[Buddha-l] In Praise of Eckhart Tolle

[Franz Metcalf]

Gang,

Whoa there, partners! Let's just settle down. Unless I grossly miss my 
guess, Stephen was not insulting Agehananda Bharati, but rather making 
a joke on a possible (mis)reading of Ron's post.

Ron wrote that Bharati was "a certified Shankarcharya Advaitist." Ron 
of course meant that he had some kind of official standing in that 
school. But "certified" can also mean--at least in Britain--"insane." 
We might say "certifiable" in America. So when Stephen wrote that 
Bharati was "insane," he was just riffing on that ambiguity in Ron's 
post.

I'm afraid the testiness of other buddha-l members is distorting our 
readings of less testy members, such as Stephen. And I've never known 
Stephen to even approach testiness except under the prodding of Dan 
Lusthaus. (And that can be interpreted as falling under the category of 
cruel and inhumane punishment.)

Let's give each other the benefit of the doubt--and the joke--here. 
Jokes are one of the few things that characterize truly human status, I 
think. Jokes and wars. Given a choice on buddha-l, let's go with jokes.

Franz Metcalf