[Buddha-l] Wrong Speech in Buddhist Scholarship

[Franz Metcalf]

Richard et al.,

You quoted a young scholar confessing

> "I thought if I praised the work of others, people would think I was  
> uncritical and intellectually soft." What an indictment of academic  
> culture that a young scholar would get the idea, probably from  
> observation, that praise is some kind of sentimentality and that not  
> being confrontational is not playing the academic game properly.

I have long thought this about academia in general, but it pains me  
more because it is so true of Buddhist studies in particular. I have,  
over the years, been privileged to have Charles Prebish as a Buddhist  
studies mentor and we've exchanged many an email arising from nasty  
things that have been written about his work. But he's told me stories  
that were much worse, detailing nearly 40 years of wrong speech in  
Buddhist studies. The cruelty (the word is not an exaggeration) shown  
by some scholars of Buddhism and even by some Buddhist scholars chills  
me.

I admit that I am, by nature, irenic and genial. It is practically  
impossible for me to be mean (except, of course, to those I love; then  
it is frequent). But I trust this does not condemn me to shallow,  
soft, or uncritical scholarship. When my scholarship is those things  
(also frequent) it is due to other factors, not to the fact that I'm  
insufficiently hurtful. And I have to repeat that I cannot chalk this  
up to being a scholar-practitioner: plenty of us (and the field is  
chalk full of us now) seem never to have learned

     If it’s not true, not beneficial, and disagreeable, don’t say it.
     If it’s true, not beneficial, and disagreeable, don’t say it.
     If it’s true, beneficial, and disagreeable, know when to say it.
     If it’s not true, not beneficial, and agreeable, don’t say it.
     If it’s true, not beneficial, and agreeable, don’t say it.
     If it’s true, beneficial, and agreeable, know when to say it.

     (From the Abhaya Sutta, MN 58, <http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.058.than.html 
 >)

Good wishes,

Franz