The Disappearing Buddha?

"(...) So people, many of them projected onto me, whether positively or negatively, but yes they projected. And because they projected they weren't really able to experience me or communicate with me as I really was. I won't say really was in the ultimate metaphysical sense, but at least as I really was in the more conventional sense. And it's because they were unable to experience me as I really was, so to speak, that the real communication between us could not go beyond a certain point."

 "Here we're too different, we can be a little bit different of course, well we are different anyway, but we mustn't be too different, otherwise people will project onto us and projection interferes with communication."


Fragments from 'The Disappearing Buddha' by Sangharakshita (https://www.freebuddhistaudio.com/texts/read?num=183&at=text&p=3)

What Sangharakshita says in these fragments apply to many other cases. When, for example, a Tao follower or any other foreigner doesn't know whether he or she is judgemental or is overloaded by so many strange projections onto him/her. It's quite tiring and it does block any possible spontaneous communication with people. It can also apply to people's communication via social networks, in which one's political views, if not fitting into a standard view of political correctness, can be targeted with speech projections of other people's prejudices as a means of Catharsis, purification.