Why do you say that - are you referencing something specific or just a point about his framing of existence? I just finished "a short history of decay"
Camus saw the problem (or got close to it) but kept it. He noticed the craving for meaning, noticed the world won't answer it, and then chose to hold on to the craving anyway and call that defiance freedom. That's just suffering with extra steps and rationalizing it.
The buddha didn't offer a "justification for existence." He pointed out that the demand for one is the problem (part of it anyway). You crave meaning, the craving hurts, so abandon the craving (not just for meaning and not by an act of will). Camus couldn't conceive of that, so he made a virtue out of carrying the boulder
The way you phrased your second block, particularly your last sentence is exceptional. I’m not sure if I agree with the substance (I’m pretty sure I’m about 90% there), but the phrasing is very emphatic.
A lot of discussions I’ve seen, and taken part in, when focusing on Camus and his cadre of fellows lead to a comparison between Buddhist thought and existentialist thought. I tend to side closer to the Buddhist outlook and acceptance of the ground truth of sunyata (often translated ‘emptiness’) versus the more modern tendency toward western Nihilism as a response to the Absurd. The depths of response in people and their dealings with these thoughts and feelings interest me, but I also like to watch people choosing between descriptions of Absurdity to try and make it a completely different concept to the Buddhist ideas.
I’m not sure I agree that ‘Camus couldn’t conceive of’ the Buddhist response to the inherent tension arising from craving ultimate meaning where none is possible; however, he and the other existentialists certainly went to great written lengths to seemingly avoid finding the Buddha’s answer.
I think there's a lot of comparison between existensialism and buddhism because a few of them seemed to respect the buddh, but also as far as philosophy goes, they were the closest to understanding the problem (similar to how the buddha did) - but the point im trying to make is that that is as far as any of them went.
That isn't to say it was intentional or to fault them for it, its only natural. What the buddha figured out goes in the opposite direction of how existence is structured. It's essentially impossible to stumble upon, and definitely impossible to figure out purely through thinking. If ones behavior doesn't change, it remains intellectual. In order to abandon craving, you have to not act on it. Otherwise there's no space between 'you' and 'it' so you could never see it for what it is.
That's moreso what i meant by "Camus couldn’t conceive of" - especially in this day and age, you can only get so far without someone else pointing it out. Who would possibly randomly think to just not act on any intention of body, speech, or mind that was rooted in craving? Its in our nature to not do that, so its normal that no one else has gotten there through philosophizing. Shoppenhaur had his whole denial of will thing but he just moved the goalposts and settled on more refined sensuality.
I would even be careful about settling that the buddhist outlook is about acceptance of the ground truth of suyata. Most of that idea comes from later traditions. It definitely is mentioned in the pali canon, but not as some universal ground truth - that often leads to a different dressing around the nihilism you mentioned. The buddha said all determined things are subject to change. All determined things are unsatisfactory. All phenomena are not-self. It's not like there is a nature of reality that is empty or something like that.
(replying to part of another comment you posted): its not about accepting ultimate reality or accepting anything really - quite the opposite. The buddha over and over again told people not to be content with 'progress' they had make. The goal is the inability to suffer amidst things that cause sufferring. Not to learn how to accept them, or quickly deal with them as they come up, as is commonly taught - its to make it so its impossible to suffer no matter what. That can only be done through seeing the structure of your existence. Then you can't take its determined nature for granted anymore (ie take it personally)
It was very funny to me to learn Nietzsche's critique of 'Nobel Eight fold path to nirvana' as "passive nihilism", and he unironically goes on to prescribe 'will to power'. All western philosophy suffer this need to meaning, individuality and existence. Even those who accept meaningless universe want you to out and make your own little version of it, whatever it maybe, this want/need becomes the root of suffering. IMO Buddhism is the first and final existential philosophy anyone needs to understand.
At least for me, the idea of giving up the craving for _everything_ seems to be rather...undesireable. I'd argue that a futile existence, with full knowledge that it is futile but living anyways, is much more "life-affirming" than giving up all desire. I want to feel, to touch, to yearn. Even if those don't mean anything, I think it's much better to do rather than to not do. And I think that humans, more than anything, want to feel alive. That's why we can never abandon that craving, why we must live with it and surpass it rather than retreating from it.
I wrote the following and then realized it sounds a little pretentious, but I think it get my point across regardless. Also, I’m not a scholar of Buddhism or a practicing Buddhist, so I could be grossly generalizing or misunderstanding what I have read, but I believe I’m not to far off base.
I think the Buddhist reply would be that living without craving and without yearning leads to truly being ‘alive’ and enables one to feel, to touch, and to experience the world as it is and in the immeasurably short time a person is alive within it. An existence where the present is experienced and cherished in the moment of having it, while knowing and accepting the inevitability of this moments ending. Such a life, in the Buddhist tradition, embodies the knowing and accepting of the ultimate emptiness of reality and then proceed to live, not in spite of the emptiness, but in the full appreciation of the act of living.
Huh, haven't looked at it that way. I'm just not sure about the leap from a lack of craving allows us to truly experience the world. As a general rule, I think humans want more. We usually aren't satisfied with "okay enough" and is what led us to do basically everything we have done. Nobody does something if they don't have a motivation to do it. I think that desire is so fundamental to life that to lead life without desire is empty, but I can definitely see how chasing your desires can blind yourself to everything else.
You can probably fairly trivially prove their claim to yourself with 1-2 months of 10-20min daily of meditation.
There's a reason it's often referred to as "waking up." The essential claim is a bit broader than what it seems like you're picking up. It's not craving = blinding. Or rather that's the most extreme end of the spectrum.
It's that we are effectively going through life in a dreamlike state. We are so preoccupied with the contents of our mind that we effectively "shut out" nearly everything about the actual world. Actually clearing your mind feels quite nearly identical to the sensation of waking up from sleep into the waking world.
A bit of practice meditating, I think you will come to prove them correct. It really is incredible how constantly-full a person's mind is, and the degree to which that distracts them from what's really going on.
Note that what Buddhists call suffering or craving is a far, far more expansive set of things than what you would intuitively describe as such. So I think they can mislead into this craving = blindness extremity.
It's slightly too broad, but probably closer to say "thinking [preoccupation with the contents of your mind] = distraction [from the real experience of being your mind]"
Thanks for your explanations, It some times feels everyone's reality is mostly their POV from what's going on on their brain.
Two person on the same exact physical circumstances can experience the same events in highly different meanings and the "World" remains the same shared constant, but how you "Percieve" such events in the world ain't.
If you substitute "clinging" for "craving" (Burbea's Seeing that Frees expounds on this very clearly) then I think we get a better English interpretation of the material.
If the mind's full of clinging (either in demanding what isn't present or refusing to release what was present but which is now leaving the present) then that mind doesn't have any room left to experience aliveness.
So (to me) the material doesn't suggest asceticism or abandoning the human sensual potential, it reminds that clinging will sneak in and take over the mental cycles, undermining your ability to live to that potential.
I mean no offense if this the practice you've settled on and it works for your goals in life, but that is absolutely not what the buddha taught. It took me a long time to learn that what burbea was teaching is not 'buddhist' in any sense of the word. 'Meditating' to have pleasant or mind blowing experiences has nothing to do with developing the inability to suffer. Clinging doesn't sneak in and take over the mental cycles, "you" (me and anyone) ARE craving/clinging. Being is fueled by craving. Without it, there is no 'you'. The buddha taught the practice to reliably abandon craving and devlop the right view of existence. It has nothing to do with living up to you potential or anything like that.
I've listened to all of burbea's talks and read most of the TSTF, so i know where you're coming from. If it works for what you want, that's great. I would just encourage you look deeper if you think its what the buddha taught. Or really even related to what the buddha taught. It's pretty much the opposite direction
He doesn't, really at all. Even in his labeled buddhist lectures. Its more a new age blend of advaita vedanta/hinduisim/zen (kind of), but really kind of just his own creation. I'm the least familiar with actual advaita, but I'd imagine he's doing the same thing there that he's doing with buddhism. I'm very grateful to Alan Watts, because he was sort of an entry point for me, but ultimately he was what he said he was - a spiritual entertainer. Imo it was basically the most interesting form of self help. Not necessarily bad, but certainly not accurate on any of the topics he claimed to be speaking about
What hardware did you go with? I was thinking of getting the second most recent glinet to run openwrt, but haven't convinced myself it's worth it since my current tplink is still pretty new and is just be getting it to tinker (I don't currently even run any vlans or anything fancy)
I went with a TP-Link Archer C7 V2. It's quite dated by now, but it's been sitting quietly in the closet and working for all these years and I am still happy with it. My speeds are also not that fast, I only pay for 100Mbps so something faster might overwhelm this hardware. I also don't have anything fancy on it, no vlans just a few wifi networks on 2.4ghz and 5ghz, some wired devices, and two usb drivers which I access via ssh (these do require I install a few extra packages to allow mounting them).
I run openwrt on an ancient Netgear WNDR3700 which is probably 15 years old by now. I can get around 900Mbps on my gigabit connection (wired). We only have two adults in our home using the Internet (for now until our two kids are older!) and it’s been totally fine for us. openwrt is a great way breath extra life into older routers. A lot of homes don’t really need anything fancy or recent.
It's very weird seeing people online have debates about Buddhism that actually have nothing to do with what the historical Buddha taught. Everything mentioned in the article and most comments here are akin to making arguments against Christianity based on why Joseph Smith was a fraud. To point out that vajrayana is mostly in direct contradiction to what is in the pali Canon and the Chinese agamas is a historical fact, not a no true Scotsman.
The op was hard to finish after the immediate misunderstanding of the sutta on metta and bandits cutting you limb from limb. If you're interested in these topics, there are people who practice and understand them. As a general rule, it's probably not a good idea to form your opinions on meditation practice from self help blogs.
It's also a historical fact that most forms of modern Christianity are far removed from the original teachings; but if one tried to rebuke criticism of modern Christians by saying that they are not the real thing, that would still be a "no true Scotsman". There's no contradiction here, because the religion is not defined by what it originally was or should be, but by how it's actually practiced by people who self-identify as its followers and who are conventionally identified as such by everybody else.
With Christianity we don't have much idea of what Christ wanted, Christ existence has an absolutely terrible historical source base. In fact I found it pretty embracing how little there was. Christ probably existed (I would put it 75%/25%) but if he did he was a insignificant preacher
The best we have really are a few of the letters of Paul and Paul himself was an apocalyptic preacher who never met Jesus when he was alive (he only 'met' Christ from revaluations). And he was clearly in conflict and had disagreements with other followers.
Then the next reasonable documents is Mark and Mark is basically a classically written stories parables that are pretty clearly a bunch of myth making and a lot of stories that are just adapted from Greek or Jewish texts. And then Matthew is just Mark with some additional insertion done. And then Luke just adds even more stuff in. And then John just invents even more even crazier stuff and add on that.
There is no evidence what so ever that Mark had any sources, his text has non of the hallmarks of an actually history as was practiced at the time. Its only much later that writers claim to have eye-witness accounts, and at that point those claims are simply not credible.
So pretty much all Christians have a massive problem. Even things as basic as if the what we now call the Old Testament is valid is highly questionable.
> With Christianity we don't have much idea of what Christ wanted, Christ existence has an absolutely terrible historical source base. In fact I found it pretty embracing how little there was. Christ probably existed (I would put it 75%/25%) but if he did he was a insignificant preacher
Still better than what we have for Siddharta Gautama. Buddhist sources can't even agree on which century he lived in. Christian sources are unanimous in dating Jesus of Nazareth to within a decade, and the Jewish historian Josephus (writing approximately 60 years later) also confirms his existence. One of the two references to Jesus in Josephus has obviously been tampered with by Christian copyists, but the majority of scholars believe there was a genuine reference there prior to the tampering; and most scholars believe the second reference is entirely genuine.
Also, the majority of secular scholars believe we can work out roughly what Jesus taught – although it seems likely that what he actually taught was much closer to 1st century Judaism than what Christianity later evolved into
> So pretty much all Christians have a massive problem.
Some Christians are big on arguing for Christianity based on the claimed historical accuracy of the New Testament – an approach called "evidentialist apologetics". You have correctly pointed out the massive problems with that approach. However, not all Christians argue for Christianity in that way – indeed, I think it is historically a minority, despite the huge fad for it in 20th century Anglophone Christianity (and especially evangelical Protestantism). Other Christians put greater emphasis on other arguments – philosophical arguments, arguments from religious experience, historical arguments that rely on the broad sweep of Christian history rather than just its first decade, etc. Maybe all those other arguments have problems too–but not these problems.
I know nothing of Buddhism as it has never interest me much.
> Jewish historian Josephus
In general we have a history in this field where early on almost everything was accepted and for decades more things have been stripped. Once upon a time it was consensuses that there was an empty tomb and that wasn't that long ago.
This is a field absolutely dominated by fundamentalist scholars and a historiography that mostly made by strongly believing Christians.
The history of the field is basically one of attempting to prove that Jesus existed, that Gospels are historical and so on. It took decades to remove and change the field an some things are still in flux, such a Q.
Even if Josephus did write those things (or there were earlier things later changed) it would most likely have been writing based of reports from Christians so even if he the reference are real and refer to the actual Jesus as we understand it, its not great evidence because of course Christians tell him that. There is no evidence Josephus did any independent study or had any source other then Christians or maybe some of the Gospels like Mark.
As I said, Jesus most likely did exist but the evidence isn't that great.
> Also, the majority of secular scholars believe we can work out roughly what Jesus taught – although it seems likely that what he actually taught was much closer to 1st century Judaism than what Christianity later evolved into
Even scholars don't have a unified agreement on what he taught. Most likely some for of Apocalyptic Judaism as you said. There were many of those kinds of Jewish cults during that time. And there is also evidence that these were partially overlapping and so on.
The issue is that after his death and supposed resurrection he apparently appeared in vision to the Apostles and gave them knowledge (that is what they believed). And its very likely that they all at different kinds of visions that likely changed what he would have taught in live.
So basically the very reason there is a Christianity (the believe in supposed resurrection) basically implies changes to the theology.
> This is a field absolutely dominated by fundamentalist scholars and a historiography that mostly made by strongly believing Christians.
Geza Vermes was never a "fundamentalist" scholar. Although he was once a Catholic priest, he left the priesthood and stopped believing in Christianity. Both his parents were Jewish by birth, but had converted to Catholicism–which didn't stop the Nazis from murdering them in the Holocaust. He went back to identifying as a Jew–at first as a purely ethnic/cultural non-religious identity, but he later accepted Liberal/Reform Judaism as his religion.
And yet, he was one of the scholars who agrees that Josephus contained original references to Jesus of Nazareth, prior to any Christian tampering. In his reconstruction of the original text, Josephus' brief discussion of Jesus was mostly neutral, albeit slightly negative/sceptical, but nevertheless affirming the historical reality of his existence. Vermes argues that Christian scribes replaced Josephus' slightly negative/sceptical attitude towards Jesus with expressions of Christian belief which a believing Jew such as Josephus could never have written.
Vermes was convinced that Jesus was a real historical figure – but he saw him as a Jewish teacher, whose actual teachings had little in common with the doctrines of Christianity. Most of his scholarly career was after he'd left Christianity, so it is not like he had any religious motivation to believe in the historical existence of Jesus – on the contrary, as an ex-Christian, you'd think if he was biased towards anything, it would be towards the opposite.
> Even if Josephus did write those things (or there were earlier things later changed) it would most likely have been writing based of reports from Christians so even if he the reference are real and refer to the actual Jesus as we understand it, its not great evidence because of course Christians tell him that.
Why couldn't Josephus have had independent knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth? Some Jewish apocalyptic teacher turns up in Jerusalem, causes a stir, the authorities (both Roman and Jewish) get rid of him. Why wouldn't people in Jerusalem remember that? Even though it happened 5-10 years before Josephus was born, why couldn't his parents have remembered it and told him about it? Josephus' parents were members of the Jewish elite in Jerusalem–his father Matthias was a senior priest at the Temple–so it seems entirely plausible that his father (or grandfather, uncles, etc) may have had some firsthand knowledge of the incident.
Jesus was surely not the only apocalyptic teacher to be executed for causing a stir – but the fact that his followers endured and grew rather than dying out likely helped stick him in people's memory.
> There is no evidence Josephus did any independent study or had any source other then Christians or maybe some of the Gospels like Mark.
There is no good evidence that Josephus had access to the Gospel of Mark or any other Christian source. We have no real idea where he got his information from. It could have come from Christians, it could have just as easily have come from independent Jewish sources – we just don't know.
You misunderstand, I didn't say everybody was a fundamentalist who believe in historicity. I'm saying the feel was dominated by fundamentalist and the universal default assumptions for 1500+ years was that Gospel were historically true.
And the Church own historical record and assumption was the jumping of point for all modern scholarship. So the universal trend of the secular field is to basically dismantle many of these things.
So what I am saying is that anything that can be interpreted as pro-historicity has received about 1000x more study and attention, while every counter point gets pushed of or dismisses and could even get you fired, even into the 1980s. Even today many schools that claim to be un-bias have faith requirements. The same was true with the history of the gospel, there are whole fields of 'scholarship' just to prove the gospels true.
So its pretty clear where the focus of scholarship is and was on all these issues. There are simply far fewer secular scholars on this topic. And scholarship has already moved on from Geza Vermes.
Josephus reliable mention of Jesus is pretty clearly added and claims that was rewritten of an earlier version are far less credible then somebody simply adding a Christian creed to the text. That is what the evidence points to.
The second mention of Jesus in Josephus is incredibly brief and is also increasingly being questioned.
So overall I would simply don't Josephus is good evidence. In fact, if anything, its evidence that Christians were really just not that important or relevant to most people. Ken Olson makes these points very well if you want to look up these debates.
I said its 75%/25% and in general the field seems to be continuously moving in the direction of removing evidence for history, rather then adding it.
> I'm saying the feel was dominated by fundamentalist and the universal default assumptions for 1500+ years was that Gospel were historically true.
Who was the founder of modern biblical scholarship? Not any "fundamentalist" – many say it was the 17th century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza [0], who was excommunicated by Amsterdam's Jewish community for heresy, because he questioned traditional Jewish doctrines – most significantly in this case, he argued that the Torah contained inaccuracies and historical errors, that most of it was not written by Moses, that its transmission had been imperfect and had allowed the text to become corrupt – all positions which were just as heretical to the Christians of his day as they were to his own Jewish community. And although, as a Jew, his arguments were about the Jewish scriptures only, not the New Testament, it wasn't long before the debate he started about the former grew to include the later.
The 18th/19th German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher was no fundamentalist either – he is often called the "Father of Modern Liberal Theology", but he also made major contributions to the development of biblical scholarship – in particular by arguing that the only correct way to interpret the Bible is to start out by treating it like any other text, to seek to find general principles applicable to all texts (even non-religious ones) and then seek to apply those general principles to the Bible in particular.
One of the founding figures of the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" was the 19th century German liberal Protestant theologian David Strauss – who rejected the traditional Christian belief that Jesus was divine, and argued that any attempt to discover the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth must begin by rejecting all supernatural explanations. A very long way from Christian fundamentalism.
The word "fundamentalism" was coined in 1920 to describe those Christians who were fans of the essay series The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth, published in Chicago between 1910 and 1915 – one of the major themes of those essays was a rejection of the tradition of modern biblical scholarship, as taught in leading academic institutions (especially Princeton.) So, rather than modern biblical scholarship being founded on fundamentalism, fundamentalism arose as a reaction to it.
And, claiming there were "universal default assumptions for 1500+ years was that Gospel were historically true" completely ignores the long history of Jewish and Islamic scholarship on the New Testament, none of which ever assumed it was true. The earliest surviving detailed Jewish criticism of the Gospels is the 10th century "Book of Nestor the Priest", which quotes extensively and critically from the Gospel of Matthew; similar mediaeval Jewish works include Jacob ben Reuben's Milhamoth ha-Shem (12th century); the Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne and Sefer Nizzahon Yashan (both 13th century); and Ibn Shaprut's Touchstone (14th century). Similarly, there was a voluminous mediaeval Islamic literature attacking the credibility of both the Jewish and Christian scriptures, which extensively quoted from them and sought to expose their absurdities and inconsistencies – important authors in that literature included al-Baqillani (d. 1013), 'Abd al-Djabbar (d. 1025), ibn Hazm (d. 1064), al-Djuwayni (d. 1085), Samau'al al-Maghribi (d. 1175), al-Qarafi (d. 1285) and ibn Qayyim al-Djawziyya (d. 1350). [1]
Four separate eyewitness accounts (the gospels), all consistent with one another, is pretty good historical evidence as far as the ancient world is concerned.
Not isn't. Sorry but this is just a highly inaccurate statement.
The gospel are absolutely not eyewitness accounts. Not sure if you learned that in Church or something, this is very much not what any scholar of those text believes. Even the 'scholars' in religious fundamentalist schools mostly don't agree with that.
The gospel were not written by the people in the title, the titles were not even in any of the older scrolls, titles like 'Gospel of Mark' were later additions.
And they are also not independent documents either. They are very clearly written with knowlage of one another.
Mark is the template for all of them. Matthew previously thought to be independent is increasingly seen as Mark with some additional stuff insert into it. Luke clearly had both Mark and Matthew to work with and basically tried to make a fusion.
John is clearly much considerably later and clearly had the other three.
The only documents that are in reasonable living memory of a potential Jesus are the non-fake letters of Paul (most of them are not by Paul). And Paul himself even says that hadn't met Jesus (outside of visions) and Paul letters also don't give us much that matters in terms the historical accuracy of what went on in the region as he wasn't there.
And don't believe the 'Acts of the Apostles' in the bible those are even less historical then the gospels.
That might be true if there were millions of people practicing a school of Christianity based on only what Jesus taught. As far as I know, there isn't, and isn't even a school based on that. Aside from that, what's described in the article is purely a western phenomenon that has emerged mostly in the last 20 years. It's arrogant (op) to pretend that that is Buddhism. They were in simultaneously critiquing it and participating in it.
I don't see how that's different to the various flavours/sects/variants/traditions that arose around Buddhism in the past. Californian Buddhism is one more to add to the list.
But this is how it always goes with religions. There is never a definitive core belief or core morality that everyone agrees with. Religions are meta-moralities that allow participants to feel credible and sincere because they're doing whatever they're doing under the cover story of a tradition.
Sometimes the results are humane, sometimes they're horrific. It's exactly that flexibility and the lack of clear unquestionable definitive absolutes that allows these belief systems to persist.
Everyone assumes their interpretation - or at least their process - is the only correct one, and all those other people are misguided at best and just plain Doing It Wrong at worst.
Personally I have more time for Buddhism than for any of the Abrahamic religions. But even fundamentals like the details of the Noble Eightfold Path are still debated and even contested, so nothing about it is as clear and straightforward as it might seem to be.
> But this is how it always goes with religions. There is never a definitive core belief or core morality that everyone agrees with.
The vast majority of Christians would say that belief in the existence of God is a core belief of Christianity. They'd say an atheist is by definition not a believer in Christianity. And, up until the 20th century, there was universal agreement on this. Then, along came some people who claimed they could be "Christian atheists". However, even today, those people are a tiny minority of (self-described) Christians, the vast majority of Christians don't accept that as a valid form of Christianity. In fact, even most non-Christians, even most atheists, don't accept that as a valid form of Christianity. I expect you'll find Christian atheists to be greatly outnumbered by those atheists who consider "Christian atheism" to be a silly oxymoron.
Similarly, in Buddhism, up until the 20th century, pretty much everyone agreed that rebirth was a literal phenomenon – not just some kind of metaphor – and that was seen as a core belief of Buddhism – they would say that a person who does not believe in literal rebirth, by definition does not believe in Buddhism. Nowadays, there are a lot of people – especially in the West – who disagree with that, and think that "there is no afterlife, rebirth is just a metaphor" is a perfectly legitimate variety of Buddhist belief – however, I'd be surprised if people who define "Buddhism" so broadly are any more than a small minority of all Buddhists globally.
> There is never a definitive core belief or core morality that everyone agrees with.
If you mean to use the word “everyone” literally here, then what you are asserting is unfair to human nature (people dissent). If “everyone” is a matter of virtue-based consensus for example, then I beg to differ.
I would disagree with this statement. The core teachings, and canonical status of the bible, is very consistent across the major denominations. Perhaps if you could provide a more specific example it would be more enlightening as to your point.
If you are arguing that the way Christians behave today is very removed from how the original Christians behaved, well that is a different point to make, albeit much more difficult to evaluate. This is in a sense nothing new, just look at the opprobium Jesus lays down at the beginning of the book of Revelation.
Yes, there is consensus among major Christian denominations today - but is it in consensus with the teachings and the attitudes of proto-Christians? When you start reading up on early Church history, it's hard not to notice just how late many of the crucial doctrines show up, and how controversial they have been at the time they were introduced.
Yes, and which proto-Christians? The various so-called Gnostics (more of an umbrella term), the Ebionites, Marcionites, the Johannine community, Pualine teachings (excluding the Pastorals, probably not a bodily resurrection, and with a more platonic view of the heavens), or whatever Jesus, James and Peter actually taught, which is probably lost to history, but would have likely been a form of messainic apocalyptic Judaism.
I found your second sentence very difficult to parse, so I'll ask you to clarify: Who do you think held the view that there wasn't a bodily resurrection? And, what is your basis for saying that they didn't believe in a resurrection?
James Tabor's analysis of Paul's letters is that Paul thought Jesus was transformed into a spiritual being, as the first of a new kind of Adam. As such, there is no point in the body being restored to life. Paul also never mentions the empty tomb or Jesus appearing in a physical manner to anyone as found in the gospels. It's important to read Paul on his own terms, since his writings are dated a decade or two prior to gMark.
Separately, there was also Docetism, which said that Jesus didn't suffer on the cross because Jesus only appeared to have a flesh and blood body. The gospel writers may have been trying to argue against such an interpretation by having Jesus eat fish and Thomas touch his wounds, which would have been ridiculous to Paul given Tabor's interpretation (although Paul was about transformation or exchange of the body for the spiritual).
I don't think you can read 1 Corinthians 15 as merely teaching "transformed into a spiritual being". Paul says 1) that Jesus was raised, using that as proof that there will be a resurrection of everyone else, and 2) that the resurrection body isn't like the pre-resurrection body. It's "spiritual" in the sense that it's fit for heaven.
That does not mean that Paul is teaching "transformed into a spiritual being". "Resurrection" doesn't fit for that. That's "died, and there's an afterlife". But over and over, Paul says "resurrection" - not just that there's life after death, but that there's resurrection.
Tabor's view seems to be forcing Paul's writing into a pre-conceived position, not letting 1 Corinthians 15 speak for itself.
I guess that depends on Paul’s use of the Greek word(s) we use for the English word resurrection. If the Greek literally means “raised up”, does that mean the body was reanimated, or Jesus ascended into the heavens? Paul doesn’t have any post-resurrection narratives of Jesus walking around in his reanimated body.
I can't comment on the Greek (at least, not right now), but Paul over and over talks about a body in this. It's a different body, but it's still a body. That's a huge focus of the discussion.
If Jesus "just" ascended into the heavens (as a spirit), Paul's discussion makes no sense. Paul clearly thought that Jesus had a body after the resurrection, no matter what Greek word for resurrection he was using.
It would be a spiritual body made out of pneuma, like the angels. Spirit meant something a bit different to the ancients. Pneuma was a substance. The supernatural was literally above in space for them. Why would a flesh and blood body ascend into the heavens where the spirits lived? Anyway, Paul had an ancient Jewish/Greek view of the cosmos, not a 21st century one.
> The core teachings, and canonical status of the bible, is very consistent across the major denominations.
Is it really?
Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism put great emphasis on following the teachings of the Saints and the Church, much more so than trying to understand the religion by yourself. Many strands of Protestantism are the exact opposite.
Many protestants believe that the Church should be an active part of people's lives and guide them in all decisions, while Eastern Orthodoxy believes the Chruch must limit itself to spiritual matters and mostly even avoid things like charity.
Catholics believe that much of the Bible is entirely allegorical and should be interpreted only as such (most notably, Genesis). Many American Protestant traditions believe that everything in the Bible is literally true, leading to Creationism and an opposition to the theory of evolution, and sometimes even to New Earth Creationism.
Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Calvinism, Lutheranism and others believe that the teachings of Jesus and the early Church Fathers make the Old Testament mostly obsolete (especially in regards to dietary and clothing restrictions, the Shabbat, or circumcision), while some Protestant churches hold some or all of these as still part of Christian cannon.
There are many other major differences - the effects of God's favor in this life (leading to ideas like the prosperity gospel in Protestantism), the belief in saintly miracles, the very existence of saints, faith healing, trinitarianism, filioque, fasting, the dates of Christmas and Easter and many others.
> because the religion is not defined by what it originally was or should be, but by how it's actually practiced by people who self-identify as its followers and who are conventionally identified as such by everybody else.
How Terrifying.
Edit (let me explain): This comes across as a very democratic way to describe something that is predominantly undemocratic.
It feels the entire article is one big strawman: I tried to find for words like: "four noble truth" or "eightfold path" and couldn't find them -- I'm not surprised.
> To point out that vajrayana is mostly in direct contradiction to what is in the pali Canon and the Chinese agamas is a historical fact, not a no true Scotsman.
To be frank, they are entirely different religions. Vajrayana is essentially Tibetan bon mixed with Hinduism.
Some of the most obvious differences are the rules for the monks. In vajrayana once you reach a certain state of enlightenment or convince your followers, you've reached a certain state. You essentially can do whatever you want and claim it's for the benefit of the students. In the pali canon, an arahat would follow the same rules as a monk who had been ordained for one day. Which would be no inconvenience to them, because there would be no desire to break any of the rules. Which is a direct contradiction. In vajarayana, a monk could have sex with his student as a means of helping them. According to the historical Buddha, that person is immediately no longer a monk. They essentially dismiss the entire pali canon as a lower teaching.
They also think that personal enlightenment/arahatship is a bad thing and that you should keep being reborn to help others. There are entire books written about why that doesn't make sense, but it's against the entire purpose of what the Buddha taught.
There are also a lot of teachings about the self that are categorically listed as wrong view in the pali canon.
I don't want to come of like I'm hating on the school or anyone who practices in it, but it's far from 'Buddhism' in a historical context. There are still many wise and compassionate people who have dedicated their lives to it.
> They also think that personal enlightenment/arahatship is a bad thing and that you should keep being reborn to help others. There are entire books written about why that doesn't make sense, but it's against the entire purpose of what the Buddha taught.
That's a Mahayana belief, not an exclusively Vajrayana one. You aren't making a clear distinction between Mahayana and Vajrayana here.
> Vajrayana is essentially Tibetan bon mixed with Hinduism.
"Bon" is an ambiguous term. It refers to the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet, which apparently was a form of shamanism or animism. It is impossible to know much about it with any confidence – although there are some references to it in Tibetan Buddhist texts, we can't really know how accurate they are. However, whatever it was, it is likely rather different from contemporary "Bon". Contemporary "Bon" claims to be historically independent of Buddhism, even a continuation of that pre-Buddhist religion, but most scholars don't accept those claims. Rather, most scholars think it is actually an unusual derivative of Tibetan Buddhism, in which the core beliefs and practices were kept, but the names/symbols/geography/etc were intentionally altered to give it the appearance of being a separate religion with an independent history. Given that, rather than Tibetan Buddhism being based on Bon, it is actually the other way around. Most of Vajrayana – including all the elements you object to – can be traced back to India, and the obvious similarities (and mutual influence) between Tantric Buddhism and Tantric Hinduism
Also, criticising Mahayana and Vajrayana for being influenced by Hinduism ignores how much Theravada was influenced by Hinduism. Consider all the stories about Hindu deities in the Pali canon – which Theravada traditionally accepts as really existent conscious supernatural beings, albeit mortal and limited in power
> In vajarayana, a monk could have sex with his student as a means of helping them. ... According to the historical Buddha, that person is immediately no longer a monk.
I don't think a monk would be able to if they're ordained and would similarly lose their status in most Tibetan lineages, but a ngagpa could. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen of course and there's definitely a lot of abuse happening. A teacher I took some karmamudra training from wrote a book about these topics that I found very interesting [1].
I'd love to read more about the atman/anatman contradictions, I'll have to do some searching -- thanks!
I don’t know Vajrayana, only have some familiarity with the Pali canon. From that perspective, everything that you’re saying sounds true.
> There are also a lot of teachings about the self that are categorically listed as wrong view in the pali canon.
Do you remember what exact things they teach about the self that is in contradiction with the Pali canon? Asking out of curiosity.
One thing that I cannot quite square with the Pali canon is the idea of Buddha mind, and the related concept of the “true self” and the “small” vs. “big ego” that certain Zen lineages talk about. According to the Pali canon, these are all wrong views because of there being no self whatsoever (anattā). Perhaps Zen and Vajrayana folks see these concepts as falsehoods that still help with practice and are thus skillful means (upāya).
