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

[Mikael Aktor]

Richard P. Hayes wrote:

>On Thu, 2005-03-24 at 10:20 +0100, Mikael Aktor wrote:
>
>  
>
>>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?
>>    
>>
>
>Every society needs a place to keep social misfits and incompetents.
>Such people used to be kept in monasteries. Now they are kept in
>prisons, which, if Foucault is right, evolved out of monasteries, and in
>universities, which also evolved out of monasteries.
>  
>
Not so simple, I guess. But Foucault has an interesting analysis of 
celibacy in a text by Cassian (quoted at length in Talal Asad's 
_Genealogies of Religion_). The point of his analysis is that sexual 
abstinence for Cassian was understood as a technique of self-knowledge 
("an entire technique for analyzing and diagnosing thought"). Compared 
with the desire for food or sleep, sexuality is remarkable by being a 
strong desire whose fulfillment can be denied without risking life. 
Therefore it serves as a means of a complete confrontation with desire. 
By sexual abstinence the monk confronts desire, gets to know all its 
ways, and may eventually, by that knowledge, be able to liberate himself 
of the desire. Also in monastic Buddhism I guess there is a reason for 
demanding celibacy, and if the Milindapañha denies that celibacy is a 
prerequisite for higher goals, there is the more reason to ask why it 
should  be demanded at all.

>But the
>romantic view [on meditation] is much too simplistic and distorted to warrant serious
>consideration by people adult enough to read buddha-l.
>  
>

Sure, and my knowledge about Buddhism is merely propaedeutic (my own 
special field is Hindu dharma´saastra). But then, my question here was 
not a scholarly one. The discussion about tathaagatagarbha revealed a 
priority for a rational, philosophical, human Buddha as against a more 
eternalized and mythologized Buddha. I was wondering what this means in 
terms of devotional Buddhism (where the cosmological, mythological 
Buddha is prevalent), and wanted to know what people on this list would 
think about that. Do people consider devotional forms as a lesser 
practice? If so, "lesser" in terms of what? My understanding was that 
devotional Buddhism has been particularly stressed as practice for the 
laity. Gombrich's argument was that modern "protestant" Buddhism breaks 
down a distinction between virtuoso-meditative Buddhism on one side and 
lay-devotional Buddhism on the other, and that this creates tensions for 
lay practitioners. I wanted to know whether people on this list might 
find this a relevant problem in relation to Western practitioners as 
well. I got a few answers, and I am happy for that.

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)