Criticism of Buddhism

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Criticism of Buddhism has taken numerous different forms, including philosophical and rational criticisms, but also criticism of praxis, such as that its practitioners act in ways contrary to Buddhist principles or that those principles systemically marginalize women. There are many sources of criticism, both ancient and modern, stemming from other religions, the non-religious, and other Buddhists.

Doctrine

Karma

See also: Karma § Free will and destiny, and Karma in Buddhism § Karma theory and social justice

Buddhist karma and karmic reincarnation are feared to potentially lead to fatalism and victim blaming. Paul Edwards says that karma does not provide a guide to action. Whitley Kaufman, in his recent book, cross-examines that there is a very tense relationship between karma and free will, and that if karma existed, then evil would not exist, because all victims of evil just get "deserved".[1]

Whitley Kaufman offers five criticisms of karma:[2]

  1. The Memory Problem: People have never found reliable evidence for the existence of reincarnation, and therefore people have no way of knowing the specifics of the evils they have done in their past lives, and naturally they cannot atone for them, which brings the whole theory closer to the theory of vengeance.
  2. The Proportionality Problem: It is difficult to determine the evaluative relationship between a person's good and bad behavior.
  3. The Infinite Regress Problem: Karma leads to the problem of
    infinite regression, where one cannot know where the first karma
    came from.
  4. The Problem of Explaining Death: Since death is often viewed as the greatest evil in Buddhism, but everyone inevitably experiences death, this may weaken the rigor of the karma discourse.
  5. The Free Will Problem: Karma's existence is somewhat contrary to free will.

Miracles

See also: Miracles of Gautama Buddha and Faith healing § Buddhism

Buddhist texts contain a range of paranormal phenomena, such as the Buddha's mysterious origins, and some Buddhists claim that the Buddha himself levitated while meditating. Scottish philosopher David Hume, in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, was skeptical of all religious miracles and advocated treating them in the same light.[3][4]

Women in Buddhism

See also: Women in Buddhism

Women are often depicted in traditional Buddhist texts as deceitful and lustful. The

Buddha himself said in an early text[a] that a woman's body is "a vessel of impurity, full of stinking filth. It is like a rotten pit ... like a toilet, with nine holes pouring all sorts of filth."[5] Isaline Blew Horner and Diana Mary Paul are worried about the discrimination against almswomen and laywomen in Indian Buddhism.[6] Kawahashi Noriko observes that the contemporary Buddhist community in Japan is rife with two views, one that women are inherently incompetent and the other that women need to be dependent on men for their liberation; and that the Japanese Buddhist community has consistently ignored women themselves, as well as feminist critique.[7]

Criticism by other religions

Taoism

See also: Buddhism and Eastern religions § Taoism

Since the fall of the

Han Dynasty, Chinese Taoism and Buddhism have accused each other of copying their texts. Since at least 166, Taoism had been propagating the idea that Laozi or one of his disciples went to India to become the Buddha in order to subdue the barbarians in the west. The Buddhists also fought back, and these debates continued until about the middle of the 9th century.[8][9]

Shinto

See also: Buddhism and Eastern religions § Shinto

shogunate, but it was still widely disseminated among Japanese intellectuals and caused considerable embarrassment to the Buddhist community in Japan.[10]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The text is from the 转女身经 (Transfiguration of the Female Body Sutra), one version in Chinese originally reads: "此身[女身]便為不淨之器，臭穢充滿，亦如枯井、空城、破村[...] 此身如廁，九孔流出種種不淨".

References

  1. doi:10.1111/phc3.12138
    . Retrieved 19 April 2024.
  2. ISSN 0031-8221
    . Retrieved 19 April 2024.
  3. ISSN 0034-4125
    . Retrieved 21 April 2024.
  4. ISBN 978-0-521-89986-4
    .
  5. ISBN 978-0-691-09171-6
    .
  6. ISSN 0012-8708
    . Retrieved 2 November 2023.
  7. ISSN 0304-1042
    . Retrieved 2 November 2023.
  8. ISBN 9780226286419
    .
  9. ISSN 0971-9458
    . Retrieved 23 April 2024.
  10. ISBN 9780226286419
    .

Further reading
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