Is Buddhism Positive or Negative

When one objectively evaluates the history of the World civilizations, and the impact that religions have had on them, one discerns that perhaps more often than not Religion had a negative impact – that Religion had served in effect as a destroyer – an agent of chaos and eventual mass misery – causing a decimation of population levels to almost the level of genocide. We would be hard pressed to suppose that such a thing could really be considered so good.

But people are more or less conditioned to believe that Religions always exercise a positive moral influence. We hear all the time from advocates who wish us to believe equally in all religions that all religions have an equally positive message. Well, this simply ignores the real differences between all of the various doctrines, but in regards to this particular essay, it ignores history. The messages of the most recent Religions (over the last several thousand years, that is) have mostly been negative.

Now, it’s not essential to the character of Religion that it HAS TO BE negative, that is, at cross purposes to Civilization and the Collective Organization of Humanity. Indeed, some of the earliest of the World Religions had been formulated specifically to promote the moral needs of Civilization. Zoroastrianism, as a prime example, actually formulated and elaborated upon the concepts of Morality, taking the side of the Good. However, most of the current World Religions formed up IN REACTION to the Civilizations of their time. Yeah, yeah, yeah… civilizations can turn bad, corrupt, evil (we should know). But the problem is if Religion embeds too much detail in its doctrine, history, anecdotes, traditions that can be construed as Anti-Civilization, then, no matter how much that Religion tries to reform itself down the road, there will always be fundamentalist pressures exerted toward the effect of being Anti-Civilization. After all, many people will simplistically always believe that Original is better – that any well considered elaboration of the Belief System, if it comes subsequent to, must only be a ‘corruption’ of the original teaching, and so if the Founder of their Religion was Anti-Civilization, well, so they would be also. The problem with this is that any Religion founded on the premises of being Anti-Civilization will never be able to formulate and maintain a Civilization of its own – it will have too many internal contradictions. Every generation of Theologian and Scholar that tries to steer the Religion more toward being Pro-Civilization will be met with various waves of uneducated Fundamentalists who simply know within their unreflective and unimproved minds, ‘for a fact’, that the Original Founder of their Religion was perfectly correct in hating and opposing Society and its Establishment.

In this context we must realize that the Original Buddha was trying to pull down a Civilization. He was reacting against the Vedantic Hinduism of the Aryan Brahmins. Though he was an Aryan himself, he was of the Warrior Caste (being a Prince), and resented the Brahmins because they were able to exercise so much relative power of their own. He saw this is an incidence of corruption and whether he specifically intended to destroy his host Civilization or not, that was the direction in which his followers took his Religion. Any Society that became Buddhist, disintegrated.

Yes, no Civilization was able to make much progress with Buddhism as their founding and central Religion. We have small hinterland communities remaining as veritable fossilized vestiges, but no Buddhist Civilization remains. History shows us not much more than Barbarian Regimes that established themselves with War and lasted only until a more powerful Barbarian Band swept in to drive them out. The Kushan Empire, in Northern India, with a strong influence from Zoroastrianism, did much in trying to recreate Buddhism in a Positive Way by advocating Mahayana Buddhism, which had come out of South India, also from Empires that had endeavored to make Buddhism more Civilization-Friendly.

Where Original Buddhism was so very hedonistically egocentric with its over-emphasis upon the individual to the neglect of Society and the Collective, Mahayana Buddhism took the focus off the individual and returned the center of attention to the Universal, and in Moral terms concentrated upon the virtue of social Compassion. Yes, I could not agree more with the positive direction they took and I truly admire the elegance of their well thought out doctrines; however, as I have said above, the Original Message could never be entirely left behind. While the scholars and the schooled theologians might all get aboard the New Improved Religion, there would still remain the dangerous masses as well as the Class of the Stupid Rich and Wealthy who would always find a way to use the Original Doctrines as an excuse for justifying whatever selfishness they would have in mind when they would deliberately take actions to subvert their host Civilizations.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Original Buddhism was its emphasis on Quietism – the withdraw from positive social behaviors into an isolating Meditation. Mahayana Buddhism was never able to delete Meditation from its Religion ( it just seems so primary and essential… when you mention Buddhism, who doesn’t think ‘meditation’), just as they could never drop the Gautama Buddha – discredit him and drop him from the Religion, but had to retain him, or they would lose the cachet of being “Buddhist”. It reminds me of a later Buddhist Story of two Zen Monks – the one saying to the other “If you see the Buddha on the Road, kill Him”. Mahayana Buddhism, at least at the elite level, knew that Buddha had not been of the Mahayana persuasion – that there were two different Buddhisms entirely, a right one and a wrong one, and that the man Gautama Buddha had been wrong – or rather that his Philosophy, though wonderfully adapted for tearing down a Civilization, was arranged poorly for sustaining one.

The lesson here is that Religions cannot be reformed, as there will always be Fundamentalist Reactions that press for the re-adoption of what had been the Original. So any of the Major World Religions that had started in opposition to their host Civilizations, as corrupt as they may have been, will forever be abrasive and contrary to Civilization, as virtuous and enlightened as they may now be. If the Religion was created to be a weapon, it will always remain a weapon, whether there is a deserving target or not.

Christianity had the same problem. Early Christianity, as pure Paulism attacked the Roman Empire, going so far as to reject ALL moral obligations, with its Doctrines of Salvation and Forgiveness of Sin. Perhaps Paulist Christianity was a reaction to Zoroastrian Morals – Salvation and Forgiveness of Sins being a rejection of Moral Responsibility. Law was said to be obsolete. But when Christianity became Established after Constantine, and especially after Gregory, really the First Pope, they tried to forget the original Christian-Paulist intransigence by emplacing a Moral Marianism and a very controlled dispensation of Salvation and Forgiveness that now depended upon the Sacraments of Confession and especially of Atonement and Obedience to Church Authority. Yes, while the Bishops, forever Paulists, never once in their long History ever moved an inch from an almost absolute putrid level of stinking corruption, the Common People were expected to live moral lives, at least to the point where the overall Society was deemed to be optimally healthy. After all, how else can you run a Civilization? But after the invention of the printing press and the vernacular Bibles became an affordable commodity for any half literate family, again the widespread awareness of Paulist Doctrine resulted in a huge rebellion against both Morality and Civilization. Fundamentalism vs. Civilization. Salvation and the Forgiveness of Sins would give us the Slave Trade, Rum Running, the Factory System, and the most merciless exploitation of man by man that we now call Capitalism (really, wage slavery) – it would be the highest success Barbarianism had ever achieved.

Yes, some Barbarians are doing very well. However we must keep in mind that Barbarism depends upon, indeed, it is definable in terms of its limited population densities. Any time a Barbarian Society approaches even a slight tension from a lack of elbow room – competition for land, positions of influence, etc, either positive institutions will instigate, or the lack of preventative institutions will allow for various means of De-Population – Wars, Civil Rebellions, Plagues, Famines. The way Capitalists talk of ‘necessary’ business cycles when discussing Recessions and Depressions (where only poor people actually die of starvation and exposure), so it is that Barbarian Societies (I won’t call them Civilizations) depend upon ‘necessary’ cycles of Population Burn Off. Note all the various Wars and Revolutions in the West since the Fall of Catholic Civilization. When Capitalism brags of its success, we must take into account how many people are killed off so that the survivors may suppose themselves living in such a ‘perfect’ system. We have all heard of the Example of the ‘Lifeboat’ – more room for passengers than can be provided with food and water. Well, when the 7 people in the Lifeboat throw 3 of themselves overboard, yes, the Survivors are certainly more comfortable than before, but it hardly makes for a perfect Model for Social Living. The Goal of Religion, for the benefit of Civilization, should be to arrange that all 7 people in the Lifeboat be provided for. To insist that it cannot be done, well… that’s simply ‘barbaric’.

If every one of the Religions now popular have compromised credentials, and would eventually cause more harm than good, than the only viable alternative is to start afresh with an entirely new Religion, consciously formulated so that there is not the least hint of opposition to Collectivity, Society, and Civilization. No right to bear arms, or oppose tyranny, or rise up against any imaginable injustice – all such claptrap is mostly used as an excuse for self-interested violence. What Bandit hasn’t some excuse for his pillaging and his killings? They quote scripture while they kill, but remember to fill their saddlebags with gold candlesticks before they ride home. In the future we should be absolutely certain there is not the least trace of any such justification for anti-social behavior in anything that could be construed as Scripture or Religious Tradition. No more excuses.

Now, where Buddhism isn’t especially violent, except for how monks must now be justifying their riots and their attempts to overthrow their host governments (for reasons as small as raising commodity prices to Market levels… which the Western Media refers to as ‘Pro-Democracy’ Protests), still traditional Buddhism does little to uphold Civilization. As mentioned above, too much influence in Buddhism goes toward influencing the individual to abandon Society and Public Service. They lose Civilization by default. While the Good People meditate, the Bandits ride free as the wind.

As a present example of dysfunction we can refer to the ongoing career of Ram Bomjon, the ‘Buddha Boy’ of Nepal. If he were to become an influential World Religious Leader, I would suspect the end result to be negative for a number of reasons: as a Buddhist he tacitly concedes that the Original Buddha was a positive exemplary character worth emulating and that the Original Doctrines can’t entirely be rejected. No matter what he himself says, people will simply think that he must be endorsing the same old generic Buddhism that had never so far helped any Civilization. Then we have his own actions which go toward supporting all of the old negatives. Just consider, what kind of example is he giving us with his Six Year Meditation. Should we suppose then that all teenagers should drop out of school and meditate? Well, if only they would, but, again, following Rom Bomjon’s example, they would think themselves free to come and go as they please. History will tell us of his Six Year Meditation in Silence and Fasting, that he wondered around the jungle, spoke to friends, gave speeches to assembled crowds, and when he became uncomfortable living among the trees decided to have a nice cozy apartment built for himself. And who can really fast if they can snack on ‘medicinal herbs’ whenever they like, for, after all, isn’t that just another way to call a ‘salad’? Anyway, so far of what we have seen of Ram Bomjon’s initiatives, it is not likely the makings of a Religion that will do Civilization any favors.

If Ram Bomjon is serious, he will have to renounce Buddhism, even to the extent of asserting that Gautama Buddha was something of a over-hyped Media-Guru of his Day, just as any former Christian, to do any good, would have to renounce Christianity as actually being Paulism, and that Paul was the Anti-Christ.

The World needs a New Religion and it has got to be really new. And this time, no mistakes.