[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[curt]

This is a dangerous answer. Geographical entities (ie, things that are 
defined geographically) begin and end at particular places. Historical 
entities (ie, things that are defined historically) begin and end at 
particular times. So maybe Europe's time is up. And yes, I am safely 
ensconced "over here" in the geographically quite well-defined continent 
of North America. Some people simply choose to call it America, which is 
fine with me, so long as we are clear that America begins at Tierra del 
Fuego and ends at the balmy coast of the Arctic Sea.

There is more than a trivial "Buddhist" point to this. The more closely 
one looks at the concept of "Europe" the fuzzier it gets. At least 
according to the Madhyamika view this is true of everything - but I 
think experience shows that even if that is true, it is easier to see in 
some instances than in others. With Europe it is pretty easy to 
demonstrate that "there is no such thing". "Australia" and "Antarctica" 
are the most difficult cases (of the class "Continent") - but if one 
gets stuck there, then you can just change gears and attack the category 
of "Continent" itself. What about Greenland, after all?

Buddhism aside - if one is going to defend Europe - against Muslim 
take-overs, or anything else - one should at least be able to describe 
what it is that one is defending. Shouldn't one? As to the idea that 
there is some "European Culture" that should be defended, I would 
paraphrase Ghandi by saying "as if".

- Curt

Catalina Castell-du Payrat wrote:

> Curt wrote:  Where is Europe anyway?
>  
> answer: the limits are historic. Are you north american?
>  
> Catalina
>
>
> Catalina Castell - du Payrat
> c_castell at yahoo.com
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Yahoo! for Good
> Click here to donate <http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-donate3/> to the 
> Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>buddha-l mailing list
>buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com
>http://mailman.swcp.com/mailman/listinfo/buddha-l
>  
>