Well said. It also helps me see more clearly why I feel no resonance with what zavk is saying.daverupa wrote:If there are social imbalances or civil imbalances, these can be addressed with dialogue and policy, but trying to ensure that Dhamma practice somehow "accounts" for the innumerable Other in its uniqueness is going too far, isn't it? This reference to "in certain circumstances", as with much of how you've framed this so far, is quite non-specific, and it seems as though the examples you are able to provide are either hypothetical or personal. So the issue you're trying to bring up is starting to look locally relevant while being framed in global terms, and this is serving to obscure the issue, I think, rather than clarify it.
Personally, I regard other people as directed to by the instructions of the Sutta Pitaka, and there's plenty in there about how we do this, if we care to look. That's it - I don't feel any obligation to "change the [external] world". I don't mind if other people do, but I don't fancy being roped up for any crusades when there are more important things to be doing - i.e. striving for arahantship.
Since the Sutta Pitaka doesn't engage in socio-cultural analytics or thought-exercises such as the "greater recognition of different, multiple realities of BuddhismS" being proposed here as part of the Noble Eightfold Path, then neither do I, as part of my application of the Noble Eightfold Path.
If this topic requires one to apply a scholastic or activist lens to the topic, which is independent of the Noble Eightfold Path, then I think it's time I bowed out too, as neither frame of reference interests me - because for the reasons outlined previously, such "horizontal" ways of looking strike me as being counter-productive.
Metta,
Retro.