[Alex3917]

No, iirc the religion was constructed pretty much wholesale during the opium wars to convince people that the Chinese were an intelligent people with a rich cultural history who we shouldn't be genociding. There are a bunch of books about it, this blog post gives an overview of the situation and links to a bunch of the books: https://meaningness.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/a-new-world-rel...

I haven't really spent any time reading up on it, but they talk about it all the time on the Buddhist Geeks podcast, and presumably they'd be in the know since they are/were students at Naropa.

[boxy310]

From your link: >I’m afraid I may be accused of political incorrectness here. I hasten to say that I myself practice (at minimum) demon worship and abominable rituals.

I'm afraid I can't believe this commentator at all, because it's committing No True Scotsman fallacies left and right about non-Abrahamic religions being "not a real religion" and conflating decentralized, non-textual religions with "demon-worship."

The underlying book that inspired the post [1] does look like a much more interesting connection between the Enlightenment and deist interpretations, but Buddhism with all its warts have existed in various forms for thousands of years. At best you can say that Buddhism has been dramatically impacted by interactions with Enlightenment philosophy, but its roots definitely stretch back further than the 1800's.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0058C6FGS/?tag=meaningness...

[jmagoon]

I can't tell if you are talking about actual Buddhism or "Western Buddhism". As in, are you dramatically misinterpreting your source document, or are you trying to say that the "Western Buddhism" we experience is not "Real Buddhism"?

from the article: "There was a problem. Buddhism, as actually found in Asia, was much more like the European idea of “paganism” than a “great world religion.”"

The site relates to current academic discussion of "Real Buddhism", but the field has been investigating primary sources (Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese) for such a long time at this point as to make this article primarily a rant about "Western Buddhism" versus the more legitimate "Buddhisms".

[Alex3917]

> I can't tell if you are talking about actual Buddhism or "Western Buddhism".

This article doesn't have anything to do with Western Buddhism. It's about how what people currently believe/practice as Buddhism in Asia comes from the west.

The point is that before 150 years ago there was no core set of ideas that could really be distilled into what we think of as Buddhism today. Rather there were just different peoples worshipping different local gods. Westerners then went to Asia and translated a smattering of ancient texts and then went around and told the local people that they were practicing their religion wrong, and what they should actually do/believe instead is X, Y, Z. That's what modern buddhism is, and then Western Buddhism is an offshoot of that which was designed to appeal to Americans as a practice. (As opposed to being designed to appeal to westerners as a reason not to genocide various Asian populations.)

[jmagoon]

That's just really not true based on modern research. That's a fringe theory at best, that might be applicable to something like "Mainstream Buddhism". (e.g. what you see in a yoga magazine in the grocery store)

There's quite an established corpus of Tibetan texts and monastic curriculum that has existed for the past 1000 or so years (depending on the tradition) that involve primary sources (Sanskrit Indian texts dating from 100 AD or so onwards) and developed commentary in Tibetan. It's of primary importance for every Monastery / center to have a full set of Kangyur (sutra) and Tengyur (tantra), with many of the most revered and most studied texts coming from 1300 AD or so in Ancient Tibetan, and as far back as 100 AD (Sanskrit and Tibetan translations of Sanskrit).

There is meticulous textual preservation practiced at all major Tibetan monasteries, and many have preserved texts throughout the Cultural revolution that have been confirmed by other discoveries of identical copies and translations in China, India, Ceylon, and Southeast Asia.

That's an extremely odd theory, as well, because Tibetan literally has two different forms: Modern and Ancient, and texts can be dated by their use of language, similar to Modern and Ancient Chinese, and anyone who denies that is basically equivalent of thinking fossils were buried by the Jews or the earth is 5000 years old or something equally non-factual.

It's certainly reasonable to say that there are "Buddhisms"--there were many different interpretations of primary sources in different Asian regions that continued to develop independently of each other (and merged with local custom or ritual), but it's somewhat ludicrous to say that there was "no core set of ideas" that was being actively practiced in Asia 150 years ago within specific traditions, or that what is currently practiced in Asia is "Western" at its core. You can even make a strong argument that there are a few core principles that are consistent across all branches of "Buddhism" that have little to do with Western ideas or Western religion, namely lack of self, and the composed nature of all phenomena, which have their roots in the very earliest texts, with constant development and reinforcement from ~100AD forward.

source: Master's in Religious Studies, specifically Tibetan Buddhism

[Alex3917]

The argument is that it's the primacy of the ancient texts and practices that is recent, not the texts and practices themselves. (Again I'm not a historian, but nothing I've read or heard leads me to suspect that this is some sort of fringe theory.)

[jmagoon]

It's hard to argue, because you could pick up literally any textbook on Buddhism to see this is a fringe theory.

If you are actually curious about this topic, I would suggest you look up the importance of lineage in the Tibetan, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Mongolian, and Japanese traditions. Warm hand to warm hand, as it is called, is extremely important. Lineage is legitimacy, and it's always the first line of defense against charlatans. That means that the most important thing in those actual traditions is where a practice comes from and who the teacher is (and their teacher, and theirs, etc.). It's even fair to say that the de-emphasis of lineage and tradition exists only in "Western" or "Mainstream" Buddhism.

If you're curious, Buddhist Geeks has long been far from the academic mainstream and has more recently gone much, much farther out.

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

Do you have any idea of the size of the conspiracy that would be necessary to pull this off.

Here are three things you need to explain just for starters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Arun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West

[Alex3917]

Well considering the argument is that what is practiced today as Buddhism is a small subset of what was believed/practiced previously, you would in fact expect all that stuff to exist...

And the fact Borobudur was only excavated in the mid 1800s and wasn't reconstructed until recently isn't exactly evidence that it was still considered an important part of the religion before then.

[notahacker]

Borobudur ceased to have religious significance because the Javanese switched to Islam