[Buddha-l] G-d damn it

[Michel Clasquin]

Richard P. Hayes wrote:

> This is a digression, but one of my former colleagues at McGill was a
> professor in Jewish Studies; she is now at Harvard. She once said to me
> it drove her crazy when Jewish students wrote "G-d", because she felt it
> betrayed a deep ignorance of Jewish tradition. The only word for which a
> Jew is not supposed to PRONOUNCE the vowels is the name YHWH. But the
> English word "God" is not YHWH, nor is it even a translation of that
> name.

But <he said in a stranied effort to move back on topic> then why do we
always capitalise the word "buddha"? It is not a name, it is a title,
like "king" or "president". We normally write "the president was elected
last year" and only if it is followed by his name do we write "Last
year, President Bush was elected". So strictly speaking, and allowing
for the inversion of name and title we get from Indian languages, we can
write "Shakyamuni Buddha" or "Gautama Buddha", but without the name it
should be just "the buddha".

That we don't do this is just a gesture of respect. In a thousand years'
time, this will be taught in Ancient English classes as one of those
exceptions to rules that drove me crazy in high-school Latin. So Jews
are not alone in their inconsistency.