about what Buddhists or Hindus really believe, because American New Agers tend to make everything up as they go along.

As an aside, there are some commonalities between Buddhism and Catholicism - the main one being the idea that we should, if possible, detach ourselves from material things. Catholicism, though, teaches that in detaching ourselves from material things, we are then to attach ourselves to something - or rather someone - else instead - namely, God. While Buddhism of course teaches that its adherents, in detaching from material things, should instead attach themselves to nothing, or nothingness, because attachment in any form is not good, or it may lead to rebirth. It’s a huge distinction, and an important one. I hope that New Agers can understand the difference.

 

[Dorothy]

Well first i’d like to thank the rest of the CAF community for not sweeping 5,000+ years worth of philosophy, tradition, and spiritual practice underneath a vast generalization that stretches not over that period of time but geography and cultures which show much in terms of local variations.

No i’m not a Buddhist. But a segment of my family is, as are another Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs… (Yeah, take a wild guess where i’m from ).

I did want to make a comment about both the whole New Age and Religious Atheism bit that seems to always pop up as a lingering assumption on so many boards.

Anyone kinda notice how this is all coming from the same source?

Both groups are essentially rejecting what I guess could be called “standard” Western religious culture - Christianity and Judaism.

“Why” that is occurring could fill up several books. But I wanted to point out something:

To quote an American friend of mine, “You can take the girl out (insert a state you dislike), but you can’t take (state) out of the girl.”

The religious atheist and the New Ager left the boundaries of your cultural sphere, hopped on a mental boat and found something that resonated with them…

…and then proceeded to twist either the teachings or intentionality/focus of the practice to favor their specific hobby horses…

ex 1: A friend of mine is an adherent of Tibetan Buddhism (for those of interest, a Gelug like the Dalai Lama). I visited his lama and had a very long conversation about a Western convert…who…well… could not stop talking about “theistic hatred.”

He dragged his “issues” with you guys into his new vocation/belief to the point that it started to twist his own understanding of what they were trying to teach him. Or to use the language they might subscribe to, his obsession became a type of “mental poison.”

He eventually dropped out and started practicing “Buddhism, the Right Way.”

Sounds a lot like your “Cafetarians” doesn’t it?

ex. 2: Swap the Buddhist Lama and the Atheist with a Daoist Priest and a New Ager and you have the same exact story. New Ager I guess read the DaoDeJing and Chuang-Tzu, hated Southern Baptists ( I guess he was on?e), wound up in Sichuan province in China learning from a legitimate Daoist priest.

Except that when the Daoist priest in question started talking about socio-moral values of the family (aligns quite closely with you guys conception of Natural Law)…well… New Ager wasn’t going to have any of that.

So he went of practice, “Daoism, the Right Way.”

And so… when Mr. “Buddhism, the Right Way,” and Mr. “Daoism, the Right Way” show back up in your neck of the woods and declare themselves to be Buddhists or Daoists…

…well a ton of you start believing it.

And that’s the part I find rather disturbing.

Thank you for the insights you provided!

Those who are part of the Judeo-Christian religion need to be reminded that their beliefs are based on Divine Revelation. God himself had to reveal himself to mankind in ways that only He can. (Abraham, Moses, etc., to the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.)

Other belief systems did the best they could with what their intellect and imagination could devise. And there is some truth in it, but NOT the whole truth. It is up to myself and other Christians to truly allow Our Lord Jesus Christ to sanctify us, so that others will recognize the Light of Christ in us. Much prayer and living out of the faith will enable others to accept the Truth, as Divinely revealed.

 

[aspirant]

While Buddhism of course teaches that its adherents, in detaching from material things, should instead attach themselves to nothing, or nothingness

This appears to depend somewhat on the kind of Buddhism one is talking about. For example, Theravadins only speak of nibbana in what we might call “apophatic” terminology (not this, not that), but it’s not nothingness, I think it’s more like “no thing.” I think these are difficult things to discuss, because we don’t have a common terminology.

At any rate, I think we agree that a lot of Buddhist ideas adopted piecemeal by other folks probably come to mean something rather different than they do to Buddhists, kind of like Christian ideas adopted piecemeal by non-Christians probably come to mean something rather different than they do to Christians.

 

[TemplarKnight1]

 

[Auntie_A]

Well first i’d like to thank the rest of the CAF community for not sweeping 5,000+ years worth of philosophy, tradition, and spiritual practice underneath a vast generalization that stretches not over that period of time but geography and cultures which show much in terms of local variations.

No i’m not a Buddhist. But a segment of my family is, as are another Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs… (Yeah, take a wild guess where i’m from ).

I did want to make a comment about both the whole New Age and Religious Atheism bit that seems to always pop up as a lingering assumption on so many boards.

Anyone kinda notice how this is all coming from the same source?

Both groups are essentially rejecting what I guess could be called “standard” Western religious culture - Christianity and Judaism.

“Why” that is occurring could fill up several books. But I wanted to point out something:

To quote an American friend of mine, “You can take the girl out (insert a state you dislike), but you can’t take (state) out of the girl.”

The religious atheist and the New Ager left the boundaries of your cultural sphere, hopped on a mental boat and found something that resonated with them…

…and then proceeded to twist either the teachings or intentionality/focus of the practice to favor their specific hobby horses…

ex 1: A friend of mine is an adherent of Tibetan Buddhism (for those of interest, a Gelug like the Dalai Lama). I visited his lama and had a very long conversation about a Western convert…who…well… could not stop talking about “theistic hatred.”

He dragged his “issues” with you guys into his new vocation/belief to the point that it started to twist his own understanding of what they were trying to teach him. Or to use the language they might subscribe to, his obsession became a type of “mental poison.”

He eventually dropped out and started practicing “Buddhism, the Right Way.”

Sounds a lot like your “Cafetarians” doesn’t it?

ex. 2: Swap the Buddhist Lama and the Atheist with a Daoist Priest and a New Ager and you have the same exact story. New Ager I guess read the DaoDeJing and Chuang-Tzu, hated Southern Baptists ( I guess he was on?e), wound up in Sichuan province in China learning from a legitimate Daoist priest.

Except that when the Daoist priest in question started talking about socio-moral values of the family (aligns quite closely with you guys conception of Natural Law)…well… New Ager wasn’t going to have any of that.

So he went of practice, “Daoism, the Right Way.”

And so… when Mr. “Buddhism, the Right Way,” and Mr. “Daoism, the Right Way” show back up in your neck of the woods and declare themselves to be Buddhists or Daoists…

…well a ton of you start believing it.

And that’s the part I find rather disturbing.

WOW! You captured a major weakness in the American comprehension of any religion. “If the moral code inconveniences me, I can just throw it out, grab a sliver of the latest fashionable religion and start my own religion!”

This has been my cry to certain dabblers in my life for the past 40 years: “You are neither Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or Jew; you are an immature rebel.”

Thank you for your stories and sharing. You have been a breath of fresh air. If you write a book, please PM me. I’ll be in line at the booksigning.

Oh, and my “wild guess”, based on the Buddhists, Hindus, Jainists, and Sikhs in your family? You must be from Cuba.

 

[davidaugustinus]

I was a seriously practicing Zen Buddhist for more than a decade before coming home to the Catholic Church. My teachers used to rail and lament about New Age appropriations of Buddhist practices and concepts, and zealously guarded against such ideas taking hold among their students. The word “Zen” has especially been taken over by the New Age, so much so that just mentioning the word evokes candles, hot tubs, and tastefully serene bamboo gardens with bubbling streams, with the lilting sound of the shakuhachi flute floating in the air; in short, a kind of Japanese flavored sensuality based on self-gratification. It was kind of a joke to us who would spend entire week-long retreats sitting in meditation for 10-12 hours per day, facing a bare wall, in silence, knees and other joints on fire from sitting in some variant of the lotus posture. So, I would say that the New Age is as anathema to practicing Buddhists as it is to Catholics.

 

[rossum]

Some Westerners who believe in reincarnation seem to view it as a positive, desirable thing, though. Hindus and Buddhists tend to view rebirth as something which can and probably will happen but which one should seek to end or transcend.

Correct. The point of Buddhism is to attain enlightenment and so to avoid being reborn.

[The Buddha said:] “What do you think, monks: Which is greater, the tears you have shed while transmigrating and wandering this long, long time — crying and weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing — or the water in the four great oceans?”

“As we understand the Dhamma taught to us by the Blessed One, this is the greater: the tears we have shed while transmigrating and wandering this long, long time — crying and weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing — not the water in the four great oceans.”

"Excellent, monks. Excellent. It is excellent that you thus understand the Dhamma taught by me.

“This is the greater: the tears you have shed while transmigrating and wandering this long, long time — crying and weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing — not the water in the four great oceans.”

– Samyutta Nikaya 15.3, Assu sutta

As others have said, New Age religion incorporates some elements from Buddhism but Buddhism has a very long history before the New Agers discovered it.

rossum

 

[rossum]

It was kind of a joke to us who would spend entire week-long retreats sitting in meditation for 10-12 hours per day, facing a bare wall, in silence, knees and other joints on fire from sitting in some variant of the lotus posture. So, I would say that the New Age is as anathema to practicing Buddhists as it is to Catholics.

Exactly right:

ZEN IS BORING

Let’s face it. Zen is boring. You couldn’t find a duller, more tedious practice than Zazen. The philosophy is dry and unexciting. It’s amazing to me anyone reads this page at all. Don’t you people know you could be playing Tetris, right now? That there are a million free porno sites out there? Get a life, why don’t you?!

Joshu Sasaki, a Zen teacher from the Rinzai Sect, once said that Buddhist teachers always try to make students long for the Buddha World, but that if the students knew how really dry and tasteless the Buddha World actually was, they’d never want to go. He’s right. Look at Zen teachers. Not a one of them has any sense of fashion. They sit around staring at blank walls. Ask them about levitation, they won’t tell you. Ask them about life after death, they change the subject. Ask them about miracles and they start spouting nonsense about carrying buckets of water and chopping up fire wood. They go to bed early and wake up early. Zen is a philosophy for nerds.

Boredom is important. Most of your life is dull, tasteless and boring. If you practice Zazen, you learn a lot about boredom. I remember the first time I sat Zazen, I was real excited. I figured I’d be seeing visions of four armed Krishnas descending from the Heavens, or I’d be fading into The Void just like the old Beatles song, or reach Nirvana (whatever that was) or some great wonderful thing. But the clock just ticked away, my legs started aching, and stupid thoughts kept drifting by. Maybe I wasn’t doing it right, I thought. But no, year after year it was the same. Boring, boring, boring. After almost 20 years it’s still boring as Hell.

– Zen is Boring by Brad Warner

It is worth reading the whole essay. A definite antidote to the New Age approach to Zen.

rossum

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

Buddhism is very much new age. Even though it’s been around longer than christianity, look at it like this, it’s like the teens who like to wear retro clothing and glasses. It’s like the hipsters who wear rayban glasses even though they might or might not need them. Like myself I like to wear things that are retro, and use retro products. This revival of Buddhism will eventually fade away.

I don’t like the term New Age, firstly because it’s used rather dismissively by many Christians. Further, it’s another way of applying limiting templates to the manifold experience of God across different cultures, when in fact even among these differing cultures, each person’s experience is a world of its own.

You have said that the ideas that have come from this aggregate of other belief systems as being a passing fad, and I find this problematic, since many of these belief systems have outlived Christianity already by virtue of the fact that they are still around and came about long before Christianity, albeit Buddhism in particular only predates Christianity by about five hundred years. It is also problematic, because many of these New Age ideas also incorporate Christian thought as well, which means that Christianity is not uniquely insulated in regard to New Age thought. Christianity is part of the soup, and it’s possible that business as usual isn’t going to be on the menu much longer, as societies merge and our understanding of the world around us evolves in such a way that new perspectives start to come into focus. In my case, this new perspective involves an understanding that all belief systems are likely interlocking parts of a whole as seen from different vantage points. God, as seen by Pagans as being in the world around us, is a component of God, as seen by Hindus as being in ourselves, which is a component of God, as seen by Christians as Jesus, who in turn Himself said to see God like the Pagans in the world and people around us, and to see Him as Hindus do - in ourselves. I am adjusting my lens to see it all as one great expansive organism, which in the process of coming to know itself, has seen itself through the limited view of being this thing or that, when in fact this thing and that are simply constituent parts of the whole.

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

The starters of all other religions did not rise from the dead. (Mohammad, among others).

With the exceptions of Horus, Osiris, Attis, Mithra, and so on…

 

[InJesusItrust]

With the exceptions of Horus, Osiris, Attis, Mithra, and so on…

Has any other historical person rose from the dead?

 

[aspirant]

Has any other historical person rose from the dead?

According to the Bible, a few folks, yes.

 

[Forkfoot]

I don’t like the term New Age, firstly because it’s
used rather dismissively by many Christians.

That term gets regurgitated in this forum so much it’s becoming a parody of itself. The other day someone posted a quote from The Cloud of Unknowing here and somebody, unfamiliar with that book, told him to stick with Church-approved writings and stay away from New Age stuff.

 

[aspirant]

The other day someone posted a quote from The Cloud of Unknowing here and somebody, unfamiliar with that book, told him to stick with Church-approved writings and stay away from New Age stuff.

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

That term gets regurgitated in this forum so much it’s becoming a parody of itself. The other day someone posted a quote from The Cloud of Unknowing here and somebody, unfamiliar with that book, told him to stick with Church-approved writings and stay away from New Age stuff.

That 14th century New Age stuff is the most dangerous of all. Those monks with their aromatherapy, hot stones and hemp belts. I still see them at Whole Foods (usually behind the cash register).

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

Has any other historical person rose from the dead?

I know it’s not intentional, but you are mixing secular historical accounts of the fact that the man Jesus existed with the belief that He rose from the dead. One is a matter of record, and the other is a matter of faith. I am not saying that historical record necessarily has any more veracity than my beliefs about he nature of Jesus, but simply that in this case, the two are not the same thing. In two thousand years there will be plenty of historical accounts that many people in the 20th and 21st centuries believed they had seen Big Foot or aliens. It doesn’t mean that they did see Big Foot or aliens. It doesn’t mean that they didn’t.