[Buddha-l] women & , er, religion

[Jayarava]

--- On Sat, 25/7/09, Sally McAra <sallymcara at gmail.com> wrote:

> Maybe I'll chip in here, I usually just lurk.

Yay. Hope you're well. 

> It looks to me like people are using up a lot of energy on
> definitions and trying to be very specific and fixed about them.

Exactly - language is always context dependent. Good call. Scholars often focus on words on paper, and they then to forget what language is like in the real world. 

If you look back through the Buddhist scriptures you will find this kind of argument all through history. Buddhists are often quite paranoid about defining who a Buddhist is; and about issues of authenticity and lineage (ordination). Buddhists get into disputes not only with other faiths, but also with other Buddhists, and describe people who disagree in the worst possible terms. Hīnayāna being most likely a caste-ist term IMHO - hīna being used in a number of other compounds for describing out-castes and untouchables. Dayamati has translated it as Garbage Vehicle, but I tend to suggest Nigger Vehicle for a modern equivalent with a similar emotional sting. 

Greg Schopen, and a few others, have published some interesting papers on this phenomena in Buddhist history. They are worth a read. Sangharakshita has highlighted the tendency to ultra-ism as well. Buddhists hate no one more than another Buddhist with a different idea! ("They're not even Buddhists you know!")

All known forms of Buddhism, even those forms portrayed in the Pāli texts, show clear signs of syncretism - the living forms are all highly syncretised with local customs, beliefs and practices. Buddhism is all about change and adaptation, everything by definition is change, a swirl of social forms and cultural manifestations around a single idea: praticcasamupada, which itself encapsulates this idea (my spelling of it tends to demonstrate the principle of fluidity as well). 

And yet there are Buddhists who resist (and resent) changes to tradition? Buddhists who want things pinned down and fixed. Anitya! Śunyata! Process! (sotto voce: just so long as you don't change anything). Hmmmm? What's that you say?

Wishing you all a Dada weekend!
Jayarava

"Anything, anytime, anywhere, for no reason at all" - Frank Zappa