[Buddha-l] liturgical languages

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 11:47 -0400, curt wrote:

> I think that a lot of the resistance that many westerners have to the 
> use of Buddhist liturgical languages stems from inappropriately
> projecting our own dark history of religious thought control (in Latin
> Christendom) onto Buddhism.

That could be a factor, but my own personal experience and my talking
about this with others has suggested a much simpler explanation, which
is that people tend not to see much point in doing things without
understanding what they are doing. Once people are told what a chant
means, they tend to find the practice more, well, meaningful.

> And for those of us in North America and Europe we should be careful
> about the assumptions we make about "our own" culture. Should we have
> linguistically segregated congregations so that everyone gets to chant
> in "their own" language? 

Why not? 

> In virtually every Western society there are linguistic minorities
> (sometimes quite large, like the Spanish speaking population in the
> US),

When I have gone to Catholic mass in New Mexico, I have noticed that
they tend to be bilingual, about equally English and Spanish. Even the
local Unitarians sing the doxology in both Spanish and English. When I
lived in Québec I attended various church services and noticed that
everything was done in French in a French-speaking diocese and in
English in an English-speaking diocese. Some Anglicans made a point of
using both official languages. It seems to work out pretty well. 

My observation of the Western Buddhist Order is that they have some
chants in Sanskrit and Pali, followed by saying the same thing in the
local language(s). I attended a WBO retreat in India, for example, and
we chanted everything in Pali, Hindi, Marathi and English. I rather
liked it. Chanting in Hindi and Marathi helped me feel a sense of
solidarity with the Indians there, in about the way that attending a
mass in which the hymns are sung in Spanish gives me a sense of
solidarity with my fellow New Mexicans. Making an effort to sing or
chant in the language of a people who occupy the same land as oneself is
a significant gesture of friendship. And there is probably no practice
in Buddhism more central than the cultivation of friendship. So this
pretty much makes the use of local languages a vital practice in
Buddhism. Thank you for pointing that out, for it makes my case much
stronger.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico