[Buddha-l] Oops--Article is from NY Times

[Richard Hayes]

On Aug 28, 2010, at 1:42, "Dan Lusthaus" <vasubandhu at earthlink.net> wrote:

> 
> Imaginary etymologies is a poor way to do comparative religious thought. 

It's always a good idea to state the obvious, but it's not a bad idea to make one's platitudes relevant. Dan's observation utterly fails on that count, since no one in this discussion has used any etymologies to make a point, let alone any imagined ones. 

The point I was trying to make was just the one that Dan made (after burying us all in mounds of pointless data):

> To think that Judaism and 
> Buddhism share a Christian sense of original sin would be a sin.

I am utterly ignorant of Judaism, aside from knowing that Jews and Christians tend to be feverishly obsessed with seeing themselves as importantly different from each other. From where I sit, the differences are trivial. But my point is that when translating Sanskrit terms into English, which has been contaminated with all manner of Christian presuppositions, caution should be exercised, lest an impression be created that Buddhism, Jainism and "Hinduism" trade in exactly the same wares as modern Christianity. 

Richard