[Buddha-l] Buddhism and Postmodernism

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 11:27 -0400, curt wrote:

> Masao Abe. I have never read anything by Abe, but I did hear hims
> speak once, and I thought he was pretty boring.

Good old Honest Abe. Honest people, like accurate people, usually are
pretty boring. If you want some excitement in your life, it's liars and
wild speculators that you need.

> For some reason he served on the Advisory Board for the Washington
> Times newspaper, which always made me suspicious (the Washington
> Times is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rev. Moon's conspiracy to take
> over the world).

That a prominent Japanese Buddhist scholar would work as an adviser for
one of the most disgustingly right-wing propaganda rags in what is
jokingly called the free world is a good reminder that Buddhists are, as
a rule, inclined to lean as far to the right as possible without falling
over. That is true in all parts of the world but the West. In the West,
Buddhism is still not established, so it attracts people who are
alienated from their societies. But wherever Buddhism is a well-
established religion, it mostly attracts people who are too mired in
tradition to think for themselves and who have a fear of anything that
might make them change their deeply ingrained habits. In short, it
attracts xenophobic bigots and right-wing nationalists, in much the same
way that fundamentalist Christian churches in the United States attract
Republicans the way dung attracts flies. 

-- 
Richard Hayes