[Buddha-l] Lamas and such

[Dan Lusthaus]

[As some of you may have discovered, the list was down for awhile --  
messages couldn't go through while it was down, so this bounced back. I'm 
resending this now that the list is back online.]

Richard,

You are always free to use "Canon Buddhism" or whatever other term you
prefer -- once it's around, we can see how others respond to it. Who knows,
maybe it'll catch on.

As for what connotations the word "early" has on people, we've has lots of
examples recently on this list of people measuring meanings of words by what
it means to them personally -- and then insisting that is what they mean in
general. I guess this subjectivism has become a buddha-l staple methodology
(or at least that's my subjective impression -- therefore I must generalize
it).

Again the test would be to use it, and then see how others (subjectively)
respond to it. I predict there will be so much additional explanation
necessary ("No, it doesn't they were obsolete before Buddhism got
sophisticated... it doesn't mean they weren't major innovators 1000, 1500 or
more years after the Buddha... we just want to call them 'early' because
they get the worms and remember to read the Nikayas/Agamas from time to
time...") that the term will prove impractical.

Of course, if one sees no need for such terms, that there is no conceptual
substrata that corresponds to "non-Mahayana Buddhism" in any meaningful or
condonable sense, then no term is necessary and we will leave that elephant
in the room unspecified, unidentified and unnamed. But any nominalist will
tell you that we have lots of names for things lacking ontological
counterparts. Most people live life according to such imagined counterparts,
presuming them to be real. That's what our Yogacara friends called
parikalpita or prapanca.

Dan