Raising children in the Buddhist tradition
Joshua Wright
before and after her birth however, we started having conversations about
what and how we would teach religion to our child.
My wife was raised as a Christian, attending an Episcopal church. She would
like to have our daughter baptized in the Episcopal church.
The Episcopal baptism ceremony is beautiful, and the teachings of the
Episcopal church are all well-meant, but I have very difficult time agreeing
to the Episcopal Bishop to raise my child to thank Christ for his sacrifice,
and to believe in God.
I desire to teach our daughter to believe in the Four Noble Truths, and to
practice the Ten-Fold Path. When asked however, I am hard pressed to
explain _how_ I am going to teach these values to my child.
Can any other parents offer any wisdom and experience on how they have
raised their children in the Buddhist tradition? Also, how do couples cope
when raising their children with two different religious backgrounds?
My sincere thanks. Namaste.
-Josh
jwri...@home.com
Jonathan
Joshua Wright <jwri...@home.com> wrote
Joshua - ('Ten-Fold Path' ? 'Namaste' ? Is this a wind-up ?) Why do you want
to brainwash the poor little sod at all ? The Buddha said that the truth
that he taught couldn't be 'seen' by most people and Jesus said pretty much
the same thing. Why belabour a child with it ? Can't she just gravitate
towards religion naturally if she's that way inclined at a later age (like
about 18 years plus later) ? Is she going to be taught meditation - Right
Mindfulness ?, Right Concentration ?, Right Livelihood, Right
Speech/Gurgling ? What's the point ? Which parts of the Eightfold Path is
she going to follow ?
Jonathan
Tenzin Choedrak
>>In reply to what Joshua Wright wrote in message ...
My own view is that you shouldn't confuse the child. Through what I have
seen, when children are raised with more than one religion or left to decide
"later on," they generally just fall out and not really religious with
either one. It depends though, everyone is different (so this
generalization might or might not be useful...)
My suggestion is to discuss this more fully with your wife and see what can
be done. There are certain Buddhist organizations which have children's
programs and such. There are certainly Buddhist holidays, why not start
celebrating them in your own home. As a young baby you cannot teach your
child the four noble truths, but having statues around or images, letting
your daughter know the Buddha and Bodhisattvas as good people would be a
start. Teaching her some mantras would be a good start, that the Buddha
was so compassionate that he left his luxurious life as a prince to help
others, and that the Buddha said to be kind to others. Once she gets a
older than of course read her stories (there are some Buddhist children
stories published today, some are even for free) and stuff like that. Take
her to a temple regularly and let her be familiar with Buddhism. Even if
she is just sitting and relaxing there, or just lites some incense.
Only once she matures can you introduce her to sutras and that type of
material. A Christian parent generally doesn't give their child the gospels
to read at 6 or 7 yrs. old...:>)
Most importantly, Buddhism has to seem like it is apart of her life, that is
around her. That is the best way she will learn such values.
regards...
Theo von Waldow
the "relegion" then that can agree with each other. But she might fell
smothered by the moral pressure. What do I know, I'm nineteen.
Joshua Wright <jwri...@home.com> wrote in message
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Matthew Martin
Where did the extra two folds come from? I guess the Buddha is getting a
little chubby...
If you are short on reading time two words: Jakata Tales. In the
meanwhile here are my experiences.
I'm the proud father of a 4 year old- I take him to church, which
happens to be the only organized Buddhist organization in driving distance,
not exactly the sect I would have first chosen, but we Americans make do
with what we can get. Fortunately, most of the sermon is in English, a big
advantage over some other Buddhist congregations that only welcome like
speaking immigrants and linguists specializing in SE Asian langauges.
Generally he figits through the whole sermon, reminds me of my child hood of
going to church. On the drive home I work on simplifying Buddhism into
something that a 4 year old can follow. "Who is the Buddha? An enlightened
guy. What an enlightened guy? Some one happy with no desires. etc." My
kid suffers this the same way he suffers through being taught to count, but
he is proud that he knows the answers at the end.
If a child doesn't learn the jargon of Buddhism and doens't know how
what it means, when he grows up we won't be able to tell the difference
between a deep religion like Buddhism and the Jonestown Suicide Cult. After
all, how many 18 year olds do you know that can name the five major
religions of the world let alone, explain why Buddhism might have a worthly
goal or means to achieve it?
If you can get a grip on what Buddhist morality is, teach that to him.
We are surrounded by opportunities to point out instances of compasion and
the lack there of. If we can't show by our own example to a child to show
compasion towards animals, insects and everyone else, how can we expect him
to respond without cynicism to isolated commandments!
If there are any authors out there, it sure would be nice if some one
would write some more books about buddhism for children that go beyond the
Jakata Tales and tales of the more spectacular parts of the Buddhas life.
Matthew Martin
Joshua Wright <jwri...@home.com> wrote in message
news:yCQW6.32089$d26.2...@news1.wwck1.ri.home.com...
Joshua Wright
little to the Buddha's teachings. :)
I wanted to thank everyone who replied. Each post contained thoughtfulness
and open-hearted advice, which I certainly appreciate.
Again, my thanks.
-Josh
Andreas Mikkelborg
news:yCQW6.32089$d26.2...@news1.wwck1.ri.home.com...
I think you should tell your wife that babtising your child doesn't give
your child much of a say in the matter, and it is after all your daughter's
choice to make.
Why not raise in the same way that you and your wife have to relate to each
other seeing that you have diffrent religions, and eventually let your child
choose, or not-choose.
Making her choose (i think) would just make her confused.
--
---------------------------------------------
The great tragedies of history occur not when right confronts wrong,
but when two rights confront each other.
---------------------------------------------
ICQ/UIN: 8734893
MSN: buzz...@hotmail.com
email: and...@mikk.com
Viranod
daughters about Buddhism here in Thailand.
Whenever possible, I ask them to pay respect to Buddha statue for half
a minute or so in the morning, and offer flowers to the statue once a
week. They seem to enjoy it. I think this should pave way for learning
meditation in the future.
I try to teach them about compassion as much as possible. I think the
4 noble truth is a bit too heavy for them now, but with compassion
they can use with interactions with other kids and when playing with
pets, etc.
Regards
Viranod
"Joshua Wright" <jwri...@home.com> wrote in message news:<nUbX6.34279$d26.2...@news1.wwck1.ri.home.com>...
Daryl
It's not a question of brainwashing or not, it's a matter of whose
brainwashing it is. Left to naturally gravitate somewhere a child
will probably go narcissist/consumer/patriot, which is the default
religion if you aren't explicitly provided with another one (okay,
maybe not everytime, but 9 out of 10 at least I'd guess).
> Is she going to be taught meditation - Right
> Mindfulness ?, Right Concentration ?, Right Livelihood, Right
> Speech/Gurgling ? What's the point ? Which parts of the Eightfold Path is
> she going to follow ?
How much does it take to at least have more than one worldview to
draw upon in one's life?
--
Daryl
Daryl
Hi Josh. Firstly, here's a link for you. It's a bibliography of
Buddhist children's literature.
http://pobox.upenn.edu/~davidtoc/books.html
I was raised Anglican and found Buddhism in my teens. I don't think
that it's anything to worry about, whether you baptise or not and so
on. I've little data to go on but it seems to me that both Buddhism
and Episcopal Christianity have enough in common at the childhood
level that you could safely do both. There is Christmas and the
Jataka tales. There is the bodhisattva vow and there is Christ
dying for all our sins (to save us all). I think that a young mind
would get the common message of compassion and joy and have no
conflicts about it. It seems to me that the more important thing
for you to settle would be mutual respect and non-competitiveness
between you and your wife. Neither of you should EVER try to
tell your child that the other's religion is wrong, IMO.
Perhaps you can honestly promise to raise your child to believe in
God merely by resolving to not get in the way of your wife doing
so. If you truly accept your wife's right to her beliefs, which
she will teach to your child, then that should not be a problem
IMHO. I wouldn't be surprised if a Bishop agreed that that would
be enough, especially since your only other offer would be worse! :)
--
Daryl
P.S. It's too early for me to tell if my 10 year old's limited
and mostly casual exposure to both church and temple is having
any "effects". I'm just glad that he enjoys both and I would
prefer that it at least remain that way, rather than burning him
out with expectations.
Jonathan
Daryl <gautam...@ajiva.com> wrote
> "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net> wrote
Daryl - (I ought to add that I'm not a Buddhist). I would say 'left to
"naturally" gravitate somewhere' a child will gravitate towards whatever is
appropriate to the stage it has reached (over lifetimes). You haven't said
this or anything like it but to me - many religious people represent the
'collective' human situation like this - that we will all be stuck rotating
on the spit of Samsara indefinitely or tainted by Original Sin and
'unredeemed' indefinitely (or whatever variant) unless we stumble across
founding teacher's teachings about the "special" course of action we need to
take to escape this fate. This makes it *crucial* that people are exposed to
the teachings of the founders (if you can guess the right founder) or
they'll just be blundering about in the dark to no purpose indefinitely. I
don't see it like that (partly because all of the founders claiming to have
attained liberation did so by blundering there untutored anyway and
"Whatever is of the nature of arising, all that is of the nature of
cessation").
I think that if the child gravitates towards narcissism, consumerism or
patriotism then that is where it 'should' gravitate and it won't be wasting
it's time in some activity of life that (so to speak) 'doesn't count'
(thinking of New Agers who divide the world into people who are and aren't
on 'The Path') and you wouldn't be able to stop it. If you tried you'd just
get a narcissistic 'Buddhist' or a consumer 'Buddhist' or a patriot
'Buddhist' (and then it would naturally gravitate to t.r.b) If the child
naturally gravitates towards religion you couldn't stop that either.
Looking
at the proportions of the population that 'subscribe' to a particular
religion, comparing the West at present with other places at present is like
comparing the West at present with the West in the past. Somehow some places
e.g. Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia have an adherence level of 75-85%
Buddhist and I expect it's similar in most Muslim countries which is like it
used to be in the West a hundred or so years ago. To me, it's not that
Western people are less religious now, it's just that there isn't the social
pressure and other factors persuading them to go through the motions now. I
think the greater freedom is like a disclosing agent which shows (better)
the real range of values any population at any time would have if they were
free to express them.
I don't accept that modern Western societies "brainwash" people (to any
extent that matters) into narcissism, consumerism, patriotism etc. because I
don't see people as that 'sheeplike'. I see it more like the way the British
soldiers in the Falklands used to call the locals "Bennies" (after a
wooly-hatted simpleton in a particular TV soap). When the officers found
out, they ordered them to stop this. Over time they started referring to
them as "Stills". When the officers heard about this they asked why and were
told 'Because they're Still "Bennies"'.
> > Is she going to be taught meditation - Right
> > Mindfulness ?, Right Concentration ?, Right Livelihood, Right
> > Speech/Gurgling ? What's the point ? Which parts of the Eightfold Path
is
> > she going to follow ?
>
> How much does it take to at least have more than one worldview to
> draw upon in one's life?
About half an hour's explanation-time I expect but what he was proposing
goes way beyond that. The reduction of the list of 'world-views' on offer to
narcissism/consumerism/patriotism and Buddhism is just so perverse to me
that I hope he doesn't have the same attitude towards his own society. As I
observe it, people aren't so much brainwashed by answers as by questions
which tend to 'fix' them on an 'axis' e.g. consumerism vs. its reverse or
narcissism vs. its reverse or patriotism vs. its reverse because in families
I've seen enough generations of it's not the same 'answers' that tend to
transmit down the generations but preoccupation with the same particular
'questions'. If the parent has some very strong stance on some issue or
other it seems to infest the child to the extent that the same issue becomes
unduly prominent in the child's mind (among the massively diverse range of
possible questions it could be asking itself) to the point where it has to
decide where it 'stands' on the same 'issue'.
I'm also not keen on the fact that (in this country at least) people look to
children for a captive audience for all sorts of things that are too joyless
to sell themselves (religion, morality, Latin, Greek, Classical Mythology,
Shakespeare, those Olympic Sports that no-one wants to pay to watch,
rote-learning poetry etc.). If there was an enforcable rule whereby
religious people were forbidden to tell anyone about their religion unless
they were asked to explain to the person who asked the the secret of their
equanimity, honesty, kindness, joyfulness etc. - religion would barely
exist.
Jonathan
John Gwynn
>
> I'm also not keen on the fact that (in this country at least) people look
to
> children for a captive audience for all sorts of things that are too
joyless
> to sell themselves (religion, morality, Latin, Greek, Classical Mythology,
> Shakespeare, those Olympic Sports that no-one wants to pay to watch,
> rote-learning poetry etc.). If there was an enforcable rule whereby
> religious people were forbidden to tell anyone about their religion unless
> they were asked to explain to the person who asked the the secret of their
> equanimity, honesty, kindness, joyfulness etc. - religion would barely
> exist.
I'm troubled that you would deprive your children of these "joyless" things,
particularly the essential sense of cultural identity that one's religion
has hitherto provided. They represent enduring traditions and are becoming
more necessary as we lose more and more of our ability to transmit our own
culture to our children. You have to consider the best interests of your
children and put that above your own prejudices if only to instill a deep
and vital sense of tradition specifically by transmitting the religion of
your family. I would suspect cases of dual religious traditions to be even
richer source for the child.
johng
Jonathan
John Gwynn <john....@tfn.com> wrote
> "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net> wrote
> >
> > I'm also not keen on the fact that (in this country at least) people
look
> to
> > children for a captive audience for all sorts of things that are too
> joyless
> > to sell themselves (religion, morality, Latin, Greek, Classical
Mythology,
> > Shakespeare, those Olympic Sports that no-one wants to pay to watch,
> > rote-learning poetry etc.). If there was an enforcable rule whereby
> > religious people were forbidden to tell anyone about their religion
unless
> > they were asked to explain to the person who asked the the secret of
their
> > equanimity, honesty, kindness, joyfulness etc. - religion would barely
> > exist.
>
> I'm troubled that you would deprive your children of these "joyless"
things,
> particularly the essential sense of cultural identity that one's religion
> has hitherto provided.
John - With the first part, I was thinking mainly in terms of the fact that
there are all sorts of minorities who lobby for their particular
'thing' to be a part (or a larger part) of the school curriculum (which has
a near enough finite time-schedule). As it is these minorities have to be
subsidized by the tax-payer and/or receive charitable status etc. For
instance, in the U.K. the pop, rock and easy-listening sections of public
radio justify themselves through their audience figures whereas the
classical music station is subsidized to the tune of Ł75/$105 per listener
per year by everyone else (and yet this is the form of music,
instrumentation, theory etc. people are usually taught in schools). Theatre,
Opera, Ballet, Art Galleries etc. for the few have to be propped up by the
taxpayer while the majority's preferred art-forms more than support
themselves but again, children get disproportionately bamboozled with
material from that 'end'). Same in sports - sports like football more than
support themselves while people who want to teach sports that don't like
throwing a discus or javelin or running in a straight line get
disproportionately represented in the curriculum.
Any of the listed and similar activities have to compete with and replace
what is already on the curriculum. Children are going to be "deprived" of
whatever isn't on the curriculum and there are more people who want to put
more onto it than could ever possibly be on it so it becomes about "what"
goes onto it. Instead of having children uncomprehendinly parrot Shakespeare
or the Buddha or fiddle about on the tuba playing music they're unlikely to
ever listen to again on an instrument they're unlikely to persist with etc.
I'd rather the curriculum minimized those kinds of activities and maximized
others. They can take them up later if they discover an interest in them but
people the point was that people lobby for them to be in the curriculum
while children are a *captive audience* precisely because they know their
activities have so little chance of selling themselves on their own merits
to non-captive audiences.
With regard specifically to the religion aspect - I am astonished at your
response. It is tantamount to accepting that your religion has produced
insufficient equanimity, honesty, kindness, joyfulness etc. in you for
anyone to ever ask the secret of it and yet wanting to teach it to children
anyway to impart an "essential sense of cultural identity". Buddhists only
comprise one in twenty of the world population and a miniscule proportion of
any of the Western populations so Joshua's child hardly needs to know
anything about Buddhism for that reason. Again - as fast as the Buddha (via
the Anatta doctrine) tried to teach the dropping of 'identity', Buddhists
want their 'Buddhism' to be a source of 'identity'.
> They represent enduring traditions and are becoming
> more necessary as we lose more and more of our ability to transmit our own
> culture to our children.
You say they are "enduring" traditions but then they become "more and more
necessary" as if left to their own devices and to sell themselves on their
own merits or to captive audiences they wouldn't be quite so "enduring". The
overwhelming majority of religious adherents I know personally did not
'follow-on' from their parents. They came to it on their own in later life
and their parents were either atheist, agnostic or of another religion
although mostly just indifferent. What are the chances that a Western
Buddhist's child if adopted or orphaned or whatever would also turn out to
choose Buddhism ? Next to none. People generally have their kids at home for
many hours a day for year upon year. If they want to "transmit our own
culture to our children" I don't see what is stopping them.
> You have to consider the best interests of your
> children and put that above your own prejudices if only to instill a deep
> and vital sense of tradition specifically by transmitting the religion of
> your family.
That is just outlandish. If you put "the best interests of your children"
above "your own prejudices" you wouldn't be "transmitting the religion of
your family" because they *are* "your prejudices". If you could find four
countries (or parts of) one each from Christian, Buddhist, Islamic and Hindu
each with same birth-rate and do a mutual adoption with each new child so
that e.g. all the Saudi Arabian children would be adopted by Thai Buddists
and all the Thai children by Bible Belt Americans and so forth round the
circle - and then "transmit to them the religion of your family" you'd
probably end up with Thailand full of Saudi-born children who were 85%
Buddhist and the Bible-Belt full of a massive proportion of Baptists or
whatever Thai-born children and so forth. I don't see how that is in "the
best interests of the children" - to make wherever they happen to be born
the determiner of which dogma they get bamboozled with.
I would suspect cases of dual religious traditions to be
even
> richer source for the child.
Your 'richer' is my 'poorer'.
Jonathan
Everett Thiele
>
> The Episcopal baptism ceremony is beautiful, and the teachings of the
> Episcopal church are all well-meant, but I have very difficult time agreeing
> to the Episcopal Bishop to raise my child to thank Christ for his sacrifice,
> and to believe in God.
You didn't carry it in your belly for nine months, so if your wife wants
to baptize it, just say yes and be nice about it! And don't stand there
feeling superior to the bishop or your head will explode in 7 pieces.
> I desire to teach our daughter to believe in the Four Noble Truths, and to
> practice the Ten-Fold Path. When asked however, I am hard pressed to
> explain _how_ I am going to teach these values to my child.
>
You don't have to. You make the greatest impression on your child
just by how you live your daily life. And you might find that that
little life has some values to teach YOU. It might have taken birth
in your family out of great compassion for Joshua Wright. Don't
laugh...it's very possible.
regards,
--Rett
Evelyn Ruut
> I'm also not keen on the fact that (in this country at least) people look
to
> children for a captive audience for all sorts of things that are too
joyless
> to sell themselves (religion, morality, Latin, Greek, Classical Mythology,
> Shakespeare, those Olympic Sports that no-one wants to pay to watch,
> rote-learning poetry etc.). If there was an enforcable rule whereby
> religious people were forbidden to tell anyone about their religion unless
> they were asked to explain to the person who asked the the secret of their
> equanimity, honesty, kindness, joyfulness etc. - religion would barely
> exist.
>
> Jonathan
Dear Jonathan,
You have struck on one of my pet peeves.... people who find themselves
unable to accept their own religion (when grown up), somehow feel obligated
to force it upon their children, sending them to religious schools or sunday
school or whatever. But in all honesty I see this as something Christians
do more than almost any others. As for Shakespeare, you know there are
some who actually enjoy him.....:-) My daughter did when she was only in
high school....
Best Regards,
Evelyn
Jonathan
Everett Thiele <m9...@abc.se> wrote
> "Joshua Wright" <jwri...@home.com> wrote
> >
> > The Episcopal baptism ceremony is beautiful, and the teachings of the
> > Episcopal church are all well-meant, but I have very difficult time
agreeing
> > to the Episcopal Bishop to raise my child to thank Christ for his
sacrifice,
> > and to believe in God.
>
> You didn't carry it in your belly for nine months, so if your wife wants
> to baptize it, just say yes and be nice about it! And don't stand there
> feeling superior to the bishop or your head will explode in 7 pieces.
>
> > I desire to teach our daughter to believe in the Four Noble Truths, and
to
> > practice the Ten-Fold Path. When asked however, I am hard pressed to
> > explain _how_ I am going to teach these values to my child.
> >
>
> You don't have to. You make the greatest impression on your child
> just by how you live your daily life.
I think that must be the much politer alternative version of the following
"by their fruits shall ye know them" concept (that I would have produced if
I was a much politer alternative version of myself :) -
>>If there was an enforcable rule whereby religious people were forbidden to
tell anyone about their religion unless they were asked to explain to the
person who asked the the secret of their equanimity, honesty, kindness,
joyfulness etc. - religion would barely exist.<<
> And you might find that that
> little life has some values to teach YOU. It might have taken birth
> in your family out of great compassion for Joshua Wright. Don't
> laugh...it's very possible.
I never know the proper form of words in Buddhism for 'spiritual status' or
'level of development' or 'stage of evolution' or 'degree of progress
towards liberation' or whatever but if he was 'average' there'd be a 50%
chance the sprog would have a better 'xxxx' than him if it arrived
'randomly' (or we should expect half of all kids have a better 'xxxx' than
their father).
Jonathan
Jonathan
Evelyn Ruut <mama...@ulster.net> wrote
> "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net> wrote
>
> > I'm also not keen on the fact that (in this country at least) people
look
> to
> > children for a captive audience for all sorts of things that are too
> joyless
> > to sell themselves (religion, morality, Latin, Greek, Classical
Mythology,
> > Shakespeare, those Olympic Sports that no-one wants to pay to watch,
> > rote-learning poetry etc.). If there was an enforcable rule whereby
> > religious people were forbidden to tell anyone about their religion
unless
> > they were asked to explain to the person who asked the the secret of
their
> > equanimity, honesty, kindness, joyfulness etc. - religion would barely
> > exist.
> You have struck on one of my pet peeves.... people who find themselves
> unable to accept their own religion (when grown up), somehow feel
obligated
> to force it upon their children, sending them to religious schools or
sunday
> school or whatever.
Evelyn - presumably it's the hypocrisy or double-standard element that you
dislike (?) which I do. There are people who do that over here although I
don't know any personally. Many people see Christianity mainly in terms of
'morality' and as almost interchangeable and see 'religious' education as
'ethical' education. The Protestant Church over here has something like a 4%
(of the population) attendance rate and yet Christian school assemblies are
the norm for all children except in city areas where there's a very high
proportion of ethnic minorities which would be 'culturally' Sikhs, Muslims,
Hindus etc. I think religious teaching in schools has moved towards a more
PC 'multi-faith' approach except at the relatively rare schools run by
particular religions. Parents can have their kids withdrawn from the
assemblies and religious education lessons if they want. I don't know how
many sunday schools we still have these days - my guess is - very few.
I'm averse to religious schools for kids even if the parents are believers.
The various ethnic minorities tend to have a very much higher
religious-adherence rate than the 'culturally' protestant majority to the
extent that as I recall we now have more people who declare themselves
Catholic than Protestant (though from a fraction of the Protestant
population-base). The overwhelming majority of people I know are simply
indifferent to religion. You couldn't really call them 'atheist' or
'agnostic' but "who gives a rat's ass ?". Most of the people I religious
adherents I know except in the Indian (Bangladeshi Muslims) Restaurant are
one-off later-life converts neither 'following-on' from their parents nor
being 'followed-on' by their kids. I like that situation. I wouldn't want
this country to be like e.g. Thailand or Burma or Saudi Arabia or wherever
where the vast majority of the people were theoretically adherents to a
religion. I have an extremely "aristocratic" attitude towards religion and
think that e.g. the Buddha or Jesus or Patanjali or Shankara called only a
few and 'individually'. I don't think the majority will come to any harm
leaving it until some future life but I don't like the inevitable 'watering
down' that it entails in fitting religion to the lowest common denominator
among a vast majority of people.
> But in all honesty I see this as something Christians
> do more than almost any others. As for Shakespeare, you know there are
> some who actually enjoy him.....:-) My daughter did when she was only in
> high school....
Bizarre :) If she's young, single and gorgeous and wants exposing to
'culture' (or something like that) she can come and stay at my house 13
miles from Stratford-upon-Avon. I couldn't abide the bloke ! I'm not very
socially orientated and have spent a lot of my life on my own (like the last
place we lived I worked every day of the year for 8 years down a farm-track
away from the village and for most of that time I had no social-life at all
apart from going down the pub with relatives about 3 times a year). All the
'truths' Shakespeare 'reveals' all seem to me to be 'social' (or on a par
with 'gossip' as far as I can make out :) and each time I stumble into a bit
of it on TV or whatever I just think - what does this have to do with me ?
Jonathan
Pyrrho
> Bizarre :) If she's young, single and gorgeous and wants exposing to
> 'culture' (or something like that) she can come and stay at my house 13
> miles from Stratford-upon-Avon.
LOL. You old devil!
> All the 'truths' Shakespeare 'reveals' all seem to me to be 'social' (or
on a par
> with 'gossip' as far as I can make out :) and each time I stumble into a
bit
> of it on TV or whatever I just think - what does this have to do with me ?
I see what you mean. If one could meet fictional characters and tell them
something, I'd have just one thing to say to Hamlet "Dude, why the devil do
you talk so much?"
Shakespeare, for all his literary abilities appears to be the sort of person
who tried to cover all the bases. Depending on individual needs, people zoom
on those aspects that confirm their own lives and portray Shakespeare as a
great poet, a philosopher, or a keen student of human nature or whatever.
Shiva
Evelyn Ruut
> Bizarre :) If she's young, single and gorgeous and wants exposing to
> 'culture' (or something like that) she can come and stay at my house 13
> miles from Stratford-upon-Avon. I couldn't abide the bloke ! I'm not very
> socially orientated and have spent a lot of my life on my own (like the
last
> place we lived I worked every day of the year for 8 years down a
farm-track
> away from the village and for most of that time I had no social-life at
all
> apart from going down the pub with relatives about 3 times a year). All
the
> 'truths' Shakespeare 'reveals' all seem to me to be 'social' (or on a par
> with 'gossip' as far as I can make out :) and each time I stumble into a
bit
> of it on TV or whatever I just think - what does this have to do with me ?
>
> Jonathan
My daughter is 38 years old, married, dazzlingly, drop-dead gorgeous, and
the mother of intelligent, talented 12 year old twin boys as well as a
hot-shot executive owner/manager of no less than three very successful
businesses (all at once) in Texas. Both she and her husband look like
movie stars, and they really do have it all, as well as having it 'all
together.' I couldn't be more blessed than with their whole family and
they bring me great joy. She used to run around the house quoting scenes
from Romeo and Juliet as a young girl, and if anyone is old enough to
remember the Zeffirelli film, you will know why. It was excellent.
(couldn't help bragging)
About being alone in ones work life, I think it has enormous benefits. I
have worked alone for many years and found it to bring out the best in me.
Have you ever heard of Thoreau? He also was not someone who traveled a
great deal and spent a lot of time alone with nature.
Best Regards,
Evelyn
Jonathan
Pyrrho <Pyrrho...@mailandnews.com> wrote
> "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net> wrote
> > Bizarre :) If she's young, single and gorgeous and wants exposing to
> > 'culture' (or something like that) she can come and stay at my house 13
> > miles from Stratford-upon-Avon.
>
> LOL. You old devil!
Shiva - It's my national duty to do my bit to help maintain the "special
relationship" :)
> > All the 'truths' Shakespeare 'reveals' all seem to me to be 'social'
(or
> on a par
> > with 'gossip' as far as I can make out :) and each time I stumble into a
> bit
> > of it on TV or whatever I just think - what does this have to do with me
?
>
> I see what you mean. If one could meet fictional characters and tell them
> something, I'd have just one thing to say to Hamlet "Dude, why the devil
do
> you talk so much?"
I think I'd be on shaky ground if I asked that :)
> Shakespeare, for all his literary abilities appears to be the sort of
person
> who tried to cover all the bases. Depending on individual needs, people
zoom
> on those aspects that confirm their own lives and portray Shakespeare as a
> great poet, a philosopher, or a keen student of human nature or whatever.
Well naturally I would never just zoom in on those aspects that merely
relate to my own life in some cheesy self-absorbed way but as luck would
have it the bloke who bought the house I was born in turned its history into
a personal obsession and went through every kind of archive he could to find
everything he could about it and then started trying to 'restore' it. When
he scraped a few layers of paint off the wall of the bedroom I was born in
he found this area with an ancient oil painting of a forest scene behind a
pulled-aside red stage curtain. Apparently, it's a scene from A Midsummer
Night's Dream. I know nothing about the play and I'm too idle to read it but
I think there was a recent Hollywood version with Calista Flockhart and
Michelle Pfeiffer which I might be able to tolerate if I find it on video.
If I like it or some aspect of it I'll incorporate it into my personal
'myth' and the painting will be like some kind of 'annunciation' or
meaningful 'omen' of my glorious birth. If it 'sucks' I won't bother :) I'm
not sure when A Midsummer Night is supposed to be. I thought the summer
solstice was the start of summer as opposed to 'midsummer' but if it's the
summer solstice - it's tonight I think.
Jonathan
Jonathan
> > Bizarre :) If she's young, single and gorgeous and wants exposing to
Evelyn - I could definitely have 'saved' her from all that :)
(Congratulations) I hope this isn't horribly tactless and no offence
intended but looking at as slight variation between the two of your kids
that I'm aware of and going back to that education thing - my (possibly
skewed) perception of my growing-up was that I brought myself up while my
parents got to be interested onlookers. I think that to an extent problem
parents tend to produce problem children but then if you've got non-problem
children from the same parents - it makes me think the problems in the
problem children must be more to do with the personality they were born
with. I never think of myself as having been 'moulded' by my parents. My
objection towards too much religious bamboozlement of children was less on
the 'moulding' them side than on the 'getting on their wick to no great
point' side.
> I couldn't be more blessed than with their whole family and
> they bring me great joy. She used to run around the house quoting
scenes
> from Romeo and Juliet as a young girl, and if anyone is old enough to
> remember the Zeffirelli film, you will know why. It was excellent.
>
> (couldn't help bragging)
Aaaaaaaah :)
> About being alone in ones work life, I think it has enormous benefits. I
> have worked alone for many years and found it to bring out the best in me.
> Have you ever heard of Thoreau? He also was not someone who traveled a
> great deal and spent a lot of time alone with nature.
I know next to nothing about American literature but I'll have a look around
for anything by him - if you and "John-Boy Walton" mentioned and like him -
he can't be all bad :)
Jonathan
Pyrrho
> Apparently, it's a scene from A Midsummer
> Night's Dream. I know nothing about the play and I'm too idle to read it
but
> I think there was a recent Hollywood version with Calista Flockhart and
> Michelle Pfeiffer which I might be able to tolerate if I find it on video.
Don't let me bias you, but it is just a silly romantic comedy and uses
various myths and fairy stories to perpetuate itself. Shades of Pure Land
;-)
Of course, there are some funny interludes, notably from the minor
characters in the play.
Shiva
John Gwynn
>
> John - With the first part, I was thinking mainly in terms of the fact
that
> there are all sorts of minorities who lobby for their particular
> 'thing' to be a part (or a larger part) of the school curriculum (which
has
> a near enough finite time-schedule). As it is these minorities have to be
> subsidized by the tax-payer and/or receive charitable status etc. For
> instance, in the U.K. the pop, rock and easy-listening sections of public
> radio justify themselves through their audience figures whereas the
> per year by everyone else (and yet this is the form of music,
> instrumentation, theory etc. people are usually taught in schools).
I don't understand what you mean by "minorities" above, but if your point is
that children should not be taught classical music because it isn't
culturally relevant then I say that you simply do not understand what music
and misic appreciation is. I am very happy that my daughters are involved
in orchestra and choir and are becoming well balanced in their appreciation
of music. Believe me, given their druthers hip-hop would be the only
musical form they'd know.
> Theatre,
> Opera, Ballet, Art Galleries etc. for the few have to be propped up by the
> taxpayer while the majority's preferred art-forms more than support
> themselves but again, children get disproportionately bamboozled with
> material from that 'end').
You're not serious here? Perhaps we should start courses in MTV???
> Instead of having children uncomprehendinly parrot Shakespeare
> or the Buddha or fiddle about on the tuba playing music they're unlikely
to
> ever listen to again on an instrument they're unlikely to persist with
etc.
> I'd rather the curriculum minimized those kinds of activities and
maximized
> others.
You'd have them review the latest Adam Sandler film over Romeo and Juliet
then?
The point is that Shakespeare is important, period. Art, art history and
art appreciation is important. Poetry is important. Classic literature,
languages, musical compositions are essential. Homer, Hamlet, Goethe, and
Gershwin should be as recognizable as Harry Potter or Laura Croft..
> With regard specifically to the religion aspect - I am astonished at your
> response. It is tantamount to accepting that your religion has produced
> insufficient equanimity, honesty, kindness, joyfulness etc. in you for
> anyone to ever ask the secret of it
If my religion (as you say) "produced insufficient equanimity, honesty,
kindness" in me then the fault is not in my religion but in me. I don't
know of any of the world's major religions that do not strive for such
qualities.
>and yet wanting to teach it to children
> anyway to impart an "essential sense of cultural identity".
I know what it is to be Catholic. It is an important influence in my life
and is important for me to honor my ancestors by transmitting what was
passed down to me. This obligation is a strong connection to the past that
has subtle importance. There must be others on this board who understand
this.
>Buddhists only
> comprise one in twenty of the world population and a miniscule proportion
of
> any of the Western populations so Joshua's child hardly needs to know
> anything about Buddhism for that reason. Again - as fast as the Buddha
(via
> the Anatta doctrine) tried to teach the dropping of 'identity', Buddhists
> want their 'Buddhism' to be a source of 'identity'.
>
I don't think this is precisely what anatma means, but since I'm a neophyte
I'll defer to those more knowledgeable. I certainly would not deprive my
children of essential experiences and education based on the above
argument...
> You say they are "enduring" traditions but then they become "more and more
> necessary" as if left to their own devices and to sell themselves on their
> own merits or to captive audiences they wouldn't be quite so "enduring".
That may be all too true. Just think of what we would have lost had not
some enlightened people (East and West) had the foresight to record and
preserve the oral and written teachings of the ancients though the numerous
wars, dark ages, persecution etc. Now we are faced with an entirely new
danger, apathy.
> The
> overwhelming majority of religious adherents I know personally did not
> 'follow-on' from their parents. They came to it on their own in later life
> and their parents were either atheist, agnostic or of another religion
> although mostly just indifferent.
I am guilty of this (indifference) myself. It was a mistake. I now
understand why my father-in-law (thankfully) made a special effort to take
my kids to church.
> What are the chances that a Western
> Buddhist's child if adopted or orphaned or whatever would also turn out to
> choose Buddhism ? Next to none. People generally have their kids at home
for
> many hours a day for year upon year. If they want to "transmit our own
> culture to our children" I don't see what is stopping them.
>
You don't have kids then? ;-)
>
> That is just outlandish. If you put "the best interests of your children"
> above "your own prejudices" you wouldn't be "transmitting the religion of
> your family" because they *are* "your prejudices".
No not mine, they are the honored traditions of may parents and their
parents and their parents' parents forming an important link to the past and
giving a rich tradition of teachings that are still vital.
> I would suspect cases of dual religious traditions to be
> even
> > richer source for the child.
>
> Your 'richer' is my 'poorer'.
>
> Jonathan
C'est la vie
john
John Gwynn
> Bizarre :) If she's young, single and gorgeous and wants exposing to
> 'culture' (or something like that) she can come and stay at my house 13
> miles from Stratford-upon-Avon. I couldn't abide the bloke ! I'm not very
> socially orientated and have spent a lot of my life on my own (like the
last
> place we lived I worked every day of the year for 8 years down a
farm-track
> away from the village and for most of that time I had no social-life at
all
> apart from going down the pub with relatives about 3 times a year). All
the
> 'truths' Shakespeare 'reveals' all seem to me to be 'social' (or on a par
> with 'gossip' as far as I can make out :) and each time I stumble into a
bit
> of it on TV or whatever I just think - what does this have to do with me ?
>
> Jonathan
>
Why you dirty old misanthrope.....
bet you like this one....
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's just a waking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing...
johng
caddy smells like trees....
Jonathan
> > John - With the first part, I was thinking mainly in terms of the fact
John - I mean by "minorities" the members of the previous list - lovers of
Latin, Greek, classical music, various arts, sports etc. It's not that they
"should not ne taught" classical music but that it shouldn't form the
majority of what they are taught and that it shouldn't form the total basis
of the instruments they are taught or the theory they are taught and it's a
false dichotomy to simply counterpose classical music and hip-hop given the
breadth of music that there is. It's not that it's not "culturally
relevant" - it's just a miniscule part of the music that is "culturally
relevant" and when you say "do not understand what music and music
appreciation are" - What are they ? (In your opinion). I have about 20
cousins and the majority had formal lessons on some orchestral instrument or
other till they could sit there like little copy-typists playing notes
someone else had written. I taught myself the harmonica and then guitar and
piano and I still play and write arrange etc. music now. They *all* dropped
out of playing years ago when there was an unbridgeable gap between what
they could play and the kind of music they wanted to listen to. My
grandmother used to nag me each time I saw her to go and get 'proper'
lessons as she had done. She ceased to be able to play when she lost her
sight because she could no longer see the sheet-music she was trying to
mindlessly reproduce (which is ridiculous).
> > Theatre,
> > Opera, Ballet, Art Galleries etc. for the few have to be propped up by
the
> > taxpayer while the majority's preferred art-forms more than support
> > themselves but again, children get disproportionately bamboozled with
> > material from that 'end').
>
> You're not serious here? Perhaps we should start courses in MTV???
Of course I'm serious.
> > Instead of having children uncomprehendinly parrot Shakespeare
> > or the Buddha or fiddle about on the tuba playing music they're unlikely
> to
> > ever listen to again on an instrument they're unlikely to persist with
> etc.
> > I'd rather the curriculum minimized those kinds of activities and
> maximized
> > others.
>
> You'd have them review the latest Adam Sandler film over Romeo and Juliet
> then?
I wouldn't personally have them bother with either. The curriculum has more
important things competing with both.
> The point is that Shakespeare is important, period. Art, art history and
> art appreciation is important. Poetry is important. Classic literature,
> languages, musical compositions are essential. Homer, Hamlet, Goethe, and
> Gershwin should be as recognizable as Harry Potter or Laura Croft.
There is no such thing as "important, period". "Importance" is subjective.
It should be Christmas every day but what are you prepared to sacrifice from
the curriculum to let this stuff onto it (which it barely is here at the
moment anyway). It's a waste of children's time to bamboozle them with most
of your list which reflect thoughts, emotions, experiences and realizations
that they won't have for years if ever anyway. (I believe it's 'Lara' Croft
:) but I have an aunt and uncle who live in a cloistered cerebral
environment in north Oxford (with the church choir and their harpsichord and
Shakespeare buffery and fellow members of their 'octet' playing in the
drawing room and no TV and they go to parties and wonder why some tart has
come in with only her underwear under a fur coat because they've never heard
of a 'kissogram' and they ask who E.T. is).
> > With regard specifically to the religion aspect - I am astonished at
your
> > response. It is tantamount to accepting that your religion has produced
> > insufficient equanimity, honesty, kindness, joyfulness etc. in you for
> > anyone to ever ask the secret of it
>
> If my religion (as you say) "produced insufficient equanimity, honesty,
> kindness" in me then the fault is not in my religion but in me. I don't
> know of any of the world's major religions that do not strive for such
> qualities.
If all the world's religions strive for them it's because they are so
universally admired and don't need teaching let alone requiring the teaching
of some specific religion.
> >and yet wanting to teach it to children
> > anyway to impart an "essential sense of cultural identity".
>
> I know what it is to be Catholic. It is an important influence in my life
> and is important for me to honor my ancestors by transmitting what was
> passed down to me. This obligation is a strong connection to the past
that
> has subtle importance. There must be others on this board who understand
> this.
Couldn't you try and get with the anatta doctrine and move past this kind of
'identification' ?
> >Buddhists only
> > comprise one in twenty of the world population and a miniscule
proportion
> of
> > any of the Western populations so Joshua's child hardly needs to know
> > anything about Buddhism for that reason. Again - as fast as the Buddha
> (via
> > the Anatta doctrine) tried to teach the dropping of 'identity',
Buddhists
> > want their 'Buddhism' to be a source of 'identity'.
> >
>
> I don't think this is precisely what anatma means...
The anatma doctrine more strictly applies to the Buddha's teaching that
there is nothing corresponding to the individual 'self' with which people
'identify' but substituting this with any finite group like 'Buddhists' or
'Buddhism' isn't any better as I see it.
...but since I'm a neophyte
> I'll defer to those more knowledgeable. I certainly would not deprive my
> children of essential experiences and education based on the above
> argument...
Teaching them Buddhism hardly qualifies as "essential".
> > You say they are "enduring" traditions but then they become "more and
more
> > necessary" as if left to their own devices and to sell themselves on
their
> > own merits or to captive audiences they wouldn't be quite so "enduring".
>
> That may be all too true. Just think of what we would have lost had not
> some enlightened people (East and West) had the foresight to record and
> preserve the oral and written teachings of the ancients though the
numerous
> wars, dark ages, persecution etc. Now we are faced with an entirely new
> danger, apathy.
To me - they were doing what 'they' wanted and preserving what 'they'
valued. What are alleged to be the dread dangers looming from 'apathy' (of
all things) ?
> > The
> > overwhelming majority of religious adherents I know personally did not
> > 'follow-on' from their parents. They came to it on their own in later
life
> > and their parents were either atheist, agnostic or of another religion
> > although mostly just indifferent.
>
> I am guilty of this (indifference) myself. It was a mistake. I now
> understand why my father-in-law (thankfully) made a special effort to take
> my kids to church.
Well it didn't kill you. What are supposed to be the dread consequences of
indifference to religion ? It's the natural state in this country.
> > What are the chances that a Western
> > Buddhist's child if adopted or orphaned or whatever would also turn out
to
> > choose Buddhism ? Next to none. People generally have their kids at home
> for
> > many hours a day for year upon year. If they want to "transmit our own
> > culture to our children" I don't see what is stopping them.
> >
>
> You don't have kids then? ;-)
Correct though it doesn't answer the question :) What is stopping them. They
have the little devils under their feet for countless hours while they're
growing up.
> > That is just outlandish. If you put "the best interests of your
children"
> > above "your own prejudices" you wouldn't be "transmitting the religion
of
> > your family" because they *are* "your prejudices".
>
> No not mine, they are the honored traditions of may parents and their
> parents and their parents' parents forming an important link to the past
and
> giving a rich tradition of teachings that are still vital.
Well when you come back as a rabbit and then a Muslim and then a Jew and
then a Hindu etc. I expect you'll feel the same way (except as the rabbit).
Most religions are incompatible with each other on key issues and it's pot
luck which you get lumbered with but I feel lucky in my parents and
grandparents were all indifferent and before then I'm only aware of one
great-grandparent couple being religious - one a freemason and the other a
Christian Scientist - so at least they had something to have continual
arguments about. I don't see how you can respect people who simply
'follow-on' from their parents' religion. It reduces religion to some
horrible socio-cultural phenomena instead of an individual quest for truth.
Jesus, the Buddha etc. 'called' people 'individually'.
Jonathan
Jonathan
> > Bizarre :) If she's young, single and gorgeous and wants exposing to
John - No - I'm a religious person - not a nihilist or a depressive :)
Jonathan
> > Apparently, it's a scene from A Midsummer
> > Night's Dream. I know nothing about the play and I'm too idle to read it
> but
> > I think there was a recent Hollywood version with Calista Flockhart and
> > Michelle Pfeiffer which I might be able to tolerate if I find it on
video.
>
> Don't let me bias you, but it is just a silly romantic comedy and uses
> various myths and fairy stories to perpetuate itself. Shades of Pure Land
> ;-)
> Of course, there are some funny interludes, notably from the minor
> characters in the play.
Shiva - I'm not working a "silly romatic comedy" into my 'personal
mythology' - I was hoping for something 'portentous' with 'gravitas' or
somesuch :)
Jonathan
Evelyn Ruut
Evelyn said;
> > My daughter is 38 years old, married, dazzlingly, drop-dead gorgeous,
and
> > the mother of intelligent, talented 12 year old twin boys as well as a
> > hot-shot executive owner/manager of no less than three very successful
> > businesses (all at once) in Texas. Both she and her husband look like
> > movie stars, and they really do have it all, as well as having it 'all
> > together.'
>
> Evelyn - I could definitely have 'saved' her from all that :)
> (Congratulations) I hope this isn't horribly tactless and no offence
> intended but looking at as slight variation between the two of your kids
> that I'm aware of
The whole family is aware of the vast difference between them and it goes
back as far as I can see to their very infancy. The oldest one was always
very willful and stubborn. If I told him NOT to do something it became his
hearts desire to do it. This attitude lasted all his life. It is as
though bad translated to good in his mind and vice versa. (Let's not get
started about the drugs)........
But on the positive side, he is a fabulous natural musician, plays almost
any instrument he picks up with a little fooling around, but his guitar work
and his beautiful singing voice are top notch. His father, grandfather and
great grandfathers on both sides of the family were all musically talented
and he seems to have gotten it all. The only one of my kids who did!
The second one, my daughter, has always had a great desire to achieve, been
witty and clever and always listened to me when I warned her of things she
ought to avoid. She seems to have been born with a fair measure of common
sense, and really almost needed NO "bringing up" whereas the older one
always needed constant attention, watching, diligence, whatever, because he
was always into something troublesome. He recently (in jail) converted to
Judaism and has all the zeal of a new convert. I approve of his choice,
because anything that inspires him or brings him focus and keeps him off
drugs is OK in my book.
My third child, the youngest son, is intelligent, sensitive, fun,
philosophical, compassionate, kind, witty and almost a born entertainer,
(he'll have any gathering howling in hysterical laughter in minutes) a
fantastic dancer, and talker, but not very successful by the world's
standards, at this time, although he has a good job. I have this feeling
he will be a late bloomer of some kind. He is also a buddhist and his
fiancee has decided to also take refuge. (I imagine that after listening
to him preach at her for a couple years it was inevitable). He is a
wonderful and truly good person and he actually has posted here a couple of
times.
Then there are a two others who are not my physical children but whom I
consider my children. A boy and a girl whose mother was my best friend and
who died tragically in a freak accident involving a drunk driver in 1981.
Those two kids are as close to me as any of my own and I love them like my
own.
Needless to say I always have a houseful around here between kids and dogs
and my mother in law and friends and whatever. :-) Nothing makes me
happier.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about those I love most!
>and going back to that education thing - my (possibly
> skewed) perception of my growing-up was that I brought myself up while my
> parents got to be interested onlookers.
I think in the best case scenario that is how it ought to be. People who
"need" too much direction are showing some problem somewhere.
>I think that to an extent problem
> parents tend to produce problem children but then if you've got
non-problem
> children from the same parents - it makes me think the problems in the
> problem children must be more to do with the personality they were born
> with.
I think that there are so many factors, heredity, environment, chemical,
medical and dietary, and who knows what all else, that to have children in
the same family who differ vastly from one another is the norm rather than
the exception, myself. Who knows, Jonathan, maybe one day they will
discover some bacteria, some prion or virus or some common household
chemical that causes mental problems or schizophrenia or something? The
old adage about "the more you know the more you find out how little you
know," makes more and more sense every day. With each scientific discovery,
whole new worlds of uncharted territory are opening up.
>I never think of myself as having been 'moulded' by my parents. My
> objection towards too much religious bamboozlement of children was less on
> the 'moulding' them side than on the 'getting on their wick to no great
> point' side.
>
> > I couldn't be more blessed than with their whole family and
> > they bring me great joy. She used to run around the house quoting
> scenes
> > from Romeo and Juliet as a young girl, and if anyone is old enough to
> > remember the Zeffirelli film, you will know why. It was excellent.
> >
> > (couldn't help bragging)
>
> Aaaaaaaah :)
>
> > About being alone in ones work life, I think it has enormous benefits.
I
> > have worked alone for many years and found it to bring out the best in
me.
> > Have you ever heard of Thoreau? He also was not someone who traveled a
> > great deal and spent a lot of time alone with nature.
>
> I know next to nothing about American literature but I'll have a look
around
> for anything by him - if you and "John-Boy Walton" mentioned and like
him -
> he can't be all bad :)
>
> Jonathan
Many people say that the works of Thoreau sound very "buddhist" in flavor.
He spent his whole life within a few miles of his home in a semi rural area
of Massachusetts. You really ought to read some of his work. There is
one called "On Walden Pond" that is quite well known and you could probably
find it at a library. Full name is Henry David Thoreau. I can just about
guarantee you would like him.
Best Regards,
Evelyn
Pyrrho
> Shiva - I'm not working a "silly romatic comedy" into my 'personal
> mythology' - I was hoping for something 'portentous' with 'gravitas' or
> somesuch :)
The Bard does best when he sticks to tautologies. Try this passage from King
Lear, for instance
Fool: The reason the seven stars are not mo' (more) is a pretty one.
Lear: Because they are not eight.
Fool: Indeed. Thou wouldst make a good fool
Shiva
Jonathan
> Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about those I love most!
Evelyn - It's a pleasure (and I also like to have the people in here set in
some kind of human environment as opposed to just free-floating voices of
uncertain name, age, gender, religion, place, marital status etc. etc.
> Many people say that the works of Thoreau sound very "buddhist" in flavor.
Well I hope that doesn't put me off :)
> He spent his whole life within a few miles of his home in a semi rural
area
> of Massachusetts. You really ought to read some of his work. There is
> one called "On Walden Pond" that is quite well known and you could
probably
> find it at a library. Full name is Henry David Thoreau. I can just
about
> guarantee you would like him.
I'll have a look. I only had time for a flying visit to the library today to
collect a book (as I got a notification this morning to say that the
Middle-Length Sayings I'd requested a search for had arrived).
Jonathan
Pyrrho
> > Many people say that the works of Thoreau sound very "buddhist" in
flavor.
>
> Well I hope that doesn't put me off :)
Actually, Thoreau was a quite a fan of the Upanishads and the Bhagavat Gita
and he makes several references to these in his journals. I suppose he could
be considered a Buddhist if we zoomed in upon his simple and uncluttered
lifestyle and preference for solitude.
I live some 20 miles from Walden Pond, where he lived for a long period. It
is always amusing to see people flock to the place in fancy SUVs and
monstrous cars to enjoy the "pristine outdoors" and "old world charm" of
Walden Pond.
Shiva
John Gwynn
You raise an interesting point. But I'm hard pressed to accept the
implication that current musical education and training has the polar effect
of inhibiting natural creativity and expression. Rather I would think that
they reinforce each other, the former by introducing discipline and
technique, and the latter with new methods of interpretation. I suspect it
is the same for playwrights, writers, painters, composers etc.
>
> > The point is that Shakespeare is important, period. Art, art history
and
> > art appreciation is important. Poetry is important. Classic literature,
> > languages, musical compositions are essential. Homer, Hamlet, Goethe,
and
> > Gershwin should be as recognizable as Harry Potter or Laura Croft.
>
> There is no such thing as "important, period". "Importance" is subjective.
If you taught a class on cabinetmaking wouldn't it be appropriate to expose
students to the finest examples of the craft you had available to you? Such
is the same with Literature. Shakespeare is simply without peer in any
language or age. Would you teach physics without mention of Einstein, or
Newton for that matter? Would you teach biology without mention of Darwin?
(ok, ok, couldn't resist that one ;)
> It should be Christmas every day but what are you prepared to sacrifice
from
> the curriculum to let this stuff onto it (which it barely is here at the
> moment anyway). It's a waste of children's time to bamboozle them with
most
> of your list which reflect thoughts, emotions, experiences and
realizations
> that they won't have for years if ever anyway.
I think you underestimate children.
> :) but I have an aunt and uncle who live in a cloistered cerebral
> environment in north Oxford (with the church choir and their harpsichord
and
> Shakespeare buffery and fellow members of their 'octet' playing in the
> drawing room and no TV and they go to parties and wonder why some tart has
> come in with only her underwear under a fur coat because they've never
heard
> of a 'kissogram' and they ask who E.T. is).
>
That is a bad thing???
> Couldn't you try and get with the anatta doctrine and move past this kind
of
> 'identification' ?
>
In time, right now I'm struggling with more pressing things such as my
vastly overrated talent and intellect and its subsequent desire for
recognition..
> > I don't think this is precisely what anatma means...
>
> The anatma doctrine more strictly applies to the Buddha's teaching that
> there is nothing corresponding to the individual 'self' with which people
> 'identify' but substituting this with any finite group like 'Buddhists' or
> 'Buddhism' isn't any better as I see it.
>
> To me - they were doing what 'they' wanted and preserving what 'they'
> valued. What are alleged to be the dread dangers looming from 'apathy' (of
> all things) ?
>
Another Dark Age of superstition where curricula composed of such things as
creationism, psychology, environmentalism, multi-culturalism etc. things
that have the effect of making children feel antipathy for their own
culture, parents, and ultimately themselves leaving them more susceptible
to the growing influences of mass-culture a.k.a. the culture of
manipulation.
> Correct though it doesn't answer the question :) What is stopping them.
They
> have the little devils under their feet for countless hours while they're
> growing up.
>
That is not the case in most working families. There is a literal war waged
over the growing influence of media and its effects on the cultural
inheritance of our children.
>
> Well when you come back as a rabbit and then a Muslim and then a Jew and
> then a Hindu etc. I expect you'll feel the same way (except as the
rabbit).
> Most religions are incompatible with each other on key issues and it's pot
> luck which you get lumbered with but I feel lucky in my parents and
> grandparents were all indifferent and before then I'm only aware of one
> great-grandparent couple being religious - one a freemason and the other a
> Christian Scientist - so at least they had something to have continual
> arguments about.
Then you truly have no idea what it is you have missed, despite what you
think.
> I don't see how you can respect people who simply
> 'follow-on' from their parents' religion. It reduces religion to some
> horrible socio-cultural phenomena instead of an individual quest for
truth.
> Jesus, the Buddha etc. 'called' people 'individually'.
>
We 'follow-on' in quite a number of areas many of these we hesitate to admit
to. ;-)
johng
Jonathan
> > Shiva - I'm not working a "silly romatic comedy" into my 'personal
> > mythology' - I was hoping for something 'portentous' with 'gravitas' or
> > somesuch :)
>
> The Bard does best when he sticks to tautologies. Try this passage from
King
> Lear, for instance
>
> Fool: The reason the seven stars are not mo' (more) is a pretty one.
>
> Lear: Because they are not eight.
>
> Fool: Indeed. Thou wouldst make a good fool
Shiva - ...and this is the kind of twaddle they want to subject children to
as part of some 'cultural heritage awareness' programme ?! The only version
of King Lear I ever saw was the film by Akira Kurosawa (and the best thing
about it was that it was a film by Akira Kurosawa :)
Jonathan
Jonathan
> > > Many people say that the works of Thoreau sound very "buddhist" in
> flavor.
> >
> > Well I hope that doesn't put me off :)
>
> Actually, Thoreau was a quite a fan of the Upanishads and the Bhagavat
Gita
> and he makes several references to these in his journals. I suppose he
could
> be considered a Buddhist if we zoomed in upon his simple and uncluttered
> lifestyle and preference for solitude.
Shiva - If I was checking to see whether Evelyn reads all of my posts I'd
scurrilously suggest that her 'ng gems' collections also inveigle (sp?)
quotes by famous non-Buddhists for 'Buddhism' (then she'd have to respond to
this monstrous calumny). That was a question that passed through mind a bit
back that I thought about starting a new thread for but forgot about - which
well-known people (that I'm likely to have heard of) claim to be Buddhists ?
So far I've only ever seen Tina Turner - Nichiren (?) and Richard Gere and
Steven Segal (?) mentioned and I don't know anything about the last bloke or
if Richard Gere's is just some pro-Tibetan pro-'native-cultures' thing or
actually Buddhism. I've seen people invoke Schopenhauer but I'm not sure how
well-informed he was about Buddhism. I ought to read the Upanishads som time
(a selection of - I mean there are loads as I understand it). No cultural
offence intended but the Bhagavad Gita is a bit repugnant to me these days.
> I live some 20 miles from Walden Pond, where he lived for a long period.
It
> is always amusing to see people flock to the place in fancy SUVs and
> monstrous cars to enjoy the "pristine outdoors" and "old world charm" of
> Walden Pond.
:) I must have lost my marbles because I had misfiled you away as English
somehow. I had a whole load of people herded together in 'New England' -
George, Tang, cupcake and Evelyn although cupcake seems to have moved to
Missouri and I'm not sure where Evelyn is (near Woodstock) 'counts' as 'New
England' either. The image I have in my mind of this 'Walden Pond' area
could be completely erroneous but it's that of the place where Steve Martin
and Goldie Hawn end up living in the film 'Housesitter' (?) which I think
was meant to be upstate New York (?). I'll never have enough cash to travel
till I come into it but I've got my American Tour planned out in the back of
my mind to include New York and Boston and Massachusetts in general (the
University bits) and New England in general and the cities over the border
in Canada then South Dakota and the site of the massacre of Wounded Knee,
Harney Peak and the Black Hills and across to Seattle (Jimi Hendrix's
birthplace) and Vancouver.
Jonathan
Jonathan
> You raise an interesting point. But I'm hard pressed to accept the
> implication that current musical education and training has the polar
effect
> of inhibiting natural creativity and expression. Rather I would think
that
> they reinforce each other, the former by introducing discipline and
> technique, and the latter with new methods of interpretation. I suspect
it
> is the same for playwrights, writers, painters, composers etc.
John - I don't believe this on the results I've seen to date. Children learn
to speak starting out 'burbling' until they've built up the right
connections between the sound they intend to hear and the sound that comes
out and then they go on to integrate thinking, speaking, listening, reading
and
writing. When children do the musical equivalent of 'burbling' a lot of them
get
shipped off to 'proper' lessons to learn to play 'properly'. They don't
build up the connections between thinking a tune and being able to play it.
They have sheet-music they couldn't write themselves plonked in front of
them and form a connection between reading that and their fingers etc. It's
the verbal equivalent of someone who is only capable of reading aloud
someone else's words from a book. The better they get at that - the wider
the gap between their easily good results at that and their appalling
deficiencies in every other department and in practice most of them will not
revert to the 'burbling' stage that is necessary in order to play what they
think, improvise, compose, , understand chord progressions and any scale
patterns but the four simplest ones, start again on an instrument they
actually want to listen to etc. It's to 'humiliating' for most people to be
pushed back to the level of their real musical status. My self-taught
guitarist friends and I would occasionally get these people wanting to 'join
in' with their classical instruments and they were just clueless lost sheep.
Most music that most people want to buy was written and performed by the
self-taught rather than these poor geeks.
> > > The point is that Shakespeare is important, period. Art, art history
> and
> > > art appreciation is important. Poetry is important. Classic
literature,
> > > languages, musical compositions are essential. Homer, Hamlet, Goethe,
> and
> > > Gershwin should be as recognizable as Harry Potter or Laura Croft.
> >
> > There is no such thing as "important, period". "Importance" is
subjective.
> If you taught a class on cabinetmaking wouldn't it be appropriate to
expose
> students to the finest examples of the craft you had available to you?
Such
> is the same with Literature. Shakespeare is simply without peer in any
> language or age. Would you teach physics without mention of Einstein, or
> Newton for that matter? Would you teach biology without mention of
Darwin?
> (ok, ok, couldn't resist that one ;)
Einstein's physics (and the focus is on the physics - not the personality
cult) doesn't come into school physics in the U.K. until the last two
(optional) years. Darwin comes into school biology (if people choose that
between 14 and 16) a bit earlier than that. Shakespeare is usually among the
set books/plays for English Literature if people choose that between 14 and
16. I didn't choose English Literature so I've managed to avoid him. (I'm
bright so I did more 'hard' than 'soft' subjects). I was more adult-friendly
than most of my cousins so I used to be targeted and harrassed by aunts and
a grandmother who were into the 'cultural canon'.
>
> > It should be Christmas every day but what are you prepared to sacrifice
> from
> > the curriculum to let this stuff onto it (which it barely is here at the
> > moment anyway). It's a waste of children's time to bamboozle them with
> most
> > of your list which reflect thoughts, emotions, experiences and
> realizations
> > that they won't have for years if ever anyway.
>
> I think you underestimate children.
If fourteen year olds can relate to the thoughts, emotions, experiences and
realizations of Shakespeare - I think you overestimate Shakespeare.
> > :) but I have an aunt and uncle who live in a cloistered cerebral
> > environment in north Oxford (with the church choir and their harpsichord
> and
> > Shakespeare buffery and fellow members of their 'octet' playing in the
> > drawing room and no TV and they go to parties and wonder why some tart
has
> > come in with only her underwear under a fur coat because they've never
> heard
> > of a 'kissogram' and they ask who E.T. is).
> >
> That is a bad thing???
Yes - they are culturally ignorant and clueless. One time when I was about
ten I told my aunt that her carafe looked like a specimin-bottle (as one
does) and she asked how I could possibly know what a specimin-bottle looked
like since I'd never been in hospital. I was totally bewildered because I
thought - "well everyone knows what a specimin-bottle looks like". It
eventually occurred to me that she had no TV. I had seen countless
specimin-bottles in every cheesy comedy where someone has to go behind the
screen and give a urine sample and then asks for a second bottle or whatever
version. You have to constantly make mental adjustments while talking to
them for the fact that they don't grasp the simplest things or commonest
references.
> > To me - they were doing what 'they' wanted and preserving what 'they'
> > valued. What are alleged to be the dread dangers looming from 'apathy'
(of
> > all things) ?
> >
> Another Dark Age of superstition where curricula composed of such things
as
> creationism, psychology, environmentalism, multi-culturalism etc. things
> that have the effect of making children feel antipathy for their own
> culture, parents, and ultimately themselves leaving them more susceptible
> to the growing influences of mass-culture a.k.a. the culture of
> manipulation.
Or less able to be manipulated by their parents and the bits you approve of
picking and choosing to designate as their 'culture'.
> > Correct though it doesn't answer the question :) What is stopping them.
> They
> > have the little devils under their feet for countless hours while
they're
> > growing up.
> >
> That is not the case in most working families. There is a literal war
waged
> over the growing influence of media and its effects on the cultural
> inheritance of our children.
I was asking what was stopping parents (given the many hours they have over
say 18 years) teaching their children about their own religion. Your
response isn't about anything which stops them doing that (I mean how long
does it take anyway ?) - you're objecting to the "competing influences" of
which you disapprove.
> > Well when you come back as a rabbit and then a Muslim and then a Jew and
> > then a Hindu etc. I expect you'll feel the same way (except as the
> rabbit).
> > Most religions are incompatible with each other on key issues and it's
pot
> > luck which you get lumbered with but I feel lucky in my parents and
> > grandparents were all indifferent and before then I'm only aware of one
> > great-grandparent couple being religious - one a freemason and the other
a
> > Christian Scientist - so at least they had something to have continual
> > arguments about.
>
> Then you truly have no idea what it is you have missed, despite what you
> think.
I've missed being dragged to religious servives in which I had no interest
and generally bamboozled about religion. I had to tolerate an amount of that
all my different schools (assemblies, going to church on Ash Wednesday, a
vicar who used to come in and drone on every Wednesdy morning, religious
education lessons etc.). I didn't like any of those - I don't see that I
would have liked my parents infliction of similar any better. Besides which,
you've already admitted that your attempts to harrass your children are
competed with by a lot of things they find more attractive. I can't make out
what religion you have - Catholic or Buddhist - but where was the value in
the Catholicism (with the confession once a week and guilt-laying, child
abuse, hypocrisy, vicars having to conceal the children they have with their
housekeepers, opposition to contraception, papal 'infallibility', sexual
hang-ups etc.) if you are a Buddhist ?
> > I don't see how you can respect people who simply
> > 'follow-on' from their parents' religion. It reduces religion to some
> > horrible socio-cultural phenomena instead of an individual quest for
> truth.
> > Jesus, the Buddha etc. 'called' people 'individually'.
> >
> We 'follow-on' in quite a number of areas many of these we hesitate to
admit
> to. ;-)
Again - that doesn't approach the implied question. To say "I believe that
Jesus died on the cross for my sins" because my father did and his father
before him while a Buddhist says he disbelieves in God because his father
did and his father before him etc. It's not a respectworthy way of arriving
at one's beliefs (or practices come to that).
Jonathan
Jennifer Martin
have to ask everybody who's debating over this a question: how long has it
been since you were in school?
The high school I graduated from just had their band teacher reduced to
"part time" and the theatre director had to get a second job at a hotel to
pay his bills. Meanwhile the athletic coaches got raises.
I can see both your points: Classics are important, but just because
something is "classic" doesn't mean it has to be studied. To be honest, I
never liked Romeo and Juliet. I went nuts for Julius Caesar.
But there is a real danger in the school system of being too specialized.
Robert Heinlein himself said that "specialization was for insects." (Bonus
points to anybody who knows the whole quote, I'd bet a $1 nobody can recite
it without having to look it up) We're pushed into majors and fields of
study. We've lost the ability to be "renaissance people". There are no
modern Da Vinci's or Michealanglo's. People are either painters or
sculptors or they do "graphic design". And that's just talking about art.
There's nothing wrong with having classes in MTV. Hey, it might actually
make people aware of media trends and social change. There has been a
little of that in the 90's.
But the real reason I'm jumping in on this is the true subject, raising kids
in religion. I'm the product of a Catholic-Lutheran union (double up on the
guilt). I didn't get drawn to Buddhism because of some deep need for inner
peace, a lack of belief in God or any other reason like that. I was drawn
to Buddhism because of the theory that there are 83 problems in life. To be
honest, I don't know what they are, and I really don't care. It's
comforting to know no matter how screwed up my life is, I can just say it's
one of the 83, call myself normal and get on with my life, no guilt, no
fuss.
I've seen parents push their kids into sunday school classes, communion and
comfirmation to name a few and, since I am one of those kids, I can plainly
tell you I didn't get a thing out of it. I bided my time, memorized just
enough to get by, and get the hell out of Dodge the second the teacher let
us go. I suppose in my own twisted way, I'm trying to tell you to let your
kids decide for themselves. People have a way of finding what's best for
them. If your kids don't choose your religion it doesn't make you a bad
parent or a bad human being: It just means your kids are different from you.
Jonathan
Jennifer Martin <jennif...@home.com> wrote
> At the risk of jumping into something that is over my head (since it is),
I
> have to ask everybody who's debating over this a question: how long has it
> been since you were in school?
>
> The high school I graduated from just had their band teacher reduced to
> "part time" and the theatre director had to get a second job at a hotel to
> pay his bills. Meanwhile the athletic coaches got raises.
Jennifer - I left school (in Britain) in 1979 just as the Conservative Party
(right wing) started its 18 year reign. The system is still more similar
than different but they made a few changes. For instance, they were aware
that a lot of kids were 'slipping through the net' (and coming out of the
system illiterate and innumerate etc.) so they introduced testing of all
kids at various ages starting at 7. Before that there was a kind of
liberal/hippy ethos where e.g. competition and testing etc. were regarded as
potentially damaging to children's self-esteem etc. They also introduced a
National Curriculum which was like a 'core' of subjects which took up most
of the time and money so a lot of the (relatively) peripheral subjects (like
the ones you mentioned) were downgraded or just fell off altogether. They
also decided that parents should be able to choose the kids' schools and
made schools compete with each other instead of sticking to the old
'catchment area' system (which they said they believed would improve all
schools). To facillitate this they published comparisons between the
examination results for different schools so that parents could compare
(which again compounded the need to focus on exam results instead of the
relatitvely peripheral subjects.
Again - where schools had been funded by
local government, they made it possible for schools to be autonomous from
local government (more likely to be left-wing than the National right-wing
Govt.) and obtain a per child grant direct from the National Govt. (I
think). Because the child-population was falling - they also wanted to
relate spending to the number of children so we have crumbling buildings and
equipment and children sharing set-books and so forth and a lot of school
fundraising activities to try and supplement government money. A lot of this
was just politics in that the Government was in love with both 'market
forces' as a solution to everything in both the public and private sectors
and also they wanted to be able to deliver tax cuts most years and so wanted
all improvements to come out of 'rearrangements' that cost less or nothing.
Teacher-morale is at a very low ebb at the moment and there is difficulty
maintaining teacher-numbers and a boom in agency-teachers. There is also a
hell of a lot more beurocracy with more frequent school inspections and
having to meet all sorts of targets and tests and so forth and having the
curriculum more nailed down in terms of what kids learn when and where they
are supposed to be up to etc. John Gwynne's
ideas about the value of all these worthy cultural subjects don't have much
contact with the reality over here even when I was still at school and much
less so since then.
> I can see both your points: Classics are important, but just because
> something is "classic" doesn't mean it has to be studied. To be honest, I
> never liked Romeo and Juliet. I went nuts for Julius Caesar.
Over here the standard would be that you would go to a primary school from 5
to 11 and then do say 16 subjects from 11 to 14 then 8 subjects from 14 to
16 when you take 8 exams and then have the choice to leave or stay and do
another 3 subjects for another 2 years before leaving and going into work or
on to Higher Education. They might slip a 'middle-school' in there somewhere
or do the last two non-compulsory years at a seperate college or whatever. A
Shakespeare play would probably be one of the set-items if you chose English
Literature to be one of the 8 subjects at 14. I escaped ! but only about one
in four kids would have done English Lit. because it was one from a choice
of four subjects.
> But there is a real danger in the school system of being too specialized.
> Robert Heinlein himself said that "specialization was for insects." (Bonus
> points to anybody who knows the whole quote, I'd bet a $1 nobody can
recite
> it without having to look it up)
I can't but this amused me because if you happened to read my post
mentioning this aunt and uncle in north Oxford who hadn't heard of E.T. or a
kissogram - someone introduced Robert Heinlein to them at a party (did he
write 'Helliconia Spring' or somesuch and something with 'grass' in the
title ?) - I think he lives in the same road or something - and they'd never
heard of him and thought it was a bit uppity of him to expect them to have.
They said he looked a bit ticked off about it.
> We're pushed into majors and fields of
> study. We've lost the ability to be "renaissance people". There are no
> modern Da Vinci's or Michaelangelo's. People are either painters or
> sculptors or they do "graphic design". And that's just talking about art.
> There's nothing wrong with having classes in MTV. Hey, it might actually
> make people aware of media trends and social change. There has been a
> little of that in the 90's.
I have a personal 'Renaissance Man' ideal for myself but I think the two
main reasons it has tended to die a death are first - that in their day it
was possible for a bright, energetic and curious person to do an
intellectual Grand Tour and get round most of the subject areas because so
much less was known in each one of them whereas today you couldn't get to
any depth in the same subject areas without specializing. The other reason I
think is just money. Many people find it difficult to reverse out of a
speciality which people are paying them more and more for and go and start
something else from scratch at the entry level pay especially once the money
is already spoken-for for kids and mortgages and so forth. We are hellishly
richer than we were then and that must be at least partly bound up with
individual work-specialization (ever since Henry Ford started breaking a
whole job down into specialisms etc.). It's difficult to sqare the demands
of the job-market with the 'recreational' aspect of education for the sake
of it e.g. in Britain, suppose you work backwards from being a doctor, you
need mainly science 'A' levels from years aged 16 to 18 to be equipped for
the start of the University course and then you need the same Ordinary level
exam subjects from age 14 to 16 to be able to do the A levels and so on so
your options are fairly hemmed in from quite early on. In a way, I think
there is also a kind of professional-class cartel in a lot of areas where
they raise the hoops you have to jump through to protect the value of their
license to practice and consequently remuneration.
We have a lot of quite humdrum jobs where they try to raise them to
'professional' status to acheive this (over the same time as working-class
unions and cartels have been smashed to pieces). I've never earned more than
half the national average wage and usually nearer a quarter but in 1983 I
accepted a job with compulsory training as a student pharmacy technician in
a hospital pharmacy and I just accepted the ('block-release') training as an
occupational hazard and the wage was equal to $5300/yr. I tolerated this
course (going away to college for a fortnight every few weeks). I left befoe
I finished it although went back to work at the pharmacy three times on the
same wage but the course was all 'filler' and I can't remember learning
anything on it that I ever needed in the actual job and we were told we'd
all pass before we started because it was the first year of a new system and
they wanted it to be a 'success' but if I'd stuck with it and done the third
qualifying year of just doing the same job the pay scale is now 90% of
average earnings here. There are a lot of phoney 'qalifications' like that
here.
To me the 'Renaissance Person' ideal is more for people with that
temperament who are self-motivated self-educators. I don't see my school
days as contributing much to that in that a lot of the subjects that
interest me wouldn't even have started until beyond the school I was at
anyway (e.g. philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, religion in any depth,
mysticism, the mathematics of music etc.).
> But the real reason I'm jumping in on this is the true subject, raising
kids
> in religion. I'm the product of a Catholic-Lutheran union (double up on
the
> guilt).
!!
I didn't get drawn to Buddhism because of some deep need for
inner
> peace, a lack of belief in God or any other reason like that. I was drawn
> to Buddhism because of the theory that there are 83 problems in life. To
be
> honest, I don't know what they are, and I really don't care. It's
> comforting to know no matter how screwed up my life is, I can just say
it's
> one of the 83, call myself normal and get on with my life, no guilt, no
> fuss.
Sounds reasonable (in a bizarre sort of way :)
> I've seen parents push their kids into sunday school classes, communion
and
> comfirmation to name a few and, since I am one of those kids, I can
plainly
> tell you I didn't get a thing out of it. I bided my time, memorized just
> enough to get by, and get the hell out of Dodge the second the teacher let
> us go. I suppose in my own twisted way, I'm trying to tell you to let
your
> kids decide for themselves. People have a way of finding what's best for
> them. If your kids don't choose your religion it doesn't make you a bad
> parent or a bad human being: It just means your kids are different from
you.
As luck would have it - I don't have kids :) so I haven't crossed over into
'Parent-Land' where you just forget everything (e.g. that being made to
'try' one brussel sprout each time doesn't make you like them then or hate
them later either etc.).
Jonathan
Evelyn Ruut
"Jennifer Martin" <jennif...@home.com> wrote in message
news:F3iZ6.1196$P5.6...@news1.rdc1.tn.home.com...
> At the risk of jumping into something that is over my head (since it is),
I
> have to ask everybody who's debating over this a question: how long has it
> been since you were in school?
Really long. How's 1959? Yeah, I am getting old, but I remember it well.
> The high school I graduated from just had their band teacher reduced to
> "part time" and the theatre director had to get a second job at a hotel to
> pay his bills. Meanwhile the athletic coaches got raises.
This is one of my pet peeves. I think there is far too much emphasis on
sports and not enough on arts and other matters. Colleges will even pay
the way for some student if he is athletically gifted, and I think that is
so wrong. Also parents are too often deeply involved in these sports
efforts too, even though they will not matter an iota after the kid is out
of school for probably 99% of the young people.
> I can see both your points: Classics are important, but just because
> something is "classic" doesn't mean it has to be studied. To be honest, I
> never liked Romeo and Juliet. I went nuts for Julius Caesar.
There are probably as many different learning turn-ons, artistically
speaking, as there are people. My 87 year old father can still quote
certain classics he memorized in high school. The "must-know" classics of
his day are often not even mentioned today.
We are raising a generation of half-literate people who rely on spell check
for everything they write. There are top executives who make big
salaries who misspell everything. TV and movies and video games and an
over emphasis on school sports have taken the place of reading books which
would give better language skills. There is too much pressure, too much
homework, and not enough emphasis on how to think or on language skills, in
my opinion.
> But there is a real danger in the school system of being too specialized.
> Robert Heinlein himself said that "specialization was for insects." (Bonus
> points to anybody who knows the whole quote, I'd bet a $1 nobody can
recite
> it without having to look it up) We're pushed into majors and fields of
> study. We've lost the ability to be "renaissance people". There are no
> modern Da Vinci's or Michealanglo's.
You are making some good points, Jennifer, but I think that you are not
seeing the big picture on this one. Every generation has its DaVinci's,
but they are not doing the same things. Today the challenges and the
needs and interests of society are different, also the musical tastes are
different, so people of powerful creative nature are into different kinds of
expression. Only time will tell which of these will stand the test of time
to be considered a modern Da Vinci or Mozart or whatever.
>People are either painters or
> sculptors or they do "graphic design". And that's just talking about art.
Back to mentioning my daughter again, she was an incredibly talented artist
in high school. When she got out ALL she wanted to do was be an
illustrator. She wouldn't even consider any other path. She attended a
very good art school and then her life took a different tack when she
married a guy who was a natural born entrepreneur. Talk about a
renaissance man! This guy was first a (very talented) hippie musician,
then a road manager for broadway shows, then a carpenter who became one of
the top builders in our area, (he built some of the most creative,
innovative, magnificent and truly individual homes around here). Then he
started another business, which turned into 5, then narrowed down into the
three very successful businesses my daughter manages today. Him? he helps
her do it all... and continues to think. He has a million ideas all the
time. Nothing is ever stagnant and his creative mind is never still. If
you ask me, the guy is a Da Vinci in his own right, but he is probably never
going to be famous.
> There's nothing wrong with having classes in MTV. Hey, it might actually
> make people aware of media trends and social change. There has been a
> little of that in the 90's.
I agree that media trends and social changes will continue to happen
regardless of whether people try to make it happen or try not to.
> But the real reason I'm jumping in on this is the true subject, raising
kids
> in religion. I'm the product of a Catholic-Lutheran union (double up on
the
> guilt). I didn't get drawn to Buddhism because of some deep need for
inner
> peace, a lack of belief in God or any other reason like that. I was drawn
> to Buddhism because of the theory that there are 83 problems in life. To
be
> honest, I don't know what they are, and I really don't care. It's
> comforting to know no matter how screwed up my life is, I can just say
it's
> one of the 83, call myself normal and get on with my life, no guilt, no
> fuss.
LOL! The best way.....
> I've seen parents push their kids into sunday school classes, communion
and
> comfirmation to name a few and, since I am one of those kids, I can
plainly
> tell you I didn't get a thing out of it. I bided my time, memorized just
> enough to get by, and get the hell out of Dodge the second the teacher let
> us go. I suppose in my own twisted way, I'm trying to tell you to let
your
> kids decide for themselves. People have a way of finding what's best for
> them. If your kids don't choose your religion it doesn't make you a bad
> parent or a bad human being: It just means your kids are different from
you.
Well said, Jennifer.
I was sent to a Sunday School as a child in a very fundamentalist Christian
church which instilled guilt in you for just living. Original sin....
needing to be "saved" the pressure to be what they wanted you to be, was
very intense. Oddly enough, my parents did not attend or care. They
just used this strict religious church as a replacement for parenting us,
which they did very little of.
My sister rebelled and became a Catholic from which she lapsed. I became
philosophical and began to search for a different kind of spirituality as
far away from the guilt trips as I could find. My brother embraced the
guilt and is still a born-again. I raised my kids with as little or NO
religion as I could. I didn't want them to have to run or rebel or to
suffer the guilt. I wanted them to find their own way. One is now
Jewish, the other is not into formal religion and the other became buddhist
like me. I have no regrets on failing to "religionize" them. They are
all spiritual beings in their own way.
About my youngest son, who is a buddhist. I NEVER ever tried to make him
be a buddhist. I never preached at him, or suggested that he do it, or
urged him. I only spoke of how I it made good sense to me. One day he
amazed me by saying he wanted to take refuge. Same with my husband.
Nobody was more suprised or pleased than me when that happened.
Best Regards,
Evelyn
Jennifer Martin
seeing the big picture on this one. >Every generation has its DaVinci's,
but they are not >doing the same things. Today the challenges and >the
needs and interests of society are different, also the >musical tastes are
different, so people of powerful >creative nature are into different kinds
of expression. >Only time will tell which of these will stand the test of
>time to be considered a modern Da Vinci or Mozart or >whatever.
So based off that explination, Da Vinci is famous because at the time he was
the only one with an open mind? Isn't that kind of belittling what he did?
I mean, he painted, sculpted, and designed the helicopter for starters. If
all a person has to do to be remembered is to say or do something memorable,
then I guess people like Hitler, Mussolini and Farakkan belong on the list
of amazing people. Maybe I'm just missing your point.
Pyrrho
> So far I've only ever seen Tina Turner - Nichiren (?) and Richard Gere and
> Steven Segal (?) mentioned and I don't know anything about the last bloke
or
> if Richard Gere's is just some pro-Tibetan pro-'native-cultures' thing or
> actually Buddhism.
Steven Segal engages in hair curling violence in his movies and barely a
minute goes by without bones being snapped and blood being spilt. Gere and
Segal are some of the high profile followers of HHDL. I don't know about
their personal practices, though.
> No cultural offence intended but the Bhagavad Gita is a bit repugnant to
me these days.
It is very likely that the composer of the Bhagvad Gita was a "copy and
paste" artist who tried to bring together the various strands of
Vedic/Upanishadic thought. However, the heavy handed "Bakthi Yoga" in the
Gita is a little abhorrent to me, too.
> :) I must have lost my marbles because I had misfiled you away as English
> somehow. I had a whole load of people herded together in 'New England' -
> George, Tang, cupcake and Evelyn although cupcake seems to have moved to
> Missouri and I'm not sure where Evelyn is (near Woodstock) 'counts' as
'New
> England' either.
It doesn't, because it is in upstate New York and some silly New Englanders
might even take offence if NY were to be called a part of New England. You
will need to re-file me as an Eastern Indian living in New England and going
by the name of a Greek Sceptic. :)
> I'll never have enough cash to travel till I come into it but I've got my
American Tour planned out in the back of
> my mind to include New York and Boston and Massachusetts in general (the
> University bits) and New England in general and the cities over the border
> in Canada then South Dakota and the site of the massacre of Wounded Knee,
> Harney Peak and the Black Hills and across to Seattle (Jimi Hendrix's
> birthplace) and Vancouver.
Are there any rich members in the Windsor family you could marry? ;-)
Shiva
Evelyn Ruut
Hi Jennifer,
Yeah, you sure are. Think to yourself, if Da Vinci were born today, what
would he be doing? Designing computers or working for NASA? or what? If
Mozart were born today, what sort of music would he be writing? What
instrument would he be playing? You can bet they would be using the media
and means of today to express their genius, and the challenges of today to
inspire them.
Fame or infamy has nothing to do with what I was saying. Forget Hitler and
the rest of those villains you brought into the conversation.
I thought we were talking about genius, something special that springs from
a very few people. There was a little boy I saw on a tv show not long ago,
and that child has the highest IQ ever on record. They cannot even measure
it accurately! He is only a little boy and he is nearly through college.
It was amazing.
There is another child genius I saw also, a Gregory R. Smith, and all he
wants to do is to use his gifts to make life better for all mankind. His
conversation seemed very "buddhist" to me in fact. I wrote his website on
a scrap of paper - I will look for it now to share it with you. Ah ....
here it is; www.gregoryrsmith.com I have never been to this website, but
I saw the kid himself and was completely blown away with his altruistic
attitude.
People who say that the great minds of the past will never be matched today
are wrong. Todays better diet and medical care, as well as health care
during pregnancy insure more of such people, and not only that, but they are
recognized more readily due to our educational system. Such great minds
are a treasure for our future.
In the past so many children died from simple childhood diseases and medical
knowledge was so sparse that we have no idea what potential was never seen.
Please read the website on Greg smith and let me know what you think. What
is even better is that he is not the only child with exceptional
intelligence and abilities out there.
Best Regards,
Evelyn
John Gwynn
>
> Einstein's physics (and the focus is on the physics - not the personality
> cult) doesn't come into school physics in the U.K. until the last two
> (optional) years. Darwin comes into school biology (if people choose that
> between 14 and 16) a bit earlier than that. Shakespeare is usually among
the
> set books/plays for English Literature if people choose that between 14
and
> 16. I didn't choose English Literature so I've managed to avoid him. (I'm
> bright so I did more 'hard' than 'soft' subjects). I was more
adult-friendly
> than most of my cousins so I used to be targeted and harrassed by aunts
and
> a grandmother who were into the 'cultural canon'.
20 years from now you may see things differently,
we can only hope.....
;-)
johng
John Gwynn
"Pyrrho" <Pyrrho...@mailandnews.com> wrote in message
news:gBHY6.888$m2.1...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
>
> I live some 20 miles from Walden Pond, where he lived for a long period.
It
> is always amusing to see people flock to the place in fancy SUVs and
> monstrous cars to enjoy the "pristine outdoors" and "old world charm" of
> Walden Pond.
>
Likely seeking respite from their "quiet desperation."
It seems Thoreau was an unbeknownst buddhist....
johng
John Gwynn
"Evelyn Ruut" <mama...@ulster.net> wrote in message
news:IklZ6.11115$l5.93...@newsfeed1.thebiz.net...
> Dear Jennifer,
>
> This is one of my pet peeves. I think there is far too much emphasis on
> sports and not enough on arts and other matters. Colleges will even pay
> the way for some student if he is athletically gifted, and I think that is
> so wrong. Also parents are too often deeply involved in these sports
> efforts too, even though they will not matter an iota after the kid is out
> of school for probably 99% of the young people.
>
>
In terms of career choices perhaps not explicitly, but there are enormous
benefits to be gained in terms of athletic conditioning, discipline,
teamwork, sportsmanship, competition etc. Not to mention the important
health and lifestyle benefits which in turn....
The thing about sports is that most can participate, but only a few will
have sufficient talent to pursue the arts. (Although it would be
interesting to compare the distribution of exceptional talent in each) It
becomes a matter of where resources will have the most impact for the most
people...
There isn't anything inherently wrong about it, strictly speaking, it makes
complete (logical) sense.
Having artistic talent, particularly where there is a lack of same in the
parents, can be off-putting to the parents in the sense that they can
appreciate it but not participate due to its unfamiliarity (e.g. the film
"Billy Elliot"). Sports have a larger basis for parents to share and
participate without a learning curve....
Yes there is a lot of antagonism and hard feelings in each group. Perhaps
there is a middle way????
johng
Jonathan
Evelyn Ruut <mama...@ulster.net> wrote
> "Jennifer Martin" <jennif...@home.com> wrote
Maybe I'm just missing your point.
> Yeah, you sure are.
Evelyn - With all due respect, I think miscommunication has entered in
because Jennifer's original proposition (whether it was true or not) was
about the pressure in the modern world to *specialize* and the relative lack
of *polymaths* - people acheiving distinction across a range of
'disciplines' (Da Vinci and Michaelangelo being examples of the latter
rather than of *geniuses/genii*) -
> But there is a real danger in the school system of being too
> specialized....We're pushed into majors and fields of
> study. We've lost the ability to be "renaissance people". There are no
> modern Da Vinci's or Michaelangelo's. People are either painters or
> sculptors or they do "graphic design". And that's just talking about art.
In a subsequent post to Rett you wrote -
> Of course not, since cupcake never gets into real conversations with
> mahayanists, he only comes to jeer.
I hope I don't *only* come to jeer the mahayanists but I'd very much like to
'jeer' the following from ex Aleister Crowley disciple 'Namdrol' to
'Chris' - the whole post on mantras was diabolical but this is the bit that
really stuck in my mind -
Namdrol >>(....Basically, Chris, as a former Thelemite....)<<
Namdrol >>Never, in the history of Tantric Buddhism, has there been any
master who hiimself did not have a Guru.<<
Chris >>The Buddha himself did not have a master but achived Nirvana through
his own practices, now are you claiming that all of his followers be bound
into a sytem of Master and Student?<<
Namdrol >>First, you are merely recounting the outer, exoteric account of
Buddha's enlightenment. There are many other accounts that may be found in
the Tantras. In any event, the Buddha gained complete recall of all of his
past lives in the hours just prior to his complete enlightenment-- during
that time, he remembered the teachings on dependent origination and the four
noble truths. He then applied that teaching to his practice and acheived
what is known as Nirvana with a remainder, thus becoming an Arhant. Not to
mention the fact that he had two teachers of meditation while he was an
ascetic.<<
Jonathan
Jonathan
Jonathan
> > So far I've only ever seen Tina Turner - Nichiren (?) and Richard Gere
and
> > Steven Segal (?) mentioned and I don't know anything about the last
bloke
> or
> > if Richard Gere's is just some pro-Tibetan pro-'native-cultures' thing
or
> > actually Buddhism.
>
> Steven Segal engages in hair curling violence in his movies and barely a
> minute goes by without bones being snapped and blood being spilt. Gere and
> Segal are some of the high profile followers of HHDL. I don't know about
> their personal practices, though.
Shiva - That's terrible - I was expecting people to pop up all over the
place with Western Celebrity Buddhists I'd heard of and all I've got in my
'collection' (down in my cellar) is Tina Turner and she's into Nichiren
which barely counts anyway :)
> > No cultural offence intended but the Bhagavad Gita is a bit repugnant to
> me these days.
>
> It is very likely that the composer of the Bhagvad Gita was a "copy and
> paste" artist who tried to bring together the various strands of
> Vedic/Upanishadic thought. However, the heavy handed "Bhakti Yoga" in the
> Gita is a little abhorrent to me, too.
Likewise. I suppose I am used to the style of the philosophical schools and
Buddhism and suchlike which (allegedly) describe my experience of being "in
here looking out" so to speak (what Tang labels "enstasis" although I think
the word's too modern and specialized to be much use). I don't know how I am
supposed to relate to the kind of 'epic' thing you could put on a
cinema-screen "out there" or "in front of me" like the Mahabharata (?),
Ramayana (?), Greek Myths, Old Testament stories etc.
> > :) I must have lost my marbles because I had misfiled you away as
English
> > somehow. I had a whole load of people herded together in 'New England' -
> > George, Tang, cupcake and Evelyn although cupcake seems to have moved to
> > Missouri and I'm not sure where Evelyn is (near Woodstock) 'counts' as
> 'New
> > England' either.
>
> It doesn't, because it is in upstate New York and some silly New
Englanders
> might even take offence if NY were to be called a part of New England. You
> will need to re-file me as an Eastern Indian living in New England and
going
> by the name of a Greek Sceptic. :)
I'll do that (even though you seem too civilised to be an American :)
> > I'll never have enough cash to travel till I come into it but I've got
my
> American Tour planned out in the back of
> > my mind to include New York and Boston and Massachusetts in general (the
> > University bits) and New England in general and the cities over the
border
> > in Canada then South Dakota and the site of the massacre of Wounded
Knee,
> > Harney Peak and the Black Hills and across to Seattle (Jimi Hendrix's
> > birthplace) and Vancouver.
>
> Are there any rich members in the Windsor family you could marry? ;-)
Not now - I bought this $5 Astrology program at a car-boot sale and it had
20 famous people programmed into it initially and it would rate your
compatibility with them and I had this fabulous *astrological* compatibility
with Princess Diana. Unfortunately, she'd died three years too soon to
benefit from this fact...and the next on the list was Tom Cruise...and he
hasn't even got a sane religion....the next two are ones I put in - Ramana
Maharshi and "Mother Meera". My father found he was most compatible with the
person who wrote the program.
Jonathan
cupcake
Jonathan wrote:
>> Are there any rich members in the Windsor family you
>> could marry? ;-)
>
> Not now -
>
oh, i don't know... -- prince charles is free;
i bet the queen and the queen mum would approve
of *you*, jonathan! ;)
(and you could put a leash on "what's her face",
and take her for walks every day!)
Pyrrho
> Shiva - That's terrible - I was expecting people to pop up all over the
> place with Western Celebrity Buddhists I'd heard of and all I've got in my
> 'collection' (down in my cellar) is Tina Turner and she's into Nichiren
> which barely counts anyway :)
I don't know of even one Western celebrity who follows Theravada. Demi Moore
follows someone in a saffron robe. I am not sure whether it is a Hindu or a
Buddhist. But then, there are significant gaps in my knowledge of celebrity
culture :)
> Not now - I bought this $5 Astrology program at a car-boot sale and it had
> 20 famous people programmed into it initially and it would rate your
> compatibility with them and I had this fabulous *astrological*
compatibility
> with Princess Diana. Unfortunately, she'd died three years too soon to
> benefit from this fact...and the next on the list was Tom Cruise...and he
> hasn't even got a sane religion....the next two are ones I put in - Ramana
> Maharshi and "Mother Meera". My father found he was most compatible with
the
> person who wrote the program.
LOL. Does this mean the Diana would have been better off marrying Ramana
Maharshi?
Shiva
Namdrol
<snip>
> 'Chris' - the whole post on mantras was diabolical but this is the bit
that
> really stuck in my mind -
And precisely why was this post diabolical?
<snip>
cupcake
Namdrool wrote:
> Jonathan wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>> 'Chris' - the whole post on mantras was diabolical but this is the
>> bit that
>> really stuck in my mind -
>>
>
> And precisely why was this post diabolical?
>
><snip>
>
is this the sinister calling the diabolical "black"?
Jonathan
cupcake
> Re: Raising children in the Buddhist tradition
>
> From: "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net>
> Reply to: [1]"Jonathan"
> Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 23:11:31 +0100
> Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com
> Newsgroups:
> [2]talk.religion.buddhism,
> [3]alt.religion.buddhism
> Followup to: [4]newsgroups
> References:
> [5]<tjf4s4f...@corp.supernews.co.uk>
> [6]<3_MZ6.15$R5...@news.more.net>
why, that homely camilla bowles character, of course!
say! just, what kind of a brit are you, anyway?!! !
i bet you don't even know where trafalgar square is!
Jonathan
> > Shiva - That's terrible - I was expecting people to pop up all over the
> > place with Western Celebrity Buddhists I'd heard of and all I've got in
my
> > 'collection' (down in my cellar) is Tina Turner and she's into Nichiren
> > which barely counts anyway :)
>
> I don't know of even one Western celebrity who follows Theravada. Demi
Moore
> follows someone in a saffron robe. I am not sure whether it is a Hindu or
a
> Buddhist. But then, there are significant gaps in my knowledge of
celebrity
> culture :)
Shiva - You'd think after 2500 years that different religions would have
colour coordinated themselves to avoid this kind of ambiguity and you'll
have to watch out for the National Enquirer's next "When Buddhists Attack"
Celebrity Pull-Out section :)
>
> > Not now - I bought this $5 Astrology program at a car-boot sale and it
had
> > 20 famous people programmed into it initially and it would rate your
> > compatibility with them and I had this fabulous *astrological*
> compatibility
> > with Princess Diana. Unfortunately, she'd died three years too soon to
> > benefit from this fact...and the next on the list was Tom Cruise...and
he
> > hasn't even got a sane religion....the next two are ones I put in -
Ramana
> > Maharshi and "Mother Meera". My father found he was most compatible with
> the
> > person who wrote the program.
>
> LOL. Does this mean the Diana would have been better off marrying Ramana
> Maharshi?
No - It's a wierd program where the 'compatibility' isn't 'reciprocal' so
it's like a tangled web of x prefers y but y prefers z etc. (which is
probably the closest thing to reality about it) - she'd have been best off
with my sister's boyfriend followed by me. Ramana Maharshi is a bit
misanthropic and doesn't really get on with most people (apart from me and a
couple of others) especially women. With the original list plus him it came
up that all of the women were unsuitable for him. I "rigged" the list of
people I added to this original celeb list. Apart from family, I started
putting in people born within a few days of me in the same year. Then people
born on the same day in different years and people with the same 'Sun
Sign/Rising Sign' combination (Capricorn/Libra) as me. I haven't put them
all on yet but in this last category (I think - if the times are right) are
Albert Schweitzer, George I. Gurdjieff, Dr.Douglas Baker (Theosophist
mini-guru), Mother Meera, Ramana Maharshi and Swami Venkatesananda (sp?).
Most of these were interested in Indian Religion, left the country of their
birth and founded some kind of school or personality cult around themselves
and their teachings so that's what I'm going to do as soon as I can find
someone from the Royal Family to pay for it all :)
Jonathan
Jonathan
Namdrol <malcolm.smith@.genuity.com> wrote
> "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net> wrote >
> <snip>
>
> > 'Chris' - the whole post on mantras was diabolical but this is the bit
> that
> > really stuck in my mind -
>
> And precisely why was this post diabolical?
Too "used-car salesman"ish.
cupcake
cupcake wrote:
> say! just, what kind of a brit are you, anyway?!! !
>
> i bet you don't even know where trafalgar square is!
>
yes... trafalgar square was establish in commemoration
of the battle of trafalgar, in 1066, when st. george, the
dragon slayer, freed the hebrew slaves.
Jonathan
cupcake <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote
> > From: "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net>
> >cupcake <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote
> >>
> >> Jonathan wrote:
> >>
> >> >> Are there any rich members in the Windsor family you
> >> >> could marry? ;-)
> >> >
> >> > Not now -
> >> >
> >>
> >> oh, i don't know... -- prince charles is free;
> >> i bet the queen and the queen mum would approve
> >> of *you*, jonathan! ;)
> >>
> >> (and you could put a leash on "what's her face",
> >> and take her for walks every day!)
> >
> > Who's "what's her face" ? :)
> >
>
>
> why, that homely camilla bowles character, of course!
I wouldn't take her anywhaer - even on a leash - I have this strong
Ant-Papist streak.
>
> say! just, what kind of a brit are you, anyway?!! !
An "Ambassadorial" type Brit.
>
> i bet you don't even know where trafalgar square is!
It's a place in London with no statues of contaminated women or jeeps :)
Jonathan
cupcake <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote
Well you're better informed than most of the American tourists who want to
know why they built Windsor Castle in the such a stupid place right under
the flightpath of Heathrow Airport :) Incidentally butt-face - just out of
curiosity - what time is it in Columbia, Misery (the town where half the
population keeps leaving as soon as it gets the chance and the average
mental age is depressed by the presence of so many students) at the moment ?
cupcake
Jonathan wrote:
well, according to my clock (which is set to the atomic clock
of the u.s. naval observatory): at the moment i press the
"send" button, here in the command bunker for "communications
central" of "the world wide network" it is:
18:30 central time
which is, i believe, 5 hours earlier than GMT.
cupcake
cupcake wrote:
and, i would remind you, jonathan, that use of that "GMT"
is nothing more than a sentimental courtesy -- because!
the world is no longer operating on "GMT" -- for many
years, now, we have been operating on "UT" (universal time)...
...so, i guess the sun has finally set on the british
empire, eh, old chum? :)
Jonathan
It could well be. We're on "British Summer Time" at the moment where they
push the clocks an hour forward so it's 6 hours different to clocks here.
>
> and, i would remind you, jonathan, that use of that "GMT"
> is nothing more than a sentimental courtesy -- because!
> the world is no longer operating on "GMT" -- for many
> years, now, we have been operating on "UT" (universal time)...
>
> ...so, i guess the sun has finally set on the british
> empire, eh, old chum? :)
Well if it saves your American pride to think of Greenwich Mean Time as
"Universal Time" - be my guest - they're even calling the English language
something daft like that now too ! We have a *Commonwealth* now (for the
best quarter of the world's population :)
cupcake
Jonathan wrote:
ah yes, "daylight savings time"... i fergot about that --
i believe that was an american invention, that screwed
everything up to where nobody knows what time it is,
any more... so, what the heck! who cares!
>>
>> and, i would remind you, jonathan, that use of that "GMT"
>> is nothing more than a sentimental courtesy -- because!
>> the world is no longer operating on "GMT" -- for many
>> years, now, we have been operating on "UT" (universal time)...
>>
>> ...so, i guess the sun has finally set on the british
>> empire, eh, old chum? :)
>
>Well if it saves your American pride to think of Greenwich Mean Time as
>"Universal Time" - be my guest - they're even calling the English language
>something daft like that now too ! We have a *Commonwealth* now (for the
>best quarter of the world's population :)
ahhh, so the queen figured out a way to go on extorting money out
of all of her "colonies", eh?
Jonathan
> >> and, i would remind you, jonathan, that use of that "GMT"
> >> is nothing more than a sentimental courtesy -- because!
> >> the world is no longer operating on "GMT" -- for many
> >> years, now, we have been operating on "UT" (universal time)...
> >>
> >> ...so, i guess the sun has finally set on the british
> >> empire, eh, old chum? :)
> >
> >Well if it saves your American pride to think of Greenwich Mean Time as
> >"Universal Time" - be my guest - they're even calling the English
language
> >something daft like that now too ! We have a *Commonwealth* now (for the
> >best quarter of the world's population :)
>
>
> ahhh, so the queen figured out a way to go on extorting money out
> of all of her "colonies", eh?
Well she's too nice to do that - it's more of a mutual love-in kind of thing
:)
cupcake
Jonathan wrote:
...and, as luck would have it, (speaking of mutual "love-ins",
and stuff) -- certainly you've heard of "soixante-neuf",
n'est pas?... well, there's something called "68"; and
"68" means: "you do me, and i'll owe you one" :)
Jonathan
Well as luck would have it - even though your mind is like an open sewer -
that's more like how the Commonwealth works :)
cupcake
Jonathan wrote:
>> >> ah ha, so the queen *has* figured out a way to go on extorting
>> >> money out of all of her "colonies", after all, eh?
>> >
>> > Well she's too nice to do that - it's more of a mutual love-in
>> > kind of thing :)
>> >
>>
>> ...and, as luck would have it, (speaking of mutual "love-ins",
>> and stuff) -- certainly you've heard of "soixante-neuf",
>> n'est pas?... well, there's something called "68"; and
>> "68" means: "you do me, and i'll owe you one" :)
>>
>
> Well as luck would have it - even though your mind is like an
> open sewer - that's more like how the Commonwealth works :)
>
once again, thanks for acknowledging my brilliant and
incisive characterization of the british commonwealth...
(...though, it is a little distressing to hear you
characterize my on-going commentary on human sexuality
as and "open sewer" -- it sounds to me like you are
laboring under the same kind of infantile maladjustments
as our friend steven lightphhhhttt, who thinks that
sex between two men is "unnatural acts"... it's too
bad you and steven are so messed up in the brain --
the vibrancy of life is such a terrible thing to waste! :)
Namdrol
"cupcake" <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:2K0_6.32$R5....@news.more.net...
cupcake
Namdrool wrote:
>
> <plonk>
>
the feeling is mutual, i'm sure :)
anon...@nowhere.you.know
Jonathan wrote:
> cupcake <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote
>
>> Jonathan wrote:
>>
>> >> >> ah ha, so the queen *has* figured out a way to go on extorting
>> >> >> money out of all of her "colonies", after all, eh?
>> >> >
>> >> > Well she's too nice to do that - it's more of a mutual love-in
>> >> > kind of thing :)
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> ...and, as luck would have it, (speaking of mutual "love-ins",
>> >> and stuff) -- certainly you've heard of "soixante-neuf",
>> >> n'est pas?... well, there's something called "68"; and
>> >> "68" means: "you do me, and i'll owe you one" :)
>> >>
>> >
>> > Well as luck would have it - even though your mind is like an
>> > open sewer - that's more like how the Commonwealth works :)
>> >
>>
>> once again, thanks for acknowledging my brilliant and
>> incisive characterization of the british commonwealth...
>>
>> (...though, it is a little distressing to hear you
>> characterize my on-going commentary on human sexuality
>> as an "open sewer" -- it sounds to me like you are
>> laboring under the same kind of infantile maladjustments
>> as our friend steven lightphhhhttt, who thinks that
>> sex between two men is "unnatural acts"... it's too
>> bad you and steven are so messed up in the brain --
>> the vibrancy of life is such a terrible thing to waste! :)
>>
>
> If you think I'm going to goaded into 'proving' I'm not 'messed up in
> the brain' and labouring under 'infantile maladjustments' by sharing my
>'vibrancy of life' with you - you can think again :)
>
well... considering that:
1. you don't have a passport
2. and i don't have a passport
3. and, all the money you've got, in the
whole world, is the $150 per week, that
you live on
4. and, all the money that i've got, in the
whole world, is the $100 per week, that
i live on
i hardly think that i'm trying to goad you into a tryst,
at all (inasmuch as, as much as you are chomping at the
bit to do it, i hardly think you're gonna be swimming the
atlantic ocean, any time soon... even for me, jonathan!
...no, jonathan -- i just think yer messed up :)
Jonathan
cupcake <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote
> Namdrool wrote:
>
> >
> > <plonk>
> >
>
> the feeling is mutual, i'm sure :)
Except with something called "68" or the "Commonwealth" Position :)
Jonathan
cupcake <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote
> Jonathan wrote:
>
> >> >> ah ha, so the queen *has* figured out a way to go on extorting
> >> >> money out of all of her "colonies", after all, eh?
> >> >
> >> > Well she's too nice to do that - it's more of a mutual love-in
> >> > kind of thing :)
> >> >
> >>
> >> ...and, as luck would have it, (speaking of mutual "love-ins",
> >> and stuff) -- certainly you've heard of "soixante-neuf",
> >> n'est pas?... well, there's something called "68"; and
> >> "68" means: "you do me, and i'll owe you one" :)
> >>
> >
> > Well as luck would have it - even though your mind is like an
> > open sewer - that's more like how the Commonwealth works :)
> >
>
> once again, thanks for acknowledging my brilliant and
> incisive characterization of the british commonwealth...
>
> (...though, it is a little distressing to hear you
> characterize my on-going commentary on human sexuality
> laboring under the same kind of infantile maladjustments
> as our friend steven lightphhhhttt, who thinks that
> sex between two men is "unnatural acts"... it's too
> bad you and steven are so messed up in the brain --
> the vibrancy of life is such a terrible thing to waste! :)
If you think I'm going to goaded into 'proving' I'm not 'messed up in the
cupcake
Jonathan wrote:
if you weren't, you would have found a proxy boyfriend by
now, and been pretending it was *me*, the whole time
you were having sex with him! ! ! !
(and, then, sending me emails, telling me what
an absolutely devine time i had! :)
Jonathan
<anon...@nowhere.you.know> wrote
Well you've blown your chances now ! I could get a passport inside a month
and I have enough savings to support myself (at my current pathetic rate of
expenditure) for at least five years even if my benefit was stopped so it's
not like I couldn't come to America anytime I liked (if I didn't mind waving
goodbye permanently to a part of my savings and the interest it generates)
but if you think I'm going to have a tryst with someone who thinks I'm
'messed up' and who is flat broke with no reasonable explanation you can
think again :)
I bet I can get much better offers than yours for unwanted gay trysts ;)
cupcake
oooouuu wow! you mean, you actually have a whole thousand
dollars saved up, in the bank, earning interest, and everything? !!
oooouuuuu! ! ! !... I THINK I'M IN LOVE!
will you marry me?!
(i can get a passport in two weeks!)
>but if you think I'm going to have a tryst with someone who thinks I'm
>'messed up' and who is flat broke with no reasonable explanation you can
>think again :)
>
i get what i need :)
> I bet I can get much better offers than yours for unwanted gay
> trysts ;)
>
yeh -- maybe camilla bowles will put a leash on *you*, and
take *you* for a walk!
Daryl
> Daryl <gautam...@ajiva.com> wrote
>> "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net> wrote
>>> Joshua Wright <jwri...@home.com> wrote
>>> Can any other parents offer any wisdom and experience on how they
have
>>>> raised their children in the Buddhist tradition? Also, how do
couples
>>>> cope when raising their children with two different religious
backgrounds?
> > >
> > > Joshua - ('Ten-Fold Path' ? 'Namaste' ? Is this a wind-up ?) Why do you
> > > to brainwash the poor little sod at all ? The Buddha said that the truth
> > > that he taught couldn't be 'seen' by most people and Jesus said pretty
> > > the same thing. Why belabour a child with it ? Can't she just gravitate
> > > towards religion naturally if she's that way inclined at a later age
> > > about 18 years plus later) ?
> >
> > It's not a question of brainwashing or not, it's a matter of whose
> > brainwashing it is. Left to naturally gravitate somewhere a child
> > will probably go narcissist/consumer/patriot, which is the default
> > religion if you aren't explicitly provided with another one (okay,
> > maybe not everytime, but 9 out of 10 at least I'd guess).
>
> Daryl - (I ought to add that I'm not a Buddhist). I would say 'left to
> "naturally" gravitate somewhere' a child will gravitate towards whatever is
> appropriate to the stage it has reached (over lifetimes). You haven't said
> this or anything like it but to me - many religious people represent the
> 'collective' human situation like this - that we will all be stuck rotating
> on the spit of Samsara indefinitely or tainted by Original Sin and
> 'unredeemed' indefinitely (or whatever variant) unless we stumble across
> founding teacher's teachings about the "special" course of action we need to
> take to escape this fate. This makes it *crucial* that people are exposed to
> the teachings of the founders (if you can guess the right founder) or
> they'll just be blundering about in the dark to no purpose indefinitely. I
> don't see it like that (partly because all of the founders claiming to have
> attained liberation did so by blundering there untutored anyway and
> "Whatever is of the nature of arising, all that is of the nature of
> cessation").
Jonathan, you've oversimplified children, religion and civilization
horribly.
Any major religion today is a complex matter of culture and practice,
not
a simple seeking after a "founder's" idea of the right thing to do.
You
used the word "founder" a lot there, so much so that I'm afraid that
you are
lumping all religion (and culture) into the same bag with personality
cults.
Your idea that a child will naturally gravitate to whatever is
appropriate
at that age presumes that whatever a child gravitates to is
"appropriate"
(which is just another word for "right"). But "appropriate" is always
culturally defined. It's appropriate in some places to kill people
for
infidelity, and it's appropriate in other places to merely speak
disapprovingly of people who practice it. There is no "natural
rightness".
Religion at least makes explicit what is "appropriate". When it's
inexplicit, as in your idea of children "naturally gravitating",
children
have no clear guidelines, which makes it difficult for them to
exercise
the natural developmental instinct of learning how to get along with
others socially (obviously starting with parent/food-bringers). In
non-human animals this is a pretty simple thing. Human beings are
hugely
conceptual creatures, however, and develop very intricate social
patterns.
A cohesive set of norms and principles for making decisions is vital,
and
I don't believe that those would spring up naturally except at the
basest lord-of-the-flies level
It's very tempting to think that these things occur naturally. I
mean,
after all, we all probably know lots of people whose children grew up
just fine, polite, responsible, honest, and so on, without religious
indoctrination. But did they really? There is a huge inventory of
religiously inspired norms and habits already in our culture. The
world
those children grew up in, probably including their parents, sent them
all those signals, for better or worse. It's like the parents who
don't immunize their children then say "see it wasn't necessary" when
in
fact all that happened was that their children benefitted from herd
immunity.
> I think that if the child gravitates towards narcissism, consumerism or
> patriotism then that is where it 'should' gravitate and it won't be wasting
> it's time in some activity of life that (so to speak) 'doesn't count'
Rubbish. If they gravitate towards consumerism it's mostly because
we've allowed the TV (etc.) to tell children that they should "get
what you want" while simultaneously telling them _what_ they want.
I applaud Joshua for having the sense to consider creating his own
religious environment for his children, rather than leaving it to
others.
> (thinking of New Agers who divide the world into people who are and aren't
> on 'The Path') and you wouldn't be able to stop it. If you tried you'd just
When I think of New Agers I mostly think of the kind of "whatever
happens is natural and right" tripe you're spouting here.
> get a narcissistic 'Buddhist' or a consumer 'Buddhist' or a patriot
> 'Buddhist' (and then it would naturally gravitate to t.r.b) If the child
> naturally gravitates towards religion you couldn't stop that either.
My thesis is that religion isn't a thing to gravitate to, but a thing
that you will inevitably have...the set of things that define meaning
and responsibility and direction and so on in one's life. ReligionS,
IOW religions with names like Buddhism or Catholicism, are simply
explicitly recognized (and yes contrived, without apology) themes. My
thesis is also that your idea of "naturally gravitating" is hogwash.
People, children, work with what they are exposed to. Sure, I was
exposed to Anglicanism and wound up Buddhist, but I consciously went
from one considered religious viewpoint to another. Tell me how
conscious and considered the decision to fill one's life with designer
labels and Pepsi "stuff" is.
> Looking
> at the proportions of the population that 'subscribe' to a particular
> religion, comparing the West at present with other places at present is like
> comparing the West at present with the West in the past. Somehow some places
> e.g. Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia have an adherence level of 75-85%
> Buddhist and I expect it's similar in most Muslim countries which is like it
> used to be in the West a hundred or so years ago. To me, it's not that
> Western people are less religious now, it's just that there isn't the social
> pressure and other factors persuading them to go through the motions now. I
> think the greater freedom is like a disclosing agent which shows (better)
> the real range of values any population at any time would have if they were
> free to express them.
Horsefeathers. What you're calling "freedom" here is really just
freedom
to have the gap filled by promoters. For example, a presentation in a
school explaining the operation and virtue of the free-enterprise
system.
People in the west are no less religious nowadays, they're just less
conscious of the religious assumptions they work with. I say make it
explicit, so that we can know and truly consider what we are doing.
> I don't accept that modern Western societies "brainwash" people (to any
> extent that matters) into narcissism, consumerism, patriotism etc. because I
> don't see people as that 'sheeplike'. I see it more like the way the British
It's not a matter of being sheeplike. (by even introducing this
red-herring you are revealing your own religious point of view BTW;
the desire to be a self-defined non-follower) It's more like fish
being inevitably affected by the quality of the water they live in.
Now if those fish knew that they could choose clean water over
polluted water, they probably would.
> soldiers in the Falklands used to call the locals "Bennies" (after a
> wooly-hatted simpleton in a particular TV soap). When the officers found
> out, they ordered them to stop this. Over time they started referring to
> them as "Stills". When the officers heard about this they asked why and were
> told 'Because they're Still "Bennies"'.
And you don't see that as sheeplike? You're more pessimistic about
the proclivity of people to behave in a sheeplike way than I am,
and you don't even see it! Bah ah ah ah
> > > Is she going to be taught meditation - Right
> > > Mindfulness ?, Right Concentration ?, Right Livelihood, Right
> > > Speech/Gurgling ? What's the point ? Which parts of the Eightfold Path
> is
> > > she going to follow ?
> >
> > How much does it take to at least have more than one worldview to
> > draw upon in one's life?
>
> About half an hour's explanation-time I expect but what he was proposing
> goes way beyond that. The reduction of the list of 'world-views' on offer to
> narcissism/consumerism/patriotism and Buddhism is just so perverse to me
Strawman argument. That's not at all what I did.
> that I hope he doesn't have the same attitude towards his own society. As I
> observe it, people aren't so much brainwashed by answers as by questions
> which tend to 'fix' them on an 'axis' e.g. consumerism vs. its reverse or
> narcissism vs. its reverse or patriotism vs. its reverse because in families
> I've seen enough generations of it's not the same 'answers' that tend to
> transmit down the generations but preoccupation with the same particular
> 'questions'. If the parent has some very strong stance on some issue or
> other it seems to infest the child to the extent that the same issue becomes
> unduly prominent in the child's mind (among the massively diverse range of
> possible questions it could be asking itself) to the point where it has to
> decide where it 'stands' on the same 'issue'.
You're talking about extremes and obsessions here, which I'm not.
> I'm also not keen on the fact that (in this country at least) people look to
> children for a captive audience for all sorts of things that are too joyless
> to sell themselves (religion, morality, Latin, Greek, Classical Mythology,
> Shakespeare, those Olympic Sports that no-one wants to pay to watch,
> rote-learning poetry etc.).
Let's not forget hygeine, traffic-safety and mathematics. Do you even
*hear* yourself?
> If there was an enforcable rule whereby
> religious people were forbidden to tell anyone about their religion unless
> they were asked to explain to the person who asked the the secret of their
> equanimity, honesty, kindness, joyfulness etc. - religion would barely
> exist.
Nope, it would just be unacknowledged, unconsidered and unnamed, and
those things whose proponents are sly enough to not _call_ religion
would fill the same space. Even now, we teach a wide range of
religious
viewpoints in the schools as if they are given or objective truths
rather than religious viewpoints. I've already named a few.
--
Daryl
Jonathan
Daryl <gautam...@ajiva.com> wrote
> "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net> wrote
> > Daryl <gautam...@ajiva.com> wrote
> >> "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net> wrote
> >>> Joshua Wright <jwri...@home.com> wrote
> > > > Joshua - ('Ten-Fold Path' ? 'Namaste' ? Is this a wind-up ?) Why do
Daryl - You're obviously afraid of plenty of things but most religions are
personality cults (e.g. Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Confucianism,
Taoism, Islam etc.) which wouldn't exist but for their founder. Moreover
simply alluding to how "complex" it all is without explanation doesn't deal
with the proposition I was making (which you go on to attempt next without
understanding what you were reading anyway).
> Your idea that a child will naturally gravitate to whatever is
> appropriate
> at that age presumes that whatever a child gravitates to is
> "appropriate"
> (which is just another word for "right").
I never said "naturally gravitate to whatever is appropriate *at that age*"
but that it will naturally gravitate towards "whatever is appropriate to the
stage it has reached (over lifetimes)". The Buddha implicitly acknowledged
this in giving monks an immensely detailed set of instructions to follow -
householders a far less detailed one and the 'Kalamas' barely any at all -
each according to "the stage they had reached (over lifetimes)" (and those
three sets of people didn't even include those not inclined towards religion
at all). The Buddha didn't attain 'Nirvana' in one lifetime and he had his
bizarre 'grading' system where involving the maximum number of times it
would be necessary to return which implies that people come into this life
at different "levels" and naturally gravitate towards what is 'appropriate'
to the level they were at. I used 'appropriate' as opposed to 'right'
because 'right' has other shades of meaning. It is 'appropriate' for an
eight-year old girl to play with 'Barbie' till she gets bored and wants to
do something else - though not necessarily 'right' or 'wrong'.
<snip continuation of response based on not understanding my original>
Jonathan
Daryl
> Daryl <gautam...@ajiva.com> wrote
>
Jonathan:
> Daryl - You're obviously afraid of plenty of things
Yes Doctor.
> but most religions are
> personality cults (e.g. Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Confucianism,
> Taoism, Islam etc.) which wouldn't exist but for their founder.
No they aren't. A personality cult has a single charismatic figure
whose teachings are considered definitive, and that figure is usually
still alive and giving instructions/orders to his/her followers.
Even if the qualification of being alive is dismissed, Buddhism
hardly qualifies as one. Sure, Gautama the Buddha is the figurehead,
but so many others have expanded upon and reinterpreted Buddhism that
his teachings can hardly be said to be definitive. In the case of
Christianity, Jesus' relatively few words have been made a lot of by
theologians, philosophers and popes, and interpreted variously
through the lens of Judaism and Paul. Whole branches of
Christianity disagree on very fundamental things and certainly do
not behave in anything like the lockstep that personality cults do.
> Moreover
> simply alluding to how "complex" it all is without explanation
> doesn't deal with the proposition I was making (which you go on
The onus is on *you* to demonstrate how simple it is when
you make simplistic assessments of traditions that are
thousands of years old, not on me to expound at length to
demonstrate the complexity of very complex things.
> > Your idea that a child will naturally gravitate to whatever is
> > appropriate
> > at that age presumes that whatever a child gravitates to is
> > "appropriate"
> > (which is just another word for "right").
>
> I never said "naturally gravitate to whatever is appropriate *at that age*"
> but that it will naturally gravitate towards "whatever is appropriate to the
> stage it has reached (over lifetimes)".
Well then you aren't talking about children at all. I simply
allowed that the text you placed in parenthesis indicated that
you were reminding me of other causative factors rather than
making an essential modification to your unparenthesized text.
But since you now defend by claiming that the parenthesized
text is so important, I will point out that the same logic
could permit complete abdication of social or religious rearing
responsibilities by parents, since a being will naturally
gravitate to whatever is appropriate to it anyway as a result
of past lives. I doubt that you can provide any arguments for
that belief other than other equally naked assertions. Even
the idea that beings have previous lives at all is far from
establishable, or even safe to assume as a given in Buddhist
circles, since many Buddhists do not hold such a view of past
lives.
>The Buddha implicitly acknowledged
> this in giving monks an immensely detailed set of instructions to follow -
> householders a far less detailed one and the 'Kalamas' barely any at all -
> each according to "the stage they had reached (over lifetimes)" (and those
> three sets of people didn't even include those not inclined towards religion
> at all). The Buddha didn't attain 'Nirvana' in one lifetime and he had his
> bizarre 'grading' system where involving the maximum number of times it
> would be necessary to return which implies that people come into this life
> at different "levels" and naturally gravitate towards what is 'appropriate'
> to the level they were at. I used 'appropriate' as opposed to 'right'
> because 'right' has other shades of meaning. It is 'appropriate' for an
> eight-year old girl to play with 'Barbie' till she gets bored and wants to
> do something else - though not necessarily 'right' or 'wrong'.
Many acknowledge that the Buddha and his followers were teaching
within the belief paradigm of their locations and times and take a
lot of that kind of "bizarre" stuff as metaphorical rather than
literal. But, if you wish to believe in multiple lives and the
above system, and rely in the authority of those to make your
point (for you certainly aren't making it any other way) then it
would behoove you to show where the Buddha said that we shouldn't
raise our children Buddhist, and then show how non-Buddhist
parents should take that to also mean that they shouldn't raise
their children in their own religions, which was after all your
general point and the context of this thread which was started
by a parent asking about resolving the issue of his being
Buddhist and his wife being Christian.
--
Daryl
Jonathan
> >
> Jonathan:
> > Daryl - You're obviously afraid of plenty of things
>
> Yes Doctor.
>
>
> > but most religions are
> > personality cults (e.g. Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Confucianism,
> > Taoism, Islam etc.) which wouldn't exist but for their founder.
>
> No they aren't. A personality cult has a single charismatic figure
> whose teachings are considered definitive, and that figure is usually
> still alive and giving instructions/orders to his/her followers.
> Even if the qualification of being alive is dismissed, Buddhism
> hardly qualifies as one. Sure, Gautama the Buddha is the figurehead,
> but so many others have expanded upon and reinterpreted Buddhism that
> his teachings can hardly be said to be definitive. In the case of
> Christianity, Jesus' relatively few words have been made a lot of by
> theologians, philosophers and popes, and interpreted variously
> through the lens of Judaism and Paul. Whole branches of
> Christianity disagree on very fundamental things and certainly do
> not behave in anything like the lockstep that personality cults do.
Well I hope you're happy to have proved to yourself that the way you define
'religion' and the way you define 'personality cult' are different. You only
introduced the phrase 'personality cult' because of your 'fear' that that I
might be lumping religion and 'personality cults' together into the same
bag when I repeated the word 'founder/s' in an unrelated context. It makes
no difference to any objection I raised to the religious indoctrination of
children whether what they are indoctrinated with is the product of one
person or a commitee of millions of 100 generations (or whether it meets
your definition of a "lockstep" thing or not). My use of the word 'founders'
was within the proposition that most religious people hold it to be crucial
for people to be exposed to religion or they'll be floundering around
indefinitely 'in Samsara' or under 'original sin' or somesuch. Most 'world'
religions spread by evangelism for this reason. You have your own version of
what people will 'naturally gravitate' towards - 90+% going to the 'default
religion' of "narcissist/consumer/patriot".
>
> > Moreover
> > simply alluding to how "complex" it all is without explanation
> > doesn't deal with the proposition I was making (which you go on
>
> The onus is on *you* to demonstrate how simple it is when
> you make simplistic assessments of traditions that are
> thousands of years old, not on me to expound at length to
> demonstrate the complexity of very complex things.
Rubbish. Joshua asked for people's two penneth. I added mine. Even though
mine was damn rude - he thanked 'everyone' who answered. You then *wanted my
attention* for your morbid fears that if people weren't brainwashed by
religion - 90+% of them would be brainwashed into
narcissism/consumerism/patriotism instead as a 'default religion'. The
onanism is in you to deserve my attention for more of your morbid fears.
Your bizarre accusation of oversimplification has nothing to do with
anything I wrote but with your private obsessions about whether 'religions'
(as you define them) are the same as 'lockstep' 'personality cults' (as you
define them).
> > > Your idea that a child will naturally gravitate to whatever is
> > > appropriate
> > > at that age presumes that whatever a child gravitates to is
> > > "appropriate"
> > > (which is just another word for "right").
> >
> > I never said "naturally gravitate to whatever is appropriate *at that
age*"
> > but that it will naturally gravitate towards "whatever is appropriate to
the
> > stage it has reached (over lifetimes)".
>
> Well then you aren't talking about children at all. I simply
> allowed that the text you placed in parenthesis indicated that
> you were reminding me of other causative factors rather than
> making an essential modification to your unparenthesized text.
> But since you now defend by claiming that the parenthesized
> text is so important, I will point out that the same logic
> could permit complete abdication of social or religious rearing
> responsibilities by parents, since a being will naturally
> gravitate to whatever is appropriate to it anyway as a result
> of past lives.
The 'parenthesized text' was always important.
I don't buy into the illusions of 'free-will' or 'randomness' so parents
will do what they will do anyway but obviously I am saying they 'could'
abdicate from religious rearing - that's the whole point. I don't know what
'without social rearing' could mean outside your imagination.
> I doubt that you can provide any arguments for
> that belief other than other equally naked assertions. Even
> the idea that beings have previous lives at all is far from
> establishable, or even safe to assume as a given in Buddhist
> circles, since many Buddhists do not hold such a view of past
> lives.
You want to indoctrinate children with a raft of 'Buddhist' beliefs that are
"far from establishable" and then moan when my objection is based on one of
the founder of Buddhism's beliefs which is "far from establishable". I can't
'prove' reincarnation any more than your Buddha could - if it occurs it will
be 'proven' to each individual when they reach the appropriate 'level' (and
acquire the relevant 'Supranormal Powers' which your Buddha taught the
existence of).
> raise our children Buddhist...
He said after his 'awakening' that the truth which he taught could not be
seen by most people. You make up these self-serving 'rules' where it's my
job to find the "You shouldn't raise your children as Buddhists" Sutta. The
Buddha taught most to his immediate entourage who were the most 'advanced'
and also took the most stringent vows including celebacy. I haven't ploughed
through the canon long enough to discover whether he ever said anything at
all about how anyone let alone non-celibate Westerners who like to imagine
themselves 'Buddhists' should bring up their children. He taught dukkha and
the cessation of dukkha to those few people who he considered capable of
'seeing' the truth he had discovered and I haven't seen an instance to date
where he taught 'gratuitously' to people who weren't asking him for answers
or teaching.
> ..and then show how non-Buddhist
> parents should take that to also mean that they shouldn't raise
> their children in their own religions, which was after all your
> general point and the context of this thread which was started
> by a parent asking about resolving the issue of his being
> Buddhist and his wife being Christian.
It doesn't "behoove" me to do anything of the sort. Josh thanked everyone
for their original responses including mine which was a series of perfectly
reasonable *questions* -
> Joshua - Why do you want
> to brainwash the poor little sod at all ? The Buddha said that the truth
> that he taught couldn't be 'seen' by most people and Jesus said pretty
much
> the same thing. Why belabour a child with it ? Can't she just gravitate
> towards religion naturally if she's that way inclined at a later age (like
> about 18 years plus later) ? Is she going to be taught meditation - Right
> Mindfulness ?, Right Concentration ?, Right Livelihood, Right
> Speech/Gurgling ? What's the point ? Which parts of the Eightfold Path is
> she going to follow ?
Jonathan
Daryl
> Daryl <gautam...@ajiva.com> wrote
> > "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net> wrote
> > > Daryl <gautam...@ajiva.com> wrote
> > >
> Jonathan:
> > > Daryl - You're obviously afraid of plenty of things
> >
> > Yes Doctor.
> >
> >
> > > but most religions are
> > > personality cults (e.g. Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Confucianism,
> > > Taoism, Islam etc.) which wouldn't exist but for their founder.
> >
> > No they aren't. A personality cult has a single charismatic figure
> > whose teachings are considered definitive, and that figure is usually
> > still alive and giving instructions/orders to his/her followers.
> > Even if the qualification of being alive is dismissed, Buddhism
> > hardly qualifies as one. Sure, Gautama the Buddha is the figurehead,
> > but so many others have expanded upon and reinterpreted Buddhism that
> > his teachings can hardly be said to be definitive. In the case of
> > Christianity, Jesus' relatively few words have been made a lot of by
> > theologians, philosophers and popes, and interpreted variously
> > through the lens of Judaism and Paul. Whole branches of
> > Christianity disagree on very fundamental things and certainly do
> > not behave in anything like the lockstep that personality cults do.
>
> Well I hope you're happy to have proved to yourself that the way you define
> 'religion' and the way you define 'personality cult' are different.
I think that you'll find those to be pretty-well consensus definitions,
and that it's your definition that is peculiar.
> You only
> introduced the phrase 'personality cult' because of your 'fear' that that I
> might be lumping religion and 'personality cults' together into the same
> bag when I repeated the word 'founder/s' in an unrelated context. It makes
> no difference to any objection I raised to the religious indoctrination of
> children whether what they are indoctrinated with is the product of one
> person or a commitee of millions of 100 generations (or whether it meets
> your definition of a "lockstep" thing or not).
Sure it makes a difference, the difference between a mainstream
religion and a cult, the latter insinuating quite a bit, as does
the word "indoctrination". Your heavy-handed hyperbole says
a lot more than you acknowledge.
> My use of the word 'founders'
> was within the proposition that most religious people hold it to be crucial
> for people to be exposed to religion or they'll be floundering around
> indefinitely 'in Samsara' or under 'original sin' or somesuch. Most 'world'
> religions spread by evangelism for this reason. You have your own version of
> what people will 'naturally gravitate' towards - 90+% going to the 'default
> religion' of "narcissist/consumer/patriot".
Glossing over my entire point about one being deliberate and
conscious as opposed to being undeliberate and therefore
unconsidered for what it is. Oh ya, that was in the part you
snipped from the previous post.
> > > Moreover
> > > simply alluding to how "complex" it all is without explanation
> > > doesn't deal with the proposition I was making (which you go on
> >
> > The onus is on *you* to demonstrate how simple it is when
> > you make simplistic assessments of traditions that are
> > thousands of years old, not on me to expound at length to
> > demonstrate the complexity of very complex things.
>
> Rubbish. Joshua asked for people's two penneth. I added mine. Even though
No problem with adding yours, but obviously you don't like to be
argued with. Ooh, I've got "morbid fears" and "obsessions". Yes
Doctor. Heh.
> mine was damn rude - he thanked 'everyone' who answered. You then *wanted my
> attention* for your morbid fears that if people weren't brainwashed by
> religion - 90+% of them would be brainwashed into
> narcissism/consumerism/patriotism instead as a 'default religion'. The
> onanism is in you to deserve my attention for more of your morbid fears.
Whether I deserve your attention or not matters little to me. By
posting in a newsgroup you are inviting attention.
> will do what they will do anyway but obviously I am saying they 'could'
> abdicate from religious rearing - that's the whole point. I don't know what
> 'without social rearing' could mean outside your imagination.
Obviously you don't.
> > I doubt that you can provide any arguments for
> > that belief other than other equally naked assertions. Even
> > the idea that beings have previous lives at all is far from
> > establishable, or even safe to assume as a given in Buddhist
> > circles, since many Buddhists do not hold such a view of past
> > lives.
>
> You want to indoctrinate children with a raft of 'Buddhist' beliefs that are
> "far from establishable" and then moan when my objection is based on one of
> the founder of Buddhism's beliefs which is "far from establishable". I can't
> 'prove' reincarnation any more than your Buddha could - if it occurs it will
> be 'proven' to each individual when they reach the appropriate 'level' (and
> acquire the relevant 'Supranormal Powers' which your Buddha taught the
> existence of).
"My Buddha" taught something more significant than your mish-mash
of conveniently literal interpretations. No doubt you believe the
Jataka tale where the newborn baby buddha walked and had blossoms
instantly spring from his footsteps.
Clearly Buddhism is more of a fundamentalist personality-cult to
you than it is to most Buddhists. You state that you aren't a
Buddhist then make your arguments from what you appear to think
is within Buddhism, as if you were a fundamentalist Buddhist.
Wow.
> > ..and then show how non-Buddhist
> > parents should take that to also mean that they shouldn't raise
> > their children in their own religions, which was after all your
> > general point and the context of this thread which was started
> > by a parent asking about resolving the issue of his being
> > Buddhist and his wife being Christian.
>
> It doesn't "behoove" me to do anything of the sort. Josh thanked everyone
> for their original responses including mine which was a series of perfectly
> reasonable *questions* -
Let's see about that. You said:
> > Joshua - Why do you want
> > to brainwash the poor little sod at all ?
Back where I come from (Earth) that's called a _leading_ question.
It's not really a question at all, but an accusation.
Other people "want to brainwash", have "morbid fears" and
"obsessions", "imagine themselves Buddhists", etc., but you
have "perfectly reasonable questions".
It's all so clear now.
--
Daryl
Jonathan
> > Well I hope you're happy to have proved to yourself that the way you
define
> > 'religion' and the way you define 'personality cult' are different.
>
> I think that you'll find those to be pretty-well consensus definitions,
> and that it's your definition that is peculiar.
I think that you'll find that most people could give a rat's ass about your
desperate need to seperate the two concepts you're so obsessed by. Most
people don't sit around deciding whether e.g. Christian Science, Theosophy,
Branch Davidianism, Scientology etc. should be 'classified' as your
'religions' or your 'personality cults'.
> > You only
> > introduced the phrase 'personality cult' because of your 'fear' that
that I
> > might be lumping religion and 'personality cults' together into the same
> > bag when I repeated the word 'founder/s' in an unrelated context. It
makes
> > no difference to any objection I raised to the religious indoctrination
of
> > children whether what they are indoctrinated with is the product of one
> > person or a commitee of millions of 100 generations (or whether it meets
> > your definition of a "lockstep" thing or not).
>
> Sure it makes a difference, the difference between a mainstream
> religion and a cult, the latter insinuating quite a bit...
You're clearly obsessed by the alleged 'difference' which is why you
introduced this irrelevance (to anything I wrote) about 'personality cults'.
I've already dealt with that in the last sentence above.
> ...as does
> the word "indoctrination".
If the word "indoctrination" is too strong for what a lot of people on these
boards experienced then I expect they will also have a moan about it (though
they haven't yet).
> > will do what they will do anyway but obviously I am saying they 'could'
> > abdicate from religious rearing - that's the whole point. I don't know
what
> > 'without social rearing' could mean outside your imagination.
>
> Obviously you don't.
Obviously you don't either and 'social' rearing was just something to try
and sneak in alongside 'religious' rearing so you could pull yet another
fraud where if I dispense with 'religious' rearing I'm also dispensing with
'social' rearing whatever the hell that is supposed to mean since children
don't generally bring themselves up in isolated caves.
> > > I doubt that you can provide any arguments for
> > > that belief other than other equally naked assertions. Even
> > > the idea that beings have previous lives at all is far from
> > > establishable, or even safe to assume as a given in Buddhist
> > > circles, since many Buddhists do not hold such a view of past
> > > lives.
> >
> > You want to indoctrinate children with a raft of 'Buddhist' beliefs that
are
> > "far from establishable" and then moan when my objection is based on one
of
> > the founder of Buddhism's beliefs which is "far from establishable". I
can't
> > 'prove' reincarnation any more than your Buddha could - if it occurs it
will
> > be 'proven' to each individual when they reach the appropriate 'level'
(and
> > acquire the relevant 'Supranormal Powers' which your Buddha taught the
> > existence of).
>
> "My Buddha" taught something more significant than your mish-mash
> of conveniently literal interpretations.
In your "make it up as you go along" version he taught whatever you want him
to have taught but the words attributed to him in the canon all support my
point of view.
Your desire to indoctrinate children into your personal "make it up as you
go along" 'Buddhism' finds no support from the Buddha. I shouldn't even have
to wheel him out because if you were anything like a real Buddhist you would
care about what he taught anyway.
> > > ..and then show how non-Buddhist
> > > parents should take that to also mean that they shouldn't raise
> > > their children in their own religions, which was after all your
> > > general point and the context of this thread which was started
> > > by a parent asking about resolving the issue of his being
> > > Buddhist and his wife being Christian.
> >
> > It doesn't "behoove" me to do anything of the sort. Josh thanked
everyone
> > for their original responses including mine which was a series of
perfectly
> > reasonable *questions* -
>
> Let's see about that. You said:
>
> > > Joshua - Why do you want
> > > to brainwash the poor little sod at all ?
>
> Back where I come from (Earth) that's called a _leading_ question.
> It's not really a question at all, but an accusation.
Tough Shit. The best chance you have of finding anyone to comply with all
your myriad petty rules and regulations is to find some children to
indoctrinate.
> Other people "want to brainwash", have "morbid fears" and
> "obsessions", "imagine themselves Buddhists", etc., but you
> have "perfectly reasonable questions".
>
> It's all so clear now.
Good - better late than never and just to remind you of the what those
"perfectly reasonable questions" were before you tried to draw me into
whacky world of obsessions with the dangers of patriotism and adverts for
American fizzy sugar water and the importance of how you define 'cults' and
how the Buddha really taught something completely different (which never
manages to put in an appearance) etc. -
> > Joshua - Why do you want
Daryl
Enjoy your characterizations and beliefs about other people's
motivations for wanting to raise children in their religions,
and about my motivations for expressing ideas about that and
about the role of religion in general. I have no further
interest in this exchange, which has become mostly projection
and hyperbole on your part, and which speaks for itself. Do
have the last word if you wish.
--
Daryl
"Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net> wrote in message news:<tjktfo1...@corp.supernews.co.uk>...
cupcake
Daryl wrote:
>Jonathan,
>
>Enjoy your characterizations and beliefs about other people's
>motivations for wanting to raise children in their religions,
>and about my motivations for expressing ideas about that and
>about the role of religion in general. I have no further
>interest in this exchange, which has become mostly projection
>and hyperbole on your part, and which speaks for itself. Do
>have the last word if you wish.
>
no, i'll take the last word, for him --
eahhh! ..!..
Jonathan
cupcake <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote
Well it's all very simple :) Daryl (t.r.b's answer to 'Gilly') has been
*CURED* (Everybody say "Hallelujah - It's a miracle" !!) of wanting to
continue to "discuss"
a couple of fragments from my brilliant post to Joshua Wright. He doesn't
like the way I "characterize" his "motivations" which he says involves
"mostly" "projection" and "hyperbole" on my part. (I think "hyperbole" is
the what self-conscious Civil Servants, Politicians, Lawyers and suchlike
say in official-sounding memos and letters when they mean "exaggeration" if
that helps :) So he's *LIBERATED* himself (Everybody say "Praise be to
Buddha the compassionate and merciful"!!) from this alleged "discussion".
cupcake
> Re: Raising children in the Buddhist tradition
>
> From: "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net>
> Reply to: [1]"Jonathan"
> Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 01:22:03 +0100
> Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com
> Newsgroups:
> [2]talk.religion.buddhism,
> [3]alt.religion.buddhism
> Followup to: [4]newsgroups
> References:
> [5]<5127a553.0106...@posting.google.com>
> [6]<P6O_6.3$Ha7...@news.more.net>
daryl's an idiot -- ferget about him...
... so, what's up with your reading on dodgechum, huh?
Jonathan
cupcake <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote > >
> > From: "Jonathan" <jojen...@lineone.net>
Well (despite the fact that your posts sometimes unaccountably dump a load
of excess 'gubbins' at the top) Pyrrho's 20KB post on that very subject
should be made compulsory reading. I find things I disagree with in the vast
majority of posts by the vast majority of people on here - it would just
take to long to try and answer them all so I'm highly selective - the only
posters that spring to mind where I usually just think "that's
true....that's true...that's true..." are the Pyrrho and the late Peachie.
Anyway this Dzogchen post (although it was an assemblage by at least four
people) was like that (which is friggin' miraculous to me for a 20KB post).
It's the first Buddhist text or description I've come across which has
reflected back to me enough of the *core* realizations that I have had in a
way which proves to me that the author knows what they are talking about. So
read Pyrrho's 20KB post :)
cupcake
Jonathan wrote:
>>
>> daryl's an idiot -- ferget about him...
>>
>> ... so, what's up with your reading on dodgechum, huh?
>
>Well (despite the fact that your posts sometimes unaccountably dump a load
>of excess 'gubbins' at the top) Pyrrho's 20KB post on that very subject
>should be made compulsory reading. I find things I disagree with in the vast
>majority of posts by the vast majority of people on here - it would just
>take to long to try and answer them all so I'm highly selective - the only
>posters that spring to mind where I usually just think "that's
>true....that's true...that's true..." are the Pyrrho and the late Peachie.
>Anyway this Dzogchen post (although it was an assemblage by at least four
>people) was like that (which is friggin' miraculous to me for a 20KB post).
>It's the first Buddhist text or description I've come across which has
>reflected back to me enough of the *core* realizations that I have had in a
>way which proves to me that the author knows what they are talking about. So
>read Pyrrho's 20KB post :)
>
well, all of the gubbins is just the "header" of the
originators post, that i am sometimes to lazy to delete,
and replace with " xxx wrote: "
as for your question about the "holy spirit":
you've got to understand, jonathan that there are a
lot of people in this world who believe in a God;
ie. a God that is a real entity, a being... a
being who created and creates the world...
now, the christians have cooked up three aspects of
God (the "Trinity") -- ie. there is God, the essential
being, who is way far off and we never hear from him
directly; then there is Jesus, who is the aspect of
God who came to earth to mingle with men, and do some
stuff for us (to kind of tweak the "machine", a bit,
so to speak; and then, there is the "Holy Spirit",
which is the aspect of God that communicates with
men directly, by variously coming into their "hearts"
or talking to them, or inspiring them... yada, yada...
it's all total trash, and belief in such stuff would
certainly be a hindrance to anyone aspiring to follow
The Buddha's Path.
...and, as for the "dogcrap" article you want me
to read; -- that's not the point! -- the point
is that you read it and i want to know what you thought
was so damn gorgeous!... and, then, i'll just
shoot it down, point by point as you print it to screen :)
Jonathan
cupcake <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote
Belief in all your Nichiren and Mahayana and Vajrayana and Pure Land with
your Nagarjunas and Hui-Nengs and chanting and 'prayer-wheels' etc. would
certainly be a hindrance to anyone aspiring to follow Jesus's Path. Although
I appreciate yopur 'lucid exposition' of the "Trinity" - I need a Real
Scholar to help me get at what Jesus may have meant (prior to the later
'cooking up' of the "Trinity") by 'Holy Spirit' and why blaspheming it was
the unforgivable sin. There might be some simple explanation. For instance -
it might be the divine aspect within oneself which 'blaspheming' might be
like the denial of or whatever.
> ...and, as for the "dogcrap" article you want me
> to read; -- that's not the point! -- the point
> is that you read it and i want to know what you thought
> was so damn gorgeous!... and, then, i'll just
> shoot it down, point by point as you print it to screen :)
That's why I haven't helped you in that ambition. I was hoping you'd read it
and then start trying to quibble with it and I could shoot your quibbliges
down point by point as you printed them to screen :) If you really want to
do it your way - you'll have to try and use the explanations of just a few
aspects of its gorgeousness which I've already given to Pyrrho :)
cupcake
Jonathan wrote:
OHHHHH! So! i'm not REAL enough for you, now,
huh, jonathan?!
... well... o.k., then -- if that's the way
you feel about it, then, jonathan.... :(
Thos638
> now, the christians have cooked up three aspects of
> God (the "Trinity") -- ie. there is God, the essential
> being, who is way far off and we never hear from him
> directly; then there is Jesus, who is the aspect of
> God who came to earth to mingle with men, and do some
> stuff for us (to kind of tweak the "machine", a bit,
> so to speak; and then, there is the "Holy Spirit",
> which is the aspect of God that communicates with
> men directly, by variously coming into their "hearts"
> or talking to them, or inspiring them... yada, yada...
> it's all total trash, and belief in such stuff would
> certainly be a hindrance to anyone aspiring to follow
> The Buddha's Path.
>
Amazing! For someone who doesn't believe in this "crap", youi have made a very
astute explanation of it but don't you remember that it less important what a
person believes than what he does?
cupcake
Jonathan wrote:
> cupcake <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote
>
>> Jonathan wrote:
>>
>> >>
>> >> daryl's an idiot -- ferget about him...
>> >>
>> >> ... so, what's up with your reading on dodgechum, huh?
>> >
>>
>> as for your question about the "holy spirit":
>> you've got to understand, jonathan that there are a
>> lot of people in this world who believe in a God;
>> ie. a God that is a real entity, a being... a
>> being who created and creates the world...
>>
>> now, the christians have cooked up three aspects of
>> God (the "Trinity") -- ie. there is God, the essential
>> being, who is way far off and we never hear from him
>> directly; then there is Jesus, who is the aspect of
>> God who came to earth to mingle with men, and do some
>> stuff for us (to kind of tweak the "machine", a bit,
>> so to speak; and then, there is the "Holy Spirit",
>> which is the aspect of God that communicates with
>> men directly, by variously coming into their "hearts"
>> or talking to them, or inspiring them... yada, yada...
>> it's all total trash, and belief in such stuff would
>> certainly be a hindrance to anyone aspiring to follow
>> The Buddha's Path.
>>
>> (btw, it is interesting to not that the "student-
>> teacher" relationship of "guruism" is almost
>> precisely the same as this :)
>>
>
>
>> ...and, as for the "doggrin" article you want me
>> to read; -- that's not the point! -- the point
>> is that you read it, and i want to know what you thought
>> was so damn gorgeous!... and, then, i'll just
>> shoot it down, point by point, as you print it to screen :)
>>
>
>That's why I haven't helped you in that ambition. I was hoping you'd read it
>and then start trying to quibble with it and I could shoot your quibbliges
>down point by point as you printed them to screen :) If you really want to
>do it your way - you'll have to try and use the explanations of just a few
>aspects of its gorgeousness which I've already given to Pyrrho :)
>
fine, then -- better to just let sleeping dogs lie :)
Jonathan
(I must have missed this paragraph before but...)..."Oh no it isn't". Well
OK it might be but the point is as follows. Jesus's teaching got "screwed
over" certainly by the time of the gospel authors and Paul if not before
then. Where he says things like "Before Abraham was I *am*" and that we are
"...in the world but not 'of' it" and "The foxes have their holes and birds
have their nests but the son of man has nowhere to rest his head (or
similar)" they are scurrying about to provide implausible and contradictory
lineages for his physical body etc. The whole "Son of God" thing, the
"Trinity", the whole "Sacrificial Death for our sins" etc. is all later
addition and isn't present in the words attributed to him. To comprehend
what he was talking about is to simultaneously comprehend that within the
gospels, his words contradict those of the gospel authors and are like
diamonds amongst pig-swill. In the Gospel of Thomas he tells Thomas that he
is *not* his 'master' because Thomas has drunk from the bubbling stream
which Jesus has measured out (or similar) so in his own words he is not
attempting to set up permanent "guru-teacher" relationships but for them to
see for themselves what he could see and "liberate" them from the need for
those.
When I drifted into trb I couldn't see what most of the posts (which tended
to contradict each other) had to do with religion so I eventually tried to
get hold of enough of the words attributed to the Buddha to check out the
founder. If I'd just settled for a load of old Nichiren and Zen riddles as
being 'Buddhism' I would have just wandered off thinking Buddhism was a load
of old donkey (which is the 'dumbassed' approach you have taken with respect
to Christianity :)
> >> ...and, as for the "doggrin" article you want me
> >> to read; -- that's not the point! -- the point
> >> is that you read it, and i want to know what you thought
> >> was so damn gorgeous!... and, then, i'll just
> >> shoot it down, point by point, as you print it to screen :)
> >>
> >
> >That's why I haven't helped you in that ambition. I was hoping you'd read
it
> >and then start trying to quibble with it and I could shoot your
quibbliges
> >down point by point as you printed them to screen :) If you really want
to
> >do it your way - you'll have to try and use the explanations of just a
few
> >aspects of its gorgeousness which I've already given to Pyrrho :)
> >
>
> fine, then -- better to just let sleeping dogs lie :)
Better for you but I *want* you to read Pyrrho's 20KB post - so do it now :)
cupcake
Jonathan wrote:
> cupcake <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote
>
>> Jonathan wrote:
>>
>> > cupcake <boj...@my-deja.com> wrote
>> >
>> >> Jonathan wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >> daryl's an idiot -- ferget about him...
>> >> >>
>> >> >> ... so, what's up with your reading on dodgechum, huh?
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >> as for your question about the "holy spirit":
>> >> you've got to understand, jonathan that there are a
>> >> lot of people in this world who believe in a God;
>> >> ie. a God that is a real entity, a being... a
>> >> being who created and creates the world...
>> >>
>> >> now, the christians have cooked up three aspects of
>> >> God (the "Trinity") -- ie. there is God, the essential
>> >> being, who is way far off and we never hear from him
>> >> directly; then there is Jesus, who is the aspect of
>> >> God who came to earth to mingle with men, and do some
>> >> stuff for us (to kind of tweak the "machine", a bit,
>> >> so to speak); and then, there is the "Holy Spirit",
>> >> which is the aspect of God that communicates with
>> >> men directly, by variously coming into their "hearts"
>> >> or talking to them, or inspiring them... yada, yada...
>> >> it's all total trash, and belief in such stuff would
>> >> certainly be a hindrance to anyone aspiring to follow
>> >> The Buddha's Path.
>> >>
>> >> (btw, it is interesting to not that the "student-
>> >> teacher" relationship of "guruism" is almost
>> >> precisely the same as this :)
>> >>
>
> (I must have missed this paragraph before but...)...
>
that's cuz i added it to a later post, while you were sleeping :)
well, as much as i would love to be your obedient sex slave --
i think i'll pass gas, on this one...
sir isack FigNewton said: "i make no hypothesis"; and, well,
little petie hooper sez: "i make, only, assertions"
(and, it is entirely up to little intellectual busy-bodies,
like you, and rett, and dar, and ridgard haze, and
peachie... to lend support to those assertions, lest
the point be lost to the world :)
so! get busy! (and hurry up, too :) cuz pretty
soon we're all gonna be old and very dead! :(
(...and that's not gonna be fun fer anybody :(
Gelong Shenphen
>"Joshua Wright" <jwri...@home.com> wrote in message
>I am hard pressed to explain _how_ I am going to teach these
>values to my child.
- I'm not a parent but a monk, nevertheless, I'm taking care of
children since over 16 years.
I do think the best way to "teach" your children is to be the best
exemple of a Dharma being, living Dharma in your daily life, doing
your practice (if any), your meditation openly, explaining the value
of every life (not to kill, even insects), the value of the truth (to
do not lie), the value of respecting others and other's things (not to
steal), and the value of having a clear mind ready at any moment to
help other (not to take alcohol and intoxicant).
Slowly, small children join freely the meditation and mantra
recitation because they feel good, good energy, calmness, etc...
From time to time, go to a Temple with them, do your prayers, etc...
It's by seeing you and appreciating what you're doing, how you behave
through Dharma understanding, that you children will appreciate Dharma
values...
Warmest regards, Gelong SHENPHEN
--------------------------
http://dharmaling.org
http://amchi.org
Steve Kellett
teach my kids my beliefs (all my deepest worries must be his cartoons - john
sebastian) at the same time allowing them to follow their own course. they
have both individually at different times investigated christianity and
buddhism and islam. they no longer follow any specific faith but the
knowledge they have absorbed from their investigations has helped make them
two very fine young adults.