Many Faces of EBT Students

The Watercooler
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Recently I’ve been thinking about the diversity of our participants in these forums — how it enriches our community, but also, making it hard to relate to one another at certain times. :slight_smile:

Roughly, I can think of four main camps (and of course, there’s probably many people who don’t fit neatly in any of these categories):

  • Traditional Theravadin: Suttas, Abhidhamma, Commentaries, the whole nine-yard. Comes here because of the richness of the translations and the community.

  • EBT Student: Historical-critical. Questions the absolute authority of Abhidhamma, Commentaries; here for the comparative EBT studies.

  • Mahāyāna Student: Likely has their practice based primarily in Mahāyāna Sūtras, here to have a study of the EBTs to complement their Mahāyāna practice, with varying levels of religious-scholarly opinions of the EBTs.

  • Secular / Scholar: With varying levels of religious concerns. Here for the academical and cultural exploration of the Buddhism phenomenon.

Just looking at that list, it seems easy to see how there might be tension among each camp. Still, we’re all nevertheless united in our interest in the EBTs. :slight_smile:

It would also make anyone in any camp feel like everyone else is speaking something foreign to them:

  • Traditionalist becomes a minority in their reverence for the wholesale literary tradition.
  • An EBTist becomes a minority among people who’re quoting Abhidhammas and Mahāyāna Sūtras left and right.
  • A Mahāyānist becomes a minority among people who couldn’t care less for anything outside the Āgama traditions.
  • A secular scholar becomes a minority among curious religious people with interesting beliefs (!).

So, I find it funny that we’re all in the same boat of feeling like a minority with the expectations and perspectives of everyone else around us! :sweat_smile:

Personally, I think it speaks to the universality of the EBTs to command such a crowd, as well as the efforts of Bhante Sujato and all the volunteers making SC and D&D what it is today.

So I just wanted to take a moment to cherish and reflect on the gifts and difficulties of sharing a community of so many different minded people.

It’s not always easy, but it’s always a humbling, enriching experience!

Closing off with MN 95 for how I remind myself to conduct in such a place:

“If a person has faith, they preserve truth by saying, ‘Such is my faith.’ But they don’t yet come to the categorical conclusion: ‘This is the only truth, anything else is futile.’ If a person has a belief … or has received an oral transmission … or has a reasoned reflection about something … or has accepted a view after contemplation, they preserve truth by saying, ‘Such is the view I have accepted after contemplation.’ But they don’t yet come to the categorical conclusion: ‘This is the only truth, anything else is futile.’ That’s how the preservation of truth is defined, Bhāradvāja. I describe the preservation of truth as defined in this way. But this is not yet the awakening to the truth.”

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I was trying to figure out where I should place myself, but then I remembered I don’t subscribe to labels and rigid definitions. :grin:

I did mention this before, but I do sometimes feel irrelevant, or even like a black sheep. I do, however, enjoy tremendously being part of this group and space, and I am grateful for its existence.

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Don’t worry, we’ll find a label and rigid definition for you! :detective:

All jokes aside, I find solace that we’re all united in feeling out of place. Might that be what they call Samsara? :smiley:

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ha! stay away from me with your labels and definitions :rofl:

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Hey, if this thread devolves into a point about no one fitting neatly into a camp, and thus all interactions bearing special consideration, I’ll have done more than enough good work. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

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Ajaan Fuang once quoted a teaching from Ajaan Mun, saying that people are all alike, but
that we’re not alike at all, but then when you come down to it, we are all alike.

Ajaan Fuang’s only comment was to take that and think it over

-Ajahn Thanissaro, Same but Different, but the Same

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This is a celestial emporium of benevolent knowledge.

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-Ajahn Thanissaro, Same but Different, but the Same

The Ajahn said:

We all come here, we all practice, because there’s some suffering in our lives: stress, pain, discontent, however you want to translate the word dukkha. If it weren’t for that stress and suffering, we wouldn’t be here.

I think that applies to the site here, and to all four categories, as well.

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I’d add another one to your list.

The Practitioners. Those who take the EBT’s as the Buddhas instruction manual on how to walk the Path all the way to the realisation of Nibbana.

Here the focus is not so much on understanding the philosophy or details of translations, but of putting the instructions into practice and then using that experience as a direct means to deepening understanding - to see and know for oneself. Pretty much like the Buddha advises in the Kesamutti sutta SuttaCentral

IMHO If this is the PRIMARY approach to the texts, it results in quite a different relationship to them.

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The Practitioners. Those who take the EBT’s as the Buddhas instruction manual on how to walk the Path all the way to the realisation of Nibbana.‘’ …Thank you Ven. @Viveka. This is beautiful, this is the essence of what EBT’s mission is. Our gratitude to Bhante Sujato and SC Team for initiating it. :folded_hands:

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Hey Viveka. :slight_smile:

I’m just dumbfound why you don’t consider these people as being labelled as practitioners:

I tried to explain that not all practitioners base their practice solely on EBTs; indeed, some of them consider Commentaries authoritative, some of them consider Mahāyāna Sūtras authoritative for their practices as well (and some of them just stick to EBTs).

Anyway, I just found it funny you didn’t consider these people as practitioners! :grin: I was obviously only trying to be inclusive of EBT practitioners’ various backgrounds. :wink:

With love. :lotus:

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In all fairness, two of those labels refer to students of texts and the first only lists texts and translations. :grin:

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Dear @NhuDuc70Syd Thank you. However, I am not ordained and as such not Ven. - just Viveka :slightly_smiling_face:

Dear @Dogen, yes, thank-you. People may, of course, fall into multiple categories.

However, I still think that one can be a ‘practitioner’ using the texts as an instruction manual, without necessarily falling into the existing 3 categories as you have outlined them, ie not: 1) a Traditional Theravadin, 2) not an historical critical EBT student of the texts and 3) not a Mahayana student.

I suppose I let the word “primary” in the last sentence of my post do too much heavy lifting.

In particular, I wanted to highlight the difference in the type of relationship with the texts from this kind of approach.

If one really applies the Buddhas injunction in the kesamutti sutta AN3.65

“So, Kālāmas, when I said: ‘Please, don’t go by oral transmission, don’t go by lineage, don’t go by testament, don’t go by canonical authority, don’t rely on logic, don’t rely on inference, don’t go by reasoned train of thought, don’t go by the acceptance of a view after deliberation, don’t go by the appearance of competence, and don’t think “The ascetic is our respected teacher.” But when you know for yourselves: “These things are unskillful, blameworthy, criticized by sensible people, and when you undertake them, they lead to harm and suffering”, then you should give them up.’ That’s what I said, and this is why I said it.

Please, Kālāmas, don’t go by oral transmission, don’t go by lineage, don’t go by testament, don’t go by canonical authority, don’t rely on logic, don’t rely on inference, don’t go by reasoned train of thought, don’t go by the acceptance of a view after deliberation, don’t go by the appearance of competence, and don’t think ‘The ascetic is our respected teacher.’ But when you know for yourselves: ‘These things are skillful, blameless, praised by sensible people, and when you undertake them, they lead to welfare and happiness’, then you should acquire them and keep them."

Then there is not much pressure to have an exhaustive intellectual knowledge of the suttas. The exact translations of words matter much less, because the point is to put it into practice, to experience the results for oneself, and to arrive at the insights oneself, following in the footsteps of the Buddha, rather than dealing with it as an intellectual ‘answer’ to a conundrum. Or assessing it in terms of philosophical cohesion etc.. In that case it is vital to get the intellectual understanding right, as opposed to following pretty basic instructions and doing the experiment for oneself.

Just like you have remarked in this thread, I too find this quite an interesting difference after having observed how people interact on the forum for the past approx. 8-9 years that I have been a member.

So the emphasis, and where attention and effort is placed, differs for each of the groups that you have outlined. Just an interesting thing to observe.

I’m perhaps more sensitive to the practitioner perspective since that is my primary approach, and can sometimes find it a bit jarring when people try to mostly ascertain the truth the Buddha is pointing to, through linguistic methodology, even statistical analysis of the use of words.. It’s perfectly fine of course – it is just pretty much the inverse approach of what I think the Buddha advised as practice. But his advice was for practitioners, those wanting to experience the fruits of the Path, and was not talking about how students of philosophy should deal with the body of teachings. SO each to their own, and as is pointed out, many of these categories overlap and are probably not static in anyone’s journey.

The only problem I have with this is when those who have not actually walked the Path to the end, try to argue and convince others that their View (after intellectual deliberation) is correct. And we have all seen those debates get quite heated.

I think it is great that the EBT’s can provide such riches in so many ways. I just like to emphasise the non-academic side every now and then, as that doesn’t get much air-time.. It doesn’t get much air-time exactly because of how the teachings are used by that group. But I know that 99% of forum usage is by those who are sometimes called ‘lurkers’, and quite a lot of these are in this ‘practitioner’ category and so don’t actively contribute much to the intellectual debates and discussions.

It is easy to think that the active posters are the community, but if you were to look at the number of posts per day compared to the amount of traffic and site usage, a completely different picture emerges. This was one of the areas of interest I had during my time as a moderator here. This is a pretty invisible group, unless you are actively monitoring the statistics on the back end, and worth keeping in mind.

Just my 2 cents worth of perspective of course. :slightly_smiling_face: :folded_hands: :sunflower:

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I also found it jarring. Despite claiming that “practice” is most important, I think it is problematic to see this as a separate category. Perhaps better to put this on a different axis. Maybe immediacy vs. doctrinal purity?

Because we see that even a practitioner will quote suttas to justify their position. Or another practitioner will quote the commentary to the same sutta to justify a different practice.

There is also a slight arrogance that “I’m really doing what the Buddha taught” and the rest of you aren’t. To be fair, I think all of the categories have this arrogance to some degree. But the “practitioner” is often the first to raise the banner.

Maybe a better way to define what we are talking about is “authority,” which you already mention in your original definitions. There is a group of people who place their own experiences above any other authority (while at the same time using the texts to justify this). I’m not sure about a good name. Everything I come up with is far too biased (much like “practitioner” is).

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There is of course conceit/arrogance in any view that is grasped.

There is also evidence of the ‘competition’ between scholastic approach and practice approach since the earliest times of the Sassana.

Ultimately everything needs to be guided by individuals needs, and balance is always a good thing.

I just raise that side from time to time, as it is generally much less prominent here, in order to also keep it in mind.

Please call the ‘categories’ whatever you like. I had assumed it was just a quick sketch - a first draft if you will.

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