Dinesh D'souza, the New Atheism, and Constantinian Christianity

» left by Aaron Taylor

from New Mexico 2 years 186 days ago.

You make some good points.  I agree that U.S. intervention in Indo China gave rise to Pol Pot's regime, but my point still stands.  If you study Marxism, which was Pol Pot's guiding philosophy, atheism is crucial to Marxism.  The undergirding philosophies of Lenin, Marx, Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot was atheism, and each of these men made a concerted effort to wipe out religion in their respective spheres of influence because of their atheistic philosophies, not in spite of it.

The Christians that you mention in your comment need to go back and study the life  and teachings of Jesus.

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» left by e

2 years 184 days ago.
133 fans.

Good article Aaron, some common sense here. Allow me to relate my personal experience with Christians in Thailand, instead of depending upon second hand information. I remember the Thais laughing about the Christians, calling them the “Rice for Christ” people. In other words, the Thais said that Christians offered Laotian refugees  rice, but only if they would convert from Buddhism to Christianity.  Later, I learned that this did not include Catholics, who wouldn’t allow the Laotians to convert and just gave them rice, this practice was reserved to the fundamentalist evangelicals. At any rate, initially, I really couldn’t believe them because who would be that insensitive - until I had a experience with Christian Missionaries for myself in Thailand.  

It was 1981, and I had recently ordained as Theravada Buddhist monk at Wat Pah Nanachat, a monastery in Northeast Thailand. One afternoon, I was half asleep and resting in the shade underneath my hut after meditating all night, when I thought I heard someone approaching through the jungle. This was unusual because the villagers usually respected this time of day when the monks typically rested, but it wasn’t villagers at all; I was surprised to be confronted by three aggressive Christian missionaries, two men and a woman that had somehow wandered into the monk’s living area.

“We’re not disturbing you, are we?" they politely, but firmly began. Then they proceeded to berate me about the disastrous mistake I was making, claiming that Buddhists are negative, that Buddhists believe that the world is a bad place, a place of suffering for human beings, that Buddhists have no hope and no belief in God, and going on and on about salvation and saving my soul. Instead of sitting in the jungle meditating, I should be out helping feed the poor Thais and Cambodians as they were.

My first impression was that their uninvited interruption was rude and disrespectful, something that a Southeast Asian would never think of doing. and there was something about this unrelenting display of insensitivity didn’t set right in my heart. I could only assume that they reasoned extreme measures were called for if they hoped to save my soul from the fires of hell! I couldn’t help wonder, however, whether they were really worried about me, or perhaps worried about making points with God themselves. I mean, Is that the extent of their practice of religion, brow beating people who have absolutely no  interest in their blindness and stupidity?  There was a “deer in the headlights” look on  their faces that told me that they  were completely brainwashed beyond any hope of recovery.

I had done enough interior introspection via meditation to understand the tendency to use Christ no differently than a bottle of Jack Daniels, an opiate, a dependency to ease the pain of human existence. Then again, maybe it was only a simple ego/power/control thing with them – to claim superiority by swaying others to their point of view. But I just couldn’t believe how a group could be so antagonistic, although I really couldn’t blame them, somebody must have taught them to act in this manner. I questioned their IQ level, and decided it was low, and therefore understood them much better..

And as far as feeding the Laotians and Cambodians, which the locals humorously regarded as “Rice for Christ," who wouldn’t proclaim allegiance to anything if they were starving? It would have been nice if this particular Christians sect would have just offered the rice, as the Catholics did, without the brainwashing.

When I was mysteriously drawn toward Buddhism, I, too, had to rely on ideas. I had to read books and so forth about meditation, but I soon verified enough of what I read with my own honest experience through practice that I didn’t have to rely on only what I read or was told – the practice of meditation does not rely on belief; it’s experiential. When meditation is experienced, no doubt remains about what one has found, nor is there a dependence on others to tell you what you should or should not believe.

Everybody has their own beliefs based on many things; culture, experience, personal inclinations, and to think that we can barge into another culture with our “better or truer" ideas, or that we are the only ones with a handle on truth, is, to my mind, the pinnacle of insensitivity and ignorant self-righteousness. This is accurate not only for religions, but any ideal that becomes obsessive, be it communism, democracy or monarchies. Democracy is fine for the United States, and the Thais love their king, and they are happy. They also love Buddhism.

The understanding that I developed from meditation was converted into wisdom through personal experience, not through beliefs or reading the good book. I had to be careful, however, because my mind would always attempt to take control of the insights I did experience. It attempted to take over the insights and change them into knowledge — facts that I would then become proud of, that I would recite and defend, maybe write my own bible and claim it was divinely inspired! Then I might self-delude myself into believing that God spoke to me directly. This is the danger of not understanding clearly the difference between belief and moment-to-moment experience.

The old story goes that the devil and one of his protégés were walking down the street and happened to see a man across the way pick up something and put it in his pocket. “What did he put in his pocket," the protégé asked the devil. Oh, just a little piece of truth," the devil replied.

“Oh, oh, we’re in trouble, aren’t we? The protégé remarked.

“No, not at all," the devil replied. “I’m going to let him organize it."

The Christian group would have had no notion of what I was thinking about, even if they would have afforded me the opportunity to get a word in edgewise, but, of course, they didn’t. It was their way or the highway!

Going within takes courage and effort. Simply believing in something requires little effort, and therefore frees us to build great economic, psychological, and emotional empires with our misdirected zealous energy, while sacrificing real liberation. Personal introspection involves tearing down built up delusions, and this is painful. For the brave seekers who dare take this on, however, out of the ashes of their former selves arise that which few beings can hope to experience; unbridled freedom.

The Catholic Church, in my opinion, has always underestimated the seriousness of seekers within their religion. Lectio Divina, Meditatio, Oratio, and Contemplatio all bring one within God’s reach. Orison, Recollection, Void, Contemplation, Rapture, and Ecstasy are stages described by Christian mystics, stages of giving up one’s idea of “self." Here, even ideas and concepts of heaven and God are eventually sacrificed, as one completely surrenders to the void and emptiness within. At this point of emptiness, the fullest emptiness imaginable, no differences exist between Buddhist and Christian, as all understanding is suspended within an ineffable ecstasy.

But I related none of this to my Christian missionary friends. Thai monks had guidelines, and one was not to teach until a monk’s desire to teach was exhausted. Another guideline cautioned against teaching higher principles to self-indulged people, because good intentions could easily turn contentious for everybody, and therefore only simple morality was taught to most lay people.

I could understand the reasoning behind this now. And as I looked into the self-righteous  faces of these Christians, I couldn’t help feel a pang of jealousy. In a way, I wished that I could still be as deluded as they were, living in their world of images. But I could no longer do that. This uncovering of truth had not been easy for me, and I’ll admit that I was still struggling with it.

But it was far too late to go back. Even though watching everything disintegrate that I had previously believed in was a most difficult thing, what else could I do now? I knew that what I had relied upon in the past was delusion, a child’s fantasy, and I had gone too far to return . . . ever. How could I expect anybody else to go to the extremes that I had gone? That would be asking too much. But then again, if I, a normal person could do it, and if Janet, my wife and Buddhist nun could do it as well, then perhaps others might understand, too.

All religions, including Buddhism, admittedly have built-in limiting factors for authentic spiritual seekers. I had already seen beyond the sensational miracles, secrecy, and emotionalism of Catholicism, and if I didn’t now go beyond, in my mind, the robes, and forms of Buddhism, beyond the idea of being a monk and all of that, I would never get to the core of what I thirsted for. If I allowed myself to be caught up in the concepts and ideals of religion, there would never be the necessary dissolution of my “self"’ that was so necessary in order to realize that which is beyond that small self. The Buddha himself said that his training methods were but a raft to reach the other shore, and just as one who reaches the far shore leaves his raft on the beach and walks away on foot, so should training methods be understood once one attains liberation. Attaining liberation was the catch!

Despite what the Christians claimed, I have never heard a Buddhist monk say that the world is a bad place. Monks consider the world to be simply . . . the world. Only when we create in our minds the idea that we are separate from it, or from anything else for that matter, does contention and hopelessness arise. Meditation clears the windshields of our minds so that we can see these things for ourselves, without being subjected to indoctrination by others, and that makes contemplative Buddhism liberating and full of hope.

The Buddha never recognized a creator, as such. In his enlightenment, he acknowledged the creation of consciousness moment to moment. He saw humankind’s destiny resting within humankinds’ own hands, within its own actions and not in the hands of an authoritarian deity that oversaw our every move. His exposition on Dependent Origination and his explanation of the deep aspects of our consciousness, rebirth, and karma provide a framework of indisputable logic that can actually be proven by the intuitive insight of meditation. The Buddha was not a deity. More amazingly, he was a self-perfected human being that gave us fellow mortals tremendous hope.

And “hope:" . . . How could I explain hope to these Christians who were so emotionally blinded with the “Word" of their holy book and their concept of a substantial, unchanging self. “Hope" represents wanting, desire, both being the basis of our suffering according to the Buddha, and the antithesis of freedom.

Wanting or hoping to achieve any state of mind — salvation, enlightenment or anything else, represents a condition arising from a cause, an effort. All conditioned things are transient, according to the Buddha, and since we are conditioned transient beings, what could we desire that would be eternal? It’s not possible for us to understand either eternity, or Reality, but we can know them in our hearts. We just can’t talk about them. We only mislead ourselves when we think that any “state" can represent ultimate freedom, and the Buddha revealed a way to go beyond states, which is the greatest of miracles.

Meditation is definitely a state of “not knowing," and I was learning not to trust the mind that thought it knew. When I found myself in this state of not knowing, the self that I believed in so passionately was gone! This is when I made my best progress toward the goal of goalessness.

Conversely, when I thought I knew something and busily stored that “something" in my mind, I found that my self was alive and well. How could enlightenment ever be found among these mind files where accumulated memories and knowledge were stored? It became increasingly apparent where enlightenment actually resided—in this immense moment where my self could never tread — a moment that is timeless, eternal, and Real, beyond time, existence, and experience.

My old worldly knowledge was no more than lame attempts at security, and security was no more than a definition of knowledge. Knowledge is miles away from spirituality. Knowledge actually only breeds further discontent. This became apparent as we met many people in our travels, many who seemed to know everything there is to know about spirituality. When they were in mortal danger, however, lying in their huts burning up with a fever, or snake bit, some other life-threatening situation, their real priorities became apparent - the body became all-important.

But I mentioned none of this to these people; it would have been futile. I merely listened to everything they had to say, hoping that they would somehow hear themselves, but this was hoping for too much, so I simply didn’t respond and kept my head down. I felt as if I was being pummeled and punished for something I did wrong. What a contrast between these strident people and the kind, quiet monks and nuns at the monastery who simply suggested that we find our own answers within ourselves.

I could have said plenty to the missionaries, because I could clearly see, perhaps for the first time in my life, how many Christians have completely misread what Jesus was trying to teach. The tragedy of the situation was that there was no way to change their opinions. With completely closed minds, they mistakenly reinforced a strong idea of “self," or dualism, insisting that their God is special and separate — that he is out there, and we are here. The whole episode was disquieting to say the least, and was actually quite frightening and threatening. For a moment, I was back at my Catholic grade school being struck by a nun!

Monks, according to the vinaya (monk’s rules) must be careful of their speech. Any unkind words are offenses, and a monk cannot use persuasion in his dealings — no belittling, no one-upmanship, only facts. On the surface, it would appear that a monk is defenseless when faced with aggressive, agenda driven individuals, but he is not. How can people such as these Christian missionaries, who travel about the world like spaghetti spoons stirring all the sauces but never being able to taste any of them, ever touch what a monk or nun knows to be true in his or her heart, and from his or her own experience? They were mere children. I felt compassion for these missionaries. What a burden they must carry; having to persuade everybody in the world to believe as they do. It doesn’t leave them much time to actually contemplate God.

Therefore, knowing that words would be useless, I said nothing to the Christian missionaries. It wasn’t that I feared my anger boiling out of control as it had done so violently in the past; it was just that I was a monk now, and began reaching beyond that point of uncontrollable anger. This was confirmed by the tremendous sadness that replaced the usual anger toward these confused people who didn’t even understand how their minds worked, or knew what a “self" was, or understood that it is all only a temporary dream.

Christians have tried to convert Thais for hundreds of years, and the Thai government permits them to freely spread Christian beliefs as widely as they please, but like mosquitoes trying to bite the iron bull, or like weevils trying to bore into a granite mountain, their efforts have gone unrewarded. Thailand remains ninety-three percent Buddhist, with only a scattering of Moslems and Christians.

The missionaries finally left, continuing to preach over their shoulders and tripping down the path, and believe me, I was on the lookout for those particular missionaries from that day forward. I carefully avoided them as warily as I avoided scorpions, snakes, and rabid dogs, and headed the other way whenever I saw one coming.

Best as always…………e 

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