[Buddha-l] Vajrayana on buddha in the Buddha

[Richard Hayes]

On Jan 13, 2010, at 8:20 PM, Alberto Todeschini wrote:

> There are numerous scholars 
> of Buddhism, as well as interested non-professionals, who are attracted 
> to the philosophical aspects of this or that Buddhist school. I'm one of 
> them. I also know perfectly well that there's a lot more to Buddhism 
> than this, and so do my colleagues. Simply, I don't write about some of 
> the other aspects that Quli mentions because I'm either not interested 
> enough or competent to do so. But I know they are there, and I don't 
> reject them.

Very nicely said, Alberto! It might be worth adding that there are, and probably always have been, Buddhists for whom reading texts, thinking about what the texts mean, trying to assess whether what the texts say is true and useful, and then trying to put what they deem to be true and useful into effect in their daily lives, is their main practice. Those activities all are part of what we call philosophy in the West. So it's probably safe to say that "doing" philosophy is a legitimate mainstream Buddhist practice, and has been since Sariputta came on board.

When students ask me (as they always seem to do) what Buddhist practice Nāgārjuna or Dharmakīrti did, I say "They wrote texts." The curious student usually laughs, thinking I have made a joke, and then asks again what *practice* they did. I repeat "They wrote texts. That is the only practice we know for sure that they did, because we have the evidence for it right in our hands." The student typically says "But did they *meditate*? What meditation did they do?" And I explain that meditation is just a four-syllable word for thinking, and it is obvious that these guys thought. Otherwise they could not have written all those texts. To write a text that people study for the next two thousand years is an achievement that would be hard to pull off without a fair amount of premeditation.

I have known several Buddhist monks from Asia who had almost no active interest at all in either rituals or relics, but who spent as much time as circumstances would allow reading, discussing and writing texts. They simply let other people do rituals if other people felt that some rituals needed to be done. And if someone in the village had a drinking problem and was beating his wife, there might be yet another monk who would do a bit of pastoral care if asked. Not everyone needs to do all things, but somehow everything seems to get done.

It seems to me that buddha-l is based on the distribution of email, and mostly what email can be used to do is distribute words. It's hard to use email as a medium for silent meditation or as an implement for conducting rituals or as a venue in which to plant a garden or cook a pot of rice, so we don't do much of that on buddha-l. It would, however, be rash to conclude that people who write to buddha-l never take hikes, plant gardens, cook food or wash their bowls, let alone that they have contempt for such activities. And even if someone *did* spend all of her time writing to buddha-l, it would be silly to think (and impudent to say) that in so doing she was not sincerely practicing Buddhism. 

Richard Hayes