[Buddha-l] Mere mereness

[Richard Hayes]

Dear denizens of buddha-l,

Years ago I descended into the hell realms of news groups 
(talk.religion.buddhism and the like) and clanged swords with all 
matter of opinionated folks claiming to be Buddhists and experts in 
Buddhism. Most of the regular contributors were so rude and 
mean-spirited that I could only stand about three years of their 
virtual company. Or maybe it was five years. I forget. All I know 
is that I was much too thin-skinned for their rough manner of 
discourse.

One of the regular contributors loved to dismiss everything I said 
by calling my brand of Buddhism "mere Stoicism" or "mere 
psychotherapy" or "mere Marxism" or "mere humanism." (Wasn't it 
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, the dean of the discipline known as 
comparative religion, who said that there is no quicker way 
demonstrate one's own smallness than to put the adjective "mere" in 
front of the name of someone else's belief?)

So what does "mere" mean? What did it mean to C.S. Lewis when he 
gave his impassioned defense of Christianity the title <cite>Mere 
Christianity</cite>? Lewis explains that his aim was to articulate 
the essence of Christianity. He knew---for he was a man of 
letters---that "mere" means "pure, complete, total." So he was 
trying to get at something like a pure Christianity, a set of 
beliefs and practices that were basic and primitive, perhaps the 
Christianity that existed before all the scholars and exegetes and 
hermeneuticists got their dirty hands on it.

Oddly enough, what Lewis was doing for Christianity comes close to 
what I have spent my life doing for Buddhism. I have wanted to get 
to mere Buddhism. How odd that in trying to get at that which was 
fully and completely Buddha-dharma, with no admixture of anything 
extraneous or unnecessary, I should come to be seen by some as 
trying to advocate doctrines that I have never found satisfactory 
or complete as they are---things like Marxism, for example. 

What I have found in Buddhism is a form of psychotherapy that is 
surpassed by none, a truly mere psychotherapy, a truly mere 
humanism, a truly mere political theory, and a truly mere 
philosophy. So I stand guilty as charged, but not quite in the way 
my various detractors thought. 

Yours in mere friendship,
Dayamati
http://home.comcast.net/~dayamati/