[Buddha-l] Bourgeois Buddhism

[Margaret Gouin]

On 4 October 2011 18:44, Stefan Detrez <stefan.detrez at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> What I want is
> decisive proof and there's nothing wrong in setting up a definition. What
> if
> a lunatic claims he's Napoleon? IS he then Napoleon?
>
>
Stefan, even in the hardest of hard sciences there is no such thing as
'decisive proof', just stronger or weaker support for propositions.

'Setting up a definition' is rather like making a proposition:
IF person A claims to be a Buddhist,
THEN we should expect behaviour B

So what kinds of behaviour should we expect to see of someone who claims to
be a Buddhist? We can never base a definition on what they believe because
we can't know what they believe.

-- 
Margaret Gouin
http://independent.academia.edu/ad3b
Author, Tibetan Rituals of Death : Buddhist funerary
practices<http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415566360/>