I noticed that there was a bump button feature and I sort of accidentally bumped this thread up. When I pressed it, I thought it might ask me if I wanted to complete the action, but it did not. It just bumped it up. I was looking at this thread, which had sunk to page four, because someone had PMed me about a "hinayana" thread on another forum and I was asking myself: do I want get entangled in all this again when I got distracted by the bump option. To answer my question to me: I really do not.Bubbabuddhist wrote:Been called lots of things in my life, if I took offense at them all I would always be mad. Hinyana isn't the most common epithet in my case--I've been called "dogmatic" by Zen folk so much I got some dogtags with Buddha stamped on them.
J
But to respond to your point: It is not that the term hinayana is offensive, though it obviously was coined to be so; it is, rather, that the word hinayana has been defined by the Mahayana (being of Mahayana coinage) in a way that grossly mischaracterizes the Theravada if applied to the Theravada, which can be an occasion for someone who takes such characterization to heart from seeing what it is that the Theravada really teaches. That is important enough to respond to when the occasion is right.