[Buddha-l] A really good & provocative book

[Joy Vriens]

Hi Joanna,

"Rhetorical hankypanky", "tricks of the trade", "smug Mahayana mainstays", looking for a fight? ;-)
  
>Speaking of the cooky Mahayana sutras, y'all have GOT to get this book--I 
>got it via ILL--it's a fantastically good critique of 4 Mahayana sutras as 
>literature, of their rhetorical hankypanky--I am so impressed: 
 
>Alan Cole. _Text As Father : Paternal Seductions in Early Mahayana Buddhist 
>Literature_. UCPress, 2005. He takes on the Lotus, the Tathagata, the 
>Diamond, and Vimalakirti's Nirdesa. [how they got rid of the old Buddha and 
>made a new one: the texts! + their tricks of the trade] 
 
>My only quibble is the same as with some other scholarly books--he overdoes 
>the writing, it's often prolix and a repetitive, he could have eliminated at 
>least 25% of it. Still a brilliant contribution to undoing the smug Mahayana 
>mainstays. 

I hope this book won't be considered as the ultimate critique of "Mahayana sutras" and Cole the new price fighter of the "anti-Mahayanists". I haven't read the book, but think the selection of 4 "Mahayana" sutras (including "taking on" the VKN), and treating them together and probably as representative of something looks like a bad start to me. I'd be interested in a critique of Jonathan Swift's works by Cole. I think (specifically having the VKN in mind) that to state as does the review below: "His sophisticated and sustained analysis of the narrative structures and seductive literary strategies used in these sutras suggests that they were *specifically written to encourage devotion to the written word* instead of other forms of authority, be they human, institutional, or iconic" is to miss the point tragically. Both for those who develop devotion through the VKN and for those judging that the VKN is meant to encourage devotion to *it*(?) or *them* (including the "other" Ma!
 hayana texts). Or perhaps I am missing the point tragically myself and reading too much irony in those texts, because I end up with a big smile rather than with devotion, not to speak about devotion to the written word. Or perhaps we need to redefine devotion. 

And talking about smugness, how about the titles of the chapters of Cole's book?

"This beautifully written work sheds new light on the origins and nature of Mahayana Buddhism with close readings of four well-known texts–the Lotus Sutra, Diamond Sutra, Tathagatagarbha Sutra, and Vimalakirtinirdesa. Treating these sutras as literary works rather than as straightforward philosophic or doctrinal treatises, Alan Cole argues that these writings were carefully sculpted to undermine traditional monastic Buddhism and to gain legitimacy and authority for Mahayana Buddhism as it was veering away from Buddhism's older oral and institutional forms. His sophisticated and sustained analysis of the narrative structures and seductive literary strategies used in these sutras suggests that they were specifically written to encourage devotion to the written word instead of other forms of authority, be they human, institutional, or iconic. 
Contents (back to top) 
Acknowledgments 

Introduction 
1. Text as Father 
2. Who's Your Daddy Now? Reissued Paternity in the Lotus Sutra 
3. The Domino Effect: Everyone and His Brother Convert to the Lotus Sutra 000 
4. "Be All You Can't Be" and Other Gainful Losses in the Diamond Sutra 
5. Sameness with a Difference in the Tathagatagarbha Sutra 
6. Vimalakirti, or Why Bad Boys Finish First 
Conclusion: A Cavalier Attitude toward Truth-Fathers 

Bibliography 
Index"
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/sale/pages/10273.html
 
But you will probably advise me to read the book first, so I will let myself be influenced by it and perhaps think different of it. That souds fair enough ;-)

Joy