User talk:Acmuller

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[edit] Re Yogacara

Very informative article on Yogacara, thank you, Dr. Muller. Yogacara is not widely known despite the enourmous influence it had and I was especially pleased to find such a good open-source essay. By the way, would you recommend any further reading on Yogacara? [User:ExitControl]

[edit] Question about your contributions to Buddhism on WP

First of all, just to say that in general, I consider that the majority of your articles are well-written, and I personally thank you for the time that you have invested in the authorship of many of the articles on WP.

My questions are based upon a particular theme that runs through your contributions; namely, the disparagement of the Sravakas by the Mahayanas. Eg. from an early Arhat edit: In Mahāyāna texts the arhat [is] placed in the position of foils for the Mahāyāna hero, the bodhisattva, and thus these practitioners of the two vehicles are disparaged as adherents of the "lesser vehicle," said to be engaged in practices that are self-centered [...] etc.

I struggle with this on many fronts (and regarding this paragraph have queried it extensively on it the talk page). But, to ease my mind, could you give me a list of the Mahayana sutras that actually do disparage the Sravakas? Also, I would like to know your reaction to e.g.

  • Lotus Sutra ch. 14: A bodhisattva [...] does not hold other Buddhists in contempt, not even those who follow the Hinayana path, nor does he cause them to have doubts or regrets by criticizing their way of practice or making discouraging remarks.
  • Ethics chapter of Asanga's Bodhisattvabhumi: [Do not] Disparage the Hinayana, or over-encourage others to learn Mahayana.
  • Candragomin's twenty verse summary: (a root downfall): Rejecting the Sravakayana
  • 18,000 verse perfection of wisdom sutra: Bodhisattvas should practice all paths - whatever is a path of a sravaka, a pratyeka or a Buddha - and should know all paths.
  • Vimalakirti Sutra (opening verses): Reverence to all Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Aryasravakas, and Pratyekabuddhas, in the past, the present, and the future

and

[...] Of bhikshus there were eight thousand, all arhats. They were free from impurities and afflictions, and all had attained self-mastery. Their minds were entirely liberated by perfect knowledge [...]

Also, an often-misrepresented component of the Lotus sutra states that 5,000 haughty Bikkhus get up and leave. I refer you to the Theravadan (or other alternative) Vinaya which often distinguishes haughty Bikkhus as being those whose ethics are weak, whereas the Lotus states that there are 20,000 Bikshus and Bikhunis present at the discourse. So this is not evidence of disparagement towards Sravakas, but merely towards those who are haughty.

I submit that the evidence for such ideas as The arhat [is] placed in the position of foils for the Mahāyāna hero is based upon interpretation of a specific sort. My experiences - certainly from the indo-tibetan axis of Mahayana buddhism - would say that such interpretations are wildly distorted.

I would really appreciate your views on these issues. (20040302 09:32, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC))

[edit] Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1
I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:
{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2
I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:
{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

[edit] Korean Buddhism

Just to say hello. As a professed Buddhist, I am very concerned about the plight of the impact of Christianity upon Buddhism and Animism, especially in Korea. What do you think? Mr Tan 4.44, 6 Fev 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jeong Dojeon's birth year

Thanks for your great contributions, Dr. Muller. You're an inspiration to us all. :-)

I'm curious if you have a source for Jeong Dojeon's birth year (given in the article as 1342). Other sources I've run across give it as 1337, or as unknown.

I'm looking forward to reading the Bulssi japbyeon sometime very soon. Cheers! -- Visviva 18:43, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A welcome find

Dr. Muller! I should have known I'd find you here. I often enjoyed your posts to Dr. T. Matthew Ciolek's (sp?) Zen electronic mailing list back in the day (I posted infrequently from dccc.edu under another name). Glad to see you're still around. --Kgf0 19:50, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] H-net

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We appreciate your contributions to the H-net article, but we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material. Perhaps you would like to rewrite the article in your own words. For more information, take a look at Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Happy editing!--Dakota 04:49, 15 March 2006 (UTC)


templates substituted by a bot as per Wikipedia:Template substitution Pegasusbot 21:34, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] H-Buddhism

H-Buddhism has been proposed for deletion. An editor felt this website might not yet be notable enough for an article. Please review Wikipedia:Notability (websites) for the relevant guidelines. If you can improve the article to address these concerns, please do so.

If no one objects to the deletion within five days by removing the "prod" notice, the article may be deleted without further discussion. If you remove the prod notice, the deletion process will stop, but if an editor is still not satisfied that it meets Wikipedia guidelines, it may be sent to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion for consensus. NickelShoe (Talk) 19:03, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nirvana Sutra

I am endeavouring to progress cited scholarship on the Nirvana Sutra page as per Wikipedia guidelines. Uncited information from the main page has been transferred to the talk page. If you could please duly cite this information and transfer it back to the main page it would be most appreciated. I have engaged a number of your published works and cited them upon Wikipedia. Thank you very much for making information freely available. To further progress the Yogacara article, do you have any information in English on Daehyeon (大賢), Sinhaeng (神行 ;704-779)? I would also really appreciate if you could direct me to any works dedicated to the influence of Korean Buddhism upon Dzogchen and the Nyingmapa.
Blessings in the Mindstream
B9 hummingbird hovering (talk • contribs) 07:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)