Report 84

 "How buddhism has been dominated by the monastic ethos of the east, and needs to be re-conceptualized from the ground up for our own cultures."

 Is it our collective challenge to “reinterpret” the dharma, using our own idiom?

"In a sense, yes, but as soon as you set out to reinterpret the teachings, you risk putting a distance between yourself and the dharma. That’s a danger." Stephen Batchelor

"Buddhism is not a property to be held or inherited in exclusivity, Batchelor argues, nor was it ever meant to be a fixed, static set of beliefs. "Buddhism, which teaches impermanence, contingency,dukkha (suffering) and unreliability, is itself also impermanent, selfless or inessential," he suggests. "http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-rotondi/buddhist-backlash-stephen_b_521675.html

The Buddha outlined these teachings in the Kalamas Sutra when a group asked him who they should believe when there were so many teachers around:

• Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing,
• nor upon tradition,
• nor upon rumor,
• nor upon what is in a scripture,
• nor upon surmise,
• nor upon an axiom,
• nor upon specious reasoning,
• nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over,
• nor upon another's seeming ability,
• nor upon the consideration, "The monk is our teacher."
• Kalamas, when you yourselves know: "These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness," enter on and abide in them.'

To me, although Buddhism has a lot of teachings of the Buddha written in Sutras, it is not a religion based on a canonical book containing injunctions that stand for all time and must be obeyed.