Thanks for the note on life around you. I think something you touch on here is physical health. But my reading of the Wikipedia article is SLS profoundly about mental well being and the toll of neglect, abuse, and crushing poverty has on overall health and quantity of life due to the lack of well being.
Would you mind expanding your story of life in your area on that dimension? How does this harshness play out for the people as people, less about their ability to get physical health care, but how does the harshness degrade their lives as humans?
Personally I think that aspect is more locked in to the aging of the post-World power great expectations of “up and to the right.”
If people have never had decent health care, and their classmates from school haven’t either, then how are they meant to move into something as rarefied as self-assessed mental health? That is something that people with too much time and not enough existential threat get up to.
Except Buddhism and similar “self help” movements evolved over thousands of years in South Asia in an environment of of extreme poverty with literally no health care, and purposefully work in a life of poverty. The idea that only wealth and leisure provides mental health or self awareness is at complete odds with how most of the knowledge around self awareness came about, as most of our modern conception around such concepts derive from Buddhist and related thought. I’d note that Buddhist countries like Burma and Cambodia are in no way bastions if wealthy leisure life, yet are somehow bastions of Buddhist meditation and pursuit of a mindful life free of suffering.
You chose quite the counterexample. Siddhartha Gautama was royalty before he became the Buddha. He pursued yoga for six years after having been married and had a child before he sat down to do nothing. He was an introspective rich kid. He was not a laborer at any point.
Further, Buddhism originated in temperate zones where asceticism works and originated separately because you can easily survive outdoors year round and eat very little (that is not naturally provided) because of low thermal demands on your body. You don’t see very many ascetics very far from the equator.
You mistakenly equate lack with poverty, which is the point I was trying to make more subtly in my earlier comment.
He did however renounced his wealth and lived a life of poverty. And Buddhism isn’t the story of siddhartha alone. He had many followers that figure in the pali canon quite extensively, and they were poor, rich, some even developmentally disabled. Concurrently, there were a lot of ascetics that siddhartha studied with - Buddhism didn’t spring out of his mind wholly formed, it was a distillation of thousands of years of Indian philosophy into a structured process with a structured monk hood and method of “evangelizing” and maintaining coherency of his teachings.
However, I’m not specifically picking on siddhartha, but on Buddhism. Buddhism has seen many people through immensely difficult situations in life, which would cause suffering if you didn’t have a way of framing the conscious experience and it’s impact on emotional and physical well being.
I used the example of Myanmar and Cambodia on purpose - they are Buddhist countries, and while not everyone who is Buddhist practices Buddhist teachings, many do. And it’s impossible to say the Burmese and Cambodians aren’t impoverished and oppressed. Yet many find through Buddhism an ability to not suffer, and lead content and full lives despite. They labor under extreme difficulty, and if you think laboring in the tropics is easy … it’s not. Yet - still, I don’t see the SLS I see in American cities and rural settings, or in UK coastal towns, etc. They’re not magical and mystical beings in burma or Cambodia, they just have access to a way of thinking that enables them to not suffer emotionally from an unpleasant life. They would escape if they could, because Buddhism doesn’t teach acceptance of unpleasantness, but it does teach how to not suffer when things are unpleasant.
Buddhism itself is a very diverse beast to get a handle on in that part of the world. But I agree it serves to preserve (especially male) populations in conditions of little material possibility.
It sounds like you are making a different point: that you don’t see anything in the USA like the social/religious systems that have enabled some in SE Asia to transcend difficult conditions.
I would say that Christianity serves much of the same purpose in middle America, and that you don’t see as much “SLS” around practicing Christians as you do in the general population. It doesn’t get reported on much in the popular media though. What would the headline read?
Interesting observation. And I say so as a (Christian-raised) atheist, albeit of the moderate secular variety.
Religious observance in the UK has fallen through the floor since the early 20th century, and is more avidly practiced by our immigrant communities (Muslim, Catholic, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, African Christians) than most "native" Brits.
And yet very few are motivated by Hitchens/Dawkins-style, burn-it-all-down atheism, more of a, "meh, haven't really bothered to think about it" thing. Brits have given up on their own culture out of some kind of depressive laziness, and yet it's often those very same Brits who get angry at immigrants for celebrating their own traditions.
"I hate Muslims because they shut the pub and turned it into a mosque", usually said by an overweight, balding man who stopped going to said pub five years ago because drinking supermarket beer at home was cheaper.
To come back to your original point. People had objectively far shittier lives a century ago, less SLS but perhaps they were just too busy dying of silicosis, industrial accidents or TB.
Yea you’re right. I just don’t personally have that experience with Christianity to have a view.
Interestingly I was reading a teaching on the difference between transcendence and Buddhism. Transcendence was in fact what was being sought after in south Asian cultures at the time of Buddha. But Buddha didn’t teach transcendence and he made a clear distinction. It’s not about escape from your situation by leaving it in some way, it’s about living your situation without attachment to the past or future, about if you want things to be better, then do what you believe makes things better and others like you will be a part of your change you make. There’s several layers in Buddhism, with basic ones being relief from suffering, but deeper ones involve loving kindness and compassion, drawing on the idea that we are communal organisms that thrive on constructive generosity and kindness.
A lot is made of “enlightenment” and reincarnation, and at least in Theravada Buddhism, are mostly metaphorical.
Which brings me to your first point - Buddhism in Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand is Theravada Buddhism which is essentially unchanged from the original compilation in pali. In other parts of Asia you see a lot of innovation and mysticism (and to be fair in Southeast Asia the lay person Buddhism is a mixture of traditional animism and spirit worship mixed in with Buddhism).
Finally you make a male / female distinction. I don’t think this is fair. Women are allowed as much freedom and respect in Buddhism as any organized “religion” (I don’t consider Theravada Buddhism to be a religion, or even a philosophy - it’s more a guide to being a human). In fact in the Pali texts there are quite a large number of females who achieve enlightenment or bodhisattva (people who could become enlightened but opt instead to spend their lives ending suffering for all creatures, often even more respected in life and death than those who become enlightened).
Women are not allowed to become ordained monks though. But they can become nuns, which in theory are equal to monks. In practice sadly many mainstream monks exploit their position, which is not supposed to come with power and influence. In many ways the monk hoods rules about women are much more about the weakness of men than anything about women. Women are generally viewed as more likely to not need such draconian rules as men. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in Theravada Buddhism that elevates men above women in any way whatsoever.
Sadly though the societies themselves are historically patriarchal, and this colors things and male monks are often venerated more than nuns for that reason.
Nah, they are a bastion of suffering, you just don't hear about it because the people don't speak English and don't get visibility in your media; and because your media prefers to write about idealized views of Buddhist life rather than actual problems.
You assume an awful lot about me. I visit the region quite often and have studied Buddhist for the past 30 years. You assume an awful lot more about the people and Buddhism. With first hand knowledge of what you speak of, I feel it’s hard to believe you’ve got a lot of exposure to either these parts of the world or Buddhism.
Buddhism teaches you that while we can be comfortable or uncomfortable, true suffering comes from gripping tightly onto what happened or might happen, and a lack of acceptance for both what’s happening now and it’s temporary nature. You can endure the pains of cancer and imprisonment, the crush of poverty, or the pleasure of lavishness of opulent wealth, but whether you are suffering or not is entirely based on your view of things and how you frame life. The wealthy suffer unbearably just as the most deprived prisoners in the worst jails, and people in abject desolation can be content just as much as a middle class person. Note, a lot of folks confuse this with “giving up,” or being stoic, or any number of confusions as to how a person that should be miserable by your measure could not be.
I know - I’ve suffered more than most, and have a lot more than most, but I’ve not always had what I have and have been deep in some dark dark places without hope. Buddhism taught me to be non attached and content in all those places, and I don’t suffer any more. I used to be anxious, depressed, all sorts of other forms of misery. But once I realized what Buddhism taught and internalized it, even as I draw my last breath whether it’s in my bed peacefully or wracked with cancer, I know I won’t be suffering.
I’m not saying everyone in Myanmar is blissed out and enlightened. Many do suffer, and it’s not a pleasant place for most people, and being a Buddhist doesn’t mean practicing Buddhism. But many people do practice, and they live full and content lives despite the unpleasantness of their situation. This is at odds with what we expect in the west, because our underlying belief system teaches us poverty is misery, wealth is happiness. Truth is, we choose whether we suffer or not, and the temporary reality of poverty or wealth only offers pleasure or unpleasantness. Suffering is certainly correlated, but Buddhist teaches that it is actually independent and the correlation comes from how you frame your experiences and an over reliance on the “self.”
What I saw there was a lot of broken people who have learned to cope by not caring; I call that resignation. Talk to them a little and you'll see they don't appreciate their situation.
When Buddhism arose and developed, India was a rich country.
Much of the area was under King Bimbisara who was a powerful and just ruler. Crime was rare. Rule of law prevailed. Economic activities such as trade were booming.
It was one of the best places to be in human history. And not only Buddhism, other rich philosophical schools rose and thrived at that place.
Healthcare wasn’t non-existent, as there is recorded history of doctors and hospitals existing.
Buddhism, and many other rich philosophies could arise at that time in India specifically because India was rich, peaceful, and calm.
Kings and rich merchants paid for huge expenses of a non-trivial number of people not working towards economic gain.
This ignores the relative realities of then and now, and we are speaking of now. Then, medical care was not what we have now. It was true quackery. While doctors and hospitals existed, and were certainly some of the best in the world in that age, they still did very little compared to medical care now. While they were rich compared to much of the world (but not all of it, let’s not forget at this time Rome and China were ascendant as well, and likely superior in terms of health, science, and economic development - although South Asia had a focus on preventive health that is an envy today). However, none of this is even similar to the quality of economic, medical, scientific, educational, or other dimension in any society outside the most abject in todays world. They’re incomparable. Just antibiotics and pain medication existing alone and distributed globally to any nation no matter how impoverished is enough to make my point.
So, despite what should be abject misery by todays standard, how did people attain a lack of suffering in the age of the buddha? By the same routes we do today. Buddha just wrote down a reproducible route.
Buddhism doesn’t offer eternal happiness with magic beings absolving your wrongs and ensuring you live forever with your friends and loved ones. It only offers a way to use meditation to end your suffering, with it changing your reality or destiny. From that alone a major world religion took root. No bribery. No promises. Just a way to meditate and construe our reality. Maybe there’s something there?
I am sorry as I closed the Incognito window and lost the previous account. I have no way of proving I am the same person. But I will answer your question.
What I described, is true for the bottom 30-40% of the people. And many people who'd get treatment for one acute illness will try to suppress a chronic one.
People of course don't realize that they are very miserable. They take this as a given. You have a curable chronic illness that requires spending weeks in a hospital and 3-4x of your monthly income? You just choose to die slowly with locally sourced meds that suppress the symptoms. People become sad and gloomy, but are not totally lost unless they happen to be very young. Young people do get treatment.
If there is no illness, they just go by regularly with their lives. Domestic violence towards women is rampant and very common among the very poor. Negligence towards old people's health is comparatively more common. Child marriage is still common.
If you are asking if they become gloomy like Dostoyevsky's characters, then no. They are far away from that. They spend disproportionately in religious festivals. Although Hindu, their worshipped deities are not mainstream, for the lack of a better word. Poor Muslims fare worse. Muslims spend big, too.
They are happy, regular people. Very pious, except when it comes to corruption. Poor or rich, ~99% people will take the opportunity of corruption if they have the chance.
And the poor are less sensitive to social stigma.
But, I have seen a large number of people uplifted from poverty. Indian economic growth is not a dummy one. There are visibly much less poor people that there were ~15 years ago.
I live in an old neighborhood (thanks to remote work trend when I entered the job market in 2021). The neighboring locality is of poor people's. If you took a walk there (we all have amiable relationships and don't live in segregated manner), you will see brick houses (pucca), motorbikes, well furnished houses. If you took the same walk 15 years ago, you would have seen much more poverty. People are uplifted out of poverty. No doubts.
India is still power bipolar. Poor people have no power. And a powerful person (mostly politically) can get what you have. This, too, people see as a way of life. They don't know better. So, big fish eats small fish is still very true in India- unless you are a white collar middle class person.
Edit: these people are very patriarchal, don't believe in personal liberty at all, so, modern values that we hold dear are absent.
I belong to a old, upper middle class family, and can live my way, or otherwise I would be fighting to escape this place as soon as possible.
Would you mind expanding your story of life in your area on that dimension? How does this harshness play out for the people as people, less about their ability to get physical health care, but how does the harshness degrade their lives as humans?