[Buddha-l] Meditating Buddha

[Richard Nance]

I wrote:

> If you could determine this criterion, you'd have solved a great many
> problems that bedevil the study of Buddhist history.

Robert Morrison responded:

> Descriptive:  In dependence upon A, arises B.
>
> Soft (subjunctive) prescriptive:  IF you want B, then you SHOULD do A.

OK -- but, of course, neither of these constitutes a criterion. A
criterion of the sort that Stefan was after would allow us to decide
whether a particular linguistic string, symbol, etc. functioned (i.e.
was intended and/or received) prescriptively or descriptively (or
both). Sometimes, such functions surface in the form of the sign
(e.g., the capitalized SHOULD in the statement above). But not always:
a sign may lack explicit prescriptive markers and still function
prescriptively.

Examples of this sort of thing are easy enough to come by. If
confronted with a sign that reads "No Smoking," it would be a mistake
to assume that the sign's principal function is to describe accurately
the state of affairs that obtains in the location in which it's
posted. (If we happen to find a cigarette butt below the sign, the
sign isn't thereby falsified.)

Best wishes,

R. Nance