[Buddha-l] Re: US/UK Buddhalogy again

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Fri, 2006-01-20 at 12:09 -0600, F.K. Lehman (F.K.L. Chit Hlaing)
wrote:

> In America, this is 
> absent, but, for reasons two of you have already 
> more than hinted at, Buddhalogy has been in large 
> part fed by (a) 19th Century News England 
> Transcendentalist romanticism and 
> pseudo-orientalism, 

Just out of curiosity, what do you mean by pseudo-orientalism? How does
faux orientalism differ from vrai orientalism?

> Also, one of the reasons for some of this is that, in America, so much
> of Buddhist scholarship has been by anthropologists, who do, as you
> know (Yes, I am an anthropologist also -- mea culpa!) tend to go for
> the exotic and folk practice, on 
> the grounds that that is what is 'real', i.e., 'of  The People'

A lot of Buddhist scholarship is descriptive, while other scholarship is
prescriptive. As a philosopher, I could not care less what Buddhist
people actually do. My attention is focused almost entirely on what,
according to reflective people, a Buddhist ought to do. The guide to
this is texts and their commentaries, not observation of the behaviour
of that the Buddha repeatedly called the foolish masses. But that is
just my taste.

Interestingly enough, when it comes to learning about the Diné or the
Tewa, I turn to anthropologists to tell me what those people do and how
they do it. That's because I have no interest at all in being a Diné. I
do have a strong interest in being a Buddhist, which for me means
striving to be better than I am now. The task of striving to be better
involves imagination, not just observation of "reality" (which, after
all is just another word for consensus). So the observations of an
anthropologist are useless to me qua Buddhist or qua philosopher. I
would turn to an anthropologist's description of Buddhism only if I
cared not more about being a Buddhist than I care about being an Anasazi
weaver.

> Moreover, pace Richard, it is the intellectual legacy of the New England 
> Transcendentalism that is at work here, despite the fact, if  fact it
> be, that Emerson was not like the caricature of the movement that
> informs later American intellectualism.

There is quite a bit more to North American intellectual history than
New England Transcendentalism. As I look at how North Americans perceive
Buddhism I see traces of Emerson and Thoreau, quite a bit more of
William James, no small amount of various kinds of Theosophical
crackpots, and substantial bits of Scottish philosophers such as Hume
and Reid. I think the Transcendentalists (whom Emerson usually referred
to as "they" not as "we"), whose "Romantic" views on nature hark back to
the reveries of Jonathan Edwards as much as to Coleridge and Wordsworth,
were influential many decades ago. But most Buddhologists my age (I'm
damn near 61) and younger wouldn't know a Transcendentalist from a
transvestite, and couldn't tell Emerson from Emmy Lou Harris. One has to
look more to Timothy Leary, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut and the
Jefferson Airplane to find the cultural influences of most of the
Buddhologists currently on the scene.

> But I defer on such things to others here, since i am (Thank God, in
> whom, as a Buddhist, I have no belief) not a philosopher and not a
> literary man, and 
> have no particular interest in either Emerson or Thoreau,

It's perfectly understandable to be interested in something besides
philosophy and literature, but why rejoice at the fact and tahnk a god
in whom you don't believe? Just curious.

> I apologise for the fact that my e-mail client does not allow me to type diacritics

That's fine. Diacritics are just a way of showing off anyway. (That's
why I use them. I want people to see how erudite I am.)

-- 
Richard