[Buddha-l] Questions

[Richard Hayes]

On Wed, 2008-06-25 at 17:23 -0600, Richard Hayes wrote:

> By far the largest segment of today's Quaker population are the
> evangelical Quakers. They are firmly Bible-based, conservative to the
> point of being nearly fundamentalist.

During the past couple of years I have been reading the journals and
letters of George Fox, Isaac Penington, John Woolman, William Penn and
other early Quakers. It has become apparent to me that there is hardly a
paragraph in these writers that does not contain numerous quotations
from the Bible. Not having been brought up in a religious household, I
am not very familiar with the Bible. 

Seeing that it's difficult to understand early Quakers without knowing
the Biblical roots of their conviction (and without knowing more about
their rivals, such as the Puritans), I decided to start reading the
Bible, just to see what is there. I have been pursuing two strategies.
First, I decided to start at the beginning and just read it straight
through. (I've made it through the first four books of the Torah so
far.) Second, I decided to follow a lectionary of the sort that
traditional Quakers used, which involves reading two psalms, one passage
from what Christians call the Old Testament, one passage from a New
Testament epistle and one passage from the gospels each day.

I must say that I have yet to find more than two or three sentences that
inspire me in any way at all. Most of what I have read so far has
horrified me. Although I have not yet read the last book of the Torah, I
feel prepared to say that this is the most dismal body of religious
literature ever composed. The psalms I have seen so far are not much
better. The epistles of Paul that I have seen so far are mostly about a
guy who has an obsession with whether or not men need to lose their
foreskin. So I am inclined to agree with Curt's claim that one is
probably wise for a Buddhist to cut ties with the entire Abrahamic
tradition. On a personal level, I'm glad it was not the religion of my
childhood, so I don't have to find a way to reconcile it with what I
have undertaken as an adult, and I have compassion for those who do have
to find a way. At the same time, I find it fascinating to get a better
glimpse into the mainstream culture I was born into, and I am getting a
lot more insight into why I have always felt like a complete alien in
North American society. 

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico