I was raised in a Christian home, yet I follow the teachings of the Buddha. However, I do not consider myself to be “a Buddhist”.  This is a complex matter, as I am in fact an Upasaka who took the vows of the Five Precepts during the Triple Gem Ceremony at a Mahayana Temple.  I think Darren Wong’s analysis of the issue might give you a good idea of why – I completely support his views.

At the temple where I took my vows, it is quite clear that a great number of the people believe in supernatural forces.  There is also a very strong belief in luck, as one can often find monks at the temple urging you to write the name of someone who needs good fortune on a piece of paper to offer it in front of the Buddhas.

A lot of this clearly has to do with cultural traditions that get assimilated into religions and philosophies as they spread throughout the world.  The particular temple in question also serves as a community centre for the local Taiwanese constituency and a lot of Chinese and Taiwanese traditions seem to play almost as important a role (if not often more important) than the teachings of the Buddha.  Compare the very noticeable differences between Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism, Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, etc. and you will find that they all have rather unique traits.  And none of them are the original thing (although it is claimed that Theravada is the closest to the original teachings of the Buddha).

I am not about to renounce my status as Upasaka though.  I feel rather strongly about the vows I took – whether you consider them part of a religion or merely a life-philosophy, what they proclaim does not change for me.

Yet, I still don’t believe in any supernatural beings.  I don’t believe in a magical land where I will go after death to be eternally happy.  I don’t believe that “praying” to the Buddha will grant me any good fortune (just as George Carlin explained, his prayers to Joe Pesci are exactly as efficient as his prayers to God 😉 ).

If you really have to stick a label on me, I suppose the closest, more or less accurate one would be “Buddhist Atheist”.

Politically, I find myself on the side of Anarchist thought more than anything else, even though I am rather unschooled in “official” Anarchist literature and thought.

I am also a little angry (which I know isn’t very Zen, but hey, I’m trying…) and that’s how this blog was born.  It is terribly frustrating to live in a world where we have made so many technological and scientific advances as well as advances to logic and reason only to have to deal with superstitions, false beliefs and an insane amount of hypocrisy (often religious, but very regularly also political) every day.

And yes, there are those of you who say, “But if it makes me happy and doesn’t hurt anyone else, why don’t you leave me be?”  Fair enough, except that delusional thinking and misinformation does hurt others.  Take the extremist branch in Islam as an example; climate change denialism, believing that rhino horn will give you sexual virility, etc.  Ignorance hurts people, whether directly or indirectly.  The only way your delusional beliefs could not hurt others, was if you kept them to yourself (or better still – didn’t have them in the first place).  As we know, however, this hardly ever happens.  It seems that the more absurd and ridiculous people’s superstitions and paranoias, the more they proselytise and try to gain followers.

I find it interesting that people get locked up in psychiatric hospitals for believing in “unreal” things, yet most people seem to be okay with others believing that there is a man in some metaphysical realm in the sky, who created us out of nothing but his words, watches over all 7 billion of us every day and night and directs the course of our lives…

Ultimately, I wish to fight ignorance of all kinds.  I wish to promote harmony between people and the world around us.  But I firmly believe that we, as intellectual beings who have the capacity for thought and reason, owe it to ourselves and the other inhabitants of the planet to discuss things calmly and clearly and guide one another to better understanding.  Simply avoiding a topic because it might cause some minor friction and conflict of opinion is hardly conducive to improving the human condition – in fact, this often has the exact opposite effect.  To try to aid understanding, I will also try to do my bit to impart some of my limited knowledge and experience of Buddhism.  Being a fluent English speaker (although not native) in a community vastly dominated by native Mandarin speakers, I think I could contribute a fair amount of knowledge and I really hope that I can help at least one person learn something new each day.