[Buddha-l] Western Buddhism

[Richard Hayes]

On Fri, 2007-11-16 at 09:29 +0000, David Webster wrote:

> It seems as though the generation of scholars that I was taught by at Uni -
> or came across at conferences / writing (now, indeed, in their 50s) seemed
> to be mostly practicing Buddhist. 
> 
> Many of my generation (not quite yet 40...) who study Buddhism [here in the
> UK at least] seem to be clearly self-defined as non-Buddhist..
> 
> What's that all about then?

That's about what I would expect. The generation who taught you had
fallen in love with Buddhism. Your generation realized that Bob Dylan
was speaking the truth when he said "You can't be wise and in love at
the same time." I expect your generation to produce far better
scholarship on Buddhism than mine has done; we were all so enamoured of
our object of study that we could not see it at all clearly.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico