[Buddha-l] Re: An experiment (Gender on Buddha-l)

[Andrew Skilton]

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005  Franz Metcalf wrote:

> it seems to me that a Buddhist 
environment ought to be inclusive and appreciative. 

But is Buddha-l a Buddhist environment? With recent revision of the
'constitution' and from observed practice, Buddha-l is pretty much anything that
the moderators (and some contributors) want it to be.

I agree that a Buddhist environment probably should be inclusive and
appreciative - it has in most of its history been a proselytizing religion after
all.

> It should embody (in our case, digitally) the compassion of hearing the other
and wisdom 
of learning from the other. There are things most of us just can't learn from
folks nearly like ourselves. 

I am sympathetic to what you write, but in practice I can only respond to people
who are 'present' to me.  I'm not sure I have a duty to seek out every 'other'
in order to learn from it/them. I am selective about my 'others'.  Put another
way, your comment also begs the objectively unanswerable question of whether I
should be learning from you or you should be learning from me - if you see what
I mean?  In practice this is relevant to who 'owns' a discourse or space...

Let's face it Franz, we are only exchanging these words because we agree!

My conclusion: Buddha-l is habitually populated by folks who like a particular
type of question or exchange. Personally, I might contribute more often to a
list with a slightly different 'style'.

Andrew



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Andrew Skilton D. Phil.

email: skiltonat at cardiff.ac.uk

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