Seems to be common in Australia, this dire need to remake Theravada from them-who-know-better.
The 80 odd page polemic glorifies the Tibetan Wizards and the Roman Catholic Church and suggests that Theravada can learn so much from them to avoid.....scandlous behavior? And demographic decline???
He also whines that women are too devoted to Buddhism and give the monks too much food and attention......
The most cringeworthy part was when he said he couldn't believe there were Evangelicals in Cambodia and blamed this on the Asian monks who were not as intellectually profound as him....I guess he didn't realize that the entirety of Theravada was, um...eradicated 50 years ago?
He says we should learn about "love" from Christian history....ya....
He also slanders many venerable monks and attempts to suggest a coup d'etat against Theravada (which will never happen) in favor of his own egalitarian vision of how things should be. Where men and womynne will be part of a...'new world order,' as the author sees things as they should be.
All in all, I found him to be punching way out of his league, as he seems to be of average intellect, nowhere near the people he scourges such as Mahasi Sayadaw.
Just another pathetic polemic from a power-hungry dude who wants to take over Buddhism for him and his clique.
I think it takes a very special person to be invited to another country, eat the food of poor people, and then tell them how to run their society and spiritual institutions.
Theravadan countries are prospering in terms of demographic fertility and keeping their percentages and dominance of religion in their nations, unlike places like Australia that basically have no religion at all and who are declining demographically and culturely in their own land.
I would guess that in 500 years Theravada will still be here, and to his disdain, more or less how it is now, whereas the tibetan wizard fad will be long dead and this polemic absolutely forgetten, whether or not it was leaked (like a sex tape) according to the auther, or if he really wanted to attempt to damage Theravada as much as he could.
Theravada is one of the oldest and most energetically followed religions today in the entire world.
The author can bemoan this fact all he wants, but it doesn't change the fact that the Buddha's word is alive and being practiced.
The Mahasi method is alive and dwelling in every single continent in the world and will continue to grow, while the author will never be capable of replicating this phenomena.
Other criticisms:
Statues not aesthetic enough:
He should see the Christ statues in Brazil!. On the left of the main north bound road
out of Rangoon is one of the strangest Buddhist mon
asteries to be seen anywhere. It looks like a
cross between St Peter’s in Rome, Lunar Park and a
LSD trip in cement. It is so bazaar and in such
hideous taste that it is actually worth driving all
the way out to see.
Statues way too aesthetic:
The Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon is
sheathed in more that sixty tons of gold and crowne
d with a umbrella encrusted with thousands of
diamonds and other precious stones. This in turn is
topped with a huge seventy six carat diamond.
Every year the lower portions of the pagoda and its
accompanying shrines are covered with twenty
eight thousand pieces of gold leaf. The effect of a
ll this is to create one of the most enchantingly
beautiful religious monuments to be seen anywhere.
Nonetheless, one cannot help thinking that the
Buddha, a man who refused even to touch gold, might
prefer being honored by having this wealth
used to help alleviate some of Burma’s appalling poverty.
Tibetan wizard manuals that teach 75 year olds to seduce 12 year old girls as superior to the words of the Buddha:
More embarrassing adulation for the "the good-asians"If further evidence is needed for the richness of the Tibetan contemplative tradition and the poverty
of its Theravadin equivalent, one only need look at
the literature produced by each.
Yes, we have seen how friendly they can get with their vajra sticks!But it is when comparing teachers that the differences between Tibetan and Therevada Buddhism
are most pronounced. The average Tibetan monk is friendly, accommodating and good humored.
This is the kind of 'chick-lit' you would expect a 12 year old to write; not someone even remotely aquanted with the most basics of logical fallacies. Theravadan monks even risk their lives to save the lives of animals.In 1966 a Taiwanese Buddhist nun named Cheng Yen witnessed a critically ill woman being
refused admission to a hospital because she was too poor to pay the bills.
All in all I would say the guy is a bitter malcontent and if he had gone to a Tibetan monastery he would come out again, empty-handed, disallusioned, and with far more than 80 pages to whine about!
