[Buddha-l] Re: US/UK Buddhalogy again

[F.K. Lehman (F.K.L. Chit Hlaing)]

I didn't get this in in time, but I hope I can insert it now

Come now! In UK, there's the legacy of former 
Burma and Sri Lanka/Ceylon colonies, which 
spawned the enterprise of Pali scholarship -- 
obviously Theravada, not least institutionalised 
in SOAS and at Oxford. In America, this is 
absent, but, for reasons two of you have already 
more than hinted at, Buddhalogy has been in large 
part fed by (a) 19th Century News England 
Transcendentalist romanticism and 
pseudo-orientalism, and (b) the silly mid 20th 
Century search for 'Oriental' mystical insight to 
'find oneself'. In the latter case, it was added 
to by the politics of the Tibet Problem and the 
rise to international prominence of HE the Dalai 
Lama.Moreover, we can take not of another, 
possibly cross-cutting distinction: Theravada 
scholarship in UK is in considerable measure 
focused upon the canon, pariyatti, whilst in the 
US (*hardly astonishing), it is all Vipassana, so 
that even Burmese monks who come to America and 
lead our monasteries here are almost all 
Meditation orientated to nearly the exclusion of 
anything else chiefly Mahasi Sayadaw followers. 
One would not suppose, seeing only Burmese 
Buddhist institutions in the USA, that Burmese 
Theravada IN BURMA (OK, Myanmar, if you want) 
had, as it does, a major, very live, pariyatti 
component (lay and monastic alike for obvious 
symbiotic reasons), as  in such Nikayas as the 
one I relate to, the Shwegyin.

In America, though, there ARE leading scholars of 
Theravada, indeed of pariyatti Theravada, such 
Frank Reynolds and his associates of the older 
generation, and the rising Burmanologist 
(Reynolds', Collins' and my pupil) Jason Carbine. 
Also, one of the reasons for some of this is 
that, in America, so much of Buddhist scholarship 
has been by anthropologists, who do, as you know 
(Yes, I am an anthropologist also -- mea culpa!) 
tend to go for the exotic and folk practice, on 
the grounds that that is what is 'real', i.e., 
'of  The People'

So, Stefan Detrez's binary distinction may be too 
simplistic and linear. Moreover, pace Richard, it 
is the intellectual legacy of the New England 
Transcendentalism that is at work here, despite 
the fact, if  fact it be, that Emerson was not 
like the caricature of the movement that informs 
later American intellectualism. But I defer on 
such things to others here, since i am (Thank 
God, in whom, as a Buddhist, I have no belief) 
not a philosopher and not a literary man, and 
have no particular interest in either Emerson or 
Thoreau,

I apologise for the fact that my e-mail client 
does not allow me to type diacritics

-- 
F. K. L. Chit Hlaing
Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign