[Buddha-l] Hindu Fundamentalism

[curt]

I would suggest as an alternative Robert Lamberton's
"Homer the Theologian" - which is concerned less with
deconstructing the modern term "myth" than it is with
explicating the actual tradition of allegorically interpreting
Homer. Right from the beginning of Lamberton's book
one realizes (if one did not already know) that there is
nothing new about metaphorical and allegorical interpretaions
of sacred literature - and, in particular, that any intelligent
citizen of Classical Greece was just as incapable of literally
"believing in" just-so stories as is any modern Buddhist.
- Curt

Richard P. Hayes wrote:

>On Mon, 2005-08-08 at 09:29 -0700, Bob Zeuschner wrote:
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>>To bring it back to Buddhism, consider "Mt. Meru is the center of the 
>>universe." This is a tough one. Is it intended to be empirical or a 
>>value judgment? In an expanding universe, is every point the center?
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>That is an interesting question. An interesting read is Paul Veyne's
><cite> Did the Greeks Believe in the Myths? </cite>, which explores
>various senses of what it might mean to say of anyone that they believe
>something. It is not at all clear in what sense someone at the time of
>the Buddha might have believed that Mount Meru was the center of the
>world. What is more clear is that a modern Buddhist has no real
>alternative to thinking of Mount Meru in purely mythic terms rather than
>as a geographical reality. Moreover, a modern Buddhist who has a pretty
>good understanding of the notion of infinity would have to say that
>Mount Meru is indeed at the center of whatever infinite universe it
>might be in (even if that universe be nothing but a possible world), and
>that every other point in that same infinite universe is also
>necessarily at the center.
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