Avaktavyam » Religious Studies

Buddhism: How the Vinaya Shockingly Ends

Louis-Dominique — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 15:46:57 +0000

The actual ending of the book of monastic rules, the Vinaya, has been lost to us. A recent a bit of luck and research allowed for its restoration. The results are shocking. The story follows:

At that time Lord Buddha was staying in Sāvatthi in the Jetavana Grove. A group of monks came to him, complaining that other monks did not wash their feet properly. The monks said: “O Lord, monks are visiting our monastery but they did not remove their sandals before coming in and when they later washed their feet they did not use one hand for sprinkling and the other hand for washing. Also, they smell like turnips and their robes are one inch too long.” Lord Buddha rose to his feet and exclaimed (anachronistically): “Jesus! Day after day you guys keep coming to me whining about this and that. Do I really need to spell out everything in minute details? Do I have to tell you how to chew your food?” A monk interjected: “O Lord, you do not need to tell us how to chew our food because you already told us yesterday. On the left side, we are to chew f…” Buddha interrupted him: “Oh, so yesterday you, Ānanda, were actually listening to what I was saying, for a change! Listen, when I give you advice on how to regulate the monastery, you should understand the spirit of my advice and figure out the details for yourself. Do I really need to tell you that you should eat your food without drooling all over yourself.” Another monk interjected: “O Lord, drooling over oneself while eating is an unforgivable offense. So it has been ordained by you.” Buddha replied: “I was joking when I said that!!! If you drool, just wipe your mouth.” Another monk said, with a glitter of hope in his eyes: “O World Venerated One, what about sex? Were you joking too?” The Buddha replied: “No, I was serious… and this is another thing. When I said no sex, I meant no sex. I did not imply that sex with a corpse was fine, because ‘well, it’s not a real woman’ or some other nonsensical reason. And no, there is no form B231-8A which you can fill to get a dispensation allowing sex. This is just something Devadatta made up.”

The Buddha took a deep breath and declared: “Ok, from now on, I’m no longer giving you advice on how to manage your affairs. I’ve noticed how you’ve already compiled all of my responses to your incessant whining. That thing is more than a thousand pages long, big enough for you to beat each other senseless with it.” As he was leaving, he stopped mid-stride and added: “You know what? Forget all those rules I gave you. Just use some common sense and you’ll be fine. Have sex if you must.” Upon saying these words, he retired to his hut.

Here ends the Vinaya. The Pāli manuscript has a line running across the entire excerpt translated above. A line in the margin says: “Mahāsāṃghika heresy. Do not copy.”

Searching for emptiness

Louis-Dominique — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:11:22 +0000

I was searching through databases of journal articles this morning. I click away and then I get this: The following error was encountered: * Zero Sized Reply I guess that should be expected when you search for “emptiness”. Has the … Continue reading →

Buddhism comp passed!

Louis-Dominique — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:52:46 +0000

I’ve gotten word from Karen Lang that she and Paul Groner rated my Buddhism comprehensive exam with an “enthusiastic pass”. (Those exams are not graded with letters: either you pass or you fail.) Yay!

I’m working on my Hinduism comprehensive now.

And then the methodology comprehensive.

And then the dissertation proposal.

And then 9 months of research abroad… probably Taiwan.

And then writing the dissertation and defending.

And then back in the workforce.

Strange encounter of the Devanagari type

Louis-Dominique — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:38:18 +0000

Yesterday, my wife and I went to a used book store. I was browsing their foreign books section and found a book with Devanagari script on it. The first thing that caught my eye was the word dharmaśāstra (धर्मशास्त्र) written on the cover. I thought “aha! a Sanskrit book”. But above it I saw the word māramana (मॉरमन), which did not ring any bell. (People who read Hindi will already have found where I erred.) I looked at the table of contents and realized immediately that the book was in Hindi, not Sanskrit. But that word, māramana, did not ring a bell. I was trying to figure out whether it was the name of an ancient author, a place, some sort of obscure philosophical view. Then I noticed the ardhacandra over the first syllabe. That’s the half moon diacritical mark above the word. This is not a normally found in Sanskrit so it has to be a modern Hindi word. Since it is Hindi, the last short “a” vowel is not pronounced so it should sound like māraman. Still, nothing came to mind. Then I remembered that the ardhacandra is normally used in transliterating the long “o” sound found in some English words (like in the name “John”: जॉन). Ok, so it is an English name sounding like moraman…. the religion of moraman…. moraman morman… Mormon!

It was an instructional book about Mormonism. It’s been my experience that recognizing English words transliterated in Hindi is pretty hard. Unfortunately, I don’t have to read such transliterated words very often. Here, I had a big fat clue in the ardhacandra but I’m reading much more Sanskrit than Hindi these days and even in the Hindi I read from time to time, the ardhacandra is not very frequent. So it initially slipped my mind. In general, Hindi transliteration of English words is done to represent how the English word sounds to the ears of native Hindi speakers. Hence, it requires quite a bit of mental gymnastics for a reader thinking in English to totally flip perspectives. The reader must no longer be an English language speaker looking at Hindi as a foreign language but must become a Hindi speaker looking at English as a foreign language. Arguably, the same gymnastics sometimes has to be performed with French for instance but because English and French “grew up” together, so to speak, and use the same script, the mental gymnastics involved are usually trivial.

The secret life of Nāgārjuna

Louis-Dominique — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:07:53 +0000

Please forgive me for the title. No, I’m not going to write about Nāgārjuna’s biography. I’m sorry. You see, I just succumbed to that disease that prompts academic writers to come up with sexy titles that only obliquely hint at their real topic.

I do not intend to write about Nāgārjuna’s life but about his texts. Or more precisely, I intend to talk about an insidious form of tunnel vision that can develop when studying Nāgārjuna’s philosophy. It is an affliction that has for root an over-reliance on Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK) combined with a neglect of Nāgārjuna’s other works. Not without warrant, the MMK is given primary importance in Nāgārjunian studies. This primacy becomes problematic when the MMK becomes the only lens through which Nāgārjuna’s philosophy is approached. I must admit that I have been afflicted by it. I’ve written term papers in which I spent no small amount of effort demonstrating that Nāgārjuna’s philosophy in the MMK entails consequence X. Now I’m finding out by reading his other works that I could have saved myself that effort by simply citing his verse. From the standpoint of personal cultivation, the effort I spent is not lost because there is value in arguing for X on the basis of the contents of the MMK instead of just citing a verse that states X. Arguing requires the ability to see the connexions between the various elements of the philosophy in a way that just citing does not. Still, I need to adjust my lens to include into its scope what I had hitherto neglected and which, blissfully abusing language, I have called Nāgārjuna’s secret life.

I am taking responsibility for my own foibles but I do think however that this disease is one the entire field of Mādhyamika studies has to guard against. It would be nice to see in scholarly publications engaging general Madhyamaka topics more reliance on Nāgārjuna’s other works and less emphasis on the MMK.