[Buddha-l] Religious violence, Buddhist violence

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Op 19-1-2010 23:55, JKirkpatrick schreef:
>   .....As a Buddhist, I am not especially drawn to Aum Shinrikyo.
> But as a professor in a secular university that has courses on
> Buddhism, I cannot and should not pass judgment on what is
> authentically Buddhist and what is not. .....
>
> Richard P. Hayes<rhayes at unm.edu>
>
>
>
> When it comes to Aum Shinrikyo, I'd etically critique its goals,
> practices and values without feeling any necessity to allude to
> its self-description as Buddhism.
Peter Whinch wrote a little book called 'The idea of a social science', 
where he argues that social sciences are typically different from 
physics etc. The idea is that you cannot understand the terms of a 
subject of a social science like buddhology without reference to what 
they mean for them and for you. Peace f.i. is not a kind of objective 
behaviour, it is something people do towards each other and understand 
as such. The same with lying, meditation, nirvāṇa, etc. So essential for 
the research in Buddhism are judgements about the hermeneutics of the 
teaching and about ethics of behaviour. If you would like to be 
impartial you would have to describe the mass murder in terms like 'they 
released some gases in the tube station and lifeforms present there 
stopped functioning', which is not a very adequate description.


-- 


Erik

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