[Buddha-l] Query--forest tradition monks in Japan today?

[Bankei]

These days when English speaking people speak of 'forest' monks, they are
probably thinking of the Thai tradition, especially the lineage of Phra
Aharn Mun. The thai word for forest in this case is 'pa' ป่า. I am not an
expert on Thai, but forest is probably a good translation in this case.

Bankei


On 10/11/06, F.K. Lehman (F.K.L. Chit Hlaing) <f-lehman at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> We need to keep it in mind that 'forest' is not quite an adequate
> translation  of the Skt/Pali words, e.g., aran~n~a. It doesn't mean
> literally forest, although the forest/jungle is maybe a sort of
> paradigm example or a prototype of  the conceptual category so
> labelled. It does, as some of these discussions here more than hint,
> mean remote from centres of [secular-social] order or power. This
> idea surfaces in Modern Indic, as Hindi, where the word jangal
> (adj.jangli), from which we get English 'jungle', refers to
> up-country, un-cosmopolitan, back-country places (the limit instance
> being the literal forest or desert or wilderness). Thus in Indian
> English, a 'jungly village' is a village of backward peasants far
> from regular contact with urban centres and so on.
>
> There is, in this connection, a problem with Dr. Kamala's book about
> Thai 'Forest' Monks. It is easily shown (and the early book by
> Carrithers documents this nicely, you know) that the idea of an
> earl/'original' Buddhist Forest tradition is in at least good measure
> a product of European misconstrual of aran~n~avaasi; and Theravadins
> in Sri Lanka, Thailand and so on, swallowed this European
> Buddhalogical work hook, line and sinker, and 'revived' that
> tradition. It is a capital error to take prototype, or limit,
> instances of a category as definitions of the category --
> Wittgenstein to the contrary notwithstanding.
> --
> F. K. L. Chit Hlaing
> Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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