Excerpt from an article by Robin of Berkeley..."Now that I think about it, I started becoming a conservative the moment I picked up that book by Trungpa. The Buddha's teachings are deeply conservative.
Given that Buddhism got me started on the straight and narrow, I was puzzled when Brit Hume urged Tiger Woods to switch from Buddhism to Christianity. As a Christian, Hume reasoned, Woods would find a path to forgiveness and redemption.
As a spiritual seeker, I'm a big fan of Christianity. I've attended two services -- one Catholic, and the other primarily black and evangelical. I loved them both.
But Buddhism is a fiercely moral path too, even though it is not God-centered. There are severe consequences in the next life for sins this time around. Act like a snake, and come back as one. (Tiger, are you listening?)
Whether a person calls himself a Buddhist or a Christian doesn't matter anyway if he doesn't walk the walk. Obama's bio states that he's a Christian. But his administration doesn't exactly exude Christian brotherhood.
The Buddha would never excuse Tiger's lying and cheating ways. But the problem is that Buddhism, like everything else, has been co-opted by political correctness and leftist dogma. Contemporary Buddhism resembles little of what the master taught.
Today's teachers communicate a don't-worry-be-happy kind of a vibe. Curiously missing is the number-one principle of Buddhism: that life is suffering."
"In Berkeley, for instance, the latest craze is a Joy class, taught by a popular Buddhist teacher. Thousands have already attended the course, where Joy Buddies are assigned to make sure you're on the happy trail.The Buddhist magazine Shambhala Sun likes to mix leftist ideology with ads for pricey yoga retreats. Right before the election, the Sun published an article entitled "The Meaning of Barack Obama," which declared that if you didn't vote for Obama, then you were in essence an unenlightened boob.
In the magazine's next issue, liberal icon Alice Walker blamed the U.S. for all the bad karma in the world. Left out of the equation were countries like Uganda, Sudan, Cambodia, China, and Cuba, which have some serious explaining to do in the karma department."
[...]
As the Buddha lay dying, he uttered these final words:
'Be a lamp to yourself. Be an island. Learn to look after yourself; do not wait for outside help. Only truth can save you. Work out your salvation with diligence.'
The Buddha stood for hard work, restraint, and honor. Sounds like a conservative manifesto to me."
'A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist.'
Full article at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/tiger_the_buddha_and_me.html
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