[temansertewek]

From my point of view, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche's statements lead inevitably to the conclusion that the Buddha himself was Hinayana since, or so I believe, most academics in this area agree that the mouth of the Buddha never uttered anything even vaguely resembling what the Rinpoche himself seems to believe. I believe the academics, because I respect their methods. I cannot respect the Rinpoche's methods, because they are faith-based, and this puts his beliefs (except for their tiny core of truth) in the same class of such belief systems as, for example, the Abrahamic religions, Hinduism, and Norse mythology during the times when it too was a religion. But I think at this point I must stick to my earlier statements elsewhere that it is such vast, complex, decorative additions to the Dhamma that attract many people to Buddhism in the first place (particularly those whose nations are not predominantly Buddhist). It is then to be hoped that such people will eventually see through what is ultimately -- to be blunt -- cultural baggage, and become followers of the Dhamma instead of Buddhists. Stephen Batchelor is an example of someone who seems to have done it, apparently shucking the labour and learning of many years as a Tibetan monk in the process. Unless we come up with some way of making the Dhamma go viral on the Internet, as Stuka has said, or some other way of demonstrating its value to great numbers of people, I can still only foresee a tiny minority of Earth's population seeing the truth, let alone valuing it as committedly as it deserves.