[Buddha-l] Subject: the poignancy of Donald Lopez ( Franz Metcalf )

[andy]

On Tuesday 19 January 2010 14:06:39 Natalie Quli wrote:
> Hi Lovely list,
>
Lovely List?  This is the first time I have ever heard Buddha-ell refered to 
like this! 

> Richard wrote:
>
> As an academic scholar teaching Buddhism,
>
> > I see my task as involving, in principle at least, passing on
> > information of everything that proclaims itself to be Buddhist. As a
> > Buddhist, I am not especially drawn to Aum Shinrikyo. But as a professor
> > in a secular university that has courses on Buddhism, I cannot and
> > should not pass judgment on what is authentically Buddhist and what is
> > not. In this, I agree with Natalie Quli (I think -- I have learned from
> > her that I have misrepresented quite a bit of what she says).
>
> Well in this case I would totally agree. Aum Shinrikyo may be horribly
> deranged, but they do claim continuity with Buddhism and can demonstrate
> some of those continuities as well. They may be creepy or evil, but creepy
> and evil does not mean inauthentic. It's just one more layer of discourse
> in a tradition that changes over time. From a secular perspective one
> discourse is no more authentic than another, but perhaps it is less
> popular, has more discontinuities, etc.

Maybe it is my ignorance as a student of Buddhism, but I think the entire 
eschatological tradition of apocalypse is foreign to Buddhism, or even if we 
have the Age of Mappo, the idea of a religious duty to bring about the 
apocalypse is ultimately foreign to Buddhism. 

Now I say this as an offender:  I look for philosoophical consistency in a 
religion, which may be the wrong place to look.  There certainly parts of 
Japanese culture that toy with this. But again, it is foreign to Buddhism. And 
of course I have objections to the importation of "just war" thinking into 
Buddhism, which I also think is foreign, but that is not really a big deal, 
since I think that it is also foreign to philosophically consistent 
Christianity (and Islam---but I could just be baiting Lusthaus, which is not 
very Buddhist of me). 
>
> Franz wrote:
> > Promoting this is a game that's been
> > skillfully played from the time of Soyen Shaku and Anagarika
> > Dharmapala through the present day of HH the XIVth Dalai Lama. This is
> > not in itself a bad thing; it's just distorting. I think even Natalie
> > Quli would agree that this is distorting, though it comes from an emic
> > Buddhist position.
>
> Sorry, I still don't consider this distortion. It's transformation, it's
> discontinuity, perhaps it's even deceptive, but as a scholar I'm not going
> to call it a distortion. Buddhism changes, and sometimes those changes are
> the result of cultural influences, behaviors, or attitudes that I don't
> like. Oh well. My job isn't to find and advocate authentic Buddhism, it's
> just to describe self-proclaimed Buddhists and their worlds.
>
> Cheers,
> Natalie

Orientalism?   What religions actually do is not all that interesting to me. 
Sorry. 
-- 
James Andy Stroble, PhD
Lecturer in Philosophy
Department of Arts & Humanities
Leeward Community College
University of Hawaii

Adjunct Faculty 
Diplomatic and Military Studies
Hawaii Pacific University 

_________________

"The amount of violence at the disposal of any given country may soon not be a 
reliable indication of the country's strength or a reliable guarantee against 
destruction by a substantially smaller and weaker power."  --Hannah Arendt