[Buddha-l] Re: Buddhist pacifism
curt
curt at cola.iges.org
Tue Oct 18 09:52:17 MDT 2005
Richard P. Hayes wrote:
>
>>My beef is with people who want to argue that "Pacifist Buddhism" IS
>>Buddhism, period.
>>
>>
>
>Well, if you find someone who wants to argue that, by all means, have a
>beef. I think, however, that you may have just bludgeoned yet another
>straw man to pulp with the might hammer of prapanca.
>
>
My argument all along has been quite simply that pacifism has never been
a part of Buddhism as it has actually been practiced in Asia for 2500
years. There is no straw man there. Asian Buddhism is what it is - and
it has never been a pacifist religion - going back to the Buddha
himself. To dispute this, in my opinion, is to insist that Buddhism IS
pacifist and that anything (like actual Buddhism as it is actually
practiced in Asia) that isn't pacifist isn't Buddhist - or at least not
properly so. Sometimes the "straw man argument" is the real straw man.
- Curt
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