[Buddha-l] [Fwd: [skepnet] Documentaire: Jesus Camp (2006)]

[Joy Vriens]

>> For what reason wouldn't they have "the right"? I don't get you here. Why would they not have the right to even exploit them for more personal agendas? In love, war and religion, all is fair. 
    
>Certainly not! In love and war you can get away with a lot, but not with  
>everything, think of Oedipus and Mladic. In religion you need  
>recognition and respectability, so you have to watch your step. So if  
>you marry four wives because it's you're religion, it's not legal and  
>not fair in our culture and you go to jail. I'm not saying it's never  
>and nowhere fair and legal, because we both know that's not true. Legal  
>and fair are cultural concepts and depend on pragamtic and historical  
>conditions. I have no clue whatsoever about what would *universally *be  
>fair and legal. 

I was alluding to Shakespeare's quip and added religion.

>> Because as for me personally, if I am asked to particpate at a ritual, I want to know why I am doing the ritual and what I am exactly doing. And then I will perhaps want to look at what the origin of that ritual is. If I am asked to participate in offerings of red bali, then it is fair enough to evoke the fact that they replace animal sacrifices. And why would I have not the right to look into the question to whom I make them, why I, a Westerner, make them, what is the relation between those offerings, me and my practice of Buddhism.      
>If offering the red bali used to be the feast after the hunting party  
>but now is felt to be the expression of bodhicitta by all participants,  
>what would be the *real *meaning? I would say bodhicitta, but if you  
>feel differently, I guess it is so from your point of view. If you  
>disagree about the meaning you dissociate yourself from the language  
>community. 

...and risk becoming a bali myself. If Kaula and Shivaism are popular in Indian courts and therefore fashionable in society and if Buddhism is taught there or wants to have a chance of surviving, I can imagine reasons to integrate balis and make them into a symbol of bodhicitta (your example). But if this Buddhism with balis and all is then taught to a society where Kaula, shivaism and balis are unknown and one first is taught bodhicitta and then has to learn totally foreign rituals in which balis are offered with the understanding that they symbolize bodhicitta, then you say that the real meaning of balis would be bodhiciita. Fair enough, but I think it is also fair to ask what do we still need those balis for? If they can be integrated then they can also be disposed off. And wasn't Buddhism dissociating itself from the language community by giving bali a different, symbolic meaning?      

>> I am not a big fan of rituals, for me they are all forms of suggestion and mass suggestion. They may create a temporary atmosphere, feeling, that may be shared and create a certain harmony within a group and appease anguish in the individuals of that group. The motivations for celebrating rituals are various and may inlcude resentment and spite, why not? Once again, for me there is no natural link between religion, rituals and spiritual exercices. That link may be artificially established and then not respected by some, sure. Others may then consider they didn't have the right and that they did break the pact, but for me that link has never really existed.     
>I don't think there ever has been a religion or a society for that  
>matter without rituals. It's like a town without traffic signs. But  
>maybe such a thing is possible and will ever exist somewhere. 

It probably does. I don't know about quakers, but the way Richard talks about them, it seems to function as a society of friends and their rituals seem to express equality. That would be the sort of rituals I can accept. I am coming to terms, very slowly, with the probability that equality in society is an impossibility. But that doesn't mean that I will not keep that dream alive in my head.  

Joy