Comments on “The telling of the tale”

I am glad you are enjoying the story!

I hope I don’t offend anyone—but you are right, the site might upset some.

Regarding my most recent page, which might particularly be seen as offensive: it describes the misunderstanding of Buddhism by a rebellious thirteen-year-old boy, in a remote village during the Indian Dark Age, when Buddhism was nearly extinct. So it doesn’t reflect my feelings about Buddhism—only his. I am glad to say that, later in the novel, his opinion changes when he encounters more accurate Buddhist teachings.

It is true that there is Tantra in Hinduism—but there is also Buddhist Tantra. (You can do a Google search to see many pages about it.)

At the time this novel is set—around 700 C.E.—Buddhist and Hindu Tantra were much more similar than they are now. This might cause some confusion.

Yes, Buddhist Tantra did come later than Theravada (according to Western historians, anyway).

It can be hard for people who know only one kind of Buddhism to understand others. Theravada and Tibetan Tantra (which I practice) are very different.

I have great respect for Theravada, although I have not studied it much. I am sorry that some Theravadins may be upset. There is nothing about Theravada here; I am writing only about Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. (And, what I am writing is fiction, entertainment; it is not meant to be taken seriously.)

I hope that helps!

Thanks! I’m glad to hear the new episodes worked for you… Romance writing is about the last thing I ever expected to do, so naturally I’m a bit uncertain about it. I’ll try not to be excessively modest, however!

I may write a metablog post soon explaining the long delay. Short version: The novel was more than half written a year ago, so I started serializing it. But there was a gap – these two episodes and one more. To write them, I thought I would have to remember what it’s like to be a teenager in love for the first time. That sort of emotional work requires a lot of time (for me, anyway), and the past year has been unexpectedly messy and busy.

I hope the novel can go back to a regular schedule now; I want to get a page out every week. (Either an episode or a significant essay/blog piece.)

On a related note, it was only after fully working out the plots for “Lord Buddha” and “Dragonflies” that I realized I was unconsciously ripping off Rinpoche’s an odd boy—“Lord Buddha” borrows from his father’s egregious misuse of God, and “Dragonflies” echoes his romance with Lindie Dale. I’ll write about that, too, when the book comes out.