Different sides to Buddhism/2009/08/21/different-sides-to-buddhism/

Different sides to Buddhism

Comment on Spiritual Psychologies

James said,
21.08.09 at 8:39 am ·
“James wants to cut to the Pali tradition, fascinating, and a good topic for this blog, for various reasons (I cannot, however, endorse anything).”

I’m not endorsing anything either and I approach the topic as an amateur scholar. My main point in bringing up the topic is to suggest that Buddhism is not a monolithic entity as Westerners assume, and that we are really dealing with very different religions that are grouped under “Buddhism.” I see absolutely nothing wrong with bringing up the differences between these religions (why should it be any more controversial than bringing up the vast differences between Kant and Hegel?). It is not like Theravadins and Mahayanists are going to start slaughtering each other like Shiites and Sunnis.

Good points, and this approach is both useful and welcome here. I was merely trying to proceed through some of Bennett’s material both critically but also in a way that will show what he was about.
In any case, Pali Buddhism is a useful zone of study, and somthing that the Gurdjieff types might bail out into.