Our corporatized Western world, which these days stands on the side of plutocracy, also stands on the side of materialism. My question is how much of an influence does this have on religion, especially Buddhism? If we consider the allure of materialism and all that this vision encompasses, the influence might be substantial.
I tend to think that Buddhism throughout its history has been more or less made to serve the needs of the dominant ethos. This means that Buddhism is subject to being manipulated and altered. This process can be represented by the bed of Procrustes who made the person conform to the bed’s length either by means of amputation or by stretching.
Certainly, a sound case can be made that Western Buddhism is presently, so to speak, on the bed of Procrustes—a bed which represents materialism. At times, some parts of Buddhism are being cut away while other parts are being stretched beyond their original intention.
Curiosity draws me to look at the parts of Buddhism that have been whacked off, not to mention the stretched parts. When the amputations and stretchings are taken as a whole one cannot help but see that Buddhism is being made to conform with Western materialism whereby all psychical processes are either being totally ignored and ridiculed (for example the Scole experiment) or reduced to physicalist explanations. What we are to believe is that we are our corporeal body which is subject to death—nothing more. The idea of postmortem survival or spiritual immortality is a risible fiction, in other words.
It is not farfetched to imagine a time in the future when a great battle of ideas will be fought (hopefully, a bloodless one), when materialism is defeated, and with it the horrors we saw in the 20th century.
Switching gears, I can say that when spirit engulfed me I was astonished beyond words. Nothing I had been taught could explain what happened to me nor could it encompass my new way of looking at the world. I hasten to add, materialism had deceived me. This new and more accurate vision gave me the ability to see and to understand that those who have had no similar experience are arguing from a limited and immature perspective. They are like a child who believes that the radio sitting on the table accounts for all the music emerging from it! Clearly, this is not the case.