Kigeko
What, per say, was his answer, if you mind me asking, in concerns to what Buddha's last words were? Of course, the statement that only Buddha can be Buddhist is rather ridiculous.
If that's the case, then only Jesus could be a Christian, no?
And Moses, Jewish?
And Mohammed Muslim?
"There was only one Christian and he died on the cross." -- Nietzsche
ninja That said, I'm going to respectfully disagree with the choice not to do anything about this. Being able to put it behind you is great, however, if you go to the person who can give him hell for being so disrespectful to someone with a different view (the dean) he is less likely to harm others in such a way again.
That said, this reminds me of another story from a person I know at a different message board I visit which should show us that this sort of behavior can come from any side: There was a topic on there asking how many of the members had been given a lot of s**t for being an atheist/agnostic by Christians (it's a heavy metal message board and thus has a large atheist/agnostic population and many of us are American where the most fundamentalist, close minded Christians live) the man I'm speaking is from Oregon and is a brilliant historian (he's working on his masters with a special on Middle Eastern studies) and also an atheist. He said that he tends to get more crap from new age mystic sorts, weak agnostics, and pagans for it. Then he made a reference to a professor he had in a history course in his college. She refers to herself as a Feminist Buddhist and several times throughout the class she complimented him on his wide ranging historical knowledge of women, in particular in the Middle East. Then, one day, it came up in class that he was an atheist and since that time she has treated him like s**t. At some point students had a choice between writing a presentation and performing it orally or handing in a written report. She happened to see him at a liquor store he visits and asked which he would be doing and if he was going to see another student that evening who was giving his report orally. He responded that the information he was working with was rather complex and needed a very clear grounding so he felt that it would be better to use a written report and thus he was going to do that. Her response was something along the lines of "Oh, that's understandable. Not everyone is brave enough to be a public speaker."
How many think this woman is the 'new age' variety of Buddhist?
rolleyes
