[Buddha-l] "Western Self, Asian Other"

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Op 29-12-2009 9:12, L.S. Cousins schreef:
> On 29/12/2009 06:11, Richard Hayes wrote:
>    
>> Now here are my first questions about the article. Have any of you
>> witnessed the sort of "rancor and finger-pointing" that Quli refers
>> to? Have you seen academic scholars of Buddhism accused of
>> Orientalism? Have you seen people like Suzuki and Dharmapāla dismissed
>> for the reasons she states; that is, have you seen them dismissed for
>> offering a picture of Buddhism that is inauthentic because it is mixed
>> with Western ideas?
>> I have to say that in thirty-seven years of being an academic student of Buddhism I have never been aware of myself or my colleagues accused of Orientalism. As I understand the charge of Orientalism, it is the charge that a scholar either deliberately or unwittingly portrays a culture in an unflattering way and thereby reinforces the idea that the other culture is backwards and perhaps in need of being nudged toward higher levels of civilization by another culture; Orientalism, as I understand it, goes hand in hand with justifying colonization, invasion and warfare. This charge is often made by Muslims of European and American scholars of Islam. But is it made by Buddhists of European and American scholars of Buddhism? I haven't seen such a charge made, but perhaps I live in a sheltered world
>>      
> I have to separate the two issues.
>
> There is no doubt that Suzuki and Dharmapala have often been dismissed
> for the reasons indicated. The whole concept of 'Protestant Buddhism'
> (and to a lesser extent 'Buddhist Modernism') is used in this way.
>    
Conze was not taken serious by many Buddhologists because of his 
personal involvement in Buddhism.
> I am not so sure about Orientalism. Since the work of Said, the terms
> 'Orientalist' and 'Orientalism' have become negative ones in the Islamic
> world and to a lesser extent among some Hindus. This is clearly much
> less true among Asian Buddhists, especially in East Asia. In general,
> much of what Said says is simply wrong, if applied to many nineteenth
> century scholars of Ancient India or China.
>    
I know a few examples. I never heard Tillman Vetter say anything positive about Indian culture or history. The Dutch Indologist Gonda never set foot in India and his successor Jaap Ensink only after his retirement. Indology, Tibetology, Buddhology, etc. was supposed to be a science of reading and classifying texts and what the texts really meant was not important. There's a study about the reception of the concept of nirvaana in the West which contains the weirdest explanations, the best being that of Schopenhauer who didn't read a letter in Oriental languages.
I always wondered why it is considered quite normal to prepare and eat the dishes if you translate an old cooking book and not practice the meditation while reading the Maahasattipatthana sutta. In these days people like Alan Wallace continue this confrontational politics, by turning Tibetan lamas into superexpertswhich are immune to any criticism or falsification. The Oriental Buddhists play the game all to willingly, because they are lazy bastards who are afraid for and not used to prove themselves. At the same time they think their tradition is superiour to anything you can find in Western philosophy. What a surprise it would give if they would learn about Diogenes or Musonius Rufus.
Besides a lot of Asian Buddhists are just homesick and long for the past that never was. They don't want any contact with Westerners. Most Vietnamese or Chinese Buddhist groups in Europe don't accept Western members.
I'm not very much in favour of a modern Buddhism because it's is outdated already, I'm looking forward to a postmodern Buddhism, where traditions are just stories and there is no racial bias. I think the first step towards a nonbiased Buddhism would be to challenge our lamas, bikkhus and senseis to prove themselves to us. Let them earn their recognition in a philosophical debate.

Erik

Info: www.xs4all.nl/~jehms
Weblog: http://www.volkskrantblog.nl/pub/blogs/blog.php?uid=2950
Productie: http://www.olivepress.nl