So what’s Charlie’s deal anyway?
Today my wife looked at this blog and said it looked like the web page a Buddhist monk might have. Clearly she said this because three of the 14 posts were of an eastern bent. Chih-i and the Reality of the Middle Way, Haiku, and Excerpts from the Tao De Ching.
Well, the truth is that Buddhism fascinates me these days. I’ve been reading a lot about it and thinking a lot about it. Makes sense that the posts to this blog would reflect that. Had I started this blog last year you’d probably see a lot of posts about Ancient Rome -- another incredibly fascinating topic that captivated me almost as much then.
Buddhism is a huge, broad topic, and utterly alien to American culture. I think most Americans are as clueless about it as I was before I decided to find out what it was all about and then got deeply interested. I’ve now read 5 books on the subject and am on the 6th -- all in the space of a few months. I think Buddhism is such a big topic that it should not be thought of as a religion, or a philosophy. If Buddhism were simply referred to as ‘Eastern Philosophy’, that might fit the scope of it. But of course the term ‘Eastern Philosophy’ would have to include Hinduism and Taoism at a minimum to be accurate. Anyway, Buddhism seems as big as all philosophy (western), not just a philosophy. This is understandable because I think the overwhelming majority of eastern philosophy and theology since around 500 B.C. falls under the umbrella of ‘Buddhism’. Buddhism is inclusive of eastern thought and religion, and causes some confusion in the west as to which it is -- philosophy or religion. Really it’s both.
How is it that Buddhism is so big in scope? Because it is both religion and philosophy, which are separated in the west, and because it’s been going on longer than western philosophy or Christianity. Western philosophy as we know it got going in about 600 B.C. with the Greeks. The Buddha lived and started Buddhism around 500 B.C. However, the Greco-Roman way of philosophical thinking basically stopped at some point as the Roman Empire declined, and was not revived until the Renaissance. So there’s almost a thousand year gap in the middle of the development of western philosophy. Christianity started roughly around 1 A.D. and has continued unbroken since then. That’s 2000 years of Christianity and lets say cumulatively around 1600 years of western philosophy. Buddhism is both religion and philosophy and has continued unbroken for 2500 years. So simple math I think shows how it got to be such a big subject!
And in the immortal words of George Costanza, it’s "got a hold on me! I can’t quit now!!", except of course he was referring to cigarettes and coughing the whole time because wasn't really a smoker...