[lit-ideas] Re: Comparative religion

JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx writes:

: I know, I know .... you guys are all on the edge of your seats waiting for  
: another episode in the saga of Public Middle School Education in the  
: Midwest....but there's a serious question at the end here.
:  
: My 7th grader's social studies class is doing a unit on basic  comparative 
: religion -- an overview of the world's major religions (though so  far I have
: n't 
: heard any noises about Hinduism, and Buddhism is being considered  a religion
:  
: rather than a philosophy, which always makes me cringe). 

As the president of the Cleveland Buddhist Temple, which is one of the
Buddhist Churches of America and thus in the Japanese Shin Buddhist
tradition I sort of cringe at your cringing.

If we weren't a religion we would lose our tax exemption.

Although there are aspects of the Buddhist tradition that look very
much like Western philosophy, there are important differences
and the two traditions are not connected except perhaps for the
Skeptics having been influenced by Buddhist or Jain 
gymnosophists, in a tradition extending from Pyrrho through
Sextus Empiricus to Hume.

Many of the institutions of Christianity as we know it, on the
other hand, like rosaries and monasticism, can be traced to
Buddhist (or Jain) sources.

And most Asian Buddhists---including those who now live in the
West---don't practice Buddhism as a philosophy, but do practice
it in a way that looks pretty much like what we would call
religious.  Of course there are the Western Zen types who
might claim that the practice of "just sitting" is a philosophy,
but that would turn every bullfrog in the world into a 
philosopher.

Of course some Weatern Buddhists would claim that Buddhism is
a psychology, but frankly I think that that view is simply
sick.

The trouble is, I think, that religion is a Western category
which is defined by the degree that a set of beliefs and
practies resembles those of Christianity.  There are scholars
who think that only Christianity can be called a religion.


--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
 EMAIL: junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    URL:  http://samsara.law.cwru.edu   
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