I agree entirely that we should focus on the message of any given passage.
Personally I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone else how they should interpret any Sutra. I have no teachings of my own. I do my best to understand what my teachers say. And they certainly don’t mistake the literal and the metaphorical.
The Lankavatarasutra in early Indian Madhyamaka Literature
Re: The Lankavatarasutra in early Indian Madhyamaka Literature
Just to add, “mythological” does not mean untrue or not useful.
We are free to take the story of Ravanna the Demon King of Lanka, as a literary device, imported from the Bhagavad Gita, or we are free to believe that the same Demon King before he was killed by Rama for abducting Sita, had conversations with The Buddha before the Buddha left his footprint in the rock.
It is not a matter of ‘respect’. There are many ways of understanding a narrative.
We are free to take the story of Ravanna the Demon King of Lanka, as a literary device, imported from the Bhagavad Gita, or we are free to believe that the same Demon King before he was killed by Rama for abducting Sita, had conversations with The Buddha before the Buddha left his footprint in the rock.
It is not a matter of ‘respect’. There are many ways of understanding a narrative.
Re: The Lankavatarasutra in early Indian Madhyamaka Literature
What Aemilius shared with us was a number of assertions by the late Christian Lindtner (1949-2020) about the authorship of texts in the Nāgārjuna corpus, some of which are demonstrably false.Zhen Li wrote: ↑Sun Jul 04, 2021 3:32 pm
Rather than discussing miracles or events, as if debating history, we should be focusing on the message of the sūtra and the statements that Aemilius has kindly shared with us. How do they help us? What can they do for us on the path? Can we/how can we use them in daily life?
Christian Lindtner (1949-2020) was a very strange bird. whose scholarship seems to have descended into a form of gematria: https://www.jesusisbuddha.com/CLT.html
Then there is his flirtation with and then reversal on the subject of the holocaust denial:
https://dagobertobellucci.wordpress.com ... -lindtner/
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... stian.htmlToday, as far as I can judge, Holocaust revisionism has reached its main objective in demonstrating that there is no valid internal or external piece of evidence for claiming that Hitler by means of gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau or elsewhere, murdered millions of Jews in cold blood. From whatever angle you look at it this claim is so absurd that it in itself becomes a most interesting problem how it can be that so many people for so long have believed in what we now safely can call the Holocaust myth. The Hitlerian gas chambers, like the alleged weapons of mass destruction of Irak´s former dictator, have now been assigned to the realm of myth. Or, if you wish, they are mere rumors, as Dr. Faurisson phrased it in a famous note in 1979. And without a weapon of mass murder, it follows that there can be no mass murder. Thus the Holocaust, in the sense of mass murder of Jews by means of gas chambers is, if you believe in logic, a mere myth.
All and all, not a terribly reliable scholar.
Re: The Lankavatarasutra in early Indian Madhyamaka Literature
This alone should preclude anyone from listening to this person.Malcolm wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 3:06 pmhttp://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... stian.htmlToday, as far as I can judge, Holocaust revisionism has reached its main objective in demonstrating that there is no valid internal or external piece of evidence for claiming that Hitler by means of gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau or elsewhere, murdered millions of Jews in cold blood. From whatever angle you look at it this claim is so absurd that it in itself becomes a most interesting problem how it can be that so many people for so long have believed in what we now safely can call the Holocaust myth. The Hitlerian gas chambers, like the alleged weapons of mass destruction of Irak´s former dictator, have now been assigned to the realm of myth. Or, if you wish, they are mere rumors, as Dr. Faurisson phrased it in a famous note in 1979. And without a weapon of mass murder, it follows that there can be no mass murder. Thus the Holocaust, in the sense of mass murder of Jews by means of gas chambers is, if you believe in logic, a mere myth.
All and all, not a terribly reliable scholar.
Re: The Lankavatarasutra in early Indian Madhyamaka Literature
Thread locked to avoid further topic drift, please contact a moderator if there is something pertinent to add.