[Buddha-l] Buddha's Meditation

[Dan Lusthaus]

Franz,

> You know that scene in "Finding Nemo" where

'fraid not. Never seen it. Sorry.

>I think that, as Bruce Burrill points out, The Lotus Sutra
> is triumphalist.

I enjoy the first half of the Lotus (the upaya stuff). The second half makes 
my skin crawl and strikes me as about as unbuddhist as a text can be. Says 
something about Mahayana that this text gets so much attention. Note that in 
China it is one school alone which gives it preeminence -- Tiantai. In Korea 
the Lotus never received that preeminence -- they've heaped that esteem on 
the Awakening of Faith. It is Japan -- which has its own issues, 
historically and currently, with militancy and triumphalism -- that made it 
the premier Mahayana scripture. Nichiren clearly was a triumphalist of 
sorts.


>But is the early layer of the suttas? Perhaps not in
> the sense that the Abrahamic scriptures demand followers to be. So
> should employ a different word for Buddhist self-pride? In the face of
> real relativist/universalist views, I don't think we can simply say
> such pride is "normal."

You are assuming that relativism/universalism is the preferred default 
position which supplies the criterion by which everything else is to be 
evaluated. I don't. Both are insidious and dangerous.

 >Can we find a middle word here?

Call "pride" pride. A Buddhist who doesn't think Buddhism is providing 
something not found elsewhere has no reason to be a Buddhist, and should 
stop being one immediately. Hence it is "normal" for a Buddhist to value 
Buddhism more highly than other traditions. What attitude a Buddhist (or 
anyone else) takes toward OTHER religions is a separate question. Don't 
conflate them. Some religions want to actively exterminate the competition. 
That smacks of triumphalism. Others are more tolerant. There are degrees of 
tolerance. Muslims accept "people of the Book" as legitimate, and have 
extended honorary status of "people of the Book" to Plato and Aristotle, and 
Hindus (Jews and Christians were its original referent). But that 
"tolerance" has an uneasy and some may think unseemly history and reality, 
e.g., dhimmi status. These days it is not dangerous to be a non-Muslim in 
certain places, it is dangerous to be the wrong kind of Muslim.

Vatican II was an expression of the realization that the age of imperial 
conquest, and thus missionaries backed by military force, was over. The 
strategy shifted to "interreligious dialogue", a less compulsive form of 
persuasion to conversion (beginning with the denial that that is its telos). 
As Christian militant conversion declines, Islamic militant hegemony-seeking 
increases to fill the international void.

These are obviously simplistic, broad-stroke sketches -- the reality is more 
nuanced, varied, and complex, but there are generalizable attitudes toward 
the Other that one can easily discover in the history of each, and tracking 
that against the varying degrees of prominence of triumphalism in both would 
illuminate some of the nuances -- a task for a different e-list.

 > Or, with a bit more nuance, wouldn't you agree that the point of the
> repeated mentions of "Sravakas, Pratyekabuddhas and Bodhisattvas" is
> to praise those beings (and Buddhas) who have *got it* when one else
> does?

I think you are missing the absolutely extraordinary implications of 
including Pratyekabuddhas on that list. It is a Mahayana list (though Pali 
texts have a good deal to say about paccekabuddhas as well), so it 
consequent discussions the bodhisattva -- representing the mahayana ideal --  
is assigned the higher, preferred status. But the pratyekas are 
NON-Buddhists. They are an OTHER. And while there are legendary stories in 
the classical literature of this or that pratyekabuddha, this is not a 
category indicating some contemporary individuals or groups who need to be 
acknowledged in accepting terms for sociological or cultural reasons. The 
category means that one does not have to be a Buddhist to figure out what 
causes duhkha and how to eliminate it, nor to overcome ignorance and 
samsara. What is to be "gotten", to use your term, is not something 
"buddhist", but something that is the case for any sentient being. No "Jesus 
is the only way", or even revelation from something/someone else. Simply 
figuring it out. One derivation of the word associates it with pratyaya, 
"conditions", so it is simply figuring out the "causes and conditions" by 
oneself (eka, "one," alone).

Which other religion has a comparable category? Muslims have people of the 
book, but as mentioned, that is a problematic status. Jews have the Noahide 
laws (google it), so that righteous gentiles are just fine -- unlike 
Christians and Muslims, Jews are not intent on converting anyone, much less 
the whole world, to Judaism, and don't consider non-Jews condemned or damned 
or any other such silliness. Other can go about believing and doing whatever 
they want, although ethical behavior -- since that impacts others -- is 
important; the only thing that really concerns Jews about non-Jews, the only 
request they make, is to not kill or persecute Jews. As 2000 years of 
history clearly shows up to the present day, despite all the self-proclaimed 
moralisms of other religions, that humble request is always asking too much. 
Universalist/relativists can accept all other religions, as long as they 
acknowledge that the best of their tradition is the universalist/relativism 
of some sort of perennial philosophy that transcends their particularity. 
Only the particularity of universalism (and it is a particular among others) 
is superior enough in vision to recognize that.

>So perhaps we're talking about a kind of triumphalism not of
> Buddhism, but of awakening. That distinction might help.

No, it continues the misconstrual. Triumphalism is not simply the idea that 
I or my group is right about something -- Heaven forbid anyone should 
realize they are right about something! -- but the expectation, actively 
pursued, or earnestly anticipated, that my group will vanquish all 
opposition, kill off the foes.

> I shall still try to be the more loving one. And that is, I
> hope, moral.

yes, but self-contradictory. If it doesn't ultimately matter whether a 
redwood or rhinoceros lives or dies, then one can love it as one 
extinguishes it.

When the Cistern monk Arnaud (or Arnau) Amalric advised a soldier who 
wondered how to distinguish Catholics (the good guys) from the Cathars (bad 
guys) to "Kill them all. For the Lord knows them that are His," [otherwise 
rendered: Kill them all, let God sort them out (Caedite eos. Novit enim 
Dominus qui sunt eius)] he too thought his advice was moral with the 
sanction of the highest moral authority. And an expresion of God's divine 
love.

Dan