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As you know, this is the Afghan man who converted to Christianity some years ago and is now under trial for his life. Even "moderate" clerics in Afghanistan, ones who opposed the Taliban, are calling for the death penalty by beheading, hanging or - if necessary - by public dismemberment. As...

Hi Vajra. Thanks for bringing in the Sammaditthi, which I agree is very relevant here. I’ll throw out my own nearly random thoughts: - Although in a sense one section builds on the last, the structure of the sutta is more a series of overlapping conceptual frameworks designed to point to the...

Your amplifications/correctives/repositionings/Zen babblings are humbly received. Nothing to do now but bark like dogs & whistle the Marseillaise. with metta

- Very good & helpful summary. Many stepping off points on this, and I’ve considered several kinds of responses, but I’ve hesitated until now because I feel I’ve already yakked up my POV sufficiently enough on these threads. But I guess I can’t resist throwing in 2 or 3 more cents. - There are...

Hi RD. I appreciate your understanding, and wouldn't take issue with its expression. But it may be that you're reading something into my "creaky hinge" metaphor that I didn't intend. The metaphor may strike you as a little cheeky, but in no way is it pointing to a "problem" in the dhamma. It's...

- No, I think I should apologize for helping to expand your initial concern into full-blown darkness! (But thanks to Samabudhi for bringing back the light.) - Devils, celestial saviours & coming redeemers are out of my league, but I respect all wholesome verbal strategies. Your teachers may be...

I guess it's fair to say that attachment/non-attachment, like non-self/self, is one of the creaky hinges of Buddhism (roughly parallel, if you permit me, to the eros/agape, in the world/not of the world hinges of Christianity). In both cases, I think it's about the hinges, not about the door, or...

I guess on one level it’s simply an institutional problem. Every tradition needs, specialists, a sort of professional class to preserve it and to do the heavy lifting, similar to the committed leaders of any community. At the same time, there’s a tension between the simple institutional role...

After you abandon sex, who will you find to abandon your abandonment? Who will renounce your renunciation? Will you contract out of shop? Would this be like drawing a picture of Mohammed? Have you never heard the zen saying, When you meet a Buddha in the road, paint him in pastels...

Thanks, Wil. I'd forgotten that rainbow connection. But now I also remember the Rainbow Coalition of Jesse Jackson, which as, you're saying here, including the whole shooting match.

Not bad. Amazing how many different ways there are to summarize the crazy facts of life.

This is only my personal take, claiming no other sanction, but I've always felt that the view often expressed that the difference between the lesser & greater vehicles is that between the selfish path of the arahant and the compassionate path of the bodhisattva perhaps dislocates us a little...

I'd agree that Alan Watts is more comparable to an Isaac Asimov than to a Herman Hesse. He was a gifted writer and clear explicator of the traditions on a conceptual level. What was lacking, I think, was not necessarially depth of understanding but too little emphasis on actual practice. But...

Don't know what a colorbar has to do with gayness or queerness or the-preference-for-people-with-the-same-equipment-ness unless you're making the age-old connection to interior decoraters! But maybe the best takes on sex & gender in Buddhism are found in the Lotus Sutra in the Devadatta (ahem)...

Hi Luna. Looks entertaining in a sort of Tom Wolfe/Tom Robbins style. On the other hand: "a devout Buddhist and the son of a Thai bar girl and a long-gone Vietnam War G.I. hell-bent on wreaking revenge" is a an interesting concept. Could this be crazy wisdom?

In Ch'an/Zen too, as you know, there was much traffic about slow versus quick. Interesting how many ways there are to slice the dichotomy, while remaining essentially false however you slice it. This is my take as well. To me maybe the most important (if still false) dichotomy is between...

Some interesting conversation going on here. Thank you. On the self-help/liberation question, I don't know that the divide is fundamentally any different than it's ever been; from the Pali Canon on, as you know, Buddhism has always been about two tracks, and the goal of liberation has been...

- Some very good points. I won't take issue so much as offer supplements. - When I talked about religion specializing in the irrational I was only trying to state the obvious - which is my specialty, blowhard that I am. Religion polices the irrational on the everyday level of superstition and...

This documentary hasn't been shown in my neck of the words but from the Web site descriptions & the reviews I've read here, it sounds like he's speaking out of alarm and frustration as much as anything. As a scientist & rationalist, he naturally distrusts the irrational and is quite...

Why, that's very metta of you. And it's nice to see you citing good old Alan Watts. I hope I'm wrong, but I have the impression that the Dharma, Western Division, is becoming just a little more solemn than it needs to be. We may know too much now about the forms & ceremonies. Ah, for the days of...