[Buddha-l] Re: Bachelor bashing [was some damn thing about buddha-ldigest]

[Vera, Pedro L.]

Richard Hayes wrote:

>I once read that spiritual poverty has been achieved when one's desire to get
>rid of possessions is at least as strong as one's desire used to be to
>acquire them. I think there is probably an academic analog to this. What do
>we call the condition in which one's desire not to write papers is as great
>as one's desire used to be to write them? Spiritual maturity?
 
One used to call it getting tenure and being thus freed from demonstrating productivity to justify a salary. Perhaps it still works the same way in the humanities, however, most major medical schools these days, although not abolishing tenure, salary has been unlinked from tenure and still tied to productivity (as evidenced by attracting funding).
 
So, I think the current system encourages the desire (or thirst, and this represents the Buddhist content of this message) for writing papers since your livelihood is still pretty much on the line. Academic maturity means that you have managed to build enough of an enterprise so that your post-docs, graduate students, techs, do the work and write most of it up, and one just writes grants and attends conferences where one displays one's might.
 
Best regards,
 
Pedro