[Advaita-l] bauddha mata

[Satish Arigela]

Jaldhar writes:
>I gave up right here. 
 
Good. You made the right choice though for the wrong  reasons. :-)

  

> Everyone with an opinion on this topic knows why 
>everyone else  is wrong but they are right "in reality."  
 
First: Read each and every word carefully. Not simply understanding the 
sentences but thinking about the implications and comparing with other known 
data.

Second: This is not a final verdict. If there is lot of evidence to the contrary 
of-course, this opinion will be discarded.

Third: The article was not authored because somebody "felt so". There is  years 
of study behind that and the study of not just one person but by reviewing  lot 
of existing literature on the subject.
Four : This is not the opinion of one person.
Five: When studying nAstIka texts it helps to set aside one's AstIka bias for a 
moment and see what the bauddha's say about themselves. The article in question 
is paraphrasing how the bauddha-s saw themselves by quoting their own words, 
incidents and opinions. So this is not somebody's opinion about bauddha mata.
Six: Keep in mind that we are talking of early bauddha-s with focus on buddha 
himself. I stress this because people will be quick to quote some later bauddha 
literature with their anti-vedic overtones. This we are aware ..so we don't need 
quotes from later bauddha literature

>Not one of them 

>can prove it.  Let us accept that some  questions are doomed to remain 
>unanswered and ask different, more  fruitful ones.

Since that would require posting many articles and extracts from many more, I 
restricted to few sentences. In this case, I mentioned buddha's advice to a set 
of people as a starting snippet:

"this is in fact  reflected in his advice to the councilors of the vR^iji 
gaNarAjya to continue  their rituals as ordained to the deva-s and to the 
brAhmaNa-s to continue  studying their veda."