[Buddha-l] Conze on monks' busywork

[Mike Austin]

In message <2392939.1130181973928.JavaMail.mlatorra at nmsu.edu>, Mr 
Michael A. La Torra <mlatorra at nmsu.edu> writes
>Richard P. Hayes wrote:
>...
>>All this reminds me of an observation that Edward Conze made once about
>>abhidharma. Monks did not have enough to do, he said, so they kept
>>themselves busy by putting every teaching into a neat category and then
>>drawing an infinite number of meaningless correlations between one
>>category and another. Better to do that, I guess, than starting wars.
>
>I quite agree with Conze about this! I've often wondered how much
>better those monks could have contributed to the reduction of human
>suffering if they had spent their time in other ways. Too much
>intellectual effort was expended for the small return of value.

Monks at Nalanda thought that Shantideva just ate, slept  and defecated. 
It later transpired that he had reached a high level of realisation. His 
text "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life" has since helped others to 
reduce dukkha. We should not be too hasty in our judgement.

-- 
Metta
Mike Austin