30 August 2010

In the No Comprendo Zone

I don't understand the motivation to make the Dharma look good by making disparaging comments about the content or practices of other traditions.

I really don't understand it when such comments reference the speaker's experience as a child: "When I was in Sunday School...," "In confirmation class I asked the teacher x, and she said...," "In fourth grade the priest said y, and I thought...". At that age the boys thought girls had cooties and sex was icky. Good thing most people don't base their adult dating habits on their pre-adolescent worldviews! So why does the third-grader's smartass comment about some aspect of religion count as an enlightened slam-dunk on a millennia-old tradition?

Or, perhaps more to the point, why does one's third-grade self, which is many decades long gone, still demand a hearing? Any why do teisho-givers yield the floor to it?

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