Theoretical Buddhism vs practical or applied Buddhism.
Don't read this unless you want to know about my self-commiseration in re forum sojourns.
About the skepticfriends.org/forum, I have been banned but as it turned out temporarily there, because I tested the rationality of one chief honcho there, named Dave W, (he flunked the test) some kind of founder/owner/admin/mod all rolled into one person: he issued an injunction against mentioning the name and thoughts and messages of McQ, who was trying with his most civil good will and patience to convince an unruly and most impolite mob to see my OP for what it truly is, a statement of opinion instead of fact; so this chief honcho on the spot and extemporaneously issued that injunction against mentioning him, McQ, on the pretext that the man not once but twice (coming back after one earlier such departure) had declared that he was getting off the thread because he could not stand any longer the kind of most uncivil treatment toward me from Dave W and his thugs, what with namecalling of the most uncouth kind -- he, Dave W, claiming that McQ thus intended that he be put off limits to any reference to him, McQ.
Anyway, I am supposed to email the chief honcho on his own instruction, Dave W, after February 14, to ask for return to active participation; but he might turn me down if he should come across my thread on Autopsy of a Deadlocked Thread in another skeptics forum, the Skeptics Society Forum whose inspiration is Michael Shermer.
What can I say about this chief honcho in the Skeptic Friends Net forum? I think he has reached landmark measure in ignobility and ignominy with his despotic recourse to gagging and banning me. Ignobility and ignominy, please water down the two terms; because the two words just came to mind when I could not see in him any nobility nor magnanimity in his role as owner/founder/admin/mod all rolled into one as a gracious host of his own forum.
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As a concrete example, during a meditation I had an awareness that gossip caused pain. I realized I could not gossip, because I didn't wish to cause myself, or others pain. The next time I was standing around at work talking with coworkers it became apparent to me how often the conversation involved gossip. I became uncomfortable and left quietly. I then realized that if I was to avoid gossip I would have to avoid a behavior that often results in one person bonding with another or fitting in with a particular group. Some of my friends gossip about certain people regularly and if I couldn't at least listen to it, it would have an impact on my relationship with them.
This was a very painful realization. To follow my convictions I would have to endure significant change. A change I viewed as negative and painful, at least in the short term.
I would not describe this as having been 'fun', 'amusing' or bringing about a 'swell' mental state. I would describe it as producing a certain anguish.
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I hope, username, you will stay around regularly and share with us your thoughts on my idea that Buddhism as with religion in general is amusement. That is always a disappointment from forum participants, they don't or can't be expected to continue lending their presence until some definite points of concurrence and of course points of impasse are arrived at on mutual or communal consensus.
Forgive my self-vanity, I am thinking that maybe I might have come to some enlightening insight with my observation that Buddhism as with religion in general is amusement, like Marx with his about religion being opium and Dawkins about religion being meme.
But at this moment I am very much tempted to postpone further investigations of Buddhism as amusement and instead go into this topic, Sex in Western Buddhists, because of that thread in Buddhism and Free Sex in the Buddha Chat forum where it took them one day to decide to accept my post on some suggested directives from myself how to adjudicate for oneself, so as to avoid qualms of conscience in doing free sex as a Buddhist.
My post there has come out, the day after I posted it here in this JREF forum thread on Buddhism as Amusement, I put it here to show that Buddhism is a closed system, meaning it is insecurable in the sense that it cannot be secured on reason, but by excluding people and ideas which are unsettling to Buddhism and disorienting to Buddhists.
[That threat has been locked up pronto on the request of the OP author himself who was seeking advice with his OP, because he fears that it could trigger a Buddhist war among his confreres there. See? fear of Buddhists breaking up among themselves owing to the matter of free sex, i.e., fear of the truth or the facts? about free sex with Budhists.]
I have also been focusing more exactly where the amusement aspect of Buddhism is to be limelighted, and I have come to the distinction that more correctly we might set apart theoretical Buddhism from practical or applied Buddhism, with theoretical Buddhism most appropriately described as amusement, but not the practical or applied Buddhism of the layman variety.
Theoretical Buddhism is reminiscent of what the Buddha allegedly told his disciples to avoid, pointless questions; but which Buddhists of the elitist kind precisely lapse into by discussing endlessly such issues as the non-self.
What are some pointless questions the Buddha warned his contemporaries against? Here is one, the famous or notorious question of whether there is a God.
Actually the way I see it, the Buddha is not saying on his enlightened authority that pointless questions are not worth intrinsically examining on for an answer pro or against, on which life and action can be based as on a platform; but he was issuing a command to not delve on them. What he did was to issue a taboo but not a declaration that pointless questions cannot be answered or cannot be discussed at all cognitively.
What in Buddhism are called pointless questions then are issues which are theoretical and remain such for the present state of man's situational circumstances, preventing resolution into definitive answers, pro or anti; no, they are not intrinsically unanswerable.
Coming to your concern, the matter of gossip and Buddhist spirituality, I believe it belongs to practical or applied Buddhism. And it is one of my continuous contention that when it comes to practices on living a life of wisdom and moralistic restraints, Buddhism has contributed nothing that mankind has not arrived at in civilized existence long before Buddha came into his timely rebirth as a human and a teacher of life at that.
That gossip is unworthy of any person who aspires after an ethical life and an admirable conduct in speech, not judgmental or even downgrading of others, that is already an accepted and propounded norm in the most ancient of civilization, founded upon the general policy of settled life among men: to not do to others what one would not have done to oneself.
Gossip is sharing information that is damaging or disparaging to the good name of one's neighbor even if not perjurious.
In my own ethnic culture it is a statutory law in our civil code that every man is expected to regard every other man with respect, rendering to every other man his due, understanding due as what everyman can reasonably expects to be dealt with and treated by every other man.
The enforcement of that general principle is the law on moral damage in our civil code. Moral damage is any kind of unpleasant experience inflicted by one person on another person that causes the other person any so much as diminished feeling of self worth, like for example calling someone a name that brings up derision or contempt in listeners toward the victim.
No, the negative stance of civilization against gossip owes nothing to Buddhism even for Buddhists themselves. In which respect, gossip is not a matter whereby the discussion of is a component of Buddhism as amusement.
When we strip Buddhism of everything that is of common heirloom in civilization in regard to the wisdom of life and universal moralistic prescription, very probably what is left in Buddhism comes down to amusement.
Yrreg
