[SpicyLemonZest]

As he mentions later, you've been reading the narrow subset of Buddhist texts that make it into Western-facing pop Buddhism. The Amitabha Sutra, one of the most well-known and well-recited texts in the East Asian canon, explains that the solution to suffering is being reborn in a Pure Land and suggests a method for getting into Amitabha's particularly pleasant one.

[moth-fuzz]

I read the whole article. The midsection on mindfulness reached the non-conclusion of "but the world and people in it are still imperfect, despite the existence of Buddhism", and like, yeah? It's supposed to be? That's the whole point.

Following that, I don't think the OP's list of individual contradictions which vary by culture and belief system constitutes a meaningful critique of the whole idea (insofar as there even is a 'whole idea', which, maybe there isn't). "Someone somewhere else thinks differently than you, so what you think sucks", like, what? That obviously doesn't follow. I'm not and have not been talking about Pure Land Buddhism, so any critique of Pure Land Buddhism, is not a critique I'm responding to.

The final part of the article criticizes the form of 'western meditation' I was talking about, where you simply try and make yourself not feel things, rather than accepting those emotions as a part of life and let them flow in and out of you while acknowledging them for what they are. I agree with the author that 'self-scolding' is a terrible approach to meditation, but this is something I see more commonly in Buddhist-appropriation rather than actual Buddhist teachings. So, to my original point, I think OP and I are simply reading different texts.

I don't think OP is wrong in any capacity, I just think they've misidentified the target and are scoping a bit too broad - OP has gripes with certain schools of Buddhism and the way certain people practice it. But the whole article doesn't really contain a criticism of like, the whole thing.