[Buddha-l] What's wrong with a little Dharma?

[Richard P. Hayes]

The discussions of Buddhist sins are no doubt a healthy antidote to a
naively romantic fantasy that Buddhists, unlike others, somehow managed
to live up to their own lofty ideals. At the same time, such discussions
are feeding material to various people who are eager to discredit
Buddhism (and other "oriental" religions) at every turn. Indeed, in some
quarters the "orientals" (Hindus, Buddhists, yoga practitioners, Reiki
practitioners etc) have replaced the Jews (or perhaps just joined them)
as a favorite target and example of people turning against God and
Christ. Indeed, I'd say that Buddhists and yogis have come to be seen as
a greater threat to Christianity than Jews. After all, not many people
leave the Baptist tabernacle or the Catholic church to become Jews, but
quite a few such people do take up meditation and/or yoga and must
therefore be vilified for stepping onto a slippery slope that will
surely lead to eternity in hell. (In other words, what's wrong with a
little Dharma, say some of our Christian gatekeepers, is that it leads
inevitably to a lot of hell.)

If interested in seeing some of this for yourself, go to the web page
http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/dissent to see a rich array of savage
attacks on Catholics who have led other Catholics astray (DeMello,
Teilhard de Chardin, and the religious pluralist Jacques Dupuis), on
social and political liberals (you may want to read "Liberalism is a
sin" for a taste of bile), and on all the world's religions aside from
Catholicism (provided it has been purged of the influences of radicals
such as DeMello and de Chardin). 

You might enjoy reading the presentation on Buddhism at
www.ourladyswarriors.org/dissent/defbuddh.htm or the piece entitled
"Yoga: Health or Stealth" (the author of which was on TV last night and
in fifteen minutes managed to spout enough inaccuracies that it would
take at least an hour to correct them all).

Being critical has always been a bit of a habit with me, and I love
nothing more than to question the very things I hold most dear, but when
the world is filled with people ready to quote one's every question and
use it to their own polemical advantage, the spirit of critical
investigation becomes a bit more subdued. Shoot fire, what with all
these Christian polemicists eavesdropping on our conversations, I don't
even feel much like dissing the Lotus Sutra these days. What has the
world come to?

-- 
Richard Hayes