You say that Buddhism “views humans as innately flawed,” when it in fact says just the opposite, all humans have Buddha nature. In fact all things have Buddha nature. According to Buddhism, we are not “doomed to suffering and misery, and in need of salvation.” We already are Buddha—the various practices are about realizing that. I think you’re making a real mistake in choosing Buddhism as an adversary when Buddhism is such a natural friend, not anywhere as tied up with the agricultural revolution as the other major religions.

First, it must be understood that Buddhism has had to be substantially reconfigured for the Western market, just as Christianity has had to be substantially reconfigured for the New Age market. In other words, Buddhism as it’s known in North America is not Buddhism as it’s known in the rest of the world. The North American version of Buddhism is in fact a virtually newborn sect with fewer than a million adherents. The Buddhism I’m referring to in The Story of B is an ancient major religion of the Far East to which many billions have belonged. This Buddhism has as its foundation four “noble truths” received from Prince Gautama, the Buddha. Here’s how J.N.D. Anderson describes these noble truths in THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS: “The first is the truth of suffering . . . suffering is omnipresent and involved in the very nature of life. All forms of existence are subject to it. It is inextricably bound up with individual existence. The second truth deals with the cause of suffering. This Gautama felt to be desire, desire for possession and selfish enjoyment of every kind . . . . The third truth states that suffering ceases when desire ceases, when this selfish craving, this lust for life, has been renounced and destroyed. Lastly comes the truth of the path that leads to the cessation of suffering. This path is eightfold . . .” Mainstream Buddhism’s preoccupation with suffering is absent from the American version of Buddhism, just as mainstream Christianity’s preoccupation with sin is absent from the New Age version of Christianity. When I talk about Christianity and Buddhism in The Story of B, I’m talking about these religions as they’ve been understood by billions of people for two millennia, not as they’ve been understood by a relative handful of Americans for three or four decades.

ID: 100