[Buddha-l] Enlightenment as dogma

[JKirkpatrick]

Hi I hope that a reply from me is worth your time.

If I may I want to post what I said before:
"If I may, I would like to add that I probably believe that if
the truth of a teaching cannot be communicated to and understood
by anyone who has not engaged in the same practices as yourself,
then that may be somewhat dubious. I think a more interesting
question is whether outside agencies would have to *agree*,
qualified with the adept's testimony, in order for it to be a
rigorously valid belief. Personally, I would understand the
Buddhist insistence on the conventional not refuting the
ultimate, in that sort of vein."
To me this *does* seem like critical theory. As far as I know the
Frankfurt school's critical theory is about being able to measure
society while still being engaged with it, which is at least not
obviously the same as what you mean by 'critical theory'. If I
can quote from Geuss's useful book The Idea of a Critical Theory
>>>>

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"...to be a rigorously valid belief."  
Beliefs are relative, there is no such thing as a 'rigorously (or
universally, or anything else) valid' belief because rigor, like
belief, is always more or less or 'both and'--- just like
generalisations.

Joanna