Scholarship and Buddhism

Question

What role if any does academic scholarship play in Buddhism? Should Buddhists be concerned with what scholars say, or can we safely ignore them? How should we resolve conflicts between tradition and academia?

For specific conflicts I can cite some of my own work. See for example my discovery that karma and dependent arising are mutual contradictory: See Does Karma Break the Rules? and Sarvāstivāda Approach to the Problem of Action at a Temporal Distance. I have subsequently discovered that Nāgārjuna also thought so (MMK 17.1-6). Or my discover that all theories of karma are internally inconsistent: ; or the conflict between metaphysics and morality; or the assertion made by Sean Carroll that no afterlife of any kind is possible (including rebirth).

Answer 1

One of my teachers explicitly warned me: do not put too much trust in books written by Buddhist scholars unless they were authorized to teach by a lineage.

In hindsight, having attained "independence of others in regards to Buddha's message", I now see why: Buddhist texts are ambiguous enough that correct interpretation of the points made (as opposed to the literal meaning) requires understanding of Buddhist path as a whole, in context of personal practice -- what's known as "ground, path, fruition".

Back when I was a baby-Buddhist, I used to study all kinds of materials, written by both practicing teachers and scholars alike. Now I see that most of the monographs that focused primarily on translation have been pretty useful, while those that ventured into analysis and elaboration were mostly a waste of time.

Not that translation is quite possible without some measure of interpretation. But there seems to be a difference between following a preexisting text and following your own train of thoughts. If you think about it, the purpose of writing is very different between the two cases. A realized teacher does not write to express his or her understanding. That's not the goal. A teacher writes in order to "deliver" the students (professional slang for "to get them to Realize"). Whereas a scholar writes to explore and explain a particular thread of reasoning they discovered that seems to explain Buddhist artifacts in a cohesive and logically consistent manner.

It is not unheard of for a scholar to slip into metaphysics (how things supposedly are) as opposed to soteriological methodology (how to achieve the Goal in practice). The tradition refers to this difference as "Buddha-eye" vs. "Dharma-eye". Buddha-eye is the enlightened perspective. The elements of it may or may not be helpful to a given student at a given point in time. Whereas Dharma-eye is the perspective presented to student by the teacher, whose concerns as I said above, are primarily didactic.

Now, don't get me wrong, many lineages have professional scholars within the tradition. "Traditional" does not always equate with "sloppy" you know. I've known of teachers in both Theravada and Mahayana schools who did care about careful choice of words, precise phrasing, and clear reasoning. It is just that in the world of realized teachers conveying information is always secondary to the real objective. To entertain you with a metaphor, not every student can handle pure spirit, so teacher ought to mix in the additives according to student's capacity. Such additive, known as upaya or skilfull mean -- basically a useful simplification -- is something non-existent in the work of a pure scholar.

Let's not assume scholarly works are 100% truth either. I've seen so many cases of misrepresenting evolution of Mahayana as progressive loss of the original meaning -- that every time I see a new one I don't even cringe anymore :)

I'm telling responsibly, unless one clearly sees that elusive Truth the Buddha has found under the Bodhi tree, one should be very careful making assumptions about a particular Buddhist school or individual teacher being authentic or a "mere religion".

To conclude this post which is already getting too long, the answer to your question I'm afraid is "it depends". The further the scholar is from putting the teaching to his or her personal practice, the likelier they are to misunderstand what Buddhism is really about, the more they're prone to skewing the message, the less we can trust them. The more the scholar is also a practitioner, the more credibility they can have in our eyes. After all, the proof is in the pudding - and how can you trust a cook who's never tried his own recipe?

Answer 2

What role if any does academic scholarship play in Buddhism?

It's beneficial to know ones way around the Pali canon and to have knowledge about the different doctrines and suttas.

If one is a teacher then one would have to do some level of studying the canon in order to teach others what the content is. It might also be beneficial to learn how to read the Pali language in order to get the "full" meaning of the words. It's not uncommon that pali words loose part of their meaning when tranlated into other languages.

So it's important to study but that studying cannot stand alone. It must be combined with practice in meditation in order to fully understand what has been studied.

I remember hearing a story about a young monk (or maybe he wasn't yet a monk) that were described as not being very bright. He could not read and had a hard time understanding what has been taught to him. He was simple and pure. One day a teacher told him to just go and observe his mind. He did that and he won Nibbana in no time while the other hard-studying student with clever minds took a lot longer to win Nibbana because their heads were filled with intellectual knowledge.

Unfortunately i do not remember where i heard the story and i do not know if i have used the correct words to describe it. But the essence of the story is that one does not need to have a large amount of intellectual knowledge to win Nibbana. To win Nibbana practice is needed and that can be gained by simple instructions from a teacher.

Should Buddhists be concerned with what scholars say, or can we safely ignore them?

It comes down to what the goal of the Buddha's teaching is, i.e. to achieve freedom from suffering. To win Nibbana one has to practice insight meditation. Studying is simply not enough since the intellect cannot penetrate reality to it's core. Intellectual knowledge (book knowledge) will only get one so far. Experiental knowledge (insights into reality) is needed in order to fully understand the immense deepth of doctrines such as anatta.

These concepts cannot be grasped by the intellect. They are too profound. They must be experienced directly through insight meditation. Nibbana cannot be won by studying.

I like to use the onion-simile for illustration. Imagine we have an onion with it's many layers and a core. Intellectual knowledge can only penetrate the top layers of the onion while experiental knowledge can penetrate all the layers and into the core of the onion, i.e. Nibbana.

Whether or not the words of scholars should be ignored is really up to the individual being. If we take the perspective of gaining freedom from suffering then the words can be ignored if they do not have a direct relation to the decreasing of suffering, the winning of Nibbana or can be tested in insight meditation.

How should we resolve conflicts between tradition and academia?

By doing insight meditation one gets a point of reference to reality. When one has seen for oneself how reality functions then there is no need for academic discussion. Buddhism is not like philosophy where there are multiple opinions or views on a topic. We can go and test everything in insight meditation and thereby gain the right understanding of reality.

It is not like other religions where there is only faith. In Buddhism faith is balanced and guided by wisdom so that it does not become blind faith.

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There are many more aspects to the questions. I have only brought up a few which i found important in the relation between Intellectual buddhism and Practical buddhism.

EDIT: The story i told above is not the correct one. Bhante has provided the true story.

It's the story of Cula-panthaka. He was a monk who could not remember a single stanza and because of that he was ordered to leave the Order. He was very sad about this and on his way out of the monastery he met the Buddha who comforted him and gave him a clean piece of cloth and said "Sit with your face to the East," and "repeat the words 'rajoha-ranam' and wipe your face with the cloth". Cula-panthaka did what the Buddha told him and wiped his face with the cloth. He saw that the cloth became dirty and then concentrated his mind on the impermanence of all things. The Buddha gave him a discourse telling about the importance of getting rid og impurities and other evils. At the end of the discourse Cupa-panthaka attained arahantship with knowledge of all the Pitakas.

Answer 3

I'm not sure my question was well enough formed for a really satisfying answer to emerge. But the answers do bring to mind the Mahācunda Sutta (AN 6.46) which I translated and commented on some years ago in this article, Meditation & Scholarship.

My article comments that this sutta describes "two kinds of monks" i.e. those 'keen on dhamma' (which Bikkhu Bodhi thinks means 'a scholar') and those 'keen on meditation'. According to the sutta the two groups disparaged each other, but instead they ought to train themselves to see both groups as equally valuable:

The meditator is of value because:

...ye amataṃ dhātuṃ kāyena phusitvā viharanti
...they dwell having touched the deathless state with the body.

The scholar is of value because:

gambhīraṃ atthapadaṃ paññāya ativijjha passantī
they see, they penetrate with wisdom into the depths of texts.

The Mahācunda Sutta is a plea for tolerance of different temperaments leading people towards the Dhamma in different ways.

Answer 4

Academic research is the raw material for my practice.

I'm a secular Mahayana Buddhist. I'm skeptical of the traditional lineages. I don't think they transmit any single person's system and there is no particular reason to think any current one of them is better than the others. Also I'm not bothered by the fact that I have "non-negotiable cultural demands"-- the sexism, authoritarianism and the cultural conservatism are nonstarters. I can't in good consciousness sign up to be a Buddhist in any orthodox organization. But here I am!

As a independent secular Buddhist, I have a project more than an orthodoxy to follow. I'm constructing my own Buddhism. The raw materials are modern day authors and academic scholars.

What Sources I Use Some secular Buddhists believe that the historical Buddha was a crypto-Enlightenment era progressive and that his true words are in the Pali texts. I find the original texts to be unreadable jumbles. The real signal in the noise is the numerous commentaries, especially from the scholars because have the least incentive to put words into the mouth of the Buddha. Stephen Batchelor's work on reconstructing the politics and intrigue drenched life of the Buddha are highly influential for me, for example, I think it is important to think about how Mahakasyapa & other early leaders of the Sangha may have made rules because they needed to keep order in the ranks & not because it was in accord with the Dharma.

The things that brought me to Buddhism in the first place were the Mahayana ideals of universalism, interconnection, social concern for the sick & poor, ahimsa and so on. So my next source is Chinese Buddhism, despite the celestial Buddhas and immortality cults. Again, I can't read it in the original and the most important thinkers, the Huayen, have no modern teachers. Chan & Zen have completely eclipsed Huayen, so the only modern masters of Huayen are the scholars who aren't usually self identifying Bodhisattvas let alone self identifying Buddhists! Jan Nattier and to a lesser extent Donald Lopez are my guides here. I try to read the original Sutras as translated by Cleary and the English translations of the Taisho, but my goodness, standards of acceptability of a text have changed so much. Without the scholars to explain what the original authors were driving at and what mistakes the translators made, these sutras would only be useful for bird cage liner.

I'm also influenced by Tom Pepper, Glenn Wallis-- I learn more from the criticism and the apollogia that I learn from emotional appeals to orthodoxy.

In the case of Shingon, the value of academia is to figure out what Esoteric Buddhism is at all. The material is officially secret, but the academics aren't paying attention to abiseka and creating a "media blackout" on the content of Shingon or esoteric Buddhism in general. I haven't much decided what to do with ritual, but what ritual I do adopt is influenced by the academics, not the traditional teacher's books that pretty much assume you are an illiterate peasant and at best can aspire to be reborn as a monk and follow the five precepts.

The other thing I use academic Buddhism for is the game "are they a believer or not" The best you just can't tell.

Answer 5

What role if any does academic scholarship play in Buddhism?

I can't answer well, but I don't want to 'just leave a comment' instead of answering, so ...

To reference one example, it was nice to see people happily welcoming this answer. It's based on the comparison (by some academic scholars I presume, i.e. at the university of Hamburg) of a sutta with its Chinese equivalent. And the comments to this answer to the same question are interesting too: i.e. various people seem to be aware that the texts may have changed or been misinterpreted over time.

Another example of evident scholarship was this answer, which references this article, Atammayata (The Rebirth of a Lost Word): in that case the word was "recovered" by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (I'm not sure whether you want to exclude someone like him, when you ask about "academic scholarship").