[Buddha-l] Selectivity

[Christopher Fynn]

Richard Hayes wrote:

.... A theme that quickly emerges is that
> just about everyone who follows any tradition of any kind ends up doing quite 
> a bit of selection of which sources to follow, which teachings from those 
> sources to emphasize, which ones to take literally, and which to explain away 
> by amateurish psycho-sociology.

Its been said that one can 'prove' almost anything by selectively quoting
the Bible. Since the Pali Canon is many times larger than the Bible - and the
Chinese and Tibetan collections several times larger than that - Buddhists
certainly have plenty to select from. Some traditions say Buddha taught 64,000 
different ways...

[& Buddhists probably need to reincarnate just to have enough time to get 
through all these Dharma teachings.]

I suspect some of the 'selectivity' is simply due to fact that most of us are
only familiar with a few parts of this mass of literature.

- Chris