[Viability1936]

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.

[int_19h]

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.

[panick21_]

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.

[skissane]

> 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.

[panick21_]

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.

[skissane]

> 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.

[panick21_]

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.

[docandrew]

Four separate eyewitness accounts (the gospels), all consistent with one another, is pretty good historical evidence as far as the ancient world is concerned.

[panick21_]

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.

[Viability1936]

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.

Edit: countries to people

[TheOtherHobbes]

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.

[skissane]

> 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.

[the-printer]

> 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.

[Gatsky]

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.

[int_19h]

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.

[goatlover]

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.

[AnimalMuppet]

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?

[goatlover]

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).

[tsimionescu]

> 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.

[joveian]

A couple of other major divisions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Orthodoxy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_believers

[the-printer]

> 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.

[prisonality]

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.

[mtalantikite]

> 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.

What sort of contradictions? Genuinely curious.

[Viability1936]

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.

[skissane]

> 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

[mtalantikite]

Thanks for your answer, I appreciate it.

> 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!

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40000465-karmamudra

[nequo]

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).