[Buddha-l] Lamas and such

[Dan Lusthaus]

With all due respect, James, a moment's reflection will show that this is an 
impossible origin for the term. Post-colonial sensibilities are recent, not 
a century old -- it would be anacronistic to project that sort of 
word-phobia backward in time. No one was arguing etic vs emic naming 
practices back then.

Additionally, the notion that Tibetan/Mongolian Buddhism was decadent was 
not the origin of the name, but an impression that got added on to the name 
(in fact, that was the prevailing "sense" of the Western use of the term 
"Mahayana" at the end of the 19th c. since Theravada was the vogue back 
then, and Christian missionaries were not impresses with E Asian varieties 
of Buddhism either, labelling them decadent superstition). As mentioned on 
this list awhile back, around the turn of the 20th c Japanese writers on 
Tibet, discovering the wide-spread pederasty amongst monastics, and other 
problems that Japanese Buddhist institutions had endeavored to stamp out in 
Japan, filled the newspapers, etc., in Japan with shocked and alarming 
accounts of the decadence of Tibetan Buddhism at that time. To claim that 
"Lamaism" was created as a label for decadent Buddhism is to conflate two 
distinct things. That it acquired that connotation in some, not all circles, 
is another story. That reputation would have arisen whatever one called it. 
The reputation and the name merged, but they have separate origins.

Dan

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Blumenthal, James" <james.blumenthal at oregonstate.edu>
To: "Buddhist discussion forum" <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2009 3:17 PM
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Lamas and such


> The term is considered offensive because its use by colonialists and 
> others in their midst seemed to imply by it that the Buddhism of Tibet was 
> such a degenerate form of Buddhism that it hardly deserved the label 
> "Buddhism".  Thus, the neologism, "lamaism" was conceived.  Lopez 
> discusses this in detail in Prisoners of Shangrila.
> Jim
>
>
> James Blumenthal
> Dept. of Philosophy
> Oregon State University
> 102-A Hovland Hall
> Corvallis, OR 97331
> james.blumenthal at oregonstate.edu
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