[Buddha-l] Re: Will new the pope verify Buddhist doctrine?

[Stanley J. Ziobro II]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2005, Richard P. Hayes wrote:

> On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 00:00 +0100, Mike Austin wrote:
>
> > When he referred to meditation as 'spiritual autoeroticism', a colleague
> > of mine thought he was being called a Buddhist wanker. Ratzinger's words
> > were humorous, but I also heard a useful warning.
>
> What I hear is a continuation of a very old and persistent way of
> characterizing Buddhism as a form of narcissism, a preoccupation with
> nothing but one's own well-being. One of my graduate students here is
> working on Buddhist ethics, and she reports that one of my colleagues
> can't see anything in Buddhism but egocentric hedonism. This colleague
> is not a Christian. He's pretty antagonistic toward all religion. But
> whether one is a complete secularist or a doctrinaire Christian, one can
> find plenty of references in Western literature to Buddhism as a
> hopeless, pessimistic, narcissistic, weak-minded, hedonistic enterprise.
> That view seems to have prevailed in the 19th century, but it has by no
> means died out. It gets a bit discouraging after a while to see it keep
> popping up, and it gets even more discouraging when it popes up.

When then Cardinal Ratzinger characterized Buddhism as "spiritual
autoeroticism" I believe he based his remarks on a study by Fr. Henri
DeLubac.  I thought he not only mischaracterized Buddhism, but also
overlooked the potential for autoeroticism in certain forms of Christian
ascesis and contemplation.  That said, the potential for autoeroticism in
any contemplative tradition or practice is real.

Stan Ziobro