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In Georgetown, Penang, seven Christian families whose houses are located in the compound of the St Francis Xavier Church have been told to move out from the area without reasonable compensation from the Roman Catholic Bishop of Penang who happens to be the church management and landowner. I suppose there will always be social classes in our society. In Marxist phiosophy, there are two basic class divisions, the proletariat and the bourgeois and in the modern Western context, there are three classes, the upper class, middle class and lower class. Social classes are defined as economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. The episode in Georgetown made me wonder if there is such a social arrangement in the Buddhist world. Of questions, maybe there is a kind of arrangement yet. I just read that Buddha divided all questions into four classes: Those that deserve a categorical that is straight yes or no answer, those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question, those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner's court and those that deserve to be put aside. Perhaps, the question of whether or not the Buddhist world is divided into classes should be put into the fourth category. Anwering it would not lead one to nirvana, would it?
In Georgetown, Penang, seven Christian families whose houses are located in the compound of the St Francis Xavier Church have been told to move out from the area without reasonable compensation from the Roman Catholic Bishop of Penang who happens to be the church management and landowner. I suppose there will always be social classes in our society. In Marxist phiosophy, there are two basic class divisions, the proletariat and the bourgeois and in the modern Western context, there are three classes, the upper class, middle class and lower class. Social classes are defined as economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. The episode in Georgetown made me wonder if there is such a social arrangement in the Buddhist world. Of questions, maybe there is a kind of arrangement yet. I just read that Buddha divided all questions into four classes: Those that deserve a categorical that is straight yes or no answer, those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question, those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner's court and those that deserve to be put aside. Perhaps, the question of whether or not the Buddhist world is divided into classes should be put into the fourth category. Anwering it would not lead one to nirvana, would it?
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