[Buddha-l] Jesus is Buddha?

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2006-01-24 at 19:36 +0100, Benito Carral wrote:

>    Yes,  I know, and I don't agree with you. The Buddha
> taught a path to a particular goal.

This is where we disagree. I claim we really don't have the faintest
idea what the Buddha taught. All we can know is what some people tell us
the Buddha taught. But their account is already an interpretation, a
rewriting of history. Everything we have, and the only thing we can ever
have, is a fictional representation. To prefer one fiction over another
and to say THIS is the original teaching, and all others are deviations
from the truth, is to try to take a stand in the air. 

> That's  your  belief.  As  far  as  I'm concerned, I prefer  to
> believe  that  the  good monks and nuns who wrote  down  the  canon
> did  it out of respect for the
> Dhamma and love for us.

I have no doubt that the people who compiled the canon were quite
sincere and full of respect for what they perceived the Dharma to be. No
one is accusing them of lacking sincerity. But the people who compiled
the Sanskrit agamas also had sincerity, And the people who wrote the
Lotus Sutra had sincerity to their perspective. And the people who
compiled the Perfection of Wisdom had sincerity to their perspective. To
choose one of those perspectives as the right one, and to say that all
others are deviations from the Sad-dharma, is to settle for a very sad
dharma indeed. So all I am saying is that if one is going to be
something a little more than a hopelessly narrow-minded pro-Pali bigot
and to embrace Pure Land and Chan as legitimate developments based on
exactly the same sort of rewriting of history that we find in the
formation of the Pali canon itself, then we really have no grounds for
dismissing the sincere efforts of people in the twenty-first century to
write rewrite mythology in a way that suits their particular needs.
Everyone in the many traditions of Buddhism who have kept darma alive
have done so by letting it evolve into new manifestations. If you want
to freeze it in one particular form, you will surely succeed only in
killing it.

>    If one doesn't want to believe in rebirth, that's OK for  me.  As
> far  as I'm concerned, the problem arises when one teachs that
> Buddhism is without rebirth.

On this we are in perfect agreement. But then I have never met anyone
who tried to teach that Buddhism has no doctrine of rebirth. Have you?
(Since you insist that this conversation is about Christian Lindtner, I
susppose I should ask you where in his writings he teaches that there is
no rebirth in Buddhism. But perhaps we can forget Lindtner and expand
the conversation to include other teachers and scholars.)

> Take away rebirth and,  instead  of  a powerful religion, you will have a
> quite simplistic psychotherapy.

Well, if one subtracts the dogma of rebirth from Buddhism, one still has
a rather powerful and effective repertoire of psychotherapeutic tools,
but I would not be so quick to dismiss such contemplative exercises as
the four foundations of mindfulness and metta-bhavava as simplistic.
Being the sort of pluralist that I am, I am quite happy with the idea
that different people have different goals in life. For many people, the
four foundations of mindfulness and metta-bhavana are quite enough, and
one can benefit from both of them tremendously without any reference to
rebirth. And if one learns these techniques from Buddhists and wishes to
avoid plagiarism by acknowledging that these are Buddhist practices, I
see no harm in such people saying that they are drawing upon Buddhist
sources.

As I have said before, I practiced a Korean style of Zen for many years
and never once heard the master speak about rebirth. He did not deny it.
(I know of few people who deny it outright.) He simply never spoke about
it. Should I write to him and demand that he stop calling his temples
Buddhist temples? Please advise me in this delicate matter, for I would
hate to see anyone claim to be a Buddhist who does not meet the
standards of the new Buddhist Inquisition that has its headquarters in
northern Spain.

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