[Buddha-l] Protestant Buddhisms

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Thu, 2005-03-24 at 14:50 -0800, Franz Metcalf wrote:

> 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.

If one's field is philosophy, then the primary evidence will be what
people say about what they think. Something that has always amused me
about Gregory Schopen, since we were both scruffy chain-smoking graduate
students studying classical Tibetan together, is that he is so
interested in history that he is almost blind to the possibility that
someone might prefer philosophy. When we read the same texts, I was
always keen to assess the quality of the ideas stated in them, while he
was keen to look through the texts for clues as to what people did. On
more than one occasion he told me that his mother was a pious Catholic
who had no idea what people like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas
wrote, and he thought that 99% of Buddhists had no idea what Vasubandhu
or Candrakirti wrote. It seemed to amaze him that anyone could care
about the 1% of Buddhists who thought about Vasubandhu and Candrakirti.
I guess I was equally amazed that anyone could care what 99% of
Buddhists (or any other human beings) did two thousand years ago.

> In our case we have not only textual evidence of Buddhism, but, as
> Schopen demonstrates, archeological evidence.

Archaeology. Isn't that an old word for what people now call science
fiction?

> 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.

If the purpose is to find car keys, then of course only looking under
street lamps is quite risible. But if one is interested in street lamps,
then spending time around them is not a bad idea. Similarly, if one is
interested in what Buddhists do and did, then reading texts about what
they ought to do is quite silly. But if one is interested in reflecting
on what one ought to do, then studying what the best minds have said
about that is not a bad idea.

> 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.

The wonderful thing about "the" vocation of scholarship is that it is
actually hundreds of vocations. While some are called to playing
historical sleuth by pouring over tantalizing scraps of evidence from
the remote past, others are interested in figuring out just exactly what
the constraints were on the uses of gerunds and locative absolutes in
Magadhan and Sanskrit, while yet others are seeking material for
inspiring dharma talks, and others still love to look for universal
trends in all human thought. Being a good scholar in any one of these
fields requires only being open-minded to evidence that is relevant to
that field. Trying to be open-minded to absolutely everything is
probably a pretty good way to become a rather mediocre scholar. But it
could make one an entertaining guest on the Larry King show.

> 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.

I tend to disagree. Right now the real scholarship in the area of
American Buddhism is being done by historians of American religions,
such as Thomas Tweed, who can show the influence of such phenomena as
the holiness movement, the nativist movement and the fundamentalist
movement on the evolution of all American religious movements of the
past 200 years, of which American Buddhism is only one. Other work is
being done by sociologists, who are intrigued in trying to figure out
why some kinds of Buddhism have been attractive mostly to affluent,
highly educated white folks, while other kinds have had an appeal to
poor urban blacks. And still other work is being done by philosophers
such as David Loy and theologians such as Ruben Habito and psychologists
such as Polly Young-Eisendrath. Some of these people study texts, and
others study statistics, but all are offering us important insights into
this chimera called American Buddhism. (And in Europe we have Martin
Baumann's good work on European Buddhism.) 

When America finally collapses under the weight of Republican greed and
incompetence, and when wild mustard grows over the ruins of what were
once cities, then the archaeologists and other looters can do their
handiwork. Just be patient.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico