for goodness' sake, people, buddhism is a *religion*. in the process of state formation, there comes a point in which the state needs to unify different ethnicities. to do so, it co-ops religion and/or political ideologies. the buddha knew this would happen and tried to stop it, but he also knew he couldn't. if buddhism were to exist and flourish, it would come to be distorted in this manner. that's the only real prophecy in buddhism - the decay of the dharma, and one of the factors discussed is 'excessive political control'. and, to be fair, whether or not women could be monks or merely nuns, though this debate occurred after the buddha's death.
i just had someone tell me, in another forum, that i'm too confrontational and arrogant to be a buddhist (because i told him that the bonsai pots he buys off ebay are tacky and not at all zen - that a modern zen pot would be a terra cotta pot from home despot with some age, not a Zen(TM) pot from a factory in japan). i replied that his comment was offensive in a curious way - it was Orientalism. he was accusing me of diverging from the stereotypical asian/buddhist, which is a back handed compliment, as i'm euro-american. that also didn't go over well. go figure.
then again, i was told i'm too arrogant for therapy (when i refused medication on the grounds that i could buy better on the street corner and that if i wanted prozac, i'd order it off the internet). should i listen to this? do i come off as arrogant?
