[Buddha-l] Protestant Buddhisms

[Richard Nance]

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 22:39:52 -0700, Richard P. Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu> wrote:

> Similarly, if one is
> interested in what Buddhists do and did, then reading texts about what
> they ought to do is quite silly. 

This seems like an obvious point -- and it's one that Schopen raises
repeatedly -- but I'm not sure it's right. Why assume that norms and
practices can be separated so neatly? One of the things that Buddhists
do and did is to compose and propagate texts concerning what one ought
to do.  You're right that such texts are philosophically interesting;
what I fail to see is why we should assume that they're not also
*historically* interesting.  Schopen seems to think this, and I can't
for the life of me figure out why.

He regularly chastises Buddhist Studies scholars on two related
fronts.  First: we've failed to recognize the normative nature of the
sources on which we have principally relied: textual sources that
propound not how things are, but how they ought to be. Second: we have
mistakenly propounded normative accounts, rather than descriptive
accounts, of what Indian Buddhism "really was."

Schopen seems to think that these two points are closely related, but
they needn't be. The second point doesn't necessarily follow from the
first: an account of Buddhism based on normative texts need not itself
be normative. It's perfectly coherent to think that one could offer an
account that self-consciously aims to describe norms articulated by,
say, Gupta-period Indian Buddhists. Would Schopen rule out such a
study as having anything of historical interest to offer? It won't
tell us "what happened on the ground," true, but so what? Why assume
that norms—and texts that articulate them—do not impact history, by
providing terms in which agents make sense of their experiences at
particular points in history?

Certainly one needs to be careful of generalizing things too much: we
should be careful of reading, say, a few texts on abhidharma and
assuming that most--or even many--Buddhists of Vasubandhu's day cared
about such things.  But some Buddhists did care, and appear to have
cared very much. So reading such texts may provide us with insight
into what captured the attention of some--but by no means
all--Buddhists of that time. Why wouldn't this be of interest to
historians?

Best wishes,

R.