From: Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Feb 10 1997 - 14:41:10 MST
Gregory Houston writes:
>Buddhists are particularly apt at indifference. Their religion
>requires that they overcome the "illusion" of value and meaning
>[because "life is suffering"] so that they can cease to re-incarnate.
Just as people who are familiar only with the teachings of the
Catholic Church should refrain from making generalizations about
all of Christianity, so people who are familiar only with the
teachings of Theravada Buddhism should refrain from making
generalizations about all of Buddhist dharma. The boddhisattva
ideal is an immortalist ideal, seeking permanent reincarnation
until all of existence has been made conscious and achieved the
ecstasy of enlightenment (which is, according to Mahayana teachings,
not a final space in which one "arrives", but capable of boundless
expansion and self-transformation). I happen to think the Four Vows
of Mahayana Buddhism are entirely compatible with extropian values,
but that's just my personal opinion.
Furthermore, the emotional state which Mahayana Buddhists generally
develop as their central mood can better be described as "detached
compassion" than as "indifference". Zen Buddhism is rather Apollonian
in this way, and I do like some of the Dionysiac stuff that is
mostly missing from it, but I think your criticism of the Apollonian
aspects goes a little too far.
-- Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ http://www.pobox.com/~arkuat/
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