(Post-) Buddhism without Rebirth
Traditional Buddhists tend to believe that rebirth and karma are essential parts of the Buddhist worldview and that one, therefore, cannot be a Buddhist without accepting those. For example, the 14th Dalai Lama has written that โas long as you are a Buddhist, it is necessary to accept past and future rebirthโ, which means that you canโt be a Buddhist without believing in rebirth. Many Buddhist modernists, on the other hand, consider the doctrine of rebirth and karma unimportant, or radically reinterpret it in an attempt to bring it in line with a more or less Western, โmaterialistโ worldview, or...
Universal Liberation
Taixu ๅคช่ was one of the most influential thinkers of modern East-Asian Buddhism. In 1904, at the age of 14, he became a monk at Xiวo Jiวhuรก temple ๅฐไน่ฏๅฏบ in Suzhou, China. Soon after, he developed an interest in modern science, left-wing politics, and Buddhist reform. A decade later (partially due to changing political circumstances) he had himself sealed in a cell in a monastery to study Buddhist scripture and philosophy. After he left his cell in 1917, he revived a Maitreya Pure Land cult, but also continued working for the modernization and revival of Buddhism in China under the...
Buddhism, Marxism, and Negating Self-centeredness โ Preliminary Remarks on the Philosophy of Neville Wijeyekoon
summary โ In 1943, S.N.B. (Neville) Wijeyekoon published a book under the pseudonym Leuke aiming to compare Buddhism and Marxism. It starts out doing so indeed, but the second half of the book presents his own philosophy focused on achieving mental harmony by negating self-centeredness through โmerging oneโs self in social welfareโ. Wijeyekoonโs wrote two more books, and in one of those he further developed aspects of this idea, while eliminating the overt Buddhist and Marxist influence. This long blog post summarizes and comments on two of Wijeyekoonโs books (namely, his first and third). I do not have access to...