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

[JKirkpatrick]

Reading Richard's thoughtful exposition of Scharf's idea, an
invigorating take on the issues at hand, I came across a matter
of digital text that makes me wonder if my use of quote marks
when citing something is perceived in other folks' screens. 
For example: 
...........by _Buddhist apologists_ (not _scholars of Buddhism_,
........................
I've noticed that some people as Richard did, above, use
underline marks next to a cit., others use * marks, I use
quotation marks. I need to know if quote marks are visible, or if
they just disappear on some formats? Should I use the underline
marks as Richard does, above? Are they more readable by different
kinds of whatevers?

Sorry for this bit of punc-pedantry, but this has been bugging me
for some time so I need to know.
Please advise, y'all..and thanks for any help with it.

Joanna



-----Original Message-----
From: buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com
[mailto:buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com] On Behalf Of Richard
Nance
Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2009 1:47 PM
To: Buddhist discussion forum
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] "Western Self, Asian Other"

Regarding "Western Self, Asian Other," I agree with Joanna that
Quli needs to provide much more evidence to back up her claims,
particularly since the evidence that she does provide is
sometimes less than compelling.

So, for example, on p. 9, she identifies a particular scholarly
practice as worthy of critique. The relevant practice is that of
identifying "contemporary Buddhisms as... 'distortions' of Asian
transhistorical essences now contaminated by Western ideas."
Which scholars make such mistaken identifications? In a footnote,
Quli specifies those she has in mind, singling out Robert Sharf's
paper "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative
Experience"
(_Numen_ 42:3 (1995)), among others, for criticism.

Quli says that Sharf's paper "describe(s) Buddhist modernism as a
'distortion.'" (p. 30). But it doesn't. In fact, the term
_distortion_ doesn't occur in Sharf's paper. Nor do related terms
like _distort_ and _distorted_.

What Sharf does say -- among other things -- is this:

"The similarity between the lay Zen in post-Meiji Japan and the
vipassana revivals in Southeast Asia is striking, but not,
perhaps, surprising. Indeed, analogous movements have altered the
face of Buddhism in Korea and Vietnam as well. In each case, the
threat posed by the wholesale imposition of Western values
prompted Asian intellectuals to turn anew to their own cultural
heritage so as to affirm and elevate their indigenous spiritual
traditions. At the same time, these "indigenous" traditions were
reconstituted so as to appropriate the perceived strengths of the
Occident. This took the form of various reform movements that
tended to reiterate the iconoclastic, anti-institutional,
anti-clerical, and anti-ritual strategies of the European
Enlightenment. As the reformers would have it, "true" Buddhism is
not to be sought in moribund institutions, empty rituals, or
dusty scriptures, but rather in a living experience. Buddhism
properly understood is not a religion at all, but rather a
spiritual technology providing the means to liberating insight
and personal transformation. By rendering the essence of Buddhism
a non-discursive spiritual experience, Buddhist apologists
effectively positioned their tradition beyond the compass of
secular critique...

The urge to reduce the goal of Buddhist praxis to a mode of
nondiscursive experience would seem to arise when alternative
strategies of legitimation, such as the appeal to institutional
or scriptural authority, prove inadequate. Breakdowns in
traditional systems of authority may in turn result from a
variety of historical and socioeconomic circumstances. The
situation encountered repeatedly above involved an Asian nation
coming into sustained contact with the culture, science, and
philosophy of the West. Such contact brought in its wake the
scourge of cultural relativism. By privileging private spiritual
experience Buddhist apologists sought to secure the integrity of
Buddhism by grounding it in a transcultural, trans-historical
reality immune to the relativist critique."

Whatever problems Sharf's paper may have, identifying Buddhism
with a transhistorical essence isn't one of them. Rather, Sharf
is noting that such an identification has at times been made by
_Buddhist apologists_ (not _scholars of Buddhism_, though, of
course, the two groups may overlap) in their attempts to
accommodate (or to resist) forces of modernity. That claim may be
true, or it may be false -- but it's importantly different from
the claim that Quli wants to attribute to Sharf.

In short: a straw is being torched here. Whether knowingly or
unknowingly, Quli has managed to misrepresent -- distort -- the
central claims of Sharf's essay. This isn't to say that the sort
of phenomenon to which she's attempting to draw her readers'
attention never occurs. But she owes it to her readers to be more
precise about where it occurs.

Much more could be said about the article, but I'll shut up for
now.

Best wishes,

R. Nance
Indiana
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