[jazzyjackson]

Karma is a hell of a justification ;)

My impression is that Buddhism, like all faiths, has that surface level of justifying why there is evil and how to get free of it - so there’s that inner peace [0] - but there’s also this call to action, to reduce suffering, to work on peace outside yourself - that’s compassion, and Jesus and Buddha were all about it, even if their followers sometimes lose the plot. (I’m too ignorant to speak of Muhammad).

As far as the corruption of religion into preserving social hierarchies goes, I like to think that the capacity to be co-opted by a state is a feature, not a bug: a viral transmission vector. These holy texts might not have survived without a corrupt state maintaining it.

[0] Nellie McKay has a song by this name on her album “get away from me”, it’s a fantastic critique of this focus on “inner peace”

[noduerme]

I'm highly skeptical of people who claim to have found salvation in Jesus, and righted all their former wrongs. I never know if they're telling themselves that, or just trying to convince me it's true. But I've lived in Buddhist countries and watched the same pattern of individual behavior juxtaposed with belief. And you're right, they both rendered unto Caesar and probably survived and propagated as a result. And to be clear, neither one is malicious or bad in its basic construction - telling people to be mindful or live according to ethical ideas. What does suck though is that both of them try to pretend that ethics spring from their written dogma, rather than teach people that ethical behavior is a rational and completely natural response. And by making it part of dogma they rob people of credit for having ethical impulses. So you want to help the poor - you're being "Christian" as opposed to being a rebel, or a good person. They deprive the individual of authentic agency in this regard. And an individual deprived of that agency passes down the dogma; and after generations it loses meaning.