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

[JKirkpatrick]

On Dec 29, 2009, at 5:17 PM, JKirkpatrick wrote:

> RH:
> My impression is that if Western Buddhologists have a fault (an

> outrageous thing to suggest!), it is that they tend to be as 
> excessively blind to possible shortcomings in Buddhism as Said
claims 
> Islamicists are blind to the positive aspects of Islam. If
anything, 
> Western Buddhologists (and I include here those who do claim in
any 
> way to be Buddhist themselves) are the very opposite of Saidian

> Orientalists.
>
JK: 
> I would appreciate some examples or refs here...thanks.
Somehow, I 
> can't share this view, but then I'm not a Buddhologist either.

RH:
My claim is essentially negative in character in that I am
claiming that there is an absence of critical appraisals of
Buddhism. It is hard to provide a reference for an absence. But I
can give two examples of ways in which Western scholars of
Buddhism have been blind to shortcomings. One would be the
reaction to Paul Swanson's translation of two Japanese authors
who made the claim that 1) Zen Buddhism is not authentic Buddhism
but is in fact diametrically opposed to Buddhism in important
ways, and 2) Japanese Buddhism as a whole has had an abysmal
track record on being on the right side of such moral issues as
war and helping the poor and disenfranchised. The claims of the
so-called "critical Buddhists" in the book 'Pruning the Bodhi
Tree' were met with more than the usual amount of academic
scepticism. I witnessed people literally screaming at each other
over this issue. My impression was that some scholars are quite
resistant to hearing Buddhism portrayed in a negative li!
 ght. But why?

A second example comes to my mind because it involves some of my
own work. I have written articles claiming that there are logical
fallacies in the writings of some Buddhist philosophers and that
there are passages in which even sophisticated Buddhist thinkers
show signs of uncritical dogmatism. This is hardly a bold or
radical claim. I have never met a single philosopher anywhere who
has not produced at least a few fallacies. Moreover, most of the
students in my freshman class on reasoning and critical thinking
can easily spot the fallacies in some Buddhist arguments I have
shown to them. That there are fallacious arguments and dogmatic
moments in Buddhist texts is pretty close to indisputable, I
think, and yet there are Buddhologists who strenuously deny this
fairly obvious fact. In religious studies circles, people are
more likely to respond to such claims with embarrassment, as if
it is a breach of good manners to say that even Buddhists
(indeed, even the Buddha) could m!
 ake mistakes. Again, I ask why that is. 

I am not sure that Quli provides an answer to my questions, but
I'm willing to consider the possibility that she may be on to
something.

Richard Hayes
=========================

Thanks for these, now I understand what you were getting at, and
realise that I've not read enough of the Buddhological
listerature to have picked up on it, or perhaps if I came across
any absences of critical appraisal, I simply ignored them.
Somehow I never came across "Pruning the Bodhi Tree" and since it
apparently produced screaming fits here and there, guess I should
read it.
Hasn't some of Batchelor's writing also encountered such
responses? He's pretty dang critical--but then, so was
Buddhadasa!

There is one way that I can understand Asians having recourse to
some version of tradition (and sorry if someone has already
pointed this out here) as criticism of what's contemporaneously
going on--and that is as a strategy to eliminate what are
perceived as practices deleterious to some, like women, on the
basis that the Buddha never called for them. Such a "return to
the golden age" critique can be found in various Asian calls to
restore the bhikkhuni ordination in those areas the allowed it to
lapse. One finds it in the writings of the Thai woman who founded
a nun monastery against the wishes of the official Thai sangha:
Ms. Kabilsingh (sorry I forget her ordination name).

The same move can be found among some well-educated Muslim women,
who resort to ancient practices (like restoration of hijab) and
quote the Koran on such topics as women's right to property, et
al. --when local customs are depriving them of certain
Koranically declared rights--as moves to create spaces for more
female personal freedom. Other Muslim women point out that full
veiling is only customary and not Koranic, citing chapter and
verse.

Again, during the so-called Bengal Renaissance of the early 19th
c., Debendranath Tagore and others founded the Brahmo Samaj as a
means of "modernising" (although they didn't use that term)
Hinduism. Such movements did appear in response to colonialism,
but they were not attempts to curry favor with the rulers.  No
scholars, foreign or Indian, ever referred to that move as
Protestant Hinduism. Moreover, Indian critiques of elite Hinduism
as widely practiced had begun appearing with the bhakti saints,
like Kabir, that preceded British colonialism by a long shot. 

But I've digressed from discussing western scholars, who Richard
suggests might be uncritical of a lot deemed to be "tradition"
(and one might add, while their Asian counterparts have long been
critical).  So I guess I'd say, in response to Quli's title, that
Asians _also_ had "Asian Others," to which or to whom they have
responded over the centuries. Could the process Quli refers
to--of western scholars dissing western Buddhism--be partly
viewed as a process and practice of maintaining their control
over an academic field they long dominated???

Best, Joanna




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