Viscid wrote:tiltbillings wrote:Viscid wrote:Love this book.
It really shouldn't offend you. If it does, then it's just the pride you have for a flawed institution which is being hurt.
Very smelly bovine coproforms. It is a badly done book, badly reasoned, and poorly balanced.
Regardless of its poor reasoning and balance, it was due. Even if to incite this discussion, to make people question their imagined stainless image of the Theravada, it was due.
My point is that it says nothing surprising, not that I disagree that there are clearly, and unsurprisingly, many problems (most of which seem to have been around since the time of the Buddha, judging from the Vinaya and subsequent history).
You seem to be saying that it's intended for naive people with no contact with the real world.
Viscid wrote:
It is a book which seems to have incited some controvercy, and is worth respecting in that regard. If the accusations and concerns expressed were either baseless or already well-documented, this book wouldn't have made a blip. But it seems to have!
Where do you see it making a blip?
It's certainly a serious problem that some approach Buddhism with the idea that everyone and everything about Buddhist organisations is perfect. I've seen this lead to dramatic losses of faith (in people I know off-line and in some here). As Tilt alludes to.
The converse problem I see is obsessing about problems (real or imagined) to the extent of avoiding real-life Sangha because they are "not perfect", and the idea that westerners are practising so much better than anyone in these corrupt Asian institutions.
Mike