[Buddha-l] Iconochasms

[Richard Hayes]

On Thursday 14 December 2006 15:39, jkirk wrote:

> Gandhi's prejudices and likes were a big surprise-I already knew he was a
> dictator with his family.

Hey! No fair giving away the answers. The whole fun of taking the quiz is to 
be taken by surprise. 

One of my colleagues surprised me recently by thrusting a copy of George 
Orwell's interview of Gandhi-ji into my hands, in which the Mahatma told 
George that the Jews in Europe should have committed mass suicide to shame 
Hitler. Good idea, Gandhi-ji! Committing suicide would have saved their lives 
for sure.

> I got the Ike & Nixon ones right, also Ben 
> Franklin, but missed out on some of the nefariousness of Jefferson.

Jefferson was a really complicated guy. Any man who sells his library to pay 
off his huge wine bill and who fathers children by a black slave as he writes 
treatises about the cultural and psychological inferiority of Negroes is 
liable to say or do almost anything. Hardly any American (except Mark Twain) 
has said more that I agree with than Jefferson, and no one who has said as 
much as I agree with has said more that I disagree with than Jefferson. I'm 
glad he loved his wine though. But for his fondness for good wine we might 
not have the Library of Congress.

> However, the question about music being a no-no wasn't so accurate because
> it's also a no-no for Buddhist monks. That question only allowed one
> answer--Quakers. (While Quaking, they could have had so much  more divine
> fun if they'd been Quaking to music.)

As you know, there were several Utopian communities started up by American 
Quakers who preferred ecstatic dancing to stoic silence. Several American 
Quaker women got rhythm,  went pentecostal, declared themselves to be the 
second coming of Christ and gathered communities of slavishly devoted 
followers. There is a whole chapter on them in Sydney Ahlstrom's Religious 
History of the American People.

If Buddhists ever discovered music, God help us all, eh?

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes