[Buddha-l] Denigrating Buddhism

[Artur Karp]

Dear All,

At the risk that all the participants of this thread (and its already
numerous outbranchings) know the book, two fragments from David
Germano, Kevin Trainor (eds.), Embodying the Dharma. Buddhist Relic
Veneration in Asia, 2004.

In his Introduction  (p. 7) Kevin Trainor quotes from the letters Paul
Carus and the Venerable Alutgama Seelakkhandha exchanged in the last
years of the XIXth century re value of relics.

 Paul Carus to Seelakkhandha:

<<According to my conception of Buddhism the most sacred relics we
have of the Buddha and his saints are the words which they left,—the
sūtras and all those ideas which we verify in our own experience as
valu¬able truths. Words, thoughts, and ideas are not material things,
they are ideal possessions, they are spiritual. It is true that they
are transferred by material means in books and MSS. and by the
vibrations of sounds, but it is not the book or the MS. or the sound
waves that are sacred, but the ideas which are conveyed by them. Thus,
all the treasures which I regard as holy are of a spiritual kind, and
not of a material kind. The worship of relics, be they bones, hair,
teeth, or any other material of the body of a saint, is a mistake.
They do not possess any other value than the remains of ordinary
mortals. The soul of Buddha is not in his bones, but in his words, and
I regard relic-worship as an incomplete stage of reli¬gious worship in
which devotees have not as yet attained to fulll [sic] philosophical
clearness. Now certainly it is of interest to me to have evi¬dences of
the religious zeal of Buddhists. The keeping of sacred relics is a
symptom of their devotion, but that is all I see in the use of
relics.>>

Seelakkhandha to Paul Carus:

<<The relic I am sending you is one thus obtained from the ruins of a
Dageba at A[nuradha]pura and has been kept with me with great
veneration,—offering flowers, incense, etc., morn and eve. I believe
this to be a genuine relic of the Buddha. We reverence Buddha's relics
as a mark of gratitude to Him who showed us the way to salvation and
as a token of remembrance of the many personal virtues (bhagavat,
arhat samyak-sambuddha) which His life illustrated; and those of His
disciples (i.e., Rahats) for similar reasons, and also to keep us
reminded of their noble exemplary lives as results of Lord Buddha's
invaluable doctrine.>>

Regards,

Artur Karp

PS. Note please the phrase "I believe" in Seelakkhandha's argument.

Some time ago I asked a SriLankan monk a stupid question: what could
have happened to the Buddha's body, if, according to tradition, it was
immersed in sesamum oil in a tightly closed iron coffin, and the
coffin placed on the funeral pyre? His answer was: One cannot exclude
it was cooked, but I do believe it was burnt.

A.