What does it mean to be a Buddhist?

In “What Does it Mean to Be a Marxist?”, Norman Geras distinguishes “three meanings of ‘being a Marxist’”: personal, intellectual, and sociopolitical.¹ He writes that “for someone to be a Marxist, in the first – personal – sense …, he or she must (a) subscribe to a significant selection of recognized Marxist beliefs and (b) describe him or herself as a Marxist”.² About the intellectual meaning he writes that “a person can work – as writer, political publicist, academic, thinker, researcher – within the intellectual tradition begun by Marx and Engels and developed by later figures”,³ and about the sociopolitical meaning: “a person is a Marxist if they belong to the Marxist left”.⁴

Something like Geras’s distinction of different “meanings” of being a Marxist can be applied analogically to other religious and ideological labels, although some modifications are necessary. The “personal meaning” combines a doxastic aspect (i.e., what a person believes) and a self-ascriptive aspect (i.e., what a person calls themselves), but doesn’t mention a practical aspect (⁠i.e., what one does), while the latter tends to be quite important in most religions as well. While the doxastic aspect is related to the “intellectual meaning” (i.e., the tradition a person is working in), not everyone who has beliefs that belong to a certain intellectual tradition needs to be “working” within that tradition, so the two are certainly not the same.

The point of Geras’s “sociopolitical” meaning (i.e., “belonging to the Marxist left”) is that being a Marxist is not not merely an individual matter. To be a Marxist it isn’t enough to have some Marxist beliefs and so forth – it also requires some kind of participation within a larger sociopolitical movement. In case of other religious and ideological identities there is not usually a political component (or no explicit one, at least), but the membership of or affiliation with some kind of “movement” (such as a church, sect, school, denomination, and so forth) is just as important. Because of the absence of an explicit political element, it may be better to call this the social-institutional meaning of being a Christian, Hindu, Muslim, or whatever. An important aspect of this social-institutional meaning is recognition. Being a … also involves being recognized as an … by relevant others.

The self-ascriptive aspect of the personal meaning is closely related to a desire to belong to, or to affiliate/​associate/​identify with a certain religion or ideology (or variant/​part/​school/etc. thereof). While this is personal, it is also social. Calling oneself by some label is a social act. It is pointless to call oneself a Buddhist, Christian, Marxist, etcetera in private only. One calls oneself by some label to communicate something (such as belonging or beliefs) to others. Hence, one could argue that this self-ascriptive aspect should be classified as belonging to the social meaning of the religious/​ideological label in question, where “social” is substituted for Geras’s “sociopolitical”. However, because this aspect is so clearly distinct from the social-institutional meaning mentioned in the previous paragraph, I don’t think that would be right either.

Nevertheless, it seems a good idea to separate the self-ascriptive aspect from the personal meaning and to rename both. The associative-affective meaning of being a … is concerned with self-identification and (a sense of) belonging. The personal-substantive meaning, on the other hand, is about what one actually does and beliefs (i.e., the practical and doxastic aspects), which could be considered the “substance” of a religion or ideology.

Furthermore, in addition to Geras’s meanings of being a Marxist, an additional meaning can be distinguished in case of religious identities, namely, a formal meaning. That is, many religions have formal criteria for assigning the status of being a follower of that religion. Such formal criteria can be related to the practical aspect and are even more obviously related to the social-institutional meaning, but don’t really fit in either, and are, therefore, better treated separately. Hence, a modified version of Geras’s distinction applied to religious (self-) identifiers, then, consist of the following five meanings:

1. formal meaning – official/​formal criteria;
2. social-institutional meaning – sect/church affiliation and social recognition as a Buddhist;
3. personal-substantive meaning, consisting of a doxastic aspect (what one beliefs) and a practical aspect (what one does);
4. intellectual meaning – working in a tradition; and
5. associative-affective meaning – (a sense of) belonging.

(The order in which these five are given here corresponds with the order in which they are discussed below.)

In this article, I want to use this modified version of Geras’s distinction to discuss what it means to be a Buddhist. For illustrative purposes, I will apply the various meanings and aspects to myself (following Geras’s example), but that’s not the main focus and for those who want to skip those parts, I indented (most of) the navel-gazing and used a slightly smaller and blueish font (as you can see here if you look very closely). (By the way, I briefly considered giving this article the title “Why I am not a Buddhist” instead, following a book by Evan Thompson with the same title⁵ and a book chapter by Tom Tillemans with the opposite title.⁶ However, as I do not merely want to explain why (I think that) I am not a Buddhist, but want to focus primarily on what it even means to be a Buddhist, I thought the current title would be more appropriate.)

1 — the formal meaning of being a Buddhist

There is nothing like the Christian ritual of baptism in Buddhism, but that doesn’t mean that there is no formal meaning of being a Buddhist. By far the most commonly mentioned formal criterion is having taken refuge in the “Three Jewels” of the Buddha, the Dharma/Dhamma (Sanskrit/Pāli), and the saṃgha/saṅgha. In addition to taking refuge there are two other possible candidates for formal criteria that I’m aware of, namely, the Five Precepts (although those are more commonly supplemental than an alternative), and the Bodhisattva vow(s). A significant difference between all three of these and the Christian ritual of baptism is that they are voluntary, while baptism is often inflicted upon a child by its parents.

1a — refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and saṅgha

One of the most common defining criteria for being a Budddhist is having taken refuge in the Three Jewels. In A Buddha Land in This World (hereafter: BLiTW) I argued that for two reasons this is not a good criterion, however.⁷ First, the vast majority of nominal and/or self-identifying Buddhists in Asian countries with significant Buddhist populations never (explicitly) took refuge. And second, the notion of taking refuge in the Three Jewels is so flexible that it is nearly meaningless. Historically, Buddhist sects and thinkers have reinterpreted the Three Jewels to suit their needs. Thus, the Buddha can be the historical Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama or Śākyamuni), or some other specific (past, present, or future) Buddha, or all Buddhas, or the idea of Buddhahood, among other options. The Dharma can be the Buddhist teachings or some specific selection thereof, truth/reality, all true teachings/knowledge (including scientific knowledge), among other options (again). And the saṅgha can be the monastic community, awakened/​enlightened beings, all followers of Buddhism, society as a whole, and so forth. This flexibility doesn’t mean that one can just choose how to interpret the Three Jewels and take refuge in that – it’s (usually) the sect that decides what the Three Jewels mean, not the individual believer. But despite that, there are just too many interpretations of the Three Jewels to be a useful defining criterion.⁸

The Pāli expression translated as “taking refuge” is saraṇam gacchāmi. The noun saraṇa means “protection, shelter, house, or refuge”. The verb gacchati (when combined with an accusative) means (among others) “to go to, to have access to, to arrive at” and more figuratively also “to come to know, to experience, to realize”. Hence, saraṇam gacchati means “to go for refuge”, “to go for protection”, “to realize/​understand protection” and so forth. The words together are also used with the meaning “to entrust oneself to …” (where “…” is another accusative referring to whatever one entrusts oneself to; the Three Jewels in this case). In Chinese and Japanese, the notion of taking refuge is 皈依 guī yī and 帰依 ki’e, respectively. These two words share the character 依, meaning “to rely on, to consent to” and so forth. The first character in the Chinese term, 皈, means “to follow, to comply with”; the first character in the Japanese term, 帰, means “to return, to come home, to arrive at”.⁹ Notice that the Chinese/​Japanese terms are much less figurative than the Pāli (or Sanskrit): they do not use the metaphor of finding shelter or protection, but literally say what taking refuge is about: consent, compliance, or acceptance.

Taking refuge evolved from the acceptance of the Buddha as one’s teacher. In the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, approaching his death, the Buddha says to Ānanda:

it may be that you will think: “The Teacher’s instruction has ceased, now we have no teacher!” It should not be seen like this, Ananda, for what I have taught and explained to you as
Dhamma and discipline will, at my passing, be your teacher.¹⁰

Hence, after the Buddha’s death, the Dharma became the teacher, and the saṅgha is the guardian of the Dharma, implying that final authority rests with the saṅgha. In the Indian tradition, a teacher (typically) had absolute authority,¹¹ and this absolute authority is retained in common understandings of the meaning of taking refuge. Moreover, according to Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “in pre-Buddhist India, going for refuge meant proclaiming one’s allegiance to a patron – a powerful person or god – submitting to the patron’s directives in hopes of receiving protection from danger in return”.¹² Thus, taking refuge implies submission, (uncritical) acceptance, wholehearted commitment, and so forth. Taking refuge is to accept the absolute authority of the Buddha, and because he has died and entrusted his teachings (i.e., the Dharma) to the saṅgha, to accept the absolute authority of the doctrinal authorities of the school or sect one takes refuge in.

(Buddhist modernists and Western Buddhists sometimes (?) seem to interpret “taking refuge” much more liberally, however. For example, taking refuge is understood more as accepting advise than submitting to authority. But Buddhist modernism has effectively become its own school/sect within Buddhism, and such liberal interpretations of taking refuge may be sanctioned by what passes for the doctrinal authorities within that “school/sect”.)

As a metaphor, “taking refuge” is somewhat peculiar, by the way. If one takes refuge in a shelter during a storm, one doesn’t have to assume that the shelter is safe. It may be better than outside, but one could (and perhaps even should) keep an eye open and check whether the shelter is, and remains, safe throughout the storm indeed. But this isn’t how taking refuge in Buddhism traditionally works: taking refuge means uncritically accepting the shelter as safe. As soon as one has found and entered the shelter, one proclaims trust in that shelter and stops checking.

So, what is that “storm” one seeks refuge from? (Recall that the Pāli expression also implies understanding of that what one seeks refuge from.) That “storm” is the nature of existence in saṃsāra, the world we live in, the world of death and rebirth, the world of duḥkha/dukkha (suffering). One takes refuge hoping to achieve (at least some) protection from suffering (dukkha). But what then, is this “suffering”?¹³

The concept of dukkha is not defined in the canonical sources. In narrower views, dukkha is simply a kind of unsatisfactoriness of life caused by an inevitably frustrated desire for permanence. In this view, dukkha is personal and psychological or mental. It is a kind of stress more than a kind of pain. In broader views, dukkha includes this unsatisfactoriness, but also physical pain and worldly suffering. An example of a very narrow view is James Deitrick’s accusation that engaged Buddhists are forgetting “the most basic of Buddhism’s insights, that suffering has but one cause and one remedy, that is, attachment and the cessation of attachment”.¹⁴ An example of a contrasting point of view can be found in the typical response Joanna Macy got from learned Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka to her questions about the application of the Four Noble Truths to worldly suffering by engaged Buddhists. She writes that she expected an answer corresponding to the narrower view, but

instead, almost invariably, these monks seemed surprised that a Buddhist would ask such a question – and gave an answer that was like a slight rap on the knuckles: “But it is the same teaching, don’t you see? Whether you put it on the psycho-spiritual plane or on the socio-economic plane, there is suffering and there is cessation of suffering.”¹⁵

Rather than defining dukkha, the Dhamma­cakkappavattana Sutta illustrates the first Noble Truth by giving a number of examples:

birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.¹⁶

This suggests a broad interpretation of dukkha, which is also supported by the scholastic classification of dukkha into three kinds. The most basic kind of dukkha is physical and mental pain, which may even include dissatisfaction, annoyance, boredom, and fatigue. The second, more subtle kind of dukkha derives from change and the impermanence of things (in the broadest possible sense of “thing”). Any gain, any achievement, any satisfaction, any positive sensation or emotion, and so forth only lasts for a brief while, leading to unhappiness and craving for more after it has drained away. The third, even subtler kind of dukkha results from the fact that this change and impermanence is fundamentally outside of our control because everything is interdependent or conditioned. Nothing is permanent and nothing is independent of causes, conditions, and other things, including we, ourselves. Dukkha in this third sense, sankhara-dukkha, is related to existential dread and to a general dissatisfaction resulting from the fact that things never are or can be as we expect and as we want them to be.

So, which kind of dukkha/suffering is one supposed to (understand and) seek refuge from? Is it just sankhara-dukkha as Deitrick and other defenders of the narrow interpretation suggest? Or is it all three kinds distinguished in the scholastic classification? Are the Four Noble Truths only concerned with sankhara-dukkha or are they concerned with dukkha in the broad sense (as the sūtra quotation above suggests)? In BLiTW I suggest that it is the latter,¹⁷ but this doesn’t really matter here. Recall that it is the doctrinal authority of the sect/school/saṅgha one joins that decides what the Three Jewels are, what “taking refuge” means, and what one seeks refuge from (as well as all other doctrinal questions).

1b — the Five Precepts

Lay Buddhists sometimes take the Five Precepts, but this is almost always part of a ceremony that also includes (and prioritizes) taking refuge. Hence, the Five Precepts are not a very plausible candidate as an independent formal criterion for being a Buddhist.

The Five Precepts are prohibitions of (1) killing, (2) theft, (3) sexual misconduct, (4) lying, malicious/harsh speech, and gossip, and (5) intoxication. The first precept forbids killing of both people and animals, but by extension also participating in systems or institutions that kill or profit from killing. Consequently, the first precept also implies a vegetarian diet, but there may be other more far-reaching consequences. Sulak Sivaraksa has argued, for example, that the first precept also forbids making weapons, depriving people of their livelihood, using chemical fertilizers and insecticides, destroying forests, polluting the environment, and living a wasteful life of excessive consumption. Somewhat similarly, he interpreted the second precept (against theft) as a principle of economic justice, and thus as a rejection of the exploitation and institutional violence that is an inherent part and aspect of the current capitalist economic system.²⁴

While the Five Precepts are not a plausible positive defining criterion for being a Buddhist, they could be a negative criterion in the sense that someone who habitually breaks one or more of the precepts is definitely not a Buddhist. So, for example, because I am not a vegetarian and regularly drink alcohol, thus breaking the first and fifth precepts, I am not a Buddhist. But then again, the same is true for tens (if not hundreds) of millions of nominal Buddhists in Asia, so perhaps, the Five Precepts aren’t even a useful negative criterion.

1c — the Bodhisattva vow(s)

In East-Asian Buddhism, some followers take a Bodhisattva vow in a formal ceremony. I don’t think this is usually considered a defining characteristic of a “Buddhist”, but it also seems undeniable that anyone who has genuinely taken a Bodhisattva vow must be a Buddhist. In other words, while it isn’t a necessary condition, it certainly is a sufficient condition for being a Buddhist.

While there are several variants of “the” Bodhisattva vow, the most common one in East Asia was first formulated in the sixth century by Zhiyi 智顗 in his Exposition on the Dharma Gateway to the Perfection of Meditation 釋禪波羅蜜次第法門:

These are the four Bodhisattva vows. […] Even though sentient beings are unlimited [in number], I vow to liberate [or] save [them all]. […] Even though the kleśas²⁵ are innumerable, I vow to stop [them all]. … Even though the Buddhist teachings are inexhaustible, I vow to know [them all]. … Even though Buddhahood is unsurpassable, I vow to attain [it].²⁶

It is worth emphasizing that taking this vow (or these vows) doesn’t commit one to succeeding (which obviously isn’t humanly possible in this life). It does commit one to genuinely trying, however, and it is that genuine trying – that is, the intention or mental attitude – that matters. As Śāntideva wrote:

If the perfection of generosity consists in making the universe free from poverty how can previous Protectors [i.e., Buddhas and Bodhisattvas] have acquired it, when the world is still poor, even today? The perfection of generosity is said to result from the mental attitude to relinquishing all that one has to all people, together with the fruit of that act. Therefore, the perfection is the mental attitude itself.²⁷

In other words, even “previous protectors” like the Buddha and various Bodhisattvas didn’t succeed in liberating all beings. Obviously, a random follower taking Zhiyi’s vow isn’t expected to succeed (in this life, at least) either.

2 — the social-institutional meaning of being a Buddhist

Above, I wrote that the doctrinal authorities of the sect determine the nature and meaning of the Three Jewels and that the saṅgha one takes refuge in is effectively this sectarian doctrinal authority. Consequently, sect “membership”, affiliation, or followership is a fundamental aspect aspect of what it means to be a Buddhist. Or in other words, one cannot just be a Buddhist, but has to choose one specific, (more or less) organized variety of Buddhism to belong to. Except if one chooses to be a Buddhist modernist, although Buddhist modernism has more or less developed into its own “school” of modern Buddhism. Facing this choice, and recognizing that he can’t join any traditional Buddhist sect, Evan Thompson writes:

Since I see no way for myself to be a Buddhist without being a Buddhist modernist, and Buddhist modernism is unsound, I see no way for myself to be a Buddhist without acting in bad faith. That’s why I’m not a Buddhist.²⁸

The reason why Thompson rejects Buddhist modernism is that its “dominant strand … is full of confused ideas”. The core of those confused ideas is “Buddhist exceptionalism”, which “is the belief that Buddhism is superior to other religions in being inherently rational and empirical, or that Buddhism isn’t really a religion but rather is a kind of ‘mind science’, therapy, philosophy, or way of life based on meditation”.²⁹ This idea is mistaken, Thompson rightly argues (and Donald Lopez has made a similar argument before³⁰), and is based on a misunderstanding of both science and Buddhism. Thompson writes, for example, that:

Buddhist modernism is now replete with appeals to the supposed authority of neuroscience. It has claimed that neuroscience confirms the truth of the Buddhist idea that there is no self, that neuroscience shows that mindfulness meditation “literally changes your brain,” and that enlightenment has “neural correlates.”
These ideas aren’t just wrong; they’re confused. The self isn’t a brain-generated illusion or nonexistent fiction; it’s a biological and social construction. Anything you do “literally changes your brain”; evidence for mindfulness meditation leading to beneficial changes in the brain is still tentative; and mindfulness meditation is a social practice, whose positive or negative value depends on social facts beyond the brain. “Enlightenment” isn’t a singular state with a unique brain signature; it’s an ambiguous concept, whose different and often incompatible meanings depend on the religious and philosophical traditions that give rise to them. Contrary to neural Buddhism, the status of the self, the value of meditation, and the meaning of “enlightenment” aren’t matters that neuroscience can decide. They’re inherently philosophical matters that lie beyond the ken of neuroscience.³¹

If won’t go in further detail about the unsoundness of Buddhist modernism here – you can read Thompson’s book for that – but I largely agree with his assessment. Nevertheless, that current Buddhist modernism is unsound doesn’t mean that a “modernized” Buddhism is necessarily unsound. On the last page of his book, Thompson writes that “the question I would pose to Buddhists is whether they can find other ways to be modern besides being Buddhist modernists (or fundamentalists)”.³² What he overlooks is that an answer to this question could also come from outside traditional Buddhism. Perhaps it will even have to come from the outside as sectarian traditionalism and inertia may be too strong an opposing force. In principle the answer could even come from within Buddhist modernism – that is, some variety of Buddhist modernism could “fix” itself.

Leaving aside the question of whether such a new, less problematic variety of modern(ized) Buddhism could, should, or will arise, the key point should be clear: one cannot just be a “Buddhist”; either one belongs to some specific sect of Buddhism, or one is a Buddhist modernist. However, as mentioned above, there is a further aspect of the social-institutional meaning of being a Buddhist (which is closely affiliated to the purely institutional aspect of affiliation), namely, social recognition as a Buddhist.

In BLiTW, I argued that “what makes one a Buddhist is not some formal criterion but recognition and self-recognition. A Buddhist is someone who considers herself to be a Buddhist and who is recognized as a Buddhist by a significant number of other Buddhists, who are Buddhist by this same, rough definition”.³³ In terms of the distinction applied here, this definition combines the associative-affective meaning (to be discussed below) with part of the social-institutional meaning. (It denies that there are defining doxastic and practical aspects and ignores the formal and intellectual meanings.) It is the part after italicized “and” in this rough definition that is the second aspect of the social-institutional meaning of being a Buddhist.

3 — the personal-substantive meaning of being a Buddhist

The third meaning of being a Buddhist concerns what one believes and what one does. One is a Buddhist in this sense if one subscribes to a significant selection of recognized Buddhist beliefs and (or?) participates to a significant degree in recognized Buddhist practice. In a footnote in BLiTW, I suggested, but not fully endorsed, a definition that condenses the personal-substantive meaning of being a Buddhist into a single sentence: “a Buddhist is someone who aims for awakening and thereby becoming an arhat or boddhisattva, either in this life or in some future life after many rebirths (through accumulation of good karma or merit)”.³⁶ However, while I still think that there is some truth to this definition, I don’t think it’s very useful, and it may, moreover, be much too restrictive (i.e., exclude to many people who consider themselves Buddhists and/or are considered Buddhists by others). So let’s briefly look at “recognized Buddhist beliefs” and “recognized Buddhist practice”.

A year ago, I wrote a (very long) blog post asking “Is Secular Buddhism Possible?”, which, among others, discussed some of the key doctrinal elements of Buddhism. These include a long list of metaphysical beliefs (⁠i.e., beliefs about what exists and the nature of reality) that are shared by virtually all sects and thinkers of Buddhism:

• non-self or no-self: there is no entity that persists over the life/lives of a person;
• anti-essentialism: there are no essences;
• impermanence: everything is impermanent, nothing lasts forever;
• momentariness: entities do not exist for longer than an instant;
• mereological nihilism: whole/sums/composite objects do not exist;
• anti-substance: simple substances don’t exist either, and are really (something like) bundles of properties;
• nominalism: universals don’t exist;
• dependent origination: everything that exists was caused by something else and depends for its existence on something else;
• rebirth: the death of a sentient being is (causally) related to the birth of another sentient being (but nothing transmigrates from the former to the latter);
• karma: good deeds lead to good karma leading to a better rebirth, the other way around for bad deeds.

In addition to these metaphysical beliefs, there are many other more or less obvious core doctrines of Buddhism:

• suffering is bad (this is assumed by the Four Noble Truths);
• suffering is caused by craving/attachment which itself is ultimately caused by ignorance (this is a rough summary of the Second Noble Truth);
• the Buddha gave us a Path/method to overcome suffering;
• that Path consists of a preparatory stage, followed by moral discipline, followed by mental discipline, culminating in wisdom and liberation ;
• the Buddha knew everything worth knowing (implying the epistemic authority of the Buddha and scripture).

Again, this list is not exhaustive – there are many other recognized Buddhist beliefs. There is a problem with regards to “recognition”, however. Whose authority is this recognition based on? For example, many (if not most!) Buddhists in Asia believe in personal survival after death. That is, they believe to be reborn either on Earth or in some Pure Land as some kind of continuant of their present person. Hence, they implicitly reject the traditional Buddhist theory of rebirth as well as no(n)-self. What’s (even) more problematic than that is that what they believe – although not Buddhist from a strict scriptural or philosophical perspective – is commonly recognized as Buddhist by themselves and by many others (including people of authority in the sects/schools they belong to). The same is true for many other beliefs. In other words, there are many beliefs that are commonly recognized as “Buddhist” by nominal Buddhists as well as monks/priests/etcetera even though they are disputed by other Buddhists on solid Buddhist grounds. Consequently, the doxastic criterion of subscribing to a significant selection of recognized Buddhist beliefs is relative to the sect/school one belongs to. Furthermore, the exact same is true for the practical aspect, and therefore, the personal-substantive meaning of being a Buddhist differs from sect to sect.

That practical aspect, as mentioned above, concerns participating to a significant degree in recognized Buddhist practice. The list of recognized Buddhist practices is probably as long as the list of recognized Buddhist beliefs, and extremely varied. It includes many devotional practices, rituals for gaining merit (i.e., good karma), rituals for transferring merit to deceased ancestors (or for gaining merit on their behalves), chanting, prayer, and hundreds of varieties of “meditation”.

4 — the intellectual meaning of being a Buddhist

Tom Tillemans opens his essay “Why I am a Buddhist” with the following passage:

No doubt many would insist that I am not. Buddhists often invoke rather rigid doctrinal tests to argue for what they think is essential, indispensable Buddhism and what isn’t. I fail many of those would-be tests, as I often have reserves about those doctrines. I am independent of Buddhist institutions, although know and respect tradition. I think of myself as a Buddhist philosopher in search of a viable transcendence without any external God-like figure. I am above all a Buddhist who seeks a way out from an absurd, but seductive, picture that holds much East-West thinking captive, viz., the conceptual tangle of metaphysical realism and self-aggrandizing individualism. Here, then, is a broad-stroke sketch of where I stand on a religion that was always more to me than an object of disinterested historical or sociological study.³⁸

The “broad-stroke sketch” on the following pages is a very academic summary of some of the philosophical doctrines of Madhyamaka Buddhism, about which Tillemans has published extensively. Hence, Tillemans considers himself a Buddhist because he is working within the Buddhist philosophical tradition. This is exactly the intellectual meaning of being a Buddhist.

5 — the associative-affective meaning of being a Buddhist

The term “nominal Buddhists” has appeared a few times throughout this article. It is largely analogous to “nominal Christians”. According to Abby Day, Christian nominalism is “arguably the largest form and fastest-growing style of Christian belief and belonging in the world”.³⁹ Christian nominalists “may not believe in God or Jesus, but they … believe in what they describe as their Christian roots and their Christian culture”.⁴⁰ For example, in 2023 Ayaan Hirsi Ali publicly announced that she had become a “Christian” for exactly this reason, but it is easy to find many other people in Western countries with a similar point of view. As Day claims, nominalism is “arguably the largest form of Christianity today”.⁴¹ She argues that nominalists “believe in belonging”, and that:

People who ‘believe in belonging’ claim social and cultural identities to reinforce a belief in belonging to specific groups of people, particularly those with whom they have affective, adherent relations or those whom they recognize as having legitimate authority.⁴²

Much of what Day writes about nominal Christians applies analogously to nominal Buddhists. Nominal Buddhists self-identify as Buddhists out of a “longing for belonging” and an identification with a “Buddhist” culture. Like nominal Christians, nominal Buddhists believe in belonging.

However, much the same may be true for not-merely-nominal Buddhists (or Christians). Those too may identify as Buddhist (or Christians) out of a “longing for belonging”. The main difference is just that their “longing for belonging” is rooted more in an understanding of the religion they identify with and less with vague cultural associations.

While I don’t think that the associative-affective meaning of being a Buddhist is sufficient to be considered a Buddhist indeed, it may be a necessary condition. That is, arguably, no one can be a considered a Buddhist if they do not at least consider themself a Buddhist.

From five meanings to one?

Which and how many of these meanings or senses of being a Buddhist need to apply to be a Buddhist simpliciter, rather than a Buddhist-in-the-…-sense? Or in other words, what is the comprehensive meaning of Being a Buddhist?

I’m inclined to say that the associative-affective meaning is necessary. No one can be considered a Buddhist if they don’t consider themself a Buddhist, even if they have many recognized Buddhist beliefs and participate in Buddhist rituals. (I expect that there are many people like that in traditionally Buddhist countries.) Perhaps, the social-institutional meaning is necessary as well, but that one may apply automatically – that is, if someone is a Buddhist and does not belong to any traditional sect/school/​denomination, then they are a Buddhist modernist. If that’s the case indeed, the social-institutional meaning doesn’t add anything as a criterion.

I’m not sure whether any of the other meanings are necessary to be a Buddhist simpliciter, but notice that while the five meanings are distinct, they are not independent from each other – if one applies, usually some others apply as well, at least to some extent. As mentioned, many (if not most) nominal Buddhists in Asia never took refuge or satisfy other formal criteria mentioned. (But they may be registered as temples and, thus, be officially recognized as Buddhists in the social-institutional sense.) The intellectual meaning is surely not necessary and it may even be possible to work within the Buddhist tradition without being a Buddhist (or even without subscribing to Buddhist beliefs).⁴⁴

This leaves the personal-substantive meaning. To be a nominal Christian, one doesn’t need to have Christian beliefs at all. Analogously, to be a nominal Buddhist, one doesn’t need to have Buddhist beliefs at all. If merely nominal Buddhists are excluded – and there is much to say for such an exclusion if we want to know what it means to be a Buddhist – then the personal-substantive meaning may be necessary, however, but then we need to have another look at the formal meaning as well. Recall that the formal meaning was deemed non-necessary because nominal Buddhists don’t usually take refuge, but if those are excluded, then, perhaps, the formal meaning needs to be included after all.

If we convert meanings/senses into aspects, this would result in a three-part comprehensive meaning of being a Buddhist:

1. the associative-affective aspect (calling/considering oneself a Buddhist):
2. the personal-substantive aspect (subscribing to a significant selection of recognized Buddhist beliefs and/or participating to a significant degree in recognized Buddhist practice)⁴⁵:
3. the formal aspect (having taken refuge in the Three Jewels, or some other recognized formal criterion).

However, I’m wondering whether this is too restrictive. Would someone who subscribes to many Buddhist beliefs and who regularly participates in some kind of Buddhist practice, but who hasn’t (formally) taken refuge count as a Buddhist (provided that they identify as such)? Maybe. Maybe not. Nevertheless, as an acquaintance pointed out, refusing to take refuge would be a bit “like a catholic refusing to say the Our Father or the Hail Mary”, and thus, would raise justified doubts whether the person in question is actually a Buddhist.

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1. Norman Geras (2012), “What Does it Mean to Be a Marxist?”, in: Matthew Johnson (ed.), The Legacy of Marxism (London: Continuum): 15-23.
2. Ibid., p. 14.
3. Ibid., p. 16.
4. Ibid., p. 18.
5. Evan Thompson (2020), Why I Am Not a Buddhist (New Haven: Yale University Press).
6. Tom Tillemans (2022), “Why I Am a Buddhist”, in: Mark Lamport (ed.), The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Philosophy and Religion (London: Rowman & Littlefield).
7. Lajos Brons (2022), A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism (Earth: Punctum), pp. 167–8.
8. The first half of this sub-section is based on Can an Anarchist Take Refuge?.
9. Both the Chinese and Japanese terms are (nowadays!) also used to refer to religious conversion in general.
10. DN 16.6.1. Translation: Maurice Walshe (1995), The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya (Somerville: Wisdom).
11. e.g., Richard Gombrich (1996), “Freedom and Authority in Buddhism”, in: Brian Gates ed., Freedom and Authority in Religions and Religious Education (London: Bloomsbury): 10–7.
12. Thanissaro Bhikkhu (1996), Refuge: An Introduction to the Buddha, Dhamma, & Sangha (no publisher, circulating online), p. 6.
13. The remainder of this section is based on BLiTW, pp. 149–52.
14. James Deitrick (2003), “Engaged Buddhist Ethics: Mistaking the Boat for the Shore”, in: Christopher Queen, Charles Prebish, & Damien Keown (eds.), Action Dharma: New Studies in Engaged Buddhism (London: RoutledgeCurzon): 252–69, p. 263. — Italics in original.
15. Joanna Macy (1985), “In Indra’s Net: Sarvodaya & Our Mutual Efforts for Peace”, in: Fred Eppsteiner (ed.), The Path of Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism (Berkeley: Parallax): 170–81, p. 179.
16. SN 56.11. Translation: Bhikkhu Boddhi (2000), The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikāya (Somerville: Wisdom), p. 1844.
17. See pp. 149–52
18. See the introduction to part II of BLiTW as well as chapter 9.
19. “Inas Abu Maamar (36) cradles the body of her niece Saly (5) who was killed, along with her mother and sister, when an Israeli missile struck their home, in Khan Younis, Gaza.” — Photo: Mohammed Salem. Source.
20. §8.120 ff.
21. Specifically, the passage: “I am the twelve-year-old girl, // refugee on a small boat, // who throws herself into the ocean // after being raped by a sea pirate. // And I am the pirate, // my heart not yet capable // of seeing and loving.” — Thich Nhat Hanh (1987), Being Peace (Berkeley: Parallax), p. 67.
22. Mark Siderits (2001), “Buddhism and Techno-Physicalism: Is the Eightfold Path a Program?”, Philosophy East & West 51.3: 307–14, p. 312.
23. Bodhicaryāvatāra, §8.96.
24. e.g., Sulak Sivaraksa (1992), “Buddhism and Contemporary International Trends”, in: Kenneth Kraft, Inner Peace, World Peace: Essays on Buddhism and Nonviolence (New York: SUNY Press): 127–37.
25. Kleśas are afflictions or negative emotions such as ignorance, attachment (or craving, desire, and so forth), and aversion, or hatred.
26. 四弘誓願者。… 亦云眾生無邊誓願度。… 亦云煩惱無數誓願斷。… 亦云法門無盡誓願知。… 亦云無上佛道誓願成。— Zhiyi 智顗 (6th ct),《釋禪波羅蜜次第法門》, T46n1916, 476b.
27. Śāntideva, Bodhicaryāvatāra, 5:9–10
28. Thompson, Why I am not a Buddhist, p. 19.
29. Ibid., pp. 1–2.
30. Donald Lopez Jr. (2008), Buddhism & Science: A Guide for the Perplexed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Lopez (2012), The Scientific Buddha: His Short and Happy Life (New Haven: Yale University Press).
31. Ibid., pp. 18–9.
32. Ibid., p. 189.
33. p. 168.
34. Nichiren was banished to Sado island for a few years because of his controversial views. The temple that was built on the location where he lived is very close to where I live, and when I finished writing my last book, A Buddha Land in This World, I visited that temple to mark the end of the writing process.
35. There have been others within Nichiren Buddhism with (somewhat) similar views, which is another reason for my relatively favorable view of Nichiren Buddhism.
36. p. 168, n. 122.
37. I also have some different views about mereological nihilism and “anti-substance”, although those views are influenced by Buddhist philosophy. See: Lajos Brons (2023), “What Is Real?”, Organon F 30.2.
38. Tillemans, “Why I Am a Buddhist”, p. 349.
39. Abby Day (2011), Believing in Belonging: Belief & Social Identity in the Modern World (Oxford: OUP), p. 153.
40. Ibid., p. 73.
41. Ibid., p. 174.
42. Ibid., p. 194.
43. To give just three examples: Japanese funeral Buddhism and its Confucian corruptions; much of Western Buddhism and its neo-Stoic corruptions and Zizekian fetishization; Burmese and Japanese war-time Buddho-fascism.
44. Paul Williams was still working in the Buddhist tradition after his conversion to Catholicism, for example.
45. More Protestantish Buddhists will tend to emphasize beliefs, while some less Protestantish Buddhists might emphasize practice.
46. mail [at] lajosbrons [dot] net