Hitchens gets it wrong about Buddhism

I’ve never really paid much attention to Christopher Hitchens, renowned and reviled critic of all things religious. But when my brother recently brought his anti-Buddhist sentiments to my attention I had to take a closer look.

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Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  10/11  at  04:05 AM

I'll try again (your login procedure ate my pithy comments).

I'm not sure why you believe that Chrtopher HItchen's is referirng to "Transcendental Meditation or something like it" in his criticism of Buddhism. TM is merely a technique that allows the nervous system to gain rest, often of a type different than what most people encounter in any degree. This form of rest helps repair stresses in the nervous system, and in the long-run, when alternated with normal daily physical, mental, emotional activities, as well as healthy doses of dreaming and sleeping, leads to a healthier nervous system, less clouded by stress, so that an individual is better equipped to perceive things as they are.

Lawson English

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  06/02  at  07:00 PM

With all due respect, it seems that youve completely missed the thrust of Hitchens' criticisms of Buddhism. His criticisms focus squarely on the *function* of the religion, on the praxeology, if you will, and, in that, Buddhism carries hardly less blame than your run-of-the-mill theism.

Buddhism is not "a type of Humanism." To make such a claim is to denigrate the very notion of humanism. Buddhism is an archaic belief system bogged down by metaphysical claims, sanskritized pseudo-philosophy (ahmm), a feudal patriarchy, and a history of violence. Buddhism, like any other religion or coercive body or cult, is a parasite on actual human productivity.

Hitchens got it right.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  06/02  at  11:45 PM

I believe the quote at the top of this page is not a quote from Buddha, but a paraphrase of Buddha by a man named David Perry.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  10/17  at  11:23 AM

With all due respect, Cal Miles, it is obvious that the above article has not 'completely missed' the 'thrust' of Hitchens' criticisms of 'Buddhism'.

In what way does the quote below, for example, completely miss issues regarding praxis, use, application and so forth as pertaining to Hitchens' main thrust or focus?


"While I agree that Buddhism has been used in this way and that blood has been shed in its name, I can’t agree that Buddhism is the cause of these things. What Hitchens is describing is the failure of human nature, the perils of insular groupthink, and politics itself. It is the same phenomenon that has led to the bastardization of the teachings of Jesus and the rise of such monolithic institutions as the Catholic Church (along with its sordid history of conquest and persecution). Consequently, Hitchens’s ire should be directed at the phenomenon of tribalism and not religion itself."

I don't have to agree with the point of view expressed here, but it does DEAL with the relevant issues at a level appropriate to an article of this nature and size.

Hitchens' claims about Buddhism are as one-eyed as your reading of the above article. Your statements about Buddhism likewise. I read the blind-siding and warping effects of anger in both Hitchen's writing on such areas as in your comments.

'Buddhism' is a label we have to define for a plethora of practices and forms, and in this case for the punch-bag Hitchens has fabricated using insuffient material. Let's try not to pin the yellow star on the 'parasites'. And let's recall Hitchens' alliance with the neocon project and its war-of-the-worlds rallying cry, as we read his condemnations of some zen Buddhists support for the Japanese regime during WW II etc. There but for the grace of...

I could thank Hitchens for his reporting, for the information, if it weren't put at the service of such a distorted and distorting anger, if it didn't seem clear in the work that his own personal gripes were parasitically feeding off choice scars in history. He weakens his own defence against the argumetum ad hominem by producing works and appearances that reveal themselves to be as much the despairing patchwork mask of a man struggling unsuccessfully with his own pain than a seriously objective struggle with the truth.

I would suggest that, as with Dawkins, Hitchens intellectual blind-sidedness with regard to 'Buddhism' is due to its potential to be defined in western culture as not only a critique of both sides of whatever the argument, but also one which 'threatens' to harmonise whatever we may view the polarisation to be, a polarisation whereby adherents to either side gain a sense of identity, stabililty and purpose (from which they often profit).

It is hardly news that isms and religions can and have been part of the way human beings screw things up. And let's not forget that all systems of thought and behaviour both enable and limit what you seem to be referring to as 'actual human productivity'. Materialism is an ism too and 'actual human productivity' what you and others agree it is for it to become a product.

Moreover, that these systems are and will always be insufficient and often iniquitous in some way means that they generate their own critical openings for change-- for better or for worse. In the case where change is beneficial, such one-eyed battering rams are of a piece with the problems they describe and often end up serving the agendas of those they oppose as those they oppose serve their own agendas.

I am not a Buddhist. But I am seriously persuaded to practice a soto zen form of zazen, having researched deeply and widely the corpus of its teachings, while doing my best to not confuse the historical mode of transmission of the teachings with their translatability to my present day context.

I have a suspicion that while the science v religion contest and its parallel west v Islam row gathers pace, there are many people in the background slowly coming to a very interesting place-- a place where looking honestly at the facts out there is necessarily indistinguishable from a process of looking at the facts in here. But then some of us find it difficult to stop being angry-- especially when we happen to get paid for it because a lot of other folks are angry too and would like to feel justified in transferring that anger onto some easy targets.

I don't know Hitchens the guy, but the 'Hitchens' out there needs a good deal of scrutiny and polemic from atheists.

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