| | Good questions.
I'll do my best:
1) there is a personal messaging feature that works pretty well most of the time under the tab messages.
2) Why new terms? Well, I am not sure there one straightforward answer to this, but I offer the following: a) The discussion that you chanced onto was a migration from our initial website on Wetpaint, and in the migration process, which was automated, the original essay didn't come along, such that the entire introduction which set up the whole discussion was lost, but has now been re-instated thanks to your fine question and observation that, without that essay, it doesn't make much sense. Thus, if you go back and read it again, hopefully it will make more sense. It was really a discussion between anagamis and arahats and the like who were hashing out some aspects of that territory, mostly, and I can see how that, using whatever terms, could be a bit much or seem quite arcane to someone not in that territory and also not familiar with the local slang. b) Buddhist terms, while in theory always well defined, in practice often aren't, and thus, sometimes when a practitioner, such as Kenneth Folk, who coined the terms no-dog and the simplest thing, comes across something and wishes to describe it, that is what comes out, and who is to say that is so wrong? You may find yourself doing the same thing yourself some day. c) Kenneth Folk and I have a very, very close relationship, like family, with a huge and complex history, and so discussions, complexities, controversies and misunderstandings, when they have arisen between us over whatever, have tended to take on dimensions that are strange to outside observers and can lead to a bit of a swirling subtext that sometimes has no clear surface explanation unless one notices that Kenneth and I are both involved in the discussion, and then, reading between the lines, that can become clear. Such was the case with much of that discussion. It also falls into a historical context of the previous discussions that had just occurred before it both publicly and privately, and so sorting out what was going on could be difficult unless you had access to enough of that. d) Your point about too many terms already is valid, and yet language evolves, terms evolve, slang evolves, as a natural part of human expression, and I realize that can cause confusion. Sorry about that.
Helpful?
Daniel |