A religious discussion in time for Easter

Oh look - Christianity Today has started a series of articles called "Engaging Buddhism."  This is the second one, looking at the doctrine of karma.

Is Karma a ‘Relaxing Thought’? For Many Buddhists, It’s Not.

The articles compare the attitude to karma in two different branches of Buddhism - what they call Thai Theravada Buddhists and Taiwanese Humanistic Buddhists.

The Theravada Buddhists have the more "old school" take on it:

About 95 percent of Thais practice Theravada Buddhism, the oldest tradition of Buddhism, which hews closely to Buddha’s teaching and emphasizes reaching enlightenment through one’s own efforts.

Hilderbrand, who moved to Bangkok in 1999, found that the idea of karma is enmeshed in everyday life, regardless of how familiar a person is with Buddhist texts. When a car accident, natural disaster, or sickness occurs, people will mutter “karma,” resigned that it was the result of a person’s actions in this life or a past life.

“In a truly Buddhist worldview … if you are born ugly or crippled or poor, it’s because you deserve it,” Hilderbrand said. “And so, there’s not a tendency to help other people, except insomuch as it gets you brownie points or earns you merit for doing so.”

If the news reports that a rich person hit a poor person with his car, it’s accepted that the poor person did something wrong in her past and deserved what happened to her, Hilderbrand said. Unlike in Christianity, there is no concept that people are equal and have special value.

People who are born poor or disabled accept that their role is to live off their karma while doing good to impact their future lives. Some parents won’t permit their child born with a cleft palate to have surgery because it would take away the “karmic duty that the person has to bear through this life and therefore wouldn’t get the merit for the next life,” said Paul De Neui, a former missionary to Thailand and professor of missiology at North Park Theological Seminary.

At the same time, De Neui has found that often people born with physical disabilities are the most joyful people he’s met and are treated with a special kind of reverence despite their difficulties. They recognize their duty based on what has been passed on from a past life.

Thais are very self-aware of who they are and what their limits are, said Hilderbrand, unlike Westerners who have been taught that they can achieve anything. The challenge is that “it’s difficult for them to establish a way of how they can better themselves,” Hilderbrand said. For instance, if individuals aren’t good at math, they just accept that as part of who they are and don’t naturally try to change their situation.

At the same time, monks must be physically perfect—with ten fingers, ten toes, no disabilities, and no birth defects—because it means they have good karma from their past lives. When Hilderbrand’s friend and fellow missionary came to Thailand, the government refused to give him a missionary visa because he was blind; in their worldview, being blind meant he had bad karma and couldn’t be a religious teacher.

So, the fatalism of the concept, like the caste system, is problematic in certain ways.   (Mind you, I guess you could accuse Calvinists and their double predestination as not being very psychologically useful, either.) 

But the article argues that Chinese Mahayana Buddhism (or at least the part of it from Taiwan) has adopted a more Christian-like view:

Humanistic Buddhism emphasizes integrating Buddhist beliefs into everyday life and caring for issues in this world. It’s embodied in the Buddhist Tzu Chi Charity Foundation: Formed in Taiwan in 1966 by a Buddhist nun and 30 housewives saving money to give to needy families, it’s now an international humanitarian aid group working in 100 countries and territories around the world. Tzu Chi volunteers engage in medical aid, environmental protection, and disaster relief—at times showing up to a disaster site before the government.

Mahayana Buddhists believe that bodhisattvas are higher beings that delay nirvana out of compassion to help the suffering. Karma and rebirth are still central tenets, but the doctrine has a different emphasis. While all Buddhists seek to alleviate suffering, Theravada Buddhists seek to accomplish this over cycles of lifetimes and reaching nirvana. Mahayana Buddhists are more concerned about alleviating suffering in the here and now.

Even if karma dictates that individuals did something bad in their past lives and deserve their situations, “what always builds up good karma, regardless, is to help them in their suffering,” said Easten Law of Overseas Ministries Study Center. “If your priority is enlightenment, what’s always good is to be compassionate: It’s good for your karma, and it’s good for their karma.”

In the late 19th century, Chinese Buddhists wanted to reform their religion and move beyond funeral rites, says Lai Pan-chiu, a religious studies professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. They saw the work Christians were doing in building hospitals, starting schools, and engaging in social issues and began developing their own. They even started youth fellowships and Sunday schools.

As these reformers transformed Chinese Buddhism “from a religion for funerals to a religion that benefits daily life,” more and more Taiwanese became adherents.

Humanist Buddhists see karma in a social or collective light.

Well, I have always said that I find Mahayana Buddhism more appealing than the other schools.  

The article goes on to note that the Bible is very clear in rejecting karma.  Apart from the example of Job, there is this:

When the disciples asked Jesus in John 9:1, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” they were expressing a karmic view of the world. Yet Jesus’ answer reveals a more complex understanding of suffering—one that is in the hands of a loving, caring, and just God, not an impersonal force: “Neither this man nor his parent sinned … but this happened so that that the works of God might be displayed in him” (v. 3).

By viewing it that way, though, it does raise more of a (shall we say) ethical puzzle as to the nature of God and his toleration of evil.  I suppose the appeal of the Buddhist doctrine is that it treats it in a more impersonal way -  it's just a law of nature, and you can't blame laws of nature for being what they are.   

Still, it's interesting how certain Buddhists recognised the greater charitable dynamism in Christianity and incorporated it.

A worthy case of religious syncretism, of sorts?