[Buddha-l] Lamas and such

[Richard Hayes]

On Dec 6, 2009, at 12:40 AM, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> Nikaya Buddhism works as an equivalent for early, pre-Buddhaghosa  
> Theravada,
> perhaps, but not for the other "Hinayana" schools, or even later,
> post-Buddhaghosa Theravada.

In a moment of fastidiousness, I trained myself to refer to Nikāya/ 
āgama/abhidharma Buddhism as canonical Buddhism, since those schools  
did seem to have in common a craving to establish a boundary (a  
pāḷi) that separated the authentic from the inauthentic. Of course,  
all Buddhism is in some sense canonical, but my terminology was meant  
to separate (up)tight canons from loose canons.

>> If not "Early Buddhist Schools," how about "Eighteen-School  
>> Buddhism?"
>
> Your suggestions highlight -- probably inadvertently -- precisely  
> why they
> don't work. "Early" indicates archaic, from a long time ago,  
> suggestion they
> have been superceded.

"Early" does not carry such a suggestion for me at all. When I hear  
and use such terms as Early American, Early Flemish or Early Modern, I  
never think of it as designating something that was superceded, or  
even as something that no longer existed when later things came along.  
I can same the same about the term "primitive," which I use without  
any hint of perjoration. I don't like the term "Early Buddhism" if it  
is meant to distinguish Mahāyāna from whatever the hell one wants to  
call non-Mahāyāna, since at least some of what is called Mahāyāna  
predates some of what is called "early." As any kind of temporal  
reference, "early" becomes useless.

> Coming up with a good name isn't as easy as it looks. ;-)

Fortunately, it is not at all necessary. I am not sure there needs to  
be a name for forms of Buddhism other than Mahāyāna, since Mahayana  
itself is an artificial construct and its negation is even more so.  
That is to say, there is nothing whatsoever that so-called Mahayana  
schools have in common, aside from thinking of themselves as great.  
And aside from thinking that the Mahayana was perhaps not so great,  
there is nothing that non-Mahayana schools have in common. The words  
have no descriptive or explanatory value at all. They are value  
judgements pure and simple, and scholars of Buddhism need not  
participate in the sectarian name-calling that Buddhist polemicists  
engage in. I would suggest that people teaching Buddhism in secular  
academic settings learn to avoid using such terms as hīnayāna,  
mahāyāna, lesser vehicle, great vehicle---in much the same way that  
careful historians of religions that began in another part of Asia  
have learned not to use such words as "old testament," "new testament"  
and "gospels" as descriptive terms, while acknowledging that those  
terms were used as polemical labels to distinguish (mostly for the  
sake of denigrating) in the traditions being studied. While Christians  
may use words such as "old testament" and "new testament," scholars of  
Christianity need not follow suit. I recommend a similar policy for  
scholars of Buddhism. That's waht I say as a scholar.

As a Buddhist, on the other hand, my polemical tendency is to  
acknowledge and affirm all kinds of Buddhism and not to see any as  
lesser or greater or more elementary or more advanced than any other,  
so I try (not always successfully, given the momentum the terminology  
has in conventional language) to avoid those terms for different  
reasons than why I try to avoid them as an academic.

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