The term “religion” is often used loosely. It is difficult to discriminate between what is considered religious and what is “spiritual” or even “philosophical.” In a secular liberal society where religious plurality is not only present but actively evolving, the exact formula that makes something not religious is unclear. One of these categorical ambiguities is the case of Buddhism, a system of thought that has been labeled as all of the above.
America’s first encounter with Buddhists was in the mid-1800s, when Chinese and Japanese immigrants settled on the West Coast and Hawaii. If you fast forward a century to the passage of the Immigration Act in 1965—which allowed immigrants from various Buddhist-practicing countries to move to the United States—Buddhism became less of a foreign mystery and more of a blossoming movement encompassing both immigrant and white-American communities alike. Many of these white people who grew up with Christianity and Judaism decided to convert to Buddhism during the Hippie Movement for its departure from the perceived harshness of Western Abrahamic religion.
Now in the present, I hear plenty of people—usually members of, again, largely white, secular mindfulness culture—say something along the lines of, “Buddhism is actually a philosophy or a way of life rather than a religion.” My reason for writing is to pinpoint where this thought arises from and explain why it is ridiculous.
Buddhism is essentially the movement rooted in the teachings of the Buddha, known as Siddhartha Gautama or Shakyamuni. The word Buddha translates into English as “awakened one,” and serves more as a title than a name for a specific person. There is Shakyamuni, who is the historical Buddha, but there are also between 29 and an infinite number of Buddhas, depending on who you ask. Some believe that you and your dog are Buddhas. Some believe that Buddhas will magically save them from burning or drowning if they chant their names and recite their teachings. Buddhist literature, art and even practice not only features Buddhas—whether they be presented as mundane or transcendental—but also dragons, demons, forest spirits, aliens, interdimensional travel, superpowers and much more that one would assume belongs more in the fantasy genre rather than the self-help aisle.
The common argument from the camp that claims Buddhism is not a religion is rooted in the idea that a religion is an ideology or practice that primarily involves the worship of a deity. This is a misconception rooted in Christianity and Islam’s dominance over much of the worldplanet. The idea stems from the First Commandment in the Torah, where God tells Moses that there shall be no gods held above Him. Abrahamic religions demand worship in a monotheistic God with a specific canon—or book—of teachings.
This is not the norm. You may be asking, “Well, if worshiping a god is not the definition of religion, then what is?” to which I would answer, “I do not know.” There is no scholarly consensus on religion, and any non-academic source you can find will likely give a vague, biased or circular definition for the term. For the sake of the discussion, I will have to use a vague definition: Religion is the attitude towards the sacred, around which a group or individual may center themselves existentially. This means that not only is worshiping a deity a form of religion, but also acts like ritual cleansing, meditation or a belief in cosmic supernatural forces.
So why do many claim that Buddhism does not fit the bill for a “religion”?” The answer can be found in Buddhism’s historical central canon, containing the teachings of Shakyamuni, the Pali Canon. In the Brahmajala Sutta, Shakyamuni tells his followers, “‘Whereas some recluses and brahmins, while living on the food offered by the faithful, earn their living by a wrong means of livelihood, by such debased arts as…worship of Mahabrahma.” Mahabrahma here means a great sovereign god, falsely believed to be the creator of the universe.
This is a departure from the centrifugal position of the Abrahamic religions, that one must worship Mahabrahma. Instead, Shakyamuni tells his followers that they must free themselves from the ignorance stemming from holding mistaken views, leading to the unvirtuous practices outlined in the sutta. This juxtaposition between monotheism and non-theism is not a mark of a categorical difference; it is a theological disagreement. Abrahamic religions inherently demand something that Buddhism does not, but that does not make one more of a “religion” than the other.
If I, a Buddhist, arbitrarily defined religion as “a belief in the compassionate power of Amitabha Buddha,” or even more specifically, “any practice or ritual that includes the recitation of Amitabha’s name,” then something like Christianity would automatically be excluded. Is that not absurd?
I beg anyone who persists and continues to view Buddhism as something other than a religion to visit a real Buddhist congregation and tell me it is simply a philosophy about mindfulness. A few years ago, I visited Koyasan Beikoku Betsuin, a Shingon Buddhist temple in Los Angeles. Upon entering, I was confronted with a remarkably church-like setup of pews facing a central stage. The first person I saw was a man sobbing and, I assume, praying during the Goma fire ritual occurring in front of him. What better image of religion can be painted?
Sam Harris, a notable atheist writer, paints religion as a load of shit! According to RNS, “‘My goal,’ he writes in the book, ‘is to pluck the diamond from the esoteric dunghill of religion.’” Harris is essentially extracting “spiritual” mindfulness from its religiously supernatural, and apparently worthless, context. This is not only an intellectually wrong way of understanding Buddhism, as I have already outlined, but it is hard to exclaim how painfully awful it is to steal from religion in this manner.
What Harris clearly does not understand is that Buddhism’s most sacred and influential teaching—the one that even made his “mindfulness” relevant—follows a simple logic. Suffering is inevitable in life. Life cannot be ended even in death, for even death is impermanent. Suffering does not end with death, and thus we must embark on a spiritual path to end suffering. If there were no life after death, as atheists like Harris hold, why is ending one’s life somehow a worse solution for ending suffering than spiritual practice?