[Buddha-l] Schools

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

On 04-08-11 01:36, Richard Hayes wrote:
> <>  He argues that was not the British or other Europeans who sought to put the diversity of Indian beliefs and practices into a single category but certain Indian commentators in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. It was they who invented the notion of schools and classified six schools as āstika and others (bauddhas and jainas and cārvākas) as nāstika. It was because of their work that Uddyotakara was no longer just good old Uddyotakara but a staunch defender of the Nyāya school of philosophy against the godless Buddhists. I recommend Nicholson's book. It is fun to read, well written and learned, and on almost every page I learn something that makes me feel a little ashamed that I had not known it before.
In all Tibetan texts I have seen the well known fourfold classification 
of Buddhist schools is taken for granted and even considered 
indispensable and the Tibetans seem to have learned this in India. Yi 
Qing (is this the right pinyin?) did not report much discussion about 
schools when he visited India, so something must have happened.
> Taking the problematic of Nicholson's project a step further, I find myself once again really questioning the value of distinguishing "Hinduism" from "Buddhism", as we are encouraged to do when teaching Religion 101. What good does that do? How does it help anyone visiting a "Theravādin" temple in Bagan understand why there are images there not only of Amitābha Buddha but also of Ganeśa and Śīva? Didn't the people in Bagan understand that Amitābha was a Mahāyānī and that those other two fellows were Hindu devas? Golly, if they were that confused, no wonder their empire fell. Didn't they have prophets, the counterparts of Jeremiah and his ilk, warning them that if they placed foreign gods in their temples or on their hearths at home, they would surely be enslaved by Babylonians?
>
> Maybe it's just me—a religious mishmash is my favorite spiritual mush—but I rejoice when scholars like Nicholson come along and take a long and careful look at the labels and categories we have been indoctrinated to take for granted and to identity some of the consequences of being too eager to put everyone into neatly labeled museum displays.
>
>
 From biology class I have learned that classifications are just for 
making multiple choice questions and keeping students from playing games 
all the time. Foucault showed in his 'Words and Things' that 
classifications are instruments of power (maybe if the Japanese would 
understand that a whale is not a fish they would not kill so many of 
them). Tibetan texts use the classification often to keep readers from 
wandering off to the wrong and lower 'school', which misses the 
'essence'. Perhaps classifications say more about the classificators 
than about the classificated.
Since it is part of the job of a lecturer at the university to keep 
students off the streets, you should be happy with all the classifications.
Perhaps it is time take up another aśrama and buy a dotar Richard Bāul.


erik