Master Yin Shun’s work on comparative studies of Early Buddhism/EBTs was first made known to Western scholarships by mainly this work, The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism: A Comparative Study Based on the Sūtrāṅga portion of the Pāli Saṃyutta-Nikāya and the Chinese Saṃyuktāgama (Series: Beitrage zur Indologie Band 32; Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2000).
Rod Bucknell was on the role of supervisor at UQ for the research project proposed by Choong Mun-keat (pp. X-XI).
However, Choong Mun-keat in his later work,
“Ācāriya Buddhaghosa and Master Yinshun 印順 on the Three-aṅga Structure of Early Buddhist Texts ” (in Research on the Saṃyukta-āgama (Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts, Research Series 8; edited by Dhammadinnā), Taiwan: Dharma Drum Corporation, August 2020, pp. 883-932), considers the following:
I think scholars in Buddhist Studies may also need to study carefully and review the works of Master Yin Shun in the area of both the foundations and the development of Buddhism, particularly early Buddhist studies.
Only feminism? The other ones are subjective then?
So are you saying that the subjective is not real?
If you want to know why I say this, my disillusionment with these approaches to study of suttas is sketched out in this thread.
In brief, I tried as hard as I could to find useful feminist readings of the Therigatha, in the hope of summarizing them and showing that a feminist perspective led to valuable insights. But in the process I found that all the studies, without exception, were full of errors and mischaracterizations. These arose both by uncritically echoing their source material and by imposing judgments on their readings, such as where modern women were explaining how ancient nuns misunderstood their own religion. I found I ended up learning more about the authors’ own views and values than I did about the Therigatha, hence “subjectivist”.
I’d love to be proven wrong, so please show me a feminist reading of the suttas that leads to new insights without such flaws and you’ll make me a happy monk.
The same flaws affect masculinist readings (like John Power’s A Bull of a Man) and so far as I can see, all similar approaches, which is why I grouped them together as “subjectivist”. It has nothing to do with the reality of the struggle, as I made sure to point out in my original post. It has to do with whether these approaches, which consciously aim to read ancient texts from a certain subjective viewpoint, lead to illuminating insights.
The approach that I have learned from is, rather, to consciously aim to set aside my own viewpoint and enter into the viewpoint of those participating in the texts. To try my best to understand, not what it means to me but what it meant to them. I would describe this as an “empathetic” reading, in contrast with both traditional (and modernist) approaches which aim to settle an absolute “objective” meaning, and postmodern approaches that emphasize the “subjective” nature of any reading.
I for one was a happy monk reading this article by Amy Langenberg:
And Alice Collett has some interesting work as well:
Whether any of this counts as “new insights” to a learned eminence such as yourself, Bhante, is of course extremely doubtful. But then again, is there really anything new under heaven?
Have you given any thought to giving a further fleshed out look at how cradle Buddhist communities have responded to western critical studies, say in how reform movements in Buddhism sprung in response or opposition to western academia?
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not, but in any case, you have a great day too.
Ha, I just did a discussion with Amy the other day, I’ll mention here when it gets published.
These are both great scholars and excellent work, but they look more at historical developments in Buddhism. Not sure if there’s anything really affecting the suttas per se.
One thing I wanted to say, I was speaking mostly about the suttas, but in the Vinaya it’s a different story. There’s been so much great work by Petra Kieffer-Pulz, Anne Hiermann, Ute Husken and others. Not sure to what degree it counts as “feminist”, but certainly in the sense of taking an interest in the lives of women, highlighting them and assisting modern women’s communities.
It’d be an interesting study. From what I can tell, “cradle” countries (new term for me!) have mostly not caught up with the “traditional-critical” approach (which I will rename “harmonizing”). As far as I can see, in Myanmar it’s 100% tradition, and in Thailand and Sri Lanka there are a few iconoclasts (Kukrit, Gnanananda, etc.) who have quite a significant impact but still very much a minority. To what degree they are responding to ongoing developments in academic approaches is not at all clear to me.
Walters is a common staple in university studies here. This is a reasonable article:
A Voice from the Silence: The Buddha’s Mother’s Story
Jonathan S. Walters, History of Religions, Vol. 33, No. 4 (May, 1994), pp. 358-379 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1062715
A public account will give you 100 free articles to read a year.
And I’m pretty sure I got this from a legal place online. It’s Walters discussion of his translation of the Gotami apadana.
I believe Bhikkhu Bodhi deserves and honourable mention here. Since he returned to the US in 2002, he has lived in Mahayana monasteries, in part with the purpose of learning Chinese. His AN translation contains a significant amount of comparative work.
Have to say I’m not a fan. Feels kind of… infantilizing? Unless you are talking about northern India as the “cradle of Buddhism”. I’m not trying to language police, and I know there are no perfect terms for what is trying to be described.
As to the point, I don’t think that western scholarship plays a role at all in the lives of Buddhists in Sri Lanka outside of perhaps the pirivenas (seminaries). Probably the “Colombo elite” Buddhist set is influenced by Modernism in general, but I doubt that is fed at all by academia.
Funny how these things resurface—that is my old blog, from the monastic days
Yes, I agree completely. As far as I know, it doesn’t happen even in the pirivenas in any meaningful sense—if it does, it must be in a few institutions, in a very limited way, based on works that are decades old.
I guess it is the flip side of how most Buddhist scholars have only a professional interest in Buddhist teachings and have no interest whatsoever in putting them into practice.
Hopefully this isn’t a derail, but I think this is a tricky thing to know. My understanding is that in Western academia there is a stigma against scholars of non-Christian religions who also practice the religion they study. So this can lead to distorted perceptions. I mean, even people think that Bhante Bodhi is only interested in translation and not interested in practice, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Also, practice, as we know, can manifest in a wide range of expressions.
In Sri Lanka I’m just not sure why there would ever be any broad interest in Western scholarship. There is a long, long history of literal policing of Buddhists by westerners. And I don’t think that people there have problems with the texts that a critical reading would solve. The commentarial tradition is where people look to understand the texts.
This is certainly true, but I was referring to people who explicitly state that they are not Buddhist (a la Gombrich): they comprise the majority of scholars, from what I have gathered. Those who claim scholars like Ven. Bodhi to be non-practitioners are practicing cognitive dissonance — a non-practicing monastic would be an oxymoron.
They read (and appreciate) Ven Bodhi’s translations. I think generally the “harmonizing” stage was successful in focusing attention on suttas without alienating traditions. But mostly folks have not kept up. But I mean, I talk about this stuff all the time, and plenty of folks from traditional backgrounds are interested. Obviously my audience is self-selected, it’s not a majority at all, but still it’s not like there is no interest.
We may be (still in proposal stage) getting copies of my translations in the pirivenas.
Right!
One thing that kinda bugs me with western scholarship, it’s so … inconsequential. Like you have an idea, just put it in an article and publish it and that’s all, it doesn’t mean anything. For example Peter Masefield had this idea some years ago, the four “paths” are not four “stages” that you go through one by one, they are four separate “tracks” that different people go down. A complete revision of Buddhist ideas of the path! A big deal really! He discussed the sutta reasons for his views, and that’s fine. Academics should be able to propose ideas, some will be persuasive, others not so much. But it just I dunno, skates on the surface, it doesn’t change anything. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here! Probably best just ignore me!
Broad schmoard, there’s no real “broad interest” in studying suttas anywhere really. But surely we can expect that the more curious and inquiring minds would take an interest in things outside national borders?
Is that true? I know a bunch of Buddhist scholars, and I’ve never really thought to ask them.
He’s since finished the whole translation, and we have it on SC, it’s excellent. But the Apadana is not early Buddhism, so it falls outside what I was talking about here.
