For responses sets 1
to 5 kindly visit:
www.bouddhayaanam.blogspot.com
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61. Swami
Vinayachaitanya:
I have wanted to write, but the discussions on the blog have been not very stimulating for me and also nobody seems focus on the main points that you raise, and it has become just a discussion on Buddhism. Will try again
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62.
P.Milan:
A
debate on the cultural significance of Buddhism/s is of course a significant. reconceptualizing.
Buddhism in the light of culture entails so many things like history, power,
and hegemony. From this perspective, we can consider Buddhism as a cultural
response to the social conditions of then India. After Buddha, there had many
historical developments within Buddhist traditions. Ambedkar’s embrace of
Buddhism in the recent past was another significant response to the caste
hegemony. That means, Ambedkar was using Buddhism as a cultural discourse to
negotiate power structure and power relationship. Cultural reasons behind the
ejection of Buddhism from India are yet to be brought out. Sankara’s alleged
driving Buddhism out from the religio-philosophical plane seems to be implausibility.
Because it is irrefutable that Sankara has assimilated Buddhist logic through
his masters Padmapad and Goudapada. At the same time, Advaita’s monism is
totalitarian. Absolutism of any kind is socially oppressive.
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63. Sasidharan:
Prof.
Milan’s suggestion on Sankara’s alleged role of annihilator of Buddhism from
India and the understanding that Sankara’s monism as totalitarian and
oppressive are really interesting. Milan seems to imply that there are apparent
contradictions in the way Sankara has been counter posed to Buddhist tradition
in India. No doubt such a history is shrouded in mystery. Again, it is
embarrassing to see that the roots of Buddhism as such have been traced to the
Vedas and Upanishads. It appears that the present day Hinduism is felt
threatened more by the cultural practices inspired by Buddhism rather than the
doctrinal or philosophical Buddhism.
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62. Rajesh Komath:
There is a wide perception among the followers of Hindu-Brahmanical notion of spiritual life that Budhas Dharmas, again a component in which the Hindu tradition consists of. This is a new set of claims so that they could embrace untouchables and Sudras in the the folder of so called Hindu/tva. Buddhism, I think, matters in contemporary India when the Dalit-Bahujan start thinking about an organised social form of life-that seeking for a spiritual legitimacy. The Navayana tradition of Buddhism, thereby, delve into the aspects of Dalit art, images and spirituality. Thus, the political, art and culture and the spiritual integrate as a whole. This triggers as a cultural politics because of the internal potency of the Buddhism.
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63.
64. Sasidharan:
it is interesting to see your reasoning on Navayana Buddhism. Of course it is a significant response towards the continuing caste hegemony in India. But I feel the present day world as such might be beneficial if there is much broader conceptual framework for cultural and political intervention. It seems there is much to learn or imbibe from Buddhist cultures to that respect. Here we need to provide or advance justification for why cultures do matter.
it is interesting to see your reasoning on Navayana Buddhism. Of course it is a significant response towards the continuing caste hegemony in India. But I feel the present day world as such might be beneficial if there is much broader conceptual framework for cultural and political intervention. It seems there is much to learn or imbibe from Buddhist cultures to that respect. Here we need to provide or advance justification for why cultures do matter.
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65. M. Dasan:
Buddhism or the core ideas of Buddhism matters to today as one of the means to purge people from their obsession with religion, irrationality and consumerism. Could think of how Ambedkar tried to incorporate the cardinal principles of Buddha's teachings in proposing navayana with an aim to end discrimination of all kind and to create an egalitarian society
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66. Sasidharan:
you have brought out two important points for discussion. It seems we need to have serious thinking on why our popular/public intellectuals hesitate to consider such things. There seems to have an unconscious strategy operating to undermine such concerns and efforts. An exploration on how such unconsciousness has been stabilized may worthier. More rigorous argumentation in favor of whatever that has been trivialized needs to be advanced as counter-strategic operation. We may also require debating more in terns of concrete historical and social facts rather than being abstract theoretical.
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67. Jackson K. David:
First
of all, I should congratulate Sasidharan, the author to attempt on a
topic where a lot of apprehensions are built throughout the ages. Kudos to you!
for employing Malayalam to substantiate your stand that too in a impeccable
fashion.
Silhouetting
Buddha over Shankaracharya and contrasting and comparing it vice verse
somewhere the extensions of evolving Buddhism is anticipated. The way you
suggested and invited confrontations from both the sects; namely, Brahmins and
the Dalits is also appreciated (even though you have tried your level best to
down play it).
How
to get into the remains through the present is detailed in an array sublime
where the existence of a being is investigated. Even scores of avalanches
cannot hide the clues to the past…… I can see a wonderful space letting out
towards a realm where many can put their heads and minds on.
When
we read the article against the contemporary history of India (If I can put it)
where everyone is dying hard to ascertain one’s identity exploring ‘the roots’
to affirm the existence, how can we neglect the political, cultural and social
imaginations alluded while portraying different dimensions of boudhayana.
Buddha
evolves and that is the key concept dealt with in the essay. When we treat
Buddhism as a religion we forget to capture this. Establishment needs history
to construct it and reasons to survive but Buddha doesn’t need it….it
evolves….as a text gets evolved in the hands of its readers.
Good
attempt!!!
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68.
P. Madhu:
On the
myth of the ‘ontology of present’
The
present, it is said, is historical. However, what we cannot be sure what
history is. Those which are projected before us as histories are nothing
beyond the artworks historians produce. The present, it is said, is futuristic.
Similarly, we cannot be sure what the future is. The projected futures are the
aspirations of the current.
History
is a futurization project irrespective of the historians’ interests or
aims. History happens as historians interpret past or present and lay a
trajectory towards the futures influenced by the singularities of their
academic syntagm. For some contingent reasons, most projects of history
writings happened to be projects trim the pasts into limited ideal types of
tapered future, a contribution towards a ‘global history’ of humanity. The
global history projected is as vicious as the ecology deprived of its diversity
by the projections of power elites. An awareness of futures and pasts as
multiple temporalities breaking out always from the presents would avert
historians from sedating their subscribers towards a tapered future.
The
ontology of present is not merely historical but also futuristic. However, it
will be simplistic to say the ontology of our present existence is both
futuristic and historical because neither there exist a factual history lying
out there to be described in all its details nor a factual future whose
trajectory is already laid. History and future are both discovered and
invented. The multiple presents hold multiple pathways of the pasts and
futures which can be modified by presents as they come forth. There are
infinite histories and futures to be discovered or invented. The greater we
understand the creative power of the multiple presents the lesser we would dare
to limit the ontology of the present in terms of past or future.
Neither
the pasts nor the futures are finished products. They are as unfinished as the
presents are. Both futures and pasts are live temporalities as the
presents are. In other words, pasts and futures are the extensions of the
multiple-presents rather than determiners of the ontology of any monolith of
the present. There exists no finished ontology of time to be described or to
look ahead. However, it appears to me, presents always have the power to enliven
pasts and futures.
Time
as history or future is the unbecoming temporized and presented as linear
chunks of periods trajectorized from past to future. The periodized chunks of
temporalities adulterated with ideologies of convenience, histories and futures
are projected. The ontology of present is sought within the projected
trajectories. The ontology of present to exist, there should be an ontology of
the trajectory moving from the past to the future through present. The
unbecoming is moment to moment disbandment of time rather than a trajectory
being constructed from past to future. To be more specific, the disbandment is
experienced by us as time. However, history is produced disregarding that
history is imagined only through ideological constructs of temporalities and
trajectories. The endeavor of history itself thus can be understood as projects
essentializing time while time per se has no such order,
trajectory or uniformity. Temporalities are understood by many thinkers as hetero-temporal,
pluri-temporal manifold experienced through ideologies of mindscapes that are
subjected to layers of ideological presuppositions.
The
presentation and projections of history and future, seen from this perspective,
is entangled within the ideological presuppositions almost in its entirety.
Hence, seeking guidance either from history or future will be nothing better
than getting entangled within the ideological muddle. Such a history or
futurity has nothing liberative in them. Merely, they immerse their subjects
into one or another bad faith. This poses a major problem to social thinkers
and theorists. Social Scientists, I suggest, instead of producing history or
future, could de-ontologize the history, future and the present.
De-ontologizing history would require, de-essentialzing and de-ideologizing
time.
How
to go about de-ontologizing time could be a question arising now. One way to
de-ontologize time as history or future is to expose the ideological syntagm
within which the histories and futures are produced. Also we could expose the
hetero-temporal, pluri-temporal and assemblage effects of time constructions.
Yet another way is to examine the events and counter events torpedoing sets of
constructed times and trajectories. The other way is to expose the unfinished
character of time that never allows any finitude of past or future. Exposing
the non-linearity, co-presents co-opting temporalities, anti-presents repelling
temporal trajectories, exploring the processes of othering, demystifying
continuities and many such research endeavors may let historians to make sense
of time in its ever unbecoming nowness. The virtue of such orientations of
history and future will be reminding its students of the ever unbecoming
present. The virtue of scientific understanding of history or future is, I
would say, to release time from the ideological clutches produced them.
