[Buddha-l] Access to Archives: Housekeeping

[Richard Hayes]

In addition to the lucid explanations Jim gave on how to get your password, you may be able to wait until the first of every month, at which time your password is automatically mailed to you. I am assuming everyone receives that message every month. I do. I am also assuming most of you who get it delete it. I do.

As for searching the archives, I have not yet found any way other than downloading the gzipped file that is produced each month, unzipping it into a directory on my own computer and then using a search tool on my computer (such as grep in Linux or Spotlight on a Mac) to search through all the files in that directory.

As Jim and I have begged everyone many times, PLEASE when responding to a message on buddha-l, trim away everything from the message to which you are commenting except the very passage you are commenting upon. If that is not done, then people doing searches will find not only the message they are seeking but all those messages that quote the message they are seeking. Follow the example of Dan Lusthaus, who is admirably conscientious in the practice of leaving only the passages he is actually commenting upon. 

Do not, if you can help it, follow Dan's practice of offering ridiculously distorted interpretations of the passages he has quoted. He can't help it. He reads Buddhist texts in the original languages, and he is simply following the practices used by the authors of Buddhist texts. The Buddhists do not have a methodology on the methodology. The technique is pretty much the same everywhere. Quote, distort, refute the distortion. While that hermeneutical strategy is universal, it is not, as Erik will probably agree, commendable.

Richard Hayes