[Buddha-l] Re: Jesus is Buddha?

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 13:09 +0100, Benito Carral wrote:

> > This is all very abstract.
> 
>    Not  at  all, Richard, we are referring to Christian Lindtner in this thread. 

There are few people I know of who have written about early Mahayana
Buddhism more convincingly than Christian Lindtner. His political views
appal me, but his portrayal of Buddhist thought and practice remains
excellent, whatever his personal quirks may be. 

I would still maintain that while the specific content of Lindtner's
reflections on Buddhism and Christianity do not appeal to me personally,
I don't think there is anything wrong in principle with redefining the
Buddha in whatever way one wishes. As I have said, every picture of the
Buddha, bar none, is a deliberate construction put forward by someone
who has a vested interest in (or an attachment to) a particular view of
practice. So I cannot condemn any modern person for "rewriting history"
without condemning the compilers of the various Buddhist canons for
doing exactly the same thing. Everyone without exception who says
anything about the Buddha is essentially creating a fictitious character
for didactic purposes, and this has, so far as the evidence allows one
to see, always been the case.

One of the features of Buddhism that most appeals to me is its absence
of creeds. (A lot has been said about this recently.) For that reason, I
tend to resist attempts to define "correct" Buddhism by defining a set
of beliefs or dogmas (such as rebirth) or a set of practices (such as
vegetarianism or refusal to join the military) as normative. On this, I
tend to side with Thomas Jefferson, who said that if there had never
been a priest, there would never have been a heresy. This observation of
the vested interests of the ordained clergy is no less true of Buddhist
monks than it is true of Catholic priests, Jewish rabbis or Protestant
ministers. Some would regard such authority figures as necessary evils;
I am inclined to regard them as unnecessary evils. But that is just a
result of the way I have chosen to reinvent the Buddha. I leave it to
you to invent your own Buddha, and Lindtner to invent his.

-- 
Richard