I don't think things are so exceptionally relative, and that there are several consensuses in Buddhism that are universal, rebirth via DO being one. I think that the modernist version of Buddhism is simply moderns being moderns. We like to think we are wiser than our superstitious forerunners. Rebirth doesn't figure in even rather remote Western history. People don't want to believe in it because they think it's "magical," I'm pretty sure, at the end of the day. People are so committed to modern pseudo-scientific paradigms that they will actively paint the Buddhadharma as Ātmavāda just to nix rebirth via DO. From there, nonsense such as "Arhats have no sense bases" arise, or fundamental misunderstandings of phassa like we see proliferated in this thread. All from a denial of elements in the Dharma that seem too Iron Age to be true to moderns.SDC wrote: ↑Thu Aug 18, 2022 5:37 pmTo question a right or a wrong reading is to imply there is an extent external criteria to do so, but as far as I understand it, right view is the only gauge available. Whether or not someone is reading in the way we prefer or with what presume are rose-colored glasses is not a public issue. Of course you are free to say whatever you want. I’m just explaining why I took issue with it and found it peripheral to the current topic.
It's convenient for the modernists, with reconstructionist agendas, to argue that the truth cannot be seen, or that it's all relative without a small bit of Gnosis, but I don't see it that way. Obviously I also consider the fact that modernists see their interpretations as arising naturally and elegantly out of the texts themselves.