[Buddha-l] "Buddhist propaganda"

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Wed, 2010-01-20 at 12:32 -0500, Curt Steinmetz wrote:

> I'm wondering how many people can tell the difference between the 
> following two statements.
> 
> 1. Westerners have consistently misunderstood and misrepresented Buddhism.
> 
> 2. A sinister cabal of Buddhist monastic intellectuals and their 
> brainwashed western academic stooges have engaged in a systematic 
> propaganda campaign to defraud the general public by hiding the Dark 
> Side of Buddhism from the world.

Well, both are false. The second one is more wordy than the first. In
general, I think if one is going to say something false, it is better to
be concise, so I prefer the first statement to the second.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu>
University of New Mexico