[Buddha-l] On being encyclopedic

[Richard P. Hayes]

Dan Lusthaus's recent message about the difficulties of saying anything
with sufficient qualifications within very tight word limitations was,
as with everything he writes, exceptionally clear and on target. (I
always admire Dan for hitting his target, even when I think he should
have aimed at a different target.) I was especially receptive to it, I
think, because I am currently writing the entry on Buddhism for the
second revised edition of the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I
have 3500 words to talk about Buddhist philosophy! That is about one-
third the length of the introduction of any standard introductory
textbook on Buddhism. I knew before it was written that no one who reads
it will think it is any good at all, for everything it says will be
oversimplified, and I will leave out almost everyone's favorite topics
(whatever they may be).

Last year I attended an interfaith conference at which I was asked to
introduce Buddhism to a general audience in a 20-minute presentation. My
presentation came near the end, and everyone before me went over time,
so I was in fact left with about seven minutes to introduce Buddhism. If
you had seven minutes to introduce Buddhism, what would you say? (I
know, I know, you'd hold up a flower and sit down. And if anyone asked a
question, you'd say "If you see a Buddhist in Rhodes, kill him.")

Well, I said as much as I could in the alloted time, as everyone was
busily packing up his or her briefcase for lunch. When it was all done,
I was confronted by a very polite Chinese Chan master, who told me that
mine was one of the worst presentations he had ever heard, because I
never got past the basic teachings into the things he thought were
profoundly interesting, such as Tantra and Chan. Many of the people in
the audience, he said, would never hear another word on Buddhism beyond
what I had said, so they would never know about the deep mysteries of
Madhyamaka and Yogacara and Tiantai and Huayan. Rarely have I felt so
helpless and deflated. All I could do was say that if I had had four or
five semester-long courses to explain things in more detail I might have
said more than I managed to say in those seven minutes.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico