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

[Curt Steinmetz]

Katherine Masis wrote:
>  
> What puzzles me is that there are western scholars of Buddhism who seem to subtly disdain the entire field of study and practice, western as well as Asian.  I’m thinking of Donald Lopez here.  I’ve only read a couple of his articles plus one-and-a-half of his books (completed *Prisoners of Shangri-La* and am now reading *Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed*).  Am I the only one with that impression on this list?  Don’t get me wrong—I think he’s an excellent historian of Buddhism.  I’m just puzzled about what I perceive as an undercurrent of contempt in his writings.
>   

I agree about Lopez' "contempt". And I also think that this contempt 
seriously undermines the value of his writings.

Take "Prisoners of Shangrila", please. According to Robert A.F. Thurman 
"The book is fundamentally marred by the usual trademarks of a polemic: 
mere assertions paraded as evidence, confused distortions in reasoning, 
and an authorial pose of scholarly self-righteousness. Numerous specific 
passages throughout the book are simply erroneous: for example, 'Lama 
Govinda ... set up permanent residence in Sikkim' (61) (the Lama lived 
far away in Almora in India); 'In Tibet ... lay and state support for 
monks was less generous than in some Theravada countries' (174) (there 
has been no society more fully monasticized than Tibet in the whole 
world under any religion in any era) ...."

The most damning thing that Thurman says, though, is this: "I was 
dismayed at the intensity of the resentment of the Tibetan people that 
leaps from every page and surprised by the unself-consciousness that 
gives that resentment such free reign. Most of all, I was saddened by 
his joining, however unwittingly, the apologists for China in Tibet."

It's really too bad that Thurman's critique of Lopez is not freely 
available online! The full reference is:

"Critical Reflections on Donals S. Lopez Jr.s Prisoners of Shangrila: 
Tibetan Buddhism and the West"
by Robert A.F. Thurman, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2001 
69(1):191-202:
http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/69/1/191

Curt