[Buddha-l] Are we sick of dogma yet? (2nd of 2)

[Franz Metcalf]

Joanna et al.,

You asked for more detail and Dan did a tremendous job of providing it 
for the Indian and East Asian traditions. Thank you, Dan, for so 
provocatively arguing for the importance of Pudgalavada. I can only add 
some correction and clarification about practice in the West.

Joanna is right to challenge my sketchy assertion that the assertion of 
Pudgalavada centrality "is *profoundly* important and--once one gets 
over the shock of it--powerfully explanatory of contemporary Western 
Buddhist practice." Fact is, there is no unified Western practice, as 
might be inferred from my words. As we know, there are a variety of 
practices in a variety of traditions practiced in the West. But let me 
better explain what I meant in saying what I said. I believe a 
principal and consistent theme of Buddhist practice in the West 
(especially among converts) is a positive--one might call it 
"psychological"--attitude to the self. Two aspects of this seem to 
parallel Pudgalavadin practice as Dan describes it. First, a 
commonsense assumption that the self exists--at least as a construct of 
perception and human development. And second, a positive valuation of 
this "self," because it is through a kind of retraversing of its 
development that we can go beyond it. So the self is soteriologically 
useful, perhaps even *necessary*, on the path to liberation (from the 
self).

Dan and others may well correct me on the above as a characterization 
of ancient Pudgalavada. But I think this psychologization (along with 
lay orientation, egalitarianism, meditative focus, etc.) does well 
describe Buddhist practice in "the West." If that change, that movement 
toward psychological focus on the self, is not aberrant or even odd, if 
it in fact brings Western practice into line with mainstream ancient 
Indian practice, well, this is something to talk about. And maybe 
rejoice in.

And speaking of talking and rejoicing, time to get back to the family,

Franz Metcalf