[Buddha-l] Re: Meditating Buddha

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 16:50 +0100, Benito Carral wrote:

> If you bother  to  read the sentence that I wrote and you have quoted,
> you  will  find  that the delusion I'm talking about   consists  in
> "mistaking"  the  Buddha  of  the
> tradition for something else

Yes, I did read the sentence, and I believe I even understood it. And I
still think it is a very foolish and naive thing to say. First of all,
there is not necessarily any mistake involved at all. Sometimes people
deliberately reinvent the Buddha, because they wish to have a figure to
whom they can relate more comfortably. Every generation of Buddhist has
done this to some extent. Reinventing the Buddha has been done countless
thousands of times. So one cannot speak of THE tradition with any
accuracy at all. There are many traditions, not all of which agree with
one another. And there will be more. And why should there not be more?

>    I  have not said what people should or shouldn't do.

Please get in touch with your own mind, Benito. Unless you are
suggesting that delusion is something that people should do, whenever
you call someone deluded you are saying by implication that they are
thinking something they should not think.

> > So far you have not demonstrated anything to me [...]
> 
>    That was not my agenda.

In that case, you have succeeded. You were trying not to convince me,
and you did not convince me.

So tell me, what WERE you trying to do? Just killing time by imagining
that there are deluded people who think they are Buddhists but are
(according to your indefensible standards) not really Buddhist at all?
Clarify your agenda, and we can take the discussion from there.

-- 
Richard