DISQUS

Namdrol:

"Usually people are pissed off at us because they don't like the fact that we don't have room for Buddhism Lite (tm)."

The fact is, the Buddha taught about a Buddhism Lite(TM), and it wasn't the slander to the Tathagata that Alexander Berzin commits with his "Dharma Lite" essay, it is in fact the very same pre-Buddhist, superstitious and speculative views of reincarnation, "merit-making", and deterministic karma that the junta at e-sangha insist are integral to the Buddha's teachings.

These views he called "right view that is tainted". He clearly points to these views as inferior to his own teachings, which he called "Noble Right View that is untainted, transcendent, a Factor of the Path".This Noble Right View and these teachings are based on discernment, and empirical observation of the way things are, not the speculative view or superstitions of the Real Buddhism Lite (TM)

The Buddha declared his teachings to be "visible here and now, timeless, open to inspection, transcendent, and to be experienced by the wise for themselves." He could never have made such a claim were his own unique teachings based in superstition and speculative views. Berzin -- and now Namdrol and the E-Sangha Thought Police -- slander the Buddha with their claim that his pristine teachings were "Dharma Lite".

Gee, bukowski, that'[s a pretty succinct re-statement of the Party Line, and nothing else.Pretty specious argumentation, considering the effort and money your masters have spent advertising themselves as "The Buddhism Portal", Which implies that it represents ALL of Buddhism, which it clearly does not. If you were to advertise yourselves as "The Vajra-Gestapo Portal", that might be a little closer to the truth and also serve to warn unknowing and unwary visitors what kind of snake pit they were wandering into.

And, as one member there seems to suggest, you could just have the courage to post on all of your pages the banner one of your moderators came up with banner to reflects your stance:

<img src="http://www.lioncity.net/buddhism/uploads/1183663048/gallery_414_82_1185044080.jpg">

Lisa Mann, are you still a moderator at E-Sangha, and if not, why7?

...which puts Namdrol precisely in the shoes of one Sati the Fisherman's Son, who claimed that the Buddha taught that consciousness transmigrates through existences in the Mahatanhasankhaya Sutta. Of course, the Buddha castigated him and reiterated the proper Dharma teaching that forms of consciousness only arise dependent upon contact between sense organs/systems and objects that arise within the scope of their abilities. The eye sees a form, and eye-consciousness arises. The mental processes sense an idea or mental activity, and mind-consciousness arises. The object-forms leave the "field of view", and that consciousness that sensed their presence disappears. This is the arising and cessation of "the world" as the Buddha defined it in the Loka Sutta in the Ninandavagga and elsewhere. The Buddha was explicit in MN38 that these six forms of consciousness, arising as each of the six sense bases interacts with their objects, are the only forms of consciousness.

Another aspect of Namdrol's statement is the underlying assumption that if one does not actively believe in his position, that one must actively oppose it. He fails to see the false duality of his position, probably intentionally, in order to submit a straw man argument against anyone who finds speculative views concerning any "life after death" to be irrelevant to the Buddha's core teachings, which are designed to eliminate suffering. He and the rest of the Dharma Nazis at eSangha do not recognize any sort of middle position in which one does not consider theories of reincarnation or tit-for-tat notions of karma to be relevant to the elimination of ignorance, greed and loathing. Anything short of outright belief or silence on the part of "non-believers" is considered "anti-reincarnatoin" and therefore "annihilationism" and treated with progressively more vicious attacks on the boards and warnings, suspensions, and banishments behind the wings. The sort of straw-man attack you see above is one of the main weapons the eSangha mods use in their ongoing war on those they view as heretics or "non-believers", as they have no real recourse to the suttas.

The biggest problem is that they claim to be a "Buddhist" forum, and many people who find themselves drawn to the teachings of the Buddha wind up there because they are at the top of the Google hit lists and come away with a bad taste in their mouth and a skewed impression of what Buddhism is about because they get beat up in the forums by the mods and their legions of toadying brown-nosers that report any activity or discussion that doesn't follow their party line. They claim to provide a Buddhist forum, but they are not a Buddhist forum at all, as they censor and attempt to silence legitimate teachings of the Buddha -- particularly those which challenge speculative views, especially their own -- and in this way they do not represent Buddhism as a whole, rather their own narrow views and beliefs of Buddhism. One can call oneself a Buddhist in their forum only as long as one toes the party line of their narrow speculative views. They are more akin to a totalitarian cult that demands blind obedience from its members. They are to Buddhism what Fred Phelps is to Christians.

Yes, it's not an open forum. The reason it's not an open forum is so that they can run roughshod on those who do not fall in their lines. In doing so, it becomes a lie to call it a "Buddhist" forum.