[Buddha-l] Re: Bachelor bashing

[Richard Hayes]

On Tuesday 11 December 2007 22:18, curt wrote:

> There is no "bashing" involved here. 

Oh, come now. Everything you write is a bash of something or other. It's the 
only mode you know.

> Batchelor himself characterizes 
> what he is now up to as a reversion, in his advanced years, to an
> ideology that he is more comfortable with because it reminds him of his
> childhood.

There is an important distinction to be made between reverting to what made 
one comfortable as a child, and simply adding what made one comfortable as a 
child on to what one finds meaningful as an adult. In Bachelor's case he is 
adding riches to riches, not abandoning one thing as impoverished while 
praising the riches of another. As I read him (and interpret what I have 
heard him say on many occasions), he is trying to show that one can be a 
Buddhist without having to give up the heritage one inherited as a youth. It 
would be hard to argue with such a mild claim as that.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes