-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Jon Johanning Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 9:55 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Buddhism and body parts
>> My point is that 'modern' Buddhists infuse their Buddhism with a modern
worldview and modern assumptions. This transformed the tradition... and
probably made Buddhism in the 'west' possible.
>Naturally. There have been developments in the way the Dharma was
expressed as it spread from India/Sri Lanka to Tibet, China, Korea,
Japan, Burma, etc., etc., and finally to North America, Europe,
Australia/NZ, etc. All of these are different cultures and different
historical periods. But you have this rather strange way of speaking of
something called "Buddhism" into which various foreign things get
"infused," as though there were some eternal "essence of Buddhism." Not
a very pomo way to talk, I would have thought.
** I'm not a postmodernist. And, as I thought was obvious, I have a strong historiographic sense. For instance, I am very aware that the dominant forms of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, China, and Tibet can be viewed as exports from India of the form of Buddhism prevalent at the time of diffusion, yet each in arriving in a new location underwent substantial adjustments (e.g. the incorporation of a caste system in Sri Lanka, something typically not associated with Buddhism but brought on by a cultural attempt to be more continental). And I understand that in each of these locations Buddhism further fragmented and found new unifications.
> Again -- "the theory itself." Where the Dharma is concerned, there just
*ain't* no "theory itself." You may be familiar with the traditional
analogy of the finger pointing at the moon. All of the zillions of
pages of suttas, sutras, commentaries on them, and commentaries on
those commentaries, including all of the stuff written in English and
other Western languages in recent decades -- all of that is just a
collection of various fingers of different sizes, shapes, colors, etc.,
pointing at the moon. To Buddhist practitioners, such as Brian and I,
the important thing is learning how to use them to see the moon.
** My point is this: the moon is based on the finger pointing at it. I don't think all Buddhists, despite using the word Dharma, are talking about the same thing; Dharma is a religious concept, not a reality. I don't think that all monotheists, despite using the word God, are imagining the same thing either. If you do something different, then the idea is something different. In all of my classes I downplay "beliefs" and "ideas" in favour of ritual behaviour or religious practice. I'm interested in the doing, not the believing. For the last 200 years or so my discipline has focused on beliefs and ignored the doing. I'm going to try to make up for that in my lifetime.
> The Mahayana term, which you may also be familiar with, is "expedient
means." The texts are not important themselves, they're just tools.
Another analogy I like to use sometimes, which is not as poetic as the
finger-moon one, is that of auto service manuals. The Dharma basically
says: "Hey, human! Your mind is broken. Here's how to fix it." To an
auto mechanic faced with, say a '98 Toyota Corolla with a busted
transmission, the important thing is not the literary quality, "genre,"
male or female "gaze," or whatever, of the service manual -- the
important thing is whether it can provide useful information for
getting the damned car back on the road. While the mechanic is fixing
the car, the literary scholar is sitting in the waiting room, examining
the literary qualities, genre, etc., of the manual. Fine, if that's how
the scholar wants to spend her or his life as a human being. But to the
Dharma practictioner, it's not a particularly valuable way to spend the
limited time between birth and death.
** Thanks. Do you mind if I keep this example on file to help explain to my students what "expedient means" is? This is my data. Given what I know about Buddhism(s) this is a great contemporary example appropriate to a modern industrial Buddhist explaining Dharma. I'd be happy to swap examples with you anytime. However, I'm not interested in coming up with a competing analogy, as if to argue "Your analogy could be improved... instead of using an auto service manual, we should use the example of an ink blot." It is awkward to say it this way: I don't "believe" (what does that mean!?!) in God, Dharma, Kami, ghosts, Leprechauns, ESP, or an afterlife underwater (or the afterlife at all). These are all virtually non-issues for me. I'm well aware that my data acts as though many of these things exist... and quite often my data also happens to be a colleague, friend, and/or neighbour.
> Given this practical purpose, introductory materials are vitally
important. The Buddha was a teacher, as (I gather) you are. As such, he
spent his whole career teaching folks how to fix their broken minds. He
started off right after his "enlightenment" experience, teaching a few
of his former fellow ascetics he met on the road the so-called "4 noble
truths." He kept on doing that, over and over, for something like 40
years, by the traditional account. Sort of like a university professor
teaching Dharma 101, again and again. Of course, he had advanced
students and graduate students, Ph. D. candidates, too, if you will.
But he was never engaging in an "ideological exercise" which he should
have avoided, and he didn't have a "theory" that he was creating new
versions of. He was just trying to explain to folks what he had learned
under the pipa tree.
** I suspect this is hagiography, that would be my initial impression. I haven't done the research on the historiography of Buddha, I'm much more familiar with the research on Jesus... Jesus, Buddha, Nanak, Zoroaster, Confucius... almost everything we know about them is legend, with all the fragilities that implies.
> As a dedicated teacher, he didn't just brush off the beginners as
idiots who could only understand summaries, "are bad and should be
avoided, although [they are] probably inevitable for introductory
purposes." He didn't take that patronizing, "how trying it is to have
to deal with these stupid undergraduates over and over, year after
year" sort of attitude that North American university professors
frequently take. (I know, I was one myself long ago.) He was a real,
dedicated teacher, who met each person he encountered at that person's
level, and presented them with whatever "expedient means" they needed
to learn how to fix what was busted with their particular mind.
** Well... I'm trying to phase out my summaries and simply use case-based comparisons, leaving summaries intact that don't diminish the complexity of what they are summarising. For some reason this is only a problem for my course "World Religions" ... I don't have the same problem with other material / courses. I think I've got a 5 year learning curve... and I'm not even half way yet.
>>. You listed off some basic believes... are these creeds from the local
monastery? To them emcompass collective or personal ritual meditation? (and
so on).
> You're getting a little incoherent here. "Believes," "To them
emcompass" ...? I suggest you slow down, take a few breaths, and
concentrate on the experience of your fingers hitting the keys.
Mindfulness ... "Be here now." :-)
** Sorry... I had just found out that irregardless isn't a real word... and was quite distraught.
>Anyway, you're making the common non-Buddhist's mistake of talking
about "beliefs" and "creeds." As Brian tried to tell and I shall
repeat, there ain't ... no ... such ... thing in Buddhism. They're
expedient means; that's all. Not divinely inspired truths, as in
Christianity.
** Well, grrr...umm... Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on getting to define "creed" or "belief." As a scholar I draw from other theoretical frameworks to enlarge or diminish the range of material that would or could be classified under such concepts. Again, this is an emic and etic debate. Who has the authority to say what is and what is not in a tradition. As an insider of course "belief" and "creed" doesn't make sense. But as an observer... I could say that there is enough cross-cultural similarity between the practices of certain strands of Buddhism and certain strands of Christianity to say, "this is their creed." I take the perspective that the etic trumps the emic (just because one has the experience of a ritual doesn't mean that they have knowledge about its history or practice), although I fully acknowledge that there must be a moral accountability between the two --> the outsider can't just say anything. So, in short: good comparative analysis might be able to demonstrate the relevance of concepts that might not seem indigenous to Buddhism but in the end are in fact quite explanatory.
>> I just wanted to call you on a general claim you made about Buddhism
which I think is false
> Which was what, again? I got a little confused reading your message.
** I can't remember... but I don't think that's an issue for us, since we're both aware of the problems of false generalisations.
ken