[Buddha-l] Re: Filtered Buddhism

[Richard Hayes]

On Tuesday 26 June 2007 19:26, Katherine Masis wrote:

> On the other hand, I don't think that socializing and
> meditating exclude each other.  Healthy sanghas have a
> balanced mix of both, in my opinion.

That seems about right. I would want to add that the healthiest sanghas also 
have an absence of what Weber called "the charisma of office," that is, 
people who are held in esteem simply because they happen to be monks, tulkus, 
geshes, roshis or abbots. Official charisma is the greatest obstacle to 
friendship, and true friendship seems indispensable to a fruitful Buddhist 
practice. The practice of friendship seems to me far more important than any 
other kind of meditation, although I think the more comfortable one is with 
silence, the more likely one is to be able to achieve depth in friendship.
But then I would have such prejudices, wouldn't I, being heavily involved in 
both the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and the Friends of the 
Western Buddhist Order.

One of the major obstacles to anything truly intellectual going on in the 
academic world is these goddamn things we call credentials and degrees, and 
all these anti-intellectual ranks and titles such as Lecturer, Assistant 
Professor, Associate Professor, Professor, Emeritus Professor and Dean. But 
it's no wonder universities have all these deeply entrenched official 
impediments. The university did, after all, evolve out of the monastery---and 
has done as much to kill the intellectual life as monasteries did to kill 
spiritual life. (Alas, I fear I will die without having shaken off these 
anti-official prejudices.)

-- 
Richard Hayes