Pagan Theology by York Michael

Author:York, Michael [York, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: NYU Press reference
Published: 2003-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

Theravada Buddhism

After India and its vibrant Hinduism, our study could become tame and anticlimactic. But the veneration of the anima-animus becomes all the more subtle, which is my chief contention: that despite the official, usually theistic or transcendental, religion of a state, culture, or peoples, what may be termed a perennial countercult remains detectable, whether focused or not. India provides the insights, tools, and patterns with which to recognize the same persistence of countercult veneration in the other major world religions. The experience of Hinduism in the land of its birth is like viewing religion through a kind of privileging and exaggerating magnifying glass. Certain trends and activities stand out even more clearly. And while these same remain less obvious elsewhere, the ability to perceive cultic or pagan behavior in Hinduism prepares the observer to find similarities beneath the more official accretions of Buddhism, Christianity, and other religions.

Buddhism itself is like a Protestant form of Hinduism.51 It has several varieties, but the essential differences present fewer obstacles or difficulties among its different forms than we might find, for instance, among the varieties of Christianity. While Theravada Buddhism is perhaps a purer, less adulterated form than Mahayana and/or Vajrayana, countercult becomes something mainly existing in addition to its Buddhist practices. In Mahayana and Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhism, by contrast, the pagan elements have been more completely incorporated into the Buddhist expression itself.

Of the countries embracing Theravada Buddhism, that form of Buddhism remaining closest to the original teachings of Gautama Buddha, I have visited only Thailand. Sri Lanka is the only one of these countries containing a sizable Indo-European Buddhist population, the Sinhalese. Theravada Buddhism—also known as Hinayana, “the lesser vehicle”—flourishes in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.

Buddha did not deny the existence of matter, but since he stressed the complete quenching of desire in order to be free of all material ties and hence the cycle of rebirth, his philosophic teachings differ little from the ideal of Vedanta.52 The Buddha’s nirvana of the void is essentially the same as the brahmin’s moksa or samadhi with the absolute Brahman, although technically Brahmanism is labeled theistic idealism, whereas Buddhism is a form of atheistic materialism. One of Buddha’s major innovations is his total rejection of social distinction and any a priori superiority of the brahmin. The pride of birth and lineage that is part and parcel of the caste system is intolerable to any Buddhist. In such “Indian” countries as Muslim Pakistan and Bangladesh, despite the complete lack of Hindu color, one is struck by the atmosphere emancipated from the absence of the suffocating restrictions and pressures of varna, that is, the position into which one is born and the notions of social impurity. This same ability “to breathe” one also finds in Thailand.

When I first arrived in Bangkok, the capital of “the Land of the Free,” the city was in the full swing of preparations for its 1982 Rattanakhosin bicentennial celebrations. Temples and stupas (reliquary shrines) everywhere were in process of restoration and regilding.

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