Up From Buddhism, Ctd.

John Horgan's article on Buddhism sparks a reply from Buddhist-esque blogger Scott Payne:

...non-attachment isn’t the same thing as detachment. And in fact, what one starts to realize when one really sits with the idea of non-attachment is that rather than withdrawing from the world altogether, one is actually freed to engage with and experience the world more vividly because one isn’t busy mistaking the transitory for the eternal. One anchors one’s ultimate presence in the eternal, the recognition that ultimately one is united with the ground of being (God), but that one is also a manifestation and expression of that ground that exists and operates in the world of form (samsara). As such, one is freed to articulate the most profound and beautiful expression of that ground one can muster without mistaking the expression for the ground itself (kind of like no mistaking the world as dictated by ideology for the world itself, to use a politically focused metaphor) and so one can avoid becoming weighed down too heavily by the objects of that world and ultimately navigate the terrain of that world in a more skillful and compassionate manner.

Beautifully and movingly put.