[Buddha-l] MARYSVILLE: American Buddhism facing generationalshift

[Gad Horowitz]

Perhaps the sapient Quaker knew that God's own language, Hebrew ( though now 
appropriated by the evil Zionists) names the days likewise--first, 
second...up to Shabbat.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Hayes" <rhayes at unm.edu>
To: "Buddhist discussion forum" <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2011 7:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] MARYSVILLE: American Buddhism facing 
generationalshift


> On Jul 18, 2011, at 16:08 , <djessop at nas.net> <djessop at nas.net> wrote:
>
>> Is any particular day of the week especially significant
>> to Buddhists?
>
> It is mighty tempting to be a smart Aleck and say that the only 
> significant day of the week is today, but I'll withstand the hardships 
> associated with restraint. Now that you raise the question, Deborah, I 
> realize I have no idea how ancient Indians thought about days of the week 
> or whether they even named them. I'm not even sure there was such a 
> concept as a week. There was the concept of the fortnight, the period 
> between the new moon and the full moon, and in Indian Buddhism (as in 
> Indian culture in general), the full moon day and new moon day were days 
> for doing something that passed as sacred.
>
> This display of astonishing ignorance on my part is calculated to bring 
> all manner of knowledgeable people out of their lurking mode to inform us 
> of what we could both easily learn by consulting Doctor Google. But let 
> them do the heavy lifting, I say.
>
> While they are doing the hard work, I'll mention a quaint habit that 
> Quakers have (aside from the quaint habit of butchering English grammar by 
> saying things like "What does thee want?") Quakers hated the idea of days 
> named after pagan gods and months named after Roman emperors and Latin 
> numbers, so they refused to use those names and referred to the days of 
> the week as First Day, Second Day and so on, and referred to the months as 
> First Month (which originally meant March but eventually became January, 
> to everyone's great inconvenience).
>
> Written this Second Day, the eighteenth of Seventh Month (this being the 
> third First Day of Seventh Month by latter day reckoning or the Fifth 
> Month by the old reckoning),
> Friend Richard
>
>
>
>
>
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