[Buddha-l] NYTimes.com: Let Us Pray for Wealth

[Richard Hayes]

On Tuesday 06 November 2007 17:53, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> Fortunate for you that you weren't working in the World Trade Center on
> 9/11 some years ago -- or you would find nothing fictitious in this. Or
> hanging out in Bali discoteques. Or greeting Mrs. Bhutto on the day she
> returned to Pakistan. Or send your kids to school on Israeli buses. Or make
> documentaries in Holland.

I count myself equally fortunate that I am not living in areas being bombed by 
Americans, or under consideration for future bombing (especially since nobody 
but Kucinich and Richardson seems willing to take nuclear bombs off the 
table). Luckily, I also managed to avoid being in Vietnam when Americans were 
dropping napalm and agent orange there. And I was lucky not to be living in 
Africa when Europeans were buying slaves. And I was lucky not to be a Bon 
practitioner when Buddhists in Tibet were putting out their eyes for reading 
mendacious texts. And I was lucky not to be a Cheyenne when Kearney rounded 
them up on the plains of Colorado and shot every man, woman and child. I was 
lucky not to be a Crow when the Americans deliberately killed off as many 
bison as possible to deprive them of food and break their will. I am lucky 
not to be either an Israeli or a Palestinian. I was lucky not to be 
imprisoned in Siberia by the Soviet authorities, or rounded up by the 
Gestapo, or a Protestant or Jew or Muslim in Queen Isabella's Spain, or a 
Quaker or Unitarian in colonial Boston when members of those religions were 
whipped to death in the public square. My luck ran out the minute I was born 
a human being. I must have been a mighty evil butterfly in a previous life to 
deserve such a fate, eh?

No, Dan, I have never denied that human beings are capable or great cruelty 
and irrationality and hatred and fear. What I deny is that there is any 
particular religion that promotes those human weaknesses more or less than 
any other. All religions condemn such behavior. All people find ways of 
ignoring what religions teach them while pretending to be pious followers of 
the very religions they betray.

> Interesting that you chose to ignore everything else I wrote.

There was nothing there requiring comment or answer. I figured you needed a 
good rant to get all that venom out of your system before it did you some 
harm.

> If you did the first part of your homework well, you will have traced the
> outline of the green areas on most of the above maps. Coincidence? Fantasy?
> Prejudice? You decide.

Coincidence mostly. That you try to make more of it than that? Prejudice, 
narrow-mindedness, irrationality and hatred, mainly. 

Interesting that people, given a choice between being part of the solution or 
part of the problem, almost always opt for the latter. If that weren't true, 
we wouldn't have needed a Buddha to come along and offer advice that nearly 
everyone would ignore.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes