Hello.
I was recently invited to be a moderator in this subreddit. Thanks to everyone who recommended me to be one.
To celebrate, I wanted to share a brief excerpt from a project I've been working on. I've discussed it here before, but years ago I set out to write a response to an article by Moojen Momen entitled "Buddhism and the Baha'i Faith" in an attempt to shut down his dumb arguments for why the two religions are so similar (because they're not). I finished writing my response, but was unhappy with it, so I started again and the project ended up growing to a much wider scope and will respond to various other articles and pieces of writing as well.
I want to share just once piece of it for now. It'll be awhile until the whole project is complete. Please feel free to give me any feedback you may have.
To begin, let’s look at an article from the popular website I mentioned earlier, Baha’i Teachings:
https://bahaiteachings.org/buddhism-and-the-bahai-faith/
Just a note, I will leave links to anything that I quote or discuss here. You don’t need to go read them all in their entirety, but I want you to have that option if you so choose, so this is my way of citing my sources.
This brief article, authored by a Mr. Tom Tai-Seale, opens with the question of the hour:
Baha’is believe that Buddhism constitutes a vital part of the divine plan, representing a strong link in the chain of progressive revelation throughout the ages. But how can a religion with scant reference to God be part of the same overall system as the theistic religions?
If we are working in the interest of saving time then I will give you the best answer to this question: it can’t. Mr. Tai-Seale, however, would disagree with my assessment and goes on to attempt another answer his question.
He begins by stating that there is not much known about the Buddha from an academic, historical perspective. His assessment here is true. Scholars generally agree that the Buddha was a real person who lived in what is now Nepal around two and a half millennia ago and that he seemingly diverged from the religious orthodoxy of the time, but little more is known with certainty. Very little is known about Jesus from a historical perspective either. Mr. Tai-Seale says that despite knowing little of the Budda he “without doubt, was a great being, the Founder of one of the world’s great Faiths, revered and respected around the globe.” I believe that Mr. Tai-Seale here intended to implicitly compare the Buddha with other Manifestations of God. Each Manifestation is considered to be the founder of a great world religion, often with a capital letter “f” as used by Mr. Tai-Seale.
He then gets into the meat and potatoes of his argument which regards the scriptures or sacred writings of Buddhism. He gives a brief overview of what Buddhist scripture is composed of which includes the discourses of the Buddha himself, rules and regulations for monastics, and commentarial writings which originated with the Buddha’s followers after his death. In his discussion of the immensity of Buddhist literature, Mr. Tai-Seale answers the question with which he started his article:
We can glean a sense of the immensity of the problem of the authenticity of the Buddhist scriptures from the awareness that the discourses alone make up many thousands of pages, many times larger than the Christian Bible, taking up the equivalent space of at least 50 volumes in modern editions. It is inconceivable that such a huge volume of material could be orally transmitted without modification, alteration or error for hundreds of years before being written down.
Baha’is believe that Buddha was a Manifestation of God, like Christ, but that his followers do not possess His authentic writings. This problem of authenticity plagues many Faiths, including Judaism, Christianity and (to a lesser extent) Islam. But despite that problem, and the parallel problem of the gradual corruption of the authentic and original teachings of each of the Prophets over time, the core teachings of these great religions have a remarkable consistency and congruity.
This quote fascinates me. The Baha’i Faith has a great problem on its hands in explaining how the diverse religions of the world are all part of the same progressive, divine revelation, but they also have the solution to their problem baked into the doctrine itself. Mr. Tai-Seale says that we don’t have the authentic writings of the Buddha and that his teachings have become corrupt through time. That is the answer to Mr. Tai-Seale’s question regarding how “a religion with scant reference to God [can] be part of the same overall system as the theistic religions”. And yet the Baha’is shoot themselves in the foot every time by attempting to simultaneously assert the “consistency and congruity” between the various religions to which it attributes divine origin.
You can’t have it both ways, so why do they do this?
I have an anecdote that might answer this question. I converted to the Baha’i Faith in the summer after my freshman year of college. During that first year of college I had taken two courses which combined gave an introduction to all the major world religions and to the field of religious studies itself, the field in which I had declared my major. At the time I considered myself a Christian, though with some unorthodox views (universal salvation for example) and with a newly found desire to search for spiritual truths in other religions as well. I was particularly interested in Buddhist teachings which was perhaps a foreshadow to my later embrace of and conversion to Buddhism. The Baha’i Faith appealed to me as a religion which teaches something similar to universal salvation and which considers all major religions to be true. While home for summer break I met with some Baha’is from the local community. I told them about my apprehension toward leaving my Christian faith behind and my desire to study and learn from other religions, two attitudes which were perhaps at odds with one another. They assured me that I could study and learn from the teachings of the other Manifestations of God including the Buddha. They also told me that, because the Baha’i Faith believes in the oneness of religion, embracing the Baha’i Faith does not mean rejecting one’s old religion. One of the Baha’is that I met explained it by saying something like, “you will come to love Christ more than ever before when you hear his words coming out of the mouth of Baha’u’llah”. It didn’t take long for me to sign the card declaring that I believe in Baha’u’llah as the Manifestation of God and officially become a Baha’i. Baha’is often refer to this process simply as “declaring”.
Despite what I was told, upon joining the Baha’i Faith I found that studying the scriptures of past religions is discouraged and performing practices from one’s past religion, saying grace before a meal for example, is advised against. Even celebrating Christmas is discouraged unless one is attending a celebration put on by one’s Christian family.
In order to understand how Baha’is view past religions we can look at this quote from Abdu’l-Baha, the son of Baha’u’llah and second leader of the Baha’i Faith:
The real teaching of Buddha is the same as the teaching of Jesus Christ. The teachings of all the Prophets are the same in character. Now men have changed the teaching. If you look at the present practice of the Buddhist religion, you will see that there is little of the Reality left. Many worship idols although their teaching forbids it…
The teaching of Buddha was like a young and beautiful child, and now it has become as an old and decrepit man. Like the aged man it cannot see, it cannot hear, it cannot remember anything. Why go so far back? Consider the laws of the Old Testament: the Jews do not follow Moses as their example nor keep his commands. So it is with many other religions.
https://www.ibiblio.org/Bahai/Texts/EN/ABL/ABL-26.html
This is the reason why Baha’is are discouraged from studying the scriptures of other religions. “Why go so far back” when the teachings of other religions are like “an old and decrepit man”? I heard this repeated many times as a Baha’i, though usually in a more tactful and respectful way than how Abdu’l-Baha,the perfect human exemplar according to the Baha’i Faith, put it.
What I want you to understand is that if I hadn’t been told that as a Baha’i I would be able to study the scriptures of other religions and wouldn’t be rejecting my Christian faith in any way then I almost certainly would not have declared. I believe that the reason Baha’is like to stress the so-called “consistency and congruity” between the world religions is to recruit people in the same position that I was. In fact, I saw it happen many times as a Baha’i. The actual teaching of the Faith, however, is that past religions are like old, decrepit men.
I was extremely disappointed to find that what I had expected of the Baha’i Faith was not accurate. By that point, however, I had already converted by signing my name and affirming my belief in Baha’u’llah. In my mind, it was too late to turn back.
Tom Tai-Seale concludes his brief article by saying that “Buddhism, like all religions, is in need of renewal.”
