
Buddhist morality is Medieval - golergka
https://meaningness.wordpress.com/2015/09/26/buddhist-morality-is-medieval/
======
eveningcoffee
_Most Tibetans were slaves according to any reasonable definition. Chinese
government propaganda uses that to try to legitimize their invasion of Tibet
as a “liberation.” From the other side, we behold the bizarre spectacle of
liberal American Buddhist intellectuals defending Tibetan slavery._

This is a lesson for naive Western people who have no clue about arguing with
twisted communist logic.

The correct answer is the following. Yes, they were slaves, but you did not
liberate them. Replacing one repression with another one is not liberation.

~~~
golergka
Depends on how bad one repression is compared to another.

I'm not saying that you're wrong; I honestly don't know. I'm just saying that
this doesn't look obvious at all.

------
eveningcoffee
_In Europe, Enlightenment rationalism enabled smart people to say “wait,
that’s nasty and stupid.” Christian morality gradually became less barbarous,
and evolved into secular ethics._

It is not that simple:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/how-
davi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/how-david-hume-
helped-me-solve-my-midlife-crisis/403195/)

------
adrianN
I would be interested how they managed to modernize their ethics from the
medieval rules as described in this post to something many liberal westerners
would find quite agreeable.

~~~
golergka
The author goes into great detail into precisely this in his other posts.
Basically, cultural appropriation and plain old lies and manipulation.

------
snakeanus
As far as I know, he makes quite a few unfounded claims here. Note that I am
not trying to defend the authors who try to line up Buddhism with modern,
Western, secular values, however I do not necessarily subscribe to these
values, though I may appreciate them. I subscribe to the Buddhist morality as
far as I understand it, and I am not rigid in this.

>Details depend on the tradition, but commonly verboten are solo and partner
masturbation, oral and anal sex, sex between men, sex during daytime, and sex
with a woman who is pregnant or nursing.

I know of no prohibitions for laypeople of this kind in Theravada, which is
the second-largest "denomination" of Buddhism. However, I am willing to say
that what defines sexual misconduct (one of the five precepts observed by lay
Theravada Buddhists) isn't clear, and may just be left to interpretation.

>Abortion is murder, and sends you straight to hell.

I don't know where this is mentioned, again at least within Theravada.

>Slavery

In his 9th footnote, he writes:

>In Buddhist literature of all varieties, stock descriptions of wealth, even
that gifted to the Buddha, regularly include both male and female slaves along
with silver, gold, fields, livestock, and so on.

In the Digha Nikaya, in the section "The analysis of virtue", and the
subsection "The short section on virtue", we find this in the tenth point[0]:

>'The recluse Gotama [...] abstains from accepting uncooked grain, raw meat,
women and girls, male and female slaves, goats and sheep, fowl and swine,
elephants, cattle, horses and mares.'

This is where one would speak in praise of the Buddha, so I think the message
would be that he sets an example. It's clearly presented as a bad quality,
something that a recluse or brahmin shouldn't do.

Furthermore, there is the Sigalovada Sutta, which declares that a layperson,
taking someone into employment ("servants and employees", the author of the
article touches on the fact that it's hard to distinguish), should master them
as such: (i) by assigning them work according to their ability, (ii) by
supplying them with food and with wages, (iii) by tending them in sickness,
(iv) by sharing with them any delicacies, (v) by granting them leave at times.

>According to scripture, the Buddha himself (after enlightenment) accepted
slaves as gifts to the sangha, and he did not free them.

I haven't found any trace of this, but I can only really Google for it. The
author hasn't provided a citation for this point, but it seems to be in
contradiction to the Digha Nikaya I mentioned earlier.

Edit: I read through the comments on the article and I found that the author
mentions some work by Schopen and he says:

>One of the scriptures he quotes is Bhesajja-khandhaka in the Pali Vinaya,
which I’ve linked at Sutta Central.

Schopen discusses the Bhesajja-khandhaka and makes points that could show it
is not authentic, such as the environment in which the text is set[2]. The
author has tried to use a text that is disputed in Schopen's work as evidence
that the Buddha accepted slaves.

>Large monasteries maintained standing armies, and sometimes went to war with
each other, secular powers, or foreigners. Monks have routinely exerted
political pressure on secular authorities to go to war.

I think it's important that he must distinguish Buddhism from Buddhists, when
talking about actual events in history.

On his fifth point about women in Buddhism, he writes:

>It’s partly the fault of other, patriarchal religions being mixed in
[irrelevant because the “original, pure” Buddhism did not teach equality]

I don't think this is irrelevant at all. As far as I know, the authenticity of
the Eight Garudhammas is questionable. Sujato Bhikkhu has made a nice FAQ
about the nuns[1] which counters some of the points the author makes about
women in Buddhism.

Funnily enough, at the end he writes:

>As Medieval morality goes, traditional Buddhism is surprisingly good. Many of
its moral positions are correct.

"Correct"? How has he discovered this correctness? It seems that this whole
essay has been judging Buddhist morality not as simply something medieval, but
as something non-Western and containing things that are "morally incorrect".

There are some Buddhists who say that the Buddha's words, after enlightenment,
are wholly true, and that whatever the Buddha said, even though it may not
seem fair or just or moral to us, there is a reason for this or that rule, or
a statement. Basically, "he knew something we don't know, and he didn't
explain it".

[0]
[http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.01.0.bodh.html](http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.01.0.bodh.html)

[1] [http://santifm.org/santipada/2010/bhikkhuni-
faq/](http://santifm.org/santipada/2010/bhikkhuni-faq/)

[2] [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qW9Sn-
cJd-0C&pg=PA196&lp...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qW9Sn-
cJd-0C&pg=PA196&lp..). (pp. 195-206)

