[Buddha-l] Dana

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2005-10-11 at 07:32 -0700, Michael Paris wrote:

> Blood is scarce. I wish I could donate, but hypertension precludes
> that. My wife was donating regularly, but a false positive on some
> obscure test forever barred
> her. 

These days it takes about as long to answer all the screening questions
as it takes to actually give the blood. This is, of course, necessary to
ensure that no diseases are transmitted through contaminated blood.
Having lived a remarkably uneventful life, I seem to have some blood
that can be put to good use.

> Why the Vedanta Society, if I may ask?

The spirit of Swami Vivekananda still prevails there, which means they
are strongly pluralistic and therefore make room for all kinds of
religious views and orientations. They are, in other words, theological
liberal and committed to open-mindedness. They also place a emphasis on
karma yoga, on doing good works in the world wihtout attachment to the
results. Their non-dogmatic writings are inspiring and reflective.
This mix suits me well, in about the same way that the Friends Service
Committee suits my tastes. 

> My wife and I used to belong to the local UU church (in fact, we re-met
> there, but that's a different topic) but did not find it met our rather
> liberal needs. 

In my experience, UU churches vary tremendously from one place to
another. Some of them suit me a lot more than others. The one in
Albuquerque is pretty nice, but it's a little too big. Both my wife and
I are allergic to joining anything, so we attend regularly but will
probably never become members or belongers. And we keep talking about
sneaking off to the Quaker Meeting, which we used to attend regularly.
We went to the local Vipassana group a while back but got such a frosty
reception that we have never felt like going back. (It turns out that we
accidentally went to "people of color" night and the people there did
not seem prepared to acknowledge that pink is a color.)

> It's hard to find a good liberal bastion in Texas

You have no idea how much restraint it takes for a New Mexican not to
leap on an opportunity to make a smart-ass remark at the expense of
Texas, but just this once I'll refrain from blurting out an unpleasant
over-generalization. Suffice it to say that many of us in this state are
happy that the Lone Star flag no longer flies over the capitol building
in Santa Fe.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu>
University of New Mexico