[Buddha-l] What's the use of buddha-l?

[Richard Hayes]

On Dec 27, 2009, at 2:53 PM, Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:

> So I see two  possibilities: Richard doesn't like his work for the list, 
> or there are other reasons for asking questions than just utilism.

Well, let's try to sort this one out. First, I define work as doing something I don't enjoy doing, and I have to confess I have never done a day's work in my life, especially for buddha-l. Second, I don't have a utilitarian bean in my booty. So there must be another reason for my question. 

It all started a couple of weeks ago when Dan Lusthaus wrote to Jim Peavler and me and asked why his messages were being returned as if they had been sent to a non-existent address. A quick investigation revealed that SWCP had by mistake closed down buddha-l. (I knew it would happen eventually, since I happen to know one of the employees at SWCP, and I happen to know he is a Christian, and I happen to have learned on buddha-l that Christians are intolerant, so it was obvious to me that SWCP would eventually sabotage buddha-l and then blame the Jews. But I digress.) The mistaken termination of buddha-l was remedied within a couple of hours. A bit of money changed hands, promises were made, a few marriages were arranged, a country or two were invaded, some airplanes were hijacked and whatnot. To make a long story short, done was what had to be done, and as a result buddha-l was soon back in business. 

The whole tawdry incident got Jim and me talking about what the universe would be like without buddha-l. After all, it seemed to us, the sole purpose of buddha-l in the past has been to ridicule Republicans, but since the Republicans are no longer in power and seem to have withdrawn to the thawing tundra to have tea parties and deny global warming, it doesn't seem sporting to continue ridiculing them. And one of us (I can never tell Jim and me apart, and I can never recall which one of us said what) said "Why don't we just ask whether anyone (aside from the handful of obviously demented squibbors who regularly write squibs to buddha-l) cares whether buddha-l exists?" Once the question was formulated, I couldn't resist the temptation to ask it just to see what would happen. 

So Erik is right. There was another reason for asking: good old-fashioned completely useless time-wasting curiosity.

Jim (I do remember this much) said "I will miss it when it goes, but then, have missed a lot of things when they went." That pretty much expressed my sentiments, as is so often the case when Jim says something. I might add that I hate missing things, so I'm not inclined to make things I might miss go away. What could be less Buddhist than that? Speaking of missing things, has anyone seen my mind lately? I think it may have run away with my buddha-nature to a dog kennel.

> Is Buddhism usefull?

It can be used to kill time until time kills me. That's useful enough for me.

Richard