[lbo-talk] comment on Zuckerman (was: "Damn, did God piss in your cheerios?"

[Jeffrey Fisher]

On 6/9/05, B. <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
> [My reply is below the quoted text.]
> 
> Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
> 
> "in my classes, i try to get students to think about
> whether (certain forms of) buddhism (or taoism) is an
> atheistic religion. "
> 
> I recently attended an exhibit of Buddhist art at a
> local art museum. One of the descriptive placards
> beneath a sculpture so took me by surprise that I took
> a picture of it, which is here:
> 
> http://img223.echo.cx/img223/1696/buddhistdemon1yp.jpg
> 
> For those too lazy to click on the URL, what it says
> is this:
> 
> "The snarling, fanged mouth, crown of skulls, garland
> of decapitated heads, and cape of flayed human skin
> identify this figure as Lhamo, the Himalayan Buddhist
> form of the Hundu death goddess Kali. Lhamo is the
> most extreme of the eight dharmapalas, violent demons
> who were tamed by Buddhist sages and became the
> protectors of the Buddhist scriptures. The savage
> goddess rides her mule through a sea of blood,
> accompanied by two demons. This horrific concept is
> typical subject matter in Tantric Buddhist art, which
> explores extremes of human experience in the search
> for enlightenment."
> 
> Things like this really make me wonder how "atheist"
> the Buddhist traition really is, and if HL Mencken
> wasn't right when he said:
> 
> "One of the strangest delusions of the Western mind is
> to the effect that a philosophy of profound wisdom is
> on tap in the East. I have read a great many
> expositions of it, some by native sages and the rest
> by Western enthusiasts, but I have found nothing in it
> save nonsense. It is, fundamentally, a moony
> transcendentalism almost as absurd as that of Emerson,
> Alcott and company."
> 

there are many traditions in buddhism.

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nirvana is samsara