[Buddha-l] Back to the core values?

[Richard Hayes]

On Tuesday 29 May 2007 23:05, Vicente Gonzalez wrote:

> it is a very old topic here... There is a difference between practice
> and doctrine. I agree there is not need to use rebirth to practice.
> I don't agree in suppressing philosophical resources because the
> social needs imagined in a few privileged brains.

Fortunately, I don't think anyone advocates suppression of resources. Even the 
Dalai Lama, who has said that he thinks it is time for Buddhists to study 
neurophysiology, depth psychology and astronomy before studying Vasubandhu's 
abhidharma, is not advocating banning or burning books. No one is.

> just I was following the recent Batchelor comments of other people.

So far I have not seen on buddha-l any portrayals of Batchelor's work that are 
very accurate. So if you are following what other people on buddha-l are 
saying about him, you are mostly studying caricatures.

> Just I say these positions obsessed with
> rationalist approaches are not representative of many westerners who
> are attracted to Dharma. 

Right. Obsession with rationalism is so rare among Western Buddhists that I 
cannot think of anyone (except the long-dead Paul Carus) who could be 
characterized as obsessed with rationalism.

> About the suppression; Batchelor claims his position is agnosticism.
> Agnosticism means that we don't have possibility to know something, and
> it is an obvious way to suppress that something.

Either you have not read Batchelor, or you did not read him with care. He 
takes pains to say that by agnosticism he simply means the state of not 
knowing. When he says that he is an agnostic on many traditional doctrines, 
he also says that what he means by that is that he does not know whether or 
not the doctrines or true. He also says that when one does not know, the best 
attitudinal stance to take is to be completely open-minded. That is hardly 
suppression. On the contrary, it is, well, open-mindedness. And this 
open-mindedness, Batchelor rightly claims, is not as common among Buddhists 
as it could be. He also claims, rightly I think, that if more people in the 
world were more open-minded, there might be quite a bit less dukkha.

> In such case, a better position would be skepticism, because an skeptic
> person is positioned in the doubt, not in the impossibility to know.
> Same Buddha advice skepticism but I don't remember nothing about
> agnosticism. You can know this point better than me, so I would be grateful
> if you can enlighten me if I'm wrong.

I have had several long discussions with Batchelor about this very point. As 
you well know, I prefer using the term "skepticism" to characterize my 
approach to Buddhism, and I have notoriously argued that such critters as the 
Buddha, Nagasena, Nagarjuna, and Dignaga are very much like skeptics. My 
claim is that the word "skeptical", which means inquisitive (not to be 
confused with inquisitional), has more positive connotations than 
does "agnosticism," which lays etymological stress on absence of knowing. 
Batchelor and I seem to think we are in substantial agreement with each 
other, and that our preferences for different words is a matter of no real 
consequence.

So the lesson for you (and anyone, I think) is to let yourself be influenced 
by how authors say they are using words, especially when they take pains to 
explain them. If you approach any text with the attitude that words have 
fixed meanings and cannot be used in different ways, then few texts will 
yield anything sensible to you. Insisting that the word "agnosticism" must 
mean precisely the stance that Batchelor takes pains to reject, and that 
therefore Batchelor is advocating the very thing he claims to be rejecting, 
is to take a stance so perverse as to be  counterproductive. If you read any 
other Buddhist text with such a lack of empathy and charity as you read 
Batchelor, you would surely find the entire Buddhist edifice of teachings 
pointless and ineffectual.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes