[Buddha-l] Back to the core values?

[Vicente Gonzalez]

Bob Zeuschner wrote:

> This seems to raise the question: could the Buddha have been wrong or
> mistaken in any statement he made, or mistaken in his understanding of 
> anything?

it is not important at all. The historical side is not fully relevant
for religious goals. Inexactitude can works perfectly. We can read
the McRae book about the nonexistence of the Zen Sixth Patriarch.
There is little doubt it was an invention, and at same time, we can
check the amount of people awakened in the Zen History using the
Platform Sutra. 

So another point can be knowing when historical rectifications becomes
an important thing to update religious meanings. In this sense,
knowing a more pragmatic Buddha in historical terms can be relevant
for scientific purposes but maybe it's not useful to update meanings,
because those concerns about new meanings for the society can be
mistaken. 

Today some people talks about a rational approach to Buddhism for
Westerners by suppressing things like rebirth or kamma. However, we
can go to any book store to check the tons of books devoted to the 
more unsuspected and irrational things, and people loves it.
Also, note we have Science saying what we call "my mind" is something
existing around us. We have quantic phenomena inside our neurones
(Penrose and others). We check how the OBE are not more a simple
hallucination against the reason but another stuff for Neurology 
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/127/2/243 

So in this point of uncertainties and weak paradigms, the worries
about kamma and rebirth as  central points to update meanings are
not very right. Precisely, when they try to interpret our historical
moment then we check they are living in a old battle between
positivism and irrational world. Meanwhile, this world is walking
to surpass those solid borders. In fact, that anguish for more
rationality can leave Buddhism a little out of game.

Where is the real modernity of these approaches?


best regards,