[Buddha-l] Bourgeois Buddhism

[Christopher Fynn]

Hmm

AFAIK - Buddhist monks actually only have to keep their precepts ~ and
not one of the 250 or so of these actually enjoins them to meditate or
study Buddhist philosophy. However there is a common belief amongst
Asian Buddhists that when an ordained monk practices meditation,
virtue or whatever it is at least 1,000x as effective. By that
reckoning, if they do even 1% of the practice of the lay western
members of your temple they are  doing at least 10x more. :-)


On 8 November 2011 00:59,  <Jackhat1 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> In a message dated 11/7/2011 12:45:09 P.M. Central Standard Time,
> rhayes at unm.edu writes:
>
> I've been working my fingers to the bone over here and have not had  time
> to look at buddha-l for weeks. Having read all of September's  entries,
> it appears I haven't missed much. I do have one question, though,  for
> Jack, who wrote this:
>
>> It has been my experience, limited  though it might be, that the Western
>> Buddhists I know follow the  8-Fold Path while ethnic Buddhists I know do
>> not.
>
> Just out of  curiosity, which angas of the eightfold path do you see
> people not  following? Are you claiming they don't follow these limbs at
> all, or that  they are just not very good at them, or that they are
> totally ignorant of  what the limbs of the eightfold path are, or
> something else? I am curious  what exactly the observation you're making is.
> =====================
> At two local Thera temples, at least 2/3's of the ethnic monks do  not
> meditate or are involved in any sort of mental development outside of  formal
> meditation, for example. I could go on with examples from other local  ethnic
> sanghas.
>
> jack