[Buddha-l] Batchelor

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard wrote:
> The kind of suspicion Hume had of the motivations of the clergy, who are 
> depicted repeatedly as frightening their parishioners for no better reason 
> than to scare money out of them, sound remarkably like the things one 
> hears the Buddha saying about the brahmans of his day. Similar things 
> could, I am inclined to think, be said about Buddhist teachers in our own 
> age.

Old Zen story:

Hakuin, during his morning talk to the monks, explained that there is no 
heaven, no hell. Later in town, a samurai approached Hakuin and asked about 
Heaven and Hell. Hakuin assured him they were real.

The monks, overhearing the conversation with the samurai, were perplexed, 
and subsequently questioned Hakuin: "In the morning you told us there was no 
Heaven and Hell. Yet you tell him that they are real. Why?"

Hakuin replied: "If I told him there was no Heaven and Hell, where would the 
alms come from?"

Postscript: Anyone familiar with Hakuin's life and writings will know that 
fire-and-brimstone Buddhism deeply impressed itself upon him since he was a 
small child and his mother brought him to Temple where he heard a 
fire-and-brimstone speech that excited his imagination for many years to 
come -- it was his original koan; andas an adult he elicits the terror of 
hell-fire against opponents and others deserving disapproval on numerous 
occasions.

Dan