Talk:Humanistic Buddhism

message: I don't get it. I don't know anything about caring for the dead in Buddhism. As far as I know, all Buddhists care for the living, not the dead. So, why is this sentence in the article?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.6.102.129 (talk) 23:33, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are funeral rites in Tibetan Buddhism, such as dedication of merits.  The same is true of Jodo Shinshu and, I assume, many other schools. Luis Dantas (talk) 19:42, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Caring for the Dead? 

message: In many contexts, "Engaged Buddhism" is used as an analogous term to "Humanistic Buddhism."  Both are valid translations of the Chinese 人間佛教. Caorongjin (talk) 15:45, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd oppose the merge.  'Engaged Buddhism' is the much more standard term in discussions of this movement in Buddhism in English-language scholarship.  I'm not sure that it and Humanistic Buddhism are the same thing; Thich Nhat Hanh is the major figure associated with Engaged Buddhism, which is focused more on the idea of applying Buddhist principles in the service of social causes than with making Buddhism more compatible with humanism.  At the very least, we should get a better indication of what the relationship between the two traditions is a little unclear to me.  It seems that perhaps the same term in Chinese is being used for two different movements.  --Clay Collier (talk) 19:27, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: If you look for instance at http://buddhistinformatics.ddbc.edu.tw/~mb/publications/bingenheimer.yinshunRenjianFojiao.pdf, a digitized version of a publication from Taiwan, Bingenheimer discusses how "Engaged Buddhism" is a term that comes from Thich Nhat Hanh's translation of 人間佛教 (renjian fojiao).  The basis for his work is that of Yinshun, perhaps the second major figure of Chinese Humanistic Buddhism (next to Taixu).  Recognizing this and the tendency for people to use both terms analogously (correctly or not) would imply, at minimum, that Engaged Buddhism is part of the trajectory of Humanistic Buddhism. Caorongjin (talk) 10:01, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I just ammended the section in Humanistic Buddhism to discuss the relationship with Engaged Buddhism.  Hope that clarifies things. Caorongjin (talk) 11:21, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, this seems like a good solution.  Thanks.  --Clay Collier (talk) 12:15, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Good.  Though the term "Engaged Buddhism" seems much more common amongst Westerners, considering that several large Chinese (Taiwanese) groups use the English term "Humanistic Buddhism", and they do have a fair body of literature, in English, we can't just overlook "Humanistic Buddhism".  Besides, there are some differences between the two, as well.  Huifeng (talk) 02:37, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge proposal 

message: I have 4 points (and requests to the originator of the article to consider):
/1/ This article is about Buddhism and its global humanistic aspects, and not about promoting certain individuals. Referring to a ceratin activist once or twice is acceptable but to make the article based on one side makes its value weaker and incomplete.
/2/  I was about to delete the "SIX CHARACTERISTICS" but I leave it to the originator to do something about it. Again - the mentioned "6 charactyeristics"  are produced by just one view, and which is inconsistent. The first characteristic about Humanism says it is based on Humanism! This is circular reasoning. These characteristics also lack the most important factor of NON-VIOLENCE as characteristic to Buddhism and to Humanism. After all just the foundation of BODHISATTVA and altruism is sufficient and contains all aspects.
/3/ Why do we speak about Buddhist Humanism? It is because all people are equal in having the potential for Buddhahood, the Buddha nature and which was not mentioned at all.
/4/ When we are speaking about Humanism it means we are referring to the whole world. To distinguish "IN TAIWAN" as a major title means that the Humanistic movement did not develope in other places. It is possible to refer to Taiwan but if I want to add and refer to Japan, China, USA, France etc... this will make the article full of titles about all countries. Please keep it short. I suggest replacing "IN TAIWAN" by "WORLD WIDE".
Thank you for your work but please let's work together to make the article solid and deeper in contents. SafwanZabalawi (talk) 03:48, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please make changes to the article 

message: I am very curious about the recent appearance of a new section on Humanism in Nichiren Buddhism and related Japanese groups.  As far as I know, the general notion of "humanistic Buddhism" 人間佛教 is one of Chinese origins.  Could someone please verify that Nichiren et al do in fact use this basic term - as opposed to simply being "humanistic"?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Huifeng (talk • contribs) 11:07, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nichiren Buddhism? 

message: If you take a look at the right handside of the article, you'll see a column with various titles referring to :Christian Humanism, Jewish Humanism but no article for "Buddhist Humanism". I will start an article on "Buddhist Humanism", or we can change the title of the current article. The current title " Humanistic Buddhism" is inaccurate. Millions of people follow other schools of Buddhism, not necessarily a Taiwanese Buddhism, and they are Bodhisattvas whose teachings are firmly based on Buddhist Humanism and the Lotus Sutra.
The article must refelct this truth. Thank you. SafwanZabalawi (talk) 08:22, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changing the title or adding a new article? 

message: The current version of this article has a wrong title. In Wikipedia - as in all professional references -one starts from the general category first - to the specific subject. The “general category” here is HUMANISM  (see Religious HUMANISM, Christian HUMANISM, Jewish HUMANISM, Secular HUMANISM)  The term Buddhist HUMANISM is missing. I am suggesting a change in the title to “Buddhist Humanism” to align with the general classification practiced by Wikipedia.  
As the article mentions, the term “Humanistic Buddhism” – was used by Taixu but who “he may not have been the inventor of this term”. Some Chinese and Taiwanese temples adopted this specific term, but many other schools of Buddhism use the terminology of Buddhist Humanism, which is general. Of course, the term Humanistic Buddhism can be mentioned as a branch of Buddhist Humanism as advocated and practiced in Taiwan. The article specifically mentions Taiwan (or temples of a specific school from China). This is what the writer of the article mentioned: It was in Taiwan that the term "Humanistic Buddhism" became the most commonly used term, particularly amongst the religious leaders who originally hailed from China. 
As was stated in the article, the term Humanistic Buddhism was brought to “Taiwan in the wake of the Republican's defeat during the civil war against the Chinese Communist Party”. It is clear that the term is very specific and local and does not represent the general teachings of Buddhist Humanism which are based on 2000 years old Sutras. 
Buddhist Humanism is a Mahayana teaching based on the Buddha’s preaching of the universal Buddha nature inherent in all people. The concept of Humanism in Buddhism goes far earlier than Taixu who died in 1947 or other masters. The article acknowledges the Lotus Sutra as a Mahayana source of Buddhist Humanism, but the Sutra goes 2000 years before the mentioned Taiwanese leaders. Buddhist reformers used the words "Buddhism for all people" and " all human beings" etc... hundereds of years ago and they should be acknolwledged.  
Buddhist Humanism is taught in ALL Mahayana schools including Tibetan, Nichiren, Zen etc… and in fact, ALL Buddhism is based on Humanism because it focuses on the Human Being (not on external god).  If we start from this truth, we can construct a Wiki-article where the Taiwanese part can be preserved as a specific manifestation of the teaching (of Buddhist Humanism). Otherwise the article now is like an advertisement. Additionally it contains controversial statements and it lacks citations.  I invite all interested editors to cooperate in editing the article starting from the change of the title. We may also ask Wikipedia editors for advise.SafwanZabalawi (talk) 05:49, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Note: Existing practice is mixed: we have Christian humanism and Humanistic Judaism. The entry in Template:Humanism is now "Buddhist humanism" (linking to Humanistic Buddhism). If we change the title or create a new section in this article without a title change, I recommend lower case "humanism", e.. either Buddhist humanism or  Humanistic Buddhism#Buddhist humanism. Jojalozzo 01:59, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changing the title to Buddhist Humanism 

message: A new page is on the screen: Buddhist humanism, which covers the foundations of the subject of humanism in Buddhist schools in general, with comparison with secular and other-religious perspectives on humanism. The school of Humanistic Buddhism is mentioned in that article starting from the introduction and also mentioned in the sections on "articles, books and references".SafwanZabalawi (talk) 06:52, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I have linked this article to that, in "See Also". I have to admit my first reaction was that the pages should be merged - but I think I can see that they are different in scope. If I understood the difference better I would add a hatnote to each article. Could you perhaps explain for a layman the difference? Thanks. Mcewan (talk) 12:55, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Wikipage: Buddhist humanism

message: I fail to understand how this section explains anything. "Another aspect of manifesting the teaching of Humanistic Buddhism is the interfaith dialogue and the study of the common tenets of non-violence." This is a null sentence: it literally means nothing. It needs to be deleted.
"Soka Gakkai International teaches that 'the Lotus Sutra that leads all people to Buddhahood, and we ordinary human beings are in no way different or separate from one another.[4] and viewed the Buddha as a role model for all humanity: 'The purpose of the appearance in this world of Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, lies in his behaviour as a human being'". What on Earth does this have to do with humanism? This is literally basic Buddhism. It is not related, and should be deleted.
In fact, the only thing that keeps me from deleting the entire section is that Ikeda says the word "Buddhist humanism" in his quote. However, his quote seems to absolutely have nothing to do with a specific category of thought that could be labeled "humanism". It's just standard-fare East Asian Buddhist themes.
In fact, this article has reasonably good sourcing in regards to the descendants of one specific Chinese Buddhist and the entire Nichiren section appears to be jammed in. It does not belong and I don't see sufficient notability at all. 
 Maybe you can comment on this? Ogress smash! 21:12, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I'm inclined to agree that both statements are of dubious value here, though from my view the primary problem is that they are simply not encyclopedic in tone.  The first, while I understand what the author was trying to get at (i.e. "Humanistic Buddhism encourages interfaith exchange and devotion to peaceful exploration of understanding generally", if I read it correctly), but as it presently reads, it is so syntactically and semantically broken so as to border on gobbledygook; certainly it doesn't pass muster as a clear and unambiguously informative encyclopedic statement.  As for the second statement, not only do I have a hard time understanding the distinction here between standard contemporary Buddhism and the "humanistic" variety that you note, it is also clearly non-neutral, and written from the perspective of an adherent, not someone looking to describe it encyclopedically, through the lens of secondary sources.   However, I'm going to reserve comment as to whether the Nicheren section as a whole is appropriate until I have looked at the source in more detail.  Snow let's rap 02:21, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, yes -- I see the problem now.  All but one of the sources in this section are primary, self-published, and fail our WP:Reliable source standards on numerous other levels.  The last one isn't even a genuine citation, reading only "WND1", with no further context.   Only Gandhi and Mahayana Buddhism is a valid source, and even then it is primary and not ideal for the statement being put forward, which, though vaguely expressed, could be seen as a contentious statement, and therefore needs a stronger and secondary source.  Lacking such a source, this statement could be deleted.  Lacking any kind of source all of the rest of the section could be deleted as well.  But I think, whoever that authors/advocates are for this section (I'm unclear on that point, not having looked at the edit history in detail yet), it wouldn't hurt to give them a chance to better source and contextualize the section before we get to removing it.   But it certainly is not presently consistent with our standards for WP:Verifiability or WP:Neutrality as it stands now. Snow let's rap 02:38, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Soka Gakkai and Buddhist Humanism 

message: I came here after posting my own RfC and noticing this one. As a complete illiterate in Buddhsim, I see here lots of buzzwording and word play. First of all it caught my eye that "humanistic buddhism" normally would not mean the same as "buddhist humanism". In a common discourse, the first would mean something like "a sect of Buddhism which boasts its himanism", or "a tendency the modern buddhism acquires as compared with the Buddhism of the savages of our dark past", while the second one would mean "the amount of humanism is buddhism as a whole" or "the concept of 'humanism' in buddhism". Of course I understand words usually are not what they mean, especially when translated from the language of very different culture. THerefore the first thing is to agree as to the definitions. And I have to sadly say that the article sucks in this respect. Starting from the lede, which is basically devoid of information. 
It occurs to me now that is for this article, I am a wikipedia READER rather than WRITER. So, are you interested in the opinion of the target audience of the article, ie., of these who want to read it and learn something useful? (Obviously the smartass readers who already know all do not count, right? They must be writers, not readers, right?) If you want my opinion, I can give more of it. I am even up to an advice or two, if allowed. -M.Altenmann >t 05:58, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Please do provide your opinion. I am sure wikipedia welcome new editor to help them to improve the article.Kelvintjy (talk) 15:35, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  One big WP:SYNTH case 

message: P.S. if it turns out (tl;dr) that this article tries to speak about all four definitions I listed at the same time plus what a little birdie chirps on a diamond hill, then I would suggest you to consider a disambiguation option: write several articles (or sections in proper "parent articles"), eg.
Humanistic buddhism or buddhist humanism may refer to:
*renmin baobab in the school of Kissyo Asso
*Il buddismo humano con penis elevatto of Fascia Everesta Alpina
*etc
-M.Altenmann >t 06:12, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambig away the mix and match? 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion