Neo Buddhism: Advertisement and Reality
Wasn’t it Ambedkar that said ‘Religion is made for man and man not for religion’. That being the case, we have to really delve and ask questions as to the relevance, utility and actual use that neo buddhism has been as far as the Ambedkarite movement goes. Now since a kid growing up in neo buddhist mahar family I was taught to worship Buddha as our God. So when it was about getting good grades in exams or praying for anything else for that matter it was always this ‘namo tasa’ prayer in front of this Buddha idol. The hindus had their Ganapati, christians had their Jesus to pray to for gifts, ours was the Buddha. Then when one went to our native place in Hinghanghat, for certain occasion be it marriage etc, there were some more prayer type things one heard. Stuff like ‘I purify my mind’ etc. When I got into my undergrads at IITB which being one of the many institutions specifically constructed as way to torture sc st students and crush their self esteem that I had my first real brushings with spirituality. I mean when the system you live in tells you that you being an sc st are just stupid, with you being taught since a kid that your value is to be measured by your accomplishment in education, your lone source of self worth crumbles and hence your quest to find meaning in something outside yourself becomes a quest for survival. That is when the nonsense of neo-buddhism as a practise struck me the most. It started with reading about buddhism as a kid of age 17 years and and its cornerstone doctrine ‘Your suffering is the result of your own desires’ felt like spitting on my misery. Then I got introduced to the the panchasheel. Gems which are supposed to quell your suffering. A few of the panchasheel in no particular order go as follows (which may not even be the panchasheel, but have its flavor nonetheless)
‘I won’t hurt living beings’ The obvious message being: The world is trying to hurt me and I should waste my time by not hurting living beings.
‘ I wont indulge in sexual immorality’ Now from the point of view of a student being tortured by the academic authorities for his caste, this is supposed to be of some relief. Your genitalia are the one to be blamed for your suffering. So better control them.
‘Right livelihood’ This is supposed to be of great help too. I mean a student getting through quota being told by the oppressors that he got in through quota over someone with better grades with the same income from the parents will definitely have some thing else to digest.
These don’t stop here. One discovers more. The emotion of anger is supposedly wrong. So by this doctrine my anger against the oppressors is dumbfounded. Couple that to the often quoted story in response to self-defense in Buddhism about Buddha telling some general in the army about a thief getting punishment at the hands of a judge only getting what is due of his karma and the judge should follow loving kindness even when dishing out this punishment….At this point it led to the realization as to how ‘religion being for man’ aspect of this philosophy as a solution to my suffering here and now is a complete joke.
But saying that brings up the famous comment, ‘So are you saying Ambedkar was a fool to choose Buddhism’. Well for starters I just want to break the taboo of putting Ambedkar on the pedestal of ‘Ambedkar is always right’. First of all it is completely disrespecting all his accomplishments in the academic sphere by reducing an academic like him to some dictatorial authority who is always right. The only reason that most academic studies of him see him as being right is because he was a person who used logical reasoning to solve his and his community’s problems during the times he lived and when anyone follows the road of logic one never is led astray. Now if we look at Ambedkar in the context of his times one can get an idea about his decision to go Buddhist. Here was a guy whose was a leader of folks who were so mentally enslaved that they believed what they are going through in life is justified because of the religion that told them so. Telling these same followers to not believe in hinduism is not the answer, because as someone said ‘IF there was no God, people would invent God’. Hence what Ambedkar had to do was find a substitute. The fact that the plight of his people was the primemost because of taking the words written by someone else to be true, it was natural that Ambedkar couldn’t go to islam or christianity or sikhism etc, which demanded that you accept certain things without question. It is hence that he chose the Buddha simply because the Buddha never asked anyone to follow anything he said without question. This naturally led to the conclusion that his religion was not stuck in the context of one time, but was malleable to the needs of the time. We have Ambedkar emphasising this aspect of the religion in his writings and even giving examples of this belief his professional life when he talked about the need for a constitution to allow for its own ammendment, because the laws of one time and place cannot be the norm for the people at a different time and place.
Despite such thoughts by Ambedkar, neo buddhism is a living example of how a religion instead of being a boon to its people becomes it bane. The religion of muhammad which gave rights to women which were unheard of for its time today is seen as the biggest oppressor of womens rights plainly because of being stuck in the historical setting in which the religion was set up. The religion of Buddha similarly was never constructed to remove oppression (even though it may have the same as a possible side effect) but was just a thesis put up by the Buddha about this principle that he called Dhamma around which existence revolves. His listeners of his time were the kings and people in power and it is hence for these people preaching of the panchasheel type doctrines makes the most sense, because it is the powerful who are the ones whose indulgence in the opposite way would translate into misery for the one being ruled over. Now taking this doctrine to restrain the might of the powerful and force feeding the same to someone who is getting overpowered then ends up in the realm of stupidity. The stupidity that offered no solution to my suffering in my undergraduate years. However, it is this very stupidity that the neo-buddhist movement wears as a badge of honor. Blame islam christianity etc for their faiths that do not allow reason, while plainly copying over behaviors and methodologies of the Buddha’s time which have no intersection to the conditions of dalits. This then turns neo-buddhism into a caricature of itself, not having any footing in real life issues and hence not having solved any problems to begin with for the people. So while you can have the afghan mujahideen fighting the soviets and now the american aggression under the banner of islam, the latter Sikh gurus taking up weapons for self defense with Guru Gobind Singh making weapon bearing as part of the dress code despite the founder of Sikhism never talking about war, the catholic church promoting the holy templar warriors when the muslims attacked jerusalem and instead you have neo-buddhists responding with the empty ‘metta’ and ‘sadhu sadhu’ despite the dalits being the most oppressed group in the history of humanity!!!
Wasn’t it Ambedkar that said ‘Religion is made for man and man not for religion’. That being the case, we have to really delve and ask questions as to the relevance, utility and actual use that neo buddhism has been as far as the Ambedkarite movement goes. Now since a kid growing up in neo buddhist mahar family I was taught to worship Buddha as our God. So when it was about getting good grades in exams or praying for anything else for that matter it was always this ‘namo tasa’ prayer in front of this Buddha idol. The hindus had their Ganapati, christians had their Jesus to pray to for gifts, ours was the Buddha. Then when one went to our native place in Hinghanghat, for certain occasion be it marriage etc, there were some more prayer type things one heard. Stuff like ‘I purify my mind’ etc. When I got into my undergrads at IITB which being one of the many institutions specifically constructed as way to torture sc st students and crush their self esteem that I had my first real brushings with spirituality. I mean when the system you live in tells you that you being an sc st are just stupid, with you being taught since a kid that your value is to be measured by your accomplishment in education, your lone source of self worth crumbles and hence your quest to find meaning in something outside yourself becomes a quest for survival. That is when the nonsense of neo-buddhism as a practise struck me the most. It started with reading about buddhism as a kid of age 17 years and and its cornerstone doctrine ‘Your suffering is the result of your own desires’ felt like spitting on my misery. Then I got introduced to the the panchasheel. Gems which are supposed to quell your suffering. A few of the panchasheel in no particular order go as follows (which may not even be the panchasheel, but have its flavor nonetheless)
‘I won’t hurt living beings’ The obvious message being: The world is trying to hurt me and I should waste my time by not hurting living beings.
‘ I wont indulge in sexual immorality’ Now from the point of view of a student being tortured by the academic authorities for his caste, this is supposed to be of some relief. Your genitalia are the one to be blamed for your suffering. So better control them.
‘Right livelihood’ This is supposed to be of great help too. I mean a student getting through quota being told by the oppressors that he got in through quota over someone with better grades with the same income from the parents will definitely have some thing else to digest.
These don’t stop here. One discovers more. The emotion of anger is supposedly wrong. So by this doctrine my anger against the oppressors is dumbfounded. Couple that to the often quoted story in response to self-defense in Buddhism about Buddha telling some general in the army about a thief getting punishment at the hands of a judge only getting what is due of his karma and the judge should follow loving kindness even when dishing out this punishment….At this point it led to the realization as to how ‘religion being for man’ aspect of this philosophy as a solution to my suffering here and now is a complete joke.
But saying that brings up the famous comment, ‘So are you saying Ambedkar was a fool to choose Buddhism’. Well for starters I just want to break the taboo of putting Ambedkar on the pedestal of ‘Ambedkar is always right’. First of all it is completely disrespecting all his accomplishments in the academic sphere by reducing an academic like him to some dictatorial authority who is always right. The only reason that most academic studies of him see him as being right is because he was a person who used logical reasoning to solve his and his community’s problems during the times he lived and when anyone follows the road of logic one never is led astray. Now if we look at Ambedkar in the context of his times one can get an idea about his decision to go Buddhist. Here was a guy whose was a leader of folks who were so mentally enslaved that they believed what they are going through in life is justified because of the religion that told them so. Telling these same followers to not believe in hinduism is not the answer, because as someone said ‘IF there was no God, people would invent God’. Hence what Ambedkar had to do was find a substitute. The fact that the plight of his people was the primemost because of taking the words written by someone else to be true, it was natural that Ambedkar couldn’t go to islam or christianity or sikhism etc, which demanded that you accept certain things without question. It is hence that he chose the Buddha simply because the Buddha never asked anyone to follow anything he said without question. This naturally led to the conclusion that his religion was not stuck in the context of one time, but was malleable to the needs of the time. We have Ambedkar emphasising this aspect of the religion in his writings and even giving examples of this belief his professional life when he talked about the need for a constitution to allow for its own ammendment, because the laws of one time and place cannot be the norm for the people at a different time and place.
Despite such thoughts by Ambedkar, neo buddhism is a living example of how a religion instead of being a boon to its people becomes it bane. The religion of muhammad which gave rights to women which were unheard of for its time today is seen as the biggest oppressor of womens rights plainly because of being stuck in the historical setting in which the religion was set up. The religion of Buddha similarly was never constructed to remove oppression (even though it may have the same as a possible side effect) but was just a thesis put up by the Buddha about this principle that he called Dhamma around which existence revolves. His listeners of his time were the kings and people in power and it is hence for these people preaching of the panchasheel type doctrines makes the most sense, because it is the powerful who are the ones whose indulgence in the opposite way would translate into misery for the one being ruled over. Now taking this doctrine to restrain the might of the powerful and force feeding the same to someone who is getting overpowered then ends up in the realm of stupidity. The stupidity that offered no solution to my suffering in my undergraduate years. However, it is this very stupidity that the neo-buddhist movement wears as a badge of honor. Blame islam christianity etc for their faiths that do not allow reason, while plainly copying over behaviors and methodologies of the Buddha’s time which have no intersection to the conditions of dalits. This then turns neo-buddhism into a caricature of itself, not having any footing in real life issues and hence not having solved any problems to begin with for the people. So while you can have the afghan mujahideen fighting the soviets and now the american aggression under the banner of islam, the latter Sikh gurus taking up weapons for self defense with Guru Gobind Singh making weapon bearing as part of the dress code despite the founder of Sikhism never talking about war, the catholic church promoting the holy templar warriors when the muslims attacked jerusalem and instead you have neo-buddhists responding with the empty ‘metta’ and ‘sadhu sadhu’ despite the dalits being the most oppressed group in the history of humanity!!!
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