Radix wrote: ↑Thu Jan 26, 2023 7:05 am
Sam Vara wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 9:34 pm
I'm not. I'm accusing you of making this up. You frequently post about monasticism and Buddhism in general in a way that makes me think that your contact with real life monastics is minimal, or fantasised.
1. I replied to the question exactly as it was stated.
Not to some question you imagine.
Sorry, I'll try to be clearer. If, when asked what
Sangha means to you, you reply:
A bunch of people who expect me to give them money, to do them favors, to do the dirty work for them, and who don't care whether I live or die.
there could be three reasons for this. The first is that this is your understanding of how the word is used; that you are merely explicating the meaning inherent in the Pali word. The second is that you have experienced in real life a thing called a
Sangha which does these things, and you are reporting on it. The third is that you have experienced in your mind an idea of a thing called a
Sangha which does these things, and you are reporting on your ideas. I don't think the first is tenable, so I'm working on a process of elimination.
Reading comprehension has never been your forte. No surprise -- some forty years into Buddhism, and you're still not sure whether it is true or not. You lost the plot.
It's a poor excuse I know, but Alan Bennett once said that one's style is the sum of one's defects.
When a person is accused of sealioning, they are supposed to shut up, lest making themselves guilty as accused again.
If we're aiming at precision, this isn't necessarily true. One can only be guilty as accused
again if one was guilty of the first offence. I don't want to derail this thread by getting into a discussion of what "sealioning" is (you can start a new topic or PM me if you like) but I said already that I wasn't sealioning.
If you just want to shut people up and prevent them from questioning what you say, you might want to try saying "Expelliarmus!" or wearing garlic around your neck instead.