[Buddha-l] Response: Western Self, Asian Other

[Richard Hayes]

Thank you, Natalie, for your detailed response on the somewhat desultory discussion of your article. (I'm sorry we got distracted so quickly. We usually get started on discussions here in the morning and end up discussing something totally unrelated to the initial topic by mid-afternoon. Buddha-l has a lot in common with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.)

On Jan 6, 2010, at 1:51 PM, Natalie Quli wrote:

> First, I want to say that I was not in any way advocating, as Richard
> suggested, “...letting students read materials written in their own language
> by practicing Buddhists, especially by ‘white’ Buddhists...” instead of
> studying Pali, Sanskrit, etc.

I may have attributed to you an idea that I myself advocate. I advocate letting students read materials written in their own language. In the past I have taught undergraduate courses in Buddhism in which all the readings were written in English by contemporary Buddhists, most of whom were Europeans or Americans. I would hastily add that I also teach Pali and Sanskrit and mercilessly force my graduate students to read texts written in those languages.

> I am arguing for legitimizing the
> study of Western (including Asian American, etc.) Buddhists and their
> writings, certainly, but I am definitely not in favor of replacing language
> studies.

That's a reasonable position to take, I think, and it is one that I have seen resisted by some. There are a few academics I know (whose name I will not mention) who seem to think that if a text wasn't composed in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongol, Chinese, Korean or Japanese, it ain't Buddhist. That, in my view, is a position longing to attain impermanence as quickly as possible, and I applaud your work for at least preparing the coffin for that attitude. We may have to wait another decade or so for the last nail to be driven into that coffin.

Incidentally, you unwittingly quoted some of my words in your article. They had appeared in Prebish's book. I can't recall the exact words right now, but they were words to the effect that at one time in my career I would have discouraged a student from studying "Western Buddhism" (whatever that is) but now encourage students to study it. I even directed an MA thesis by a very capable student who wrote on the development of several ideas in the work of Stephen Batchelor, a thesis from which I learned a great deal. (Stephen Batchelor said he learned a lot about his thought from that thesis, too.)

>  I would not suggest substituting Batchelor for Dharmakirti.

I would, but I don't hold it against you or anyone else for not sharing my enthusiasm for Batchelor (and folks like Tai Unno) and my lack of enthusiasm for Dharmakīrti. 

> Also, Richard writes, “Moreover,
> professors of Buddhism are, she claims, much more inclined to have students
> read texts than take field trips, analyze rituals, or study iconography.”
> Hmm, I wouldn’t claim that, actually. My professors have always encouraged
> the study of ritual and iconography, so that hasn’t been my experience. But
> they have discouraged the study of Buddhists in Western countries.

Perhaps I read that attitude between your lines. Probably I thought you were suggesting that there are people like me. I myself am guilty of the accusation I falsely accused you of making. In close to thirty years of teaching I have never even mentioned either rituals or iconography in my classes. I don't know anything about those things (except as a practitioner) and tend to stick with teaching the things I imagine I know something about, namely, doctrines and theories and the things people do with words. 

> Richard comments, “The bias for texts, and especially old texts, and
> especially texts written in Asia, she claims, helps maintain the impression
> that Asian Buddhism is somehow authentic, while modernized Buddhism is less
> so.” I’m not sure I would call it a “bias” for texts, it’s just the dominant
> methodology in the field.

Fair enough. I tend to use the word "bias" in a non-pejorative way, simply in the sense of a tendency. A dictionary I have, for example, defines "bias" in this way: "a concentration on or interest in one particular area or subject" and gives this as an illustrative sentence: "he worked on a variety of Greek topics, with a discernible bias toward philosophy."

> And I do like
> Schopen’s work in that it shows instances of conflict between what Buddhist
> texts say about Buddhist behavior and how Buddhists actually behave, but I
> am a bit concerned by his idea that Western scholars have focused too much
> on text because of a “Protestant” bias.

Whenever I read Schopen pointing out (yet again) that Buddhists do not always do what their texts say they are supposed to do, I ask "So what else is new? Who in human history *does* do what their texts say they are supposed to do?" And I agree with you that Schopen (who was brought up a Roman Catholic) overemphasizes the Protestant influence in Buddhist scholarship. I would not expect you to agree with me that Schopen's preoccupation with Protestant influences borders on a potentially (and perhaps actually) unhealthy obsession. That said, I very strongly concur with an observation you make: 

> The idea that all things Buddhist that resemble Western or Protestant ideas
> must have somehow come from the West is actually something that concerns me
> a great deal, which is why I didn’t really mention Schopen, though I do
> think he has produced good research.

This whole issue of Protestant Buddhism interests me a great deal, because I have consciously striven to explore the question of how much a person with a Protestant cultural heritage (such as, uh, myself) must jettison in order to take up Buddhism as a practice with a built-in theory based on assumptions that are not part of European cultural heritage. My trajectory has been one of going from thinking (about 40 years ago) that to be a Buddhist a Protestant kid from some backwater place like New Mexico would have to jettison almost everything to take up Buddhism in any serious way to thinking (now) that one would have to jettison very little. This is my own personal obsession, since I have been involved with both Quakerism and Unitarianism most of my life (and am even a dues-paying member of a Quaker Meeting and therefore what Quakers call a "convinced Friend") and yet fancy myself to be quite a serious Buddhist practitioner. So when I hear the term "Protestant Buddhist," my clenched fist involuntarily rises into the air as I shout "Si. Vinceremos." (Actually, after reading your article, I was thinking of sending you a link to some of my Protestant Buddhist writing, just to see what you would make of it.)

> I name only a few people in the article, though I certainly could have named
> more. I think Bartholomeusz’s “Spiritual Wealth and Neo-Orientalism” is a
> good example of someone who expresses feelings of guilt over colonialism and
> connects the study and practice of Buddhism by Westerners to Orientalism.

I've not read Bartholomeusz, but the recapitulations you offer convince me that there are scholars of Buddhism who think about colonialism. 

> And I must confess I am not immune to
> becoming annoyed with white middle-class Buddhist dabblers who make stuff up
> about Buddhism--someone recently told me Buddhism is about finding the
> highest purpose of your soul (!!!).

Most of us who teach Buddhism for a living (and wonder, quite sincerely, whether doing so is a breech against "right livelihood") have had the experience of reading exams at the end of a semester in which students earnestly speak of Buddhism as one of the many legitimate ways to repair our broken relationship with God. How on earth anyone could sit in a course on Buddhist philosophy for an entire semester and still think that boggles the soul. But I think everyone who teaches anything becomes aware pretty quickly that the course a student takes is a very different one from the course that the professor teaches. Our job as educators is to have our most cherished work caricatured.

> I also
> recognize that I am not the best writer and that frequently the way I word
> things is overly confrontational. 

Welcome! You'll fit right on on buddha-l. 

But seriously, you may be the product of a tragic culture. One of the things that most alarms me about academic culture (at least as it is practiced in the places I have participated in it) is that it is so often conducted in a spirit of confrontation, as if one cannot possibly be taken seriously as a scholar unless one finds negative things to say about the work of others. I once attended a PhD defense (again, I won't say where) in which one of the questions posed by an examiner was "Is there a reason why you do not say a single positive thing about any scholar who went before you?" The answer almost made me cry. It was: "I thought if I praised the work of others, people would think I was uncritical and intellectually soft." What an indictment of academic culture that a young scholar would get the idea, probably from observation, that praise is some kind of sentimentality and that not being confrontational is not playing the academic game properly. Where do students get the idea that academic work is an invitation to play hardball? (That question is rhetorical. I know the answer, and I am ashamed of it.)

> And yes, I am co-organizing with Scott Mitchell (and under the guidance of
> my advisor, Dr. Richard Payne) the event “Buddhism without Borders” at the
> Institute of Buddhist Studies (at the Jodo Shinshu Center in Berkeley,
> CA)in March.

That looks like a very exciting conference. We all wish you the best in the thankless work of organizing it. And please stick around buddha-l, if you feel so inclined. It's often painful, but try to look at it as a practice in austerity.

Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
rhayes at unm.edu