[Buddha-l] Akālika Forum

[Curt Steinmetz]

Well, I dunno. Westerners (and human beings in general) are always very 
quick to not only absolve ourselves for all our past sins - but to 
insist that everyone else also forgive us just as soon as we promise to 
be good from now.

Personally I tend to agree with Taigen Dan Leighton, who wrote the 
following in a book just published in December:

"In the modern Western appropriation of Zen Buddhism, Zen often has been 
viewed as an intriguing but abstract philosophical doctrine, or as a 
spiritual exercise designed to achieve higher states of personal 
consciousness or a therapeutic calm. However, the Zen tradition in East 
Asia developed as a branch of Mahayana bodhisattva teachings, dedicated 
to universal liberation. As a religion with soteriological aims, Zen is 
based on and grew out of a Buddhist worldview far apart from the 
currently prevalent preconceptions of a world formed of Newtonian 
objectifications. This objective worldview still clouds our attitudes 
toward many realms, including the study of religion, even though it has 
now been discredited by new cutting-edge physics. Contrary to present 
[Western] conventions, Zen Buddhism developed and cannot be fully 
understood outside of a worldview that sees reality itself as a vital, 
ephemeral agent of awareness and healing."

Although I strongly agree with gist of the above, Leighton is wrong to 
drag Newton down like that - good Hermeticist that he was. And he is 
also just as wrong to invoke "cutting-edge physics" (e should leave that 
kind of boneheaded new-age scientifical mystification to Ken Wilber and 
his ilk).

Curt Steinmetz

P.S. Here's a link to Leighton's book, "Visions of Awakening Space and 
Time: Dogen and the Lotus Sutra":
http://tinyurl.com/c29wne

Franz Metcalf wrote
> Gang,
>
> Apart from any possible veracity of unverifiable Buddhist experience,  
> it's the extremely inaccurate characterization of Buddhist scholars as  
> having no possibility of understanding a Dhamma" that rankles me here.
>
> That said, I believe the situation among Buddhist scholars was quite  
> different when Ñāṇavīra Thera wrote his words. Things have  
> changed, at least in the United States. Most scholars I studied with  
> at the (very un-practice oriented) University of Chicago were  
> definitely engaged with the Dharma personally, And even though most  
> have not go on to become card-carrying Buddhists, I believe they do  
> continue to have what the good bhikkhu calls "a vertical view" of  
> Buddhism and of life. I wonder what he would say today, about the  
> quality of scholarship on Buddhism. Think of scholars like Professor  
> and Lama (!) John Makransky. Perhaps we'd get a bit more credit now.
>
> Franz
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