XPost: alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: dd@dandrake.com   
      
   On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 15:51:30 UTC, Siwel Naph    
   wrote (quoting Orwell):   
      
   > And even beyond the grave his success would continue. According to   
   > Buddhist belief, those who have done evil in their lives will spend the   
   > next incarnation in the shape of a rat, a frog or some other low animal.   
   > U Po Kyin was a good Buddhist and intended to provide against this   
   > danger. He would devote his closing years to good works, which would pile   
   > up enough merit to outweigh the rest of his life. Probably his good works   
   > would take the form of building pagodas. Four pagodas, five, six, seven...   
      
   How interesting. This is exactly the form of argument with which kids of a   
   certain Christian faith -- you'd recognize its name in an instant if I   
   gave it -- annoyed my mother in her youth, to the extent that she retold   
   it to me years later: "If you sin, you go to Hell; but we can confess and   
   get absolved."   
      
   I am sure that any members of that well-known church who are reading this   
   will protest that this is an abominable perversion of their faith.  I   
   believe it.  (I'm guessing that the problem is something along these   
   lines: if you plan in that way, you are trying to fool and manipulate God.   
   Boy, is THAT a dumb thing to do! )  But people have said it, and it's a   
   marvelous example of how people manage to mess up the Teachings in much   
   the same ways, regardless of race, color, creed, or place of national   
   origin.   
      
      
      
      
   --   
   Dan Drake   
   dd@dandrake.com   
   http://www.dandrake.com/   
   porlockjr.blogspot.com   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)