I need an update

Often in Buddhism, teachings, practices or stories from the Buddhist scriptures, or from accounts of other great teachers of the past, are retold on the assumption that they are relevant to the present. It is rare that they are completely irrelevant, but they may certainly need a good deal of interpretation to become justifiably relevant today.

Teachings that involve karma, rebirth and past lives certainly form one set that need an update. Just the shift from a context where rebirth is generally believed in to one where it generally isn’t, completely changes the meaning of such teachings from (perhaps) basic ethics to metaphysical speculation. If one thinks about why a certain monk in the Pali Canon defends rebirth, for example, the answer may be in terms of concern about basic social morality, and people having a reason to support their neighbours rather than stealing from them. Rebirth certainly has no significance of this kind today.

Another type of teaching that badly needs an update are discussions of the relationship between Buddhism and other philosophies, especially when these draw on the arguments between the Buddha and teachers of other persuasions in the Pali Canon. I have already discussed the issues behind this in chapter 8. The alternative religions and philosophies that exist today in the West (or even in the East) are totally different from those that existed at the time of the Buddha – the Buddha knew no utilitarianism, no scientific type of materialism, no Marxism, no Christianity, no Islam. Yet all too often I have heard Buddhist speakers simply bundle these modern religions into the categories of “eternalism” and “nihilism” (as traditionally defined), where they fit ill, without further thought. An updating of “eternalism” and “nihilism” are badly needed (indeed I have attempted one myself[1]), but until there is some widely accepted updating by Buddhists on clear grounds, speakers who use these terms in their traditional definitions and expect them to still apply are hardly likely to be understood.

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