[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Mon, 2005-10-03 at 08:09 +0200, Joy Vriens wrote:

> I am afraid that the Americans can't separate their nationalism and
> religion. 

Nationalism IS the American religion. Saluting the flag is the principal
sacrament. You can't even fish a coin out of your pocket without being
reminded that Americans trust in God. But which God? The God that is on
their side in crushing the spirit of infidels, that is, the people who
do not share the vision of America as the new Jerusalem, the land from
which the good news of the coming Kingdom of God (and Wal-Mart) will
spread like a light to every nation on earth. This sort of rhetoric
could already be found in the writings of the first pilgrims before
their stockings got dry from the trans-Atlantic voyage. In the minds of
an alarmingly large percentage of the US population ever since then,
America without God is just another piece of real estate, and God
without America is just another feeble wisp of poetic fancy. One can
scarcely dream of anything more frightening than this vision, although
it does have some pretty frightening cheap imitations around the world
in the visions of such folks as Osama bin Ladin, and the Ayatullahs who
brought us the glorious Islamic Republic of Iran a few decades ago, and
some of the ultra-religious folks in Israel who still cling to the
quaint idea that YHWH gave their ancestors the land and encouraged them
(in Deuteronomy and some of the Psalms) to dash out the brains of the
babies of the hapless people who were living there before them.

There is a bumper sticker on the rear ends of several cars here in the
USA that reads "Dear God, protect me from those who believe in you."

I'd say more, but I need to go persuade my Reasoning and Critical
Thinking class that as Americans they don't have a prayer of being
either reasonable or critical, after which I go to my Buddhism class to
persuade my students that as Americans they don't have a mantra of ever
being Buddhists. It's all in a day's work.

-- 
The Logging Chain of Loving Kindness