Dear Ven. Sujato, Gunnar and friends,

thanks again.

Gunnar, I know what you mean, with family members of different
religious background, it is more important than ever to maintain and
cherish the bonds. For one thing, I do not know if that's exactly
what the Buddha meant.

As much as I understand, religions known to the Buddha is different
from what we know about religions today. During Buddha's time, the
social system in India is such that there is a priestly class, that
is the brahmins. These priests perform rituals and are also educators
and learners of the vedic literature. They had a high social status.
More importantly, the education and rituals they perform are highly
regarded, and the Buddha himself no doubt benefited from them.
Therefore, they should be respected, in that aspect.

Then, of course, we have the samanas or ascetics. Like the Buddha,
these people gave up their worldly life in search of the solutions to
human suffering. They live the lives of beggars, asking for food,
sleeping under trees and in graveyards, etc. I agree that these
ascetics can have very bizarre practices and beliefs, not only by
today's standards but by Buddha's standards too. However, for their
high aspirations, they should be respected. In fact, the Buddha even
said, they should be offered food and not deprived of it.

Many of the religions that we know today can be considered even more
bizarrrre by the Buddha if only He is around. But, I think we can
fairly well extend our compassion to these people. By "these people",
I mean the "clergy" of religions in this very context, not
the "laity" or the followers of any religion.

There are exceptions, though, as I mentioned in my previous mail
about a "use your brain or lose it" case. I think compassion has to
work in hand with wisdom, or it will reduce to blind compassion.

As for the relationships with "other people", the Buddha has advices
in other parts of the Tipitaka too. I think that is what you are
trying to discuss. We can also extend the concept of "embrace and
respect" to them, but it would NOT be giving away your money to them!
And it doesn't mean you have to agree with all of their ideas. It was
not what I intended, neither was it the Buddha's intention.

I think nowadays people do not really respect each other, so much so
that the word has erroded, and to 'respect' (verb) someone means you
have to treat him to high tea? or to agree with him on everything?.
To me, it is very simple, to respect is not to disrespect. With this
simple definition, you can respect everyone on the street. There is
no need to pretend or put on a show, Buddhists are not good actors.

As for your family, I think it is definitely more than respect, there
is almost love, family bonds and so on involved. Even for friends,
friendship is more than just respect. I am not going further into
this.

Bhante: I do not agree with what the Sikh say. If I happen to see
him, I promise to disagree with him with respect. :-)


metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Bhante Sujato wrote:

> for me personally, its more important that I
> have a reasonably good relation to my Protestant
> brother and Catholic sister, and to my friends of
> quite a range of different opinions. I don't think I
> must respect every single one of their ideas, though.

We must distinguish between a person and their ideas - but even if we
wish to refute their ideas, this must be done with compassion.

I believe it is a subtle form of disrespect to refuse to engage in
religious debate. The implication is that if we disagree, we'll have
to end up fighting each other, so best pretend we really all agree.
Surely it is a sign of maturity that people can have different
opinions, discuss them honestly, agree to disagree, and still respect
each other - as we do often on this list!

Once when i was staying at Wat Nanachat we were visited by a
wonderful Sikh teacher - totally warm, totally outrageous. He walked
into the sala saying, 'We are all brothers! We must looooove each
other!' He told us that if we want to meditate, first we must, you
know, go with our wife, then we can sit and meditate. One of the
monks mentioned that the Buddha said we must let go of that kind of
thing. He replied: 'Yes, you are right! I am right, too - Everybody
is right!'