Losing My Religion

[qatar]

I was recently asked why I stopped considering myself Buddhist. My response:

The first answer that popped into my mind was the last few lines of a poem by the iconoclastic Zen monk Ikkyu:
To harden into a Buddha is wrong;
All the more I think so
When I look at a stone Buddha.To answer the question more completely, I think I have to recount my

Comments

[anonymous]

The short version (unofficial, not approved by Marjorie).

1. Believing in supernatural shit is questionable dubious merit.
2. Ethics and morality don't need religion, so get rid of it.
3. Using religious words in symbolic ways makes shit confusing and ought to be generally avoided.

*ecafkcuf*

[anonymous]

I don't understand. There are several reality-based conclusions in the above writing. What exactly is backward for you? Surely not those.

*ecafkcuf*

[qatar]

lol, it's hard to imagine this in reverse without it being the story of a person who loses their self-confidence, stops engaging in ethical reasoning and then feels the weight of self-deception fall onto their shoulders. But I'm going to assume you just mean the atheist -> Buddhist -> Christian part. ;-) I'd be interested to hear your version in more detail sometime.

[roseandsigil]

I find Buddhism fascinating in that I can view it is a nonreligion

[dachte]

Buddhist-inspired nonreligious philosophy is unusually honest in its understanding of human nature. There's a lot of good stuff to be found when the christian heritage of western thought is understood well enough to see it and when we, through history or creativity, walk a ways in other directions - while my first experience with this was trying to understand ancient greek morality (particularly the role of hubris in that), buddhism made a more lasting impression. I'm not sure if I owe more to Freud or to Buddhism, but both are great starts for understanding big parts of human nature - if I ever meet someone and have kids, I suspect I'd raise them based heavily around ideas extracted from those traditions.

[qatar]

I've never put a ton of thought into what parts of Buddhism are not just inherited from Hinduism (other than the gods), as you can probably tell from my emphasis above on things like monkey mind and one-pointed mind, which I believe are really more concepts from yogic meditation than from the Buddha. However, coincidentally, I finished reading Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist last night, and he addresses this very question in his conclusion:

"What is it in Gotama's teaching that was distinctively his own? There are four core elements of the Dhamma that cannot be derived from the Indian culture of his time. These are

1. The principle of 'this-conditionality, conditioned arising.'
   
2. The process of the Four Noble Truths.
   
3. The practice of mindful awareness.
   
4. The power of self-reliance."

I'm not sure if Hindus would appreciate hearing that they don't practice mindful awareness. :-p

[kit_ping]

A very good read, thank you! Quite a lot of it sounded familiar, I must admit. :) And also thank you for the poem; I like it a lot.

[gustavolacerda]

Thanks for sharing. I think I identify with the vertigo. Despite not having a similar story with religion, I think most of us have had "viewquakes" at some point in our lives.

Can you list some of the forces that attached you to the Christian faith and to your self-image as a Christian?