Over at Shambhala Sun Space, our friend and editor Rod Meade Sperry has two new posts on the continuing Brit Hume saga. Among the updates: more comments from Hume, another Daily Show segment, and a chat between the Interdependence Project’s Ethan Nichtern and CNN Newsroom’s Rick Sanchez.
Elsewhere, at Barbara’s Buddhism Blog, author Barbara O’Brien responds to the Family Research Council’s use of quotes from her reaction to the Hume flap to “‘prove’ the superior forgiveness/redemption power of Christianity over Buddhism.”
Our e-friend The Reverend Chuck Currie, a U.C.C. minister and great blogger, also gives this blog a kind shout-out and pithily responds to the whole issue, writing:
Why Hume thinks Christianity would make Woods a better person is a mystery to me. Just think of all the Christians we all know who have failed to live up to their martial vows (Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Ted Haggard, etc.). Christians fail with the best of them. But Hume’s remarks also show a deep misunderstanding of Buddhism as a religion. His remarks were pretty darn offensive, in fact, and laced with ignorance. He asserts that Christanity is better than Buddhism but it is pretty clear he has no real understanding of this great world religion.
Today’s dharma quote is yet another from the Vidyādhara, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939-1987), whom I previously quoted and wrote a little bio for here. It’s his poem “Timely Rain,” which you can find in editor David Rome’s Timely Rain: Selected Poems of Chögyam Trungpa, pg. 35:
