UrbanMysticDee 
Bae > Bay
This is part of a footnote to one of the endnotes for chapter 4. This is only to clarify, or justify the phrase "soul within Tibetan Buddhism").
And I hate to bring race into this, because several times throughout the book I say fixation on race is bullshit, but without exception every single person who has ever told me that "Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion" has been a white Western atheist, and they are disagreeing with Asian Buddhists who were born into the faith and have practiced it all their lives.
Here's the note:
Western scholars, or lay enthusiasts of Buddhism, tend to be atheist materialists who have taken that path out of rejection of Christianity (I was the opposite, starting out as an atheist, who went through Buddhism to get to Christianity), so they have a very materialistic view of Buddhism, which is totally incorrect. I’ve had white Western art students, who were man-hating lesbians and “male feminists”, who eventually got jobs at like Costco or wherever (I think only one of them actually got a job in the art field, so you can imagine they were pretty bitter dropping $40,000 on a useless degree) and they were all atheists by the way, and very anti-religious, and they nonetheless told me, who actually was a student of a Japanese Zen Roshi for several years, that “Buddhism is not a religion, it’s a philosophy.”
That’s bullshit on its face. I don’t know of any other philosophy where people wear silly costumes, pray to deities, make offerings, burn incense, and are recognized tax-exempt ministries.
Melford E. Spiro did a study of Burmese Buddhism and found that most Buddhists were concerned with literal magic (warding off evil spirits, securing a good harvest, getting a good spouse for their child, etc.), or with being a good enough person to get a better rebirth (or to secure ethnic purity of the nation, because there is conflict there between Buddhist and Muslim tribes). Only a tiny minority of practicing Buddhists are concerned with the latter stages in Gautama Buddha’s Noble Eight-fold Path and meditation and all that good stuff.
Similarly Western atheistic journalists have argued in interviews with the Dalai Lama over this very issue, with the white Westerners telling the Dalai Lama himself he is wrong to his face about Buddhism being a philosophy and not a religion. I think the Dalai Lama knows more about Buddhism than some nobody New York City. If the Dalai Lama says Buddhism is a religion then it’s a religion and if you disagree you can get fucked.
Naturally, it’s because of these atheistic, materialistic, anti-Christian tendencies within the Western academia that have led to this push to interpret Buddhism incorrectly in the West, along atheistic, materialistic lines.
Getting back to the topic, there is a soul within Buddhism. What Gautama Buddha described as anatta (often translated as “non-self”) does not mean that there is nothing that can be used to describe a soul, it just means that there is nothing substantive and unchanging. This is good because if an unchanging soul existed and it was stuck in Samsara then there would be no way for it to get out! The fact that the soul can, and does, change, is how the process of working through karma (which the West has a very incorrect view of, but that’s a different book altogether), and accumulating wisdom and virtue so as to achieve enlightenment happens.
This Buddhist soul, or Indestructible Drop, is said to be the mount or vehicle that carries the very subtle bodymind that is none other than the mind of enlightenment, and it is the Indestructible Drop that transmigrates from life to life, and ultimately persists into Nirvana once all karma (both positive and negative) has been worked off. It is the Indestructible Drop that allows Buddhas to manifest in countless worlds and send emanations of good will down to all sentient beings who are still suffering.
And I hate to bring race into this, because several times throughout the book I say fixation on race is bullshit, but without exception every single person who has ever told me that "Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion" has been a white Western atheist, and they are disagreeing with Asian Buddhists who were born into the faith and have practiced it all their lives.
Here's the note:
Western scholars, or lay enthusiasts of Buddhism, tend to be atheist materialists who have taken that path out of rejection of Christianity (I was the opposite, starting out as an atheist, who went through Buddhism to get to Christianity), so they have a very materialistic view of Buddhism, which is totally incorrect. I’ve had white Western art students, who were man-hating lesbians and “male feminists”, who eventually got jobs at like Costco or wherever (I think only one of them actually got a job in the art field, so you can imagine they were pretty bitter dropping $40,000 on a useless degree) and they were all atheists by the way, and very anti-religious, and they nonetheless told me, who actually was a student of a Japanese Zen Roshi for several years, that “Buddhism is not a religion, it’s a philosophy.”
That’s bullshit on its face. I don’t know of any other philosophy where people wear silly costumes, pray to deities, make offerings, burn incense, and are recognized tax-exempt ministries.
Melford E. Spiro did a study of Burmese Buddhism and found that most Buddhists were concerned with literal magic (warding off evil spirits, securing a good harvest, getting a good spouse for their child, etc.), or with being a good enough person to get a better rebirth (or to secure ethnic purity of the nation, because there is conflict there between Buddhist and Muslim tribes). Only a tiny minority of practicing Buddhists are concerned with the latter stages in Gautama Buddha’s Noble Eight-fold Path and meditation and all that good stuff.
Similarly Western atheistic journalists have argued in interviews with the Dalai Lama over this very issue, with the white Westerners telling the Dalai Lama himself he is wrong to his face about Buddhism being a philosophy and not a religion. I think the Dalai Lama knows more about Buddhism than some nobody New York City. If the Dalai Lama says Buddhism is a religion then it’s a religion and if you disagree you can get fucked.
Naturally, it’s because of these atheistic, materialistic, anti-Christian tendencies within the Western academia that have led to this push to interpret Buddhism incorrectly in the West, along atheistic, materialistic lines.
Getting back to the topic, there is a soul within Buddhism. What Gautama Buddha described as anatta (often translated as “non-self”) does not mean that there is nothing that can be used to describe a soul, it just means that there is nothing substantive and unchanging. This is good because if an unchanging soul existed and it was stuck in Samsara then there would be no way for it to get out! The fact that the soul can, and does, change, is how the process of working through karma (which the West has a very incorrect view of, but that’s a different book altogether), and accumulating wisdom and virtue so as to achieve enlightenment happens.
This Buddhist soul, or Indestructible Drop, is said to be the mount or vehicle that carries the very subtle bodymind that is none other than the mind of enlightenment, and it is the Indestructible Drop that transmigrates from life to life, and ultimately persists into Nirvana once all karma (both positive and negative) has been worked off. It is the Indestructible Drop that allows Buddhas to manifest in countless worlds and send emanations of good will down to all sentient beings who are still suffering.