[Buddha-l] liturgical languages

[curt]

Richard P. Hayes wrote:

>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.
>
We are clearly in the realm of the subjective here. To me it is far more 
meaningful
to do a chant that is one or two thousand years old, than to do one that 
was dashed
off by some committee last week. To be honest I just don't think that 
Western Buddhism
has yet produced the personell who are QUALIFIED to compete with such 
works of
art as the Morning Bell Chant in Sino-Korean, for example. That will 
require people
who are, first of all, fully enlightened, second of all, exceptional 
scholars, and third
of all, gifted poets. I really don't think we are there yet. When true 
Master/Scholar/
Poets do arise in the West I think that their work will be persuasive on 
its own merits
to people across sectarian/cultural lines. Right now the tendency is for 
every sectoid
that wants an English language liturgy to cook up their own - that is a 
pretty sure sign
that the motivation has more to do with territoriality and ideological 
attachments than
with any desire to make the Dharma more accessible.

- Curt