Is Chinese government against Buddhism?

It’s not a theoretical topic to someone who studies the different versions of Buddhist EBTs. It already happened thousands of years ago. What you and I called the “Dhamma-Vinaya” is the product of human creativity, and also a good bit of natural errors.

So, if you find the Dhamma-Vinaya that exists today to be good and fruitful, then you have your proof.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that changing the core principles, omitting them, or adding harmful beliefs is harmless. But I don’t see anything harmful about the natural creation of new mythological figures like Quanyin to express core Buddhist values like compassion.

And that gets to the heart of this problem. It’s not really the texts themselves that contain harmful things; it’s the human mind. If a person develops wisdom and critical thinking, they can navigate the spurious additions that are problematic. If they don’t develop wisdom and critical thinking, they are less likely to reap much benefit from the exact words that the Buddha spoke, even if we knew we had them today.

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Touche. In fact, I do say that about all the governments in existence at this time.
Perhaps only a wheel-turning monarchial governance based on the Dhamma gets anywhere close.

This is my main point, so I think we are in agreement on this point at least.

I think you are conflating “harmful creativity” and “beneficial creativity” and not making an appropriate distinction between the two.

Like I conceded in my previous comment, if the creativity is in terms of say reproducing the meaning of Dhamma-Vinaya in different languages, mediums, etc., I agree that this creativity is beneficial and has been done to some degree.

But I don’t agree with this.
I do think this is harmful even if on the basis of basic dishonesty: attributing to the Buddha’s religion something that the Buddha’s religion did not claim was or is the case.
I.e. the Buddha never claimed that Quanyin exists and embodies compassion.
In short, Quanyin is claimed to be “Buddhist” when it is actually not - not taught by the Buddha. That fits the basic definitions of dishonesty and misrepresentation and can mislead many beings into believing the Buddha taught something that he actually did not teach.

If some outsider were to wish to evaluate Buddhism to test if it is true or valid and they come across the Quan Yin and other such fabricated cultural creations which “claimed to be taught by the Buddha” - when they try to test “Buddhism,” they will like find many false parts. They can conclude that Buddhism is not 100% true and has many false parts - and they would be right that those parts and false and not true.

They may go on to throw Buddhism into the category of all the other religions that try to teach virtues but use folklore and myths and etc. to get their points across - which is not the case in actual Buddhism.

However, tolerating such additions and modifications due to not seeing danger in doing so seems to be the kind of attitude that leads to the gradual but significant accumulation of distortions in the Dhamma-Vinaya.

The glaring hypocrisy of this position seems evident when someone decides that they wish to say the fat Buddha was how the actual Buddha looked, nazi philosophy (Aryanism) is taught by the Buddha, killing infidels through Islamic Jihad is taught by the Buddha, all of math was invented by the Buddha, etc.

Many people would reject such claims.

But it would beg the question: on what basis? Who gets to decide what can and cannot be included in Buddhism and attributed to the Buddha?

If you could provide a solid answer to this question, it might help me understand why adding stuff to buddhism, like Lotus Sutra and Quan Yin and Abhidhamma, and attributing these to the Buddha is okay.

I think this gets to the heart of our disagreement actually.

I think in AN Book of 2’s, the Buddha said there are two things that lead to the decline of Dhamma:
Wrongly set down words and phrases, and wrongly interpreted meaning.
He then goes on to draw the connection in this very specific way:
when the words and phrases are wrongly put down, the meaning is wrongly interpreted.
(Maybe @Upasaka_Dhammasara can find the exact sutta that I am trying to refer to?)

Your argument seems to claim that the “heart of the problem” comes primarily from the second part, independent of the first part.

I.e. beings should develop enough wisdom to not wrongly interpret the meaning to Dhamma-Vinaya regardless of how wrongly the words and phrases are put - the fault lies exclusively in the interpreter, not in the formulator.

“If they don’t develop wisdom and critical thinking, they are less likely to reap much benefit from the exact words that the Buddha spoke, even if we knew we had them today.”
This seems to (perhaps rightly) blame those who misinterpret the teachings even if the words and phrases were put down correctly.

However, I think that you seem to be overlooking the fact that those who do not formulate the Dhamma-Vinaya properly are, to that degree, worthy of blame.

Greetings SeriousFun136 ,
do you ever think that the four nikayas never get corrupted ?
Who gets to decide which dhamma vinaya of which schools 100% genuine and accurate ? Does all teachings has to be word by word from the Buddha mouth before one could accept it ? Another thing is if Buddha accepted some teachings not originated from his own awakening and taught it to his disciples and encouraged them to practice such as four immeasurables meditation , eight stages of jhanas etc , then one should not have difficulty in accepting something embodies compassion ! By learning and practicing compassion one come close to Buddha and eventually His other teachings .
The learnings is gradual as you already aware of .

No.
I think the four nikayas are corrupted.
And I am 100% against each and every single one of those corruptions.

The Buddha already decided.

Its up to all other beings to decide what they wish to do with the Dhamma-Vinaya that he taught - whether we wish to add, subtract, and modify everything as we wish willy nilly - add Quanyin here, add that there.

If Dhamma-Vinaya as already been corrupted and misrepresented, it is up to us to decide whether now we wish to become dogmatic defenders of the corruptions and modifications - or to try to correct those very same corruptions and modifications! What would you like to do?

It seems many beings here become defensive when I call into question whether modifications and changes that were not authorized by the Buddha himself. It makes me wonder if beings have become attached to and cling to the modifications like Quanyin.

Why care so much if what was wrongly added into Buddhism later on later gets deleted out of Buddhism? Why get so upset if Quanyin is rejected and no longer considered Buddhist? Why does it hurt?

We can do as we wish in terms of how we represent the Dhamma-Vinaya, but we all reap what we sow, I think we would all do well to remember that.

What if beings who try to accurately represent the Dhamma-Vinaya suffer less harm and enjoy more benefit than those who tolerate, defend, advocate, cling to, accept, and even initiate misrepresentations of the Dhamma-Vinaya.

What if these latter category of beings end up suffering more harm and enjoy less benefits?

Would they blame others? Like say the Chinese government for their dukkha? Or would they realize that their modifications of the Dhamma-Vinaya have very real, real-life consequences for themselves and what they experience in the future by misrepresenting the Dhamma-Vinaya.

I think the first step is to acknowledge that misrepresenting the Dhamma-Vinaya in any way at all under any conditions is harmful and unbeneficial to that degree.

Otherwise, I think beings will keep making excuses, justifications, rationalizations to misrepresent the Dhamma-Vinaya. I won’t reap what they sow though, they will.

Examples of excuses that I have come across:

  1. there are distortions and additions in all the sources we have already (and instead of trying to correct those, we should promote even more distortions and additions because we feel helpless to correct it)

  2. creativity is good (thus, all beings should be allowed to take creative liberties on the Dhamma-Vinaya, rather than say, creating their own religion and take responsibility for this new doctrine they created - that would be “true” creativity!)

  3. how can we know what is Dhamma-Vinaya? (instead of trying to figure it the answer, they use it as an excuse to excuse distortions)

  4. no one can know what Dhamma-Vinaya actually is! (clever phrasing to make it sound like it is 100% impossible to know what is Dhamma-Vinaya at all - close-minded skeptic - maybe they mean that they don’t know…and project their feelings of confusion into the universe and declare: no one can know!)

  5. who is the judge?! (The question is inappropriate and irrelevant. Again, a diversion tactic that distracts from the task at hand: figuring out what the Dhamma-Vinaya actually is)

  6. One thing in common that all of these excuse have in common is that they seem to lazily excuse the “toleration of distortions of Dhamma-Vinaya” under the guise of “tolerance” - I have encountered beings who use it as a ploy to extol their own virtue “look how tolerant I am!” and try to slander me saying “you are close-minded, dogmatic, narrow-minded, etc.” - but when the conversation is said and done - they “go back to their life and whatever they have to do” and never really make an attempt to systematically investigate what actually is Dhamma-Vinaya - “I don’t what what Dhamma-Vinaya is…but I am more tolerant [of all-too-human of misrepresentations of Dhamma-Vinaya] and thus better and more compassionate than the other person.” It seems more difficult to investigate and figure out what the Dhamma-Vinaya actually is than to “act tolerant and tolerate everything as equal and worthy of respect.”

I don’t think there is anything compassionate at all about misrepresenting the Dhamma-Vinaya.

To the contrary, I think it is not compassionate to misrepresent or defend misrepresentions of the Dhamma-Vinaya.

I think it is compassionate to accurately represent the Dhamma-Vinaya.

I think it is out of compassion for gods and humans that beings try to accurately represent the Dhamma-Vinaya and pull, attract, draw, and persuade beings out of wrong view into right view regarding what Dhamma-Vinaya actually is.

I think this forum/SuttaCentral is based on the premise that it is possible to discern what the Dhamma-Vinaya taught by the Buddha is to some degree through piecing together early sources.

If distortions should be tolerated and accepted as Buddhist, what’s the value of early Buddhist texts at all?

Why not “mix all of the teachings into a giant pool of so-called “Buddhist texts” where all of us are free to creatively add whatever want into the mix and we can all jointly shove it into the mouth of the Buddha. Why? Because we are all “Buddhists” of course!”

Yes, the teachings has to be “identical in meaning” as “what the Buddha actually said” for it to be “accepted as said by the Buddha.”
Do you think that things were not actually spoken by the Buddha should be accepted as spoken by the Buddha?
Do you think that things that were actually spoken by the Buddha should rejected as not spoken by the Buddha?

I am not understanding what point you are trying to make here.
Are you suggesting that I should accept Quanyin as a Buddhist embodiment of compassion?

Is the Buddha himself not a perfect embodiment of compassion? What is the need to accept Quanyin then?

I think Quanyin should be rejected as non-Buddhism guised as Buddhism - i.e. not actually taught by the Buddha. It should be kept separate. Call it a Chinese cultural relic, or something more accurate - no need to call it Buddhist.

I don’t know exactly which one is that.

These? In two I think is about representing Buddha words.

Herein, monks, some foolish men master Dhamma : the Discourses in prose, in prose and verse, the Expositions, the Verses, the Uplifting Verses, the ‘As it was Saids,’ the Birth Stories, the Wonders, the Miscellanies. These, having mastered that Dhamma , do not test the meaning of these things by intuitive wisdom; and these things whose meaning is untested by intuitive wisdom do not become clear; they master this Dhamma simply for the advantage of reproaching others and for the advantage of gossiping, and they do not arrive at that goal for the sake of which they mastered Dhamma . These things, badly grasped by them conduce for a long time to their woe and sorrow. What is the reason for this? Monks, it is because of a wrong grasp of things.

And again, there will be in the course of the future monks undeveloped in body… virtue… mind… discernment. They — being undeveloped in body… virtue… mind… discernment — will not listen when discourses that are words of the Tathagata — deep, profound, transcendent, connected with the Void — are being recited. They will not lend ear, will not set their hearts on knowing them, will not regard these teachings as worth grasping or mastering. But they will listen when discourses that are literary works — the works of poets, elegant in sound, elegant in rhetoric, the work of outsiders, words of disciples — are recited. They will lend ear and set their hearts on knowing them. They will regard these teachings as worth grasping and mastering. Thus from corrupt Dhamma comes corrupt discipline; from corrupt discipline, corrupt Dhamma

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Excuse me, but I just realized that the topic, the way it’s phrased, is a loaded question. “Is the Chinese government against Buddhism?” Not necessarily. It’s very much pro-Buddhism–provided Buddhism can be marshalled in the service of the CCP and divested of anything that would cause it to be an independent power. It’s like asking if the Chinese government is against families: probably not. Good communist families are the backbone and the vanguard of the nation. Nevertheless, we know that they have enacted a draconian system of birth-control which effectively broke the traditional Chinese extended family network as a power base.

By being force-fed only one way of thinking 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 12 months of the year from before you are born–through the media, education, philosophy, all cultural events, the very language the government created for you to speak: a way of thinking that everyone around you subscribes to with no real avenue for dissent; while simultaneously having little to no access to any other world-view; and, lastly, being taught that your way of life (well, that is, the way of life that has been prescribed for you) is thousands of years old, vastly superior to any other culture on the planet–that superiority empirically proven by the very age of your society–well, then, I find it difficult to see how scores of people are going run to something different (other than mass emigration: which is exactly what Chinese people do when they have the chance).

Now, if that way of life taught to you was a the material-dialectic, completely devoid of spirituality, sentimentality, a sense of nostalgia or veneration of the past (all of which was wiped out in the Cultural Revolution); and your benchmark for measuring the relative worth of things in life is only its economic or otherwise materialistic value (because materialism is all there is), then what motivation would there be to seek out dhamma? To what would you attribute the ability of people to actively seek out world renunciation under such conditions? The ultimate triumph of the indomitable human spirit? I feel that way. But I’ve been disappointed by Chinese people time and again.

Unfortunately, anyone who has received CCP-sponsored education, I don’t expect much of.

Really?! Because that’s exactly what they do.

For the record, and I apologize in advance if anyone is offended by this, but for myself, I personally feel America is the wickedest government ever seen in human history–their human rights abuses far outshine China’s. (Though that’s not exactly fair, as they do have a longer history.) So, yes, it can happen anywhere. But I recognize that, living in America, there’s a capacity for free thought and choice not afforded to Chinese citizens except to the degree that they find a way to escape or circumvent the system. And, to that extent, I am glad to have been born in the US, though I no longer choose to live there.

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Do they sentence do death people just for taking refuge in the triple gem and/or developing the eightfold path ?

Can you provide examples?

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After someone recommended it, recently I have been watching the 13-part documentary series “The Ancient Path to Enlightenment.” The series was filmed in China several years ago. The description of the series on YouTube reads in part: “The Ancient Path to Enlightenment” is a documentary that captured the real life cultivation practice of a Buddhism Dhutanga-practicing Sangha - the Da Bei Sangha. The Da Bei Sangha is stationed at the Da Bei Monastery in a mountainous valley in Liaoning Province in the northeast of China."

One of the things that strikes me while watching the documentary is that many Chinese people who encounter the monastery monks featured in the series seem to have no knowledge of Buddhist teachings or practices, despite the fact that the Buddhism as practiced at the monastery existed in China for hundreds of years. I get the distinct impression that the Chinese Revolution in 1949 and the Cultural Revolution which lasted roughly from 1966 to 1976 were spectacularly successful in eradicating Buddhist religious and cultural practices in China.

Clearly the documentary series would not have been made without the approval of the Chinese Communist Party and the government of China. It is very intriguing that, on the one hand, the series offers a seemingly sympathetic portrayal of Buddhist teachings and practices, but on the other hand it shows Chinese people in the countryside who seem to have zero awareness or connection to the teachings and practices that once prevailed in China prior to the Chinese Revolution. I don’t know exactly when the series was produced, but I get the impression that it could not be produced under the present political circumstances in China.

This thread is veering into all sorts of directions that should be diverted into PM conversations.

This Forum does not welcome political discussion.
Nor does it welcome arguing about the relative merits/demerits of the Theravada and Mahayana.

Perhaps contributors would be willing to reconsider and judiciously edit their own posts? :pray: Please.

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I am not sure whether a lot of people are aware of this (I learned about it just recently) and I think it is relevant to the conversation, so let me throw it out there:

In the early 1950s, the CIA began to explore ways to aid the Tibetans as part of its growing campaign to contain Communist China. By the second half of the decade, “Project Circus” had been formally launched, Tibetan resistance fighters were being flown abroad for training, and weapons and ammunition were being airdropped at strategic locations inside Tibet. In 1959, the agency opened a secret facility to train Tibetan recruits at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, partly because the location, more than 10,000 feet above sea level, might approximate the terrain of the Himalayas. According to one account, some 170 “Kamba guerrillas” passed through the Colorado program.

This seems to show the CIA gave the Tibetans pretty much the same treatment as they gave the Mujahideens in Afghanistan (operation Cyclone), who later gave birth to the Talibans.

John Kenneth Knaus, a forty-year CIA veteran, wrote a 1999 book Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival .

Many friends of Tibet and admirers of the Dalai Lama, who has always advocated nonviolence, believe he knew nothing about the CIA program. But Gyalo Thondup, one of the Dalai Lama’s brothers, was closely involved in the operations, and Knaus, who took part in the operation, writes that “Gyalo Thondup kept his brother the Dalai Lama informed of the general terms of the CIA support.” According to Knaus, starting in the late 1950s, the Agency paid the Dalai Lama $15,000 a month. Those payments came to an end in 1974.

So according to Knaus, for at least 15 years the Dalai Lama’s brother received money in his name from the CIA in relation to armed and trained militias fighting in his name… That doesn’t make him de facto a warlord but that would explain why China would see him as such.

In 1999, I asked the Dalai Lama if the CIA operation had been harmful for Tibet. “Yes, that is true,” he replied. The intervention was harmful, he suggested, because it was primarily aimed at serving American interests rather than helping the Tibetans in any lasting way. “Once the American policy toward China changed, they stopped their help,” he told me. “Otherwise our struggle could have gone on. Many Tibetans had great expectations of CIA [air] drops, but then the Chinese army came and destroyed them. The Americans had a different agenda from the Tibetans.”

This was exactly right, and the different goals of the Agency and the Tibetans are explored fully by the Tibetan-speaking anthropologist Carole McGranahan in her Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War (2010). Although sometimes clouded by anthropological jargon, her account fascinatingly explores how differently from their American counterparts the Tibetan veterans remember the CIA operation. A striking example is the matter of the Chinese army documents, whose capture in a Tibetan ambush of a high-ranking Chinese officer is depicted in grisly detail in a huge painting in the CIA’s museum in Washington. In addition to revealing low Chinese morale, the documents disclosed the extent of Chinese violence in Tibet. “This information was the only documentary proof the Tibetan government [in exile] had of the Chinese atrocities and was therefore invaluable,” MacGranahan notes. Yet the documents and their capture rarely came up during her long interview sessions with the veterans. “Why is it that this particular achievement, so valued by the US and Tibetan governments, is not remotely as memorable for [the] soldiers?”

One reason is that the Tibetan fighters were told nothing about the value of the documents, which they couldn’t read. One veteran explains to her:

Our soldiers attacked Chinese trucks and seized some documents of the Chinese government. After that the Americans increased our pay scale. Nobody knew what the contents of those documents were. At that time, questions weren’t asked. If you asked many questions, then others would be suspicious of you.

The leader of the ambush tells her that “as a reward the CIA gave me an Omega chronograph,” but he, too, had little knowledge of the documents’ importance. As McGranahan shows in extensive detail, the veterans were preoccupied above all by their devotion to the Dalai Lama, whom they wanted to resume his position as supreme leader of an independent Tibet.

source:

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My apologies. I also felt the dhamma-content of the discussion was becoming minimal.

I love chanting the Atanatiya Sutta and Ahiraja Sutta parittas. In the Agama versions, there are two parittas: one, a Chinese translation of the meaning; and, two, an esoteric Buddhism-type dharani/mantra Prakrit transliteration with in-text prompters on how to pronounce the words. I’ve always wanted to learn to chant them, so I carry copies around and sometimes ask Chinese monastics, but no one has ever been able to tell me how. Once, in Sri Lanka, I was with bunch of Chinese monastics studying at Peradaniya and I asked. Again, no one could make heads or tails of it, and one nun was just in the process of telling me that probably only the very old masters would know when a Malaysian monk I didn’t know walked up into our circle and just started reading it off like it was his native tongue! (Unfortunately, he walked off before I could get any instruction.)

I took away two things from that experience: first, I just felt really, really sad for Chinese people and for the state of Buddhism in China. I realized it had been wiped clean and only the shell was left. And we are all the poorer for it. Secondly, I gotta get to Malaysia!

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