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<\/a>Missoula Sunset, 8-19-08<\/span><\/span>\n<\/div>\nLast night\u2019s \u201cDharma Tuesday\u201d centered on the simple act of reading a sutra. <\/span>What benefits may be gained in this practice? Why, in Buddhism<\/a>, which seems so focused experience and activity in the world, are texts so important?<\/p>\n I recall learning years ago of a discussion amongst two Greek philosophers, perhaps Socrates and an interlocutor. In the dialog, one of the great thinkers lamented the invention of writing. He said that now people will simply write down great wisdom and leave it there, in the pages or engraved in stone; they will no longer take up and <\/span>live<\/span> the wisdom in their bodies as they had before.<\/span> The value of the teacher, he worried, would decline, as intelligent but unwise youth turned instead to books, and the whole system of civic virtue, which relies upon the human-to-human passing of wisdom and discipline, would slip into decline.<\/p>\n In India at the same time there may have been similar worries. The Buddhist canon<\/a> wasn\u2019t put into writing until four centuries after the Buddha\u2019s death. Young monks were instead assigned sections of it and spent years memorizing these lengthy teachings. They came together periodically, called from all corners of India and beyond, to recite, in unison, the teachings in order to ensure that with each generation not a single word was lost<\/span>. Eventually, likely due to a famine and the death of many monks, it was decided that the Dhamma should be put into writing<\/a>, thus creating what we have today.<\/p>\n
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