Rant of the Day 7-31-2013 - by K.M.Kaung

Rant of the Day --

Quote of the day - from a crazy psychiatrist much disliked by everyone at a social gathering in the USA - "What kind of Buddhist are you?  You eat meat!" 

Shortly thereafter this nut job left the group due to her own financial problems and no one missed her.

I didn't even have time to explain to her that The Buddha himself ate meat, and that he died either of eating truffles or a pork curry that went bad (according to a Pali lecturer whose name I have forgotten) but He did not wish to decline (merit) to the donor, and so he ate the spoiled food anyway even though he knew it would lead to His death, and that Buddhist villages like the one Melford Spiro studied, are often next door to Muslim villages.

So if 969 succeeds no one will eat beef or Indian danbauk or samosas??  And no appom (from Sri Lanka) or mon sein paung (string hoppers) and no bayakyaw etc?

I remember how in the U Nu days we needed to go to the Shan States to eat beef.

Go figure, when so much, including Buddhism, came to us from India.

The very concept of reincarnation is in fact Hindu, not Buddhist (Prince Siddartha was born a Hindu) and there are so many Buddhists including the nun next door perpetually talking about Hindu gods, such as Brahma, and Surasvati (Thurawadi Medaw) and so on and so one - Thagya Min (Sakkya) -

and the art and the temple designs etc.

And women who want children going and making offerings at the Hindu linga at the Hindu temples.

I don't understand this purist fundamentalism and small mindedness at all.

Like the otherwise I guess OK friend who was so shocked, my word shocked, because I walked into a replica of a Hindu temple at an Indian Festival in Edison, NJ.  (I regularly walk into churches too) - but I do draw the line at going to a witches' wicca meeting - My friends from the Christian Association went, and then said they could feel the evil and left.

(for those of you who don't know, the largest number Indian-Americans live in Edison)

or the recent FB "friend" and the insufferable little mission boy, who asked me on first meeting me "What's your religion?"

to confound them I said, "Buddhist-Christian" which is accurate enough, or I could have said atheist, or agnostic or "Believes in Big Bang Theory" and "monkeys are related to humans" -- but not "humans are descended from monkeys" --

I'm too tired to type any more.

And what about the Hindu Temple brought en bloc and installed in the Phila. Museum of Art, and the original Ishtar (Baghdad) Gates at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, or the Elgin Marbles, or the numbers of Khmer ancient statues I see all the time in rich people's houses profiled in books like Architectural Digest.

Maybe that is why the articles seldom mention the homeowners by name -

it is always "according the the husband" and "the wife says her favorite color is mauve"

Imagine - so rich and you have to hide. 

I would rather, as my cousin Mongoose says, "have an umbrella and hold my head up and walk all over New York City."

Though really, to walk around NY for a few days and stay in a nice safe boutique hotel on the Upper East Side, you would need to spend at least $2000.

K.M.Kaung