He did however renounced his wealth and lived a life of poverty. And Buddhism isn’t the story of siddhartha alone. He had many followers that figure in the pali canon quite extensively, and they were poor, rich, some even developmentally disabled. Concurrently, there were a lot of ascetics that siddhartha studied with - Buddhism didn’t spring out of his mind wholly formed, it was a distillation of thousands of years of Indian philosophy into a structured process with a structured monk hood and method of “evangelizing” and maintaining coherency of his teachings.
However, I’m not specifically picking on siddhartha, but on Buddhism. Buddhism has seen many people through immensely difficult situations in life, which would cause suffering if you didn’t have a way of framing the conscious experience and it’s impact on emotional and physical well being.
I used the example of Myanmar and Cambodia on purpose - they are Buddhist countries, and while not everyone who is Buddhist practices Buddhist teachings, many do. And it’s impossible to say the Burmese and Cambodians aren’t impoverished and oppressed. Yet many find through Buddhism an ability to not suffer, and lead content and full lives despite. They labor under extreme difficulty, and if you think laboring in the tropics is easy … it’s not. Yet - still, I don’t see the SLS I see in American cities and rural settings, or in UK coastal towns, etc. They’re not magical and mystical beings in burma or Cambodia, they just have access to a way of thinking that enables them to not suffer emotionally from an unpleasant life. They would escape if they could, because Buddhism doesn’t teach acceptance of unpleasantness, but it does teach how to not suffer when things are unpleasant.
Buddhism itself is a very diverse beast to get a handle on in that part of the world. But I agree it serves to preserve (especially male) populations in conditions of little material possibility.
It sounds like you are making a different point: that you don’t see anything in the USA like the social/religious systems that have enabled some in SE Asia to transcend difficult conditions.
I would say that Christianity serves much of the same purpose in middle America, and that you don’t see as much “SLS” around practicing Christians as you do in the general population. It doesn’t get reported on much in the popular media though. What would the headline read?
Interesting observation. And I say so as a (Christian-raised) atheist, albeit of the moderate secular variety.
Religious observance in the UK has fallen through the floor since the early 20th century, and is more avidly practiced by our immigrant communities (Muslim, Catholic, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, African Christians) than most "native" Brits.
And yet very few are motivated by Hitchens/Dawkins-style, burn-it-all-down atheism, more of a, "meh, haven't really bothered to think about it" thing. Brits have given up on their own culture out of some kind of depressive laziness, and yet it's often those very same Brits who get angry at immigrants for celebrating their own traditions.
"I hate Muslims because they shut the pub and turned it into a mosque", usually said by an overweight, balding man who stopped going to said pub five years ago because drinking supermarket beer at home was cheaper.
To come back to your original point. People had objectively far shittier lives a century ago, less SLS but perhaps they were just too busy dying of silicosis, industrial accidents or TB.
Yea you’re right. I just don’t personally have that experience with Christianity to have a view.
Interestingly I was reading a teaching on the difference between transcendence and Buddhism. Transcendence was in fact what was being sought after in south Asian cultures at the time of Buddha. But Buddha didn’t teach transcendence and he made a clear distinction. It’s not about escape from your situation by leaving it in some way, it’s about living your situation without attachment to the past or future, about if you want things to be better, then do what you believe makes things better and others like you will be a part of your change you make. There’s several layers in Buddhism, with basic ones being relief from suffering, but deeper ones involve loving kindness and compassion, drawing on the idea that we are communal organisms that thrive on constructive generosity and kindness.
A lot is made of “enlightenment” and reincarnation, and at least in Theravada Buddhism, are mostly metaphorical.
Which brings me to your first point - Buddhism in Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand is Theravada Buddhism which is essentially unchanged from the original compilation in pali. In other parts of Asia you see a lot of innovation and mysticism (and to be fair in Southeast Asia the lay person Buddhism is a mixture of traditional animism and spirit worship mixed in with Buddhism).
Finally you make a male / female distinction. I don’t think this is fair. Women are allowed as much freedom and respect in Buddhism as any organized “religion” (I don’t consider Theravada Buddhism to be a religion, or even a philosophy - it’s more a guide to being a human). In fact in the Pali texts there are quite a large number of females who achieve enlightenment or bodhisattva (people who could become enlightened but opt instead to spend their lives ending suffering for all creatures, often even more respected in life and death than those who become enlightened).
Women are not allowed to become ordained monks though. But they can become nuns, which in theory are equal to monks. In practice sadly many mainstream monks exploit their position, which is not supposed to come with power and influence. In many ways the monk hoods rules about women are much more about the weakness of men than anything about women. Women are generally viewed as more likely to not need such draconian rules as men. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in Theravada Buddhism that elevates men above women in any way whatsoever.
Sadly though the societies themselves are historically patriarchal, and this colors things and male monks are often venerated more than nuns for that reason.
However, I’m not specifically picking on siddhartha, but on Buddhism. Buddhism has seen many people through immensely difficult situations in life, which would cause suffering if you didn’t have a way of framing the conscious experience and it’s impact on emotional and physical well being.
I used the example of Myanmar and Cambodia on purpose - they are Buddhist countries, and while not everyone who is Buddhist practices Buddhist teachings, many do. And it’s impossible to say the Burmese and Cambodians aren’t impoverished and oppressed. Yet many find through Buddhism an ability to not suffer, and lead content and full lives despite. They labor under extreme difficulty, and if you think laboring in the tropics is easy … it’s not. Yet - still, I don’t see the SLS I see in American cities and rural settings, or in UK coastal towns, etc. They’re not magical and mystical beings in burma or Cambodia, they just have access to a way of thinking that enables them to not suffer emotionally from an unpleasant life. They would escape if they could, because Buddhism doesn’t teach acceptance of unpleasantness, but it does teach how to not suffer when things are unpleasant.