[Buddha-l] Re: Of Buddha, Miracles, and Ferry Rides

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Wed, 2005-11-02 at 15:27 +0100, Joy Vriens wrote:

> I don't know what the purpose of the book was, but I enjoyed 
> reading it and found it "thought-provoking" as one says.

My only purpose was to think about things by writing about them. Then I
had all this writing on my hands. The purpose of publishing it was to
raise money for a meditation center, to which I have signed over all the
royalties.

> I don't know why you wrote/published it, nor what Vladimir K.
> (Karamazow?) expected to find in it (other than reflections of a
> sceptical buddhist), but that 
> is entirely your and Vladimir K.'s business.

What I found compelling about his review was the comparison of Michael
Moore to Noam Chomsky. One expects Michael Moore to make all kinds of
wild accusations and to shoot from the hip, and perhaps even enjoys it,
but one expects more carefully argued and well-documented claims from a
professor at MIT. Similarly, Vladimir apparently expects wild
accusations and shooting from the hip from some Buddhists, but not from
a professor of Buddhist studies. Vladimir pay have been shooting from
the hip when he wrote that, but I think he hit the target. So perhaps
the mistake I made was not to write the essays and publish them as a
book, but to do all that under my real name. If I had published the book
under the name Wild Dick Haze, then no one would have expected it to
have the gravitas they expect from a professor.

> Besides I found Wladimir K.s review almost as funny as some of your
> essays and similar in style. The one-hundred twenty-five word sentence
> had me laugh out loud,

Some years ago my father gave me a computer program that was supposed to
help one become more aware of writing style. One of the things this
program did was to count the number of words in a sample of writing and
divide by the number of sentences. My average sentence was something
like 100 words, and many of my sentences were 200-300 words long. This
computer program then gave a reading assignment a difficulty score. The
idea writing style, it said, was aimed at a reader with a grade nine
education. It then computed my writing style to be something that a
student with a grade 27 education would feel comfortable reading. I took
the hint and started writing shorter sentences, such as the 125-word
masterpiece that Vladimir cited. (It was, you'll have to admit, a damn
well-written sentence.)

>  just like the bit where he writes "I must confess that I had trouble 
> finishing this book and many times thought of throwing it down in anger 
> and despair".

Moi aussi! Vlad's reaction is just about exactly the reaction I
appreciate in a reader. If people don't come away feeling a little angry
and personally insulted by an essay, I figure the essayist only made a
half-hearted effort.

> Admit it Richard, you wrote it yourself...

I have no problem admitting that I wrote it. I just wonder how wise it
was to publish it under my own name. In the future I think I'll publish
such essays under an assumed name. I've been toying with using either
James Peavler, Joy Vriens or Joanna Kirkpatrick.

-- 
My Unitarian Jihad Name (http://tinyurl.com/6valr ) is:
The Logging Chain of Loving Kindness
You can get your own at http://homepage.mac.com/whump/ujname.html