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suenam,
I may be wrong, but are you intentionally trying to distract from my original posting? I am not open to that.
Maybe it has not become clear: I do not have a single little bit of trust towards buddhism or buddhists anymore. I explicitly forbid any buddhist leader, teacher or whatever to try to force teachings into or manipulate my life in any way. Doing so is against my expressed will and is a violation of my privacy.
(for all readers of this forum: there were so called genuine teachers who liked to lie down with their students, whose students needed psychotherapy or psychiatric help afterwards, or who directed the inauguration of the temple of one of the teachers who liked to lie down with his students. again, "genuine" is a word for a basic value - this is step 1 in action.)
Just to clarify - in my mind there is a difference between Buddhism as a personal practice and the group dynamics that you are writing about here.
It may well be that in other groups the ideas communicated may always not correspond to the level of practice in everyday life, however upon examination those ideas may be found to be in keeping with what I am calling "genuine" Buddhism. (Certainly there are issues with institutionalisation both in traditional Buddhist countries and in the west which are beyond the scope of this thread).
In DWB this is not the case. I actually do think that in DWB they are much closer to "practicing what they preach," but if one examines what is taught it may be seen to be dualistic and therefore not genuine Buddhism at all.
apologies for any confusion.
On a wider level, one thing I was questioning was the idea you put forward when you wrote, "Can we agree that in pre-buddhistic times we were for one part our mind, school, education, maybe science? For another part we were our heart, family, friendship, love? For another part we were our soul, faith, art, music? All that pretty much unspiritualized, not always bright and shiny but harmlessly enjoyable."
To me this sounds not dissimilar to Nydhal himself who seems to see the relationship of the west to Africa and the Middle East, or indeed the situation with his relationships with women as simply "good clean harmless fun".
Surely any value system is subject to question and self-examination and can never claim such a naïve innocence?
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2012 02:51AM by suenam.