Posting because the last request for this appears to be from 3 years ago before federation was a thing.
I would like to request to create and get mod privileges for a community parallel to /r/goldenswastika, which is a Buddhist subreddit/Discord with a purposefully transgressive name consisting of broadly ‘Asian’ posters tired of their religion being called into question by secular American teenagers. The subreddit and the community is/would be staunchly against Western appropriation of Buddhist ideas and aggressively moderates “dude im so high its like im enlightened” and “your beliefs are all cultural baggage” content that took over /r/Buddhism. Considering the political slant of Hexbear, the rules against bigotry and imperialism, and the intended goal of giving Buddhists a place to congregate without being questioned by folks whose only exposure to Buddhism is through Sam Harris, Hexbear seems the perfect instance to host a similar kind of community, even if I’m to assume a large percentage of users are atheists.
Content would have to be non-sectarian and the space would be open to all Buddhists (and non-Buddhists), but moderation would be tighter or posts disallowed about groups ran by known abusers (Shambala), those that so significantly deviate from traditional Buddhist ideas to the point they’re debatably Buddhist at all (SGI), or secular dismissal of traditional Buddhist ideas without good faith attempts to produce substantial arguments and to understand cultural context.
The other Buddhism communities outside of Hexbear are inactive, with single moderators that post infrequently or have disappeared, and are likely to be less heavily moderated when it comes to psychonaut content or comments dismissive of traditional Buddhist ideas in favor of secular mischaracterization. It is probable they would face the same problems as /r/Buddhism just by nature of being on a large general purpose instance, even if someone more active were to take them over.
As to how this relates to the socialist nature of the instance, I’m inclined toward the idea that it’s our responsibility to create an artificial Buddhist pure land in our human realms by establishing a society that is based on mutual aid. This would alleviate several kinds of suffering that come from living in poor economic conditions, freeing people to pursue meditation, textual study, or generating good karma by helping their fellow humans, which then leads to the more traditional form of Buddhist enlightenment.
In other words, communism/socialism/marxism and Buddhism are compatible, despite historical and current disagreements between Buddhist groups and some world governments. We can have some nice discussions about the Dalai Lama and the Kalmyk deportations of 1943.
In case you need some sort of mod credentials, I’d be happy to DM to discuss. I was a previous mod on /r/Buddha, which is a fairly niche subreddit dedicated to vegan/vegetarian posts related to Buddhism. Outside of that, I have no mod experience, but have spent significant time studying Buddhism as a practitioner and in academic contexts. I would also be looking to recruit mods either from those existing communities on other sites, or from the Hexbear userbase, if anyone was interested.
my knowledge of Buddhism is mostly filtered through the reformation it forced in Hinduism - unsure if that’s the kind of perspective you’re looking for but if it is, I’ll be happy to post.
That’s not something I’m super familiar with personally, but I think that would be interesting. I envision interfaith content being mostly fine. There were a lot of people bending over backwards to reconcile fundamental philosophical conflicts between Buddhism and Christianity that would probably not be great to rehash. But it makes sense to consider how Buddhism relates in a broader world context and what effects it may have had.
it was something akin to the protestant/catholic schism except the critique got reincorporated into the version of hinduism that was practiced at the time. it’s why there are relatively few buddhists in India. led to some cool stuff philosophically like an atheist branch of hinduism and a lot of social reforms. of course it literally all got rolled back, especially after the British took over. so much was lost through colonialism that it’s hard to find much info on the beliefs and practices people were experimenting with at the time. “learn Sanskrit so I can do some original research” has been on my todo list for decades.
I’d definitely be interested in hearing more. Since you mentioned it, they’re already part way into their yearly curriculum, but there’s a surprisingly good way to learn Sanskrit if you’re more into structured courses. It’s not free, but it’s significantly cheaper than taking a university class or something.
https://www.yogicstudies.com/sanskrit
This site was started by some Harvard profs and has courses from very prominent Buddhist and Vedic scholars. I’ve been meaning to subscribe myself since one of them is someone I studied under and I sort of fan stalk their projects because they’re so informative.
thanks! I’ll check it out.
I hope this gets made! I can’t contribute, but this is content I would love to see. I look forward to subscribing. Thank you!
If you feel you just don’t know enough to contribute, part of the goal would be to educate others about Buddhist philosophy and practice. I would plan to have stickied posts for “newbie questions” so we can keep those from flooding the community, but still work together toward that goal. I’d want to create a space as welcoming as the rest of Hexbear, so if this does go through, I look forward to seeing you there!
This is a great idea! I’m interested in learning about Buddhism and its relationship to communism, though I probably won’t have anything to contribute.
I’d like to compile a reading list for folks that relates specifically to this. I highly recommend reading about Uchiyama Gudō as an interesting place to start.
As a propagator of Buddhism I teach that “all sentient beings have the Buddha nature” and that “within the Dharma there is equality, with neither superior nor inferior”. Furthermore, I teach that “all sentient beings are my children”. Having taken these golden words as the basis of my faith, I discovered that they are in complete agreement with the principles of socialism. It was thus that I became a believer in socialism."
There are three leeches who suck the people’s blood: the emperor, the rich, and the big landowners …
