Criticism of Buddhism

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

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] Sallie B. King writes that karma often leads to stigmatization of the disabled and people of lower social status (e.g., Dalits in India), especially for the disabled, as the Buddha's own words in the Cūlakammavibhanga Sutta are used to justify the stigmatization.^[2]

Whitley Kaufman offers five criticisms of karma:^[3]

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.
The Proportionality Problem: It is difficult to determine the evaluative relationship between a person's good and bad behavior.
The Infinite Regress Problem: Karma leads to the problem of infinite regression, where one cannot know where the first karma came from.
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.
The Free Will Problem: Karma's existence is somewhat contrary to free will.

Miracles

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.^[4]^[5]

Sectarianism in Buddhism

Buddhist scholars use terms such as "early Buddhism" to describe Buddhism before the early religious schisms. About a hundred years after the death of the Buddha, the Buddhist community began to conduct gatherings such as "councils" to resolve the divisions that existed at that time. However, a series of schisms still occurred, leading to the birth of many schools of Buddhism, and Buddhists sometimes use very pejorative terms to characterize other schools that do not share their beliefs.^[6]^[7]

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."^[8] Isaline Blew Horner and Diana Mary Paul are worried about the discrimination against almswomen and laywomen in Indian Buddhism.^[9] 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.^[10]

Criticism by other 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.^[11]^[12]

Shinto

Hirata Atsutane, a Shinto fanatic and Japanese Kokugaku theorist, wrote a biography of the Buddha from a critical perspective. Atsutane's book was subsequently banned by the shogunate, but it was still widely disseminated among Japanese intellectuals and caused considerable embarrassment to the Buddhist community in Japan.^[13]

Notes

^ The text is from the 转女身经 (The Sūtra on Transforming the Female Form), one version in Chinese originally reads: "此身便為不淨之器，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

^ Burley, Mikel (June 2014). "Karma, Morality, and Evil". Philosophy Compass. 9 (6): 415–430. doi:10.1111/phc3.12138. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
^ Flanagan, Owen (22 June 2017). A Mirror Is for Reflection: Understanding Buddhist Ethics. Oxford University Press. pp. 168–171. ISBN 978-0-19-049979-2. Retrieved 14 May 2024.
^ Kaufman, Whitley R. P. (2005). "Karma, Rebirth, and the Problem of Evil". Philosophy East and West. 55 (1): 15–32. ISSN 0031-8221. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
^ Rockwood, Nathan (December 2023). "Locke and Hume on competing miracles". Religious Studies. 59 (4): 603–617. doi:10.1017/S0034412522000464. ISSN 0034-4125. Retrieved 21 April 2024.
^ The Cambridge Companion to Miracles. Cambridge University Press. 2011. pp. 11–12. ISBN 978-0-521-89986-4.
^ Gray, David B. (2016). "Buddhist Sectarianism". In Powers, John (ed.). The Buddhist World. London; New York: Routledge. pp. 368–370. doi:10.4324/9781315688114. ISBN 9781315688114. Retrieved 29 July 2024.
^ Baruah, Bibhuti (2000). Buddhist sects and sectarianism. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons. pp. 39–42. ISBN 978-81-7625-152-5. Retrieved 29 July 2024.
^ Faure, Bernard (2003). "The Rhetoric of Subordination". The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity, and Gender. Princeton University Press. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-691-09171-6.
^ Yuichi, Kajiyama (1982). "Women in Buddhism". The Eastern Buddhist. 15 (2): 53. ISSN 0012-8708. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
^ Noriko, Kawahashi (2003). "Feminist Buddhism as Praxis: Women in Traditional Buddhism". Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. 30 (3/4): 293–294, 300–302. ISSN 0304-1042. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
^ Auerback, Micah L. (2016). A storied sage: canon and creation in the making of a Japanese Buddha. Chicago (Ill.) London: University of Chicago Press. pp. 120–125. ISBN 9780226286419.
^ Raz, Gil (October 2014). "'Conversion of the Barbarians' [Huahu] Discourse as Proto Han Nationalism". The Medieval History Journal. 17 (2): 255–294. doi:10.1177/0971945814545862. ISSN 0971-9458. Retrieved 23 April 2024.
^ Auerback, Micah L. (2016). A storied sage: canon and creation in the making of a Japanese Buddha. Chicago (Ill.) London: University of Chicago Press. pp. 135–160. ISBN 9780226286419.