Hitchens and Buddhism

It's a non-issue, really. However, George Dworsky wrote in his "Hitchens gets it wrong about Buddhism" at the IEET, quote:

"...Hitchens’s special claim into the true nature of reality aside, he is a bit off course here and his concern is exaggerated. Buddhists do not deny the presence of the material world or the value of objectivity – far from. What they assert is that the Universe will always be perceived through the lens of an observer and that our comprehension of reality must always take this into account. The only way the world can be observed is subjectively; there can be no such thing as a truly objective observer. We can and should strive towards an objective frame, but the world will always be perceived by an observer, which is by definition a subject."

This may well be the case with some pseudo-Buddhist approaches in the West, but the tricky and relative nature of this observer/subject is a fundamental teaching in all three great turnings of the Buddhist teaching. In short, subjectivity is not fundamental in relation to objectivity by definition, since they are co-dependent both ontologically and semantically. Also, this not so subtle distinction aside, having a subjective observer does in no way exclude the importance of others (i.e. intersubjectivity), and the characteristics of what is observed from its own side (i.e. objectivity) in determining conditioned reality. "The only way the world can be observed is subjectively", claims Dworsky. Fortunately, this is not the case, and so the counter-argument from Hitchens remains baseless.

Elsewhere, in a great interview, Hitchens did qualify his statements on Buddhism, and Buddhist-influenced imperial regimes from Burma to Tibet to Japan, quote:

I know that some people will think I'm piling on a bit there. That's the only thing in the book so far that I've run into that I might have to consider rewriting. I am going to have a proper dialogue with Sam Harris on this because he is a very serious guy and he thinks I'm in error here. I'm not closed-minded. When I'm talking about Buddhism I don't feel the same sense of urgency as I do when I'm talking about Islam, say. So I'm happy to concede that.

Read the whole thing, there's good stuff on myth and church-state separation and hardcore skepticism. Then there's the interview with John Wiener at Truthdig, where Hitchens goes one step further:

The Dalai Lama claims to be a hereditary god and a hereditary king. I don’t think any decent person can assent to that proposition. You should take a look at what Tibet was like when it was run by the lamas. Buddhism has some of the same problems as Western religion. Zen was the official ideology of Hirohito’s fascism that was used to conquer and reduce the rest of Asia to subservience. The current dictatorship in Burma is officially Buddhist. The Buddhist forces in Sri Lanka are the ones who began the horrific civil war there with their pogroms against the Tamils in the 1950s and 1960s. Lon Nol’s army in Cambodia was officially Buddhist.

These are facts, more or less. What most Buddhists don't like is the way Hitchens interprets those facts, but they don't go away when you dismiss his interpretation. Just as every other religious tradition, historical Buddhism is a complex system of practices - mostly faith-based, not leading to mystical awakening, accessible to hoi polloi - and especially institutions that belong to a premodern, feudal structure. And these structures, that have been sustaining the Buddhist tradition for centuries, often filter into ways the teachings are practiced and applied even now in the postmodern Western Buddhism.

Hitchens may be wrong on some Buddhism, but still be right. The difference between elite, esoteric spirituality on one side, and the common mythology served to masses, on the other, is real enough. But you can't really argue for one by quoting the other, though in real life they tend to function by reinforcing one another . The capacity for self-criticism in Buddhism at large is yet to be demonstrated. Granted, doctrinal basis and potential are there, but so is the long history of parochial mentality and authoritarianism. Fortunately, Buddhism ain't one thing, just like Christianity or, indeed, Islam.