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

[Gad Horowitz]

curt, can you provide a reference for the quote from Camera? I will use it in a book I am publishing on Levinas.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: jkirk 
  To: Buddhist discussion forum 
  Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 11:35 AM
  Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Re: Will new the pope verify Buddhist doctrine?



  My comments interlinear. JK
  ======================
  Curt wrote:

  > If we just wanted to be part of a movement dedicated to helping
  > the poor, etc, then we should just all become Socialists. Don't
  > get me wrong - I happen to be a Socialist myself. Religious
  > charity work very often involves attempts to indoctrinate poor
  > people and other "disempowered" groups to see their situation
  > as either "God's will" or the result of "past karma" or whatever.
  > Religious charity work also serves as a PR bonanza for Religious
  > groups and is usually tightly coupled with their fundrasing
  > apparatus. Also, "charity work" is almost inevitably thinly disguised
  > missionary work. .................

  JK: 
     This is precisely what I alluded to without going into it at length.
  This is precisely what US critics of Buddhism like about their own 
  religion. That missionizing, hypocrisy, and phonyness etc is going on is just fine by them as long as it has the Christian stamp on it. 
  I intended to allude to a very obvious cultural institutional aspect
  as the basis for the cited put-downs of Buddhists and Buddhism.

  > Dom Helder Camera put it better than I can "When I give food
  > to the poor they call me a saint. But when I ask why the poor
  > have no food, they call me a Communist." Dealing with the causes
  > of social problems (ie, asking why the poor have no food) is
  > ultimately more important than putting bandaids on the sucking
  > chest wounds of poverty and oppression.

  JK:    
  I did not write about dealing with the causes of social problems. 
  I too am a socialist, but causes were not my point. You changed the subject here.

  Let me add, following up on cultural differences, that the charities organized by many immigrant Asian communities are continuations of what they do or did in their countries of origin. Such organizations are viewed as self-help or support organizations, and the founders may also figure they earn merit thereby. Such Asian immigrant cultures as Vietnamese, Thai, and Korean for ex., still maintain a spirit of community or collective identity that is no longer part of US mainline individualistic culture. 

  Referring to points made by Peter Junger today, charitable donating per se is not what I was on about either. I was noting
  the lack of so-called charitable institutions, not individuals.
  Judging by the costly edifices paid for by some Buddhist sanghas, it does seem that not all of us are all that poor.

  But I overlooked one important contribution of Buddhists to social needs in some parts of the USA: their setting up of or support for hospices for the care of the terminally ill. 
  JK




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