WORKSHOP ON CULTURAL BUDDHISM:
quick responses and exchanges.
For theme note and responses sets 1-6, do visit:
www.bouddhayaanam.blogspot.com
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63. Argo Spier:
Parthasarathi Mondel has made an interesting Quick response posting ref "... where you could also discuss the idea of the collective.' It prompted the issue of historiography. And particular this question 'Is the history of Buddhism to be found in the recorded historiography or may the collective provides a truer account of it?' And P. Madhu's "... Even Christianity, Judaism & Islam are a fake constructions." balances on thin air." Of course all three of these has structures that could be trace back in Religious Mythology till very old Occidental forms but that doesn't make their constructions faked ones. On the contrary, in Christianity, a construction such as Dumuzi-Adonis-Attis-Dionysos-
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64. Pulavar N. Thiagarajan:
Buddhist Culture of Pumpuhar.
Silappadikaram
metioned that there were temles for many gods - Brahma, Muruga,
Balarama, Vishnu. The epic also states that there were Buddhist and
Jain pallis besides Dharmastanas.
(5: 79-80).
Manimekhalai
refers to the presence of the Buddhavihara and the Buddha-pada being
revered by the devotees (3: 64-65), 5:97, 5:104, 6: 11-12).
The discovery of a big Buddhavihara at Pallavaram by the archeologists
is extremely significant and condirms the literary evidence. One wing of
the vihara (palli) consisted of a series of seven square rooms in one
of the rooms a small metal image of Buddha seated in dhyana pose was
discovered. In another room, a large limestone (whitish) slab bearing
the sacred feet of Lord Buddha (Buddha pada) was found. Carvings around
the feet were the auspicious symbols like the lotus flower,
purna-kumbham and swastikam. This Buddha -padam, in limestone according
to Dr. K. V. Raman, is similar to the found at the Buddhist sites of
Nagarjunakoda and Amaravati in Andra Pradesh and most probably brought
from there was also a large granite half moon-stone at the entrance.
Buddha was worshipped symbolically in the earlier period and in
iconographic form in later times.
Mahindra,
the grandson of Asoka is said to have visited Kaveripumpattinam (on his
way to Srilanka) and established as seven Buddha-viharas. In one such
vihara, Aravana-adigal was staying according to the Manimekhalai.
In the 4th century A.D. this place came under the rule of Kalabhara
king Achyuta vikkantan. During his period and under his patronage, a
great Buddhist scholar Buddhadattar lived in a monastery in
Kaveripumpattinam and wrote his work Abhidammavatara. In this work he
praises the monastery he stayed as the place and particularly the
monastery he stayed as the one built by Kanadasa. The vihara looked
white like the Kailasa hill because of the white stucco plaster. A
similar description is also found his work Buddha Vilasini. When we read
these lines and look at the Buddha viharas discovered by the
archaeologists many interesting facts come to light. The numerous white
plastered fragments, some of them painted and the beautiful white stucco
figures add significance to the literary descriptions.
The National Institute of Oceanography had suggested the undertaking
of intensive exploration by sending divers into the sea.....
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65. C. P. Vijayan:
M. T, Vasudevan Nair, in one of his short stories (I do not remember the title but) wrote about the temples in a locality(I presume the locality to be Kudallur or nearby places).The protagonist in the story ,an Archaeologist who was on vacation with family in his ancestral home says "If one dug deeper around the plinths of most of the temples in this area , one might find writings in Pali and images of Buddha".
What I mean to say is that
no one is an exception. If all other creatures remember the ways and
customs practiced for long embedded in them, no man could be an
exception - writers and columnists included.
Prejudice might
prevent someone to look inwards for an answer, but he too becomes
dumbfounded as a particular custom, ritual or body language is pointed
out to him which relate him to his past.
A group of people
were photographed once while they were crossing a meadow full of
overgrown grass.Of course they all were engrossed in some discussion.
But what their "body" was doing while they walked was amazing. Almost
all of them were unwittingly pulling of the shoots atop the grass, some
simply nibbling at it, some chewing, some smelling and some few smelling
and throwing away. They were just doing what all other primates would
have done in similar situations - inspecting/smelling/eating tender
grass shoots!!
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66. C. K. Raju:
The workshop is indeed very imaginative.
If Buddhism is a non-stagnant *way* of critically viewing a *religious
world*, it would have eternal significance. Self-sufficient and
self-administered gotras appear to have been appropriated into a
faith-system in an antagonising manner. It could also be very likely
that places of meditation or preaching might have been forcibly taken
over and rechristened as temples. Even Ayyappan might be a chiseled
and ornamental form of Buddha. I also get a feel that *right to enter
temples* might actually be a hindu-version of *right to reclaim sacred
sites* by their rightful owners.
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The workshop is indeed very imaginative.
If Buddhism is a non-stagnant *way* of critically viewing a *religious
world*, it would have eternal significance. Self-sufficient and
self-administered gotras appear to have been appropriated into a
faith-system in an antagonising manner. It could also be very likely
that places of meditation or preaching might have been forcibly taken
over and rechristened as temples. Even Ayyappan might be a chiseled
and ornamental form of Buddha. I also get a feel that *right to enter
temples* might actually be a hindu-version of *right to reclaim sacred
sites* by their rightful owners.
......
67. Argo
Spier:
NOTE to the reader: The
following input may aid students to rethink the methodology they
are using when proceeding with the theme Cultural Buddhism. I have
made used of a subtle set of metaphors. It is for the reader to see
the connections between content and metaphor and decide whether the
scope of the metaphors are not overdrawn. It is also up to him to
decide whether these introduction ideas are of usable nature and
whether they executed here with accepted reasoning. The difference
and yet inter-connectivity between the thingness of a concept and
the concept itself was also touched upon, as was the 'spaces'
connected to methodology. I may have repeated certain thought
streams throughout my input but hopefully have not overloaded the
repetition. The input has to be seen as a quick response and the
reader is begged to only use what he finds applicable and to delete
the rest. Due to the scope of the Quick/r preliminary discussions I
also refrain from writing a conclusive paragraph. This may give the
piece a feel that it is 'hanging' somewhere. The reader may write
the end paragraph for himself if he so desires (and post it to me).
- Argo
Most of the posts and
per-luminary chat so far in the Workshop (up to February 2015) seem
to be dealing with content-orientated history. There also seems to
be an accepted hear-say reasoning in the method of many of the
posters and a firm belief in some of them that what they post,
and their arguments in getting to their statements, deals with 'the
truth' of the historical developments of Buddhism. But isn't that
exactly what is at stake in the issue Cultural Buddhism, namely the
questioning of method and the fact that method and analysis of
existing knowledge escapes historiography?
Present traces of historiography may not hold the truth one has got
used accepting? And
isn't this questioning an inherent part and parcel of the concept
after all? How do we know that that what we know of Buddhism, its
history and its development through the ages and/or decline, isn't
but a colored version tainted with local myth and/or the rusted
concepts of 'truth' that are ingrained inside
our thoughts and memory? Our concepts of
what history and what development is, may be wrong. And 'truths',
especially 'historical-truths' …
are they not always only true to a degree per definition? Our
knowledge of truth itself too, is it an absolute true thing that is
never untrue? What about half-truths and even non-truths? How do we
distinguish between these categories? Another
issue applicable here is that there
are the 'things' that we name and then believe that by naming them
we have made them true. When do things, facts, statements an
concepts become true? Can a concept become true? And there are more
uncertainties. For instance, there's that Kantian imperative and
the issue of having knowledge
of knowledge. How can one know that he knows something without
knowing what he knows is part of knowledge? And the ability of the
individual to deal with knowledge as a truth,
is that based on a standard and is this standard a sound 'thing'?
One has to know what knowledge is
to know that it is knowledge and one has to prove and verify that
this knowledge is
the 'right' knowledge to know. Verification is important, it comes
into the equation with a strong command. How can we know that our
ideas are truthful at all and what definition do we give to the
attribute truth that is so often attached to what we formulate?
And there is the Heidegger issue
of the meaning of the meaning of knowledge? What is the meaning of
truthful knowledge? Has it weight or is it a bearing showing a
direction? All this has influence on the topic
of Cultural
Buddhism. The very 'meaning' of our talking has influence over that
what we say about subjects and objects in everything.
In all our utterances we all have
to be aware of this and of the issues mentioned here. With our
efforts we have to exercise an openness in which it is possible to
consider that that what we say is true. But this isn't as easy as
it seems. There are many other aspects of knowledge and true
statements that one has to be aware of in order to really get to
some level of not only clarity but of grasping meaning as well. The
way that we have been looking at things and the way we have been
dealing with the truth so far in our lives may not have been the
absolutely right way and, in our openness, we have to incorporate
that as well. An awareness
of all the aspects of knowledge
seems to be a worthwhile approach
to start with. Then issues such as to what truth-
and trustful knowledge is
has to be incorporated. We need to know 'what it is' that we are
saying when we make a statement and hold it as a 'true thing'. We
must be very sure that we are speaking the truth and say something
'real' so that others can use it to built their 'knowledge' upon
and be on the 'right track' to find the meaning
of what was said. This seems a
good way to 'go' when we deal and research Cultural Buddhism. It
may even be the right methodological approach to discover the full
extend of the reach of Cultural Buddhism.
To speak of knowledge, the first
question that comes to our minds is the question 'what is it?' What
is knowledge? How can we know what knowledge is? It is a word, a
concept, one can answer, and that would be a true statement. But
knowledge is also something more than the word that explains the
concept of it. It is something we know. Its abstract. But how do we
know that we know it? Even, how do we know that it is abstract? And
how do we know that it is knowledge? There's knowing it and and
theres knowing it is knowledge. Don't we have to know what
knowledge is first before we can know that we know it and know that
it is knowledge that we know? It all doesn't seem so easy, does it?
One can reason that this is ah but, an interesting situation! And
say that it has nothing to do with Cultural Buddhism. But a person
thinking that, has he it at the right end? How does he know it has
nothing to do with the topic? And if he is absolutely sure of his
view, how does he know that it is a true view, one worth to have?
And how does he know he knows that it has nothing to do with the
subject? Where did he get that 'knowledge' from? And where is that
knowledge now, in his head? How does he know it? Indeed this
seems to be an Ororobos snake eating its own tail and going into a
never-ending loop. But it matters. It matters because we are trying
to get truthful knowledge about our subject. We don't want to fool
around, no, we want to know true things about our subject. That's
why we have a Workshop, to seek out things and preferably ob for
true things and 'true knowledge' about our subject.
This is the next issue - truth!
What is truth and what are 'true' things? How do we know that
things are true? How do we know that that what we know to be true
is true? And if a statement is true can we then say we 'know' the
'truth'? When are things true and when are they not true, untrue,
false or just plain irrelevancies? Are things that cannot be proved
to be true per definition false.
Or are there degrees of truth? Something like half true things? And
what is the difference between a true thing and the concept that it
is a true thing? And how much prove and verification does a thing
need to be perfectly and finally true? Really, what is truth and
what way and/or method do we have to follow to get it?
This is a crucial issue in the
research into our topic. We need to find the answer and also to
ponder more about knowledge. I suggest you read the following piece
I worked on before I started with the 'wobble' idea in the
methodological process, a topic I probably will not conclude. ...
Much of
the 'rubbish
in the world'
(our pondering of
what true things are as
well resort under this heading too)
can still
be used,
recycled in
some way. Others
not. Radio-active
material radiate
dangerous radio-activity
and only
after some
20,000 years or so the
effect seemed to has lost its bite.
We are dealing
with toxic stuff when we deal with it. Toxic stuff that lingers. How
many rusted theories do
we not
have in our
heads
that blur our vision and harm our ability to think clearly
on academic
topics
and issues? It
is as if there is a
'lingering' of
'toxic' stuff in our heads that prohibits the discovery of new means
of approaching a
subject and
to work out a
right approach
towards it, to find a new methodology.
Just as with
contaminated materials, this
keeps on lingering.
Some of
the truths we
have, have been
with us for a long time. 20,000
years? Yes, things like Archetypes are from Paleontologist times in
our minds. Are they toxic? Yes and no, depending on
whether you
incorporate them is some kind of religious truth and fill your life
with it. They certainly are of the lingering
kind too.
How do we know whether concepts that we hold for true in our minds
are producing the right kind of truth? I suppose you have to work
with it, test it and mull it over and over till the true nature of
that what you hold true really becomes knowable. I'd say awareness of
the nature of truths and a long pondering of it, is a good way to
start with the
endeavor to find out what a true thing is
really all
about. And
if we
mean to know that what
we know is true,
we must become
doubly aware as this, as
this especially
is a true signal of toxic
content.
People who tell
other people that they tell the truth certainly lie. Has
any one of
us ever have
asked ourselves
whether if that
what we know that we know are
true, whether then that what we don't know is to be definitely
untrue? Do
you see, what I mean by toxicity?
You are using
the same methodology for the left side as
for the right
side. In this case it leads to nonsense. Like
with
radio-activity,
we do not see the
dangerous
radiation that
causes
the cancer in our bodies.
We also do
not we
see whether that what we know is to
be true, may be false and not true at
all.
The
idea to work with a
truth of degrees seems
to be not such a bad idea
after all.
What we know of
Buddhism, its development and
its possible
decay (as many
academics in Kaledy seem to believe to be true as far as Kerala is
concerned), may
only be true to a degree of the
level of truth
we have become
accustomed to.
This all is
linked to what
I had said earlier about knowledge and the question
of where we get
the
knowledge that we think
we know is
knowledge and then
treat as
truthful knowledge.
Methodology is
a question more of how we ask the question of what knowledge is than
of a
content-logic reasoning of what knowledge is. The
same goes for the dealing with truths. And we have to develop our
ways of dealing
to deal with it. Methodology
is the space into which you dump the question whether that what you
believe you do believe,
is true or false. View
it as a
per-designed letterhead. You use it for all your letters. Or even,
view it as
as the dustbin icon on your computer screen.
You can dump things into it. They are not really in it. The
codes to the items are
what is
in the dustbin. When you delete the codes the documents crumble and
evaporate from your computer. You
have to also empty your dustbin. There
is a handy function however to this dustbin on
your screen (screen … your vision of truthful knowledge?).
You can salvage documents from it, move them back to their
original places and use them again. Its
a kind of recycling. Knowledge too can be 'recycled' but can it be
exposed of?
What about truth?
Anyway,
then you can dump them again into
the dustbin.
Methodology is like that. It is a way to deal with the roots of
things. And this brings us to the following issue – 'roots
of things',
what are that? For instance, Cultural
Buddhism is a concept dealing either with the roots of Buddhism or
the results of Buddhism. This
may be the root of Cultural Buddhism, that is 2 things, root and
culture. But
we, when dealing with Cultural Buddhism, do not know
where the idea and concept of
Cultural
Buddhism comes from, leave
alone know its 'roots'.
Since
we have the
idea of
Cultural Buddhism we have a problem. Where
does it resides? Does
it exists in
the concept of itself
or where? In
the thingness of it? We
don't even know if it is a true thing or even contains
a true concept
of a true thing.
We have found it in our minds
where it may be hidden in
a discarded
layer of
thought
(debris,
coming from
waste theories whether toxic or not) that was
placed there by an 'earlier
time'
for deletion.
We just
have the codes
of it in our dustbin. We
must restore the codes and undelete it to be able to work with it and
find clarity, essence and root. With
the word
'earlier'
I don't mean
from a
previous life
and/or that
we know about it via incarnation
or
rebirth. Although it may be true that we had previous lives, and many
Buddhists
know this to be true, it is
more in a
historic way
that I
am using the term focusing
on it's
collective unconsciousness
embedding by
culture. This
is an uncontrolled
vast domain of continued space of human existence. It
spreads through all people. In this space (this is our second use of
the word and concept space)
we must look to
find sense to the concepts
we work with.
The how we look for Cultural Buddhism contains the methodology
question and
has everything to do with the collective unconscious of man.
How we
deal with that what
we think
we know is important. Undefined
creative cultural space and the space of methodology are areas of
outlet to watch out for. Its
in the attitudes in there that we find the possibility to discover
truthful things and perspectives. Attitudes
towards Buddhism are
to be found in
the collective unconscious of culture of which we are psychologically
part and parcel of too.
These attitudes must
be viewed as
sedimented layers of 'waste' (rubbish) that the 'stream' of
civilization activity through the eons
has left behind in our
souls. To
'find' Cultural Buddhism we have to become archaeologists of
these layers and dig
it up. The
various spaces
mentioned in this input is the right places where to dig.
As
archaeologists, diggers, excavators we will have to compare the
pieces related
to the subject that
we have found with
the images
(concepts) we have imprinted in our mind systems (our
knowledge) and
do our
selections.
And while
doing it, we
must try to
disregard
what's academically irrelevant and
what is
fitting,
what's relevant
and what
not. And slowly
build our grand theory
(which may
prove to be our our
methodology in
the end) to
find out whether that what was recorded (in
the historiography)
and had
produced certain theories and truths that
were through the ages become
very true and hard,
sedimented stuff
in our minds,
can compare
to new theories
of the past that
we will stand
the test for
being true
and/or
false. We
will then
slowly understand whether we are victims
of false codification or
gallant academics riding real horses.
We need to
question the historiography of both the present and the past. And we
have to do this in fully awareness of the categorical imperative,
that issue and question as to what knowledge is and
where it is, in the thingness of it or in the concept of it.
Its not an easy
pursuit, I
agree. Nothing
is 'true' in
the World of Everything and
everything is
but
recorded and
sedimented inside
the World in Us, our minds,
the dustbin full of codes.
Truth is its
own concept and rather
the philosopher's
nightmare
because of the
possible toxic nature of it.
We must be very
careful not to make fools of us, saying something to somebody that we
think is is
true, only to
discover only some moments later that we have
been fooled by
our lack of methodology in the space of our minds (third time) and
that we have
had been
dealing
with the wrong layer of rubbish, the wrong theory.
But this is rather
besides the
point now. Our
knowledge of what we know of the past and also that of what we know
of the present is for a great deal only that what we think we know of
it. We must
know more of what we know – that is why we are having a Workshop on
Cultural Buddhism. And
when we are driving hard at the truth of it in our quest our
knowledge will
have to fit our
habits, attitudes and the theory of what it takes for a thing and a
concept to be known and to
be know as ton be
true. As searchers for academic validity (diggers,
laborers) we
may at one stage even may
consider
abolishing the concept Cultural Buddhism or chose
to see it as a
fabrication, when we conclude that the totality of is but yet another
layer of sedimented crap
on top of a
newer level of how to ask the question concerning
it … and
knowledge … residing in
the riverbed of our thinking. Once
again, methodology is the message and
carries the message.
Does this mean that the message of
it IS the
meaning? As
was pondered in the 60ties? Yes,
in a way. We
even may
conclude, in
our quest, that
we have taken a presupposed
road in our academic fervor and
made something true that is absolutely not true.
We have then
taken another
'thing' that
exists and we
have treated it
as Cultural
Buddhism. The space (fourth
time) of
dynamic affluence and
creativity in
methodological method may
then, thank god, provide a hiding place for our embarrassment.
As a first
step in this
'real political' methodology I
am advocating here, we
may have
to allow for a shift
from a content-based
knowledge methodology towards a more fluent intuitive and
creative drive
in our attitudes
and analysis. And to do so,
and take the step, we
have to understand
that the
concept of Cultural Buddhism
carries the
possibility of being a
real 'thing'. It
is not only a concept. It
is normally accepted that concepts are in our heads. But thing
things, where do they 'live', exist? The thingness
of Cultural Buddhism
exists somewhere else?
Where? This is what we
are to look for. Cultural
Buddhism as a word makes sense because it
is a thing driving a thing at the same time. It is a
concept, a thing, it
carries a meaning of
being a concept and a thing and … this
is what we must do, from
here hop on a
bus and go to the meaning of the meaning of the concept of Cultural
Buddhism as a thing. So
we have the step and we have the direction. And we do it by bus. Once
again we are back to where we have started, back at the categorical
imperative of Kant, the how do we know that we know anything
at all. But we have
also covered some ground. So we are probably on track.
We
need to look at how we relate to Buddhism ourselves and what
attitudes we have towards it to
find our methodology and truthful knowledge.
The sedimented rubbish of what may be the truths of Buddhism lies not
only in our mind but the color of it that
can also been seen
when we look in (the
space) of our
attitudes. Our
attitudes has something to do with our deeds and actions. We
do what we are and we are what we think. If we are aware of the
spaces
in us and in our deeds
we can utilize it. In
our attitudes towards concepts/truths creative
methodological processes
give clear indications
of the direction into which has to be looked in order to find
clarity. It is in the
locality of attitudes that unseen things really gets their meaning.
Cultural
Buddhism and the truth of the
phenomenon's existence
depends on processes set aside
inside
methodology
… but
I
am ending off now. Just this still - do
analyze people's attitudes (and
your own) and
you will be a mile closer in understanding Cultural Buddhism and its
meaning.
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