A while ago I passed a sarky comment or two about “Aro Ter”, a rather odd Buddhist organization that I don’t really need to describe. I’ve come to realize that my views at that time were formed almost exclusively on the basis of the information available at the E-sangha forum. I’ve also been made very aware of late that the policies exercised at E-sangha are such as to maintain extremely tight control of information and views.
Points of view that differ from or are critical of the moderators or their views are not really countered or answered – they are eliminated, by removing posting rights from the contributors concerned and hiding their posts. Some hard-line policies are pursued in a narrow, highly polarized and partisan way.
I might return to that topic later, but the point is that there are answers to the charges laid at E-sangha against Aro Ter. See, for instance, the Approaching Aro website. I am not very interested in weighing up the pros and cons – Aro Ter does not attract me, and I’m happy to let it be genuine or fake, as the case may be. What is clear though is that the case is not as cut and dried as Malcolm Smith at E-sangha (where his handle is Namdrol) would have us believe. So caveat emptor, again and of course, but there are two sides to this story.
