Western Buddhism Is Fundamentalist

I’m getting pretty close to the idea that, in the Western milieu, a Buddhist who believes in any prescription at all is already a fundamentalist.

To take this take to 11, I will also state that the category of “prophet,” i.e. a human who receives direct knowledge of G!d and translates it into actionable prescriptions for other humans, describes the far-right spectrum of buddhas.

(a reminder of my one-sentence definition of Buddhism: The belief that buddhas can transmit actionable information about the process by which they became buddhas.)

Now it’s okay to be a fundamentalist. What’s not okay is:

• not knowing you’re a fundamentalist

• pretending not to be a fundamentalist

• trying to make anyone else into a fundamentalist

I have a strong urge to expand this take to include psychedelics. I suppose it’s that psychedelic fundamentalism IS a sect of Western Buddhist fundamentalism, and you can use that convergence as a diagnostic.