[Buddha-l] Social codes [was: Gandharan Buddhist Art at NY Asia Society]

[Richard Hayes]

Erik schreef:

> People develop different behavioural codes and that is sometime very 
> confusing.

This is true not only from one country to another, but even from one discipline to another within the academic setting. Every discipline has an unwritten code of what kinds of questions it is suitable to ask and how aggressive a tone is considered polite. I have worked in several departments of religious studies and in several philosophy departments and note that the behavioral codes are different enough that it pays to be mindful of which setting one is in.

My experience outside the academic world is limited to working in foundries, assembly lines, warehouses and farms, and that was quite a while back. In all those settings the most common form of entertainment by far is teasing, hazing, ridiculing and mocking. Fitting in requires being able to take all that and dish it out without taking any of it personally or seriously. If you want to get socially marginalized, all you need to do is show that you can't take a joke—or that you can't recognize the difference between a joke and a serious comment. My impression is that the same is true pretty much everywhere, but that the dynamics are considerably more subtle in some settings than in others. As Erik suggested, dockworkers and academics manifest their Buddha natures in somewhat different ways. (He also mentioned theologians, about which I know nothing, except that they have no Buddha nature whatsoever.)

Something that I have noted over the years is that when I read accurate translations of Buddhists texts with students, a lot of students (especially in religious studies) are taken aback by what they see as the rudeness of satiric jibes issued by the Buddha and by fellows like Nāgārjuna (that's Nga?gga?rjuna on your computer, Dan) and Dharmakīrti against their rivals. It's interesting that students *love* the insults that Zen masters hurl at one another and at their disciples, but for some reason they seem to expect Vasubandhu to be like an English country vicar taking tea with the women's auxiliary at a gooseberry jam sale.

> Recently I went from China to 
> Thailand and it struck me that Thai people are much softer in their 
> dealing with each other than Chinese.

A Canadian friend of mine was a Buddhist monk for seven years in Thailand. His observation was there there is such a taboo against showing anger in Thailand that, as he put it, "if someone becomes angry with you, they might as well just go ahead and kill you, since they can't do anything worse than showing their anger in the first place." He came to feel that Buddhism had done such a number on the Thai psyche that the people in that culture have no idea what it might be like to be authentic and straightforward about their feelings. He was, of course, an outsider, and I get the impression that outsiders often develop the notion of a culture they are living in that the people of that culture are somehow inauthentic. (Just read a half dozen travel guides about the Dutch temperament written by British or American travelers. They are hilarious and, in my limited experience, quite selective in what they choose to report. The same is true of books about traveling in Canada written for Japanese adventurers.) 

When I was in a religious studies context, the holy book that had replaced the Torah and the Gospels was Edward Said's Orientalism. If you could not cite Said's book chapter and verse, you were liable to be drummed out of the corps. (If, like me, you said you thought it was one of the most offensively idiotic and wrong-headed books ever written, you could be sure to have a table all to yourself in the faculty lunch room. Remember that if you ever need some privacy in a crowded religious studies faculty lounge.) Everyone knows Said's argument by heart, so there's no need to repeat it here. A general observation that has some validity is that when people of one culture look at people from another culture, they tend to see either angels or demons. Those who see angels at first tend to become disillusioned when reality just won't go away; they then make up for lost time by seeing insidious demons posing as angels. 

My concern about the future of Buddhism in the West is that it has been regarded much too positively by the general public, thus setting the Buddha on a pedestal so high that the eventual fall will dash him to pieces. One of my duties as an academic is to inoculate naive enthusiasts of the Buddha-dharma against the disease of fulsomeness. 

Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM