[Buddha-l] Re: Article of possible interest

[Joy Vriens]

Margaret wrote,

>....so can we just agree that a lot of Buddhists in a lot of traditions 
>believe something similar about karma? A lot of us don't agree. That's 
>good, because maybe over time we'll be able to overcome the rather 
>simplistic attitude towards karma that has built up over time in cultures 
>with a long tradition of Buddhism. 

A wise decision. But being an active-prone (working on his hyper(re)activity though) Western male, my fingers itch when I read the way the student formulated the question.

"STUDENT: Some of my students are not necessarily Buddhist and they think the idea of accumulating merit is very strange. They ask me, "Why should the acts of making offerings, doing circumambulations, and so on create anything at all?" I don't feel that I answer them well. They also say, "It is it even stranger to think that, having done these things, you can give the merit away." Even though I personally feel this is a funny question, I would like it if you would explain in detail how it works, in a way that I can explain to my students."

The "Even though I personally feel this is a funny question" makes me sigh, because I feel the student, who apparently is a teacher himself, is denying his own doubts and feels he has to add he thinks it is a funny question, although he himself didn't seem to be able to come up with a satisfying answer. I fear he will merely use the Rinpoche's authority to still his students' (and probably his own) doubts. The Western mentality is not taken sufficiently in account in the teaching, which can thus become a source of future misunderstanding and frustration.

Well, I better go back to practising patience...

Joy 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.swcp.com/mailman/private/buddha-l/attachments/20070522/1f963236/attachment.html