[Buddha-l] leaving home - culturally speaking

[Richard Hayes]

On Tuesday 11 December 2007 19:27, Richard Hayes wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 December 2007 18:06, Piya Tan wrote:
> > Some years back (early 2000s), Paul Williams (family pressure?) announced
> > he has "reverted" to Roman Catholic. Wonder what is status is now?
>
> I wonder what difference it makes.

I should add that buddha-l was founded to provide a forum for the discussion 
of Buddhism (and the moral and intellectual deficiencies of 
neo-conservatives), not the private lives of scholars of Buddhism. 

While discussing the personal beliefs of scholars of Buddhism is normally of 
little value here, Williams is arguably someone whose beliefs are worthy of 
discussing, since he has written a book and a couple of articles about why he 
chose to return to Roman Catholicism and what he found deficient in Buddhism. 
(It had nothing to do with family pressure; it had everything to do with his 
feeling that Buddhism was lacking what he was seeking. In some respects his 
views on the matter are not too different from those of Paul Griffith.)

If anyone has read Williams' book and actually knows what it says, it might be 
worth discussing. Speculating about what he might have said would be less 
interesting (though it is surely what many of the amateur psychologists on 
buddha-l will be tempted to do).

I vote for leaving this particular dead horse unbeaten.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico