Is Buddhism an Atheistic Religion?

This question requires you to show some knowledge of Buddhism using primary source material, but it also requires you to think about the meaning of two words that do not originate in Buddhism: 'God', and 'Religion'. (The word God does not appear in the title, but you cannot define 'atheism' without defining 'God').

This might seem easy: when you want to know the meaning of a word, don't you just use a dictionary? The thing to remember is that people who write dictionaries defer to specialists. A dictionary would say that a whale is a mammal, not a fish, because scientists classify a whale as a mammal. Scientists did not learn that whales were mammals by using a dictionary, lexicographers learned from scientists. When studying biology, you would learn the biological reasons for classifying a mammal as a whale. So too, you need to consider the reasons for (and, perhaps, against), defining Buddhism as a religion.

Whales are not baboons, and baboons are not pigs, but all of them are mammals, and so some lessons that are learned from the physiology of the whale can be useful for understanding the physiology of a baboon. All of these species are linked by natural history. It was in the 18th and 19th  Centuries that scholars tried to study the history of religion in a scientific manner, hoping to separate religions from other movements, and to draw up a family tree of religions just as we can have a family tree of animal and plant species. One of the founding figures of the comparative study of religions was Max Müller, a German who spent most of his career in Oxford. In his Gifford Lectures, Müller argued that one cannot include belief in God as a defining characteristic of a religion, because Buddhism is an example of an atheistic religion (see Lecture V, pp.103-114 of the original text). In attempting to understand religion, we are trying to understand an important social force. One of the founding figures of the sociology of religion is Emile Durkheim, and he too referred to Buddhism when arguing that religions do not involve belief in God, in fact, they need not involve any belief in the supernatural at all. (This argument is found in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Book 1, Chapter 1, Part 2).

The work of Müller and Durkheim is important because it shaped the future direction of religious studies. For example, our text book, like most text books, classifies Confucianism as a world religion – that is part of Müller’s legacy. Their writings should spur you to think about the question ‘what do we mean by ‘religion’. However, neither Müller nor Durkheim was a specialist in Buddhism, and in any case, studies of Buddhism have advanced since their time. For further discussion and criticism of their work on Buddhism, there are two useful articles available via the EZ-Proxy server: “Durkheim, Buddhism and Religion” by Marc Orrú and Amy Wang in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Volume 32, No. 1 (1992), pp.47-61 and “Comments on Max Müller’s Buddhist Interpretation of the Buddhist Nirv­āņa” by G. R. Welbon in Numen, Volume 12, Fasc. 3 (September 1965), pp. 179-200. Both of these articles are worthy of careful study, and each suggests a different path your inquiry might take.

Welbon points out that Müller’s interpretation of Buddhism was based on the work of his teacher, Eugéne Burnouf, who was the first European to make a thorough study of Buddhism. (The French version of Burnouf’s study is out of copyright and can be downloaded free of charge, but the English translation is more expensive). Burnouf thought that whereas the religion of the Brahmins was superstitious, the Buddha was a rational thinker. However, led by the Brahmins, Hindus aimed to achieve a union with God. Buddhism, on the other hand, rejected the world as full of pain, and sought relief from this pain by embracing nothingness, so Buddhism is a rational but nihilistic and pessimistic religion. So, says Welbon, a crucial question for Müller, and indeed, for anyone trying to understand Buddhism today, is the interpretation of nirv­āņa. Is the search for nirv­āņa simply a quest to embrace the void, or is it something more positive, a quest for something that followers of theistic religions would recognize as communion with God?

This question came to the fore when John Paul II published Crossing The Threshold of Hope in 1995. In this book, he argued that Buddhism was an atheistic religion with a negative view of the world. In fact, his view of Buddhism owed a lot, perhaps indirectly, to Burnouf’s work. However, when he visited Sri Lanka, many Buddhists protested his view of their religion. Bhikkhu Bodhi, a Buddhist monk and one of the foremost living translators of Buddhist scriptures, wrote a response called Crossing the Threshold of Understanding. Bhikkhu Bodhi does not dispute the use of the term ‘atheism’, but he does argue that Nibbana should not be considered a negative goal. Some Christian thinkers have argued that it is legitimate to extend the concept of God to include Nibbana. So, for example, Keith Ward, former Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, stated in a lecture given in 2008:

I think that if you  look at all the main religious traditions of the world you will find that they all do have something in common. They affirm that there is a reality - the most fundamental  reality of all - which has the nature of consciousness, wisdom, intelligence, bliss,  compassion and hope; and that is called by some of us ‘God’. Others such as  Buddhists do not call it God, but they certainly believe in a fundamental reality – Nirvana - which has the nature of consciousness and bliss. This reality not only exists,  but it is possible for us to have a conscious relationship with it, which will transform our lives so that we mediate its reality in our world.

 

Once again, we come to the question of definition, this time, the definition of ‘God’. I suggested above that the task of defining religion falls to scholars like Müller and Durkheim, who are interested in building up a systematic account of religion and the role it plays in human society. As such, they take a stand outside any particular religion. However, the task of defining terms like ‘Nibbana’ or ‘God’ falls to people within the religions where those terms are used. Keith Ward is an Anglican clergyman, and speaks as a theologian – he is attempting to articulate, as a Christian, the concept of God that he believes in, and he thinks that this concept covers the same reality that Buddhists call ‘Nibbana’. So, part of your investigation could be the meaning of Nibbana and the meaning of ‘God.’ If by God we mean the Creator and Ruler of the universe, then it is clear that the Buddha rejected such a god. Evidence can be found in this set of texts from the Pali canon. (Your paper should demonstrate some familiarity with these texts, but don’t limit yourselves to repeating what they say). The Buddha did not believe in all-powerful creator. However, if by ‘God’ we mean the goal of human existence, that whose essence is pure happiness, then perhaps ‘Nibbana’ is another word for God.

 

So, Welby discusses Müller’s work, and raises the point that Nibbana might be the same as (communion with) God. Orrú and Wang criticize Durkheim’s work. They argue that Durkheim overlooked the fact that the Buddha is treated as a supernatural savior. Durkheim, like Müller, wrote under the influence of Burnouf. Before Burnouf, Europeans thought that Buddhists worshipped a god called Buddha. Burnouf thought that the Buddha was a rational man who taught people a method of achieving happiness by escaping from a world of pain. Only later were his teaching misunderstood, and people began to think of the Buddha as a god to be worshipped rather than a teacher to be followed. But was there ever a form of Buddhism in which the Buddha was not treated as a being with supernatural, indeed, godlike powers? When we discuss Greek mythology, we say that figures like Herakles were born as humans but became gods (a process called apotheosis). So too, we might say, the Buddha was a human being, not the creator of the universe – Buddhists do not believe in a creator of everything. However, if we look at what Buddhists believe about the Buddha, and their attitude to him, do they not treat him as a god? This means thinking about the difference between humans with super-powers and gods. One important factor is soteriology, that is teachings about salvation. Many religions teach that we are in some kind of bad situation and we need to be saved. If the Buddha is the only possible source of salvation, if that is something that he can offer that nobody else can, that would be grounds for saying that, even if he is not the creator, he is a God. If, on the other hand, he is simply a man who figured out a useful guide to happiness, then he is not a god.

 

This, in fact raises another way of looking at the question. Müller and Durkheim both thought that Buddhism was atheistic, and concluded that there is at least one atheist religion. Perhaps, if we stretch the concept of God, and if we study carefully what Buddhists believe about Nibbana or about Buddha, we will conclude that Buddhists are not atheists. But another option would be to conclude that Buddhism is not a religion, or more carefully, that it was not a religion although, as the Buddha’s message has been misunderstood, perhaps it has become one. Sometimes it is said that Buddhism is not a religion, it is a way of life. This, however, is not very helpful: every religion is a way of life. You could just as well say that FSU-Panama is not a university, it is a center of higher education. A more interesting – but less credible suggestion – is that originally, Buddhism was a science rather than a religion, based on evidence rather than faith. Donald Lopez discusses this in his book Buddhism and Science (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008). Lopez does not claim that Buddhism is more scientific than other religions, but, in the fourth chapter of his book, he explains how it was that Buddhism managed to acquire a reputation for being scientific. Once again, this story features Burnouf (Burnouf translated the Sanskrit term ‘prajñā’ as ‘science’: today it is usually translated as ‘wisdom’), but the main impetus for treating Buddhism as a science came from the Theosophical Society, who wanted to validate their own views as scientific. To read Lopez’s work, you will need to go to the library.

 

I have already given a link to a set of scriptures that present the Buddha’s teachings on whether there is an all-powerful Creator, but as you consider the other topics listed above, you might need to refer to more Buddhist scriptures. I will leave some useful material in the library. A good translation of the Pali canon is available on-line here. This web-site is not complete, and the full set of scriptures would take up several bookshelves, but if secondary sources contain references to the Pali canon, you might be able to find the relevant sections there.

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