Buddha Pests
Feb. 20th, 2009 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vovatI know some people have criticized the Catholic Church for imposing a rigid hierarchy and wealthy leaders on what was originally presented as sort of a grassroots religion for the poor and humble. Has anyone ever done the same with Tibetan Buddhism? I mean, the Dalai Lama used to have his own palace back in the days before the Chinese occupation, right? I haven't really studied the Dalai Lama much, but stuff like this and the Bullshit! episode that criticized the "Free Tibet" movement makes me question the support that lama leadership seems to have in this country. That's not to say I favor the Chinese communist rule over Tibet, but I can't say I'm too fond of the Chinese communist rule over CHINA, either. When you get people like Sharon Stone acting like the treatment of Tibet is the worst thing the Chinese government has done since Mao's seizure of power, it makes me wonder whether they've actually done any research at all into twentieth-century Chinese history.
Getting back to my original comparison, I know Protestants object to the Catholic concept of praying to a saint as an intermediary, and insist that you can have a personal relationship with God. Buddhism strikes me as going one step further, claiming that you can have a personal relationship with the universe without having to go through a deity. Then again, to a pantheist, these would all be the same thing anyway, wouldn't they?
Getting back to my original comparison, I know Protestants object to the Catholic concept of praying to a saint as an intermediary, and insist that you can have a personal relationship with God. Buddhism strikes me as going one step further, claiming that you can have a personal relationship with the universe without having to go through a deity. Then again, to a pantheist, these would all be the same thing anyway, wouldn't they?
