[Buddha-l] Vivekananda

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 09:23 -0600, Andrew Fort wrote of Swami
Vivekananda:

>  And, of course, like all of us, he spoke differently to different audiences.  Which
> leads me to agree with Richard, Curt, and Paul Simon, that "a man sees what
> he wants to see, and disregards the rest. . . " 

Quite so. And I think of Vivekananda we can also say that he took to
heart Emerson's most famous dictum: "A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds." 

Unhappily, Emerson forgot to tell us what exactly is foolish. So I have
had to do considerable work mopping up after him by telling people when
they are being foolishly consistent, consistently foolish, foolishly
inconsistent and just plain foolish. (So far, Andy, I have never caught
you coming anywhere close to being foolish, which has put a considerable
strain on our friendship.) 

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico