[Buddha-l] Re: Filtered Buddhism

[curt]

Richard Hayes wrote:
>
> The best part of Wesak for me was watching and listening to all 
> the monks, nuns and lay practitioners chanting or droning or singing in 
> Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Burmese, Sinhala, Pali, 
> Sanskrit, Tibetan, English and French 

I realize this is very minor point, but I believe that in all likelihood 
what you heard were people droning or singing only in Pali, Chinese and 
Tibetan - the three "liturgical languages" of Buddhism in Asia. I point 
this out only because it is such a widespread misconception that Asian 
Buddhists "chant in their own languages", which is usually not the case. 
Most chanting in Asian Buddhism is done in just those three languages - 
none of which resemble any language that anyone has spoken for centuries 
- ie, none of which are comprehensible except to specialists. This is 
even true when people chant in "Chinese" and "Tibetan" because the forms 
of those languages used in chanting are very old "literary" forms. This 
situation is made even more extreme in places like Korea - where 
Buddhists chant in "Sino-Korean" - a form of Chinese that is only known 
and used by Korean Buddhists. Not only do they chant in it - but they 
write poems, and commentaries and even give lectures in it! There is 
nothing outlandish about this - or at least nothing more outlandish that 
the use of "Ge'ez" or "Old Church Slavonic" by some Christians.

"Nomina barbara nunquam mutaveris."

- Curt