Criticism of Buddhism

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Criticism of Buddhism has taken numerous different forms, including philosophical and rational criticisms, but also criticism of praxis, such as that its practitioners act in ways contrary to Buddhist principles or that those principles systemically marginalize women. There are many sources of criticism, both ancient and modern, stemming from other religions, the non-religious, and other Buddhists.

Women in Buddhism[edit]

Women are often depicted in traditional Buddhist texts as deceitful and lustful. The Buddha himself said in an early text[which?] that a woman's body is "a vessel of impurity, full of stinking filth. It is like a rotten pit ... like a toilet, with nine holes pouring all sorts of filth."[1] Isaline Blew Horner and Diana Mary Paul are worried about the discrimination against almswomen and laywomen in Indian Buddhism.[2] Kawahashi Noriko observes that the contemporary Buddhist community in Japan is rife with two views, one that women are inherently incompetent and the other that women need to be dependent on men for their liberation; and that the Japanese Buddhist community has consistently ignored women themselves, as well as feminist critique.[3]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Faure, Bernard (2003). "The Rhetoric of Subordination". The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity, and Gender. Princeton University Press. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-691-09171-6.
  2. ^ Yuichi, Kajiyama (1982). "Women in Buddhism". The Eastern Buddhist. 15 (2): 53. ISSN 0012-8708. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
  3. ^ Noriko, Kawahashi (2003). "Feminist Buddhism as Praxis: Women in Traditional Buddhism". Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. 30 (3/4): 293–294, 300–302. ISSN 0304-1042. Retrieved 2 November 2023.

Further reading[edit]