> ** I'm not a postmodernist.
Sorry; I guess I was misled by your heavy use of jargon -- "trajectory," and all that. Also your idealist metaphysics; see below.
> 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.
But the problem is with your statement that " 'modern' Buddhists infuse their Buddhism with modern worldview and modern assumptions." That seems to imply that there is something called "Buddhism" which crystallized back in Asia in the old days, which gets "imported" into the West like a shipload of ginseng or something, and into which "modern" folks inject their world view and assumptions. For once, I'm taking a leaf from the pomos and arguing that this essentialist view is all wrong. Buddhism is what people who take refuge in the Buddha (the technical definition of what a "Buddhist" is) make of it. It has no fixed essence.
> ** 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.
Sorry, Ken, but you're wrong. All Buddhists *are* talking about the same thing: what really is, reality. You are perfectly welcome to your idealist metaphysics, in which reality is what people think it is, but that's not the Dharma (as I understand it, anyway). You are arguing with Brian that you can know all about Buddhism by studying it as an academic, but you're wrong. Your idealism makes you think it's impossible to get in touch with a non-conceptually-mediated reality, but that's because you've never actually done some practice.
To a lot of you religious-studies types, meditation is something weird and exotic, like meditating on rotting female corpses, that you can quote to your students and say, "See what weirdos those Buddists are?" and share a chuckle with them. I know that livens up a boring lecture hall no end. I used to labor in those halls myself, and I know how much the prof has to strain to keep the students awake. But in fact, most Dharma practice is not nearly so exotic as that. The most common beginning practice (and not just beginning) is to sit (on a cushion or a regular chair, doesn't matter) and count your breaths -- when your mind strays from the counting you go back to "one." Another one is to take a koan like Joshu's "Mu" and put it in your belly.
The point of these practices, roughly speaking, is to get your mind detached from the endless stream of concepts and ideas running through it so you can directly grasp reality. The Zen expression is: it's no good trying to scratch an itch on your foot through your shoe. Or: to know if the tea is hot or cold, drink it. "Directly pointing at the human mind; waking up and achieving Buddha-hood."
You may have come across the story of the Japanese academic who spent an afternoon chatting with a Zen teacher about all of his theories and observations. Finally, the teacher asked him if he wanted a cup of tea. "Yes," the professor replied." The teacher poured a cup, but kept on pouring when the tea reached the top. "Why did you do that?" the professor asked. The teacher replied: "To show you that your mind is so full of your ideas and theories that there is no room in it for Zen."
> ** 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.
Yes, I do mind your talking about me as "data" all the time. Am I a bacterium on your microscope slide, or something? I'm trying to have a discussion about real things, and you keep pulling this academic "Professor of World Religions" act on me. You're not in the classroom now.
> 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.
"Data," again. I guess I should start calling myself "Commander Data."
> ** I suspect this is hagiography, that would be my initial impression.
> I
> haven't done the research on the historiography of Buddha
Well, maybe you should. The hagiography, I think, is the stuff about his speaking as soon as he was born, being able to walk on water and swim through the earth as though it were water, flying up to the heavens, touching the sun and the moon, etc. The kind of extravagant imagery that folks in those cultures used to praise people they greatly admired as gurus.
The descriptions of him as a human teacher, though of course idealized, don't strike me as hagiography. Undoubtedly he was not as perfect as the tradition portrays him, but he did keep it up for about 40 years, and must have been a pretty impressive guy to have touched off a movement that lasted over two thousand years and spread over several continents. Still, he was clearly not a "Son of God" like Jesus was reputed to have been, just a human teacher.
> ** 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.
Yes, scholarly words like "emic" and "etic" sound great in the Academy, but I don't think they apply here. Christianity and Buddhism are fundamentally incompatible on this point, and not only you "religious scholars," but a lot of ordinary folks, don't understand this.
You can say that both X-ty and Buddhism are "religions," and therefore can be compared in their "creeds" and "beliefs," but that's like saying that water and oil are both liquids at room temperature, so they conform their shapes to any container in which they are placed (as does mercury, in fact). But that's about as far as their similarities go. For starters, Buddhism doesn't have any Creator and Ruler of the universe. So it doesn't have anybody to be worshipped, as X-ty has. Therefore, all of the worshipping rituals and practices X-tians do have no (I repeat, *no*) correlates in Buddhism. They might look similar to an outside scholar
It also doesn't have a creed like X-ty's. For most of the history of that sorry religion, you could be persecuted in various interesting ways, including being burned at the stake, if you didn't accept whatever official set of beliefs your particular gang of spiritual capos defined for you. Nowdays, they have mostly put away the firewood and torches, but a lot of them certainly tend to get very upset when their beliefs are challenged. (Even Quakers can be somewhat perturbed by this; I grew up as a Friend, so I know from experience.) Nothing like that can be found in the Buddhist world (except for a few tiny exceptions here and there -- there are nuts in every group). "Non-clinging to concepts" is what the Dharma is all about, whereas X-ty clings to its concepts so strongly that it will combust you for denying them -- or depose you as a bishop if you dare to act contrary to the divinely inspired words of Saint Paul vis-a-vis gays. That's what I call clinging, man!
BTW, about metaphysics: after you consult with your medieval historian colleagues on the question of medieval folks enjoying their rolls in the hay, you might have a chat with your philosopher colleagues about the subject of realism vs. idealism. You may find that there are more philosophers than Gadamer and Hegel. :-)
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ After the Buddha died, people still kept pointing to his shadow in a cave for centuries—an enormous, dreadful shadow. God is dead: but the way people are, there may be, for millennia, caves in which his shadow is still pointed to. — And we — we must still overcome his shadow! —Friedrich Nietzsche