MLK jr., and the difference between Sujato's "love" and the Buddha's "metta"

Re: Kp 9, Snp 1.8: a new reading of the Mettasutta [from Sujato]

mikenz66 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 03, 2022 2:37 pm

Hi Frank,

Clearly your understanding of the English is different from many of us. It would be more useful to discuss exactly what metta means, rather than criticising other people's English.

Post by frank k » Fri Nov 04, 2022 3:29 am
I'm not criticizing your English. I'm questioning your ability to discern when it's appropriate to use words with sloppy and ambiguous meaning, and when precision is required.
Metta can include some wholesome parts of Jesus's 'love', or MLK jr.'s 'love'.
but 'love' includes a whole lot of defilements which 'metta' does not.
So you can not just plug in 'love' everwhere the suttas have 'metta'.
By the way, MLK jr. was a serial cheater on his wife, who was loyal, devoted, and 'loving' towards MLK and gave him no reason to cheat.
So MLK was practicing sujato's 'love', but not the Buddha's 'metta'.

I'm going to spell it out because some of you will still not get it.

When MLK was fornicating the women who were not his wife, he was practicing Sujato's "love", but not "metta".

He still exercised the Jesus type of compassionate love toward the women he was cheating with, as well as the lustful defiled "love", and he still "loved" his wife, but he wasn't doing "metta" toward his illicit lovers, and he wasn't doing "metta" toward his wife.

So if MLK was going by Sujato's instructions on how to practice "love", he is not guilty of any wrong doing there, because if you go by Sujato's English translations on 'metta', it doesn't exclude lust, passion, extra marital affairs, etc.

Whereas if you respect the Buddha's clear separation between friendliness, good will, and lust, passion, this kind of ambiguous interpretation would not be possible.

This is why it's not acceptable for Sujato to translate 'metta' as 'love'.

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