Are modern day Buddhists Satanists?

The carnal body we live with, i.e., the five skandhas consisting of material form, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness, belongs to Mara the Evil One who is the equivalent of Satan, the adversary.  The Buddha goes to great lengths to warn his followers that these skandhas are not their self or ātman—don’t identify with them!  He has other not-so-good names for the skandhas.  Here are some:

[He sees] the five skandhas as impermanent, as painful, as a disease, a boil, a dart, a calamity, an affliction, as alien, as disintegrating, as a plague, a disaster, a terror, a menace, as fickle, perishable, unenduring, as not protection, no shelter, no refuge, as empty, vain, void.

Seldom do modern day Buddhists acknowledge these negative epithets for Mara’s skandhas.  There is only one they acknowledge and do so wrongly.  This is anātman (lit., not the self).  Surprisingly, they hold this up to be the foundation of the Buddha’s teaching ignoring the many times the Buddha says of each skandha: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self [ātman].”

You would think the bulk of modern day Buddhists were stark raving mad the way they carry on claiming the Buddha denied the self or ātman when in fact he did not.  He even said, “monks should abandon desire for whatever is not the self” (S. iii. 178), which is tantamount to saying that his monks should abandon desire for the five skandhas since they are not the self!

Since modern day Buddhists appear to cling to what is not the self (anātman), namely, Mara’s five skandhas, doesn’t that make them Mara-ists or better yet, Satanists?  Apparently, they celebrate rebirth into the flesh and all the suffering that goes with incarnation including death.  I suppose this lump of flesh is their refuge along with death.  These people must be either totally stupid or totally evil, or maybe both.  Modern day Buddhists need a great awakening to put them back on the right path so they can see what a simple and elegant religion Buddhism actually is.

Comments

[thezennist]

I love that term, "cult of the skandhas"! :)

[MStrinado]

Modern-day "Buddhists" are incessantly fixating on the psychophysical components--in a very real sense they are aborting the spirit. It's a cult of the skandhas.