dmb says: Yea, that's especially true for American trust-funders and other wealthy Western Buddhists. But I think the middle way also means something else. It is in the middle between absolutism and nihilism, between eternal truths and no truths. The MOQ's distinction between DQ and sq reflects this middle way. Truth is intellectual and provisional and practical, not eternal or divine. Truth depends on context and perspective and it evolves but that doesn't mean the truth is so fleeting that we are powerless to make any claims. That's my favorite version of the middle way, anyway. And "desire" in the context of Buddhism goes beyond the physical appetites. The tougher task is to deal with the desires of the ego, especially for the philosophically inclined. And it seems to me that the Western religions' emphasis on "sin" is almost entirely about the body's desires and so strikes me as relatively undeveloped. It can open the heart and quell the beast in you. It can make a person human, if you will, but enlightenment isn't really on the table at your local church.
[Krimel] I am ok with most of this but if you think that purse strings only matter to western high rollers, you really ought to rethink that. Buddhism's emphasis on reducing expectations to a vanishing point is an emperor's wet dream. If you think Constantine turned to Christianity to help subdue the empire, imagine to joy of millennia of Indian and Chinese emperors dealing with populations who think passivity and self denial are the high road to heaven. I really can't take you seriously at all when it comes to western religion. You have yet to show any substantial difference between "enlightenment" and oneness with the living God. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
