Removing The Sheen From Buddhism

[Husky]

^Buddhist vandalism of the Bon wikipedia page^ shows that Buddhism's still intent on running down Bon and converting it.

(Even the Dalai Lama didn't quite concede when he declared that Bon didn't deserve the persecution; rather, he merely declared that Bon was one of the Tibetan Buddhist sects and for that reason should not have been and should not be persecuted. In a way he has encouraged a lot of Buddhists - including western converts on fire for Mahayana and particularly Tibetan Buddhism - to view the matter his way and to argue it his way. Even though the matter actually concerns Bon religion and Bonpos and not Buddhism/Buddhists.)





Tracked down one of the two modern western-Buddhist apologetics for Tibetan Buddhism that was mentioned at the start of the previous post.



berzinarchives.com/web/en/archives/study/comparison_buddhist_traditions/tibetan_traditions/bon_tibetan_buddhism.html



"Bon and Tibetan Buddhism

Alexander Berzin

Amsterdam, Holland, December 23, 2001

lightly edited course transcript"



(Personally felt dumbed-down after reading that article. It is touchy-feeling speculations. It is very new-agey western Buddhist of wanting reconciliation [to save face for Buddhism] etc. yet claims Bon for Buddhism as much as the speaker dared to do via what he knew was his mere, ignorant speculation. Quite provoking. Don't know why these people don't bother to read some works on the subject by historians.)



The speaker -



1. Admits he doesn't really know Bon OR its history and doesn't know whether any of his conjectures are remotely true, but *will* nevertheles speculate



2. And speculates conveniently in favour of Buddhism: he starts off pretending to be impartial, and then develops inevitably (predictably) into the now all-too-oft-seen Buddhist backprojected inculturation that "Bon was a Buddhism. Its origins must have been a pre-Tibetan Buddhist Buddhis, from some Bauddhified place outside Tibet."



3. He conveniently projects that determined Buddhist persecution of Tibet's pre-Buddhist indigenous religion Bon was actually "political" not religious (contradicted by religiously-Buddhist writings hurling invectives at Bon) and even that it was all ultimately Bon's own fault: the speaker - western convert to Buddhism - having tried his best to summon a picture of "political intrigue" at the time of Buddhism's introduction into Tibet's royalty, the speaker argues that Bon was essentially xenophobic/unaccepting of outsiders infiltrating their royalty and that *this* must have been the reason for Buddhism persecuting Bon. Lame, and contradicted by actual history of why Buddhism persecuted Bon. But anyone with sense would admit that - even for apologetics - it's bad.



4. He shows signs - as do many western converts to Tibetan Buddhism who in time discover that their religion of choice/investment wasn't all that uh "friendly" towards the native Bon religion - of feeling rather uncomfortable with the little he did bother to discover about how Buddhism actually felt about Bon. But the discomfort quickly passes for converts, and with redoubled efforts they continue to deny that Buddhism could be capable of criminality let alone should be held culpable for it.



5. Upon increasing visibility of (one can't say familiarity with) Bon, more new-agey western people have contemplated dabbling in Bon too. Some like dabbling in both Bon and Tibetan Buddhism, the latter as well as Tibetan Buddhists (and converts to it) tend to like to contemplate a vision of Tibetan Buddhism having got along swell with Bon and that everything else must all have been but a terrible misunderstanding. Some alien converts to Bon too - being new-agey - want to be part of a larger new-agey network of "paganisms" and so you get the same nonsense from them. (Also, when did Buddhism/Jainism suddenly become "paganisms"?)





Of course, it's not just aliens who are determined to rewrite the ugly history of Buddhism in Tibet vis-a-vis what IS the native ancestral and originally distinct religion of Bon (and which is yet distinct in places outside of Tibet), and for which there are in fact clear signs that it existed before Buddhism. (Not the least that they were/are familiar with pre-Bauddhified forms of Hindu and Taoist Gods. I don't want to press the matter, but it remains a fact that Bonpo were like relations to Hindus: it was an overlap region, so Bon knew Hindu religious forms well too, and besides Kailasa, certain other famous sacred peaks were to have been revered by Bon before Buddhism as well, and they also recognised these - in their own names, but with the same view/same descriptions as Hindus did - as their divine parents. There was the *definite* presence of unBauddhified Hindu religion in Tibet and among Bon before Buddhism entered Tibet. And even their many Gods have been stolen by Buddhism and Buddhism detected Shiva and Parvati quite clearly among them and Bauddhified them with its standard mapping template. And that's not even mentioning the Daoism there. There is further every indication that what's called "Tibetan Buddhist" art is actually Bon, Nepalese Hindu and Taoist in origin, imagery/visualisations already conceived of among the Bon.)





There was one accidentally interesting bit in the article, which is very telling about who all did NOT invent vegetarianism:



berzinarchives.com/web/en/archives/study/comparison_buddhist_traditions/tibetan_traditions/bon_tibetan_buddhism.html

Bon has certain vows that one would expect Buddhists to have but they do not. For example, Bonpos have a vow of being vegetarian. Buddhists don't. The Bon morality is a little stricter than the Buddhist.

I predict the JMF will next terrorise the Bon by declaring that Bon was derived from Jainism. But no, it wasn't due to Jainism's influence either.

Anyway, so much for "ur-Shramanism invented vegetarianism" claims. (Not that anyone but the delusional would have believed it. Taoists independently knew of it: some of their communities are strict vegetarians including in offerings. Some of the Taoist Gods are strict vegetarians, so that even non-vegetarians will only offer vegetarian fare to them. And some ancient Taoist Sages were likewise.)





And the bit that the speaker admitted (though he doesn't tell the full story, but one suspects he knows it?):



berzinarchives.com/web/en/archives/study/comparison_buddhist_traditions/tibetan_traditions/bon_tibetan_buddhism.html

[...] people who emphasize their positive sides will tend to project their negative sides onto somebody. This phenomenon is found particularly in fundamentalist Buddhist traditions with super guru devotion and a big emphasis on a protector. The protector becomes the important thing. The [Tibetan Buddhist] texts say terrible things about anyone who is against the [Bauddha] Dharma or against the said tradition [Buddhist sect]. Smash our enemies, trample them, tear their eyes out, etc.

I've left out the rest of the paragraph because I've had enough of the apologetics of "it must originally have been Bon's fault for not being accepting of alien religion", which were speculations when the speaker first submitted them and now he advances them as certainties. (As if conjecture becomes true in the retelling.) Can see at link.



Well, at least the western convert to Tibetan Buddhism admitted as much as the above. He couldn't avoid it though: it's not like people don't know or can't find out.

But I'm tired of these excuses for known, historical cases of ethnic cleansing and replacement theology (oddly enough, people blindly defend Buddhism from a factual crime, while Hindus - whose religion has been projected as that of some mythical alien invaders - are blamed [often by the same people, btw] for backprojected fictional crimes of ethnic cleansing and replacement, and expected to feel remorse over it. Quite insane.)





Anyway, the violence in the Buddhist screechings against (corrected) Bon invokes the conclusion in an early quoteblock of this thread:



[quote name='Bharatvarsh2' date='09 May 2010 - 02:07 AM' post='106279']

The nAstika tilopA from the va~Nga country is highly regarded among Tibetans. He was an aggressive subversionist of former dharma. He says in apabhraMsha:

bamhA vihNu mahesura devA | bohisattva ma karahu seva | deva ma pUjahu titya Na jAvA | devapUjAhi Na mokkha pAvA ||



Here tilopA says: bodhisattva, do not worship the deva-s brahmA, viShNu and maheshvara; do not do pUjA to deva-s do not go to tIrtha-s. One does not get mokSha by doing pUjA to deva-s. Earlier, the sthaviravAdin buddhaghosha (born a brAhmaNa in magadha) who calls upon the nAstika-s to desist from hearing the rAmAyaNa or the bhArata. Actually, this strain is an original aspect of the tAthagata-s that passed unchanged through the transition of the yAna-s. Umakant Mishra points to a li~Nga in the Soro village of Orissa that has been defaced by the carving of a nAstika dharaNi on it. So the pAShaNDa-s were ready to put these words into practice. Yet we are repeatedly told that it is the Astika-s who were the buddha-busters (to borrow a favorite term of the Mohammedan: bhut-shikhan).



manasataramgini.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/the-rant-of-tilopa/

[/quote]

And the simplified version that was provided:

[quote name='Bharatvarsh2' date='09 May 2010 - 09:34 AM' timestamp='1273377387' post='106291']

Basically says that tilopA from Bengal who is highly regarded among Tibetans was a Buddhist and a subvertionist of dharma (or Astika sampradayas) who preached that Buddhist's shouldn't worship Brahma, Vishnu & Shiva and shouldn't go to the traditional holy places (tIrtha's) of Hindus because one doesn't achieve moksha through these things. Earlier Buddhaghosha from Magadha told the Buddhists that they shouldn't hear the Ramayana or Mahabharata narration. This type of attack is an original aspect of Buddhists that passed unchanged through the transition of yAna-s (vehicles? **). Umakant Mishra points to a shiva linga in the Soro village of Orissa that has been defaced by the carving of a nAstika dharaNi (Buddhist "earth"? ***) on it. Basically the linga was desecrated by Buddhists somehow. This shows that the pAShaNDa-s/Buddhists (another word for nAstika-s of various kinds including Buddhists & Jains but in this case Buddhists) were ready to put into practice the rants of people like tilopA by desecrating Hindu murti's/icons. But nowadays we are told (by commies and assorted enemies of Hindus) that it was the Astikas/Hindus who destroyed Buddhist temples/idols and Buddhism itself from India, to a borrow a term from the Muslims we are told that Hindus were the but (idol) shikhans (breakers) when it comes to Buddhists.

[/quote][Not related to my point, but:

** "yAna-s": I *think/guess* the reference is to the various Buddhisms, i.e. the hinayana, mahayana, vajrayana etc. And as the original quote also mentions the crazy sthaviravaadins, the ref "yaana-s" would then surely include all the Buddhisms that have appeared throughout history and not just the ones that are known to end on the -yana suffix. Thus the sentence might read "This type of attack is an original aspect of Buddhists that passed unchanged through the transition of <the various Buddhisms>". Or something. Or I interpreted it wrong all the while.

*** "dharaNi": dharaNi is a Buddhist spell, incantation. Or so I'd made out from the E Asian context.]





But I meant to refer to this line:

So the pAShaNDa-s were ready to put these words into practice.

In the context of:



berzinarchives.com/web/en/archives/study/comparison_buddhist_traditions/tibetan_traditions/bon_tibetan_buddhism.html

The [Tibetan Buddhist] texts say terrible things about anyone who is against the [Bauddha] Dharma or against the said tradition [Buddhist sect]. Smash our enemies, trample them, tear their eyes out, etc.

(Actually, a lot of unpleasant things were said by Tibetan Buddhism about Bon.)



The words were not mere threats. Buddhism persecuted Bon so that many fled Tibet for some neighbouring countries. Called ethnic cleansing were anyone else to have done it.

It is not because of but in spite of Buddhism that Bon has survived.