[Buddha-l] Protestant Buddhisms

[Franz Metcalf]

Gang,

Sorry to be so late in replying, but I wanted to respond briefly to a 
most important question raised by Richard Nance:

> Schopen's real point may well be that any view that locates a religious
> tradition in the texts of that tradition imports outmoded assumptions
> that are inappropriate for scholarly work. Is Schopen right about 
> this? I
> suppose the answer one gives to that question will depend a lot on
> what one understands the vocation of a scholar to require.

I, in turn, suppose that the answer to the question is that the 
vocation of a scholar requires one to open-mindedly study the evidence 
available in one's field of inquiry. In our case we have not only 
textual evidence of Buddhism, but, as Schopen demonstrates, 
archeological evidence. Paul Mus (French Buddhologist of the 
entres-les-guerres era) was highly influential on me here--and possibly 
on Schopen, also certainly on Bernard Faure--connecting Buddhist 
doctrine to Buddhist and Brahmanic *practices* as much as we can 
recover them. The study of classic Buddhist texts has always reminded 
me of the joke about looking for the lost car keys under the 
streetlight simply because that's where you *could* see them, though 
they don't happen to be there.

I would add that in the case of contemporary Buddhism we have a very 
great deal more evidence to open-mindedly study if we want to fulfill 
the vocation of scholarship. This is exactly why the study of 
contemporary Buddhism is so vital and so disrespected: though it can 
tell us so much more about human experience and this fascinating mess 
we call "Buddhism," it is far too broad and diverse to get any 
consensus on. There are just too many streetlights and keys here, 
forcing all but the boldest scholars to retreat, buglike, to the 
darkness. The scholarship that does get done also ends up conducted in 
vulgar tongues by experts with differing expertise who have to make 
their discourse mutually intelligible and thus--heaven preserve 
us!--open to scrutiny by the educated public. For these reasons and 
others it fails to generate academically self-sustaining study-groups 
(aka Buddhist studies areas in research universities). The "real" 
scholarship of, say, the development of American Buddhism will only get 
done when the evidence lies under the soothing lights of libraries and 
excavations.

Franz Metcalf