NEW BUDDHISM

NEO-BUDDHISM

Material world can and will only be understood by scientific knowledge. With below superstitions nothing can be solved. So keep away...

1. Do not say that foxes or badgers deceive or possess people.
2. There is no such thing as winged goblins.
3. There is no such thing as curses.
4. Do not believe in dubious ritual prayers.
5. Do not trust in the efficacy of magic or holy water.
6. Do not put your trust in divination, whether by written oracles, physiog-nomy, geomancy, astrology, or ink stamp.
7. It is wrong to be concerned with omens and auspicious or inauspicious days.
8. Do not otherwise believe in anything that is generally similar to these above mentioned  things.

As can be seen in the above quotation, religion’s domain is the spiritual world and this spiritual world has no direct power over material existence. Thus, the miraculous is impossible and prayers for this world’s benefits are nothing but superstitions. This provides the basis for Inoue’s dismissal of prayer rituals, magic, and charms. While he acknowledges that these types of prayer are one of the foundations of popular religion, he dismisses them as rooted in ignorance, writing “The true sentiments of the curses and prayers the ignorant peasants  direct toward their buddhas and gods, are generally nothing but good health, longevity, lack of illness and prayers for good fortune”. Yet, neither kami nor buddhas can grant these boons. Thus popular religion is not in fact a religion at all but instead largely a superstition.

Nevertheless, Inoue does not acknowledge that Buddhism might be founded on a view of the physical world. Instead he repeatedly contends that Buddhism is fundamentally in accord with science.

As new scientific advancements were made, more aspects of Buddhism turned out not to be “really Buddhist” after all. This process led to the increasing internalization (or “psychologization”) of Buddhist theory; what had previously been taken as references to real physical objects now came to be seen as psychological or “spiritual” artifacts. As can be seen in the above quotation, religion’s domain is the spiritual world and this spiritual world has no direct power over material existence. This provides the basis for Inoue’s dismissal of prayer rituals (especially kaji kitō), magic, and charms. While he acknowledges that these types of prayer are one of the foundations of popular religion is not in fact a religion at all but
instead largely a superstition.

In the process of trimming Buddhism into a religion, Inoue has abandoned Buddhist geography, miracles, prayers, and in the end by implication every description in a Buddhist sutra that makes a concrete claim about the material world (unless by coincidence this description is completely consistent with science). This move has its parallel in the West. It is a reduction of the sphere of religious authority, where the universe has been bifurcated into an almost Cartesian duality with religion relegated to the metaphorical, immaterial, or at best psychological. Manifestations of the Absolute After the extensive elimination of “superstitions” that characterizes the first half of Meishin to shūkyō, there is not much remaining to fit into the category religion.

In the popular arena much is made of Buddhism’s compatibility with science, including the following famous phrase attributed to Albert Einstein: “If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.” However, it should be noted that this compatibility has its origins largely in the creative interpretation of Buddhist cosmology.

Inoue, Buddhism...