Sure, but my point is that renunciation with a world-hating vibe and renunciation with a world-loving vibe are very different! It’s “I will let go of pleasures that don’t serve me or the world because I’m in deep love with the world and its people and want to be a better vessel for universal love” versus “the world and everything in it sucks, ideally I’d commit suicide but my religion says that’s bad so instead I’ll go sit in a monastery to meditate for the rest of my existence”, and Chapman’s presentation strongly implies that all sutra would be the latter kind.
If he just said that “sutra is about renunciation” without trying to imply that sutric practice also has to be fundamentally anti-life and anti-pleasure, then that I wouldn’t object to.
Sure, but my point is that renunciation with a world-hating vibe and renunciation with a world-loving vibe are very different! It’s “I will let go of pleasures that don’t serve me or the world because I’m in deep love with the world and its people and want to be a better vessel for universal love” versus “the world and everything in it sucks, ideally I’d commit suicide but my religion says that’s bad so instead I’ll go sit in a monastery to meditate for the rest of my existence”, and Chapman’s presentation strongly implies that all sutra would be the latter kind.
If he just said that “sutra is about renunciation” without trying to imply that sutric practice also has to be fundamentally anti-life and anti-pleasure, then that I wouldn’t object to.