Buddhism: religion of the internet? Digitizing the word.

May 5, 2013 By 1 Comment

The Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC), has a couple podcasts and articles this week on this topic:

The article surrounding the first begins:

At the heart of Buddhism is a metaphor for interconnectedness: Indra’s net. The Vedic god’s net, which is supposed to hang over his palace on Mount Meru, is said to stretch to infinity. At each point where the threads cross sits a jewel that reflects all the other jewels, and like mirrors within mirrors, the entire cosmos is reflected.

Lewis Lancaster, Professor Emeritus of Buddhism at the University of California at Berkeley, knows how apt that metaphor is in the current world. For years he’s struggled to find an adequate way of documenting the complicated, almost infinite spread of Buddhism from its 5th century BCE Indian origins. That is, until he found an equally complex instrument to map the ancient faith.

Prof. Lancaster’s project provides an amazing visual and current image of Buddhism as it is being practiced and has been practiced throughout time and around the world, the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative. He has been working for over a decade on compiling the data needed for this (not unlike the prolific work of Charles Muller, and others, to compile the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism).

If you haven’t seen it yet, Prof. Lancaster’s lecture 5 years ago in California gives a comprehensive overview of Buddhism and his work to make it better known:

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Returning to the present, Lancaster was interviewed today for ABC by Dr Rachel Kohn to discuss the movement of Buddhism and how it became

Prof. Lancaster with his graduate student Ven Jue Wei at the ABC site (with Dr Kohn inset).

the “first world religion.” As it spread, he suggests, it altered beliefs and practices where ever it when. It even likely influenced the ‘cults of relics‘ that would later develop widely throughout Christianity – though he notes that this is not a fact widely acknowledged (as far as he knows) by researchers in Christianity.

He also notes that Buddhists have never denied the reality of the world, never, contrary to a lot of what people continue to write about Buddhism today. As he says, the way that our mind comes into contact with that world is at the center of Buddhist analysis – “what we perceive is not the thing itself. What we perceive is partly what our cognition constructs for us.” No, Lancaster hasn’t been reading Kantian epistemology*, but yes, he is pointing out a striking similarity between Buddhist accounts of our relation to the world and that of the 18th century German philosopher.

It’s an excellent talk with a wonderfully well-versed Buddhist scholar. Ven. Jue Wei enters with her research toward the end of the interview. I highly recommend downloading/listening to the full talk.

* Here is a helpful review of a recent philosophy text on Kant’s Epistemology. And the book is here.

Read more:

Filed Under: Academia, Buddhism, Technology, video, Western Philosophy 1 Comment

A recent Catholic take on Buddhism

May 3, 2013 By 33 Comments

See my review of this wonderful film here.

My news feed had an interesting title in it a week or so back, “In case you were wondering about Buddhism.”

“Yes,” I thought, “I am wondering about Buddhism…” So I clicked through to see what it was all about and found that it was a link from a fellow Patheos bloger,  Mark Shea (Catholic and Enjoying It!). His introduction to the piece is short, simply calling it “a fine (and sympathetic) comparison and contrast between Buddhism and Catholic faith by Peter Kreeft.”

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem sympathetic to anyone familiar with Buddhism. And more distressing perhaps is that Kreeft is a philosophy professor – and so should know better. Yes, he works for a Catholic college and seems quite busy with a Catholic talking tour, but one would hope that academics, even when we disagree with other ways of seeing the world, would work a little to first understand the ‘other’, rather than rehashing old distortions and parochial simplifications.

Kreef begins with the all-too-common trope that the Buddha claimed to be a man, while Jesus ‘clearly’ claimed to be both ‘Son of Man’ and ‘Son of God.’ In fact, the Buddha denied both being a man and a god (and other things), telling his interlocutor to know him simply as awakened – buddhoti, (Doṇa Sutta AN.4.36). My understanding of this is that the Buddha was challenging Dona’s (and our) categorical preconceptions of the world: in our experience there are such-and-such types of being that we could encounter and the Buddha was urging us to see that what he -and his teaching- represented was something beyond our current typologies and limited experience.

Doug Smith covers much of the territory in this dispute with an excellent piece at the Secular Buddhism site.

Kreef continues: “Buddha said, “Look not to me, look to my dharma (doctrine)”; Christ said, “Come unto me.” Buddha said, “Be ye lamps unto yourselves”; Christ said, “I am the light of the world.”

In fact the Buddha said “He who sees me, sees the Dharma, he who sees the Dharma, sees me” (SN 22.87). His life and teachings form a mirror image of one another. And one should not get too hung up on him as a particular being, as he is simply one of many who have understood the true nature of things and overcome suffering.

Concerning God, Kreef writes that “Buddhism does not deny God. It is silent about God. It is agnostic, not atheistic.” This is a complex topic. As I wrote here:

“The Buddha didn’t endorse a creator God such as that found in general definitions of Western monotheism. However, in the Pali Canon there is found a complex pantheon of Brahmanic gods (and yakkhas) interacting with humans, including the [or 'and the'] Buddha. Furthermore, there are Western conceptions of God that do not include all of the connotations found in traditional definitions.”

Kreef goes on to caricature Buddhist compassion (karuna) in somewhat babbling words that could be taken right out of a 19th century colonialist missionary’s account:

For Buddhism, egotism (selfish desire) causes the illusion of an ego. For the West, secular as well as religious, a real ego is the cause and egotism is the effect. Agape is a different effect from the same cause: altruism from the ego instead of egotism from the ego. To the Buddhist, agape is impossible; there can be no ego without egotism, no self without selfishness, because the self is not a real cause that might conceivably change its effect. Rather, the self is the illusion—effect of selfishness. There’s nobody there to love or to hate.

How can this apparent nihilism, this philosophy of nothingness, feel liberating to Buddhists? The answer is found in Buddha himself: his personality and the events of his life, especially his “great enlightenment.”

Oh dear. Where to begin?

I won’t. You can read it all for yourself, if you wish. Again, it’s sad to see anyone, especially an academic, distorting any religion in this way. Of course this might just be part of the great Catholic conspiracy, as Dan Brown has made clear to us in his novels ;)

As a commenter at Mark Shea’s blog notes:

“There is no comparison to the relationship of the Christian to God, which is what Kreeft is getting at, because the Christian God is fundamentally different in kind than the Buddhist gods.” Kreeft merely asserts this, and he does so without precedent or proof. I know this is a fundamental tenet of your faith, but it isn’t very convincing to anyone who isn’t already a member of your faith. It is lazy evangelizing.

 

Filed Under: Academia, American Buddhism, Western Philosophy 33 Comments

Jesus & Buddha: Practicing Across Traditions, a review

March 18, 2013 By 7 Comments

I sat down over the weekend to watch (for a second time), this short documentary, joined by two fellow PhD students, one a Theravadin Buddhist, the other a Roman Catholic. At just 44 minutes in length, it is brief, but perhaps it is the perfect length for a high school or university class on Comparative Religions or a faith group to watch over tea and cookies. The film features three people who are intimately familiar with both traditions:

  1. Father Robert Kennedy, a Jesuit priest and Zen teacher;
  2. Chung Hyun Kyung, Professor of Ecumenical Theology and Interfaith Engagement at Union Theological Seminary and a Buddhist Dharma teacher; and
  3. Paul Knitter, Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture at Union Theological Seminary.

And when I say ‘both traditions’ I must point out that a limitation of the documentary is that two people are/were Roman Catholic priests and all three are experienced in Zen/Soen Buddhism. As such, the Buddha you meet is the Buddha of Japan and Korea, while the Jesus you meet comes very much through the Roman Catholic tradition (while Chung Hyun Kyung is a Presbyterian, she does not express any ‘distinctively’ Presbyterian views that I/we noticed). That said, the documentary proves to be a welcome entrée into not only Buddhist-Christian dialogue, but also the discussion of the Ultimate or Absolute in general – a conversation that could go well beyond these two traditions.

YouTube Preview Image

One of my first questions to my friends was “is this too New Age-y?”  Both shook their heads. Despite needing to be brief and succinct, the discussions from all three of the people in the film were lucid, focused, and well grounded in tradition. Again, they are in the Zen tradition, so Theravadin and/or Tibetan conceptions of / problems with a Creator God are avoided. The Zen teachings conveyed simply suggested that the Ultimate (or absolute or salvation, etc) is not justoutside you, it is within, and it is within everyone.  The trick is ‘waking up’ to this, moving beyond your old/separate/egoic/deluded self. Christian teachings were presented to suggest a parallel:

“For through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:19-20).

“Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)

“Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)

Statements in these traditions require interpretation and discernment, but what these practitioners (and others) were able to do is use the teachings and practices of each tradition to more fully inform their own self-understanding and their own practice. Discussions about the problems that come up in trying to practice multiple traditions weren’t addressed, and, given the short time in the video, would have been difficult to give sufficient time to. It will be up to viewers to pick up on and discuss these and compare them with the convergences discussed in the video.

The DVD comes with a handy “Discussion Questions” insert and more can be downloaded at their website. I could see interested Muslims, Jews, Hindus and others also using it as a learning and discussion tool. For those still asking ‘why’ we should care about interfaith/comparative religious thought, the answer should be found in the world around you. You interact with people of different traditions all the time, and if you want greater understanding and perhaps for them to better understand you, these kinds of dialogues must take place. Not to be too political, but it should be obvious that a lack of cultural and religious understanding has been disastrous in our shared human history.

And not to be too anti-traditional, but  every living tradition and every living culture is an open one and is already a product of this kind of dialogue(early Buddhism is a dialogue between the Buddha and Brahmins, Jains, and others; Chan is a product of Buddhism meeting Taoism and Confucianism; Zen is a product of Chan meeting Shintoism; and yes, Western/Modern Buddhism is a product of all of this meeting with Christianity, science, etc.).  Christianity, too, has thrived on its ability to incorporate Platonism and the Stoics, and later Aristotle by way of Muslim philosophers.

As Max Müller said, “to know one religion is to know none.”

Annunciation

Even if I don’t see it again — nor ever feel it
I know it is — and that if once it hailed me
it ever does –

And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t — I was blinded like that — and swam
in what shone at me

only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.

– Marie Howe

* For other perspectives, see this one by Dhivan Thomas Jones at the Western Buddhist Review, and Robert A. Jonas at Contemplative-life.org.

Filed Under: Academia, Book review, Buddhism, Theism/Atheism, Western Philosophy 7 Comments

Buddhists, Books, and Technology

March 4, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Burma - Rangoon 2011 - young monk with a game

Rangoon, Burma, 2011. A young monk plays a video game.

The Huffington Post has a good article out today on Buddhism and technology: Om Mani iPadme Hum: Why Buddhists Get Technology.

According to Joyce Morgan, the author:

Printing is one of humanity’s great four inventions (together with paper, gunpowder and the compass).

In the West, it helped spread literacy and ushered in the Enlightenment. In the East, seekers after another form of enlightenment were instrumental in its spread. Buddhist monks grasped the value of the rapid reproduction of material — in their case sacred material — at least 600 years before the West.

They did so not just to proselytize but because of an idea central to Buddhism: creating merit. The more good deeds performed, the more merit accrued and the swifter one’s path to Buddhahood, or at least to a better rebirth.

I’m not sure where Ms. Morgan gets this list of four from, but it sounds good enough (an alternate list of top ten include 10. alcohol, 9. the internet, 8. birth control, 7. antibiotics, 6. anesthetic, 5. the printing press, 4. plumbing, 3. tools, 2. cooking, and 1. language). One year ago today, elephantjournal posted an article asking, “Is Money Humanity’s Greatest Invention?“ And here is an interesting short discussion on BBC radio about humanity’s best inventions, where it is a toss-up between the internet and the printing press.

And indeed, Buddhism did develop “cults of the book” in the early development of the Mahayana. As John Jorgensen writes in Inventing Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch: Hagiography And Biography in Early Ch’an:

… the cult of the relics almost back to the Buddha himself. The cult of the book originates with early Mahayana, in texts such as the Lotus Sutra, which went so far as to recommend the enshrining of scriptures in the stupas (along with the bodily relics?). A rivalry existed between the two cults as a means of creating sacred spaces. They could be symbolised as Dharmakaya (Corpus of the Law) versus Buddhakaya (Body of the Buddha). The b00k replaced the Buddhas speech, the relics his body.

Morgan goes on to connect the power of the book to more recent technology, including the internet:

With the internet in its infancy just over a decade ago, I encountered a Buddhist monk who, from a tiny house in Sydney, Australia, had quickly seen the potential of that emerging technology. He set up what was then the world’s largest Buddhist website. Technology has changed dramatically since, yet the aims of the website (www.buddhanet.net) remain the same: to use communication technologies to make the Buddha’s teachings widely available.

Buddhism tends to be about attention and mindfulness, calming the mind in order to see things as they truly are. These days many people see technology and ‘stuff’ in general as a force in the opposite direction, but this isn’t necessarily so. As I noted in a recent post:

No piece of technology will be intrinsically good or bad. What will matter is how we use it. It is up to us. This is the Buddha’s message.

Free Burma rally - London 2007.

Free Burma rally – London 2007. While some marchers carry signs featuring Aung San Suu Kyi , this Buddhist monk is busy on his smart-phone.

Filed Under: American Buddhism, Buddhism, Buddhist Ethics, Western Philosophy Leave a Comment
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