[Buddha-l] (the recycling of) Western Buddhists

[Joy Vriens]

John,

>So a possible solution that we could entertain under more rigorous scientific conditions and possibly make into an AAR article: second-generation Buddhists become anti-Buddhists precisely because we hail from the bardo those relatives and loved ones whom we became Buddhist to tick off in the first place, so it's our own karma coming back to crow. The solution is to be nice to these kids, don't make them do all of their homework for example, so that they will later hail us from the bardo and we can try again. 

Like your atheist son (:-)) I wouldn't draw the bardo into it if we can keep it so a simple action-reaction. If you define yourself as something, then that spot is taken and another person can't take it. The other person can only come up with a different self definition. Take two people who define themselves as Buddhists, you can bet they will find ways to define themselves as a different Buddhist than the other one, and very likely a better one. Even the ways they achieve calm and peace or to be calm and peaceful will be different. The ways of self spin are limitless. What I learn from that is to not take my self definition too seriously, to never use it as a confrontational argument and to accept others (including myself, because the way I see myself doesn't have much to do with myself, I am another too) as different. When my kids try to take an opposite stand (and they do so simply for the sake of it, no bardo business there), then I tend to not take their stand too serio!
 usly, like I do with my own stand. A stand is a stand. Stands may have the tendancy to look for a confrontation (to stop when stopped by another stand), but I don't need to identify with them or to give them more credit than simply being a stand.  

Apart from that, my kids have to go to bed when it's time and have to do their homework. My or their self definition doesn't come into that.  

Joy