[Buddha-l] Buddha's Meditation

[Dan Lusthaus]

Will someone distribute de-confusion-de-conflation pills to the fevered 
throng here? That Buddhists should think Buddhism is best is normal, not 
triumphalism. Please use words properly.

An all too common strategy -- labeled viparyasa (literally -- turning 
something upside down) by Buddhism -- is to misidentify something by 
something else, and then condemn it for being that. One would think that 
Buddhists triumphally drove muslims from the Kush, central asia and India, 
rather than the other way around -- and wrote long epics and reports of how 
they did it. Oh, wait... that too was by muslims.

Let's blame the victims.

The eminent but thoroughly confused Dr. Hayes needs to explain why Buddhists 
include in the list of triyanas, pratyekabuddhas, viz. people who find 
enlightenment without exposure to or interaction with Buddhism. Sravakas, 
Pratyekabuddhas and Bodhisattvas. If I had a nickel for everytime that triad 
is mentioned in a Buddhist text I could retire today. No Buddhist should be 
proud of being  Buddhist instead of being a relativist? But relativists 
should feel superior to Buddhists by making a virtue of being noncommital. 
Very healthy.

That one almost inevitable byproduct of such viparyasa is to condone actual 
violence in the name of condemning violence is also evident.

We can sleep better tonight knowing that redwoods, rhinoceroses
< http://tinyurl.com/3retpjs >, Buddhists, and all other living things can 
be exterminated since planets and stars too don't last forever. What silly, 
fallacious reasoning. And how immoral.

Maybe it is time to let this group die its death. There's been precious 
little Buddhism here for many years.

Dan