Yes, Buddhists ‘worship’. No, the Buddha didn’t tell you not to. A lot of debate online around the Buddhism and religion question centres on the absence of a creator God in Buddhism. Without an ult…

Another day, another BuddhaBro influencer opining about Buddhism’s ‘philosophy not religion’ credentials. Well, I say ‘another’, but I have engaged with this particular creator a few times in the p…

YouTube video by Gary Donnelly

Regular readers (ha!) or TikTok viewers will have no doubt seen how much time I’ve been spending arguing that we can categorise Buddhism as a religion with largely Western enthusiasts who are very keen to wriggle out of any such notion. Well, I’ve been reading a book, as I am wont to do, and it makes the case that ‘religion’ as a concept is a modern invention, and its application to ‘ancient’ traditions is anachronistic and so should be abandoned.

There’s been a whole hoo-ha online recently about whether or not we can say that Buddhism has any ‘dogmas’ (or dogmata, as I like to pretentiously call them). Many people claim that Buddhism has no dogmata whatsoever: it is a faith (lol) based on reason, enquiry, deciding for yourself; it is scientific, fits neatly into quantum mechanics, has no trappings of…

Does anybody remember that phrase, ‘the stink of Zen’? That idea within Zen that practitioners can be a bit to self-impressed and self-assured, thinking they know it all, detaching themselves from real life and facts on the ground? I think we see a similar thing a lot with lay Theravādins, too. Anybody who subscribes to me on Tik Tok and if you don't, why not?) will have seen that for the past couple of weeks, I have been engaged in some back-and-forth with some particularly vocal, usually Western, Theravādin Buddhists.