Why does Buddhism insist you don't "really" exist?

I had a revelation. I finally understood what that "ego doesn't exist" thing is all about.

I remembered that years ago I had read a woman's description of how she was raped. I don't remember her exact words, of course, but the idea was this: when her violator fondled, say, her right breast, she mentally gave her right breast away. That is, she forced herself to think that that breast wasn't really a part of her. And when he fondled her left breast, she mentally gave that away. And so on. Every new body part which her assailant violated, she mentally gave away, pretended it wasn't really her. That was her way of coping with the unspeakable rage and disgust caused by having her body bared and touched and penetrated without her consent.

Yesterday evening it suddenly occurred to me that the way she mentally gave away her body parts one after another sounds a lot like the Buddhist authors telling you how this part of yourself isn't actually real, and that part of yourself isn't actually real, and end up suggesting that nothing you are used to thinking of as belonging to your personality is actually real, so there is really nothing that is you, so no abuse you may be subjected to actually matters, so all your perceived suffering is actually illusory.

Do you see a similar psychological self-defence mechanism in those two cases?

Rape – the way a criminal stronger than you treats your body and destroys your dignity is unbearable, so in order to avoid going crazy with despair, you begin to pretend that parts of your body are not actually you.

Buddhism – the way people more powerful than you treat you and destroy your dignity is unbearable, so in order to avoid going crazy with despair, you begin to pretend that aspects of your personality are not actually you.

Don't forget that Buddhism was created for dirt-poor East Asian peasants in a primitive feudal society. They were completely at the whim of landlords, soldiers, bandits and whatnot. The society was hierarchical, with peasants actually considered inferior beings rather than proper humans. Remember one of the most important Buddhist credos: "pain is inevitable, suffering is optional". That's what Buddhism is all about – pain is inevitable. Buddhism is essentially a way of coping with an unbearable life full of abuse. Buddhism teaches that you can't do anything about the abuse and all you can do is to diminish your suffering by training yourself not to care about being abused.

But that was ancient India, China, Japan. We live in a different society. We are not powerless. We are not doomed to poverty, misery and hopelessness. We can influence things. Maybe not as much as the Constitution says we can, but we certainly don't have to go through life thinking: pain is inevitable, pain is inevitable, pain is inevitable. Those days are long gone.

Buddhism has many good ideas, but the Buddhist authors of today need to realise you can't just take teachings from feudal East Asia and transfer them into a modern democratic society word for word.

The essential difference between the religions

As you may know, a religion has three main purposes:

1) to alleviate the debilitating fear of death which almost every human being has and which almost certainly is genetically inherited because evolutionally beneficial;

2) to explain natural phenomena for which the humans have not yet found a satisfactory explanation;

3) to give the leaders of the society an ideology with which to justify their demand that the rest of the population submit to their rule.

I shall not elaborate on that here. I only mentioned it to remind you that when reading religious writings, it is advisable not to forget that that particular religion was created by somebody and directed at somebody. Maybe a religion was not actually created with a target audience in mind, but it survived to today because it found a target audience for which it was very suitable.

Recently, while I was reading some religious texts, it occurred to me that one can observe a rather striking difference in a way how three major religions (Christianity, Islam and Buddhism; I'll leave our Judaism and Hinduism because I know very little about them) approach the third main purpose of religion – keeping the common people in line, that is encouraging the individual to do whatever the society and its rulers happen to require from them at the moment.

If we simplify, not only their actual preachings, but more importantly their way of preaching, to its essence, we will come to the conclusion that:

1. Christianty is a religion of fear.

It says that if you don't do what the nobles and priests tell you, you will suffer unspeakable torment in Hell after the death of your physical body.

2. Islam is a religion of gain.

It's not hard to notice how Moslems are motivated much less by the fear of hell than tempted by the delights supposedly waiting for them in paradise. Houris and all that. Christianity has nothing of the kind. Paradise is just a moderately nice place to be. You want to get there not for its own sake, but in order to avoid Hell.

More than that, Islam tempts believers with all-but-heavenly pleasures already in this world. While the Quran prescribes certain rules for intergender relations, it states specifically that with women looted in war, one can do as one pleases. There is nothing like that in Christianity. Quite on the contrary – pleasure as such is a sin. Fight against pleasure is what Christianity is all about – brought to the extreme by Calvinism, but unmistakably present since the very beginnings of Christianity. It is no exaggeration to say that the association of sex drive with guilt is the most important principle that lies on the basis of the whole Christian faith. (I'm not the first one to point that out, of course.)

3. Buddhism is a religion of reason.

Other than Christianity and Islam, Buddhism doesn't urge people to fight for or against something. Rather than insisting on subservience, it persuades you to stop trying to achieve anything. By the means of psychological facts and logical arguments, as well as occasional skilful truth-twisting, it suggests that meekly submitting to whatever life throws at you is in your best interest. Pleasure is neither a sin (as in Christianity) nor a reward of doing the right things (as in Islam), it is unachievable. Whatever you do to be happy, Buddhism consistently and vehemently insists, will bring you a lot more suffering than pleasure. It is therefore reasonable to give up striving for happiness. The (relatively) best you can ever hope for is to minimize your suffering, which you can achieve by making yourself numb to everything and, ideally, giving up your very identity. Buddhism can be summed up in one sentence – "Happiness is impossible, but if you don't care about anything, then at least you don't suffer." But the main point I wanted to stress here is that Buddhism doesn't say what you have to do – it tells you that following their teachings is in your best interest. Christianity and Islam say that you must work on your master's field and pay your taxes to the king in order to save your soul from hell. Buddhism says you can't do anything about it, so it's in your best interest to put up with it and learn not to care. Christianity says self-denial is your obligation. Buddhism says it's the lesser evil.

I think there can be little doubt that the original target audiences of those three religions – Europeans, Semites and East Asians – were very different in their prevailing mentality. I dare say, the difference between their target audiences can be observed even today. Admittedly, it is only thanks to historical chance that Islam is very popular in Indonesia and Christianity in the Philippines. From the anthropological point of view, it could just as well be the other way around. But I don't think it's an accident that Christianity never seriously caught on in India, China and Japan, and neither did Buddhism outside of East Asia – and that Islam is far more popular among the blacks than among the whites.

Does it mean that the white people are very cowardly, the semites are very greedy and the orientals are very rational? I rather disagree with that. But understanding the fundamental differences of the three big religions is surely helpful for better understanding of the peoples among which they are popular.