[Buddha-l] Can't Touch This!

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2005-03-29 at 07:30 +0100, Christopher Fynn wrote:

> > Jeffrey Hopkins, in his "Meditation on Emptiness" (p. 200), makes reference
> > to advanced tantric practitioners who are not allowed to touch such objects
> > as images and books.  Could someone be kind enough to provide some context
> > here.
> 
> This sounds to me like an injuction to get beyond relying on props such as 
> texts and images.

Usually I defer to your interpretation of tantric injunctions, Chris,
but this time it is obvious to me that you have missed an important
prophetic element in the tantric text. What the injunction against
touching books clearly offers is a two-fold prophecy: 1) the advent of
the Internet in general and buddha-l in particular will make books
unnecessary, and 2) in the dying days of an empire to the west of the
Atlantic ocean an emperor will come to power who never touches books but
has the empress read children's versions of Bible stories to him.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico