91f2c12c   
   XPost: talk.religion.buddhism, alt.zen, alt.philosophy.zen   
   XPost: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy   
   From: kimmerian@fastmail.fm   
      
   Hollywood Lee :   
      
   > > > his posts, he is able to demonstrate that all the years of meditation   
   > > > and Buddhist practice are of little value ...   
      
   > Sorry to be unclear.  I was suggesting that such an assessment was one   
   > Cat could assert.  True or not isn't the point as it plays to his   
   > rhetorical purposes.   
      
        Nifty insinuating from Hollywood:  he dreamed up something   
   anyone _could_ say, stuck my name onto it without quite   
   insisting I actually did, then accused me of disregarding truth   
   even though the whole thing is his invention.  Sure, he's   
   being despicable, but he's added a touch of creativity.  That's   
   gotta count for something.   
      
   > He cleverly misunderstands explanations, then points to his opponent's   
   > agitation.   
      
        Just another of Hollywood's always-unsupported accusations.   
   His unexpected burst of artistry ended, so he's back to   
   dishing out the usual.  Ah, well.  I've pointed out some of the   
   items in the scriptures (Buddhist and otherwise) separating   
   them from my correspondents' assertions about what they contain.   
   The "explanations" they make in reply alternate between   
   revising the Bible or the suttras and misrepresenting their own   
   claims.   
      
   > I am hypocritically curious why people want to continue to feed this   
   > narrative.   
      
        Not very hard to understand what's going on.  Goes back to   
   Hollywood's difficulty in seeing "why so many posters here   
   want to deny ... that a life that leads to rebirth or faring on   
   is a life to be condemned and avoided by awakening."  The   
   answer is that those who belong to the world have deeply-seated   
   objections to ideas which throw doubt on the value of life   
   here.  (Or in the Buddha's reported words, "Those delighting in   
   passion, cloaked in the mass of darkness, won't see," his   
   reason for thinking twice about teaching the dhamma.)  And many   
   of those people adhere to religions or philosophies which   
   include strongly world-rejecting themes.  They can't truthfully   
   reconcile their texts or scriptures with their beliefs, so   
   they do it the other way, adding or subtracting whatever may be   
   necessary for the story they want to hear, forcing them to   
   defend their unadmitted revisions against any hint they've been   
   getting up to tricks and to attack any references to the   
   life-denying themes they tried to suppress.  The results are on   
   display in discussions like this.   
      
   -- Catawumpus   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)