[Buddha-l] Re: Filtered Buddhism

[Richard Hayes]

On Wednesday 27 June 2007 09:08, curt wrote:

> The future of western Buddhism will almost certainly consist of
> westerners insisting, ever more loudly and obnoxiously, that Buddhism
> cease and desist from anything that challenges us or that makes us feel
> uncomfortable.

So far I have yet to encounter even one westerner insisting on anything at 
all, and I certainly have not seen anyone being either loud or obnoxious. If 
anything, I see people asking for those aspects of Buddhism that DO challenge 
them more. If anyone has been offering Buddhism Lite, it has been those who 
feel that the only aspect of Dharma that westerners are capable of grasping 
is how to put money into the Dana box. Most of the western teachers I have 
witnessed in action are very good at getting right to those things that 
challenge us and make us uncomfortable. 

> I mean, who do these foreign Buddhists think they are, 
> anyway? Maybe they should be deported along with the Mexicans.

It seems to me that you often prefer joking to serious discussion, but let me 
invite you to be serious just for a moment. Have you ever actually seen any 
Westerner who practices Buddhism make a disparaging remark about foreign 
Buddhists along the lines you suggest? I have seen people observe (rather 
accurately) that some Asian teachers are not very effective at communicating 
in English and that some Asian monks seem not to be very serious in their 
pursuit of Dharma. But such complaints hardly count as wholesale complaints 
that Buddhism itself is too difficult or that Asians as a whole are 
incompetent; rather, they seem to be expressing a desire to find people who 
can articulate the difficult aspects of Buddhism in comprehensible English 
addressed to audiences assumed to have intelligent, inquiring minds. There 
are plenty of Asian teachers who can do that; there are also many who 
apparently cannot.

In your eagerness to imply that Westerners are lazy and complacent racists, Dr 
Steinmetz, you appear to have made a slur against Western Buddhists as 
egregious as the one you falsely accuse them of making against Asians. 

As of now, you're grounded for making ungrounded remarks.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico