Review from The Most Venerable Dhammika on From Buddha to Jesus

I have been called lots of things in my life, a list of some 86 of them can be found in my curricula vita. Recently I wrote a critical review of a book called From Buddha to Jesus and in his response to this review, the book's author has now added considerably to this list. Apparently I am an ‘argumentative’, ‘conceding’ ‘academic elitist’, ‘a materialist’, ‘a neo-atheist’, I have the audacity to ‘cite the Tipitaka as if it were on a par with the Bible’, I live in the ‘Ivory Tower of Academia,’ I’m ‘ignorant of science’, I speak ‘out of the corners of my mouth’, no matter how many hours I chant and meditate I will never know Buddhism the way it is lived by Asians, I can’t tell historical science from operative science (I plead guilty to that one), I ‘misapply quotes and misuses statistics,’ I have had ‘no exposure to the realities of Asian life,’ I have ‘an ax to grind,’ I cannot claim to have ‘achieved the 8-fold path’ (guilty again) and I seem to have a ‘Western supremacist mentality.’ According to the author, some of my friends are ‘anti-Jews’ and ‘bigots’ and I might well be anti-Semitic myself. I usually take critical assessments of myself fairly easy, but this last one genuinely offended me. Perhaps it’s not as bad as it seems though. In From Buddha to Jesus, the author assures us that that he ‘loves Buddhists’ and as I have been a Buddhist for 40 years I’m sure he loves me too.

You can read my review of the book at

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13296079/Book-Review-by-Ven-S-Dhammika-From-Buddha-to-Jesus
and another one by Bhikkhu Aggacitto at
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13099022/Review-From-Buddha-To-Jesus-by-Steve-Cioccolanti
and the author's 'interesting' response at www.buddhabook.org
If you would like to add to the growing things I have been called you can SMS insults to 77459233156