[Buddha-l] Re: Filtered Buddhism

[curt]

Richard Hayes wrote:
>
> 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.
>   

To accuse people of smugly assuming that their culture is superior to 
others is not the same as calling them racists. It is very difficult to 
find anyone anywhere who does not, consciously or unconsciously, make 
such assumptions. One of the things that creates such a psychological 
gap between Asians and Westerners is that not only do we both assume our 
own superiority, we are largely unaware of our own assumption - while 
the assumption of the "other" is obvious - and obviously silly. It is 
easy for a Westerner to see the assumption of superiority that Tibetans 
and Japanese, for example, have toward westerners (and our money 
grubbing materialism) - and it is also painfully obvious to Tibetans and 
Japanese how we assume our superiority to them (and their silly 
superstitions).

As a westerner I feel far more comfortable chastising other westerners 
for the mote in our eye, than I do mocking Asians for the speck in theirs.

- Curt