[Buddha-l] Vajrayana on buddha in the Buddha

[Alberto Todeschini]

Katherine Masis, quoting Quli, wrote:

 >Natalie Quli seems to have been describing Buddha-L on page 11 of her 
recently-discussed article:?
?
"?the extolling of reason and rationality; a rejection of ritual, 
?superstition? and cosmology; ? the tendency to define Buddhism as a 
philosophy rather than a religion; ? and rejection of ?spirit? or ?folk? 
religion as mere cultural accretions to be separated from the rational 
core of Buddhism."<

I haven't read the article, but in isolation I wonder how much of this 
quote is true nowadays, especially if you refer it to Buddha-(Hel)l. I 
like to put it more in terms of preference. There are numerous scholars 
of Buddhism, as well as interested non-professionals, who are attracted 
to the philosophical aspects of this or that Buddhist school. I'm one of 
them. I also know perfectly well that there's a lot more to Buddhism 
than this, and so do my colleagues. Simply, I don't write about some of 
the other aspects that Quli mentions because I'm either not interested 
enough or competent to do so. But I know they are there, and I don't 
reject them.

To conclude, I'm not sure that the quote above is true nowadays, though 
as I said, I haven't read Quli's article so I have no idea about what 
time-frame she is referring to. In particular, I haven't seen any of 
that rejection here on Buddha-l. Failure to mention or being interested 
in some aspects of Buddhism doesn't mean rejecting them, though I 
understand that it could give such impression.

Best,

Alberto Todeschini