Post #4500852

@underzen@mastodon.social - Lol, truth. I dived heavily into Secular Buddhism when I was starting down the path as I was very specifically not interested in "gods" or creators and worship, right? I've found though that trying to strip the Buddha's teachings away from the cultural and religious aspects often harms the process. There's some really thoughtful and insightful criticisms into how Secular Buddhism approaches or outright embraces colonialism, white supremacy, and similar concepts. Instead, I've found that following a tradition that immerses Buddhism into the religious aspects provides a more complete picture. Even if you just take the religious aspects metaphorically, there's a lot of value there. Any given culture adopts and adapts Buddhism to their needs, but we already see that in the US even from the "traditional" lineages. Heck, a criticism of Shin Buddhism is that it, too, embraces a metaphorical approach to Amida / Amitabha Buddha and doesn't see Amida as a fully literal supramundane being. Soooo... yeah. But Secular Buddhism's approach of "getting to the heart of Buddhism without religiosity" seems to "cut into the quick" of the nail so to speak and removes too much. And lol on the "karma of algorithms". That hits... yeah.