[Buddha-l] Bourgeois Buddhism

[andy]

> > And who´ll be able to determine "real buddhism" from the  fake buddhism?
> > 
> > F
> 
> Scholars will.
> ===
> Not my first choice. Nor 2nd.
> 
> jack
> 
OK, This is either by definition (circular or tautological), or the third 
choice or  lesser.  I am seriously interested in why scholars would be such a 
non-prefered option.  

Of course, I may be biased, having recently read a volume entitled "Pruning 
the Bodhi Tree", with a notable contribution by someone named "Dan Lusthaus", 
but it seems the Critical Buddhist  movement in Japan is precisely scholars 
taking this task of deteriming real from face buddhism seriously.  

The original article in this thread refered to residents of some place self-
indentifying as Catholic, when their practice clearly indicated they were not. 
At some point, in spite of self-identificaton, it clearly does not wash.  I 
cannot think that Aum Shinrikyo, or the Church Universal and Triumphant  (the 
Claire Prophet one, not the original one) are buddhist, any more than I could 
think that Prosperity Gospel is actually Christian. So do I go wrong in taking 
a religion's dogma and applying it to branches of that religion, even if I am 
not a member of that religion? 

So I really want to know why the judgment of scholars on these questions is 
not the first choice.  
-- 
James Andy Stroble,