[Buddha-l] Re: Rational or mythological Buddhism and Western Buddhist lay practice

[Mikael Aktor]

Richard Hayes wrote:

 >> After all, no pali sources (as far as I am aware of) recommend
 >> meditation for lay people, but daana, visits to stupas and other
 >> devotional practices.

 > Heaven forbid that anything should be different from what the Pali canon
 > describes.

I did not mean to be fundamentalistic. I just wanted to stress that 
religious practices are not independent of life styles. In a monastery 
meditation is protected by regularity. Although early Buddhism rejected 
extreme asceticism, it still endorsed renunciation and demanded sexual 
abstinence of those who took it up. And also many later Buddhist schools 
kept running monastic institutions. Why? I don't think this is only a 
matter of sociology (not having children to care for), but because 
sexual abstinence as a "body technique" (in a Maussian sense) affects 
the mind in ways that are considered necessary for higher 
concentrations, although I admit, this is only a guess. But why else?
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 >> Or does our busy Westerner have to make the (rather un-Buddhist)
 >> choice that in the West Buddhism is (only) a philosophy, not a
 >> religious practice?

 > I guess I was absent the day the announcement was made that you had been
 > appointed to tell the world what is Buddhist and what is un-Buddhist.
 > You're not off to a very good start, in my view, unless you can tell us
 > what philosophy is and what religious practice is.

I'm just speaking conventionally here. You're right, "religious 
practice" can be almost anything. But here I'm thinking of meditation. 
"Philosophy" - prototypically - is based on intellectual, discursive, 
critical reasoning. It follows a problem were ever critical reasoning 
leads it to. In contrast, meditation - prototypically - stays with a 
preselected focus. It's not intellectual or discursive, but suggestive. 
In much meditation the practitioner is guided to transcend intellectual 
reasoning in favor of sheer mindfulness or concentration. Althought the 
starting point may be an analytical reflection, this is only to lead to 
a meditative stand-still. Then, of course, there are the border line 
cases: Paul Williams claims that Madhyamaka analysis was meditative. 
Some see the epoché of the phenomenological school as meditative. I 
don't know if any of these claims are valid.

Best wishes,
Mikael

-- 
Mikael Aktor, Assistant Lecturer, PhD
Department of Religious Studies
University of Southern Denmark
Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark

Phone +45 6550 3318 / +45 3696 9054
Mobile +45 2830 7394
Web http://www.humaniora.sdu.dk/nywebX/inc/show.php?full=478 (in Danish)