question this

"I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion, and elimination of ignorance, selfishness, and greed." High Holiness the Dali Lama

Is this quote "classist" or "sexist"? Can "enlightenment" be for all? One student noted that Steve Jobs (the guy who delivered the Stanford Commencement speech we saw on You Tube) was of the privileged elite. Is he? I thought. I didn't know, so I looked him up on Wikipedia to discover that he was adopted and that his biological father was Syrian. Privilege? OK - but not the expected variety. Now, either way, I am not sure how knowing his "real" background or making up my own fictional version of his background makes any difference about what he said. What he said was do what interests you - and you may discover that the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line. The people and events that make a difference in your life are not always who or what we expect. When we disagree or resist a statement because of something about the person who makes the statement, we have an "ad hominem" argument. Ad hominem is Latin for something like "to the human, the person." The retort in an "argument" must always be to the words, not "the person" - i.e., we cannot disagree with something because of something about the speaker such as race or class, age, gender, ethnicity,style or anything but the words.