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

[Richard Hayes]

On Jan 1, 2010, at 2:15 PM, Curt Steinmetz wrote:

> Why not just state your own 
> opinion and stand by it?

I don't have an opinion on the matter of Thurman's review, because I have never read it. I simply reported what I heard people saying about it moments after the panel in which he delivered it at the AAR was over. But I admit that hearsay is no substitute for scholarship. I falsely assumed you might be interested to know that not everyone agrees with your apparently positive assessment of Thurman's review.

You want to hear me state an opinion? Here's one: I like Lopez's book, which I believe I did say, and which I now stand by. And I know it has been quite well received, Thurman's critique notwithstanding. Since you seem to take an interest in objectivity, why don't you go ask Dr Google to provide you with a list of all the reviews of "Prisoners of Shangri-la" and submit a fair and balanced report to the rest of us.

Although I have no opinion of Thuerman's review of Lopez, I do have an opinion about one piece of Thurman's work that I have seen and used in classes. He gave opening remarks to the teachings of the Dalai Lama in a series of videotapes called The Four Noble truths. His introduction is so full of misinformation and misquotations that I learned to fast-forward past his introduction and and just get to the Dalai Lama's teachings. If he excoriates his colleagues for scholarly carelessness, it may do more to evoke such words as "pot" and "kettle" and "black" than to diminish the reputations of his colleagues.


Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
rhayes at unm.edu