Zhanguochunqiu, What Kind of Buddhism Are You Getting from "Journey to the West"?

2006/4/23 16:58:17

Just finished dealing with two men — one from the left and one from the right — and now I spot another one who needs dealing with. Nowadays men are so cheap they could win an Oscar for Brokeback Mountain, so it's no surprise that someone reads "Journey to the West" and starts pontificating about Buddhism. Reading one copy of "Journey to the West" and daring to mouth off about Buddhism — it doesn't even qualify as taking things out of context. As for what it does qualify as cutting off, well, ask men themselves — this is something only men can know.

First of all, Buddhism is not a religion. The Buddha is not some savior, great star of deliverance, or any such deadwood. Buddhism does not emphasize the afterlife, nor does it pursue renunciation, purity, or nirvana in the sense people imagine. To say Buddhism negates marriage is even more laughable — do you know what a lay practitioner or a bodhisattva is? Buddhism doesn't preach "emptiness" either — true emptiness is wondrous existence. How could someone who's only read "Journey to the West" and cut things off possibly understand? As for claiming that the Buddha "gives his followers nothing but desolate mountains, barren waters, poverty, and austerity" — that's even more laughable. The Buddha gives nothing. People create their own karma and bear the consequences themselves — what does any of it have to do with the Buddha?

The world only knows that bodhisattvas lower their brows in compassion and doesn't know that Vajra guardians glare in wrath. Buddhism has the life-giving sword, and naturally it also has the killing blade. To deliver an evildoer through the killing blade — that is the greatest compassion. Ignorant leftists position themselves with so-called atheism, not knowing that Buddhism is the true atheism — not the leftists' "sheep's head selling dog meat" variety with its this-star-and-that-lord. Ignorant rightists position themselves with so-called humanism while secretly playing Crusader tricks — such people are essentially just sex slaves. Left and right fools, with their leaky wisdom, trying to peer through the gateless gate — they only reveal their own leakiness and make fools of themselves!

Today's leaky ones cling to Old Marx's so-called "religion is the opium of the people" dictum and spout nonsense, not knowing that Marx's argument was specifically aimed at Christianity and similar neurotic cults that promote saviors and great stars of deliverance. The so-called "opium" is the use of external forces to achieve internal satisfaction through illusion. Using this metaphor as a criterion, everything that promotes reliance on external forces — whether it bears the name of religion or not — is true opium. Those things that have no religious name yet function as religion are the opium of opium.