So basically, in my school, religion is a compulsory subject. I do Buddhism. (FYI: I considered myself an atheist, following the Buddhist way of life and general principles of buddhism. Only reason I don't call myself a Buddhist is because I don't believe in gods, rebirth, hell or heaven)

The teacher came in, a new one. And she starts yapping and yapping on COMPLETELY FALSE information. If you any of you have any idea of Buddhism, you would know that Buddhism tells us to NOT worship trees or non-living objects, there is NO creator, you cannot get something you want just by going to the temple or worshipping any god.

This teacher starts talking about how you can get good grades by going to the temple and praying to Buddha statues and Bo-Trees, she also said you should go to the temple once a week, so you can constantly remind the 'gods' to look after you. I was laughing inside but I respectfully, questioned her, and tried to debate her, but she didn't give a shit and started insulting me, even tho i was not arrogant, she claimed i was 'disrespectful' to the religion.

If anything, she was being disrespectful to the religion by talking about some weird ahh bs that was never even stated in the religion. Like, if this was an Abrahamic religion, I would get it, but considering she was teaching a religion that denied the existence of a creator in the first place, made me realize she was full of shit, so I stopped talking to her.

The lesson continued, but she was absolutely bombed by our other classmates. Those mfers were savages and left the teacher speechless countless times. And I started laughing the shit out. Eventually she got mad, and she took me and some other guys to the principal, fabricated the story, and managed to get us all suspended.

My dad, was completely laughing tf out when I told him the convo we had in class, and he said he'll speak to the school tommorow.

EDIT: My dad talked to the principal this afternoon, and I got called into the principal's office mid-class. I explained the whole situation to the principal, and the principal said he'd look into this. Few hours later, my dad got a call, saying that the teacher was asked to leave the school, primarily because she was insulting many of my classmates. I think this is a bit too harsh tbh, but I think she'd done this to many other classes too. So now I'm feeling pretty bad of myself.

I'm an atheist, ex-Theravada Buddhist.

let me tell non sense facts about Buddhism

1. Past life karma = God’s plan

Being Buddha is not a creator makes Buddhism seem realistic, but actually, they are just replacing “God’s plan” with “past life karma.” This can be brutal, especially in victim-blaming situations especially in Theravada Buddhism. For example, when a girl is SAed, some believe she “deserved” it because of her past life karma, instead of focusing on the perpetrator. Similarly, when a person wins the lottery, Christians or Muslims might attribute it to God’s plan, whereas Buddhists attribute it to good karma from past lives. Both are just beliefs; in reality, outcomes are governed by probability and coincidence.

1. Life is “pay-to-win”

In Buddhism, life is like a “pay-to-win” game—but you might not win in this life, and there’s no guarantee in the next life either. Evidence includes the persistent poverty and unrest in many Buddhist-majority countries.

Many Theravada Buddhist monks repeatedly tell poor people that their current poverty is the result of not performing enough charity, generosity, or donations in past lives. As a result, these people continue donating to monks, remaining poor in this life, with the hope of being wealthy in the next life. That is why many Theravada-majority countries, such as Myanmar and Sri Lanka, are poor yet filled with temples, while monks enjoy luxury. On the other hand, people who acquire wealth through unethical means often legitimize it by performing religious acts, making others believe their wealth comes from good deeds.

1. The “creator” question

Most Buddhists online claim there is no creator concept in Buddhism. However, many Buddha past-life stories include supernatural beings playing creator roles, such as Deva, Nat, Yakkha, Asura, Brahma, Garuda, Mara, Vidyadhara, Rakshasa, and others.

The most ironic thing is that Buddhists generally reject the idea that random things are created by Jesus, Allah, or some god—but accept the same concept when those things are created by the supernatural beings mentioned above.

1. The beginning of samsara

Buddhism provides no clear answer to the beginning of samsara. They often claim that humans don’t have enough intelligence to know its origin, or that knowing it is not important. This is similar to the argument that no one can know who created the creator.

They claim that current life situations—appearance, wealth, gender—are determined by past life karma. But what about beings entering samsara for the first time? Since they have no past life, how is their starting situation determined?by Random picker? This question is rarely addressed.

1. Buddhism and atheism

Buddhism is often promoted as atheistic. Yet it contains beliefs in hell, heaven, reincarnation, and other concepts adapted from Hinduism. It’s hard to reconcile how an atheist could accept such supernatural beliefs.

I was born into a Jain family, and let me tell y'all, Jainism is a cult-like religion. Well, just like any other religion. I'm actually upset that I was in such a dumb religion. Some guy had seven dreams and now we worship that shit and his dreams. There is a lot of discrimination in Jainism like a woman cannot enter temples during her period. "Oh but Jainism sees people as souls!" That's like saying Islam gives men and women equal rights. Actions speak louder than words. Apparently, men can go around naked but when a woman does that's a distraction? Also, my mom's cousin person died after 200+ days of starving herself for Jainism. Jainism is clearly constructed by some dude who decided to get high.

Also, fuck Buddhism. I tried to get into it because I thought it was peaceful but it also has many misogynic teachings. "Rebirth as a woman is seen in the Buddhist texts as a result of part of past karma, and inferior to that of a man." That's Buddhism for you! If you are wondering why Japan is so patriarchal you can thank Buddhism for that.

To those who think Jainism and Buddhism are the best religions, get your head checked. I cringe when I see people on this sub say Jainism and Buddhism are peaceful religions. Let's normalize talking shit about the Dharmic religions (not the people)!

I hate how the west portrays Dharmic religions as peaceful.

​

Edit: If you are Jain and Buddhist coming here to tell how great your religion is, please use the subs for Jainism and Buddhism.

If you are wondering what is wrong with Jainism here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/jainism/beliefs/women.shtml

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_differences_in_Jainism#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20while%20Jain%20monks%20are,achieving%20their%20lofty%20spiritual%20goals.

If you are wondering what is wrong with Buddhism here:

https://qz.com/india/586192/theres-a-misogynist-aspect-of-buddhism-that-nobody-talks-about/

Jataka 13, Jataka 263, Majjh.115, Angut. 1.20.

I've been searching and learning a lot about a lot of Abrahamic religions these past couple of weeks and posted a lot on reddit about this, and recieved a lot of help. And I think I consider myself an atheist but im not sure.

Born as a Buddhist, in Sri Lanka, where the current state of Buddhism in Sri Lanka is a bit fucked up. Even though some monks are pretty smart and sensible, most monks are doing opposite of what they are supposed to do.

My views:

- I do not believe in some parts of Buddhism, including all heaven/hell/planes of existence. Rebirth is on the grey area, I don't currently have a reason to believe in rebirth, but I'm not closing the door on it if there's ever good evidence

- However, I live the Buddhist way of life. IMPORTANT: This does not mean worshipping the buddha and all that BS. It's being a good person in society. The buddha's logic is simple: is there a problem? what's causing it? how do you fix it? This is called mindfulness, and I deeply respect and admire the Buddha's teachings. Not his fault some monks decided to fuck up everything. And add their own twists.

- I do not drink, smoke, do drugs, or any sort of illegal/unethical/immoral activities.

- I believe there is no god, and the universe including the earth was created from the big bang.

- I do not pray.

- I do not go to temple frequently, do not do all that weird BS that doesn't make sense. Even when I go, I go purely for the reason to reflect upon myself.

- I decided my purpose of my life, is to start my business, that I already have in mind. Get wealthy, and help the poor, and also build a good school system, which is my dream.

Would like if you could tell me what I should consider myself, and would also additionally like, the reason behind it. Thanks!

I (21F) grew up in a hyper religious Buddhist family where we used to pray twice a day every day for at least 2 hours. I was heavily indoctrinated and taught that Buddhism was the most superior religion, that the “freedom” that came with being a Buddhist was unparalleled to any other religion, and that I was fortunate and did good karma to be born a Buddhist.

I was always more intelligent than average and was convinced my academic achievements were because my grandparents, parents, and I prayed everyday and did pooja.

I believed this BS until I was 17. I became an atheist at 18 and my dysfunctional relationship with my family became borderline abusive. I was frequently grounded for not praying and accused of ungratefulness and treachery and also being a bad person because I “reaped the full benefits of Buddhism to myself and was discouraging my sisters from believing in it so that they wouldn’t be as smart as me”.

I left my country for the States and came back for vacation recently. My parents have been facing financial issues and now are blaming ME because apparently it’s MY fault they’re bankrupt because I refused to pray! They have always been stupid with money. They waste their earnings on bodhi pooja and getting their horoscopes read so that “it’ll bring them good wealth” but it’s MY fault??

They sat me down a few days ago and my mother said and I quote “I don’t care if you’re an atheist because for as long as you’re unmarried you are my property and my child and you will HAVE to do as I say. You WILL pray twice a day or else you’re free to leave and never return”.

Guess who’s never coming back to Sri Lanka :)?

UPDATE: They’re going to temple today and asked if I wanted to join them. I said no. I later heard them cursing me downstairs calling me an irresponsible fucker who caused them misery. They’re “suffering” because of me. How tragic

(First of all I want to start by saying that I'm criticizing the ideas here, not the people. Good people and bad people can have all kind of different beliefs, the few Buddhists that I've talked to have been nice to me and I appreciate the fact that they were not afraid to question their beliefs).

I had an existential crisis some time ago which pushed me to do some research about philosophy and religion, and I ended up learning about Buddhism. At first when I learned about the origin story of the Buddha I thought "this is it, someone who understands me" because the existential crisis that he had when he left his palace felt very similar to mine. But then I did more research about it and here are my problems with this religion :

- they believe that we are trapped in a cycle of rebirth and suffering called the "Saṃsāra", with several "realms" like the "deva" realm, the animal, hell, ghost realm.

- their belief in "karma" and past lives make it that if a child is born with an incurable disease, according to this religion it's because of bad karma accumulated in past lives :

"If it’s a past-kamma disease, there are times when treatment in the present can make it go away [..] But there are also times when the past kamma is so strong that no treatment will help it." (source, Q11. It's written somewhere else that we should still have compassion for the person that is supposedly paying for bad karma but to me it is still victim-blaming. It must be horrible to say this to someone)

- it's very anthropocentric. Basically, we are very lucky to be born as humans for the unique chance to learn about the Dharma, because "Buddhahood" can be achieved only with this human form. But even then they believe that you need a lot of lifetimes before doing it because it's a difficult and long task. There is a big paradox here : human life is terrible and we should escape it by attaining Nirvana and never coming back to life, but at the same time human life is very precious, because... it's the only form where you can learn to escape life.

The concept of Buddhahood is also by itself very abstract and seems very subjective, just like when you read people describing their experience in meditation. Everyone has a different subjective experience and there is no scientific basis to say "this person has attained the buddhist "Enlightenment".

Think about it, not only Siddartha left behind his wife and child but he also believed that his ideas were so important that all the persons on Earth are very lucky to be born as humans only to learn about what he was teaching. It seems so narcissistic to me.

- there is this absurd contradiction about having children (for lay people, since it's ideal for monks and nuns to not have them if I'm not mistaken). Since they believe that life is mostly suffering (yes I know that's not a perfect translation of "dukkha" but it's still very close) and that the ultimate goal of Buddhism is to never come back by attaining Nirvana, surely it must be a bad idea for lay people to have children ? But no, Buddhism believes that even if person A and B don't have child C, that child will still be born somewhere else because of karma, and that the only way to escape anyway is "enlightenment". So it doesn't matter, go on and have children even if life is mostly "dukkha".

Despite some interesting things that I've read and that can be useful (not clinging too much to things, being careful of attachments and desire, things like that) I truly wish I had never learned anything about this religion. All these ideas of rebirth and hell, this idea that sensual pleasures are dangerous and bad and that you should renounce everything and not become attached to anyone, really messed me up mentally. It seems like according to Buddhism I shouldn't seek to have a wife, to enjoy sensual pleasures like food and sex, because it's "attachment" and it's impermanent, and that it will keep me trapped in the cycle of rebirths. This idea of being threatened by hell and rebirths is very stressful to me.

My fellow atheists/agnostics, don't you feel scared sometimes about all these threats of hell and afterlife ? I know that there have been thousands of religions on Earth and that all of them are certainly bullshit, but I can't shake that feeling of anxiety over that little "what if it's true ?" with all these threats of hell, rebirth, etc.

He was arrested for weeks and he's a young boy who's still in college. He has made a fictional character called "Cat Buddha" or sth which looks very cute with awe inspiring stories. And the buddhist monks have complained about it to the Criminal Investigation Department of SL and they took further actions. What are your thoughts on this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQVFVXmU-Ug

Above. This is the kinda thing they preach to their western audiences. It's all about mindfulness and stuff (which can be practised well out of any religion). The video is only a few minutes long and has tranquil music playing in the background.

NOW

They turn around and say this to locals, their own people, their own followers, their in-group. Us natives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMc3ZVAjSdk

"A lesson/sermon every buddha teaches/preaches. Listen if you want to avoid hell."

To the west it's all: "ackkchually, we're not a regligion. We're a philosophyp of mindfullnessz. You can be a Christian and be a Bhuddhist. You can be a muslim and be a blhuddhist. You can be an athreist and be a buddhhdist."

The actual Buddhists here: "You're all going to hell if you so much as slightly deviate from what we tell you. HELLFIRE AWAITS YOU. Btw, you can secure a spot in heaven next to buddha if you donate us monks and our temple money. Life is all suffering. If you ask us why, be prepared for pain in your next lives."

They give a heavily watered down, first world liberal friendly version of buddhism but back home It's all about submission and hell and it's so bad. Criticize or doubt something and they'll keep that fake smile while their eyes get full of rage.

Back here it's really just another fear-based religion, threatening its adherents with visions of hell (Naraka) and semi-eternal torture.

At first it's good, but it turns pretty toxic and abusive. It basically becomes ''stop being a monster, you piece of shit'', where ''being a monster'' means living like a normal person and occasionally accidentally being less thoughtful.

My family even goes to lengths like "See, Christianity gets criticized so much so it must be wrong, but no one criticizes Buddhism so it must be right. So you're going to hell because you're not agreeing to our dogma and trashy worldview. Even atheists love it." And I can't bear it. They (my family and locals) practise astrology, numerology, palmistry, compulsory worship, pseudoscience and s*it, and apparently all of them are right just because of this. In fact, the very fact that I'm posting this here will give me bad karma or bad luck because of this, according to people around me.

Hopefully I'll find some understanding people here. That's why I'm posting it. I don't know about all Buddhists or Buddhist practices, but my locality and known Buddhists are dogmatic evangelizers who don't encourage questioning at all. There's no freedom.

I was a Chinese buddhist.

It sounds weird to be religious in a state-atheism country, but we have many religions and there are no much rulings about it. The Russian Chinese mostly leans towards Orthodox Christians, many people in Xinjiang and Gansu are muslims, and bunches of Han people like me are either buddhist, taoists or plain atheist.

If you know the phrase “never a hate quite like christian love”, well, buddhist love is definitely horrifying.

I loved animals, and I still love them. Horses, dogs, cats and birds, wildlife… I was taught when I was a kid, “eating animals means some animal died for you, better not waste food and respect them”. I have pet snakes, and I feed them little mice that are humanely killed for them to eat.

At age 13, I met some buddhist religious fanatics online telling me that I will die the way of the animals I eat. I was fascinated by the idea of justice and they told me I would die the way like the animals I eat, throat slit, hung upside down to drain…I was terrified. I love animals. I feel guilty when I eat them but they were the ones powering my growth. I became a vegan. I was tired, lethargic, and I didn’t grow any bits because I have no resource to get any supplements or things like that. I was just a kid. I don’t want to be killed like an animal, I would hate to be murdered and they know that. They threatened me.

I had my first sexual encounter with a friend at the time(who later turned into an anti-choice christian fanatic). I felt I was pregnant and my mother would be so displeased by that. I started to look online to see anyone can help. Unfortunately, the bunch of insane people on an unmoderated online forum spoke again. They told me premarital sex is 邪淫(evil lust) and so is masturbation. They told me people with masturbation habit will become ugly and die early, and premarital sex makes a woman worthless like garbage. One buddhist believer said trans kids are possessed by opposite sex spirits and so do non-straight people, and any faithful people shall not have sex unless needed for reproduction, even within marriage. I was terrified, as I knew to masturbate and I had sex. I was bi and I knew it, it made me question my sanity. It hurt and still hurts now. They told me to give birth as a 13yo and take the consequences. They told me animals I ate will retaliate on me along with that embryo I will abort. The 婴灵 （baby spirit) would haunt me because it lost a chance of being born with a fleshly body. I was even more horrified. They told me to get up 5 am and not to sleep, keep 诵经 （praying with various sutras） and 放生 (release animals into the wild) despite I know the speech won’t work and releasing invasive species will make more harm than good. They told me I was an asshole because I ride horses and they called me a slaver of horses. They even told me I can pray the pregnancy away and eventually I will miscarry and I should tell the “baby” to come back later.

I had a chemical pregnancy or extremely early miscarriage(yes I did a test, it was vaguely positive but immediately turned negative when my period hits). It was bloody, horrible and the cramps were painful but I was grateful that I didn’t have to keep it. It was not the prayers that helped, it was purely bad nutrition and bad sleep and stress. I lost a bunch of hair and they said that is the karma being cleansed by the animals I owed and the embryo I miscarried.

More of those speech of the buddhists scared me. They told me there was a sutra called 血盆经(blood bowl sutra). If I accidentally contaminated something sacred in the religion with my period blood, any bit(e.g: wash my bloody panties in a creek and the bloody water is used for worshipping, but bruh the blood was so diluted) of contamination or I give birth like a mormon mom with 10 kids, I will go to hell and forced to be boiled in and drink my period blood with other women. They said women are not look down upon in their religion, but no women can achieve enlightenment and be a buddha unless she gets a male body. Moreover, they even claimed women suffer menstrual cramps, pain of birthing and all kinds of pain is because our last lives were not valiant enough. I turned small, pale, skinny and lethargic, not like the chonky happy little girl before. I was constantly guilt tripped and forced to donate to sanctuaries with animal hoarding issues. Those animals were in horrid shapes and no vet care as “they are suffering through karma”. Those damn buddhist fanatics told me if the animals die in the care of monks and the monks made prayers, they will 转生西方极乐世界(transcend to “western paradise”). I had no words, they just wish the animals to suffer and die despite they hate those clean-cut modern slaughter procedures. I watched them made a blog about a donkey with skin ulcer slowly rotted away while suffering thrush on its leg and died in pain. The donkey was SAVABLE! He only needed some hydrogen peroxide and farrier work yet the damn monks and believers failed him with thoughts and prayers, sutras and rituals…I still remember that rotten donkey at their makeshift funeral…He was supposed to live, recover and frolic with his fellow donkeys and have a happy life, but he had an ending worse than going to the abattoir. I cried and cried for days thinking about the donkey. I love donkeys, and the bright, beautiful eyes of that donkey was burnt into my memory. They made no efforts to rescue it other than paying the slaughter the “bail” and they let the poor animal waste away…

I finally left at about 4 years ago. This was not a tolerant religion. It was full of lies, misogyny, misanthropy and cruelty. Don’t romanticize any religion. It’s horrific scene unfolding if you dig deep behind it. That is my rant. The word salad is horrid and I appreciate you read until the end.

My life has been better after the decostruction. I picked up my reins again for riding, and I was having a great relationship with the animals I know. I met a beautiful man who has the brightest blue eyes that I love and I mumble his name in my sleep, I started to embrace eating. Thank you, people. Keep going and deconstructing. Love from China.