Journal of the International Association of

Buddhist Studies
Volume 18 Number 2 Winter 1995
On Method
D. SEYFORT RUEGG
Some Reflections on the Place of Philosophy
in the Study of Buddhism
LUIS O. GOMEZ
Unspoken Paradigms:
Meanderings through the Metaphors of a Field
JOSE IGNACIO CABEZON
Buddhist Studies as a Discipline
and the Role of Theory
TOM TILLEMANS
Remarks on Philology
C. W. HUNTINGTON, JR.
A Way of Reading
JAMIE HUBBARD
Upping the Ante:
budstud@millenium.end.edu
145
183
231
269
279
309
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
Editor-in-Chief
Robert Buswell
Steven Collins
Collett Cox
Luis O. Gomez
Oskar von Hinuber
Padmanabh S. Jaini
Shoryu Katsura
Alexander Macdonald
D. Seyfort Ruegg
Ernst Steinkellner
Erik Zurcher
Editorial Assistant
Alexander Vesey
Contributors to this issue:
JOSE IGNACIO CABEZON is Associate Professor of Philosophy of
Religion at Iliff School Theology in Denver, Colorado. His books in-
clude A Dose of Emptiness and Buddhism and Language.
LUIS O. GOMEZ is C. O. Hucker Professor of Buddhist Studies and
Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. His
research interests and publications focus on Mahayana Sutra literature
and the commentarialliterature (especially in the Madhyamaka tradi-
tion), early Chan in China and_ Tibet, Buddhist traditions of faith and
devotion, and the psychology of religion.
JAMIE HUBBARD holds the Yehan Numata Chair in Buddhist Stud-
ies at Smith College. He is currently preparing books on Buddhist
heresies in Tang China and contemporary Japan.
C. W. HUNTINGTON, JR. is an Assistant Professor of Religious
Studies at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. His most recent
publication-a study of the Akutobhaya and its connection with the
Chinese Chung Lun-is forthcoming in Etudes Asiatiques.
D. SEYFORT RUEGG is currently Professorial Research Associate at
the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
TOM TILLEMANS is Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University
of Lausanne in Switzerland. His research centers on Indian and Tibetan
Buddhism, in particular the Madhyamaka and logic and epistemology.
D. SEYFORT RUEGG
Some Reflections on the Place of
Philosophy in the Study of Buddhism
I
It is surely no exaggeration to say that philosophical thinking constitutes
a major component in Buddhism. To say this is of course not to claim
that Buddhism is reducible to any single philosophy in some more or less
restrictive sense but, rather, to say that what can be meaningfully
described as philosophical thinking comprises a major part of its proce-
dures and intentionality, and also t h a ~ due attention to this dimension is
heuristically necessary in the study of Buddhism. If this proposition
were to be regarded as problematic, the difficulty would seem to be due
to certain assumptions and prejudgements which it may be worthwhile to
consider here.
In the first place, even though the philosophical component in Bud-
dhism has been recognized by many investigators since the inception of
Buddhist studies as a modern scholarly discipline more than a century
and a half ago, it has to be acknowledged that the main stream of these
studies has, nevertheless, quite often paid little attention to the philosoph-
ical. The idea somehow appears to have gained currency in some quar-
ters that it is possible to deal with Buddhism in a serious and scholarly
manner without being obliged to concern oneself with philosophical con-
tent. One has only to look at several dictionaries to see that the European
terminology so often employed to render Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan tech-
nical terms is on occasion hardly coherent and did not reflect the state of
philosophical knowledge even at the time these dictionaries were first
published. This impression is reinforced by many a translation from
these three languages as well as by some work on texts written in them.
This article is an expanded version of the presidential address delivered at the
11th International Conference of the International Association of Buddhist
Studies at Mexico City in October 1994.
145
146 JIABS 18.2
An example of such lexical incoherence is the rendering of Sanskrit
salJljna and Pali sanna "idea, notion" by the English word "perception"
if, at the same time, the epistemological term (pramafJa) is to
be rendered as "(direct) perception"; for if in a well thought-out and
coherent terminology salJljna is to be translated by "perception,"
could not be, and conversely. A somewhat more difficult case
is the rendering "form" for nlpa, rather than the more precise
"(elementary [mahabhuta = dhatu] and derived [bhautika], resistant)
matter (for rupaskandha) / visible matter (having color and shape) (for
rupayatana)." In the Abhidharma, nlpa is the first of the five skandhas
"Groups"; and in the ayatana classification of the Sarvastivadins, the
rupin Bases are nos. 1-5 and 7-11, the rupayatana or visible matter Base
being no. 7 which is the sense-object of the (Base
no. 1); and in the dhatu classification, the rupin Elements are nos. 1-5
and 7-11, the rupadhatu Element being no. 7 in relation to the
(Element no. 1) and the (Element no.
13). Hence, when adopting the rendering "form" for rupa one is obliged
to consider whether, in philosophical usage, this equivalent can actually
bear the required meanings; a glance at a good dictionary of philosophi-
cal terminology will reveal that the term "form" in fact very seldom
does.! These are, then, fundamental terms and concepts in Buddhist
1. In the list of khandhas / skandhas, even while rendering safifia by "idea"
the philosopher K. N. layatilleke retained "form" for rupa in his Early Bud-
dhist Theory of Knowledge (London, 1963), e. g. p. 283. Conversely, Y.
Karunadasa rendered rupa by "matter" while continuing to use "perception"
tor safifia in his Buddhist Analysis of Matter (Colombo, 1967). Bhikkhu
NaQ.ananda, Concept and Reality in Early Buddhist Thought (Kandy, 1971),
also kept "perception" for safifia. These translations were given in The Pali
Text Society's Pali-English Dictionary (London, 1921-25), and earlier in R.
C. Childers, A Dictionary of the Pali Language (London, 1875). Already in
1939 the Critical pali Dictionary (Copenhagen, 1924 ff.) s. v. arCtpa had
rendered rCtpa by "corporeal, material" (beside "form"!); it however curiously
conflated safifia and vififiafJa, translating both terms by "conscious(ness)" s.vv.
asafifia and avififialJa. The rendering "corporeality" for rCtpa(skandha) was
adopted by Nyanatiloka / Nyanaponika, Buddhist Dictionary (4Kandy, 1980),
which used "perception" for safifia. Much earlier, T. Stcherbatsky had
employed "matter," "ideas" and "consciousness" to render these three skandha-
terms in his Central Conception of Buddhism (London, 1923), elaborating on
results obtained previously by O. Rosenberg (see Die Probleme der
buddhistischen Philosophie [Heidelberg, 1924], where the renderings "das
Sinnliche," "Unterscheidung" and "Bewusstsein" have been used). L. de La
Vallee Poussin has frequently used "matiere" and "notion" in his translations.
In his note "Sarpjfia," in C. Vogel, ed., Jfianamuktavali, 1. Nobel Com-
memoration Volume (New Delhi, 1959) 59-60, H. von Glasenapp sought to
RUEGG 147
thought for which no philosophically adequate translation has yet been
agreed. Another kind of difficulty is presented by the Sanskrit term
pramalJa, which has been variously translated as right / correct knowl-
edge / cognition, veridical awareness, valid knowledge, validating
knowledge, epistemic norm, standard, and authority, all of which render-
ings are no doubt appropriate in some context either as denotations or, at
least, as connotations of the word.
2
Until such problems associated with
philosophical terminology and concepts have been first recognized to
exist and then adequately investigated, lexicography and translation, as
well as interpretation, will rest on insecure foundations, as will Buddhist
studies in any full sense of this term.
In part, this situation might be though to be due to what could be called
a philological fallacy were one to take the work philology exclusively in
its narrow sense of textual study inclusive of content and context-a
well-established sense that has long been recognized in classics for
example. But since I understand the word philology in its full and com-
prehensive sense, I would reject the expression "philological fallacy" as a
suitable tag for the problem in question. The fallacy has rather to do
with the presumption that the study of the linguistic expression in texts
can somehow be divorced from content.
Secondly, the issue has been complicated by the dichotomy between
philosophy and religion that has been current in western thought, and
accordingly in academic structures. In the western tradition, philosophy
has indeed very often defined itself in opposition to religion, and the fact
that scholars of Buddhism may regard the subject of their studies as both
a religion and a philosophy has then led to the most extraordinary misun-
derstanding and confusion. If, for its students, Buddhism is both a phi-
losophy and a religion in some meaningful sense of these two words, it is
clarify the issue, distinguishing between "Unterscheidungsvermogen" for
sa'!ljnii ("wobei die Bedeutung 'separates Objekt einer Wahrnehmung oder
Vorstellung' mitschwingt") and "Bewusstsein" for vijniina. Whilst rendering
sa'!ljnii by "perceptions . . . et les notions qui en resultent," J. Filliozat
rendered both senses together by "prise de conscience" in L'Inde classique,
vol. 2 (Hanoi, 1953) 340 with 521; on 519 he explained nlpa as "including
everything which is material in the universe." In an early effort to understand
Abhidharma / Abhidhamma thought, H. Guenther rendered sannii by "sen-
sation" and nlpa by "form" and "Gestalt"; see his Philosophy and Psychology
in the Abhidharma (Lucknow, 1957) 58 and 151 (where only in his note did
he provide a good explanation of nlpa). For sa'!ljnii, cf. also D. Seyfort
Ruegg, Le traite du tathiigatagarbha de Bu stan Rin chen grub (Paris, 1973)
76n.2,117n.1.
2. See below, IX.
148 JIABS 18.2
neither according to certain current definitions conditioned by the history
of these subjects. Thus, Buddhist thought is not philosophy in the per-
spective of e. g. logical positivism or linguistic philosophy as it was gen-
erally practised earlier in this century. Nor has Buddhism normally been
a religion in the sense of belief in a supreme being either as creator god
or as a supernatural entity who can intervene in the natural order of
things (thus giving rise to very difficult problems of theodicy). In addi-
tion, the problems of (self-)definition which the study of Buddhism has
thus had to confront may have to do with the place apart in the humani-
ties that philosophy and religious studies have so often been assigned-
indeed with the place that they have sometimes been quite content to
assign themselves.
Thirdly, the problem has no doubt been connected with the presump-
tion that anything regarded as so quintessentially Greek, and hence
"Occidental," as philosophy cannot possibly be found in anything
"Oriental."3 For-according to a widely held view-does not "Oriental
thought" concern itself chiefly with the mystical and the irrational, or at
best with what is called "wisdom" as opposed to reasoned philosophical
thinking and the search for truth (defined in philosophy as the property
of a proposition or state of affairs)?4 Moreover, does not the interest
evinced in mind by Indian and Buddhist philosophy place it outside the
pale of true academic philosophy, so long at least as mind-that so-called
"ghost in the machine"-was regarded as an epiphenomenon of the
material, or of behavior, and was not held to be a suitable subject for
genuine philosophical inquiry?
A further drawback for the study of Buddhist philosophy is the fact
that it has all too often been studied in isolation from Indian thought as a
whole, and from Indology. It should be clear that both in its structures
3. A discussion has turned round the question whether Sanskrit even has a
word that corresponds precisely to "philosophy," and whether the concept of
philosophy is an indigenous, "ernie," category in Indian thought. See the
valuable remarks in W. Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understand-
ing (Albany, 1988); id., Tradition and Reflection (Albany, 1991), Chap. 7.
4. Confusion has probably been created, at least for non-specialists, by the
translation of prajiiii by "wisdom" when one of the chief meanings of this
term is discriminative knowledge (pravicaya = rab tu rnam par 'byed pa)
bearing on the dharmas. See e. g. Vasubandhu, i.2b
and ii.24 (prajiiii dharmapravicayaf:z), and PrajfHikaramati, Bodhicaryii-
vatiirapaiijikii ix.I. This confusion has then been compounded by rendering
vikalpa by "discrimination" when this term means "(dichotomic) conceptual
construction." Even for jiiiina = ye fes, "wisdom" is a rather inadequate
translation.
RUEGG 149
and its development Buddhist thought must be investigated to a consider-
able extent in its relation with Brahmanical and Jain thought.
Similarly, the study of Buddhist thought outside India must take
account also of contextual factors such as Taoism, shamanism, Shinto-
ism, Bon, etc.
But the undifferentiated idea of "Oriental thought," or "Asian philoso-
phy," as some sort of monolithic entity, is of course a construct, a largely
imaginary creature inhabiting the minds of some modern writers. At
best, as often employed, the expression "Oriental thought" is of limited
utility as a shorthand.
Still, very interestingly for us as students of Buddhism, to the extent
that there really is substance in the idea of an "Asian philosophy," histor-
ically it is in large part constituted precisely by Buddhism. For it is
Buddhism that has linked together so many Asian civilizations from
Afghanistan and Kalmukia in the west to Japan in the east, and from the
northern Mongol lands to Sri Lanka in the south. At the same time,
however, we have in fact long known of the enormously large and
diverse ways of thought represented in Asia, which is after all a geo-
graphical rather than a cultural entity. And amongst these ways of
thought we have become familiar with a very considerable number of
discrete Indian and Buddhist philosophies which require to be kept dis-
tinct. 5 Several of the latter have indeed embraced within themselves
some form of what has been called mysticism, and certain trends may on
occasion have proved themselves to be non-rational, irrational, even anti-
rational. But, after all, these are not characteristics peculiar to Asian, or
Buddhist, thought alone!
II
The view that philosophy is at best of only marginal and incidental
importance in Buddhism, even that the historical Buddha did not profess
being a philosopher at all, claims to have support from within the Bud-
dhist canon itself.
Holders of this view have based it in particular on the smaller
Ma[Ulikyiiputtasutta, where it is related how the Buddha declined to
answer questions put to him by the ascetic Malmikyaputta relating to the
5. But not totally isolated from each other. Thus the concept of "Buddhisms"
(in the plural), which has recently gained popularity, seems only to displace
the issues, and also to avoid the question as to why so many peoples with their
various world-views have in fact called themselves Buddhists.
150 JIABS 18.2
permanence and endlessness of the world (loka, of living beings), to the
link between the body (sanra) and the life principle (jlva), and to the
existence of a tathagata after death. In this text, these questions set aside
and left unanswered by the Buddha are described as unexplicated
(avyakata == avyak.rta) points, and the reason for the Buddha's refusal to
answer them is there said to be that they are neither relevant
(atthasalflhita "goal-fitted, useful, salutary") nor linked fundamentally
with pure practise (adibrahmacariyaka), and that they do not conduce to
distaste (nibbida), dispassion (viraga), cessation (nirodha), calming
(upasama), "superknowledge" (abhiiiiia) and NirvaJ?,a. To illustrate this,
the sutra employs a parable that has become famous, that of the man
wounded by a poisoned arrow and of the doctor called by his friends and
relatives to treat his wound. According to this parable, if before allow-
ing the removal by the doctor of the poisoned arrow embedded in his
body the wounded man were to insist on knowing just what sort of per-
son it was who shot the arrow and precisely of what materials the arrow
and the bow from which it was shot were made, he would die from his
wound before all his curiosity was satisfied. But the Buddha is like a
true doctor who immediately sets about removing the arrow from a
wounded man's body without stopping to investigate irrelevant circum-
stances.
6
Here we see that the Buddha's teaching is supposed to work
therapeutically-to have a salvific and gnoseological purpose-and that
certain questions have been excluded from its purview because they do
not serve the immediate need and are thus irrelevant.?
Another canonical text cited in support of the claim that the Buddha
had no wish to profess himself a philosopher is the one in which he
declines to reply to Vacchagotta' s question as to whether an atta (atman)
"self' exists or not, as well as to his question concerning the unexplicated
questions (avyakatani / avyakatavatthu==avyak.rtavastu, which
6. Cu!amaluizykasutta, Majjhimanikaya I, 426-32. In this context E. Lamotte
once wrote in his Histoire du indien, i (Louvain, 1958) 52: "La
Loi bouddhique telle que la Sakyamuni releve de la morale et de
l'ethique plutot que de la philosophie et de la metaphysique"; Lamotte's for-
mulation was more moderate than that of some others.
7. On medicine in Buddhism and the Buddha as physician, see e. g. Hobo-
girin s.v. "Byo." That the Buddhist aryasatyas were not, however, derived
from a pre-existing medical teaching in India has been argued by A. Wezler,
"On the quadruple division of the Yogasastra, the Caturvyuhatva of the
Cikitsasastra and the "Four Noble Truths" of the Buddha," IT 12 (1984): 289-
337; cf. also W. Halbfass, Tradition and Reflection, Chap. vii.
RUEGG 151
have been described as set aside, .thapita, and excluded, pa,tikkhitta).8 In
the case of the Buddha's silence concerning the atman, the tradition has
sometimes regarded it as pedagogically motivated; 9 elsewhere, of course,
the Buddha is shown teaching that the factors of existence are without
self (anatta, anatman), without a permanent substantial essence. 10
In deciding whether Buddhist doctrine-either as preceptive scriptural
teaching (ddanadharma) or as a way of life to be practised
(adhigamadharma)-is genuinely philosophical, much will of course
depend on what we think philosophy is about. Were it to be considered
to be unbridled speculative thought, or about the arbitrary construction of
a metaphysical system, Buddhist thought would no doubt not be pure
philosophy. And a doctrine like Buddhism that has represented itself as
therapeutic, and soteriological, would not be counted as essentially
philosophical so long as philosophy is understood to be nothing but anal-
ysis of concepts, language and meaning (though these matters do play an
important part in the history of Buddhist thought too). But the fact
remains that, in Buddhism, soteriology, gnoseology and epistemology
have been closely bound up with each other. Indeed, as a teaching con-
cerning the Path leading to the cessation of "Ill" (dukkhanirodhagamim
pa,tipada), Buddhism has not only had to develop a soteriological method
that is theoretically intelligible and satisfying, but it has found itself
obliged to identify what is this "Ill" (dukkha) from which liberation is
sought, whence it springs (dukkhasamudaya), and what is the nature of
the cessation of III (dukkhanirodha, i. e. Nirval).a as the Fruit of the
Path). For the purpose of explicating these four Principles-the
aryasatyas-Buddhist thinkers have brought to bear what can be
described as philosophical theory and analysis alongside practise. Even
8. See the in Dighanikaya I, 187 f; the pasadikasutta, ibid.,
135 ff.; the ParammaraIJasutta in Smp.yuttanikaya II, 222 f; the Avyakata-
salJ1yutta, ibid. IV, 374 ff (induding the Vacchagottasutta, ibid. IV, 395 f.);
the Cu!amalUlikyasutta in the Majjhimanikaya I, 426 ff., and the Vaccha-
gottasutta, ibid. 1,484 ff; and the Avyakatasutta in the Anguttaranikaya IV,
68 ff (on inter alia the ariyasavaka who is avyakaraIJadhamma with regard to
the avyakatavatthus).
9. See e. g. Sarp.yuttanikaya IV, 400. Cf Nagarjuna, Mulamadhyamaka-
karika xviii.6, xxii.12, xxv.21, and xxvii.8 (the problem of empty [null]
subject terms is also taken up in Candrakirti's Prasannapada on this passage,
as it is in ix.12).
10. A recent treatment of the unexplicated points is C. Oetke, "Die 'unbeant-
worteten Fragen' und das Schweigen des Buddha," WZKS 38 (1994): 84-120,
which arrived too late to be addressed here.
152 JIABS 18.2
their identification of a type of question (prasna) or matter (vastu) to be
set aside (thapaniya = sthiipaniya = bzag par bya ba, as un explicated /
undecided, avyiikata = beside other questions susceptible of
explication either categorically (ekii1J1sa-vyiikarafLiya), or after making
appropriate distinctions (vibhajja / vibhajya-vyiikarafLiya) or after further
questioning (pa,tipucchii - pariprcchya-vyiikarafLiya) is itself of philo-
sophical significance. 11 In philosophy as well as in semantics and prag-
matics, the principle of relevance (and the maxim of relation) is also
acknowledged as essentially philosophical. 12
The canonical text in which the Buddha is shown declaring that he does
not dispute with the world but that the world disputes with him, also,
does not appear to justify the supposition that the Buddha was somehow
anti-philosophical. The context in fact indicates that what the wise agree
on as the given must provide the starting point for philosophical discus-
sion.
13
What is rejected, then, is disputing for the sake of disputing,
rather than useful discussion and analysis. The latter are in fact amply
evidenced in many a Buddhist slltra; and in so much of Buddhist tradi-
tion, scriptural authority (iigama) is regularly accompanied by reasoning
and argument (yukti). But for Buddhist thinkers reasoning (yukti) and
disputation (vivada) are not automatically equivalent.
In sum, according to Buddhist traditions, if it is true that a Buddha
does not hold back, so to say in a closed teacher's fist =
any relevant teaching required by his disciples, neither
does he indulge in any utterance that is unwarranted and unjustified in a
11. See e. g. the Smig!tisuttanta, Dlghanikaya III, 229; Ailguttaranikaya I,
197; and Milindapafiha, 144-5. (Cf. K. N. Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory
of Knowledge, Chapter vi.) For the Sanskrit, see e. g. Sa1J1gitisutra (ed.
Stache-Rosen) iv.26; and Vasubandhu, v.22, with
Y asomitra' s Vyiikhyii.
12. See for example P. Grice, Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge, MA:
1989); and D. Sperber and D. Wilson, Relevance (Oxford: 1986).
13. See the Pupphasutta in Sarp.yuttanikaya III, 138: naha1J1 bhikkhave lokena
vivadami, loko ca maya vivadati / na bhikkhave dhammavadi kenaci lokasmi1J1
vivadati / yarJ! bhikkhave natthi-sammatarJ! lake pafLtfitanarJ! aharJ! pi tarJ!
"natthi" ti vadami / yarJ! bhikkhave atthi-sammatarJ!loke pa1J.ritanarJ! aharJ!pi
tarJ! "atthi" ti vadami /. ... For the Sanskrit parallel, and the context from
the point of view of the Madhyamaka school, see Candrakrrti, Prasannapada
xviii.8 (370): loko mayii sardharJ! vivadati naharJ!lokena sardharJ! vivadami /
yal lake 'sti sammatarJ! tan mamapy asti sammataml yal lake nastisammatarJ!
mamapi tan nasti sammatam /; vi.81. Cf. also the
TrisarJ!varanirdeiaparivarta-mahiiyiinasutra of the Ratnakuta collection.
RUEGG 153
given philosophical and teaching situation. 14 And what he is shown as
eschewing was disputatiousness and contentiousness masquerading as
philosophy rather than discussion, reasoning and analysis.
III
One of the most recent investigations known to me of the appropriateness
of speaking of "Indian philosophy," and of attaching the appellation of
philosophy to Buddhism, is to be found in a book by the comparative
philosopher Guy Bugault bearing the challenging title L'/nde pense+
elie? which both provokes deeper thought on the matter and calls into
question certain cultural shibboleths. There it is shown how-notwith-
standing the very real differences between the traditions of philosophy in
the west and in the Indian and Buddhist schools-there does exist a gen-
uine sense in which we can, and indeed must, give due consideration to
the philosophical dimension in the latter. Bugault's discussion turns
round the questions whether what we find in India is "an other philoso-
phy" rather than "something other than philosophy," and the extent to
which a soteriology and therapeutic such as Buddhism is not wholly a
philosophy but, nonetheless, a way of thinking that clearly comprises a
philosophical dimension. 15
14. See Milindapaiiha, 144-5: natth' Ananda tathiigatassa dhammesu
abyiikato ca the rena MiilUlikyiiputtena pucchito paiiho, taii ca
pana na ajiinanena na guhyakaraf!ena. cattiir' imiini mahiiriija
paiihabyiikaraf!iini ... bhagavii mahiiriija therassa Miilunkyiiputtassa talJ1
.thapaf!fyalJ1 paiihalJ1 nabyiikiisi. so pana paiiho kilJ1kiiraf!ii .thapanfyo? na
tassa dfpaniiya hetu vii karaf!alJ1 vii atthi, tasmii so paiiho .thapanfyo. natthi
buddhiinalJ1 bhagavantiinalJ1 akiiraf!am ahetukalJ1 giralJ1 udfraf!an ti.
15. See Guy Bugault, L'/nde pense-t-elle? (Paris: 1994), Chap. 1 "La ques-
tion prealable," 50-51: "Apres avoir essaye de montrer qu'il existe une
philosophie en Inde et aussi sa specificite, nous laissons finalement Ie lecteur
face a la question qui nous parait l'essentiel : en queUe mesure est-ce une
philosophie, en queUe mesure est-ce autre chose que de la philosophie? [ ... J
Restent les mouvements qui ne relevent pas des briihmanes mais des sramanes :
bouddhisme et jinisme. Si on les considere dans leur totalite organique, aucun
d'eux n'est une philosophie. Ce sont des therapies, des soteriologies, mais qui
comportent une dimension philosophique."-G. Bugault is emeritus professor
of Indian and comparative philosophy at the Sorbonne (Universite Paris IV),
the passage quoted being reprinted from his article "En queUe me sure et en
quel sens peut-on parler de 'philosophie indienne'" in Andre Jacob ed., Ency-
clopedie philosophique universelle I, L'Univers philosophique (Paris: 1989)
1585.
An interesting recent work analysing the conditions under which Indian
philosophy first attracted attention in Europe, but then came to be largely for-
154 JIABS 18.2
We know of course that individual strands within Buddhist thought
have been compared-if only more or less atomistically and episodi-
cally-with Socratic maieutics, Stoic and Epicurean apathia and ataraxia,
or Pyrrhonic skepticism; with Berkeley's pluralistic idealism, Locke's
empiricism, Hume's views on causality and psychology, or Kant's tran-
scendentalist idealism and criticism; with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche or
Heidegger; with American transcendentalism or pragmatism; with
Wittgenstein's linguistic analysis; with modern phenomenology and
semiotics of various kinds; and, of course, with Derrida's deconstruction.
However, although no doubt of use as intellectual exercises in a particu-
lar-and more or less limited-context, comparison of the type
"Buddhism and X" or "Nagarjuna and Y" can only take us just so far.
More often than not, it has proved to be of rather restricted heuristic
value, and methodologically it often turns out to be more problematical
and constraining than illuminating. In the frame of synchronic descrip-
tion this kind of comparison tends to veil or obliterate important struc-
gotten there, is also by a philosopher: R.-P. Droit, L'oubli de l'Inde, Une
amnesie philosophique (Paris: 1989). Reference has already been made in
note 3 above to the valuable studies by W. Halbfass. An older classic in this
field of intellectual history is R. Schwab, La renaissance orientale (Paris:
1950), published (under the sign of Edward Said's problematic campaign on
the theme of "Orientalism," concerning the relation of which to Buddhist
studies see the present writer's remark in JIABS 15 [1992]: 109) in English
translation as The Oriental Renaissance (New York: 1984). Reference may be
made further to G. Franci, ed., Contributi alla storia dell'orientalismo
(Bologna: 1985). A. Tuck's Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of
Scholarship: On the Western Interpretation of Nagarjuna (New York: 1990)-
notwithstanding several good observations on would-be objectivity vs. cultural
relativism and on unconscious "isogesis" (defined as "a "reading into" the text
that often reveals as much about the interpreter as it does about the text being
interpreted" [pp. 9-10], in contradistinction to exegesis as a conscious pro-
cess)-seems to be attempting to offer more than it can deliver, not least
because it excludes from consideration some philosophically significant west-
ern work on Nagarjuna and the Madhyamaka published in this century: R.
Grousset, S. Schayer, J. W. de Jong and J. May (to mention only some)
appear neither in the index nor in the bibliography even if several of them are
mentioned, casually, in the text. Cf. also the review of Tuck's book by J.
Bronkhorst, Asiatische Studien 47 (1993): 501 ff.
For some observations on the relation-and the lack of it-between philo-
sophical study on the one side and Buddhism on the other side, see also G.
Chatalian, "Early Indian Buddhism and the Nature of Philosophy: A Philo-
sophical Investigation," lIP 11 (1983): 167-222.
One of the most significant attempts in more recent decades to relate the
study of "Early Buddhism" in the Pali sources with philosophy was provided
by K. N. Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge (above, note 1).
For a critique see G. Chatalian, loco cit.
RUEGG 155
tures in thought, whilst from the viewpoint of historical diachrony it
takes little account of genesis and context. For however much a philo-
sophical insight or truth transcends, in se, any particular epoch or place,
in its expression a philosophy is perforce conditioned historically and
culturally.
But when saying that it is historically and culturally conditioned, I
most certainly do not mean to relativize it or to espouse reductionism-
quite the contrary in fact. The often facile opposition relativism vs. uni-
versalism has indeed all too often failed to take due account of the fact
that what is relative in so far as it is conditioned in its linguistic or cul-
tural expression may, nonetheless, in the final analysis have a very gen-
uine claim to universality in terms of the human, and hence of the
humanities. It seems that this holds true as much when we postulate
some "Western" or "Eastern" philosophy of this or that period as when
we consider what is now termed human rights, which by definition must
transcend specific cultures in time and place. 16
Now, it has to be recognized that our studies in Buddhist thought must
indeed proceed on a comparative basis, that is, on a methodologically and
phenomenologically well-founded comparativism which is, needless to
say, a regular feature of scientific investigation. But a well-grounded
philosophical comparison of this kind will differ very significantly from
the one alluded to above by being structurally and systemically oriented,
and at the same time sensitive to differences in historical genesis and
context.
In the last analysis, of course, everything will depend on exactly how
we actually engage in comparative philosophy. To pursue this point fur-
ther would lead far afield and I shall therefore not attempt to do so at this
point.
IV
For the purposes of a philosophical study of Buddhism we are today in a
probably more favorable position than formerly thanks to certain con-
temporary developments in the field of philosophy itself.
What is called the "linguistic turn" in philosophy and cultural studies
has no doubt made investigators more aware of the complexity of lin-
guistic issues, though one must beware of transforming this turn into a
16. Notwithstanding what some Pacific-rim politicians and entrepeneurs
would have us believe about a so-called "Asian exception."
156 JIABS 18.2
dogmatic strait-jacket or surrogate ready-made philosophy. The same
applies to post-modernist relativism and to some current forms of decon-
struction. At all events, Buddhist theories of interpretation and her-
meneutics, and the associated problem of the canonical vs. the apoc-
ryphal, are in process of being addressed both more systematically and
systemically, and doubtless more philosophically too. Such approaches
will surely be fruitful provided they avoid the excesses of seeing so many
things mainly as the expression of power relations between different
trends in Buddhist thought and hermeneutics (in the wake of the
"Hermeneutics and Politics" movement), or indeed between our academic
disciplines. (Political forces may well have played a part in the history
of Buddhist thought, but it will be a tricky task indeed to pinpoint these
forces from the sutra and sastra sources as we now have them.)
In recent work in philosophy, some essays now collected together in
the late Paul Grice's Studies in the Way of Words (1989) have no doubt
contributed ideas and methods-not to speak of terms such as
"implicature" (even if Grice's idea of the "conversational" in implicature
would appear to have little relevance in Buddhist [and Indian] thought).]?
It may also turn out that a recent book by another philosopher will not
only help to make it philosophically respectable once more to address the
question of the mind after the long reign of a certain Behaviorism and its
reductionist cohorts, but also enable us to talk more clearly and meaning-
fully of consciousness and intentionality and of the mind/matter problem.
I refer to The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992) by John Searle, who, while
maintaining that the philosophy of language is in fact a branch of the
philosophy of mind, has trenchantly elucidated issues in the mind / body
problem while holding that monism and dualism are both false by argu-
ing that the vocabularies and assumptions behind them are simply
obsolete.
v
For my part, I am inclined to think that the approach to the understand-
ing and analysis of our sources must initially be what has been termed
17. Cf. D. Seyfort Ruegg, "Purport, implicature and presupposition: Sanskrit
abhipraya and Tibetan dgons pa / dgons gZi as hermeneutical concepts," lIP
13 (1985): 309-25. The concept of implicature has since been taken up by C.
Oetke, "Pragmatic implicatures and text-interpretation," StIl16 (1992): 185-
233. See also below, p. 14.
RUEGG 157
"ernie" rather than "etic."18 That is, in the first instance, an effort has to
be made, as far as is possible, to determine how the categories and terms
of a culture relate to each other structurally and systemically, and so to
place ourselves within the cultural contexts and intellectual horizons of
the traditions we are studying, making use of their own intellectual and
cultural categories and seeking as it were to "think along" with these tra-
ditions. This is much more than a matter of simply developing sympathy
or empathy, for it is a an intellectual, and scientific, undertaking. And
very clearly it is not one of merely converting from one religion to
another.
19
Nor is it a matter of anyone-sided, or absolute, preference for
structural and systemic-or "emic"-analysis over the generalizing and
comparative-or "etic"-one which would totally reject the comparative
method at every stage of work. Rather, it is one of learning how intelli-
gently and effectively to work with, and within, a tradition of thinking
by steeping oneself in it while rejecting the sterile "us" vs. "them"
dichotomy.2o Structural and systernic analysis is in a position to allow
due weight to the historical as well as to the descriptive, that is, it may be
diachronic as well as synchronic. Here the observation might be ven-
tured that careful "ernic" analysis can provide as good a foundation as
any for generalizing and comparative study, one that will not superim-
pose from the outside extraneous modes of thinking and interpretative
grids in a way that sometimes proves to be scarcely distinguishable from
a more or less subtle form of neo-colonialism. It should go without say-
ing that in proceeding along these channels it will always be necessary to
steer clear of the Scylla of radical relativism-which would wish hermet-
ically to enclose each culture in its own categories-as well as of the
18. This terminology-inspired by the use in linguistics of terms ending in
-etic as opposed to -ernie-goes back to the "tagmernics" of K. L. Pike, Lan-
guage in Relation to a Unified theory of the Structure of Human Behavior
(The Hague: 1954-1960; 2nd ed., 1967).
19. This approach should therefore not become embroiled in the claim that a
Buddhist is, as such, disqualified from lecturing on Buddhism in a university
department of religion (where few seem, however, to be concerned about
whether a Christian is disqualified from teaching courses on Christianity), nor
need it enter into the opposite claim that only a Buddhist can be so qualified.
These two positions are egregious examples of intellectually sterile arguments
carried on with scant regard to the scientifie (not to mention spiritual) issues
involved.
20. The procedure may be compared with epoche or bracketing (Einklam-
merung, in relation to Einschaltung) in phenomenological method which has
occupied a prominent place in the study of religion at least since the time of
G. van der Leeuw's Einfiihrung in die Phdnomenologie der Religion (1925)
and Phiinomenologie der Religion (1933).
158 JIABS 18.2
Charybdis of ethnocentrism, European or otherwise-which would study
and judge all cultures by "our" standards-, these twin extremes being
travesties of the "emic" and "etic" methods respectively.
It should be emphasized again that to say this is not meant to exclude
bringing together different epistemes for comparative and heuristic pur-
poses. Quite the reverse in fact.
21
As for the frequently made-and in some circles popular-distinction
between (genuinely philosophical) evaluative study and historical (and
philological) study of a philosophy or philosopher, it is evident that the
first rests and depends on a successful pursual of the second kind of
study. The two may be theoretically distinguishable and belong to sepa-
rable phases and modes of investigation, but they cannot be totally
decoupled.
22
The distinction between the "emic" and the "etic" approaches-which
have to do with our modes of analysis and understanding-is no doubt
parallel to the distinction drawn between the use of author-familiar as
opposed to author-alien terminologies for the purposes of comparison
and exposition. But these two sets of concepts do not appear to be iden-
tical because, for the expository and comparative purposes just men-
tioned, it may still be possible to employ author-alien terminologies even
within an approach that is committed to "emic" analysis and understand-
ing. For example, in explaining the Buddhist theory of spiritual classes
or "lineages" (gotra) to the extent that it is based on a biological
21. Surprisingly, however, the (of course quite legitimate) procedures seeking
to analyse and understand traditional materials with the help of contemporary
theoretical and methodological concepts in anthropological, cultural, histori-
cal, literary, philosophical and religious studies-e. g. to understand the
sastraic traditions of the Indian PaI,1<;lits through certain modem epistemes-is
nowadays being referred to as contextualization by some Indologists. But
since these procedures are by nature "etic" and comparative, it would seem
that contextualization is exactly what they are not, and cannot be. For, surely,
to contextualize something is to study it in its own cultural, systemic, and
"ernie," terms and context.
22. For a recent investigation, from a somewhat different point of view, of
the relation between philological and philosophical study, see C. Oetke,
"Controverting the arman-controversy and the query of segregating philologi-
cal and non-philological issues in studies on eastern philosophies and reli-
gions," Studien zur Indologie und lranistik 18 (1993): 191-212 (a reply to
observations made by J. Bronkhorst in WZKS 32 [1989]: 223-5.) This article
came to my attention too late to be taken into account in the present
discussion.
RUEGG 159
metaphor, one might evoke the idea of a (spiritual) "gene";23 and in ana-
lysing the exegetical principle of an intended ground (dgons gzi) to
which an intentional (neyartha) utterance ultimately, but allusively,
refers without explicitly expressing it, one might speak of an
(hermeneutical) "implicature."24 Of course, both the modern biological
term "gene" and the still more recent coinage "implicature" are alien to
our Indian and Tibetan sources, in which no lexeme is to be found with
precisely the meaning of either of these two modern words. Yet it seems
possible to evoke, mutatis mutandis, the ideas expressed by these new
terms when seeking to explicate the theories in question. In other words,
author-alien (or source-alien) terminology could very well be compatible
with an "emic" approach to understanding, and it does not necessarily
bring with it an exclusive commitment to the "etic" approach.
(Conversely, it would in principle be possible to employ source-familiar
terminology and still misconstrue and misrepresent a doctrine, thus
infringing the requirement of an "emic" approach.) Furthermore, as
already indicated, the use of a source-familiar terminology need not stand
in the way of proceeding from "emic" to "etic" analysis.
In this connection, a parallel might perhaps be drawn with the ques tions,
both musicological and musical, that today arise in recovering and
performing (so-called) "early music" (mediaeval, Renaissance and
Baroque), a field in which there is also much discussion of problems of
retrieval and rendition, i. e. interpretation.
25
Thus, a piece of music may
have to be retrieved or reconstructed from ambiguous documents in a
way satisfactory to performer and musicologist (who mayor may not be
the same person), and it has then to be performed in a manner pleasing to
performer and listener. In the case of instrumental music, this can
involve using either original instruments contemporary with the music
and of the same provenance, modern copies of such instruments, or mod-
ern instruments (for instance the piano for Bach). Any of these three
methods may produce results that satisfy performer and listener, though
the musicologist and the "purist" performer and listener would generally
23. Cf. D. Seyfort Ruegg, "The Meaning of the Term gotra and the Textual
History of the Ratnagotravibhiiga," BSOAS 39 (1976): 341-63.
24. Cf. D. Seyfort Ruegg, "Purport, Implicature and Presupposition: Sanskrit
abhipraya and Tibetan dgons pa I dgons gzi as Hermeneutical Concepts," JIP
13: 309-25.
25. The question of authenticity will be left out of consideration here because
of the possible ambiguity of this concept and of the misunderstandings to
which it call give rise.
160 JIABS 18.2
prefer to use original instruments (if necessary rebuilt or reconstructed)
or, if such are unavailable, modern reproductions (which may sometimes
be unavoidably hypothetical).
Interpreters of classical Buddhist writings using the "emic" approach
and source-familiar terminologies find themselves in a situation some-
what analogous to that of the performer of "early music" on contempo-
rary instruments, or perhaps more accurately (because of the problems
outlined above) in a position comparable with that of an instrumentalist .
using largely rebuilt instruments or copies. And interpreters using prin-
cipally or exclusively the "etic" method and source-alien terminologies
may well resemble the performer using modern instruments, and perhaps
even a modern style of performance. As for the interpreter using the
"emic" approach, yet perhaps having occasional recourse to source-alien
terminology, he might be compared more with a musician using the first
or, above all, second kind of instrument, rather than to one playing mod-
ern instruments in modern style. (To what extent it may be possible to
compare the interpreter of ancient Buddhist writings with a modern
vocalist performing "early music," where the question of old and modern
instruments plays no part, is another matter. Just as it would no doubt be
difficult for the modern vocalist totally to remove from his mind and
technique all developments in singing in the time intervening since the
production of the piece he is performing, so the modern interpreter of a
Buddhist text may well experience difficulty in entirely eschewing all
more modern forms of thinking and all more modern problematics. In
both cases, the audiences might not desire such an exercise even if it were
possible.) Like so many comparisons, the one offered here is of course
not entirely on all fours with what is being compared, but it may at least
help to illustrate the issues.
In any event, in its crudest inhibiting form as something in which the
interpreter and scholar is so to speak imprisoned in his pre-understanding
and in the limitations of his pre-judgments, the "hermeneutic circle" can,
I think, be got out of if a real effort is made. And an analysis and cri-
tique in "etic" terms of philosophical thought will only become genuinely
meaningful and useful once one has understood, as it were "emically,"
the concerns, presuppositions and intentions-i. e. the problematics-of
texts and their philosopher-authors, in other words the horizons and
RUEGG 161
issues that have been theirs.26 No valid principle of scientific objectivity
is being thereby abandoned. And to raise this objection against "emic"
methodology would be to demonstrate a rather simplistic and indeed
naive understanding of scholarly distance and objectivity-which is, as is
well known, a not unproblematic thing even in the natural sciences-and
a lack of awareness of certain implications of the theory of understanding
in the humanities and of hermeneutics. The objection just mentioned
would, then, be scientistic rather than truly scientific.
A more weighty objection against this approach is based on the
hermeneutic principle that it is simply impossible for us today to project
ourselves back into an age long past, that we cannot put ourselves in the
skin, or in the mind, of a long-dead thinker in order to determine autho-
rial intention-the mens auctoris-and that our understanding is deter-
mined by its historicality. This view has been powerfully argued by sev-
eral modem writers on hermeneutics. 27 An "archaeology of the mind" is
a highly challenging project indeed. But while fully acknowledging the
formidable difficulties involved in any search for understanding, and
while recognizing the weight of certain theoretical problems involved, I
think that considerable progress can still be made in genuinely penetrat-
ing what the Buddhist tradition calls the intention (Sanskrit abhipraya,
Tibetan dgons pa) of ancient authors and texts, and in understanding his-
torically and contextually the evidence which we consider as historians of
religion and philosophy. Thought forms, presuppositions, ~ n d prejudg-
ments as well as language may be prison-houses of sorts. But it is possi-
ble to make progress in freeing ourselves from the shackles of our mind-
sets, and to a significant degree also of our historically and culturally
conditioned limiting horizons, if only we will-and provided, of course,
we refrain from imposing currently fashionable ideas on what we are
26. By speaking of a crude and inhibiting fonn of the hermeneutic circle ref-
erence is being made here to the negative, imprisoning effect of the circle, not
to the positive nature of the hermeneutic circle as understanding in contextu-
ality and historicality.
27. On the circle in philosophical hermeneutics, see e. g. H.-G. Gadamer,
Wahrheit und Methode
3
(Tiibingen: 1960) and the works of Paul Ricoeur.
The concept of the hermeneutic circle-found earlier with Friedrich Ast,
Sch1eiermacher and Dilthey-is current also in theology (Bultmann) as well as
in philosophy (Heidegger). Cf. R. Palmer, Hermeneutics (Evanston: 1969),
and J. Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics (London: 1980). Some aspects
of contemporary trends in hermeneutics have been usefully criticized by E.
Betti, Die Hermeneutik als allgemeine Methodik der Geisteswissenschaften
(Tiibingen: 1962), and by E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New
Haven: 1967) and The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago: 1976).
162 JIABS 18.2
studying (a process that can on occasion come very close to neo-co10nia1-
ism, as mentioned above). Surely the "us" and "them" dichotomy has
been somewhat overworked in the theory of understanding.
VI
Continuities, structured patterns and non-essentialist and lattice-like
po1ythetic "family resemblances"-however underlying they may be-
are no less interesting than discontinuities and disagreements in studying
the history of thought.
28
We are, after all, trying to understand what a
tradition has meant to its representatives, even in the face of synchronic
intellectual and spiritual tensions and of diachronic heterogeneity present
within it.
One may focus on tracing such patterns and continuities, first, within
Buddhist thought and, next, between it and its Indian (Brahmanical and
Jain) context and, then, between this Indo-Buddhist culture and its pro-
longation in the "Greater India"-I'Inde exterieure-of the Himalayan
area, Inner Asia and East Asia. This kind of study has lead me to think
that a very large sector of Tibetan civilization, although not simply
reducible to the Indian, is typologically (and structurally) Indic in a
number of highly interesting respects even though it has of course devel-
oped its own specific and very characteristic features and contains much
that is not historically attested in India.
29
Intercultural studies of course necessarily involve the careful clarifica-
tion of the modalities of relations between two worlds of thought,
between peoples whose civilizations are in contact. Thus it addresses the
question of how one people (the Tibetans for instance) could adopt from
its southerly neighbor and then thoroughly absorb and integrate a religio-
philosophical system like Buddhism accompanied by the not specifically
religious sciences-the vidyasthanas or rig gnas-with which this culture
was closely associated in India, and with which it has continued to be
linked in the Himalayan area and Inner Asia. This process of intercul-
28. See D. Seyfort Ruegg, foreward, Buddha-nature, Mind and the Problem
of Gradualism in a Comparative Perspective (London: 1989). It is on this
ground also that one can still continue to speak not of "Buddhisms" but of
Buddhism. Compare below, X.
29. The term "Indic" is used here not as an equivalent of "Indian" (as distinct
from Amerindian, American Indian, "native American"), or of "Indo-Aryan,"
but rather to denote what is typologically and structurally Indian,without
being attested (to the best of our knowledge) in our sources as having actually
existed in India.
RUEGG 163
tural borrowing and integration raises the fascinating question not only of
linguistic areas-the Sprachbund theory of areal in contrast to genetic
relationship between languages-but also of cultural areas.3
o
VII
Let me now illustrate some of the above generalizations by a few exam-
ples relating to the philological and historical study of philosophical texts
and to the philosophical and hermeneutical analysis of these texts.
Critical editions of philosophical texts
Following the publication in 1950 of the Sanskrit original of the Rat-
nagotravibhaga
31
-an important early Mahayana treatise counted as one
of the Dharmas of Maitreya that had hitherto been known in the west
mainly through E. Obermiller's work on the Tibetan sources relating to
it
32
-, it became apparent that this text, together with the theories of the
buddha-nature (tathagatagarbha) and of spiritual types or "genes"
(gotra) expounded in it, could provide a valuable starting point for
research which should prove to be of interest for Buddhist studies under
the aspects of both philosophy and religion and historical-philological
method.
Philologically speaking, the Ratnagotravibhaga (RGV) is of interest
because the study of this work together with its extensive commentarial
literature has urgently raised the question of how best to handle an old
text which is available in both its original Sanskrit and in (Chinese and
Tibetan) translations, and which, within the Tibetan tradition, has been
the subject of a vast body of exegesis from the eleventh century to mod-
ern times. That is, this text is both a literary and historical record which
is some 1500 years old and part of a living tradition. Work on it engages
the question of the very nature of Indo-Tibetan (and Indo-Sinitic) philol-
ogy and, more generally, what the scope and tasks ofIndo-Tibetan stud-
ies are. A few decades ago these were questions that had by no means
been adequately clarified, and even today uncertainty seems still to be
rife concerning what Indo-Tibetan studies are about.
30. Cf. D. Seyfort Ruegg, Ordre spirituel et ordre temporel dans la pensee
bouddhique de l'Inde et du Tibet (Paris: 1995).
31. Ratnagotravibhiiga Mahiiyiinottaratantrasiistra, ed. E. H. Johnston and
T. Chowdhury (Patna: 1950).
32. E. Obermiller, "The Sublime Science of the Great Vehicle to Salvation,"
Acta Orientalia 9 (1931): 82-306.
164 JIABS 18.2
In Buddhist studies, critical philologically based editions are of course
required of any Indian materials that may still be extant as well as of the
relevant translated texts in the Chinese and Tibetan canonical collections
containing sutra and sastra sources. In the course of this work it is neces -
sary, inter alia, to draw on any proto-canonical, paracanonical and com-
mentarial traditions having preserved textual variants that have to be
taken into account for a genuinely critical edition. By commentarial
traditions I mean both Indian commentaries-either in their original lan-
guage or as now available to us only in translation-and commentaries
composed by non-Indian authors. By proto-canonical traditions I refer,
in the frame of Indo-Tibetan studies, to textual material belonging to the
time antedating the constitution of the known bKa' , gyurs and bsTan
, gyurs, such as that found in the Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts (going
back to the ninth century) and in inscriptions and manuscripts from Ta
pho (going back to c.lOOO).33 And by paracanonical traditions I refer,
in the same frame, to versions of a sutra or sastra text in editions postdat-
ing the constitution of these bKa' , gyurs or bsTan ' gyurs, which may
differ more or less from the readings found in the "standard versions"-
printed or manuscript-of these two canonical collections. 34 Even when
33. In Dunhuang Tibetan rule lasted until 848. Aurel Stein dated the sealing
of the caves to 1035. A. Fujieda, "The Tunhuang manuscripts," Zinbun,
Memoirs of the Research Institute for Humanistic Studies 10 (Kyoto: Zinbun
Kagaku Kenkyusho, 1969): 17 ff., dated (p. 22) the Tibetan materials to 782-
848 (cf. JA 1981: 65-68, where Fujieda dated the closure of the caves to
shortly after 1002). But see A. R6na-Tas, "A brief note on the chronology of
the Tun-huang collections," AOH 221 (1968): 313-16. See in general, L. I.
Cuguevskii, "Touen-houang du VIlle au X
e
siecle," Nouvelles contributions
aux etudes de Touen-houang, ed. M. Soymie (Geneva: 1981) 1-56; and for a
recent very brief survey, see L. Petech, "The Silk road, Turfan and Tun-
huang in the first millennium AD," Turfan and Tunhuang, The Texts, ed. A.
Cadonna (Florence: Orientalia Venetiana IV, 1992) 1-13.
On the Ta pho / Tabo inscriptions and manuscripts, see E. Steinkellner, "A
report on the 'Kanjur' of Ta pho," East and West 44 (1994): 115-36, as well
as the articles by E. De Rossi Filibek, J. L. Panglung and H. Tauscher, ibid.
34. For information on the bKa' , gyur manuscripts and printed editions, see
in particular the recent work of H. Eimer, P. Harrison, P. Skilling and J. Silk.
The standard (printed) editions of the bsTan 'gyurs are those of Beijing, sNar
than, sDe dge and Co ne, to which must now be added the so-called "Golden
Tanjur" commissioned by the mi dbaiz Pho lha nas bSod nams stobs rgyas and
recently published in facsimile in China (see P. Skilling, "A brief guide to the
Golden Tanjur," Journal of the Siam Society 79 [1991]: 138-46).
In the case of the Ratnagotravibhiiga, its translation in the Chinese canon
(available also in the edition by Zuiryu Nakamura published in Tokyo in
1961) has been treated by J. Takasaki, A Study on the Ratnagotravibhiiga
(Uttaratantra) (Rome: 1966); some of his text-critical conclusions concerning
RUEGG 165
already accessible, these are materials that have often been neglected
when preparing editions of texts, something that is of course understand-
able in view of their very great abundance.
In sum, the textual transmission of fundamental works such as the Rat-
nagotravibhaga and Candrakirti's proves to
be appreciably more complex than had been foreseen by their first editors
earlier in this century.35 And for any truly critical edition of a sutra or
its Indian Dr-text have however had to be reconsidered (cf. D. Seyfort Ruegg,
"The Meanings of the Term gotra and the Textual History of the Ratnagotra-
vibhiiga," BSOAS 39 [1976]: 341-63). Even though the very useful edition of
the Tibetan text with trilingual indexes published in Japan in 1967 by the
Suzuki Institute was not a fully critical edition based on all existing textual
materials, it had the merit of making use of the Beijing, sNar than and sDe
dge editions of the bsTan ' gyur and referring in addition to the commentaries
by rGyal tshab Dar rna rin chen and Kon sprul Blo gros mtha' yas.
As an example of the evidence for variant readings to be extracted from
Tibetan commentaries, reference may be made to the comment on the RGV(V)
by rGyal tshab Dar rna rin chen (1364-1432). There (f. 42a) we find a very
significant variant reading not attested the Beijing and sNar than bsTan
'gyur editions of this text translated by rNog Blo Idan ses rab (1059-1109),
but which is not only suggested by the sense but is actually confirmed by both
Johnston's Sanskrit text of the RGVV (i.12, p. 12.14) and by another bsTan
'gyur edition (sDe dge). This variant is non mons pa'i sbubs las ma grol ba =
avinirmuktakleiakosa instead of non mons pa'i sbubs las grol ba = vinirmuk-
taklesakosa in a sutra passage defining the relation between the tathiigata-
garbha and the dharmakiiya: ayam eva ca bhagavaf!1s tathiigatadharmakiiYo
'vinirmuktakleiakosas tathiigatagarbha ity ucyate. Because it concerns the
crucial matter of this relation, and since traces of both doctrinal views can be
found in the Chinese tradition, the variant appears to be a doctrinally
significant one and not to be explicable solely in terms of the textual
transmission of the Tibetan bsTan ' gyur. See D. Seyfort Ruegg, introduction,
Le traite du tathiigatagarbha de Bu ston Rin chen grub pp. 37-45.
As for the precise contents of the concepts of the proto-canonical and para-
canonical, they will be further clarified by continuing research in respect to
the history of the bKa' , gyur and bsTan ' gyur.
35. The Tibetan translation of the Madhyamakiivatiira and only
version of these texts now accessible-, was published by L. de La Vallee
Poussin, Madhyamakiivatiira (St. Petersburg: BibliothecaBuddhica IX, 1907-
1912) (evidently on the basis of the Beijing and sNar than bsTan 'gyurs). La
Vallee Poussin referred also to the translation of the Kiirikiis alone by Nag
tsho in the bsTan ' gyur and to a "paracanonical" edition which he described
(p. ii) as "beaucoup plus correcte que celIe du Tandjour"; but since he
included no critical apparatus in his edition, it is difficult to make out what
use he made of this additional material known to him. In the Beijing edition
of the bsTan 'gyur are found both a translation of the Madhyamakiivatara-
kiirikiis ascribed to and Nag tsho ]shul khrims rgyal ba (b.
1011) as revised by Tilakakalasa and Pa tshab Ni rna grags (b. 1055) (no.
5261) and one ascribed to Tilaka and Pa tshab (no. 5262, executed in Kasmir),
166 JIABS 18.2
satra text in the Indo-Tibetan tradition, alongside the printed and
manuscript bKa' , gyur and bsTan ' gyur editions, the commentarial tradi-
tions, and any paracanonical traditions available, have to be taken into
account as important testimonia.
The need in philosophical study for such critically constituted texts of
course requires no demonstration.
Historical study of doctrinal content
With respect to the contents of the Ratnagotravibhaga, the historical-
philological problems revealed by the examination of the tathagat-
agarbha and related concepts have turned out to be no less challenging
and interesting. These are some of them:
(i) It has been necessary to trace the sources of the relevant Mahayanist
concepts in many branches of literature, Buddhist and non Buddhist,
including in particular any possible anticipations in the earlier scrip-
tural sources of the Sravakayana.3
6
This search in turn raises the prob-
1em of continuities and discontinuities between the Mahayana and the
Sravakayana.
as well as a translation of the same text_together with Candrakirti's
autocommentary ascribed to Tilaka and Ni rna grags as revised by
Kanakavarman and Ni rna grags (no. 5263, also executed in Kasmir). And in
the sDe dge edition there are found a translation of the Kiirikiis ascribed to
Tilaka and Pa tshab (rather than Nag tsho) as revised by Kanakavarman and
Pa tshab (no. 3861) and a translation of the Kiirikiis together with the
autocommentary ascribed to Tilakakalasa and Pa tshab as revised by
Kanakavarman and Pa tshab (no. 3862). In 2u chen Tshul khrims rin chen's
dKar chag to the sDe dge bsTan 'gyur (p. 785 of the Lhasa reprint of 1985),
the information on no. 3861 very strangely conflates the names of and
Tilaka and the names of Pa tshab and Nag tsho, as if reflecting a problem
which is, however, not resolved. There exists in addition a paracanonical
edition from the Lhasa 201 par khan of Pa tshab' s translation of the Kiirikiis of
the MA. In his comment on the MA(Bh), the dGons pa rab gsal, Tson kha pa
has on several occasions preferred readings from Nag tsho's translation (prose
as well as verse) over the "standard" translation by Pa tshab.
36. As suggested by the present writer in JIABS 15 (1992): 110-13, the term
Hinayana had best be reserved as a technical one applying to cases where the
arhat concept and the corresponding Path of the doctrinal schools (nikiiya) is
being distinguished from, and opposed to, the Path of the bodhisattva and the
buddha ideal of the Mahayana / Bodhisattvayana. When this is not the case,
and in particular when it is the teachings of Early Buddhism that are
being referred to, the (non-pejorative) term Sravakayana is usually a more
term than the potentially pejorative Hinayana. Needless to say,
Sravakayana is not coextensive with the narrower term Staviravada and the
even more narrow term Theravada.
RUEGG 167
(ii) It has been necessary to trace the interrelations between the forms
of these concepts found in the Ratnagotravibhaga together with its
direct sutra sources and those found in other Mahayana sutras, in par-
ticular the Prajiiaparamita sutras, and in the Abhisamayalaf!tkara-
another treatise traditionally regarded in Tibet as a Dharma of
Maitreya. This in turn raises the question of a "Maitreya-tradition" in
early Mahayanist thought.
(iii) In connection with the concept of the tathagatagarbha-or the
Buddha-Element (tathiigatad.hi1tu)-as empty (Sunya) of all heteroge-
neous, extrinsic and relative factors, but as not empty (asunya) of its
intrinsic, constitutive and informing (buddha- )dharmas, there arises the
crucial and vexed question of the historical relationship between the
principle of Emptiness of self-nature (ran ston, svabhdvasunyata) in
the Madhyamaka and its sutra sources such as the Prajiiaparamita and
the Ratnakuta, and the idea of Emptiness of the other (gzan ston,
*para{bhava-]Sunya) in some of the tathagatagarbha literature.
(iv) In connection with the concept of buddha-nature, there arises the
complex question of the historical relation between the traditions of
Buddhism in India and Tibet and those of East Asia. According to the
former, only sentient beings (sattva = sems can)-the sattvaloka-have
the capacity of becoming buddhas, whereas East Asian traditions have
attributed the capacity for buddhahood also to the grasses, trees,
mountains and rivers-i. e. to the so-called bhajanaloka.
(v) In the Sanskrit expression tathagatagarbha, its Tibetan equivalent
de bZin gsegs pa'i sfiin po and the Chinese term ju-lai-tsang, even the
terms garbha / sfiin po / tsang have been understood somewhat differ-
ently, garbha being usually interpretable in the Indian and Tibetan tra-
ditions as Embryo or Seed, or as Essence (sfiin po), whereas in the
Sino-Japanese tradition the value of Womb (tsang) has become estab-
lished. This is not to say that the Sino-Japanese tradition's use of the
word tsang to render garbha was wrong. But it has to be recognized
that it has introduced a metaphor which is largely absent in the Indian
and Tibetan sources, and that it is therefore quire inappropriate to
import this new metaphor into the original Indian sources as is some-
times being done nowadays. This is, then, a difference that has often
been overlooked in modern discussions of the doctrine of buddha-
nature.
168 JIABS 18.2
Philosophical and hermeneutical study
On the level of philosophical interpretation and hermeneutics, the
tathagatagarbha theory and the related problem of Emptiness of the
other (gzan ston: *para[bhiivaJ-sunya) in relation to Emptiness of self-
nature (ran ston: svabhdvasunya[taj) has given rise over recent years to a
number of discussions among writers on the subject.
Thus, the doctrines of ran ston and gzan ston have tended to be repre-
sented simply as opposed theories located on the same level of
discourse,3? but with no investigation being made of the religio-philo-
sophical question as to the extent to which they might be complementary
(as part of the Tibetan tradition has indeed thought), or whether they
might perhaps be considered as what is today termed incommensurable
(that is, located on different levels, or within distinct universes, of reli-
gious and philosophical discourse). What is needed in Buddhist studies is
not enlistment in c'ampaigns and polemics with other schools of Buddhist
thought, but careful descriptions and analyses of the various traditions
establishing their sources and religio-philosophical problematics and
identifying how each dealt with the philosophical and hermeneutical
questions that arose in their respective schools.
In Tibet from the thirteenth century at the latest, the ran ston theory
has been associated with dominant "majority" schools such as the
"mainstream" Sa skya pas and dGa' ldan pas / dGe lugs pas, whilst the
gzan ston theory has been adopted by "minority" schools such as the Jo
nan pas and some currents within the rNin rna pa and bKa' brgyud pa
schools,38 Then, in the seventeenth century during the reign of the Fifth
Dalai Lama, the Jo nan pa school in Central Tibet was suppressed and its
books sealed at the time of a conflict between on the one side the central
authorities of the dGa' ldan pho bran, who were inseparably linked with
the dGe lugs pas, and on the other side the king of gTsall, who was asso-
ciated with the Zva dmar Karma pa hierarchs of the bKa' brgyud pa
school. Here we have a case where considerations of state do appear to
impinge on philosophical and religious ideas; and the question arises
whether the Jo nan pas-whose center was in gTsan province and who
37. See for example S. Hookham, The Buddha Within (Albany: 1991), who
regards the advocates of the ran ston as having denigrated and distorted the
gzan stan, which she then sets out to defend.
38. The words "majority," "mainstream" and "minority" have been put be-
tween inverted commas because they tend to be subjective descriptions with
little scientific content or value-the more so when proper statistics are hard
to come by-and cannot in any case constitute the decisive criterion for un-
derstanding and evaluating religious, philosophical and hermeneutical ideas.
RUEGG 169
were protected by the king of gTsan-were in fact suppressed for politi-
calor for ideological reasons. Perhaps, however, it would be an error to
opt exclusively for either of these explanations. Reasons of state may
have predominated; but it is not impossible that the ideological and the
political in fact reinforced each other. In any case, in a land such as
Tibet where "church" and "state" were so closely interlinked, the modern
dichotomy religious vs. political-or sacred vs. profane-loses much of
its relevance. And an explanation that completely subordinates one of
these concepts to the other might well be too culture-bound and reduc-
tionist, and thus a travesty of the "etic" approach. The task of the histo-
rian will surely be to take account of both factors in an "emie" under-
standing of Tibetan Buddhist civilization-something that is admittedly
not always an easy undertaking.
"Inherent Enlightenment" vs. "Critical Buddhism"
as a philological. historical and hermeneutical undertaking
In recent years it is in Japan that the most striking controversy revolving
round the tathagatagarbha and buddha-nature theory has come to the
fore in discussions on "Critical Buddhism." There two respected scholars
in Tokyo-Professors Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shiro-have
characterized the buddha-nature doctrine as in some way non-Buddhist.3
9
According to them it represents what they have labeled by the newly
coined Sanskrit term "dhatu-vada," i. e. the hongaku [shiso] (pen-chiao
[hsing]) theory of "original/inherent" enlightenment in Chinese and
Japanese Buddhism. And this doctrine they hold to be incompatible with
the principle of pratttyasamutpada "origination in dependence." Now,
origination in dependence is indeed a fundamental concept in Buddhist
thought. And in their critique of the buddha-nature doctrine these two
scholars may well be justified in reacting against a superficial or simplis-
tic version of it current in Japan or elsewhere. But in totally rejecting
this doctrine as non-Buddhist they seem to have overshot the mark by
giving scant attention to the explications of the tathagatagarbha theory
39. See recently N. Hakamaya, Hongaku shisiJ hihan [Critique of the thought
of inherent enlightenment] (Tokyo: 1989), and id., Hihan bukkyiJ [Critical
Buddhism] (Tokyo: 1990); and S. Matsumoto, Engi to kii-nyiJraiziJ shisiJ
hihan [Causality and emptiness-A critique of tathagatagarbha thought]
(Tokyo: 1989; 3rd ed., 1993), and id., "The Madhyamika philosophy of
Tsong-kha-pa," Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 48
(1990) (English reworking of an article published in the TiJyiJ GakuhiJ 62
[1981]).
170 JIABS 18.2
by Buddhist thinkers who, outside Japan, have at the same time accepted
pratltyasamutpada as basic. 40
In western reports on this recent Japanese debate, moreover, we find
the Sanskrit term tathagatagarbha being translated as "womb of the
Buddha"-a meaning which (as mentioned above) this expression simply
does not have in the relevant Sanskrit texts, any more than does its
Tibetan equivalent de bZin gsegs pa'i siiili po. And we find repeated the
assertion that the Japanese technical term hongaku (Chinese pen-chiao)
"original, inherent" has no Sanskrit correspondence.
41
But in point of
fact, in the Sanskrit and Tibetan terms prak.rtiviiuddhi / pariiuddhi = ran
bzin gyis rnam par dag pa / yons su dag pa that are well attested in the
Ratnagotravibhaga-Commentary and the related literature as expressions
referring to the natural purity of ordinary beings on the level of the
Ground (gzi)-as opposed to the purity that is actualized on the resultant
level of buddha hood or the Fruit ('bras bu) (vaimalyavisuddhi / parisud-
dhi = dri ma med pa'i rnam par dag pa / yons su dag pa)-, the word
prak.rti (= ran bzin) is very near indeed to the Sino-Japanese term pen-
chiao I hongaku "original, inherent."42
In sum, while acknowledging the contribution this debate has made to
cultural and social criticism in Buddhism, it surely behoves students of
Buddhist thought to refrain from carrying on a discussion of such signifi-
cance for Buddhist studies as a whole on an overly narrow basis, and
without paying due attention to what major Buddhist thinkers elsewhere
have had to say on the philosophical and hermeneutical issues involved in
the theory of the tathagatagarbha and buddha-nature. The whole topic
of the significance of the buddha-nature theory cannot be investigated in
a vacuum, as if it concerned only Japanese Buddhism or, at the most, the
Sino-Japanese traditions of Buddhism.
In this regard, reference may be made to the thought-provoking sys-
temic (rather than historical) exegesis of the philosophical and herme-
neutical problem of the tathagatagarbha in relation to iunyata offered
for example by Gun than dKon mchog bstan pa'i sgron me (1762-1823),
an outstanding Tibetan scholar who built on earlier interpretations of it
current in the Indo-Tibetan tradition, and who at the same time accepted
40. See below on the exegesis by Gun than dKon mchog bstan pa'i sgron me.
41. Cf. P. L. Swanson, "'Zen is not Buddhism': Recent Japanese critiques of
'Buddha-nature,'" Numen 40 (1993): 115-49.
42. See D. Seyfort Ruegg, Thiorie du tathagatagarbha et du gotra: Etudes
sur la soteriologie et la gnoseologie du bouddhisme (Paris: 1969).
RUEGG 171
the doctrine of pratityasamutpada (on which he also wrote) without con-
sidering that it annuls the tathagatagarbha theory.43
It does not seem, then, that the tathagatagarbha doctrine can be repre-
sented as blurred and undifferentiated mysticism issuing in uncritical
syncretism or in indifferentism, much less in naturalism. And it is
imperative carefully to distinguish superficial syncretism of incompatible
positions-not to speak of coercive inclusivism of totally disparate ideas
-from the philosopher's treatment of intellectual and spiritual tensions
existing since early times between various strands of Buddhist thought
and from his hermeneutical awareness of their possible complementarity
(or, eventually, of their incommensurability). By fragmenting Buddhist
studies-and in this case treating (Sino-)Japanese interpretations of bud-
dha-nature in isolation from the history of the tathagatagarbha theory as
a whole-we render ourselves no longer able clearly to discern the
43. See D. Seyfort Ruegg, op. cit., 393 ff. Gun than indeed composed a trea-
tise on pratityasamutpiida (included in vol. ga of his gSun 'bum).
On the tathiigatagarbha and buddha-nature in the Chinese Madhyamaka
thought of Chi-tsang, see M.-W. Liu, Madhyamaka Thought in China
(Leiden: 1994) 86, 160 ff., 171 ff.
In his interesting article entitled "What is Buddhist logic?" in S. Goodman
and R. Davidson, eds., Tibetan Buddhism: Reason and Revelation (Albany:
1992) 25-44, K. Lipman has rightly pointed to the historical-philological fal-
lacy that is incurred in rejecting a given hermeneutical interpretation both
because it is held to be "later" rather than "original" and because it is assumed
to "favor" one Buddhist "harmonizing" exegetical tradition (objections ex-
pressed by L. Schmithausen in his critique of the present writer's Theorie in
WZKS 17 [1973]: 136-7). But concerning my observations of 1969 in
Theorie, Dr. Lipman criticizes my having (supposedly) sought "the solution"
where he apparently assumed I did, writing "I do not believe that the dGe-
lugs-pa interpretation is the 'solution' Ruegg was seeking, and perhaps
through the study of rNying-ma, Sa-skya, and bKa' -brgyud materials of the
period, the dGe-Iugs-pa approach will be seen in a less adequate light"(p. 25).
In fact, however, the point in my book was not that, e. g., the dGe lugs pas
rGyal tshab Dar rna rin chen and Gun than had found the "solution" (and a
fortiori the last word) to any contradiction there may be between the
tathiigatagarbha and sunyatii theories-indeed I am not certain that there
exists anyone single "solution" to this tension which is both synchronic-
systemic and diachronic-but that they had something significant to say about
it in terms of philosophical hermeneutics and Wirkungsgeschichte. This
philosophically crucial point appears to have been overlooked.
It should go without saying that, in philosophy and hermeneutics, the interest
and value of what an author has to say are not simply a function of whether
the author is or is not a member of a certain school (e. g. the dGe lugs). It is
most regrettable that this basic principle is becoming overshadowed by sectar-
ian likes and dislikes of investigators.
172 JIABS 18.2
significance in the history of Buddhist thought of an overarching set of
fundamental religious-philosophical issues.
VIII
The question of the relation between the traditions of Buddhism in
South, Central and East Asia has also brought into the lime-light the
issue of the transcendence vs. the immanence of buddha-nature and bud-
dhahood (buddhata). In this context, it has been supposed that East
Asian tradition has generally opted for immanence, with buddhahood
being thought of as inborn, whereas more westerly traditions of Bud-
dhism tended on the contrary to emphasize transcendence, with buddha-
hood to be reached only through a progressive and protracted spiritual
and mental training. This difference has furthermore been linked with
the distinction between intellectual analysis and meditative non-conceptu-
alization, and between Gradualism-a tendency also supposed to charac-
terize most of Indian and a large part of Tibetan Buddhism-and Simul-
taneism (or Subitism)-which has, by contrast, frequently been deemed a
specific feature of East Asian Buddhism and of certain Tibetan traditions
influenced by the latter.
Now, whether we look at these sets of contrasts only from the view
point of the tathagatagarbha theory, or whether we additionally bring in
the theme of the Great Debate of bSam yas in late eighth-century Tibet
together with the subsequent Tibetan discussions of the issues involved,
the theoretical problems have turned out to be highly complex and
nuanced, perhaps even somewhat intractable. At all events, it is no
longer possible in this connection simply to speak of some Sino-Indian
cultural frontier, and of the Great Debate of bSam yas as a Sino-Indian
controversy, as Paul Demieville once did in his great pioneering work on
the subject. 44 This is so because the traditions of Buddhism in South,
Central and East Asia are anything but monolithic, and each of them
often embraces the ancient philosophical and religious polarities and ten-
sions alluded to above.
The Buddhist traditions themselves have of course been very alive to the
philosophical and religious issues involved even if, naturally enough,
they have not used our categories and vocabularies.
44. See P. Demieville, Le concile de Lhasa (Paris: 1952).
RUEGG 173
One old attempt at clarification was by way of developing a taxonomy
of the scriptural teachings attributed to the Buddha which is based on
distinguishing "Wheels" (chos kyi 'khor 10 =*dharma-cakra), i. e. phases,
of the doctrine together with a system of textual exegesis and systemic
scriptural hermeneutics founded on differentiating a definitive, deep-
level meaning (the nitartha = nes don) from a provisional, surface-level
one that requires to be further interpreted in a sense different from the
prima facie one (the neyartha = dran don). This differentiation is some-
times also expressed by saying that a given scriptural text is intentional
(abhiprayika = dgons pa can)-or that it is non-literal (na yathiiruta- =
sgraji bZin ma yin pa)-because (i) it has an intended ground or purport
(dgons gzi) only alluded to by indirection in the Buddha's teaching,
because (ii) it is determined by some special motivation (dgos pa =
prayojana) on the part of the Buddha who uttered it, and because (iii) its
meaning is incompatible with the true meaning (dnos la gnod byed =
mukhyarthabadha) accepted as being the Buddha's final and definitive
intention (abhipraya = dgons pa) within a given doctrinal system (or
*dharma-cakra).45
This hermeneutical distinction may be used in a classificatory fashion,
that is, as a taxonomy. But it has sometimes also been employed in order
to subordinate one body of teachings to another, as in some Chinese
p' an-chiao classifications;46 and this last use of the taxonomy may then
include a polemical dimension.
But recourse to the distinction between neyartha and nitartha has not
been the only possible approach to systematic hermeneutics in Buddhism.
And it has been seen by some philosophically minded hermeneuticians
that this division between a provisional "surface" neyartha-meaning and a
definitive "deep" nitartha-meaning is not actually required to resolve
every problem of conflicting meanings encountered by the philosopher-
interpreter. Thus, it has been concluded that even when we take as
nitartha the two doctrines of (svabhiiva)sunyata and the tathagata-
45. See recently D. Seyfort Ruegg, "Purport, implicature and presupposition:
Sanskrit abhipriiya and Tibetan dg01is pa / dg01is gzi as hermeneutical con-
cepts," JIP 13 (1985): 309-25; "An Indian Source for the Tibetan Her-
meneutical Term dgons gzi 'Intentional Ground,'" JIPh 16 (1988): 1-4; and
"Allusiveness and Obliqueness in Buddhist Texts: sa1Jldhii, sa1Jldhi, sa1Jldhya
and ab-isa1Jldhi," Dialectes dans les litteratures indo-aryennes, ed. C. Caillat
(Paris: 1989) 295-328.
46. See recently e. g. D. Lopez, ed., Buddhist Hermeneutics (Honolulu:
1988); and M. -W. Liu, Madhyamaka Thought in China, index s. v. "p'an-
chiao."
174 JIABS 18.2
garbha it may still be possible to develop an interpretation-a "read-
ing"-that allows both doctrines to be understood as congruent and com-
patible, without there being any need to suppose that one or the other has
to be neyartha and canceled by the other. This is what Gun than has
done in his exegesis to which reference has already been made above
(26). Although attention was drawn to it long ago, this very important
line of traditional interpretation has received virtually no attention in
most recent work on the tathagatagarbha and ran ston theories and on
Buddhist hermeneutics.
IX
The matter of pramalJa mentioned already at the outset (p. 3) takes us on
to a further point which is of both lexical and religious-philosophical in-
terest. This is the study of some of the things in Buddhist thought which
can be subsumed-more or less "etically"-under the idea of authority
current in contemporary European languages, notwithstanding the fact
that Buddhism is a tradition that has regularly placed great emphasis on
people's own endeavor, on their karman and its ripening, and on their
direct understanding of reality. Thus, in the old canon we read that one
has to be one's own refuge (Skt. atmadvlpa), or one's own lamp (Pali
attadipa). And we are repeatedly told that, in the final analysis, spiritual
realization must be unmediated and independent of any communication
received from another (aparapratyaya), in other words that ultimate
reality is to be directly realized within oneself (pratyatmavedamya,
Furthermore, irrespective of whether Tathagatas appear
or not, it is the principle of Origination in Dependence (praUtya-
samutpada) that represents the timeless stability and fixedness of Dharma
(dharmasthititii. dharmaniyamata).
Yet, at the same time, the Buddhist does take refuge in the Buddha and
the Community (sar;tgha) as well as in the Teaching (dharma). And the
Buddha's word (buddhavacana = sans rgyas kyi bka ')-agama ([un) or
scripture-is regarded as trustworthy (apta = yid ches pa), even as a cog-
nitive standard or norm (prami1lJa = tshad ma).47 Indeed, the Bhagavant
or Buddha-the teacher (Sds(r = ston pa )-is himself described as pra-
miiflabhuta (tshad mar gyur pa).48 So, in slltra Buddhism as well as in
the Vajrayana, the teacher-indeed the entire line of teachers extending
47. See e. g. CandrakIrti, Prasannapadii xv.6, p. 268.
48. See Dignaga, Pramiiflasamuccaya i.I.
RUEGG 175
back to the Buddha-play a central and crucial role in Buddhist theory
and practise. The spiritual master-both the proximate "root" Guru (rtsa
ba'i bla ma) who is one's immediate teacher and the more remote ones
belonging to one's spiritual lineage (brgyud pa'i bla ma)-is accordingly
no less important to a Buddhist than he is for example to a Hindu.
These two sets of propositions within Buddhist thought appear to
belong to distinct levels of religio-philosophical discourse. Hence,
although they would thus not be contradictory in the strict sense, they
evidently do reflect a real tension in the idea of what we in modern par-
lance call authority. This is accordingly a worthwhile and fruitful sub-
ject for both lexical and religio-philosophical clarification. And the
question of the function of pramdlJa in relation to authority proves to be
of very considerable interest in attempting to demarcate what is essential
to Buddhist thought intrinsically-and "emically"-from what we some-
times import into Buddhism with our own conceptual baggage when we
superimpose on it either our culture-bound categories, interpretative grids
and terminologies or, alternatively, our comparatively arrived at "etic"
categories.
In the Buddhist theory of knowledge, the term pramalJa-though often
rendered by our word "authority"-basically denotes right / correct cog-
nition / knowledge. In the first place, it may refer to direct perception
(i. e. = miwn sum), a form of cognition which is defined as
"congruent"-i. e. non-delusive and indefeasible / veridical (avisaf!tvad-
aka = mi[blslu ba) and hence reliable-and also as free of conceptual
construction (kalpandparjha = rtag pa dan bral ba); and its scope belongs
to what is cognitively accessible immediately = mnan gyur).
Secondly, the term pramalJa may denote inferential knowledge (anu-
mana = rjes dpag), i. e. that form of right cognition whose scope belongs
to what is in part cognitively inaccessible cun zad lkog
gyur) to us because of epistemologically extrinsic obstacles such as dis-
tance, as in the case of fire the presence of which on a distant hill can be
inferred from observing smoke there, in accord with the homologous
example of smoke regularly accompanying fire in a
kitchen: "no smoke without fire." Now, according to the Buddhist
PramaJ;la-school of Dignaga and DharmakIrti, PramalJa has only these
two basic forms of direct perceptual knowledge and inferential knowl-
edge. Even scriptural authority (agama = lun) as reliable testimony
(apta = yid ches pa) is not regarded as a separate and independent means
of correct knowledge, but is included under that form of inferential
knowledge (anumana) the scope of which belongs to what is totally con-
176 JIABS 18.2
cealed = sin tu lkog gyur) for epistemologically intrinsic
reasons connected with the transcendent nature of its cognitive object.
Still, the Buddha-though a person-does function like a pramalJ-a, for
he is stated to be pramalJ-abhuta in Dignaga's great treatise on epistemol-
ogy and logic, the PramalJ-asamuccaya (i. 1). And a thoroughly
competent teacher such as Nagarjuna is described as a * pramalJ-abhuta-
(tshad mar gyur pa'i skyes bu) by the Madhyamaka master
Candraklrti (MARh vi.2). For this and related reasons such as their com-
passion, the Buddha and other trustworthy masters are then thought of as
persons in whom one may place confidence, so that we may legitimately
describe them as authorities. Thus the idea of the Teacher or Guru as an
authority is not restricted to the Vajrayana form of Buddhism alone.
In the Buddhist concept of pramalJ-a we accordingly meet once again-
this time in a perhaps somewhat unexpected context-the contrast
between immediacy and mediacy already encountered in the quite differ-
ent contexts already mentioned above of the theory of the
tathagatagarbha and buddha-nature (on the level of Ground, gZi) and of
the distinction between the Gradual and the Simultaneous (on the level of
the Path, lam). For in the case of the criterion is the
immediacy of right knowledge free of conceptual construction
(kalpanapo,rha). And one prerequisite for being a truly trustworthy-
and thus authoritative-teacher is the possession of this immediate
knowledge of reality. That is, if the Buddha or other reliable teachers
are "authorities"-i. e. pramalJ-as, prama,!ika or pramalJ-abhuta, as they
indeed are for Buddhists-, their being authoritative is in fact secondary
and derivative in as much as it results from their having access to-even
being so to say constituted by-right knowledge or prama,!a relating to
ultimate reality. Hence, if pramalJ-a were to be understood as authority,
this conception will inescapably involve indirectness and mediacy. For if
a teacher is an authority for another cognizer, this necessarily makes the
latter cognitively dependent on this outside authority (i. e. parapratyaya)
as an external, and hence indirect, source for his own knowledge. On the
contrary, being direct right / correct cognition / knowledge
pramalJ-a is characterized precisely by its cognitive immediacy for the
knower. For the Buddha, or another reliable teacher, the pramalJ-a in
question is constituted by their direct awareness of reality.
Here we are thus confronted by a curious tension-even a certain lack
of perfect fit-between the above-mentioned uses of the Sanskrit word
pramalJ-a and its Tibetan equivalent tshad ma as (1) right / correct cogni-
tion / knowledge and (2) authority. These two well-attested values of the
RUEGG 177
word-which are in fact quite distinct-come verycleady to our atten-
tion when we seek to translate pramiiJ!a into a language like English
which, unlike Sanskrit and Tibetan, makes this religiously and philosoph-
ically vital distinction by employing etymologically unrelatetl words to
express the two values.
49
In this way, concepts which we for our part might include under the
idea of authority have in Buddhism distinct philosophical (i. e. epistemo-
logical and gnoseological), religious, religio-social and sometimes even
religio-political aspects. It is therefore necessary to reflect closely on the
extent to which the contemporary "standard average" idea of authority is
really adequate to embrace what, basically, is cognitively direct, imme-
diate and (in the first place) free from conceptual construction like the
(pratyalqa)pramiiJ!a-something that is epistemologically "normal" or
"standard" rather than an "authority" in the usual sense of this word.
x
It has been argued that studies in Buddhist thought may be viewed as
constituting a unitary discipline even if they are also, inevitably and
legitimately, multidisciplinary and, one may hope, interdisciplinary.
When considering Buddhist traditions extending from South through
Central to East Asia and beyond it has, however, often been customary to
think in terms of national Buddhisms (conceived of sometimes as more
or less uniform and even monolithic entities). In so doing we risk falling
prey to modern preconceptions. It is of course true that Buddhists them-
selves have not hesitated to engage very closely with and to absorb the
various cultural traditions of different peoples as the Buddha-Dharma
spread first within India and then further abroad. (The Buddha is in fact
reported to have himself authorized his hearers to make use of their own
particular languages.) Yet, even if Buddhism reveals no single and uni-
versal monothetic essence throughout, its traditions show over arching
continuities and what may be called lattices of polythetic "family resem-
blances." And it is just this that makes it possible to speak of Buddhism
at all, even while recognizing that it is not a single uniform entity on the
horizontal plane of its geographical diffusion in space.
49. See D. Seyfort Ruegg, "Pramii"(Labhl1ta,
and as epithets of the Aciirya and
Tathiigata in grammatical, epistemological and Madhyamaka texts," BSOAS
57 (1994): 303-20; and "La notion du voyant et du 'connaisseur supreme' et
la question de l'autorite epistemique," WZKS 38 (1994): 403-19.
178 JIABS 18.2
As for the vertical axis of chronology, when investigating the Buddhist
traditions which have presented themselves in such diverse garb over the
centuries, it has been customary for scholars to think in terms of layers of
textual material where one stratum is set off from and supersedes
another. Certainly, in many a case, this stratigraphical model for the his-
tory of Buddhism is appropriate. But such a quasi geological paradigm
should not be allowed to mislead. In the case of structurally contrastive
oppositions-such as those between immediacy and mediacy, between
inborn buddha-nature and progressively achieved buddhahood, between
cataphaticism and apophaticism, between the non-analytically meditative
and the analytically intellectual, between direct understanding by oneself
and instruction communicated from outside by another-, there seem
rather to exist intellectual and spiritual polarities and tensions which are
not best understood as conditioned only by chronology, i. e. stratigraphi-
cally. Not only have these been present in Buddhist thought from early
times, but they may well be inherent to Buddhist thought throughout its
history-indeed perhaps even to the Buddha's teaching as he gave it to
his disciples of varying capacities and propensities.
Hence it does not seem possible simply to generalize the stratigraphical
paradigm of higher criticism and to speak, in such cases, only of textual
layers opposing, succeeding and eventually superseding each other in
time. If a method of textual analysis based on the stratigraphical model
loses sight of its own inherent limitations, it runs the risk of postulating
diachronically successive strata while overlooking the complex systemic
and synchronic philosophical processes and spiritual tensions involved in
the history of Buddhism. Historicist positivism does not always make
good history.
XI
This last point can have a bearing as much on postulated diachronic
sequences in what has been termed Earliest Buddhism, and in the doc-
trines of the early schools (nikaya), as it does on the later phases in the
history of Buddhism with which the preceding remarks have been
concerned.
When attempting to determine what may have constituted "original" or
"earliest"-that is, "precanonical" or proto-canonical-Buddhism, let us
then reflect on the circumstance that we sometimes find ourselves engag-
ing in what may, no doubt unavoidably, be rather impressionistic infer-
ences and atomistic reconstructions. Unless one is quite clear about the
RUEGG 179
eventual role of systemically structured-and hence synchronic rather
than exclusively diachronic-polarities and tensions in philosophical and
religious thinking, the possibility will exist that any atomistic identifica-
tion in the sources of (putative) doctrinal inconsistencies and contradic-
tions in content-and also of formal incoherence in the textual peri-
copes-can, per se, offer no sure and reliable guide to the reconstruction
of doctrinal developments that could be datable absolutely, or even rela-
tively. (The earliest attestation of a doctrine or other piece of evidence
can of course be employed as a terminus a quo, provided the fallacy of
argument from silence is avoided.) Hence many a reconstruction, inex-
tricably bound up as it in practise is with theoretical presuppositions and
prejudgments and with methodological options, may turn out to be as
unfalsifiable as it is unverifiable in view of the very nature of the evi-
dence available. And one must then carefully consider just what their
scientific value and function can be. If, however, they are clearly recog-
nized to be simply working hypotheses with a certain (albeit circum-
scribed) heuristic value, there may be no harm in them.
50
Finally, an approach prepared to envisage the possible un answerability
of the question as to what "original" Buddhism was because of the very
nature of our documentation should not necessarily be thought to amount
to agnosticism, to relativism or to indifferentist ahistoriscism.
By Buddhist tradition the crucial problem of the authenticity of a text or
doctrine has been raised not so much in the form of the question whether
Doctrine x is "original"-i. e., that the historical Buddha Gautama
Sakyamuni taught it at such and such a time-as in that of the question
whether a given teaching is attested in the corpora of sutra and Vinaya
(as in the canonical mahapadesas),51 and whether it is both justifiable
and intelligible in terms of the Buddha's soteriological purpose and his
50. At all events, recourse in such matters to arguments claiming to be based
on what is rational, or plausible, will be of little avail, and often examples of
methodologically naive question-begging, unless of course it has first been
possible satisfactorily to establish what, in each case, is to be considered ratio-
nal and plausible. The watch-word of rationality is hardly an open-sesame, a
universal pass-key which can be used anywhere. Rather, in order to avoid cir-
cularity, the relevant "rationale(s)" is (are) what has first to be discovered by
investigation of the evidence in each individual case.
51. See E. Lamotte, "La critique d'authenticite dans Ie bouddhisme," India
antiqua (J. Ph. Vogel Felicitation Volume, Leiden: 1947) 213-222. See also
R. M. Davidson, "An introduction to the standards of scriptural authenticity in
Indian Buddhism," Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, ed. R. Buswell (Honolulu:
1990) 291-325.
180 JIABS 18.2
philosophical intention as expressed in his nztartha statements. In
Buddhist tradition, it has been considered that if these last criteria are
fulfilled a statement will be buddha-Word (buddhavacana).
In other words, the criterion has generally not been what the historical
Buddha taught at a given time t in the 45 years said to have intervened
between his A wakening and his ParinirVciI,la taking place n years before
the present. 52 For, finally, the criterion of authenticity was the idea that
what is Buddhistically well-formed is buddhavacana / bud-
"buddha-word." Conversely, buddha-word is in the
sense of being well-formed in the philosophical meaning of this term-
i. e. correctly formulated-rather than just well-turned and eloquent in a
literary sense. Then, in the last analysis, whatever is Buddhistically well-
formed (i. e. dharmopasaf!1hita, arthopasaf!1hita, etc.) has-so to say by
definition-become Buddha-word. 53
Needless to say, this will not have to be the point of view of the histor-
ically minded modern student of Buddhist thought. Yet, in addition to
being about identifying historical origins, religious or doctrinal develop-
52. Attempts to answer such questions do, however, exist within Buddhist
tradition, for example in the Kalacakra system and (to a lesser degree) in the
taxonomy of the three Wheels of the Dharma (*dharma-cakra).
53. See the Uttaravipattisutta in Anguttaranikaya IV, 164: evam eva,deviinam
inda, yalJl kifici subhiisitalJl sabbalJl talJl tassa bhagavato arahato
spmmiisambuddhassa; and the AdhyiisayasalJlcodanasutra cited in Santideva's
(ed. Bendall) 15, and in PrajiHikaramati's Bodhicaryiivatiira-
pafijikii ix.43ab: yat kilJlcin maitreya sarvalJl tad
On the idea see E. Lamotte, Le traite de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse, i
(Louvain: 1944) 80 n. 2; D. L. Snellgrove, BSOAS 21 (1958): 620-1; R.
Davidson, op. cit., 310; S. Collins, "On the Very Idea of the Pali Canon,"
JPTS 15 (1990): 94-95; and D. Lopez, "Authority and Orality in the Maha-
yana," Numen 42 (1995): 27.
The parallel idea that whatever the Buddha said is well-said is frequently
attested. See e. g. the Subhiisitasutta in Suttanipiita iii.3 (p.78-79), with the
Amagandhasutta in Suttanipiita ii.2.14 (verse 252, p. 45)and the KilJlsilasutta
in ii.9.2 (verse 325, p. 56); Sarrtyuttanikaya IV, 188-9. The idea is attested
also in Asoka's Bhabra inscription (ed. J. Bloch, 154): e keci bhalJlte bhaga-
vatii buddhena bhiisite savve se subhiisitevii.
Although = legs (par) bsad (pa) has often been translated by
"eloquent" or "eloquence," this rendering can be somewhat misleading. What
is in the final analysis intended is the well-formulated, and well-formed, on
the content-level (though the level of expression is, presumably, not entirely
excluded in the view of the tradition; cf. F. Edgerton, BHSD s.v.). In the pas-
sage just cited of the AdhyiisayasalJlcodanasutra, pratibhiina "intelligent /
insightful I inspired expression" (rather than just "elocution")-one of the four
pratisalJlvid-is also mentioned: caturbhiT:t kiiralJaiT:t pratibhiinalJl sarvalJl bud-
jfiiitavyam].
RUEGG 181
ments and successive textual strata, the study of Buddhist thought is also
about understanding structurally and systemically the ideas we find in the
sources together with the underlying (and often unexplicit) presupposi-
tions with which the Buddhist traditions have operated in developing
these ideas. For this purpose, Buddhist hermeneutics with its theory of a
"deep" definitive meaning (nztartha)-as distinct from a provisional
"surface" meaning requiring to be further interpreted in a sense other
than the prima facie one (neyartha )-offers very considerable interest.
In the philosophical study of Buddhist thought hermeneutics too can
therefore assume a place of central importance.
LUIS O. GOMEZ
Unspoken Paradigms:
Meanderings through the Metaphors of a Field
"People of the world say 'method, method,' what sort of thing is this
method?"
"What do you think? Does it ever occur to the skillful user of method to
think, 'I will use this method, I am now using this method, I have used this
method'?"
"No, indeed this never occurs to the skillful user of method."
"And why is it so? Because there is no dharma that can be called
method. This is why it is called method."
-from a long-lost sutra-
"Method" has finally arrived in the land of Buddhist Studies. It makes its
appearance belatedly, reluctantly, and haltingly. Our colleagues in other
fields and our students now demand to know what our positions are
regarding the questions of "method" and "theory." They expect from us a
certain familiarity with the types of discourse that dominate the academy
in what used to be the province of classical philology, or, at best, of New
Criticism. What shall we, the "buddhologists," say to those who want to
know about our "method"?
Even if we make allowances for all that is fashion and trend, even if we
truly believe in the hallowed crafts of the philologist and the historian,
and even if we suspect that "method" is often a front for a misreading of
one sort or another (or for no reading at all!), the call to question our rea-
sons and motives cannot be ignored, and should have been heeded earlier.
Those with whom we would like to engage in some form of dialogue have
been asking us similar questions for decades. We may have ignored them
as long as our craft was shielded by the privileges of the overprotected'
Academy, but more and more we are unable to keep turning our faces
away from this clear call to understand, from this challenge to our goals
and to the means leading to our goals. Moreover, those who would shrug
183
184 JIABS 18.2
off any consideration of the social and logical infrastructures of their
scholarship do not thereby become magically divested of a method, a the-
ory, and a particular choice of perspective. We may choose not to speak
about why and how we do what we do, but such refusal does not erase the
why and the how of what we do; and the refusal is often interpreted by
others (correctly) as some sort of theoretical statement. The healthy sus-
picion of what may lurch behind the abstruse language of "theory" is one
thing, the pretense, against all reason, that one does not have a theory or a
method, is another.
This paper is in part the fruit of attempts to engage graduate students in
some form of reflection on "theory"-that is reflection on the reasons for
doing what we do and on the art of choosing and judging arguments in
what we do. The paper is a spin-off from a mini-course I offered a couple
of years ago to a small group of Asian students and research associates at
the University of Michigan. They had come to a North American uni-
versity to "learn about Western methodologies."! Perhaps with only one
exception, they were all' interested in "the application of these method-
ologies to the study of Buddhism," not as a part ofa secular humanistic
enterprise, but as a part of the study of a religion that was in fact an inte-
gral part of their own cultural and religious belief systems.
2
They were
consequently baffled by what appeared to them as a pointless reduction-
ism in the methods and conclusions of the work we were trying to pass by
them as "Buddhist Studies," yet they were equally shocked to discover
that writers on "theory" and "method" did not offer a viable alternative to
forms of scholarship that failed to speak to them.
In the more recent, and expanded, incarnations of this course, the
majority of my students have been North American graduate students in
Buddhist Studies who need to learn of contemporary historical methods,
methods of literary criticism, and contemporary critical theory, but who
also need to learn about traditional Western methods of study and
research, especially those which, in the last 100 years, in Europe, North
1. The choice of words seems to me significant, and suspect. The common use
of the word "methodology" to mean "method" strikes me as betraying a mysti-
fication of "theory" and "method."
2. This too strikes me as suspect: that we should assume that method is some
neutral tool to be "applied" to Buddhism. Even if "methods" were "tools," the
selection of a tool is not a trivial matter-even the most naive mechanic knows
that you cannot use an Allen wrench on a Phillips head or on a machine bolt, or
a metric socket on an English bolt-at least, not without causing major
damage.
GOMEZ 185
America and Japan, have helped to form the logic of the forms of
research and discourse that we call Buddhist Studies. These methods
follow primarily two models: classical philology and historical positivism.
These are the "older" methods that have also defined during those 100
odd years "the Canons" that we are expected to study-paradigmatic
works of scholarship and representative Buddhist texts.3
But a need to understand what we do and why we do it has grown even
as the skill and the willingness to carry out the close reading of the text
have decreased, placing both student and teacher in a bind: any course in
method can only be a preliminary to the acquisition and application of
certain formal tools, but experience in the use of such tools is a prelimi- .
nary to understanding method and theory.
Attempting to serve as a bridge to the uses and values of more tradi-
tional tools and the pursuit of more traditional goals, the course has come
to be roughly divided into three units of disparate length: (1) a short
review of the history of the Western Academy and of the place of Bud-
dhist Studies in the Academy, (2) a middle length survey of issues in con-
temporary critical theory that are relevant to the study of Buddhism, and
(3) a much longer historical and critical review of how we have come to
privilege texts, certain texts, and certain methods-in other words, a his-
tory of the canons of contemporary Buddhist Studies.
4
The last unit
includes, furthermore, reflections on the way in which the scholarly con-
structs of traditional Buddhists combined with Western presuppositions
about history and texts to shape the canons of modern Buddhist Studies.
I describe this class as a course that surveys, for the benefit of future
scholars of Buddhism, (1) the position of Buddhist Studies and Buddhism
in the Academy, (2) forms of critical discourse that have been used to
speak about Buddhism and the study of Buddhism, (3) the critical and
analytic traditions of Buddhism before the appearance and hegemony of
3. The content of these Canons has also been determined by historical acci-
dents in the encounter of the Western academy with Asian Buddhist tradi-
tions-including the early encounters with Tibetan scholasticism and the
canons of particular Japanese denominations.
4. The influence of particular modes of Western learning, especially the ideals
and presuppositions of philology as it developed from the eighteenth to the
nineteenth century, has been such that we can safely assert that these ideals of
learning have become normative in Buddhist Studies. So far, Asian and
Western Buddhists have not been able to free themselves completely from the
spell of these ideals, even when their application is often ignored in practice.
186 JIABS 18.2
Western secular scholarship,5 and (4) critical discourse generally. But the
central goal of the course is to encourage the young scholar to question
the goals of our metier, the types of discourse we use, the audiences (real
or imagined) to which we speak, and the constraints and limitations of the
field.
The present paper is an exercise in reviewing and reordering the prole-
gomena to such a course, and therefore touches on most of the issues
addressed in the course, but polemically rather than descriptively.
Although the plan of this paper calls for speculation and debate, it also
calls for some schematics-after all, can there be generalizations without
some type of classification and outline? The paper therefore belongs to
the genre we sometimes call, with typical scholarly grandiosity and
hubris, "the state of the field." Expressed more plainly and humbly, I
would like to survey cursorily and examine critically some models of
Buddhist Studies. These are the models that remain unspoken in the
field, hidden behind metaphors of positivistic science in a discipline
where the methods of the positive sciences are seldom, if ever, used.
A Discipline of Sorts
Whatever our position may be on the appropriateness of speaking about
Buddhist Studies as a discipline, we at least tend to agree that even a
"Buddhist Studies" in quotation marks depends on, or is composed by,
certain principles of research and discourse that belong to what we may
call the academic disciplines. We assume that Buddhist Studies is in
some way analogous to other disciplines, or, at least, defined by the appli-
cation of well-established disciplines to a particular object of study. The
putative foundation that sustains the academic disciplines guarantees the
"results" of research in Buddhist Studies.
However, other forms of scholarly activity that we would regard as
safely established in a disciplinary history, and therefore as a safe model
for our projects in Buddhist Studies, have equally questionable or modern
pedigrees. Even the "well-established" disciplines are relatively young,
and have communities of participants and audiences that are ever shifting
5. In the process of developing these themes in class discussion, a meta-anal-
ysis of the goals of the course leads inevitably to questions of authority and
constraints on human knowledge and behavior. Although this paper addresses
such issues only indirectly, their importance should become obvious to the
reader as I develop my argument. I have attempted a more explicit discussion
of issues of religious, textual, and scholarly authority in Buddhist Studies in
two workshops I offered at Otani University in the summers of 1993 and 1994.
GOMEZ 187
and colliding. They are not defined by a core intellectual practice, but by
a tradition of practice and by a community that is to a great extent a guild
of craftsmen (only recently more open to craftswomen). All the disci-
plines have suffered major transformations. A shift from art and avoca-
tion to profession has changed radically the meaning of the word
"philosophy," for instance. This same shift has changed humanistic dis-
course in general, to the point that the term "Humanities," like "Liberal
Arts," remains only as a convenient label for college administrators.
Philology and history have suffered a similar professionalization and a
specialization that has gradually created a class of scholars dedicated to a
professional discourse of recondite jargon and erudition pure, with no
sense of an audience outside the limited circle of the professional.
Of course, a discipline is also a set of modes of thinking. But it is sel-
dom, if ever, a single set of such modes. It may include a set of norms-
especially norms about which forms of discourse are acceptable and
which are not. The norms, or rules of genre, however, are fluid, and the
vitality of a discipline may depend on its capacity to tolerate and accept
challenges to these norms.
The vitality of a discipline also depends on its capacity to garner sup-
port from the community, and this is often accomplished by listening to a
variety of voices. Beyond the voices of the academe there is another set
of important voices: the voices of those upon whom the survival of the
discipline within the established academe depends (government officials,
students, students' parents, university officials, editors, the press). A dis-
cipline is accountable to a number of audiences, and our colleagues within
the guild are only one such audience. Disciplines respond to the needs
and to the idealized self-image of particular communities and they are
held accountable by those communities.
However, if a person of learning were only accountable to his or her
Maecenas, responsible scholarship as we know it would not exist. The
scholar is also responsible to a broad range of audiences, extending from
the potential or occasional reader, to the members of the traditions to
whom we owe the works that we study. Such a broad definition of audi-
ence, of course, entails a broad definition of the role of the scholar. A
single scholar cannot carry out all roles, but should aspire to serve hon-
estly and with dedication at least some of the communities that justify the
scholarly enterprise, and not just the communities or the individuals that
support, or participate in, the scholarly enterprise.
Among the forgotten communities of readers that we often neglect are
those of the person's who seek in Buddhism a humanistic model. Like-
188 JIABS 18.2
wise, we cannot forget the communities of the new believers in the West,
for whom a secular non-sectarian Buddhist scholarship will probably
become a necessity. But, above all, the most important neglected "audi-
ence" is that of those who created the traditions we now study-those
who, in a peculiar way provide us with a justification.
A tradition is also a set of practices and norms tracing their roots into
the past. Here Buddhist Studies, for instance, depended for a long time on
the traditions of European philology, and attempted to model itself on
Classical Studies. The disciplines of Indology and Sinology are good
examples of stepchildren to Classics. The youth of these disciplines is not
only a chronological curiosity but an indicator of the extent to which aca-
demic disciplines are specific to certain historical moments, and the
degree to which disciplines are fragile. At least since the creation of the
modern research institution, the life of disciplines has depended as much
on discovery and paradigm shifts as it has on academic bureaucracies and
scholarly guilds. Accordingly, the coexistence of competing voices and
interests (within disciplines and among disciplines) is essential for the
survival of tradition even as it is the very ground for the fragmentation
and transformation of the tradition.
What is peculiar about discipline in the humanities, however, is that the
avowed interests of the discipline and the values that may be derived from
the cultural products studied by those disciplines do not have to coincide
with the interests and values of the communities that support them.
Often, the genre of the discipline is shaped as much by the norms of the
tradition that it studies as by any conscious reflections on the goals and
limitations of the discipline.
Buddhist Studies, for instance, has developed several identities that are
in fact built around the focal points provided by the tradition itself. So
that the nature of this discipline-like the nature of many other intellec-
tual traditions-depends not only on the processes and means of produc-
tion associated with it, or on its social context, or on the explicitly recog-
nized interests of the classes that practice it, but depends likewise on
idealized notions of what the subject is or was, and on abstract notions of
its value, and what constitute truth values in the discipline's discourse. A
similar illusion gives all intellectual enterprises the protection of an illu-
sion: that it has a life of its own. Thus, it is possibly to do art criticism
that imitates Vasari for an audience in New York City, in 1995, under the
auspices of a state agency, and only a few hundred yards from a Arab,
Jewish, Black or Hispanic neighborhoods.
G6MEZ 189
A scholarly discipline is not only a matter of disinterested intellectual
effort, for it is evidently also a matter of the abstract application of intel-
lectual curiosity through the medium of a discourse accessible, intelligi-
ble, and valuable to an intellectual elite, yet supported by a community
that is interested in the veneer of learning. Consider the irony of a Con-
ference on Buddhism in the heart of Mexico City, or of Buddhist Studies
in Ann Arbor, only some 65 kilometers from the heart of the "inner city"
of Detroit. Consider the irony of Buddhist Studies in America in dialogue
with Indology in Japan. Such ironies already raise some questions as to
the nature, audience, and social role of the discipline.
Discipline Defined by Its Object
But, as already noted, disciplines may also be defined by their objects.
One could therefore argue that Buddhist Studies is only defined by con-
tent, not method. This is at least partially true, and likely to become more
than partly true as the old philological models are displaced by ethno-
graphic and, one would hope, literary models. However, the study of
Buddhism has still much to learn from other fields of study that define
themselves by an object or a cultural sphere. Thus, Christian Studies,
without laying any claim to a separate methodological discipline has
made better use than Buddhist Studies of the ways of arguing used in so-
called "established" academic disciplines.
Today, research in Christian Studies is no longer based only on texts,
and is no longer concerned only with doctrine or history. Of course,
unlike Buddhist Studies, Christian Studies has a clear place in Western
communities at large-it may find itself cornered by secularism, but it is
not the isolated hobby of a handful of gentleman scholars, for it is also
based on a community presence. Christian scholars and scholars of
Christianity have embraced an understanding of Christian traditions that
makes ample and creative use of contemporary advances in criticism, see-
ing, for instance, the religious text and religious discourse as literary and
narrative events. A generous use of literary criticism, psychological
anthropology, and history of religious approaches has not in the least
compromised the textual disciplines. Consider for instance the rich range
of possibilities open to a beginning Biblical scholar or an undergraduate
interested in progressing beyond the "introductory" course-as illustrated
by manuals such as Tucker, 1971, and Turner, 1982. Compare these
sources with the limited understanding of what is Buddhist scholarship
illustrated by some of the rare "manuals" of Buddhist Studies accessible
to the modern reader, such as de Jong's history of Buddhist Studies or
190 JIABS 18.2
Hirakawa's Bukkyo-gaku Nyumon.
6
Only some rare manuals of Indology
come close to providing anything close to what we find in the Christian
Studies texts and manuals (e. g., Renou, and Bechert and von Simson).
The difference between Christian and Buddhist Studies is perhaps in
part explained by the fact that Buddhist Studies continues to be a Western
enterprise about a non-Western cultural product, a discourse about Bud-
dhism taking place in a non-Buddhist context for a non-Buddhist audience
of super-specialists, whose intellectual work persists in isolation from the
mainstream of Western literature, art, and philosophy, and occasionally
even from the mainstream of contemporary Buddhist doctrinal reflection.
The audience to which Christian Studies speaks shares with the Judeo-
Christian tradition a more or less common language. It is possible, if not
natural, for members of this audience to accept the conceit that they
belong to the tradition and the tradition belongs to them. Any attempt to
show that we are in fact in a different universe from that of early Chris-
tianity will not convince the audience of Christian Studies; because this
audience has a cultural sense, an unshakable belief that creates meaning
even where the tradition has lost its meaning. Buddhist Studies and its
audience lack such a common language and such a conviction. In fact,
even in Asia it is losing its capacity to maintain the myth of an unbroken
tradition and a common, meaningful, language.
Furthermore, whereas Christianity and Christian Studies as we know
them are the fruit of a continuous interaction with Western secularism,
rationalism, and the modern and postmodern Western self, most of our
Buddhist materials and many of our Asian informants belong to a very
different cultural tradition. The methods and expectations of our scholar-
ship and our audiences have been shaped by a cultural history very differ-
ent from that of Buddhist traditions.
7
6. Generally, I have abstained from discussing in any detail works or authors
mentioned in this essay as models or examples of particular types of scholar-
ship. Complete references to the works mentioned or to sample works of the
authors mentioned have been provided in the bibliography. The bibliography
also includes a selection from the bibliography of the course alluded to in this
essay-readings the influence of which is behind the essay and its arguments.
Not all of these titles have been referenced in the body of the article.
7. Because of these cultural differences, comparisons can be skewed. Con-
sider, for instance, the way in which Luther is studied by Erikson (1958) and
Ignatius of Loyola by Meissner (1992) with the difficulties one would face
attempting a similar analysis of either earlier figures in Western tradition or
many of the classical figures of Asian Buddhism. As social circumstances
GOMEZ 191
Nevertheless, even within the very limited circle of that minority of privi-
leged individuals plying the trade of Buddhist Studies, there is a belief
and a sense of continuity-it may not be shared by it audience and by the
community that supports Buddhist Studies, but it is nevertheless a more or
less effective mythology of continuity, legitimacy, and truth. This belief
(that is, the belief that the scholar of Buddhism is somehow connected to,
or "in tune with" the Buddhist tradition) is in part maintained by an
unconscious return to imagined origins, a return that is accomplished by
using some of the forms of traditional Buddhist learning as models for
contemporary scholarly genres. We have to a certain extent adopted some
of those classical models, and remained bound and constrained by some
of the presuppositions of such models, especially those that appear to
confirm on the surface our own preconceptions-our own Enlightenment
and post-Enlightenment preconceptions.
The Buddhist tradition is itself rich in critical methods. Used inge-
niously, some of these traditions of critical inquiry or of hermeneutic
suspicion, could be used to help the modem scholar question the Buddhist
tradition. But this is seldom done. Our failure to do so may be attributed
in part to the fact that these traditions of critical inquiry have become fos-
silized; but it is also true that such traditions were never traditions of free
inquiry in any sense close to what the term has come to mean in recent
Western history.
The rise of "criticism" in the West is based not on the same historical
circumstances that produced Buddhist traditions of criticism. The latter
were formed in debates that were largely within religious discourse or
between divergent religious discourses. The multiple roots of Western
criticism include debate between secular and religious forms of discourse,
and among metaphysical speculation, scientific theory and empirical
observation of types that were unknown in Asian tradition-and which
are relatively young in Western tradition. In such encounters Western
philosophers have confronted a long line of critiques of language (from
the critique of Latin and the Vulgate to the linguistic theories of de
Saussure and beyond), critiques of textual authority (from the critique of
the Book and its authority to the death of the author, and the object of the
work), and critiques of religious authority (from a critique of the deity
change, the potential for this type of analysis (and the potential for meaningful
discourse of this type) also changes-consider for instances the possibility for
psychological analyses of King's biography of Satomi Myodo (1987) or some
ofthe materials in the life of Hakuin (Yampolsky, 1971).
192 JIABS 18.2
who spoke the text to a critique of the motives of the human authors and
transmitters of sacred texts). For all its philosophical sophistication the
Buddhist tradition never confronted (and has barely risen to confront) the
full implication of such challenges.
Let us then pause briefly to reflect on some of our roots-on classical
models for what one would characterize as "Buddhist Studies." I see a
wide range of styles of scholarship. Some of these styles have deep roots
in Asian as well as Western cultural conventions and assumptions about
the nature of knowledge generally, about the nature of religion and reli-
gious knowledge, and about the nature of Buddhism. Classical Buddhist
assumptions in these areas have been transposed or displaced to apply
them to the human sciences, thus confirming prejudices that are at the
same time secular and religious.
Of course, other styles of Buddhist Scholarship have deep roots in
Western paradigms that may be traced back to Greece and the Middle
Ages, to the Reformation and the Enlightenment, to Western colonialism,
to the development of the modern research university, and to the devel-
opment of Western historical criticism. But in the present essay I wish to
focus only on a few traditional Buddhist models that may have reinforced
some of our own preconceived notions about the nature of evidence, dis-
course, and text.
Four models of Buddhist scholarship are to a great extent defined by
their subject matter-in other words, they emulate the assumptions and
goals of the subject they study. These models or ideals are: (1) the true
word, especially the written scriptural word, as the object and goal of
Buddhist scholarship, (2) the doctrinal system as a prerequisite for truth,
(3) the doctrinal word as the principal tool for understanding Buddhism,
and (4) the sequential or chronological ordering of events and ideas as a
necessary precondition for the truth of judgments about religion.
The definition by subject matter is only the surface of these genres.
There is more to be said as to the cognitive styles and contexts that define
and constrain each of these genres, but I will confine myself to a brief
examination of how these genres of scholarship suggest the limits of our
scholarly imagination. These are a few of the ways our object of study
tends to shape our discourse, or how they become part of our discourse,
rather than simply the object of our discourse.
GOMEZ 193
1. Words as the primary object: The strict, or classical, philological model
This is one of the oldest "method" of Buddhist Studies-old in Asia as
well as in Europe.
8
It owes its strength and longevity to the virtues of
close, grammatical reading. But it often assumes that "Buddhism" is pri-
marily, if not exclusively, accessible through, or embodied in, texts, and
that certain texts rather than others embody Buddhism in a more true or
perfect form. In its most extreme forms this model obsesses over individ-
ual words and syllables, almost as if meaning depended on the elucidation
of single words.
Philology is, as the Greek roots of the English term suggest, a love for
words-and in this love it betrays its magical origins. The philologist
believes that words contain truth, and that their power derives from truth.
The philologist also believes only he or she has access to "the true word."
One may reject the notion that the true word is the word of God, that
God's authorship is the ultimate guarantee of meaning, yet authorship,
authority, and truth remain linked in the scholarly imagination.
Traditionally, this true word was the etymology, that is, the philologist
assumed, against the evidence of living languages and historical linguis-
tics, the existence of an ultimate, pure origin of words. The usual claim is
to knowledge of an earlier or earliest "meaning" of the word, a meaning
that somehow invalidates or supersedes any other meaning the word may
have later in history. Thus, the Buddhist scholar may debate the
"original" meaning of the name "Arnitabha," concluding that he can know
the true meaning of the name of the Buddha Arnitabha, and that he can
know this meaning better than those for whom the name is an integral part
of a living language and a living universe of belief.
In its most extreme practical form, the clarification of etymologies and
the proper choice of variants constituted the whole of the philological
enterprise. The true word was the key to the true text, and the latter was
the locus and the ground of meaning and authority. In its most extreme
theoretical (or theological) formulations, the philologist claimed that he
could understand the believer's belief better than the believers themselves
by understanding the true meaning of the texts the believers claimed as
8. That is, if we consider Bumouf as the founding father of Buddhist Studies.
But even Vassiliev, working "in the field," speaks of how his texts allowed him
to correct the Buddhist teachings he received from his informants in China. If
one traces the origins of Buddhist Studies to an even earlier stage, say to the
groping researches of de Harlez or Abel Remusat, Buddhist Studies as
"philology" is even more clearly a reverence for words, written words, above
everything else.
194 JIABS 18.2
their ultimate authority. Such claims are indeed a rare combination of
Protestant models of scripture-centered theology, colonialist presumptions
of cultural privilege, and a misuse of rationality as a key to understanding
the non-rational. This exotic combination creates a scholarly fundamen-
talism that asserts that only texts, and only "old" or "primary" texts
should have authority, that texts have fixed, immutable, "original" mean-
ings which inhere in the text itself, and above all that there is a sharp dis-
tinction between textual truth and the truth of daily superstition.
This form of scholarship is represented by the traditional editor and
translator. The philological tradition seeks to "establish" a text (ironi-
cally, this has been called "lower criticism" in other quarters) and then to
convert this text by some type of grammatical algorithm into a text in
another language, which is then presumed to be a true version of the
original.
This hope or aspiration has Buddhist antecedents, for instance, in the
Chinese Buddhist search for the original Indian text and the struggle to
find the right translation method. But our ancestors had a better sense of
mythic irony, for they often conceived of the original as an ideal, lost,
inaccessible, and inexhaustible-as all pristine sources ought to be-
serving perhaps as an antidote to the hubris of the editor-translator.
Among Buddhologists, the presumption of a single source lead to the
once common practice of attempting to "establish" a text by conflating
several versions, often from obviously divergent recensions, traditions,
and regions. Thus was born the art of reading a Chinese-Tibetan-Sanskrit
text, which in the hands of a skillful philologist could be used as an inge-
nious control on the vagaries of textual transmission, but which could be
overdone to create a hybrid text. When such a text was created, it was
presented as a work of philology, with an almost naive pretense that it
was not a creative work of literature, not a work of commentary, criticism,
or theology. But this pretense is central to the survival of the myth of
philological authority: there is not only the possibility of a perfect enunci-
ate, but it has been in fact identified, the single true word is safeguarded
by science, not tradition.
This critique of philology should not be taken to imply a rejection of the
fundamental role of the discipline. It is a critique intended to restore per-
spective in those of us who practice the discipline. The object of criti-
cism are the tacit assumptions that allow us to present an edition as the
true text, or the assumptions that make us confuse correctness or com-
pleteness with historical accuracy or even truth. I am also questioning the
assumption that the text, especially the text established by the philologist,
GOMEZ 195
is somehow a privileged voice, an authoritative source for judgments of
truth in matters of Buddhist doctrine or history.
Accuracy does not guarantee much, especially when it is a matter of
accuracy as the recovery of the text verbatim. For the verbatim
reproduction of a text is only that, the reproduction of a text. This is the
trap of the philologist, so well depicted in Borges's "Pierre Menard, autor
del Quijote" (Borges, 1944a). The true perfect exegesis, the true perfect
edition, tells us nothing about the text-at best it is an echo of a text.
There is still room for, and an unquestionable need for accuracy and
rigor. No one could quarrel with the thoroughness of texts such as the
Udlinavarga constructed by Bernhard, which, although claiming to pre-
sent the correct text, is compiled with enough care to provide the next
reader with the necessary tools to make his or her own decisions as to
which text is to be read. Also worthy of being presented as a model of
careful work to our students are works like Fujita's transcription of the
Nepalese manuscripts of the Sukhlivattvyuha. My words of warning are
not directed at thoroughness or at the need for some sort of grammatical
and textual integrity, but rather at the presupposition that textual integrity
and "neatness" are synonymous with truth, or with historical fact or his-
torical understanding.
A critique of narrow philology is not a critique of philology, nor is it a
defense of "higher criticism" and critical theory for their own sakes. It is
more a warning against a neglect of the study of the text for what it may
tell us about actual texts and actual human beings, about the situation that
make the text a cultural product, a neglect of the cultural function, literary
and moral merits of the text, and a loss of memory that leads to forgetting
the study of the text for what its study may tell us about ourselves and our
goals.
9
These types of neglect allow us to ignore tradition, its value, its
challenges and what we may need to challenge in tradition. Differences,
meanings, and conflicts are glossed over.
The confusion that can arise from attempts to conflate meaning with
verbatim reproductions of a text, text with single literal meaning, and total
meaning with uncontested meanings, can be seen in a recent translation of
Suttaniplita published by the Pali Text Society (Norman, et aI., 1984). In
9. The word "actual" is used advisedly to modify "text." Actual is not the
same thing as real or true. The term is a shorthand for a perspective on the text
that takes into account as wide a context as possible, considering the material-
ity of the text, its intertextual parameters, the history of its uses and commen-
taries, and the function of the text in the research, intellectual, and professional
lives of modem scholars.
196 JIABS 18.2
this work an attempt is made to have the English reflect the grammar of
the original (though not the poetic complexity, or the meter), whatever
the pitfalls of this conceptions of the text, it should nevertheless be a
challenge to the traditional readings of this text through late commen-
taries. Yet the editor attempts a compromise with tradition avoiding an
obvious confrontation. This strategy produces a strange hybrid that is
neither one thing nor another, and creates confusion where the reader
should have seen conflict.
Naturally, these last paragraphs are to a certain extent caricatures, but
they are arguably "exaggerations in the direction of truth." Contemporary
practitioners of the art have gradually moved-and I hope will continue to
move-in the direction of a more critical view of their task. A "more
critical view" means a scholarship that is aware of the difficult position of
the textual scholar: between the risk of being another Pierre Menard and
the risk of pure palimpsest, and between the risk of disregarding the con-
straints of source and object, on the one hand, and becoming, on the other
hand, paralyzed by the hope of gathering all the sources, of having every
variant and every edition in "the Library of Babel" (Borges, 1944a).1
0
Jerome McGann, offering a "critique of modern textual criticism"
(1983), reveals the limitations of a model of textual transmission that pre-
supposes a single prototype or that asserts the ultimate authority of a
putative "autograph." McGann's critique is especially illuminating for
those of us who work with ancient Asian text because it is addressed at
textual criticism in the study of texts composed after the introduction of
the printing press-in other words, it is a critique applied to a literary
context in which the concepts of autograph and faithful reproduction
make some sense. One need not look at the complexities of textual
transmission in Asia to realize that the concepts of autograph, original,
and accuracy in transmission are relative reference points, controls that
are themselves shifting as information, interpretation, and goals shift.
Anyone who has experienced the trials and tribulations of writing and
publishing knows how uncertain is the process and the ideal. One must
10. Ironically, Borges himself not only writes playfully with Buddhist ideas
but also "seriously" writes about Buddhism. In the latter efforts one cannot
avoid the feeling that he has allowed himself to get trapped more than once in
the web of philological fantasy, when he attempts to understand the legend of
the Buddha using 19th century demythologization (Borges, 1952). For all his
attempts to penetrate the mystery of Buddhism Borges still does this through
the eyes of European scholarship, which he barely imitates (Borges and Jurado,
1976, and 1980).
GOMEZ 197
negotiate with editors after spending long hours negotiating with oneself
in an effort to craft a very preliminary object-the so-called "manuscript."
We look in trepidation as this object is transformed into a different one,
the book or the chapter. Throughout the process we are sustained by a
belief, which we hold against all evidence, a faith that somehow the cre-
ator, and the ideas, and the words, and the book form some sort of coher-
ent whole, perhaps an unchanging unity. We live in the hope that what-
ever comes out at the end will become an effective vehicle for what our
imperfect memory makes us believe were or are our positions, or for what
memory makes us believe are the true words about someone else's words
and ideas. When the final work becomes the locus or the pretext for a
plurality of foreign voices, what shall we conclude, that the work has been
misunderstood by every other reader, or that maybe there were many
works to start with?
The emptiness of author and authorship is both a cultural event of our
time and a subjective experience. This event and this experience are sim-
ple reminders that any text lives only in a context created by other texts,
other events, other persons-there is no such thing as erasing the "errors"
of our predecessors, since our "discoveries" only make sense in the con-
text of the discourse they created. Buddhist words and works in particu-
lar, if presented as the texts "as they are," as "what the texts say before
any interpretation," or as the truly original source, without precedent,
would be context-less. In a paper that has been unfortunately neglected,
Paul Griffiths gave us the convenient term "Buddhist Hybrid English" to
designate that form of English we have created in an attempt to translate
Buddhist jargon into English. But this attempt seems to fail only because
it is an attempt to convey Buddhist discourse apart from a community of
believers, "free of interpretation" and free of the biases that are built into
the English language-in other words, as if it could exist outside the
actual world of English language users. Griffiths also pointed out the
absurdity of a translation without a context, and seemed to privilege the
contemporary interpretive study over the translation, arguing that the
Western scholar should only do the former. In doing so, he was pointing
not at a problem inherent to Buddhist texts but inherent to transmitting lit-
erature into a culture that still lacks the audience for that literature.
My perception of the problem differs from Griffiths's, insofar as the
Buddhist case is only an extreme case of the problem of translation gen-
erally. Like other translations, translations of Buddhist texts must have an
opportunity to enter the shifting terrain of the international language of
English, and there compete for meanings. One must, therefore, come to
198 JIABS 18.2
the defense of a modicum of Hybrid English. Unamuno's criticism of the
those who expect proper Spanish translations ("traducciones castizas") of
Hegel and Kierkegaard seems applicable in this context. No one among
us can predict, much less legislate, the future of appropriate or meaningful
language-to do so would be to claim individual property rights over
something that is useful and valuable only because it cannot be owned by
individuals. Like the single true text, the single appropriate expression is
only a fiction, a fantasy created by our desire to control the authority of
the sacred word.
An excursus: The lexicon
An extreme manifestation of the cult of the word is the belief in the power
of the glossary, the lexicon, and the word index. Again, the Buddhist
tradition has provided us with a model to follow. We can call this the
Mahiivyutpatti tradition-which originates in the West with an early
attempt to translate a derivative of the great Tibetan glossary, an attempt
that is one of the earliest pieces of Buddhist scholarship in Europe. As an
exaggerated appeal to the authority of words, this tradition would have
meanings encoded in lists of polyglot equivalents. It is also assumed that
"the underlying meaning" is a Sanskritic meaning. In this form, the lexi-
cographic tradition has been considerably undermined by the growth of
independent Sinological and Japanological branches of Buddhist Studies,
and of late, has also been weakened by the growing independence of
Tibetan Studies. But here too the tradition still retains a place of impor-
tance in the training of Buddhist scholars, because Buddhism itself relied
on and turned towards the Sanskritic meaning of words as a corner stone
for the construction of theological meaning.
A close relation to the tradition of the word-list is the index tradition. In
Buddhist studies the distinction between the index and the concordance
has failed to develop as it has in other disciplines. Critical indexing (as
we see, e. g., in Weller's index to the Bodhicaryiivatiira) is rare; so are
indexes that serve a heuristic function, be it grammatical (as in Nobel's
index to the Tibetan text of the SuvarlJaprabhii) or thematic-exegetical (of
which only some rare indexes of similes and metaphors exist). Word lists
are of some use, especially when they are comprehensive-see Ejima's
index to the SaddharmapulJarlkaslltra (1985), the fruit of ten years of
work. But generally it is not easy to tell if a work of this nature is meant
as a tool or as a collection of sacred words.
I allude to this confusion between tool and collection of sacred words,
but I do not mean this facetiously or sarcastically. It may be that the
GOMEZ 199
index does serve a sacred purpose worth investigating. It is also true that
indexes are still of some value in the absence of comprehensive critical
dictionaries.
2. "Systems of thought": The scholastic model
Asia, however, did not only give us the slltra, and the translator, or the
lexicographer, it also gave us the creator of systems, the scholastic as
commentator and abhidharrnist. Thus it gave us a second model of Bud-
dhist scholarship. Many of us, trained in the hallowed philological tradi-
tion were also trained in an abhidharrnic tradition. The recognized need
(and I would argue the justifiable requirement) that our students under-
stand traditional systematizations often bred modern abhidharrnists. Fig-
ures like Rosenberg, Vassiliev, Stcherbatsky, and their Indian, Tibetan,
and Japanese sources played a major role in the formation of early West-
ern models of Buddhist scholarship and conceptions of Buddhism. They
tended to create a Buddhism that was disembodied, abstract, and, above
all, deceptively elegant, antiseptic, and orderly.
This is not meant to deny the importance of the careful study of native
scholastic traditions. Among the many reasons why Buddhist cultures
and literatures should be part of a university curriculum, I would list first
the fact that Buddhism offers a mature and sophisticated critical tradition
that can be used in the classroom as a model of what is alternative. My
warnings are more against two other, dangerously overlapping, uses of the
tradition: (1) to create the illusion that Buddhism is a closed system, im-
penetrable or unchallengeable, and thereby, (2) to reinforce the Western
preconception of Buddhism as the wholly other and incommensurable.
The scholastic systems should be the subject of some sort of social cri-
tique, of a critique of genre, etc. But, at the same time, they should retain
some role as part of the backdrop for our pedagogical narratives of Bud-
dhist history and doctrine. They should also be the object of philosophi-
cal criticism. A fine example of this approach is the work of Paul
Griffiths (1991, 1994), which illustrates well an imaginative use of this
tradition, in his case concerned not only with contexts but with what we
may call etic validity. 11 He has been one of the few scholars of Buddhism
11. I am not sure how Griffith's interests and approaches in this latter work
would agree or disagree with his earlier statements about Buddhist Hybrid
English. But it would be unfair to make much of disagreements I may see
today without first hearing what disagreements he would see, because the two
sets of opinions represent two different Griffiths at two different points in time.
200 JIABS 18.2
to recognize that underlying our historical and textual research-and per-
haps ultimately providing or denying its justification-is a struggle for
truth, and that generally the Buddhist scholar is philosophically timid in
this area.
I would add, in a more contemporary tone, that "truth" comes in many
forms and shapes, and that the struggle for authority and its accouterments
(prestige, power, influence, self-satisfaction, and a sense of security and
control), can take place in the restricted and isolated environment of an
academic guild, around issues of syllable count and epigraphic dating.
One should not assume that the scholar who denies any interest in philo-
sophical truth is in fact renouncing all claims on truth.
"Truth" in the abstract is never enough. It is in the nature of philosophy
and theology to thirst for systems and order, to crave for some type of clo-
sure. But this is only achievable in a didactic mode, in the mode of the
catechism. In other socio-political contexts, the press for ideational clo-
sure and neatness unravels. This closure may be reduced to an ultimate
appeal to what is wrongly conceived as a "Madhyarnika mystical silence."
It may be established with an appeal to a non-Buddhist authority (though
this is now less common). But the most common is for the closure to be
constructed-very much like the illusion created by Borges with his Dr.
Brodie, and his Hervert Quain-out of the presumed order and internal
consistency of the system.
The illusion of completeness is a traditional Buddhist value so that it
seeps into modem scholarship from traditional models as well as from our
natural compulsion to have it all. It is therefore possible to see these
styles of scholarship as a modem response (or, rather, correspondence) to
the authority of the Buddhist tradition itself, but they also may be the
result of the Western scholars discovering himself in the Indian scholastic.
One may use knowledge not as self-discovery or discovery but as self-
confirmation or as a way of knowing in order not to know.
Buddhist scholastic traditions deserve of course our attention as docu-
ments of Buddhist ideology and polemics. But they cannot contain the
last words in matters of doctrine, much less of history. The question is
how they are to be read, the degree of suspicion that we must bring to a
genre that is peculiarly multivocal and therefore cannot be seen as nor-
mative. One needs to understand its multivocality and its position relative
to other sets of voices, including those that are presented as the source for
scholastic authority, their opposites or so-called "low" traditions, and the
traditions of the contemporary world.
G6MEZ 201
A specially silent, but egregious, gap in the construction of scholastic
normative pictures of Buddhism is created precisely by the absence of the
alternative voice and the alternative genre, by silence regarding the social
setting and the religious function of those alternative voices. One does
not have to advocate any extreme left-wing position to see that important
segments of the religious life of a tradition are ignored by the systems
approach to religion and ideology of religion. Even a conservative, albeit
idiosyncratic, thinker like Miguel de Unamuno saw the difference
between the voice of a John of the Cross and the voice of a Teresa of
Avila, understanding that the issue was not one of differences in doctrines
or systems (John of the Cross's strength), but of personal and gender
styles, and of expressive force (Teresa's strength). In other words, the
topic of theological writing, like the topic of all other writing, is the per-
son and his or her position in a world of culture and materiality (St.
Teresa's "pots and pans," in Unamuno's language). Teresa's idiosyn-
cratic and messy style has, for a given culture and a given subculture
(Unamuno is thinking of Spanish women) the same force, power, and
importance as the Critique of Pure Reason has for a different subculture
(male, Northern European). The system is therefore only the veneer of
other realities, which, of course are many of them social, but which I
would argue, with Unamuno, can be at the same time "spiritual" and
"philosophical" but of a kind different from the illusion of order created
by the sanitizing, prophylactic effect of scholastic systematization.
3. Doctrine and truth: The doctrinal tradition
In our field, perhaps more than in any other, there is a constant struggle to
bring in or keep out questions of truth. Susumu Yamaguchi is said to
have gently persuaded Louis de la Vallee Poussin to wonder aloud about
his motives for studying Buddhism: the practice of this metier-strange
indeed in Western societies-must hold some clue to the secret (perhaps
unconscious) workings of the mind of this particular and peculiar type of
scholar.
We may ask what attracts a scholar to a field where "doctrine" and
"truth" are clearly being contested, and what makes one type of person
into a defender of Buddhist truth claims, another into a detractor (a type
that is surprisingly rare, at least in the scholar's public persona), another
into remaining evasive and hiding behind the shield of "scholarly
neutrality."
Committed scholarship is a style of Buddhist learning for which the
tradition provides a variety of models. In fact, the presence of such mod-
202 JIABS 18.2
els may be part of the reason that reactions to the issue of doctrinal truth
can be so strong-the Buddhist tradition, though generally less assertive
and aggressive than other religious traditions, is nevertheless a proselytiz-
ing tradition, and as a religion demands some sort of commitment.
How sensitive this topic can be becomes obvious to me even as I write
these lines and hesitate: most of the contemporary examples that come to
mind result in such poor scholarship (and often work against the tradition
in strange ways) that I move with trepidation. Nevertheless, the tradi-
tional model of scholarship with commitment can produce elegant and
responsible scholarship even today. One can think of the work (or I
should say the life-time dedication and creativity) of Gadjin Nagao as
perhaps the quintessential model of quality for this tradition.
Likewise, it is possible still to find intelligent criticism (that is, in the
sense of polemics, not in the sense of critical theory) following traditional
doctrinal lines. The recent work of Hakamaya and Matsumoto (their cen-
sorial term "hihan" sometimes misconstrued as if it meant "critical" in the
contemporary Western sense). Needless to say, I would take exception
with their use of concepts of history and origin, but as I have already
noted, the tradition accepts these models, and a criticism coming from
within the tradition is justified in appealing to such notions of history. In
the same breath I add, however, it is justified, but it must also be ready to
be challenged by more contemporary notions of history and authority.
More common than these two types is the attempt to make "silent
statements about truth"-that is, the presentation of doctrinal claims as
part of simple "reporting" tradition. This refers to the scholar whose
leanings and preferences are hidden behind the persona of the "objective
reporter" (alas, a true oxymoron). This is doxography's rich cousin-the
modern scholar replicates or imitates the classical doxographer with the
advantage of some modern tools. At one time this was a common genre
(perhaps a method of sorts, insofar as genre and method cannot be sepa-
rated in practice). But its main weakness (talking about systems of truth
while ignoring everything that is outside the system) is now too well
known. Regrettably, neglect of doxography may bring with it neglect of
the broader issues of "systems" and their religious and social functions.
On the positive end, the attempt to appear "objective," if accompanied
by the understanding and practice of accounting for negative evidence,
can lead to preservation and highlighting of particular strata of the tradi-
tion that would otherwise be neglected by the scholar who has shed all
pretense of "objectivity." On the negative end, the objective accountant,
like the doxographer, can turn into a professional claiming his or her pro-
GOMEZ 203
ductions as independent entities called facts, discoveries, and the end and
all of science. Then this scholar is dangerously close to so many other
ways of knowing in order not to know (and confess without confessing).
Or, at best, scholarship has then the beauty and joys of butterfly collecting
(admiration that depends on the death of the object).
4. Doctrine and time: Textual histories
The construction of history based on the logic of textual evidence (that is
on a "rational" ordering or stratification of the sources) is especially
common in the study of Indian Buddhism and may be due in part to
scarcity of historical documents. But the general tendency to understand
history as a movement in a single, orderly, and rational direction is not
only due to the need to rely on too much literary sources. Here too truth
values and judgments of value generally are reduced to a certain precon-
ception of what is order, and the more fundamental preconception that
order must exist in history. This is compounded by the existence of so-
called Buddhist "hermeneutics" of stratified truth, or the hierarchy of
truths. The modem scholar therefore finds himself or herself reproducing,
consciously or unconsciously a type of p' an-chiao.
History then becomes not the history of common belief systems and
local variations, but the story of how a system of beliefs either devolves
away from its pristine origins (decay) or evolves towards a culmination or
recovery (growth). Buddhist traditions lend us models for both metaphors
of history. Decay is the theme of the so-called "prophecies of the decay
of Dharma." Culminationism is at the root of the so-called "hermeneutics
of the three turnings."
The concept of historical decay, so common in the days of Spencer and
Spengler, has fallen into disrepute. But culminationism is still very much
alive and often shapes our teaching, because our courses are often orga-
nized according to some type of chronological grid. It is possible to
combine both models by conceiving of "life" as culminating in old age.
Thus, a recent book on Buddhist art states in its preface that the books is
"a panoramic survey of the history of Buddhist art from its origins in
India to its final efflorescence in Japan" (Yamamoto, 1990).
Many of us are trying to move away from the chronological template in
class and in research. The challenge of the future, however, will be to
find a way to retain the obvious pedagogical advantages of a chronologi-
cal matrix while we replace the implicit universal linear narrative with a
narrative that is neither culminationistic nor atomistic. At this point in
time, it appears that the abandonment of hegemonic and universalisitc
204 JIABS 18.2
conceptions of history is leading to the fragmenting of knowledge, his-
tory, and identity. The flourishing of the Festschrift and the conference
volume may be a silent academic reflection of the general fragmentation
within and among societies that comes with the loss of a sense of univer-
sal history, the loss of self, and the loss of object.
The Development of Critical Awareness
There is no need to review the traditional roots of the problematic
assumptions behind these four approaches to Buddhist Studies. One can-
not imagine that anyone would quarrel with the notion that traditional
Buddhist's in Asia have assumed a single voice, the pure and pristine
source, cloaked in the mythologies of gradual revelation, culmination, and
the last word. But, much culminationist polemics (sometimes mistakenly
called "hermeneutics" in contemporary writings on Buddhism) have had
as their astutely implied consequence the existence of a "latter teaching"
that is in fact the final teaching and by implication the true and pure
teaching. Buddhist scholars and believers are not, after all, immune to the
fever of wanting to be "the last man."
Nevertheless, apologetic moves like Buddhist culminationist doctrines
bear witness to an awareness of the multivocal nature of a tradition. Such
an awareness or unconscious intuition can also be seen in the traditional
histories of the schools and doxographies. The, intuition appears occa-
sionally in the reports of pilgrims, in the religious travelogue. The latter
genre might be seen as an early forerunner or distant relative of the mod-
ern ethnography. Ethnography, of course, is not necessarily critical-its
various roots in the goals and habits of the wealthy traveler, the colonial
officer, and the missionary are well known and need not be reviewed
here.
Nevertheless, ethnographic and anthropological research occupy a
dominant position among those methods that attempt to avoid some of the
pitfalls of the traditional modes of doing Buddhist Studies (Lewis 1989,
1992, 1994). Yet anthropological thinking sometimes seems to only
exaggerate the gap between present forms of Buddhism and ancient Bud-
dhism that had been posited already by the ideal image of the inviolate
past presented by the philologist (the human Buddha who could not have
taught the "superstitions" of real-life Buddhists). The philologist may be
reluctant to accept what we observe in the field, or what the believer
reports to us in the field, but the anthropologist should not accept the
assumptions of this reluctance. The converse of this is the tendency,
GOMEZ 205
noticeable in some recent studies to assume that the textual study is not
only in need of revision, but fundamentally flawed.
A healthy critique of the uses and misuses of the textual tradition needs
to stay with us, especially with those of us devoted to textual study. A
refocusing of our narratives on the wider field of practice (as observable
behavior in the field) can give us refreshing presentations of the tradition
(witness some of the more recent books of wide appeal, such as Swearer).
However, any good criticism can be abused. Three words of caution are
therefore in order.
First, we are reaching the saturation point, at which the critique can
become trite, predictable. When this happens the critique turns into ten-
dency and fashion, and inevitable blinds us to other perspectives. The net
effect on humanities and humanistic learning, and, what is more impor-
tant, humanistic education, is not easy to access. The presentation of
Buddhism in the classroom as something occurring only in a practice
without canonical benchmarks may be more corrosive that one can per-
ceive on first blush-after all, this degree of secularization and devalua-
tion of the book is not accompanied by a parallel secularization and
devaluation of the Great Books of our own culture. Granted that in major
research universities this may not be the case, still I would argue that, in a
society dominated by Western models of truth and authority, an exagger-
ated inflation of the "field" approach to Buddhism that excludes the tex-
tual tradition and the canons that guided that tradition may work in sup-
port of the exoticization of Buddhism, reinforce its alterity, and reinforce
the perception among our students and the public at large that Buddhism
is only a curiosity, and certainly not comparable to the well ordered and
well-demonstrated products of our own culture.1
2
Second, by the time Buddhist Studies came to appreciate fully the value
of ethnographic observation, ethnography itself was under attack and in
crisis. Ethnographic studies on Buddhist cultures or Buddhist communi-
ties have yet to make full and effective use of contemporary critiques of
ethnography. It is too early to predict, for instance, how these critiques
will affect the way we understand the interconnection between oral and
12. This opinion may very well reflect my experiences teaching in a university
in the heartland of North America. But I cannot imagine there are many places
where Buddhist canonical ideals and concepts of rationality compete without a
handicap against Western canonical ideals and notions of rationality. The
challenge to the canons is paradoxically after all a notion that is very white,
very European, very middle class. Additionally, higher education in the indus-
trialized world continues to be dominated by the ideals of European culture.
206 JIABS 18.2
textual traditions in Buddhism, or the way we will come to understand the
stratification of authority across a field of Buddhist practices.
Third, a simplistic or "methodological" exclusion of the textual tradition
leads to two errors of perspective. This perspective may tum into fact the
questionable assumption that textual traditions and textual elites are enti-
ties separate from the living traditions and the non-elite groups with
which they obviously interact. Additionally, it may lead to further
neglecting an important field of research: the location and function of the
text in the praxis of a religious community.
We would be well advised, therefore, to open the field to alternative
models, but to do so with constant watchfulness (which is not the same as
being timid or unduly cautious). There is no single alternative method
that will solve our problems. To assume that there is would be a return to
the assumption of the single true word. The present climate of scholar-
ship in other fields is already having a salutary effect on our field-the
methods we may want to emulate are under constant attack and revision,
to the benefit of all of us. Hence, lest I give the impression that Buddhist
Studies is mired in ancient scholasticism and surreptitious dogmatism, I
rush to note that as the second century of Buddhist Studies approaches its
middle point, scholars are struggling more and more with the question of
what is it that we are doing and why.
The process must continue. Buddhist Studies will have to come to grips
with these questions soon or else continue its isolated existence. It may
very well be that Buddhist Studies will remain marginalized even if it
faces up to this challenge-after all there are forces greater than scholarly
honesty and clarity. It may even come to pass that Buddhist Studies will
disappear as a result of facing up to the challenge, destroyed by its own
self-doubting; but I for one cannot imagine the field going in any other
direction but the examination of its own assumptions, roles, and claims.
The training of Buddhist Studies scholars excludes serious reflections
on the position and value of the scholarly enterprise, particularly that of
the buddhologist. Such reflections may be avoided for reasons of effi-
ciency, that is, oftime. But they are also reflective of a general tendency
to work as if the rest of the world were not relevant. Not only do we fail
to examine the location of the discourse of Buddhist scholarship in schol-
arship and education generally, or its roots in the past (including the re-
cent past of contemporary scholarship on Buddhism), we also miss, as a
consequence, the opportunity to examine the role of Buddhist scholarship
as a competing discourse, and above all the role of Buddhist discourse as
a competing discourse. These are, in fact, the key functions of criticism,
GOMEZ 207
all of which have not only theoretical interest but also practical con-
sequences.
"Criticism" is a concept with a wide range of meanings (and therefore a
wide range of claims). In Buddhist Studies, however, the dominant and
normative model has been that of the curator, not the critic. Hence we
have not enriched the field as we could have if we were more open to the
full range of criticism that we find in other fields in the humanities. I am
referring to the acceptance of judgments and evaluations (needless to say
educated and discriminating) about the value-artistic, social, religious-
of our sources, the application of so-called "lower-criticism with a clear
view of its presuppositions and its implications for "higher criticism." An
active and live debate on how we make the above judgments, in particu-
lar, the philosophical investigation of the process, the possibility, the
meaning, and the ends of scholarly investigation generally. By "criti-
cism" I mean primarily the last of these meanings, and include the inves-
tigation of comparative issues in doctrine, sociology, etc., as long as they
are conscious efforts to define the nature of our relationship to the mate-
rials, subjects, or texts that we are investigating.
Efforts of this kind have already appeared, in works that received some
initial celebratory reviews but were soon forgotten,or criticized not for
the issues they raise, but for the Ubiquitous "errors" in textual scholarship
(the trump card is noting how the author is not familiar with "the original
languages"). Such criticism is not surprising, since until recently some of
the best criticism came from outside the field. Thus the work of
Gudmunsen and Tuck fell prey to the most obvious defense of the guild.
More recent work, it is to be hoped, will be more robust, since it is com-
ing from within the guild. It remains to be seen how (or if) we will be
able to make good use of the rhetorical criticism of Faure (1991, 1993) or
the cultural criticism of Lopez (1995).13
It is neither necessary nor advisable to steer our students away from
classical philology. But we in Buddhist Studies must practice a healthy
detachment, an application of skillful means, with respect to its ancient
13. The reception of Huntington's radical rhetorical criticism is much more
problematic, since it also raises the specter of borrowing surreptitiously
Nagarjuna's cloak of invulnerability. A different type of criticism, which I
would call evidential criticism, has been presented in action more than in the-
ory by G. Schopen. I believe Schopen is also doing a special kind of cultural
criticism, although I have not seen him state anything like this publicly. Even
his paper on "Protestant presuppositions" shies away from the implicit cultural
criticism.
208 JIABS 18.2
attachment to Enlightenment models of grammatical clarification and
psychological divination it la Schleiermacher. The question of how (or if)
it is possible to "divine" the other and his, or her, or their intentionality
needs to be an integral part of our discussion. The degree to which such
"educated guessing" can reflect the scholar and his community's script-
ing (Tomkins), or the degree to which it is a truncated dialogue (Tedlock)
must be considered.
I do not present these imaginings as a way of undermining our profes-
sion or declaring our task absurd. But our task, if viewed with rigidity
and grandiosity as a quest for the truth, is indeed an impossible task. On
this I side with the more radical critical theorists. With de Man, I believe
translation is impossible, and with Foucault I regard interpretation as the
insertion into a text of a new and foreign voice-hence, "a displacement
of authority." But this stance is only a reaction to what I view as the fun-
damentalism of traditional Buddhist scholarship. When I say that transla-
tion is impossible and interpretation is fraudulent, I refer to-certain ideals
of translation and interpretation. That is to say, a translation that repre-
sents the original accurately is impossible. The only perfect translation
there can be is the original itself-which, of course, is not a translation,
only Menard's Quijote. A "critical apparatus" that gives us the true and
original social and psychological reality of the text's meaning is absurd,
by virtue of the gulf to which the "apparatus" bears witness, and by virtue
of the fact that no one can represent accurately and thoroughly the social
and psychological reality of anything-not even his or her own reality.
Such ideals are only possible in a mythical discourse in which science is
conceived in theological terms: that is, not as probabilistic reasoning and
the testing of hypotheses, but as the establishment of authoritative truth.
It is important that the scientific model be mentioned here, although the
human sciences should be well advised to avoid using this model as the
ultimate and absolute judge of scholarly integrity. For the concept of
probabilistic reasoning offers a useful analogy for a crucial distinction
often neglected in human sciences: the difference between syllogistic
certainty and "likelihood."
A moderately experienced reader of Sanskrit can usually determine with
a very high degree of confidence whether a given form in a given Sanskrit
text is or is not a finite verb. This reader can also assume with almost
absolute certainty that this verb forms the kernel of a clause. But, as the
reader moves into the grammatical function of this partiCUlar verb in this
particular clause, or into the relationship of the clause to broader and
broader segments of discourse, confidence must by necessity decrease.
GOMEZ 209
As certainty decreases, it becomes appropriate to talk of the likelihood of
an interpretation.
This is not the same thing as denying all possibility of distinguishing
right from wrong, as long as "right" and "wrong" mean, respectively,
plausible and implausible. My criticism is also an affirmation of the
probability that the right and wrong we advocate at a given moment may
be undermined and denied at the next moment. Right and wrong of tex-
tual and cultural analysis are a matter of degrees of confidence. Yet these
are not the same as probabilistic confidence intervals, because
"probability" (or, rather, "likelihood") in the human sciences cannot be
quantified, and depends on experienced intuition and linguistic skill in a
manner that probability estimates do not in the social and natural sciences.
Likelihood in the literary sciences remains nevertheless the object of
discriminating and educated judgments that constrain interpretive dis-
course. The actual constraints set by scholarly experience and convention
are the "tools" of the trade. They are the limits to imagination set by the
object and its medium (be it the limits of grammar or the limits of per-
formance, for instance), and the limitations imposed upon us by the con-
stricted range of our own discourse, audience, and social setting.
In the end, constraints make differences and meanings, because
"constraint" is what determines the possibility of meaningful discourse. It
guarantees a common language, and therefore a common set of values. It
is one way to make sure that scholarship is not a narcissistic enterprise of
talking to ourselves in an empty room.
But, in what sense could we say that the constraints of discourse ulti-
mately make no difference? In the sense that the parameters of such con-
straints are to a certain degree in flux, or, as the fashionable jargon would
have it, "they are contested horizons"-withoutjargon: intelligent, honest,
human beings will disagree and argue about these constraints (and so will
less intelligent, honest, or even less civil and benevolent human beings).
Furthermore, those horizon's of meaning that affect judgments of right
and wrong will always be dictated by communities and by the needs of
communities. Our choice of the right or the wrong is only relevant insofar
as a community will listen and pass judgment. And that the constraints
are always open to new conceptions of what the applicability of our
notions is. Thus, although the possible readings of a given passage may
vary little in a period of a quarter or half a century, the limits of reading
can easily expand or contract with the changing of culture, especially
across many years of cultural history. Doctrinal readings may be dis-
placed by metrical studies, edition, or etymological studies, which may
210 JIABS 18.2
give way to form-critical studies, to be followed by a feminist critique.
One does not necessarily preclude the other, but each new perspective
changes the constraints that we accept as normal limitations on judgments
of value.
There is consequently no specific method to most humanistic disci-
plines-and Buddhist Studies is no exception. There is no specifically
Buddhist hermeneutics-unless one really believes in a single way of
being Buddhist, in which case we are not talking of hermeneutics but of
exegetical and apologetic strategies, at best. But there are a plurality of
interfaces between Buddhist traditions (forms of discourse, and social
contexts) and the social and discourse contexts of the scholar and the
scholar's culture. The number of interfaces is perhaps finite, but it is not
closed, not foreordained.
The scholar still retains a certain normative role as the interpreter of the
rules of discourse of a given culture or subculture (France, India, the
West, the quasi-Western culture of "world scholarship," the North
American academy, the guild of Buddhist scholars, the guild of the
tibetologists, etc.). But, as I have argued above, the object itself is also
the object of this normative investigation-Indian scholastics still retain a
certain normative role in Buddhist Studies, and that is as it should be, with
certain caveats.
The caveats have to do with the second role of the scholar: that of
negotiating normative authorities. The scholar has the difficult task of
listening to the voice of Buddhism (or of the plurality of Buddhist voices),
listening to the voice of Western cultures (even as they transform before
our very eyes like so many clouds), listening to the voice of his or her
own subculture (the academy, for instance), and yet retaining the capacity
to assume a critical stance of skepticism, of inquiry, a willingness to test
beliefs and values.
Texts and meanings are fragile because they are multivocal, and the
scholar's position is precarious because it is always dialogic (even when
we act as if it were not). But multivocality is something more than a
social or literary phenomenon-it is also linguistic and psychological.
Multivocality is built into language, and, I would argue, in our narratives
and fantasies about subjectivity, intentionality, and authorship.
Roman Iakobson (quoted in Ginzburg 1986, 159) recognizes "two
cardinal and complementary traits of verbal behavior": that "inner speech
is in its essence a dialogue, and that any reported speech is appropriated
and remolded by the quoter, whether it is a quotation from an alter or
GOMEZ 211
from an earlier phase of the ego (said 1)."14 One would have to add, if in
dialogue, then in conflict, if in conflict then precarious.
1 trust my audience's familiarity with Buddhist notions of change and
causality will make them more receptive to a description of the discipline
as groundless and a prescription for opening the discipline to radical self-
examination. We will not be destroying or betraying the tradition by
opening ourselves to a revision of our view of the field. The fact that
there is no substance (svabhiiva) to Buddhist Studies is good news, but it
requires that we abandon our persistent thought habits (abhiniveSa).
Roles and Methods
The future of Buddhist Studies is very much in its past (meaning, of
course, both the past of Buddhism and the past of the Western academy),
not in the sense that we will return or that we must return to the past, but
in the sense that the past reveals both the flaws and the strengths of the
scholar's many roles. Our weaknesses are those of our genres, our guilds,
and ultimately of what we call our method, and how we imagine it
through the metaphors of our discourse ("definitive," "accurate," "ground
breaking," etc.). Method, as 1 have argued, is to a great extent the formu-
lation of the limitations of certain genres and the formulation of roles and
skills, and of guild interests as constraints on what can be said. What are
these roles which allow us to form societies of craftsmen? What have
they been traditionally in the humanities, and, by extension, in Buddhist
Studies?
We hear much talk about methods as if they were somehow theoreti-
cally based, or based on ultimately absolute philosophical reasoning.
Such talk overlooks the extent to which a method is a posturing or the
expected behavior of a role. The academic student of Buddhism, for
instance, may appear in the guise of the "scholar" as "curator" or
"diviner." The first is the scholar who understands his or her role as the
custodian of a cultural object, or an idea, perhaps a "truth" Often the
object that is being guarded has been "restored" by a process of divination
that, the scholar would argue, guarantees that what is now in the curator's
show case is the genuine object.
This role of course overlaps with that of the "cleric," the custodian of
standards, values, truths. The cleric is no longer charged with the cure of
souls but serves as a true "clerk," the custodian of grammar and the
14. I suggest the reader juxtapose this quotation with the passage from Saint
Bonaventura quoted below.
212 JIABS 18.2
proper genres of scholarship. Perhaps, if this clerk is up to date he or she
will also be the custodian of "method" (constraints).
But scholars can still be "priests" in the sense that they can assume the
role of the theologian and the mystifier. Carefully avoiding the external
trappings of the priest, the scholars can nevertheless declare, for our bene-
fit, what the truth of Nagarjuna' s "mystical" experience is (or was?).
More common among contemporary scholars is the role of the anti-
priest: the guardian of "secular authority." I do not refer here to the
common iconoclasm directed at the consecrated work of other scholars,
rather, I refer to the scholar's interest in undermining the authority of the
tradition he or she studies. Seldom is this role part of the scholars public
role. The motives remain a mystery to me, but it is clear that it is polite to
pretend that scholarship is perfectly neutral. We would advance consider-
ably in both the goals of scholarship and (paradoxically) the goals of
belief and practice if we stopped once and for all the pretense that our
scholarship is never inimical to Buddhist belief and practice. It often is,
as it should be. It is also a competing authority.
The scholar's avowed neutrality is supposed to be a sign that he or she
is a scientist. This role allows us to avoid the dangers of a public recog-
nition of our role as critics. It also places us in the safe position of those
who can claim that the ideas they explore are not their own. Interestingly
enough this myth reinforces the idea that the scholar is not an author, that
the scholars role is totally other than that of the creative artist. Yet, the
scholar is supposed to be "original"-hence the inappropriate use of the
metaphors of science: "data" and "discovery."
This is ironic, for here we have, as in the case of philology, a conception
of truth that remains only vaguely articulated but has the potential for
problematic contradictions. On the one hand, the scholar denies his roles
as literary creator and craftsman, on the other hand he or she claims to be
"original." On the one hand, the scholar elevates his role to that of the
primary creator (devaluating the standpoint of the voices he is claiming to
report), on the other, he or she skirts the responsibilities that come with
usurping the primary voice.
The contemporary emphasis on "originality" which is held as an ideal
even as we presume that the scholar is not adding anything to his or her
sources, the emphasis on discovery in humanistic disciplines, and the
denial that the scholar is a creator like a writer is not only ironic, it is a
fundamental contradiction that hides the knotty problem of what is
authorship and whose is the authoritative voice. The complex industry of
producing books has many dimensions that we choose to ignore in our
GOMEZ 213
public discourse-although they are often the object of much discussion
during our private conversations. Central to this is the myth of the author
as creator and the scholar as scientist.
In the 13th century, Saint Bonaventura debated the questions of what is
an author and whether or not anyone other than God could be an author.
The Seraphic Doctor wrote:
[The] ways in which one writes a book are four. Someone may write down
the works of others, adding and changing nothing; and this person is simply
called "scribe" (scriptor). Another one may write down the works of others
adding elements that are not his own; and he is called a "compiler"
(compilator). Another one may write down both others' work and his own,
but in what is essentially the work of others, adding his own for purposes of
clarification (evidentia); and he is called a "commentator" (commentator),
not an "author." Another one may write down both his own work and that of
others', but in what is essentially his own work, adding the work of others'
for purposes of confirmation; and such a one should be called an "author"
(auctor). (Bonaventura 1882, 14-15)
John Burrow, quoting this very same passage (1976, 615) notes how
Bonaventura assumes that a thoroughly original composition, which is for
us the mark of the true writer, is not possible. The passage is emblematic
of the medieval conception of authorship, in which "a writer is a man who
'makes books' with a pen, just as a cobbler ... makes shoes on a last"
(Burrow, 1976). But we may learn much from this conception (a concep-
tion which was after all only displaced by the printing press, which may
itself be soon displaced by the electronic medium). This is a conception
of human agency and individual creativity very different from our own
conceptions, but this is most likely a conception very similar to that of
classical Buddhist sources.1
5
We cannot expect anyone among us to simply jettison his or her cultural
baggage and return to a Medieval conception of individuality and human
agency, but we can increase our awareness of the role of the scholar as
craftsman and writer. We can come to understand that our task is neither
the creation of something wholly new nor the accurate reflection of solid
15. And I note, in order to highlight the ironies that nuance my arguments, that
I quote Bonaventura's text from the Quaracchi edition, a true monument of
19th century text criticism.
214 JIABS 18.2
"facts." We cannot pretend that humanistic scholarship is the gathering of
accurate data (which, of course, is only the accountant's view of science)
where there is in fact very little measurable data. Rather we have to
understand our roles as different degrees of balance between writing one's
own work and adding the work of others, or the work of others, adding
one's own.
It is in the quest for this balance that issues of "method" and criticism
become relevant. Theory and method are propaedeutic, pedagogic, and
corrective. They are part of the ways by which we prepare scholars,
transmit values, and keep ourselves honest. There is, therefore, an ele-
ment of preparation, an element of transmission, and an element of
integrity. One way of viewing these three is to conceive of them as three
different forms of controlling for self-deception. Another way is to
imagine them as dimensions of the investigation of knowledge itself. In
these roles the scholar is a critic of his or her own metier.
Our critical goals, however, include unveiling the role of our audiences.
These audiences, real or imagined, include the power-base of our dis-
course: the university, the religious institutions of our cities, town and
nations, and the presence of our own individual communities of friends
and acquaintances whose suspicion of our work shapes the caution with
which we perform it (to say nothing of those parts of the world or the
academy where speaking freely can cost position or advancement, if not
life itself).
I would add, moreover, yet another audience (imagined yes, but all
important): the audience as source, or the source as audience. Our images
("scholarly scenarios") of who the audiences of our sources were or of
how these audiences may have used and understood our texts and objects
are in fact part of the Buddhism that acts as a control or constraint on our
scholarship.
But, "Buddhists" as audience are not always a silent or imagined audi-
ence. Contemporary Buddhists, wherever they may be, are also an audi-
ence for our scholarship. This neglected audience, which I am sure never-
theless affects our discourse, exists in three different roles. They can be
audience in the most common meaning of the term-that is, they read our
books. They are audience as target of the suasive power of our discourse
(we try to influence their way of thinking). They can be a source
(however maligned and deprived of authority they may sometimes
appear), because, inevitably, they speak to us and make demands on us.
The object of our study, like the object of any other science worth pur-
suing, is ever present and shifting. But in our field the object is also a
GOMEZ 215
voice that speaks to us and hears us. It is present not only as object but as
a set of voices that demands something from us. In fact our "object" has
had a biographic presence in all of our lives-especially on those of us
who can remember moments in our life narratives in which we have "felt
Buddhists" or "have been Buddhists" or have "practiced," as the contem-
porary English expression has it. I would venture more, even for those
who at one time or another have seen in some fragment of Buddhist tradi-
tion a particle of inspiration or an atom of insight, Buddhism is an object
that makes claims on their lives. For those who have failed even to expe-
rience this last form of interaction with the object, there must have been at
least moments of minimal encounters with seeking students or, after a dry
and erudite lecture, one of those emotional questions from the audience
that make all scholars nervous.
The plurality and complexity of our audience can also be imagined in
terms of the diversity of our pedagogical goals. The didactic dimension
of our work is something that involves not only our colleagues, not only
our younger colleagues (graduate students), but also our younger students,
and the public at large. All of these ultimately become colleagues insofar
as they shape in one manner or another our work, our expectations as to
what an audience wants or does not want to hear, and even our mental
models of what Buddhists may have desired, practiced, or imagined.
Among the ancient Mexicas, the metier of the scholar was the province of
the tlamatinime, the wise men among the nahuas, who Bernardino de
Sahagun called "sabios 6 fiI6sophos," but who were also the custodians of
oral and written texts. A true tlamatini, according to the C6dice
Matritense, "lifts up a mirror in front of others, making them persons of
sound judgment and circumspection, and giving them a face" (Le6n-
Portilla 1993, 65).
It would be presumptuous to compare the scholar with the wise man,
but the scholar's knowledge nevertheless should serve as a mirror to oth-
ers-and serve as the foundation for good judgment and circumspection.
Good judgment in matters of scholarship is the domain of the scholar, but
such good judgment should extend to other domains. Scholarship also
may (and we hope will) serve the humanistic purpose of helping to shape
persons, helping to shape a more humane being, a more humane face in
all of us, thus giving us a face.
But, why should I say that comparing the scholar to the sage is pre-
sumptuous? Or with what effect in mind have I said this? First there is a
"technical" difference: the scholar is open to a plurality of methods, the
216 JIABS 18.2
plurality advocated in this paper. Second there is a social difference: the
scholar, we would hope, has no aspirations to a position of authority com-
parable to that of the ancient sages. Third, there is a spiritual difference:
in principle the respectability and validity of our efforts should not
increase or diminish with our personal spiritual and moral growth or
decay (which is not to say that there are no moral constraints to the intel-
lectual enterprise).
These differences notwithstanding, we have a mirror to hold up. We
would do well to remember that we must hold this mirror up in front of
ourselves and that the face we thus form will have to be a changing
face-not necessarily changing by spiritual growth, but changing by criti-
cal growth. The mirror is also held up in front of our audience. We pro-
vide our audience, in fact, with a variety of mirrors. This is the service of
scholarship. Part of the message of this paper is a reminder that we must
consider the services that we can render. these are services rendered by
the field of Buddhist Studies to a broader field-responding to needs
derived from our own cultural experiences, and responding to distinct
cultural "choices."
We render a service to the Academy. First, to present and preserve
another voice or another family of voices (what we call, in shorthand,
"Buddhist traditions"). Second, to model a style of evidence.
We render a service to Buddhists and their ideals. First, by understand-
ing their perspective on their traditions, their sense of continuity, and their
sense of belonging. Second, by helping preserve their traditions. Third,
by keeping a critical eye on criticism, seeing clearly when an arrogant
eagerness to censure and ridicule appears under the guise of critical
thought.
We render a service to criticism and its role in contemporary Western
culture. First, by the mere fact that we help preserve alternative voices.
Second, by insuring the preservation of alternative voices within Bud-
dhism. Third, by questioning the same limitations and constraints that we
believe are established by previous moments of critical reflection.
Humanistic scholarship stands in a no-man's land between tradition and
criticism, between community and individual preferences. It cannot seek
and cannot lead to agreement. The greatest mistake we can make is to try
to be the fabled "last man" who has "the last word" (the "defInitive" this
or that). Our role vis a vis community is not one of deciding the issues
once and for all but one of keeping more than one voice alive. Recog-
nizing the power of voice, we must be careful not to seek to establish a
single voice.
G6MEZ 217
As in other myths of creation, the Popol-Yuh tells us that the creators
created by naming, but they did so only after two creators had spoken to
each other:
Then came the word, Tepeu and Gucumatz came together, in darkness, in
the night, and they spoke among themselves Tepeu and Gucumatz. They
therefore spoke consulting each other, and meditating, they agreed among
themselves and combined their words and their minds ....
Then Tepeu and Gucumatz came together; then they held council on life
and light, what should be done so that dawn and daybreak would come, and
who would produce food nourishment. (Popol Yuh 1994, 23-24)
Of course we are not Tepeu and Gucumatz, but we have a small world of
our own to preserve and maintain, if not create, and we are still in dark-
ness and need much more light. Conversation and deliberation may be
the only tools at our disposal.
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JOSE IGNACIO CABEZON
Buddhist Studies as a Discipline
and the Role of Theory
Is Buddhist Studies a discipline, or is it still in a proto-disciplinary phase
in its evolution? Or is it rather a super-disciplinary entity that serves as a
home for disciplines? What is the relationship of Buddhist Studies to the
(sub)disciplines from which it draws? Does Buddhist Studies require
homogeneity for its coherence and perpetuation as a field of academic
inquiry? Does it in fact have such homogeneity? The last decade has
been witness to the rise of a body of theoretical literature whose purpose
it is to explore the notion of disciplinarity.! How do disciplines arise?
What social, institutional and rhetorical practices are employed in the
construction of their sense of coherence and unity? What are their natu-
ral subdivisions? How do disciplines change, and how do they respond
to changes in the intellectual climate? How do they interact with one an-
other? These are just some of the questions raised in the field that has
come to be known as "disciplinary studies," and the first goal of this
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Institut ftir Kultur und
Geschichte Indiens und Tibets, Universitlit Hamburg in the summer of 1994; it
has benefited from the comments of colleagues and students alike; I would
especially like to thank Prof. D. Jackson for his close reading, and Mr. B.
Quessel and Dr. F.-K. Ehrhard for their valuable bibliographical suggestions.
It was also presented as a keynote address at the meeting of the International
Association of Buddhist Studies, Mexico City (November, 1994), in response
to which I must acknowledge not only the comments of the various colleagues
who heard the paper, but also the valuable bibliographical references supplied
to me by Profs. T. Tillemans and J. Bronkhorst, by Dr. U. Pagels and by
Prof. Jamie Hubbard. The paper was written during the tenure of an
Alexander von Humboldt fellowship. The author wishes to express his grati-
tude to the von Humboldt Stiftung (Bonn) for its generous financial support.
l. The most recent study, with an extensive bibliography of previous work in
the field, is Ellen Messer-Davidow, David R. Shumway and David J. Sylvan,
eds., Knowledges: Historical and Critical Studies in Disciplinarity
(Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 1993).
231
232 JIABS 18.2
essay is to reflect on Buddhist Studies in light of this recent body of
literature.
The second goal derives from the first and is in a sense more urgent.
If, as I think is clear, divergent methodological approaches to the study
of Buddhism are emerging, then the time has come for us to seriously
consider these alternative methodologies and to ask what role method-
ological reflection should play in the field today. For the past several
years different approaches to the study of Buddhism have emerged that
challenge what they take to be the classical paradigm. How the latter is
characterized, of course, determines the nature of the critique. In some
instances classical Buddhology is portrayed as overly concerned with a
specific geographical area (usually India). The domination of the field
by the given area is said to have two consequences: (1) by equating the
study of Buddhism with its study in the specific geographically hege-
monic area, classical Buddhology has been charged with impairing the
development of areas of research-Chinese, Tibetan and Southeast Asian
Buddhist Studies, for example-as subdisciplines in their own right, and
(2) it makes of the study of the languages and civilizations of these other
areas mere tools to the study of the dominant cultural region.
2
But the
critique of the classical paradigm in Buddhist Studies can take other
2. That the study of Indian Buddhism is hegemonic in this regard-that
scholars of the latter consider the study of Chinese texts as worthwhile only to
the extent that it serves to elucidate Indian Buddhism-is a point made most
recently by T. Griffith Foulk, "Issues in the Field of East Asian Buddhist
Studies: An Extended Review of Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to
Enlightenmeht in Chinese Thought," Journal of the International Association
of Buddhist Studies 16.1 (1993): 93-180. The point is also made by
Lancaster; see note 18. It is not difficult to see why in reading Nagao Gadjin,
for example, a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism should share Foulk's view con-
cerning the dominance of Indian / Sanskritic based scholarship in the field. In
Nagao's "Reflections on Tibetan Studies in Japan," Acta Asiatica: Bulletin of
the Institute of Eastern Culture 29 (1975): 107-128, he states that "Tibetan is
no more than a complement to Sanskrit Buddhist studies, though a very
important complement" (p. 112). See also de Jong's remarks concerning the
centrality of Indian Buddhist texts in Buddhist Studies in his "Recent Buddhist
Studies in Europe and America: 1973-1983," Eastern Buddhist 17.1 (1981):
82. On the relationship of the study of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism in
Japan, and the methodological shifts that have taken place in recent years see
Matsumoto Shiro, Tibetan Studies in Japan: 1973-1983, Asian Studies in
Japan, 1973-1983, Part II-18 (Tokyo: The Centre for East Asian Cultural
Studies, 1986).
CABEZON 233
forms as well. There are those who claim, for example, that the field
focuses almost exclusively on written, doctrinal texts to the exclusion of
other semiotic (that is, meaning-producing) forms (e. g., oral texts, epi-
graphical and archaeological data, rituals, institutions, art and social
practices) In some instances the critique goes further, not only bemoan-
3. Many scholars in the history of the field have stressed the importance of
considering more than written textual data. This has traditionally taken the
form of advocating the study of epigraphy, art, ritual, culture, "Buddhist
mentality," etc., alongside, or as supplements to, textual material. E. Burnouf,
arguably the father of Buddhist Studies, himself used epigraphical material to
shed light on the meaning of words and phrases in the texts he studied; see his
extensive tenth appendix to Le Lotus de la Bonne Loi (Paris: Maissoneuve,
1825). On other studies of Buddhist inscriptions see J. W. de Jong, "A Brief
History of Buddhist Studies in Europe and America," Eastern Buddhist 8.1:
88; and, by the same author, "Recent Buddhist Studies" p. 98. The most recent
literature, however, dissatisfied with this more moderate stance, criticizes the
hegemony of the written text over other semiotic forms and attempts to show
how a serious engagement with the latter undermines many of the
traditional-written-text-based-presuppositions of the field. Paradigmatic of
this approach is the work of Gregory Schopen. See especially his "Two
Problems in the History of Indian Buddhism: The Layman / Monk Distinction
and the Doctrines of the Transference of Merit," Studien zur Indologie und
lranistik 10 (1985); "The Stupa Cult and the Extant Pali Vinaya," Journal of
the Pali Text Society 13 (1989); and "Burial 'ad Sanctos' and the Physical
Presence of the Buddha in Early Indian Buddhism," Religion 17 (1987): 193-
225. Of course, as Schopen himself acknowledges, there are earlier instances
of such a critique, most notably Paul Mus's classic study Barabuur: esquisse
d'une histoire du Bouddhisme fondee sur la critique archeologique des textes
(Hanoi: Ecole Fram;:aise d'Extreme-Orient, 1935; New York: Arno Press,
1978; Paris: Arma Artis, 1990). Schopen's critique is not limited, however,
to the use of epigraphical and archaeological data, as can be seen from his
"Monks and the Relic Cult in the Mahaparinibiinnasutta: An Old Misunder-
standing in Regard to Monastic Buddhism," Koichi Shinohara and Gregory
Schopen, eds., From Beijing to Benares: Essays on Buddhism and Chinese
Religion (Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1991) 187-201, where he utilizes written
texts themselves to undermine the received wisdom of classical Buddhology.
Steven Collins, Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravada Bud-
dhism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), considers social prac-
tices, that is, "the actual thought and practice of most Buddhists," to be indis-
pensable to the understanding of "intellectual Buddhism": "I have tried to
show that the most abstract forms of its (Buddhismis) imaginative representa-
tions-what we call its 'ideas' -are intimately connected with, and inextrica-
ble from, the presuppositions and institutional framework of Buddhist culture
234 JIABS 18.2
ing the narrowness of the data traditionally considered (a critique of con-
tent) but also attacking the traditional means of studying the data that is
considered (a critique of method). The latter often takes the form of a
repudiation of classical Buddhist philology, seen by its detractors as a
naive and scientistic approach to the study of written texts. 4 In other
instances, traditional Buddhology is seen as overly narrow in its scope-
in its hyperspecialization, unconcerned with broader, comparative ques-
tions and unable to enter into dialogue with the wider intellectual
community. 5
and society" (p. 265-266).
4. Examples include C. W. Huntington with Geshe Namgyal Wangchen, The
Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian Miidhyamika
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989), and Andrew P. Tuck, Com-
parative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship: On the Western Inter-
pretation of Niigiirjuna (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1990). For a brief critique of specific methodological principles used in the
philological analysis of Buddhist texts see Paul Griffiths' review of Lambert
Schmithausen's Alayavijftiina, in the Journal of the International Association
of Buddhist Studies 12.1 (1989): 170-177. See also John C. Holt, Buddha in
the Crown: Avalokitesvara in the Buddhist Traditions of Sri Lanka (New York
and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) viii.
5. See, for example, Paul J. Griffiths, "Buddhist Hybrid English: Some Notes
on Philology and Hermeneutics for Buddhologists," Journal of the Interna-
tional Association of Buddhist Studies 4.2 (1981): 18, for example, where he
states that "there is absolutely no reason why Buddhology should become an
hermetic tradition, sealed off from the uninitiate and passed down from master
to pupil by mystical in that way lies extinction, or at least a self-
banishment from the wider academic community." Griffiths goes on to assert
that the understanding of Buddhism "goes far beyond philology" (p. 18),
involving as it does the hermeneutical task, which requires that scholars restate
the meaning of texts in words other than those of the texts themselves. This
he perceives as leading to "some very positive results in the area of inter-disci-
plinary and inter-cultural thinking" (p. 21). Consider also Steven Collins'
remarks in Selfless Persons p. 1, "I think that a great deal of contemporary
philosophy, particularly in the English-language tradition, suffers from a lack
of historical and social self-awareness. I want to argue that philosophical
reflection should not proceed in abstraction from intellectual history and
anthropology, from the investigation and comparison of cultures." David
Seyfort Ruegg, "Some Observations on the Present and Future of Buddhist
Studies," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 15.1
(1992): 105, encourages not only interdisciplinarity, "the need to foster con-
tacts with specialists from other disciplines," but also "a closing of the ancient
and entrenched divide between 'town' and 'gown' by attracting and holding
CABEZON 235
Reaction to this challenge has varied. In some cases, it has been
ignored: a North American,6 postmodern ripple on the otherwise calm
sea, one that will dissipate with time. In others, it has brought scorn and
fear: what will become of "serious" scholarship in light of these recent
developments? The second goal of this essay is to explore these
methodological differences and to suggest not a means of achieving re-
conciliation (none, I think, is forthcoming), but a way of living with
these differences that averts an impending-and possibly irreparable-
rift within the field.
It may be inappropriate to call Buddhist Studies a discipline, especially
if we take disciplines to be exemplified by such fields as history, anthro-
pology, art history and so forth. Analogous to the Buddhist argument
concerning the self and the aggregates, it might be contended that Bud-
dhist Studies is not a discipline because it contains disciplines as parts. 7
This, however, could simply be a question of historical evolution, for
there was a time when even the classical disciplines did not seem particu-
lady disciplinary-like. The fact that Buddhist Studies today seems a
the educated attention, interest and support of persons who are not full-time
professional academics"; see also the latter's remarks concerning specialization
and interdisciplinarity in "A propos of a recent contribution to Tibetan and
Buddhist Studies," Journal of the American Oriental Society 82 (1962): 322,
n.4.
6. That the critique emerges primarily out of North America can be gleaned
from the sources cited in the previous four notes. Increasingly, many bud-
dhologists based in North American institutions of higher education see them-
selves as having a distinctive style-a method of scholarship that is different
from that which is represented by the parent discipline. Increasingly, North
American scholars seek to create a self-identity by contrasting their work with
that of their European and Asian colleagues. If there has yet to emerge a dis-
tinctive North American school of Buddhist Studies, it is because geographi-
cally bounded areas of specialty have yet to engage in serious conversation, so
that subfields the likes of South Asian, East Asian, Southeast Asian and
Himalayan Buddhist Studies remain for the most part relatively isolated, self-
enclosed subunits.
7. See the distinctions made by Foulk, "Issues in the Field of East Asian
Buddhist Studies" p. 112, who reserves the term disciplinary for fields like
"anthropology, history of religions, etc." Seyfort Ruegg, "Some Observa-
tions" p. 104, sees in the fact that Buddhist Studies draws on "philology, his-
tory, archaeology, architecture, epigraphy, numismatics, philosophy, cultural
and social anthropology, and the histories of religion and art" not evidence of
the fact that Buddhist Studies is not disciplinary, but an indication "that our
enterprise is at the same time a disciplinary and a multi-disciplinary one."
236 JIABS 18.2
strange, almost artificial and heterogeneous discipline may simply be an
artifact of its relative youth. Although the academic study of Buddhism
is much older than the International Association of Buddhist Studies and
the journal to which it gave rise,8 the founding of the latter, which repre-
sents a significant-perhaps pivotal-step in the institutionalization of
the field, is something that occurred less than twenty years ago.
Nonetheless, whether a true discipline or not-whether or not Buddhist
Studies has already achieved disciplinary status, whether it is proto-dis-
ciplinary or superdisciplinary-there is an apparent integrity to Buddhist
Studies that at the very least calls for an analysis of the field in holistic
terms.
9
After all, we gather at meetings and international congresses in
the name of that whole, however differently we may conceive of it.
Still, it must be granted that, whether due to its relative youth or not,
Buddhist Studies today seems particularly hodge podge. This is due in
part to the international composition of the Buddhist Studies community,
and in part to the heterogeneous nature of the object of our study, Bud-
dhism itself (on the latter, more in a moment).10 But there are other
factors-institutional ones-that also contribute to the diversity that
exists within the field. It is often the case that a common pattern of insti-
8. No comprehensive history of Buddhist Studies as a discipline exists. J.
w. de Jong's essay, "A Brief History of Buddhist Studies in Europe and
America," published in two parts, Eastern Buddhist 7.1: 55-106, and 7.2: 49-
82, which is principally a history of Buddhist philology focused primarily on
India, is an excellent, though by his own admission partial, overview of the
history of the field. It contains substantial bibliographical references to other
relevant studies, making it unnecessary to cite these here. See also his follow-
up article, "Recent Buddhist Studies in Europe and America: 1973-1983,"
Eastern Buddhist 17.1 (1984): 79-107.
9. Not only the existence of chairs in Buddhist Studies at major universities
worldwide and the fact that doctorates in the field are possible, but also the
existence of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, and the fact
that the latter publishes a scholarly journal, all point to the fact that buddho-
logy is, at the very least, quasi-disciplinary in nature.
10. On the question of heterogeneity see Foulk, "Issues in the Field of East
Asian Buddhist Studies" pp. 102-103. Foulk discusses the hitherto most natu-
ral subdivisions of Buddhist Studies based on geographical and linguistic sub-
specialties, but it is clear that there are other ways of envisioning the subdivi-
sions of the discipline, e. g., on methodological lines. Hence, there are tex-
tual-philological, anthropological, sociological, literary-critical, and art histor-
ical approaches to the study of Buddhism, all of which form part of the
broader field.
CABEZON 237
tutional support provides a discipline with homogeneity. This is lacking
in Buddhist Studies. True, in many Asian countries Buddhist Studies
finds consistent institutional support from religious circles, but here sec-
tarianism leads to heterogeneity of a different kind. Outside of Asia,
moreover, a department of Buddhist Studies is rare. 11 Instead, buddho-
logists find themselves with homes in area studies centers (South Asian,
East Asian, Uralic-Altaic); in centers and institutes for the study of lan-
guages, cultures, history or a combination of these (Asian, South Asian,
Indian, Sanskrit, in order of ascending specificity, just to take one series
of actually instantiated examples); in departments of religious studies,
and even in schools of theology. 12 Unlike other disciplines-even ones
that are structurally homologous to our own, like Judaic Studies-Bud-
dhist Studies has few secular institutional homes that it can call its own.
This means that Buddhist Studies, though not unique in this regard, is
in an institutionally symbiotic relationship with-perhaps even parasitic
upon-other more established fields. We often still have to justify our
existence by arguing for the fact that the study of Buddhism is essential
to a full understanding of a phenomenon whose epistemological value
(for historical, political or economic reasons) goes unquestioned. For
example, we make the case that understanding Buddhism is essential to
an understanding of Asia or some portion thereof 13 (in the United States
the "Pacific Rim" has for some years now been the buzz-word), or that it
is an essential part of the study of religion, or perhaps that it is a sine qua
non to fathoming what is probably the most inclusive and least epistemi-
11. See Seyfort Ruegg, "Some Observations" p. 104.
12. Seyfort Ruegg, "Some Observations" pp. 106-107, discusses what he sees
as some of the advantages and dangers of the varying institutional bases of
support for the discipline. For example, he sees in the fact that scholars of
Buddhist Studies find homes in departments of religion, philosophy and his-
tory, a possible danger: that Buddhist Studies may become "distanced if not
totally divorced from the historical and philological disciplines-Indology,
Sinology, etc.," that Buddhism "might find itself being organized without due
regard being accorded to its historical matrix and cultural context."
13 David Seyfort Ruegg, The Study of Indian and Tibetan Thought: Some
Problems and Perspectives, Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Indian Philoso-
phy, Buddhist Studies and Tibetan at the University of Leiden (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1967) 4, cites J. Ph. Vogel on the importance of Buddhist Studies to the
understanding of India. This goes to show that this rhetorical move is neither
uncommon nor particularly new. In a similar vein, Seyfort Ruegg justifies
and legitimates the study of Tibetan texts on the basis of their importance to
the study of Indian Buddhism (p. 43).
238 JIABS 18.2
cally questionable category, "humanity." But whatever the "host," Bud-
dhist Studies remains the parasite, having in only the rarest of cases the
status of unquestionable episteme. This means, of course, that many
(perhaps most) of us have dual allegiances. Not only does the discipline
become increasingly diverse as it cultivates a variety of institutional rela-
tionships for its survival, but heterogeneity in the form of multiple alle-
giances is something that we inherit as scholars of Buddhism. Part of the
process of our becoming socialized as Buddhologists entails negotiating
institutional homes for ourselves, and this means in part learning to wear
hats other than the buddhological one.
The heterogeneity of Buddhist Studies is evident not only at the insti-
tutionallevel but in other respects as well. Especially today we seem to
share less and less by way of method, or even subject matter. As we
have seen, in recent years the textual and philological ground upon which
the discipline was implicitly based
14
has been the subject of increasing
critical scrutiny, and the perception exists-at least on the part of the
challengers-that this has left the apparently once firm foundations of the
if not teetering, at least in question. 15 Anthropologists, sociol-
14. That the discipline was (and perhaps still is) based on the philological
study of Buddhist texts is a principle that we find repeatedly enunciated in the
literature. To take just one example, see Jacques May's remarks in "Etudes
Bouddhiques: Domaine, Disciplines, Perspectives," Etudes de Lettres
(Lausanne), Serie III, Tome 6, no. 4 (1973): 10.
15. It might be argued that the depiction of classical Buddhist philology by its
detractors is an inaccurate caricature which fails to come to terms with the
way actual philological-historical work is done. This may be so, but it will
have to be shown to be so by the proponents of the philological method. For
example, critics of classical Buddhist philology often portray the latter as a
unified and monothetic whole, something that is clearly not the case histori-
cally. On different styles of Buddhist philology see Lambert Schmithausen,
preface to Part I: Earliest Buddhism, in David Seyfort Ruegg and Lambert
Schmithausen, eds., Earliest Buddhism and Madhyamaka, Panels of the VIIth
World Sanskrit Conference, vol. 2 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990); many of the
articles in the volume also touch, though at times only implicitly, on issues
related to method. (For details regarding Schmithausen's own approach to the
study of Buddhist texts [at least those of Early Buddhism], see his "On Some
Aspects of Descriptions or Theories of 'Liberating Insight' and 'Enlighten-
ment' in Early Buddhism," eds. K. Bruhn and A. Wezler, Studien zum lainis-
mus und Buddhismus, Gedenkschrift fUr Ludwig Alsdorf, Alt- und Neu Indis-
che Studien 23 [Hamburg] 200-202.) In addition, diversity in Buddhist
philology is seen in the fact that philological controversies have existed, and
continue to exist, in the field. On one such controversy, that begins seriously
CABEZON 239
ogists, art historians and a new breed of textual critics, all of whom
existed (or perhaps, better, subsisted) on the margins of the discipline a
generation ago, are challenging the chirographic-textual-philological
paradigm, and in doing so acquiring a voice that, now more central, can
no longer be ignored.
In addition to the critique of philology that has emerged from within
the discipline, there exists also a more general critique of editorial prac-
tices and methods of textual criticism from De Man to the present day
that is virtually unknown to Buddhist Studies.1
6
The literature of this
in the 1930's-the issue of whether or not there exists a precanonical Bud-
dhism-see Seyfort Ruegg, The Study of Indian and Tibetan Thought pp. lO-
ll. Other controversies, e. g., regarding the antiquity of the Pali canon, the
use of Pali and Sanskrit materials in understanding the meaning of the Buddha
as a religious figure, the relationship between Buddhism and Brahmanism, the
characteristics of a Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (if any), whether or not the
Vinayas of the different schools derive from the Skandhaka-debates that are
in large part philological in character-have been discussed by de Jong, "A
Brief History of Buddhist Studies," pts. I and II. Whether or not the critics of
classical Buddhist philology have accurately portrayed their opponents in this
debate, and whether or not their arguments hit their mark, are questions that
can only be decided within the methodological debate itself. At the very least,
there does exist a widespread perception (at least on the part of challengers)
that a gauntlet has been thrown.
16. To cite just a few of the more important sources (some critical of classical
philology, some writing in its defense): Paul De Man, "The Rhetoric of
Blindness," Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary
Criticism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983); Paul Bove,
"Variations on Authority: Some Deconstructive Transformations of the New
Criticism," The Yale Critics: Deconstruction in America, eds. Jonathan Arac,
Wlad Godzich and Wallace Martin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1983); G. Thomas Tanselle, "The Editing of Historical Documents,"
Selected Studies in Bibliography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia,
1979); and by the same author, A Rationale of Textual Criticism
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989); Jerome J. McGann, A
Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1983); and by the same author, The Textual Condition, Princeton Studies in
Culture / Power / History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
Recent literature on the philological method not actually part of the afore-
mentioned debate includes William Proctor Williams and Craig S. Abbott, An
Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies (New York: Modem Lan-
guage Association of America, 1985); Peter L. Shillingsburg, Scholarly Edit-
ing in the Computer Age (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986); Textual
Criticism Since Greg: A Chronicle 1950-1985 (Charlottesville: University of
240 JIABS 18.2
broader critique, at once more extensive and subtler, is in many ways
more devastating to classical Buddhist philology than that which arises
from within the field itself. But this is not the place to rehearse these
arguments. Suffice it to say that there is a growing perception that the
critique of the chirographic-textual-philological paradigm upon which
classical Buddhist Studies is based has meant that in the eyes of many
scholars the discipline no longer has a common methodological base.
Given the lack of consensus in regard to method-in its general form a
fairly recent phenomenon-it might seem natural to seek commonalty
not in "how" we do what we do, but in "what" we do, that is, in the
object of our study. Is not Buddhism our common concern, and does this
fact not give the field its coherence? This is nominally true, but Bud-
dhism is itself an artificial construct whose apparent unity and solidity
begins to crumble almost immediately upon analysis. Is Buddhism text-
based doctrine or behavior-based praxis? Is it what the clergy does or
what lay people do? What was done then or what is done now? What
happens in Tibet or in Japan? Of course, it is all of these things, but that
is tantamount to admitting the multivalent character of our subject mat-
ter. To say that we all work on Buddhism is not to point the finger at
similarity but at difference.
Now it might be thought that I will be arguing here for the reconstitu-
tion of Buddhist Studies around some new and as yet unperceived com-
mon core.!7 But this is not my intention. The coherence of Buddhist
Studies as a field of inquiry does not require consensus as to method or
subject matter-just the opposite. Now that the cat of difference is out
of the bag, what will guarantee the stability and longevity of the disci-
pline is not the insistence on homogeneity, which in any case can now
only be achieved through force, but instead by embracing heterogeneity.
To embrace difference, moreover, implies more than the passive and
irenic acceptance of the polarities that exist within the field. The superfi-
Virginia Press, 1987); and E. J. Kenney, The Classical Text: Aspects of Edit-
ing in the Age of the Printed Book (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1974).
17. The heterogeneous and artificial nature of Buddhist Studies as a discipline
is not something new. If it appears to be so, it is because of the new forms of
criticism that have recently emerged. That there exists "a singular lack of
coordination" and "seriously divergent attitudes" in the field of Tibetan Stud-
ies is a point that was made by D. Seyfort Ruegg more than thirty years ago;
see his "A propos of a Recent Contribution to Tibetan and Buddhist Studies,"
Journal of the American Oriental Society 82 (1962): 320.
CABEZON 241
cial tolerance of other methods or areas of specialty is no longer suffi-
cient. The embracing of difference that I see as being necessary entails
more than the organization and promotion of interdisciplinary and cross-
cultural panels at conferences like those of the International Association
of Buddhist Studies. The investigation of specific Buddhist themes from
different disciplinary, geographical and historical perspectives is a
desideratum, to be sure, and even this much has yet to be fully realized in
the field. IS More, however, is called for. Embracing difference involves
as well a new mode of discourse within Buddhist Studies that focuses on
method: a conversation that is critical, dialogical, and at times
unabashedly polemical. For this to occur, however, two preconditions
must be met: we must acknowledge (a) that the discipline has indeed
changed, that it is no longer what it used to be,19 and (b) that what is
different about it is something that is worth exploring, taking the chal-
lenges seriously enough to make them the subject of conversation. This,
of course, implies eschewing the kind of conservatism that considers
18. This is true despite a call for greater cross-cultural and interdisciplinary
work in the field throughout the decades. Seyfort Ruegg, again more than
thirty years ago, bemoaned the arbitrary compartmentalization of Tibetan
Studies into "a 'philosopher's Tibetology'-or a historian'S, a sociologist's
etc."; see "A propos of a Recent Contribution" pp. 320-321. The issue is taken
up by him once again in his The Study of Indian and Tibetan Thought, p. 5,
where he argues against the distinction between the philosophical, religious
and sociological in Buddhism. In that same essay (p. 21) he stresses the
importance of psychology, semiology, sociology and religious studies for a
full understanding of Tantra. Michel Strickmann, "A Survey of Tibetan Bud-
dhist Studies," Eastern Buddhist 10.1 (May, 1977): 141, argues, analogously,
that it is impossible to fully understand the Buddhist Tantras in India "without
considering the abundant Chinese sources and the work of Japanese scholars
who know them well." Lewis Lancaster, "The Editing of Buddhist Texts,"
Buddhist Thought and Asian Civilization: Essays in Honor of Herbert V.
Guenther on His Sixtieth Birthday (Emeryville, N.Y.: Dharma Publishing,
1977) 145-151, argues for the value of Chinese translations in the editing of
Sanskrit texts. Examples of such calls for greater cross-cultural and interd-
siciplinary work are, of course, plentiful in the literature, despite the fact that
they have in large part gone unheeded.
19. In this regard, what Clifford Geertz has said of anthropology rings just as
true of Buddhist Studies: "Something new having emerged both 'in the field'
and 'in the academy,' something new must appear on the page ... if it [the
discipline] is now to prosper, with that confidence shaken, it must become
aware" (Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author [Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1988] 148-149).
242 JIABS 18.2
ignoring methodological differences to be the most effective strategy for
dealing with them. In its most insidious manifestation this ignorance of
difference takes the form of a paternalism that simply refuses, through
the sheer force of will or the exercise of power, to acknowledge the exis-
tence of viable alternative methodological perspectives and styles of
scholarship. A more palatable form, which nonetheless brings an end to
the conversation just as effectively, we might term "isolationism." Here
the existence of different theoretical perspectives is acknowledged but
considered trivial, in that these views are seen as having little if any
impact on one another. This latter solution to the problem of method-
0logical heterogeneity consists simply of continuing to do what one has
always done, while paying lip service to the fact that others may be doing
things differently. A third obstacle to the emergence of a critical dia-
logue on method is skepticism in regard to theory generally. From this
perspective second-order reflection on theoretical and methodological
issues is considered to fall outside of the purview of the field: a distrac-
tion to the "real" work of the buddhologist. "When time
20
is so precious,
why waste it on speCUlation of this sort?" Each of these responses fails to
take the challenge and implications of difference seriously. We exist
today in an atmosphere where the methodological direction(s) of the field
20. The issue of "time" is quite central to the entire discussion of method.
Many of the issues dealt with below can be reformulated in temporal terms,
that is, as problems related to time (or lack of it). For example, lack of time
is an often-cited justification for hyper-specialization (geographical, linguistic,
methodological): "There is simply not enough time to gain expertise in more
than one cultural area or historical period: to learn all of the necessary lan-
guages, to be both a good philologist and a good anthropologist." Time (for
training students, for doing research) is always limited, and this means that
choices must always be made. Choosing one option excludes pursuing others.
What this means, then, is that the rhetoric of time limitation is ultimately
translatable into language concerning priorities. To say that there is insuffi-
cient time to specialize in more than a single geographical area is tantamount
to saying "I will give priority to India over China" (or vice versa); or to say-
ing "It is more important to have greater knowledge of one geographical area
than lesser knowledge of two (or more)." Likewise, using the rhetoric of time
limitation as justification for avoiding methodological questions reduces to
giving priority to nonmethodological, first-order discourse. Hence, the fact
that there is not enough time for x translates into the fact that y must take pri-
ority. In another, as yet unfinished, essay related to this issue I use Mikhail
Bakhtin's notions of "chronotopes" as a way of periodizing the development
of Buddhist Studies.
CABEZON 243
are in contention. Not to speak to these issues by retreating in reac-
tionary, isolationist or skeptical ways is in effect to give up one's vote: to
forsake the opportunity of allowing one's voice to be heard.
The alternative, as I have mentioned, is to enter the methodological
debate in a way that is both critical and dialogical. To do so is not only
to accept the fact of methodological heterogeneity but also its implica-
tions. The different theoretical approaches to the study of Buddhism
challenge each other and demand not only mutual respect but mutual
response.
Of course, such a dialogue must begin with an identification of the
different perspectives. One of the best entrees into the identification of
the variant styles of scholarship is not through their sympathetic depic-
tion, but through their caricature in stereotypes. These stereotypes are
often constructed in such a way that specific styles of scholarship are
associated with specific raciaVethnic, national, religious and gender char-
acteristics. Like all stereotypes, they are falsehoods: racist, sexist and
generally exhibiting the type of intolerance to which we as human beings
are unfortunately heir. But exist they do. My purpose in listing some of
these now is not so much to directly criticize them, though this needs to
be done, but to utilize them as a venue for identifying the different
methodological perspectives on which they, in their grotesque way, are
based. For better or for worse, let us proceed.
1. Critical distance from the object of intellectual analysis is necessary.
Buddhists, by virtue of their religious commitment, lack such critical dis-
tance from Buddhism. Hence, Buddhists are never good buddhologists.
21
Or, alternatively, those who take any aspect of Buddhist doctrine seri-
ously (whether pro or con) are scientifically suspect by virtue of allowing
their individual beliefs to affect their scholarship. Good scholarship is
neutral as regards questions of truth. Hence, evaluative / normative
scholarship falls outside of the purview of Buddhist Studies.
2. Interesting and / or serious Buddhist Studies only takes place in the
northern hemisphere (and substitute for "northern hemisphere" anyone
of a number of geographical areas: Europe, North America, Japan and so
forth).
3. North Americans are poor philologists; when they rely on primary
21. For the opposite view, see May, "Etudes Bouddhiques" p. 18: "As for the
practice of the religion itself, it can certainly be combined with academic
erudition. This is frequently the case in Japan ... " (my trans.)
244 JIABS 18.2
textual material at all, they do so in an uninformed, extravagant and
frivolous way as a means of substantiating overly broad hypotheses that
are, in any case, of dubious scientific interest. Their philological naIvete
makes them turn to questions of theory rather than substance, and this in
turn makes them prone to the dogmatic acceptance of the latest method-
ological fad.
4. German and earlier French scholarship is so obsessed with the minu
tiae of textual criticism that it is incapable of achieving any kind of broad
overview of the meaning of individual texts, much less an understanding
of Buddhist doctrine / praxis in broad terms. Scholars from these tradi-
tions often lack knowledge of modem Asian languages; their scholarship
is usually of the arm-chair variety, devoid of any contact with living
traditions. This leads them to dogmatically dismiss the value of oral
traditions of textual transmission and to disregard the popular and nonlit-
erary aspects of Buddhism. In their superficial treatment of texts they
are uninterested in-and in any case incapable of --critically assessing the
philosophical validity and broader implications of Buddhist doctrine.
5. Continuing east, Indian scholarship, encumbered by years of neo-
Vedantist influence, is incapable of perceiving Buddhism as a distinct
entity; and even in the rare instances when it does, it is neither system-
atic, critical nor historical.
6. Chinese scholarship is, in its Taiwanese variety, pietistic, sectarian, at
most only historical, and in any case consists primarily of the careless re-
publishing of out-of-print editions. On the mainland, it is hostage to the
imprimatur of Marxist-Maoist ideologues.
7. Japanese scholarship consists entirely of philological work of insignifi-
cant worth, or, alternatively, of cataloguing, indexing and lexicography;
in no instance do we find anything "creative" or "innovative" in Japanese
scholarship.
8. Anthropologists, archaeologists, epigraphers and art historians are tex-
tually' and often historically, uninformed. If they were not, they would
be doing what the rest of us are doing.
9. And finally, feminist criticism (and some would say the scholarship of
women generally) must be tolerated but, consisting chiefly of subjective
evaluations and emotional appeals with no basis in rigorous scientific
principles, is not to be taken seriously.
Now there are various ways of gleaning from these caricatures the dif-
ferent perspectives on methodological issues that today divide the field.
One such way consists of identifying the perspectives or vantage points
CABEZ6N 245
from which the above stereotypes emerge by identifying the voices that
speak them. Broadly, we encounter two schools of thought operative
here. One we can call positivist, the other interpretivist.
Positivists conceive of texts-whether linguistic (written or oral), or
cultural (behavioral, artistic, etc.)-as the beginning and end of the
scholarly enterprise.
22
In its philological variety, positivism sees a writ-
ten text as complete and whole. It maintains that the purpose of scholarly
textual investigation-and the use of science as a model for humanistic
research here is always implied
23
-is to reconstruct the origina12
4
text
(there is only one best reconstruction): to restore it and to contextualize it
historically to the point where the author's original intention can be
gleaned.2
5
The principles of textual criticism represent an established,
22. That the notion of text can be more broadly construed, as I have done
here, to include oral material, religious behavior (e. g., ritual, pilgrimage,
etc.) and art, should by now be a fairly familiar move. Critics often overlook
the fact that written texts are not the only objects of the positivist enterprise.
Positivist anthropology, for example, uses "texts" of a different sort (cultural
artifacts such as rituals or kinship patterns) to similar ends as philological
positivism. If our focus is on the latter in this essay, it is only because it is the
positivism of the philological variety that has become the object of recent
critical scrutiny, and not because philological positivism is the only form to be
found in the academy, even in Buddhist Studies.
23. Seyfort Ruegg, "A propos" p. 320, is careful to use the word "science" in
quotation marks when referring to work "guided by principles derived from
the study of Tibetan sources." Others, however, continue to operate under the
assumption that philology is wissenschatlich in very much of a positivist sense
of the term.
24. The relationship between philology and the quest for origins goes beyond
the search for the original ur-text, the autograph. In some instances philology
has been seen as the key to recovering primitive or original Buddhism as a
whole. E. Burnouf, for instance, believed that the latter could be reconstructed
based on an analysis of the commonalties between Pali and Sanskrit texts; see
his Introduction a l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien, Tome I (Paris: Imprimerie
Royale, 1844) p. 11; and also de Jong, "A Brief History," pt. I, p. 73.
25. One of the clearest brief statements regarding the "methods of philology"
to be found in the Buddhist Studies literature is Seyfort Ruegg's in "A propos
of a Recent Contribution" p. 322. See also, J. W. de Jong, "De Studie van het
Boeddhisme, Problemen an Perspectieven" (The Hague: Mouton and Co.,
1956); in English translation, "The Study of Buddhism: Problems and Per-
spectives," Buddhist Studies by l. W. de long, ed. Gregory Schopen
(Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1979) 15-28. The difference between the
approach of Seyfort Ruegg and the extremist position being characterized here
246 JlABS 18.2
fixed and finely tuned scientific method; hence, there is no need for fur-
ther methodological reflection.
26
To reconstitute the text in this way is
to make it available in a neutral, untampered-with and pristine fashion.
This is not only sufficient and worthwhile, it is in any case all that is
achievable, even in principle. Once the text has been reconstituted in this
way, its meaning unfolds from within itself, without any need for inter-
pretation. The goal of scholarship is to allow texts to speak for them-
selves. Scholars are not multifaceted prisms through which texts pass
and refract. They are mirrors on which texts reflect and congeal into
wholes. It is the text and at most its historical context that should be the
sole concern of the scholar: the end-point of the scholarly enterprise. To
is that the former acknowledges the validity and worth of other forms of anal-
ysis not philological. It is, however, true that Seyfort Ruegg in that same
essay (p. 322) excludes "comparative and general studies" from Tibetology
and Buddhology proper. The latter disciplines-"whose methods and 'pro-
gramme' ... can in the last analysis be determined only by intrinsic criteria"
(p. 321)-he perceives as "necessary prerequisites" for, but distinct from, the
former type of work. Moreover, Seyfort Ruegg sees philology as providing "a
vital nucleus in this diversified field" (that is, in Tibetology). From this it can
be surmised that for Seyfort Ruegg-at least for the Seyfort Ruegg of 1962-
Tibetology and Buddhology proper are philological disciplines, and that these
philological disciplines form the basis and core for other methodological
approaches to Tibetan civiliiation and Buddhism, respectively. A similar
position is held by de Jong, "The Study of Buddhism" p. 16, where he sees
philology, that is, the study of Buddhist literature, as being fundamental and
the most important source of knowledge of Buddhism. Buddhist art,
inscriptions and coins have supplied us with useful data, but generally they
cannot be fully understood without the support given by the texts.
Consequently, the study of Buddhism needs first of all to be concentrated on
the texts which have been transmitted, and, indeed, it [Buddhist Studies]
only made good progress after Buddhist philology had been established on a
sound basis.
De Jong, too, is more moderate than the extremist position being characterized
here in that he sees other research strategies, e. g., direct contact with Buddhist
cultures, as being necessary to an understanding of Buddhism.
26. Consider as an example of the rhetoric of the finality of method the fol-
lowing words of Nagao Gadjin, "Reflections on Tibetan Studies in Japan"
p. 112: "Since approximately fifty years ago, when Yamaguchi Susumu and
others returned to Japan from study in Europe, the method of studying the
combined Sanskrit-Tibetan-Chinese versions has been established, and is now
generally accepted by scholars."
CABEZON 247
go beyond them-and in most instances this means even considering the
opinion of what later interpreters in the tradition have to say-is to go
beyond the author's intention. It is to pollute scholarship with personal
bias, either one's own or those of others. 27 In the words of Clifford
Geertz, the role of the text positivist "dissolves into that of an honest bro-
ker passing on the substance of things with only the most trivial of trans-
action costs."28
Interpretivists believe that texts, though the starting point of scholar-
ship, are not ends in themselves. They maintain that interpretation
infuses every part of humanistic scholarship, even apparently "neutral"
tasks such as textual criticism and lexicography. There is, for the inter-
pretivist, no escape from subjective contamination, no preinterpretive
moment.
29
Interpretivists eschew the notion that there is a single achiev-
27. What I am characterizing here as philological positivism is of course
closely linked to the nineteenth century hermeneutical tradition as represented
by Schleiermacher and Dilthey (what Gadamer calls "romantic hermeneu-
tics"). See Andrew P. Tuck, Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of
Scholarship: On the Western Interpretation of Niigiirjuna (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); and also Hans-Georg Gadamer,
Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, 2nd rev.
edition (New York: Continuum, 1993) pt. 2.
28. Geertz, Works and Lives p. 145.
29. An interesting analysis of the way in which scholars' subjective method-
ological and theoretical presuppositions have affected their results is to be
found in de J ong' s historiographical discussion of the Western scholarly study
of the Buddha "legend." In his "The Study of Buddhism," and more exten-
sively in "A Brief History of Buddhist Studies," he shows how the interpretive
strategies of figures like Senart, Kern and Oldenburg molded their conception
of the Buddha as a mythical! historical figure. Not content simply to point
out the variation in the perceptions concerning the Buddha, de Jong himself
proposes a method for its resolution, namely greater reliance on the methods
of historical criticism; in particular, he believes that comparison to non-Bud-
dhist sources can yield the historical truths in the traditional accounts of the
life of the Buddha. As in the former cases, it is likely that this method, rather
than yielding new "facts" concerning the Buddha's life, is simply reflective of
de Jong's own scholarly style and presuppositions. See his "The Study of
Buddhism" pp. 25-26. Enigmatically, he ends this latter essay by claiming
that no historical approach to the study of Buddhism is possible, "because in
the spiritual life of India the historical dimension is of much less importance
than it is in Western civilization" (p. 26). Implicit here is the presupposition
that Western scholarly methods employed in the study of Buddhism must
correspond to the world view in which Buddhism existed and evolved-an
248 JIABS 18.2
able text that represents an author's original intention.
3o
Every move in
the philological process represents an instance of personal choice, and
these choices have their consequences. 31 Given the intensely subjective
character of humanistic scholarship, we have no choice but to reflect
methodologically on what we do, indicating to readers our theoretical
presuppositions and providing them with reasons for why we have chosen
certain methodological options over others. A scholar's signature must
appear not only on the title page, but throughout the entire work through
the manifest exposition of his or her subjectivity,32
Interpretivists are usually not content simply to engage in a negative
critique of what they perceive to be the scientistic dogmas of positivists.
They want to go further and to propose certain positive theses of their
own. For example, interpretivists often wish to assert that texts, far from
being the end-point of scholarly praxis, are the starting points for further
almost theological stance. Leading de Jong beyond pure philology as the sole
method, he comes to the conclusion that "the most important task for the stu-
dent of Buddhism is the study of Buddhist mentality. That is why contact
with present-day Buddhism is so important, for this will guard us against see-
ing the texts purely as philological material and forgetting that for the Bud-
dhist they are sacred texts which proclaim a message of salvation" (p. 26).
Though never rejecting the importance of philology, it is clear from this pas-
sage that de Jong sees philology as incomplete and in need of being supple-
mented by other methods. How easy-and how inaccurate-it would be, on
the basis of his other writings, to characterize de Jong, the consummate
philologist, as a positivist. If there is one lesson to be learned from this dis-
cussion it is that the positivist / interpretivist distinction I am drawing here is
only heuristically useful, and that methodological affiliation in the real life of
practicing scholars is a more complex phenomenon than we have access to
using such a simplified model.
30. For a devastating critique of the notion that the only goal of textual criti-
cism is achieving a text that represents the author's intention, see McGann,
The Textual Condition, ch. 3.
31. For an actual example of the choices that confront the editor of a text,
and of the consequences of those choices on how the text is understood, see
McGann, The Textual Condition, ch. 1. Although McGann would probably
not want to be considered an interpretivist in some senses of the term, it is
clear from his writings that he opposes the "editor-as-technical-functionary"
model of textual scholarship that is paradigmatic of positivism, or what he
calls "empiricism."
32. As an interesting counterpoint to this view, see David Macey's characteri-
zation of Foucault's view of authorial subjectivity in The Lives of Michel
Foucault (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993) xiv-xvi.
CABEZON 249
reflection. The fact that a written text, a ritual or a work of art is (or
was) meaningful is an indication of the fact that it can teach us broader
lessons beyond itself: that it can, for example, be a source for developing
more general principles, theories or laws that concern what people
believe or how they behave)3 Some interpretivists would go so far as to
claim that texts can even serve as sources of normative insight about the
world by serving as sources for the evaluative assessment of claims con-
cerning truth, beauty and human well-being,34 Given that all scholarship
is "refractory," asks the interpretivist, why not admit to the creative role
of the investigator and celebrate, as it were, this creativity and freedom
in scholarship itself?
It should be clear from the way in wlJich I have characterized these two
paradigms-the positivist and interpretivist-that they are themselves
caricatures. They are, to borrow a phrase from Max Weber, "ideal
types" that are rarely, if ever, instantiated in real life. For example, few
philologists today consider their work to be completely objective
3
5; and
few scholars with interpretivist leanings are willing to abandon philologi-
cal standards of accuracy and rigor. Hence, pure positivists and interpre-
33. Collins, Selfless Persons, sees the comparative project in which he is
engaged, for example, as capable of illuminating our own "inherent concerns
and presuppositions, and perhaps the general nature of human thought (if such
exists)" by "acting as a mirror to our own thinking" (pp. 2-3). And John C.
Holt, Buddha in the Crown: Avalokite.svara in the Buddhist Traditions of Sri
Lanka (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), suggests that
the process of the transformation of religious symbols might be found in
religious traditions other than Buddhism, so that he sees his work as
uncovering "principles of religious assimilation generally." I myself make an
analogous claim about scholasticism in Buddhism and Language: A Study of
Indo-Tibetan Scholasticism (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1994).
34. Seyfort Ruegg, "Some Observations" p. 105, for example, sees the Bud-
dhist world view as making normative contributions to ethics; see his n. 1 for
relevant bibliography concerning this issue.
35. Consider Lambert Schmithausen's remarks in Buddhism and Nature,
Studia Philologica Buddhica Occasional Papers Series VII (Tokyo: The Inter-
national Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1991) p. 2, sec. 2: "As a scholar I am
expected to deal with my subject-matter in an objective way. If this were to
mean without emotional concern, and without a personal standpoint, I have to
admit failure in advance." Nonetheless, Schmithausen makes it clear that hav-
ing a personal standpoint and being emotionally concerned does not prevent
scholars from engaging in their task "as objectively as possible" (p. 2, sec.
3.1).
250 JIABS 18.2
tivists are fictions, but though fictions there are some heuristic advan-
tages in considering them. Their most important function for our pur-
poses is to serve as reagents that distill the attitudes of the previously
mentioned stereotypes, bringing them down to their most basic forms. In
addition-if I may be allowed to extend the chemical analogy a little
further-they serve as foci around which to crystallize the fundamental
methodological issues over which buddhologists today tend to differ.
What are these issues?
The necessity o/methodological reflection
36
This has already been dealt with above to a large extent. That there are
fundamental issues in the discipline that have yet to be fully explored is,
in any case, what much of this essay is about. The need for methodolog-
ical debate in a discipline comes about when there emerges a critical mass
of scholars who perceive themselves as engaging in research strategies
that are substantively different from those that preceded them. This leads
them to formulate their new method in more precise terms, distinguish-
ing it from what came before; ultimately, it leads them to question the
previous paradigm's hegemony, validity or both.3
7
Those familiar with the work of Thomas Kuhn may conclude,
wrongly, that I am here predicting or advocating some kind of paradigm
shift in Buddhist Studies. It is not my intention, however, to forecast,
much less to argue for, an end to philology as a mode of scholarship. 38
This essay is rather a call for conversation and mutual understanding
between different views on key issues that I perceive to be representative
of different styles of contemporary scholarly praxis. Not to engage in
methodological reflection and debate at this point, however, could indeed
polarize the field, whether or not this inevitably results in a paradigm
shift. In general, however, I do not believe that the Kuhnian model for
36. This is not, strictly speaking, a methodological, but rather a theoretical
(or meta-methodological), issue. It is a claim about methodology (that it
needs to be more fully discussed) rather than an issue in methodology proper.
37. To question the hegemony of a previous paradigm is to demand a voice
alongside the latter; to question its validity is to demand an end to the previous
mode of scholarly praxis altogether.
38. Indeed, I have argued in print for the importance of textual studies, and
for the fact that methodological speculation should occur alongside such stud-
ies and not replace them. See my "On Retreating to Method and Other Post-
modern Turns: A Response to C. W. Huntington," Journal of the International
Association of Buddhist Studies 15.1 (1992): 134-144.
CABEZON 251
change within disciplines-essentially agonistic, one mode of discourse
defeating another-is the only viable one. An alternative is the critical-
dialogical model I am setting forth here, the result of which is not the
wholesale triumph of one view over another, but the mutual, albeit criti-
cal, understanding of perspectives.
The question of objectivity
At a previous meeting of the International Association of Buddhist Stud-
ies in Paris I had the great fortune to have dined with a one of those rare
colleagues who holds close to a positivist view on the issue of objectivity.
In his characterization of it, it went something like this. In working with
a Buddhist (or indeed any kind of classical) text, scholars can and should
be devoid of-or rather, since this is something that must be cultivated,
"void themselves of ' -all bias and prejudice, allowing the text to speak
for itself. This critical distance, though difficult to achieve, is attainable
through training and sustained effort. The result is the total eradication
of all subjective elements in the scholarly enterprise, so that one becomes
"the disinterested observer, wherein one strives to bracket one's own
opinions and agendas and applies the methods of historical criticism." 39
This is essential if scholarship is to be scientifically sound. Religious
commitment to the text one is studying necessarily clouds judgment and
prevents the scholar from achieving the kind of neutrality that is neces-
sary to presenting the text as it was originally written and understood. 40
When confronted with difficult philological decisions-for example, key
textual emendations or questions of authorship that run counter to the
doctrines of the tradition-allegiance to the religious world view one is
investigating prevents the scholar with a faith commitment from making
the appropriate decision. 41 Therefore, Buddhists can never achieve the
kind of pure objectivity that is called for in scholarly research on Bud-
39. See, e. g., Foulk, "Issues in the Field of East Asian Buddhist Studies"
p. 173. An attempt to come to terms with and to dispel some of the prejudices
that have infiltrated the field of Indian Studies is found in Johannes
Bronkhorst, "L'Indianisme et les prejuges occidentaux," Etudes de Lettres
(Lausanne) (April/June 1989): 119-136.
40. On some of the tensions between being Buddhist and studying Buddhism
in a Japanese context see Foulk, "Issues in the Field of East Asian Buddhist
Studies" pp. 106-108. See also Paul J. Griffiths' caricature of the Buddhist
buddhologist in "Buddhist Hybrid English" pp. 21-22.
41. See Paul Griffith's remarks in his review of Schmithausen's AZayavijfiiina,
p. 173.
252 JIABS 18.2
dhist texts.
42
For this same reason scholars should refrain from relying
on "native informants," lest scholarship become tainted by the bias that is
endemic to traditional exegesis.
43
As a corollary, the study of the mod-
ern spoken languages of Asia, if necessary at all, are to be given low
priority.
At the other end of the spectrum from this view is what we might call
the hyper-subjectivist or constructionist position. It claims that a scho-
lar's own subjectivity infiltrates every aspect of his or her work. Texts
cannot speak for themselves because they do not exist objectively. It is
the reader that creates or constructs a text in the very act of reading.
Versions of this view are to be found in the writings of Paul De Man,44
and more recently in a book by Jerome McGann.
45
A text exists only in
the act of reading, and when scholars read a text, they do not glean an
author's intention, but, as it were, only their own. Rather than a scholar
being a mirror that reflects an author's original intention, it is the text
that serves as a mirror for the scholars' own concerns: their personal and
social situation. Objectivity is a myth, as is the notion of a set of stan-
dards or criteria on the basis of which to arbitrate between competing
interpretations. In De Man's words, "[reading] is an act of understanding
that can never be observed, nor in any way prescribed or verified."46
42. It is sometimes maintained, as a corollary to this view, that even the mere
exposure to living traditions is enough to contaminate the scholar's judgment,
and should therefore be avoided.
43. It is interesting to note that despite the fact that Japanese Buddhist Studies
has inherited many of the positivistic tendencies of its European counterpart,
the Japanese do not exhibit this allergy to contact with the cultures they study.
Tibetan Buddhist Studies in Japan, for example, began with the travels of
Japanese scholars to Tibet; and Nagao Gadjin marks 1961, the year when three
Tibetan informants came to Japan, as a tuming point in Tibetan Studies in that
country. See his "Reflections on Tibetan Studies in Japan," Acta Asiatica:
Bulletin of the Institute of Eastern Culture 29 (1975): 107-128. See also
Matsumoto, Tibetan Studies in Japan p. 10.
44. See, for example, De Man, "The Rhetoric of Blindness."
45. Jerome J. McGann, The Textual Condition. McGann's version of textu-
ality differs from De Man's in that it is less idealist and more materialist,
emphasizing the social and historical dimensions of the act of reading. Both
theorists, however, fall into the constructionist camp.
46. "The Rhetoric of Blindness" p. 107. For McGann (The Textual Condition
p. 10) the fact of interpretational variety is due not only to the situational
diversity of readers, but is something that inheres within texts themselves.
CABEZON 253
The true subjectivist is a relativist. 47
My purpose here, and in this paper as whole, is not to suggest a resolu-
tion to the question of objectivity, or even a direction for a critical dia-
logue on this or other issues. This is of course impossible both to predict
and to prescribe. It is something that will instead evolve in response to
the interests and needs of scholars. My goal is simply to point out that
methodological differences on this question (and the others that follow)
do exist, and to suggest that their discussion is an essential part of the
critical dialogue on method that is needed in the discipline.
Interpretation and creativity
To consider fully the disciplinarity of a field like Buddhist Studies, which
this paper does not purport to do, requires an investigation of its intellec-
tual sociology. What social processes are involved in becoming
employed as a buddhologist, in the granting of tenure and in the making
of reputations? What books and articles get published and how is this
decided? How are students supported and trained
48
? In brief, what cri-
teria are operative in deciding what constitutes knowledge, and how is
this knowledge institutionally transmitted and disseminated, and to
whom? These issues are too complex to treat here in their entirety. It is
however possible to use the discussion of interpretation and creativity a<;
a venue--or perhaps "excuse"-for examining one somewhat contained
issue: the nature of acceptable research.49 Guidelines-usually irnplicit-
47. A critique ofthe notion of the objectivism implicit in Western scholarship
on Nagarjuna is to be found in Tuck, Comparative Philosophy. Though not as
radical as the position outlined here, and though rhetorically repudiating rela-
tivism, Tuck's view that all reading is isogetical leaves one with the impres-
sion that the various Western interpretations of Nagarjuna that he analyzes are
solely the result of the relative paradigmatic and psychological "site" of vari-
ous scholars, making him effectively a relativist. See also Johannes
Bronkhorst's review (and criticism) of Tuck on this very issue, "On the
Method of Interpreting Philosophical Sanskrit Texts," Asiatische Studien /
Etudes Asiatiques 67.3 (1993): 501-511, though it might be argued that
Bronkhorst's rejection of the fact that knowledge is culturally embedded in
fact goes too far, risking a fall into the extreme of positivism.
48. May's "Etudes Bouddhiques" is dedicated in large part to setting forth
principles along the lines of which the training of students should be based.
49. An interesting attempt to prescribe what constitutes valid research, or in
his words, "true progress of Tibetan Buddhist studies as a highly developed
field of scholarly inquiry," is Michel Strickmann's bibliographical article, "A
Survey of Tibetan Buddhist Studies," Eastern Buddhist 10.1 (May, 1977):
254 JIABS 18.2
for what constitutes an acceptable doctoral dissertation topic, and for that
matter criteria for research funding evaluation and even tenure and pro-
motion decisions, are often good indicators of the ethos of a field. A
generation ago in the United States it may have been possible to submit
as fulfillment of the research requirement for the doctorate, or as the
subject of a postdoctoral research grant, work that was strictly philologi-
cal in character: undertaking a critical edition of a text, say. If this was
ever the case, it is even rarer today. In our time, such work is considered
to lack a certain originality and creativity that is an essential characteris-
tic of scholarly research. Ironically, this is due in large part to the pic-
ture that many philologists have themselves painted of their own spe-
cialty. Philological work is seen as lacking originality because it is
believed-falsely it seems to me-to consist of the mechanical reconsti-
tution of another author's work. Hence, the editing of texts, the compi-
lation of anthologies, and even translations, are perceived by the most
extreme critics to be just one step removed from plagiarism. 50
True research, so the story now goes, is creative. That is, it contains an
element of novelty: the defense of a clear thesis that is not only new but
significant. Hearkening back to our discussion of interpretivism, this
requires the full involvement of the scholar not only in the text, but
beyond it as well, utilizing the text as an object of interpretation with the
goal of achieving results that are broad and general in scope. Ideally, the
research should shake the field from within, and the waves from the
"splash" should be felt outside of it as well. It is probably clear that this
128-149. Here Strickmann attempts to distinguish real scholarship from
"gaudy productions" that, "hardly relevant to the study of Buddhism," are
"tracts telling harassed Americans how to relax." Unfortunately, Strickmann
never cites examples of the latter, nor does he ever disclose his criteria for
including and excluding the works that he does. One is to surmise from his
rhetoric that the list of "gaudy productions" consists of all those works to
which he does not grant his imprimatur. What I find most interesting about
Strickmann's article is not the actual scholarly canon he attempts to
"catalogue," but the fact that it represents a prime locus for the investigation
of the sociology of knowledge in one subfield of Buddhist Studies: a site for
exploring one scholar's attempt at delineating what constitutes valid research,
clouded in a rhetoric that makes it appear as though that scholar's own subjec-
tivity has no part to play in the process.
50. In the United States, to take the example with which I am most familiar,
it is almost inconceivable to imagine that tenure would be granted solely on
the basis of text-critical work, or even on the basis of a well-received anno-
tated translation.
CABEZON 255
notion of creativity is modem,S! and-at least in the way I have charac-
terized it here-particularly North American, based as it is on a kind of
hyper-individualism. But it is also clear that such a model of what con-
stitutes adequate research has been received warmly and is functionally
normative in geographically diverse institutional settings outside of North
America as well.
52
In the United States and Canada today53 we operate with this as the
ideal of what constitutes real research in the field of Buddhist Studies.
There are reasons for this that go beyond the realm of the merely intel-
lectual. For about a decade or so, buddhologists in North America have
found employment in increasing numbers in departments of religious
studies and schools of theology. Often this has meant that we have had
to expand our pedagogical repertoire beyond courses in Buddhist Studies
to accommodate the curricular needs of these institutions. In addition,
we increasingly find ourselves in conversations with colleagues whose
specialty lies outside of the discipline of Buddhist Studies. Our de facto
professional organization has become the American Academy of Reli-
gion' an institution that stresses broad and interdisciplinary research. The
editorial bodies of academic presses seek work that has "broad appeal," is
"original," and "cutting-edge." And finally, it is in accordance with the
standards (often only implicitly) set forth by these various institutional
bodies that tenure and promotion decisions are made. All of these factors
have contributed to what we might call the diversification of the bud-
dhologist: a movement away from classical Buddhist Studies based on the
philological study of written texts, and toward the investigation of more
general, comparative and often theoretical issues that have implications
(and audiences) outside of Buddhist Studies. Some colleagues have
51. On this point see my Buddhism and Language: A Study of Indo-Tibetan
Scholasticism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994) 83-87.
52. To cite just one example, I know of several Tibetan scholars who have
chosen not to seek doctorates at Indian universities precisely because of the
requirement that they undertake research that is innovative, something they
consider anathema-a betrayal of the tradition.
53. I am not unaware of the dangers of generalizing about the patterns of
scholarship in large geographical areas. My goal here is not to speak for my
colleagues in the United States and Canada; many will undoubtedly disagree
with what I have to say. Nor is it my intention to imply that North American
scholarship is homogeneous; it is certainly not. With these caveats, however,
it does seem to me possible to venture upon some general remarks about pat-
terns of scholarship, like the ones that follow.
256 JIABS 18.2
resigned themselves to this situation: a set of circumstances that must be
tolerated for the sake of gainful employment. Others-and I count
myself in this camp-have found the pressure to greater diversification
intellectually stimulating, affording an opportunity to enter into broader
conversations where Buddhist texts are one, but not the only, voice.
Be that as it may, it is clear that this latter model of what constitutes
adequate research, based as it is on an interpretivist paradigm, represents
a clear departure from a positivist program of exclusively textual scholar-
ship. What kind of dialogue will arise as a result of these methodological
differences concerning the nature of adequate research? This, of course,
remains to be seen.
The question of normative discourse
Related to the questions of objectivity and creativity, though not
reducible to either one, is the issue of the appropriateness of normative
discourse. 54 The classically positivist position that I have outlined above
maintains of course that there is no room for evaluative assessment in
Buddhist Studies. Perceiving its own discourse to be value-free and neu-
tral, positivism operates under the assumption that the role of the scholar
is to mirror, rather than to evaluate, textual meaning.
55
In addition,
philosophical positivism-where all normative questions pertaining to
religious matters are considered either meaningless, undecidable or
54. The question of objectivity has to do with self-identity and normative
commitment rather than with discourse. It is possible, for example, that a
scholar be a committed Buddhist and not write from an overtly theological
perspective (although in the present context the question of objectivity deals
precisely with whether or not there is always an implicit theological agenda
even in such writing). The question of creativity is broader than that of nor-
mative discourse, and in a sense contains it, since normative discourse can be
considered one instance of interpretive creativity.
55. It is interesting that in his characterization of the scholarship of the 18th
century Jesuit missionary Ippolito Desideri, de Jong ("A Brief History," pt. I,
pp. 65-66), in his preoccupation with the philological and descriptive dimen-
sions of Buddhist Studies, should have overlooked the fact that Desideri's
chief interest in Buddhism was polemical, that is to say normative. It is moti-
vated by a desire to engage Tibetan Buddhism philosophically and religiously
that Desideri delved into the Buddhist religion and gained the expertise that he
did. If, as Petech and Tucci state, Desideri managed to fathom the intricacies
of Tibetan (principally dGe lugs pa) Buddhism in ways that even later scholars
could not, it is not in spite of, but precisely because of, his interest in norma-
tive issues.
CABEZON 257
both-exerts a different kind of pressure in the direction of ignoring the
implications of the normative claims of Buddhist texts. But even when
the latter is not operative as an assumption, philological positivists con-
sider the issue of the truth of religious claims, and even issues of aesthet-
ics and literary worth-of texts, practices, art forms and methods-as
necessarily clouding judgment, and as leading to the infiltration of per-
sonal bias and prejudice into scholarship. By contrast, as we have seen,
interpretivists believe that, far from meaningless, forms of discourse that
bring to light the full significance of texts-as normative discourse, for
example, does-represent the epitome of the scholarly enterprise: its
fulfillment. Ascribing to the view that all scholarship is necessarily eval-
uative, interpretivists claim that there is no escape from subjective
assessment. Hence, all scholarship is normative; and those that admit to
its normativity in exploring the philosophical implications of texts are
simply being more candid.
At the very least three forms of discourse are objects of contention in
this debate: religious or theological, philosophical, and methodologica1.5
6
56. The dividing line between these three is not always very precise. For
example, some authors, ostensibly writing as philosophers, often exhibit theo-
logical presuppositions in their writings. Be that as it may, the distinctions
between the three forms of discourse I discuss below seem to me valuable.
Foulk, "Issues in the Field of East Asian Buddhist Studies" p. 112, opts for
another method of distinguishing theology from Buddhology (that is, from
Buddhist Studies as an academic discipline). Buddhist theology, he states, is
"the study of divine things or religious truth as it is carried on within a nor-
mative tradition," while Buddhology is "'objective' (non-normative)." Such a
definition, despite his use of quotation marks around the word objective, is
problematic. As we saw from the discussion of objectivity above, scholars
increasingly question the existence of "objective" scholarship. Buddhology, as
the academic study of Buddhism, may have different presuppositions from
Buddhist theology, but-so the critique goes-the former is based as much on
subjective and normative presuppositions as the latter. Moreover, Foulk's
distinction, by excluding overt forms of normative discourse from Buddho-
logy (this is reiterated on p. 172 of his essay), implies that philosophical and
normative methodological treatment of issues in the field falls outside of Bud-
dhist Studies / Buddhology proper. Ironically, it implies that his own essay-
in large part be considered a piece of buddhological schol-
arship. Rather than confiating normativity and subjectivity (and then defining
the academic study of Buddhism in terms of its objectivity), it seems to me
preferable to distinguish normative from descriptive forms of scholarship
(historical, philological, etc.) discursively, that is, in terms of whether a par-
ticular work deals explicitly with the assessment and determination of the truth
258 JIABS 18.2
In theological discourse the authorial subject speaks or writes from
within a specific religious world view; that is, theological authors explic-
itly situate themselves within a specific tradition. In its standard form,
Buddhist theology presupposes-or, alternatively, argues for-the valid-
ity of the doctrinal claims of Buddhism,5? the value and significance of
its art
58
and/or the efficacy of its practices; it also utilizes these as the
essential raw materials of the discourse itself. Theological discourse need
value of doctrinal, more broadly religious, aesthetic or methodological claims.
Normative discourse can then be further subdivided in terms of where autho-
rial subjects situate themselves in such discussions: it is theological when
authors locate themselves within a religious tradition, and philosophical when
they either locate themselves outside of a specific religious world view or are
rhetorically neutral on their religious location. Methodological reflection then
becomes a specific kind of philosophical discourse that instead of focusing on
primary Buddhist artifacts (doctrines, rituals, art, etc.) focuses on second-
order issues pertaining to how these artifacts are to be studied. But again, the
distinctions between the three modes of discourse is not always clear-cut. And
it is frequently the case that a single work will shift between these different
modes. A good example of this is a recent work of Anne C. Klein, Meeting
the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists and the Art of the Self (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1995), in which she is self-consciously engaged in both
methodological and theological reflection. Another example is Lambert
Schmithausen's Buddhism and Nature. Though principally a philological and
historical work, whose goal it is to "describe and analyze, as objectively as
possible, the attitude of the Buddhist tradition toward nature" (p. 2, sec. 3.1,
my emphasis), there are definite normative dimensions to Schmithausen's
work, in that he sees Buddhist speculation on nature as contributing to the dis-
cussion of the contemporary problem of environmental destruction and pollu-
tion. Schmithausen also sees another goal of his work to be that of making
"contemporary Buddhists aware of the multifacetedness and ambivalence of
their tradition in order to have them lay stress, consciously, on those strands
which favor a positive attitude toward nature consonant with present day
requirements" (p. 56, sec. 63.1).
57. See, for example, Gunapala Dharmasiri, A Buddhist Critique of the
Christian Concept of God (Antioch, CA: Golden Leavs, 1988 [rpt.]).
58. See Marilyn M. Rhie and Robert A. F. Thurman, Wisdom and Compas-
sion: The Sacred Art of Tibet (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991). A critical
review of the work exists in David Jackson's "Appropos a Recent Tibetan Art
Catalogue," Wiener ZeitschriJt fur die Kunde sudasiens und Archiv flir indische
Philosoph ie, Band 37 (1993): 109-130. The latter is in many ways a critique
of the former's-sometimes overt, sometimes unacknowledged-theological
(Jackson calls them "Geluk-centric" and "thoecratic"), myth-creating and
idealizing agenda.
CABEZ6N 259
not always be dogmatic, however, since it sometimes engages doctrines
and practices in critical ways59; but whether dogmatic or critical, theol-
ogy situates itself within a particular religious perspective.
60
In contrast to theology, philosophical discourse does not situate itself
within, say, the Buddhist tradition. Though concerned with the norm-
ative evaluation of Buddhism, it is not grounded in a specifically Bud-
dhist religious world view. 61 Finally, methodological discourse too can
be normative. When it is so, it can be situated either within
62
or out-
side
63
of a specific Buddhist religious world view, and rather than taking
specific Buddhist artifacts (doctrines, rituals, etc.) as its direct subject
matter, it is instead chiefly concerned with the assessment of options in
their study. 64
59. The work of Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shiro might be consid-
ered paradigmatic of what I am here calling critical Buddhist theology. See
Jamie Hubbard and Paul L. Swanson, eds., Critical Buddhism: A Critical
Appraisal, a forthcoming anthology and study of the work of these two fig-
ures. N. David Eckel's somewhat ambiguous remarks in "The Ghost at the
Table: On the Study of Buddhism and the Study of Religion," Journal of the
American Academy of Religion 62.4 (1994): 1099, might be interpreted as a
call for the possibility of a critical Buddhist theology situated in the academy.
60. It is conceivable, however, that such a perspective be non-Buddhist. A
critique of Buddhism that situates itself within a Christian perspective is
equally theological. See, for example, Steve Odin, Process Metaphysics and
Hua-yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Mutual Penetration vs. Interpenetra-
tion (Albany: SUNY Press, 1982).
61. Exemplary of this approach is the work of Paul Griffiths; see his On
Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation and the Mind-Body Problem (La Salle,
II.: Open Court, 1986), and An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic
of Interreligious Discourse (Maryknoll, N. Y.: Orbis Books, 1991).
62. See Rita M. Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Anal-
ysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1993); and Anne Carolyn Klein, Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Bud-
dhists, Feminists and the Art of the Self (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).
63. See, for example, Tuck, Comparative Philosophy.
64. Although the set of distinctions I have drawn here between theology, phi-
losophy and methodology represents one way of conceptualizing the differ-
ences between these three modes of discourse, it is not the only one. Christian
theologians have discussed this issue for some time-in the context of the
debate concerning whether or not theology belongs in the secular academy, to
cite just one example. As all three of these underrepresented forms of dis-
course become more prevalent in Buddhist Studies, as I think they will, we
would do well to consider the latter literature in a serious manner.
260 JIABS 18.2
To summarize, from the positivist point of view, normative forms of
discourse-like the three just outlined-fall outside of the scope of Bud-
dhist Studies. From the interpretivist perspective, on the other hand,
there does exist a place within the academy for these modes of analysis. 65
Normative forms of discourse are paradigmatic examples of creative
scholarship in that they use texts as points of departure for the investiga-
tion of broader issues-issues such as the truth or falsity of various
claims, or their implications.
The question o/the author's original intention
An ancient Buddhist painting, !low in a museum, is "restored" using the
latest technology; a ritual never before performed in public is enacted
before cameras so that the scholar may film it and preserve it "before the
tradition is lost"; the textual scholar publishes the definitive critical edi-
tion of a tantric manuscript based on all known recensions and utilizing
all known fragments. Do we have in these various enterprises the preser-
vation and presentation of the various authors' original intentions? The
question is not so easily answered. As the narrator in one of Guenther
Grass's recent books says, there is the finest of lines between restoration
and forgery.
The positivist will want to argue that every text has a single definitive
and final meaning, and that this represents the author's original intention.
Recapturing this is the goal of textual scholarship. Interpretivists will
respond variously. Some will want to repudiate the notion of authorial
intention altogether. What authors intend, if they intend anything at all,
is rarely static and monothetic: authors frequently change their minds,
even in the very process of writing. And even if authorial intention were
capturable in principle, it is doubtful whether an academic, scholarly
format of presentation is what Buddhist authors had in mind. The repu-
diation of authorial intention will be seen by some pessimistically-we
are forever doomed to living within the closed world of our own inter-
pretations; and by others optimistically-this gives us license to manipu-
late texts in creative ways. Interpretivists of another ilk will want to
grant the possibility of multiple interpretations, while rejecting the notion
that anything goes. For the latter there must exist ways to arbitrate
65. Of course classical Buddhist texts are themselves theological in their
mode of discourse. Contemporary examples by Western scholars are more
difficult to identify. Some of the writings of Anne Klein, Stephen Batchelor,
Robert Thurman, and Rita Gross come to mind.
CABEZON 261
between competing interpretations; here authorial intention may be one,
though not the only, factor in judging adequacy.
In principle, a critical dialogue on authorial intention could of course
lead to some kind of resolution or consensus on the issue; but, as with
most complex issues of method, if this occurs at all it will most likely
occur only locally-in the context of individual self-contained conversa-
tions. But the point of a critical dialogue on questions of method is not
of course to reach final and universal consensus. Rather, it is to con-
verse, and in so doing to clarify our own and others' positions on impor-
tant issues, for ourselves and others.
Beyond written texts
It is interesting that disciplines that pride themselves on critical distance
from their object of study often implicitly incorporate many of its
assumptions and presuppositions without being aware of the fact that this
is the case. Buddhist Studies is no exception here, uncritically recapitu-
lating in its scholarly literature many traditional Buddhist presupposi-
tions.
66
Nowhere is this more evident than in the discipline's focus on
the written, doctrinal text as the principal object of investigation. 67 This
66. In Indian / Tibetan Buddhist Studies a prime example is to be found in
the adoption of the fourfold siddhanta schema as an explanatory mechanism.
In the academic study of Indian philosophy the same can be said to be true of
the classical "six systems." On the former see my "The Canonization of Phi-
losophy and the Rhetoric of Siddhanta in Tibetan Buddhism," Buddha Nature:
A Festschrift in Honor of Minoru Kiyota, eds. Paul J. Griffiths and John P.
Keenan (San Francisco: Buddhist Books International, 1990) 7-26; and on the
implications of adopting the six darsana framework as normative see Tuck,
Comparative Philosophy pp. 16-30. Strickmann, "A Survey of Tibetan Bud-
dhist Studies" pp. 140-141, discusses the implications of Western scholars
uncritically adopting a fourfold division of the Tantras as found in later tradi-
tional exegesis. Foulk, "Issues in the Field of East Asian Buddhist Studies"
p. 108, speaks of the recapitulation in Western scholarship of sectarian
Japanese interests, and (p. 113) of the ways in which "conclusions reached in
Japanese Buddhist theology are carried over into ostensibly critical Western
scholarship without being recognized and tagged as coming from a normative
tradition"; see also pp. 136 and 145 of that same essay for yet other examples
of the phenomenon being described here.
67. That the written text is not an entity that can be isolated and considered
separate from other semiotic forms is a point that was made as early as P.
Mus's classic study, Barabufjur. More recently, the same point has been made
by Steven Collins and Gregory Schopen (see note 3).
262 JIABS 18.2
emphasis on the conceptual, chirographic and doctrinal seems to be in
large part inherited from monastic Buddhism itself, where we often find
a rhetoric that emphasizes the study of texts and the doctrines found in
them over the study of other semiotic forms. Be that as it may, it is
indisputable that written texts and the doctrines they teach have received
a disproportionate amount of attention in the scholarly literature of the
field. There may be good scholarly reasons for this, but these will have
to be given, and no longer simply assumed, in the critical dialogue on
method that I envision. This is especially true given the fact that critics
have, from within the discipline itself, begun to challenge what they per-
ceive to be the monopolization of the field by the written text, and espe-
cially by doctrinally oriented scholarship.68 There is today a call for the
increased investigation of alternative semiotic forms-oral and vernacu-
lar traditions,69 epigraphy, 70 ritual,71 patterns of social and institutional
68. It is no accident, for example, that when J. W. de Jong wrote his master-
ful "A Brief History of Buddhist Studies in Europe and America," he should
have put the "main emphasis ... on philological studies."
69. Recently, Anne C. Klein has explored the importance of "oral genres" in
one school of Tibetan Buddhism in her Path to the Middle: Oral Madhyamika
Philosophy in Tibet, the Spoken Scholarship of Kensur Yeshey Tupden
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). On the rise and fall of
vernacular texts of the Theravada tradition as the objects of European schol-
arly study see Charles Hallisey, "Roads Taken and Not Taken in the Study of
Theravada Buddhism," in Donald S. Lopez, ed., Curators of the Buddha.
70. See note 3.
71. What Michel Strickmann sees as essential to the understanding of the
Buddhist Tantras, others have seen as essential to Buddhist Studies as a whole.
"To make their bare bones live will require a powerful supplement drawn
from both Tibetan scholastic and ritual literature and from direct observation
(or, indeed, participation). Until Tibetan philology has been durably wed to
Mercury in a series of such studies, it would be unwise to imagine that we
understand the real import of the later Tantras." "A Survey of Tibetan Bud-
dhist Studies," Eastern Buddhist 10.1 (May, 1977): 139; see also p. 141,
where he sees the study of iconography as essential to an understanding of the
Tantric tradition. On the importance of ritual in Ch' an Buddhism see Robert
H. Sharf, "The Idolization of Enlightenment: On the Mummification of Ch' an
Masters in Medieval China," History of Religions 32.1 (1992): 1-31; and T.
Griffith Foulk and Robert H. Sharf, "On the Ritual Use of Ch'an Portraiture
in Medieval China," Cahiers d'Extreme-Asie 7 (1993-94): 149-219.
CABEZ6N 263
evolution,72 gender,?3 lay and folk traditions, 7 4 art, archaeology and
architecture. Moreover, many of the critics who push for greater schol-
arly emphasis on the nondoctrinal are asking for more than merely a
voice, since part of the critique is that the study of alternative semiotic
forms directly impinges on, and challenges, the validity of the strictly
chirographic-doctrinal paradigm. The claim is not simply that the inves-
tigation of other semiotic forms should exist alongside the study of doc-
trine as it is found in written texts, but that doctrine itself cannot be fully
understood independently of culture in the broad sense of the term. 75
The critique is really a call for greater balance and holism within the
field; it is not only a demand that equal recognition be given to new areas
of research, but a call for an integrated and mutually interpenetrating
research program aimed at the understanding of Buddhism as a multi-
faceted entity. It is, in effect, a critique of methodological isolationism.7
6
72. See note 3; also, Hallisey, "Roads Taken and Not Taken" p. 5l.
73. See note 79.
74. Consider the words of the anthropologist Stan Mumford, Himalayan Dia-
logue: Tibetan Lamas and Gurung Shamans in Nepal (Madison: The Univer-
sity of Wis"consin Press, 1989): "Tibetan Lamaism, as one of the world's great
ritual traditions, could then be understood as a process that emerges through
dialogue with the more ancient folk layer that it confronts, rather than as a
completed cultural entity represented in the texts" (p. 2); or again, "The tex-
tuallanguage ... cannot determine the meaning of these rites. Each time they
are enacted or commented upon they incorporate traces of local folk con-
sciousness that are embedded in the lived experience of the valley" (p. 12).
See also, S. J. Tambiah, The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of
Amulets, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 49 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984); Richard Gombrich and Gananath
Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), and the review of the latter by
Vijitha Rajapakse, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies
13.2: 139-151; George D. Bond, The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka: Religious
Tradition, Reinterpretation and Response (Columbia, S. C.: University of
South Carolina Press, 1988).
75. For a description of what such a holistic approach might look like in the
study of "a single temple or monastic complex," see Michel Strickmann, "A
Survey of Tibetan Buddhist Studies" p. 142.
76. For a discussion of this issue in regard to Tibetan Buddhist philosophical
studies see my "On the sGra pa Shes rab rin chen pa'i rtsod Ian of Pal). chen
bLo bzang chos rgyan," Asiatische Studien / Etudes Asiatiques 49.4 (1995).
264 JIABS 18.2
The relationship of Buddhist Studies to the larger academic community
In much contemporary critical literature in the field we increasingly find
Buddhology characterized as a provincial discipline-ignorant of emerg-
ing theoretical developments in related fields, and reluctant to enter into
conversation even with the most natural of dialogue partners (e. g.,
Indology, Sino logy etc.). The perceived isolationist tendencies of the
discipline are seen as fostering a kind of intellectual hermeticism that
makes buddhological scholarship increasingly less relevant to the larger
academic community. Two types of remedies are called for. On the one
hand, we find a call for greater cultural contextualization, where the
objects of study of the field (written texts, institutions, art, rituals etc.)
are investigated not only against a particular Buddhist background, but
vis a vis the larger cultural context in which those objects-and Bud-
dhism itself-exist; hence, for example, the attempt to consider classic
questions of Chinese Buddhism in the broader context of Chinese intel-
lectual history,77 or the attempt on the part of anthropologists to situate
Buddhism as "part of a large social and cultural system."78
On the other hand, we find in the recent critical literature an insistence
on the fact that buddhologists need to become more conversant with the-
0ries, methods and forms of analysis current in the academy. This has
led to studies (and to calls for studies) that emphasize, for example, com-
parative, cross-cultural analysis,79 feminist criticism, 80 deconstruction, 81
77. See Peter N. Gregory, ed., Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to Enlight-
enment in Chinese Thought, Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism
5 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987); and the review by Foulk,
"Issues in the Field of East Asian Buddhist Studies." Bernard Faure, La
volonte d'othodoxie dans le bouddhisme chino is (Paris: Editions du CNRS,
1988) 11, also sees the importance of "placing Ch'an in its political-religious
context," of discussing its relationship with other Buddhist schools, and "with
other currents in Chinese religions" (my trans.), although the latter gets dealt
with only marginally by him in that particular work. See also Richard
Gombrich, "Recovering the Buddha's message," in Ruegg and Schrnithausen,
eds., Earliest Madhyamaka p. 20.
78. Anthropologists have in fact emphasized this direction in scholarship
early on. See, for example, Manning Nash, et. aI., Anthropological Studies in
Theravada Buddhism, Cultural Report Series 13 (New Haven: Yale University
Southeast Asia Area Studies, 1966). For a more recent study that attempts to
do this in the Tibetan cultural area see Stan Mumford, Himalayan Dialogue.
79. Much of this work is to be found in the area of comparative philosophy
in, for example, the pages of Philosophy East and West. See also the volumes
in the recent series from SUNY Press, Toward a Comparative Philosophy of
CABEZON 265
and literary criticism.
82
To give heed to these trends in the broader intel-
lectual sphere is seen as being profitable to Buddhist Studies in two ways.
Intellectually, it is said to bring life to the discipline by suggesting new
problems, and new perspectives on old ones; it is also said to give the
discipline a voice in current debates and ultimately to help the field by
demonstrating that the data from Buddhist cultures is relevant to the con-
versations that are taking place in the broader intellectual community.
The views just outlined clearly emerge out of an interpretivist frame-
work. The positivist response to this kind of scholarship is that it is fad-
dish and that it dilutes the scholarly worth of the discipline. It is suffi-
ciently difficult to gain the expertise necessary to engage in sound schol-
arship on Buddhist texts, and to impart that knowledge, without requiring
of the buddhologist forays into new and unproven areas of investigation.
Given that buddhological expertise confined to a narrow geographical
Religion. Other works with this emphasis include Chris Gudmunsen,
Wittgenstein and Buddhism (New York: Harper and Row, 1977); C. W.
Huntington's introduction to The Emptiness of Emptiness; Robert A. F.
Thurman's introduction to Tsong kha pa's Speech of Gold in the Essence of
True Eloquence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); and Steven
Collins, Selfless Persons.
80. See the work of Anne Carolyn Klein, Diana Paul, Nancy Schuster, and
Rita Gross; for more complete bibliographical references see the volume of
essays edited by me, Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1992).
81. See Anne Carolyn Klein, Meeting the Great Bliss Queen; Roger Jackson,
"Matching Concepts: Deconstructionist and Foundationalist Tendencies in
Buddhist Thought," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 52.3
(1989): 561-589; Bernard Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991).
82. The methods of literary criticism are implicit in a variety of studies that
employ and analyze categories such as orality, narrativity and rhetoric. In
addition to previous references (Klein and Faure) see also Paula Richman,
"Gender and Persuasion: The Portrayal of Beauty, Anguish and Nurturance in
an Account of a Tamil Nun," and Miriam L. Levering, "Lin-chi (Rinzai)
Ch' an and Gender: The Rhetoric of Equality and the Rhetoric of Heroism," in
Jose Ignacio Cabez6n, ed., Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender; also Robert E.
Buswell, Jr., "The 'Short Cut' Approach of K'an-hua Meditation: The Evolu-
tion of a Practical Subitism in Chinese Ch'an Buddhism," in Peter N.
Gregory, ed., Sudden and Gradual. Stan Mumford's Himalayan Dialogue
relies heavily on the work of the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin.
See also William R. LaFleur, The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Arts in
Medieval Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
266 JIABS 18.2
area and time period is already pushing human limits to the extreme, how
can we expect worthwhile scholarship to emerge from the pens of bud-
dhologists who attempt broader forms even of intracultural contextual-
ization, not to speak of cross-cultural comparative analysis. Underlying
these generally pragmatic arguments, however, is the positivist's general
skepticism concerning methodological novelty. Even if they were to
accede to the practical possibility of these forms of analysis, positivists
would reject them on principle, for interpretive methodologies of this
kind distort the objects being studied, forcing them into preconceived
theoretical molds. Moreover, what is so truly creative and original, asks
the positivist, about appropriating the theories developed in other disci-
plines to buddhological ends? Is this not a form of methodological para-
sitism that shows little by way of innovation? If capitulation to the cur-
rent fads in theory is the price of admission into the broader conversa-
tion' then perhaps better to send one's regrets.
Politics and the study of Buddhism
In addition to the challenges already mentioned, there has emerged in
recent years another category of criticism not yet discussed, one that
insists on the fact that politics (and, perhaps more generally, the analysis
of power) is relevant to the study of Buddhism in a variety of ways.
Most of these works are founded on one or both of the following
methodological presuppositions: (1) that cultures are political entities,
and (2) that scholarship (for example, the scholarship that takes a Bud-
dhist culture as its object) is never politically neutral, either in its consti-
tution or in its repercussions. The scholarly study of another culture-or
of a specific aspect within a culture, e. g., Buddhism-should therefore
(a) take into account "the features of asymmetry, inequality and domina-
tion"83 that exist within that culture, (b) reflect on the fact that the schol-
ar's work is affected by the power differential that exists between the two
societies interacting (that of scholars and that of the society that is the
object of their study), and (c) become aware of the fact that scholarship
can itself affect subsequent societal attitudes and political policies.
84
83. Sherry B. Ortner, High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of
Sherpa Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) 12.
84. In this regard it is no accident that the first lines of Stan Mumford's
Himalayan Dialogue should read, "A Highly reflexive mode of cultural inter-
pretation is emerging, as cultural anthropologists recognize the impact they
have on the societies they study and in tum find themselves being transformed
internally by their informants" (p. 11).
CABEZON 267
Although the- implications of this form of analysis are only now just
beginning to be felt in Buddhist Studies,85 its impact has had tremen-
dous-and often devastating-consequences in other fields of study.86
Like the study of most of Asia, the academic study of Buddhism as we
know it is the heritage of a colonialist and missionary past. These activi-
ties have utilized scholarship as a means of consolidating power over
other peoples, and although scholarly praxis has come a long way since
the time when it was an overt instrument of such activities, critical theo-
rists of the political sort often maintain that scholarly analysis continues
to recapitulate its colonialist past. Some would go so far as to claim that
it can never fully be divested of this heritage.
The nature of the relationship between a scholar and the culture that he
or she studies may be different today, but economic and political power
gradients still exist, and these must be taken into account in the very act
of scholarly analysis. Scholarship in its widest sense (including admis-
sion to, or exclusion from, scholarly organizations; the publication and
dissemination of information about religious liberty, or lack of it, etc.)
can have tremendous consequences in the socio-political realm. Scholar-
ship is a powerful mode of legitimation that can influence political
events. At the same time, political institutions influence scholarship: by
granting or refusing visas, allocating or withholding research funds, and
so forth.
In short, the critiques of colonialism, neocolonialism, orientalism, and
those that explore more broadly the relationship between power and
knowledge, are beginning to challenge Buddhist Studies in new ways. If
their claims are valid, it will mean not only reassessing the present of the
field in terms of its political past, but also considering the future moral
implications of its present.
As is the case with other fields, the response of buddhologists to such a
challenge will undoubtedly vary. Some will maintain that socio-political
analysis of this sort is reductionistic. In its preoccupation with power
and control as motivating forces, it leaves no room for other human
motivations, and in any case denies in a naive fashion the possibility of
85. See Lopez, ed., Curators of the Buddha; Christopher Queen and Sally
King, eds., Engaged Buddhism (Albany: SUNY Press, forthcoming); T.
Tillemans, "Oii va la Philologie Bouddhique?" forthcoming in Etudes de Let-
tres (Lausanne).
86. Consider the way in which Edward Said's Orientalism (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978) has already affected fields like contempo-
rary Indian and Islamic Studies, for example.
268 JIABS 18.2
objectivity. Others will maintain that politics has no place in the
academy; that scholars simply report what is true. Scholarship may be
used for political ends, but that is beyond the control of scholars; and in
any case, is it not better that political bodies give support to and utilize
fact rather than propagandist fiction?
Conclusion
What I have just described are some of the issues around which the criti-
cal dialogue on method will, I believe, take place. This list, however, is
more impressionistic than complete. As I have already mentioned, it is
of course impossible to predict, much less to prescribe, the agenda of this
conversation or the turns that it will take. The issues and their resolu-
tions (if any) are not predetermined. It is for this reason that I have
refrained from couching the above discussion in a rhetoric that makes it
appear as though the answers are there on the surface, just waiting to be
had. I do not believe this to be so, and although I myself have formed
some rather strong opinions in regard to many of these questions-some-
thing that has probably not gone unnoticed-I still remain baffled by
others. Moreover, if I have chosen to frame these issues using extremist
positivist and interpretivist views as foils, it is because (a) in the emerg-
ing critical literature in the field there already exists a tendency to char-
acterize each other's positions in these ways; (b) many of these character-
izations are the result of the ways in which we caricature and stereotype
each other; and (c) the use of extremes to frame issues is heuristically
useful, a very Buddhist device. If I have not opted for the Buddhist solu-
tion-by suggesting that the middle way is the way to go in each of these
cases-it is because I believe these issues are complex enough that they
are unamenable to moderate, middle-way types of solutions in all cases.
Be that as it may, this is something that only future conversation itself
can determine. But as Bakhtin has noted, a conversation can begin only
when a monologue has ended, and so I end mine here with the hope that
whether or not everything I have said is true, it is nonetheless
provocative enough to act as the impetus for such a conversation.
TOM J. F. TILLEMANS
Remarks on Philology
To begin with a disclaimer: In what follows I do not intend to offer any-
thing like a unified or detailed position on how to do philology, nor on
the soundness and feasibility of certain methods for providing relative
chronologies for texts or text-strata via philological analysis, but only a
series of remarks on what I perceive to be some of the recurring and fun-
damental philosophical issues which do and should come up, in one way
or another, in reflecting upon what we do in the disciple of Buddhist
Studies. My remarks are broadly inspired by an extensive exchange of
views between Jose Cabez6n and C. W. Huntington, Jr. in earlier issues
of this journal, as well as by their present contributions to this volume.
Contrary to what Jose Cabez6n seems to advocate, however, I do not
think that we can advance matters this complex through polemical argu-
ments in defense of rigidified traditional "methodological positions."
The danger is that these positions, once formulated in adversarial debate,
become caricatural and without actual adherents. An honest, and useful
approach, might be to look at some of the complex features of how peo-
ple who call themselves philologists ( and I count myself as being one)
do read texts, and to make methodological remarks on the basis of what
we actually do, rather than referring primarily to nineteenth century
thinkers or their philosophical avatars.!
The important feature of most working philologists' approach is the
conviction that by understanding in real depth the Buddhist languages,
and the history, institutions, context and preoccupations of an author and
his milieu, progress can be made towards understanding that author's
thought and better grasping his world. This much is clearly close to
essential aspects of traditional hermeneutics. And it is hard to imagine
philology not having at least the above-described basic stance. Now
granted, some would phrase things differently. Paul Griffiths, for exam-
1. The present article is a sequel to my lecture at the University of Lausanne
entitled "OU va la philologie bouddhique?" and appearing in Etudes de Lettres,
Universite de Lausanne 1996.
269
270 JIABS 18.2
pIe, speaks of linguistic competence and mastery of the historical context
as being preconditions to understanding a text.2 But the transition to talk
about understanding an author's thought is a natural one for a philol-
ogist, and, I would maintain, it probably should remain so. Take an
example of a historico-philological program which unabashedly seeks
authorial intent, namely what Erich Frauwallner and Ernst Steinkellner
have attempted to do in deciphering how and when Dharmakirti's
principal philosophical developments took place. Frauwallner sums it up
in the deceptively simple-looking penultimate sentence of his famous
article "Die Reihenfolge und Entstehung der Werke DharmakIrti's":
Es wird eine anziehende Aufgabe sein, dariiber hinaus die Entstehung und
allmiihliche Weiterbildung seiner Gedanken im einzelnen zu verfolgen.3
And I don't think that Steinkellner, for example, was atypical of philolo-
gists when he recently said:
As soon as we start reading Dharmakirti on his own terms we find ourselves
participating in his philosophical workshop. And the philological situation
in his case is luckily such that we can literally observe him at work, taking
up a theme again and again, adapting it, fitting it together with other themes
he has taken up again, and welding them together so that they seem never to
have been separate.
4
Of course, one could say that this is always just a quaint illusion, but I
think that many working philologists or historians of philosophy at a
particular point do have the feeling that Steinkellner referred to of almost
being able to observe their favorite philosopher at work.
Is there any real reason to say that a sentiment like what Steinkellner is
speaking about is always just plain wrong? Or perhaps we should turn
things another way: if we admit that, inspite of some quite considerable
2. See his article "Buddhist Hybrid English: Some Notes on Philology and
Hermeneutics for Buddhologists," Journal of the International Association of
Buddhist Studies 4.2 (1981): 17-32.
3. E. Frauwallner, "Die Reihenfolge und Entstehung der Werke Dharma-
krrtis," Asiatica, Festschrift F. Weller (1954): 154. The passage was trans-
lated by Steinkellner as: "It will be a fascinating task to trace the origin and
gradual development of his thought in detail."
4. E. Steinkellner, "The Logic of the Svabhavahetu in Dharmakirti's Vada-
nyaya," Studies in the Buddhist Epistemological Tradition, ed. E. Steinkellner
(Vienna: Osterreichische Akadernie def Wissenschaften) 311.
TILLEMANS 271
difficulties, we often can understand the mind of one of our contempo-
raries or that of someone who lived in the same decade, or even the mind
of someone who lived in another culture in the same century, then is
there anything in principle all that different in the case of understanding
the mind of a historical figure like Dharmakirti? No doubt, it's harder
and our rate of success is much lower. But perhaps opponents of philol-
ogy underestimate just how far someone can get by spending most of his
lifetime delving into texts, seeking to better understand them in their
context, and thus coming to form a picture of the minds of the authors.
Consider, for example, what Lambert Schmithausen has done in his his-
torical-philological study on the Buddhist concept of iilayavijiiiina-
Schmithausen is, by his own admission, "enmeshed in the historico-
philological method." 5 This study is, I think, a success, and I also think
that the fact that it is successful supports the view that we can go at least
a significant distance in understanding how the Buddhists themselves
conceived of a notion like iilayavijiiiina. To put the argument a bit more
bluntly: if it were otherwise, then what was Schmithausen doing, and
what could he have accomplished?
There is a tendency to characterize philologists as adhering to an
impossible program of understanding the meaning of a text by
"emptying" themselves of all preconceived notions, biases, prejudices,
etc. We are frequently told by critics that as getting rid of prejudices is
impossible, the goal must be to become "self-conscious" of them.
6
Alas,
it is not at all clear why we can only become self-conscious of our pre-
judices (as if we were condemned to doing only a kind of therapy), and
not refute or come to reject them, albeit not all of them all at once. Get-
ting rid of prejudices would indeed be impossible if we had to be free of
all at some given time. Now, some philologists perhaps still do say that
this is desirable and possible. But I doubt that many would want to have
to defend such an extreme version of their approach. It strikes me that a
reasonable position for a philologist would be to say that, at any given
time, one will always have some such prejudices, but that none, or at
least very few, are so intractable that they cannot in principle be chal-
5. See his Alayavijiiiina: On the Origin and Early Development of a Central
Concept of Yogiiciira Philosophy (Tokyo: 1987) vii. See also the review by
Paul J. Griffiths in the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist
Studies 12.1 (1989).
6. This is stated repeatedly in A. Tuck, Comparative Philosophy and the Phi-
losophy of Scholarship. On the Western Interpretation of Niigiirjuna (Oxford:
1990).
272 JIABS 18.2
lenged. Granted there probably are cases, like belief in rationality itself
or in the existence of other minds, etc., where, to adopt the Wittgen-
steinian phrase, the chain of reasons must come to an end. But accepting
these types of constituent elements of our "form of life" is relatively
harmless and will not, as far as I can see, in any significant way preclude
our understanding what an author meant.
The fact remains that we can often get rid of mistaken ideas about what
texts and authors thought by means of rational argumentation and by
meticulous analysis, so that it just won't do to say baldly that we read our
own baggage of cultural prejudices into a text. (For example, we can, I
believe, show by textually based argumentation that Stcherbatsky's neo-
Kantian understanding of Dignaga and DharmakIrti's idea of s v a l a k ~ a l } a
is wrong, if we are staying close to the basic Kantian ideas, or meaning-
less if we adapt Kant to fit the Buddhist perspective.) Surely, the onus
must be on the skeptic to prove his point, if he wishes to say that
progress in eliminating prejudices, preconceived or mistaken notions, etc.
is in principle impossible. I won't dwell on this, except to say that we
could invoke the famous analogy of mariners at sea repairing their boat,
an analogy which Quine so often used for describing how we can change
anything in our conceptual schemes: one can replace the planks (i. e.
prejudices, etc.) one at a time, but never all of them all at once. At any
rate, the fact of the interpreter always having prejudices does not itself
lead to the conclusion that we can never come closer to the "world of the
author," nor should it lead to a relativism where all our subjective ideas
as to what is meant are as good or bad as any other ideas. Although we
might not be able to empty our minds so that we have a pristine tabula
rasa and thus a kind of unadulterated pure vision, it's surely a bad non-
sequitur to think that this implies that any interpretation, being subject to
some prejudices, is as good as any another. Prejudices can be gross or
subtle, and some are seen to be quite obviously wrong. Fortunately, we
can and do rationally challenge our own ideas, sometimes even the most
deep-seated ones, and (as epistemologists of a Popperian bent recognize)
acceptance does not exclude acknowledging fallibility.
My colleague Johannes Bronkhorst, in a review of Andrew Tuck's book
on the history of Western interpretations of Nagarjuna, 7 made an impor-
tant remark which I should mention in this context, namely, that
Nagarjuna, about whom we all seem to write when it comes to
hermeneutics, represents a quite exceptional case, where indeed we do
7. In Asiatische Studien / Etudes Asiatiques 3 (1993).
TILLEMANS 273
seem to "find" virtually anything we're looking for. Nagarjuna is thus a
case where arguably our interpretations are to a very large degree a func-
tion of our initial baggage of biases. But, stresses Bronkhorst, not every
Indian philosopher is as maddeningly obscure as Nagarjuna: there are
philosophers where we can come much closer to understanding their
intent and there are texts where we can eliminate a lot of seductive inter-
pretations to which we might otherwise be led by our current mind-set or
by our cultural baggage. In short, Nagarjuna is a bit of a loaded exam-
ple, and we wouldn't want to say that we are in the same situation in try-
ing to understand DharmakIrti, the Nirukta or the Nyayasutras as we are
in understanding Nagarjuna. We're often stumped because of our inade-
quate knowledge, bad texts, unsolvable historical problems, etc., but for-
tunately there are degrees of incomprehension, so that sometimes we do
get somewhere. Let's go back to the situation of DharmakIrti studies: I
think that after some decades of following Frauwallner's philological
program, the scholarly world understands DharmakIrti' s thought much
better than did Stcherbatsky, and not just differently.
So much for what I take to be the important and inescapable preoccu-
pation which we, as philologists, have wjth authorial intent. While all
this has been, I hope, a reasonable depiction of how philologists proceed,
it is also I think important to stress that, if we take a narrowly restricted
sense of "intent," nobody limits himself to only that. Indeed, what
makes a good theory of interpretation so difficult to come up with are a
number of tensions in our practice, tensions which unfortunately we try
to eliminate by choosing one or another side in current philosophical
polemics. As I argued earlier, most of us quite naturally feel that we try
to understand authorial intent, that we try to see how, when and why an
author came up with his ideas and that we have to try to understand the
author's own thought processes, "what was going on in his head," and
this in his historical context and in terms of philosophical concepts which
would nave been basically familiar and acceptable to him. Not only do
we try, but we sometimes really do seem to have some success. On the
other hand, we are not content, or perhaps better, we should not be con-
tent to understand a philosopher merely in this way. Failure to interpret
in terms other than those mirroring the internal discourse of the author, is
a fast track to translations and studies written in that rather hermetic
idiom which Paul Griffiths has so aptly called "Buddhist Hybrid
English."8 We can and should defend textual interpretations which use
8. See Griffiths, op. cit.
274 nABS 18.2
terms and concepts which would have been unknown to the author him-
self-"unknown" in the sense that he didn't have anything at all like
equivalents to those terms in his vocabulary (and might well have con-
siderable reluctance in accepting what we are attributing to him). And
when we do this, we like to think that we're not modifying or adapting
our philosopher's thought so that it becomes palatable, chic or relevant to
our contemporaries. We like to think that we're doing more than just
useful falsifications or pleasant half-truths: our new characterization in
author-alien terms is (in some sense), after all, what he himself thought.
Arguably, this tension, or something quite like it, is what is at the root
of people's feeling that they have to choose between the traditional idea
of philologists, now defended by E. D. Hirsch et al. (i. e. the mens auc-
toris is the objective meaning of the text, all the other contemporary stuff
just has to do with the text's "significance" for us) and more radical
approaches, like so-called "textualism," which happily dismisses authorial
intent altogether as depending upon a "metaphysics of presence." Jose
Cabez6n, in a recent article in this journal, seems to speaks of a dilemma
between accepting "objective meaning" or just inventing meaning subjec-
tively' and leans towards the position of Hirsch; Huntington, in embrac-
ing Richard Rorty's position, is closer to textualism It la Jacques
Derrida.
9
I think that some of the black-white starkness of this dilemma, at least
amongst orientalists, may well be due to an insufficient analysis of what
we mean by "thought of an author," and, in general, may be due to an
9. See J. Cabez6n, "On Retreating to Method and Other Postmodern Turns: A
response to C. W. Huntington, Jr.," Journal of the International Association of
Buddhist Studies 15.1 (1992): 141-142:
As an aside, it is interesting that much of E. D. Hirsch's critique of
Derrida has focused on this very issue: what I am calling hermeneutical
relativism, and what others have called subjectivism. In his American Reli-
gious Empiricism, William Dean paraphrases Hirsch's criticism as follows.
He says that if Derrida is right, and "the objective meaning of a text is gone,
the text is meaningless--'-Or, to say the same thing, the meaning of the text is
simply invented in the subjectivity of the reader." It should be obvious that
Huntington sides with Derrida on this issue, and I with Hirsch, and that the
debate is by no means a new one.
Cabez6n's article is a response to one by Huntington in the same issue of
JIABS. See also the introduction to C. W. Huntington, The Emptiness of
Emptiness (Hawaii: 1989).
TILLEMANS 275
insufficiently clear picture of the logic of "knows," "believes," "thinks,"
"intends" and other such propositional attitudes which have two types of
uses. Something similar to the medieval distinction between de dicta and
de re modalities applies to contexts with the verbs "know," "accept,"
"thinks," etc., so that we have cases where "John knows a proposition P"
demands that P is in terms familiar to John, and others where this is not
needed at all. This is also very well-worn ground in modem logic, but it
is probably worth repeating. Let me give an unoriginal presentation.
There are indeed many epistemic statements which we accept as true,
but which cannot be taken in anything but the second way, that is, as
saying something unfamiliar, unknown, or even completely unacceptable,
to the thinker himself. For example:
a) Boris thinks his yacht is longer than it is.
b) Boris thinks that his pregnant girlfriend is a virgin.
To put things more exactly, a statement like b) may be true if analyzed
along the lines of "There is someone who is Boris' pregnant girlfriend
and Boris thinks she is a virgin." It is no doubt false if we take it as:
"Boris thinks that there is someone who is his pregnant girlfriend and is a
virgin." (De re / de dicta, "transparent" / "opaque," tum on where one
puts the quantifier "there is ... ," either outside the scope of "believes" /
"thinks," or within it.) For our purposes, instead of speaking of de re /
de dicta or using the Quinean terms "referentially transparent" /
"opaque," let's just speak of taking belief-statements in author-alien
modes and in modes which are author-familiar, all the while understand-
ing the fundamental logical differences at stake. The point of all this is
that it is an ordinary feature of "thinks ... ," "believes ... ," "accepts ..
. ," "knows ... ," "wishes ... ," "intends ... ," "hopes ... ," and all other
propositional attitudes, that both modes exist.
So obviously what is going in a) and b) is that we are phrasing Boris'
thoughts in ways which he would not: indeed he will vehemently contest
our formulation of what he thinks about his girlfriend. Nonetheless, the
statement that he thinks his pregnant girlfriend is a virgin may well be
true, and we can certainly argue about its truth or falsity. Now, some-
thing similar to a) and b) in logical structure is going on when we make
statements like "Nagarjuna accepted inference rules like modus ponens
and modus tolens," or "Buddhists thought that logical quantification
applied to existent and nonexistent items." These too tum on the author-
alien mode of "accept" and "think." In brief: we do of course try to
276 JIABS 18.2
understand what a philosopher thinks, but the words "think," "know,"
etc. involve two approaches inherent in the logic of belief, thought and
propositional attitudes in general. When it comes to understanding
Dharmakirti, Dignaga, Nagarjuna and co., I think we can say that we
should pursue both. When contemporary writers speak of "understanding
an author on his own terms" or "being truthful to the original mean-
ing,"!O I, of course, have no opposition to these formulae, but the nag-
ging doubt remains that they have been rather insufficiently clear slogans
generating more heat than light. The same ambiguities as those which I
have discussed remain here, for it should be obvious that it's a short step
from "understanding him on his own terms" or "being true to the original
meaning" to "understanding what the author himself thought or
intended."
A final remark. There is probably nothing particularly surprising in the
fact that philologists, like other human beings, will make author-alien
attributions of thoughts, that is to say, they will attribute thoughts to a
person which in a certain sense never entered the fellow's head and
which he might himself vociferously disavow. Indeed, this is not a prac-
tice which a thinking philologist should banish in dealing with Nagarjuna
or Dharmakirti any more than in dealing with his friend Boris. The real
difficulty is how to evaluate these types of attributions'!! This is gen-
uinely difficult and will admit of no algorithm-like criteria, but nonethe-
less whatever we attribute will have to be confrontable with textual evi-
dence. Can we then even speak of correctness or incorrectness, truth or
falsity, or should we just adopt a pragmatism along the lines of Richard
Rorty, as C. W. Huntington would seem to suggest in his book The
Emptiness of Emptiness? To put things another way, if we don't go along
with the idea that there is just one correct interpretation of a text-i. e.
correspondence with authorial intent taken in, I suppose, the author-
familiar mode-, then do we have to accept that "anything goes," or at
least that "anything useful or interesting goes"? I personally don't think
10. Cf. Steinkellner's use of "on his own terms" in the passage which I
quoted above. Cf. also Steinkellner's review of M. Sprung in the Journal of
the American Oriental Society 102.2 (1982): 412: "A translator has to present
the original in his chosen language in a manner which is at once truthful to its
original meaning, and dear to its new readers. That is all."
11. Cf. Cabez6n's remarks on page 153 of his review of Huntington's The
Emptiness of Emptiness (JIABS 13.2 [1990]): " ... I do believe that there are
evaluative criteria that can be employed to decide questions of authorial
intent."
TILLEMANS 277
so. But equally it has to be said that this is a hard, and even a highly
technical, issue about theories of truth which has challenged some of the
best minds in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. It would be
out of place and presumptuous to argue for a position on these issues
here. Suffice it to say that the general thrust of Hilary Putnam's argu-
ments with Rorty is that our practice of interpretation involves notions of
true, false, correct and incorrect, and not just usefulness or interest. The
technical part of Putnam's and Nelson Goodman's philosophies consists
largely in showing that "true," "false" etc. can be applicable only in a
determined context or "version": other "versions" with truth criteria
internal to them remain possible.l
2
While I'm certainly not in a position
to rule out a sophisticated pragmatism, what I would like to stress force-
fully here is that Rorty's rhetoric, like that of Derrida with whom he is in
sympathy, has an obvious potential for being taken in a very anti-intel-
lectual way by people who wish to seek primarily to maximize the
importance of their own ideologies. (Let me add that this remark is of a
general nature-I do not think that C. W. Huntington should be accused
ofthis at all.) Hopefully, if we opt for Rorty's pragmatism it will be in
a sophisticated version which accommodates philological rigor, and not
in one which dishonestly exploits Rorty's provocative phrases about
"beating texts into shape" and "systematic misreadings" as being a license
to bypass learning Buddhist languages properly or to avoid the difficult
enterprise of reading texts in their historical context. Buddhist Studies
insufficiently grounded upon, lacking, or even contemptuous of philol-
ogy is an unpalatable, albeit increasingly likely, prospect for the future.
It would add insult to injury if mediocre scholars justified or hastened
this unfortunate tum of events by invoking postmodern buzzwords.
12. To take a favorite example of Putnam, if we have x, y, z on a page, we
can get right or wrong answers to the question "How many things are there?,"
but only if we know whether we are accepting sum individuals or not. If not,
then the answer is three; if so, then we have seven things viz. x; y, z, x + y, y
+ z, x + z, x + y + z. For Putnam's internal realism, see e. g. Reason, Truth
and History (Cambridge University Press, 1981), and, more recently, Realism
with a Human Face (Harvard University Press, 1990). Goodman's classic ac-
count is in his slim but all-encompassing Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1978). Quine himself admitted affinities with Goodman's account,
but with some significant reservations. See e. g. his informal article on
Goodman in the New York Review of Books 23 November, 1978.
c. W. HUNTINGTON, JR.
A Way of Reading
When the realm of thought is extinguished
there is nothing to be named.
Like nirval)a, the essential nature of things
neither arises nor passes away.
Nor is there the slightest difference
between nirval)a and the everyday world.
N or is there the slightest difference
between the everyday world and nirviil)a.
-Madhyamakasastra, XVIII.7 and XXV. 19
I
I remember-as if it were only yesterday-stretching out on the upper
bunk of a second-class bogie on the Kashi-Vishvanath Express that runs
back and forth between New Delhi and Benares, between the capital city
of this world, of politics and commerce, and the capital city of another,
quite separate realm, the world of spirituality and unchanging truth. It's
late August, and in the stifling monsoon heat our compartment has
become an oven, the air saturated with human sweat and a haze of
smoke. Below me the wooden benches are packed with uniformed sol-
diers, each one of them puffing on a beedie. The card game has been in
progress non-stop for some ten hours. Only a meter above the fray I lie
safely ensconced on the narrow platform, my head resting against an
olive green canvas bag, my eyes focused on a small, pale yellow book.
The cover is worn, the Devanagarl title barely legible under a coat of
accumulated grime: Rt1pacandrikii. The book has been my constant com-
panion for years. Six hundred pages of Sanskrit grammar, six hundred
closely lined pages of declensions and conjugations that must be commit-
ted to memory. This is the map by which I plot my journey into the
mysteries of Indian Buddhism.
The setting varies, as do the characters on the page, but nevertheless for
most of us the activity is a familiar one. Whether Sanskrit or Tibetan,
Chinese or Mongolian, or any of half a dozen other classical Asian lan-
279
280 JIABS 18.2
guages, these are the terms of our apprenticeship as text-critical scholars.
Hundreds of hours of memorization, thousands of hours of consulting
grammars and dictionaries, an endless succession of mornings and after-
noons and nights spent nodding over pages of print, deciphering the
code, submitting to the ritual of training that will guarantee passage into
the inner-sanctum of the text. And yet, as each of us would acknowl-
edge, grammar and vocabulary are in themselves not enough. One may
read the words without understanding. Far worse, however, is the pos-
sibility that even our most considered interpretation might tum out to be
entirely spurious. A peculiar loss of faith is common to anyone who has
ever substantially revised his initial understanding of a passage. Here's
the rub: We may well know what a single line or, for that matter, what
an entire text means, but how could we ever know that we know? How
indeed. The truth is that we can not even be sure what might constitute
knowledge in this case, as opposed to belief. Precisely this is the funda-
mental uncertainty in which we, as text-critical scholars, become abruptly
self-conscious; here is the sort of radical doubt that drives us away from
the texts and back into an eccentric, introspective space where we begin,
for the first time, to frame questions of method.
To become critically self-conscious can be a rewarding experience. It
is also, more often than not, a painful one. A sort of profound discom-
fort arises along with our growing awareness of the extent to which the
conclusions of our research are inevitably molded by presuppositions
embodied in the conceptual tools that permit that same research to get
underway in the first place. The desire for certainty is not easily
uprooted. We would like very much to know something and to know
that we know it. Or, at the very least, to know that such a possibility
exists, and that not every act of knowing is contaminated by belief.
Moreover, the search for correct (valid I accurate) interpretation is (like
all theoretical impulses) part and parcel of a much broader philosophical
project, and so we quite naturally find our own craving for certainty
mirrored in the Indian sources. All of this is clearly registered in the
way we have traditionally gone about the business of interpreting Bud-
dhist philosophical texts. An example might help to illustrate the point.
Not so long ago Paul Griffiths published a review of The Emptiness of
Emptiness. Commenting on my characterization of Madhyamaka as
philosophical propaganda, he pointed out that
the very notion of propaganda carries with it an interest in persuasion: the
propagandist, by definition, wants to persuade his audience of something,
HUNTINGTON 281
or, more usually, to do something ... but [Huntington] does not pay suffi-
cient attention to the close connections between the act of persuasion and the
need for argument.. .. If, as he suggests, we are to regard Madhyamika as a
'justified prejudice' there need to be (and are) arguments to ground the use
of the adjective.. .. I am inclined to think ... that the Madhyamika theo-
rists are on firmer ground than Rorty (or Huntington)." (Griffiths 1991,
413-414)
Look closely, for a moment, at the network of associations triggered by
the use of the words "persuasion," "argument," "grounds," "theory": To
engage in persuasion is to construct deductive arguments; to argue in this
way is to furnish grounds; to stand on firm ground is to be a successful
theorist. The philosophical notion of "firm ground" has a long and ven-
erable history and is itself embedded in a wide range of associations
bound up with the search for first principles bracketed from all extrane-
ous interests, goals, agendas, or lines of authority. Notice how such a
vocabulary expresses certain assumptions about the way language must
do its work in Madhyamaka texts. According to these assumptions,
Nagarjuna's words are to be read as a proposed universal lexicon for
non-mythical, objective truth, knowledge of which would reflect the
presence of an equally non-mythical, objective reality-another world, so
to speak, a transcendent realm beyond suffering and decay and all forms
of historical contingency; the "other shore" from which Nagarjuna
speaks. Our job as interpreters of these texts is, then, to evaluate the
validity of the Madhyamaka's arguments in terms of whether or not they
succeed in providing convincing theoretical proof ("grounds") for the
existence of this other world. It ought to be possible, in principle at
least, to peel back from Nagarjuna's writing the layers of cultural bag-
gage (everything that has to do with the period and place in which these
texts were composed) and uncover a core of timeless philosophical truth.
Either the "Madhyamika theorist" successfully furnishes conceptual
access to (proof of / grounds for) ultimate reality, or the realm of the
transcendent conjured up by his words is merely a product of the Indian
religious imagination. Either these texts contain arguments that prove
something, or they don't. It is our job-our interpretive task-to con-
struct an accurate representation of those arguments and to evaluate their
success or failure by this standard. If the texts fail to establish conclusive
theoretical grounds for the existence of this other world of transcendent
truth and reality, then they may still, of course, hold a great deal of
interest for the cultural or intellectual historian, but it is difficult to see
282 JIABS 18.2
how they could have any compelling philosophical or religious value
except as rather exotic artifacts of a distant place and time, the record of
what was, ultimately, an unsubstantiated claim.
All of this is, I think, a fairly accurate sketch of the interpretive strat-
egy that has been routinely applied to the study of early Indian Madhya-
maka by European and American scholars working in shadow of T. R.
V. Murti, Richard Robinson and Edward Conze. To read in this way is
to understand that one is reading what Griffiths refers to, elsewhere, as
"denaturalized discourse":
... denaturalized discourse is almost always (perhaps always) linked with
an attempt to clean up the messy ambiguity of ordinary language used in
ordinary contexts. Polysemy, multivalence, the stuff of poetry and the lan-
guage of love: these are not values for a user of denaturalized discourse.
This is usually because the contexts within which such discourses are devel-
oped and applied are judged to be unreal, consisting in apparent or con-
structed objects rather than real ones. The lebenswelt, the constructed world
of lived experience in which we have our being is, of course, exceedingly
messy. We always say more than we mean and less than we hope; we use
language to evoke sentiment, to inspire action, to manipulate, and to medi-
tate. All of this is discourse in context, naturalized discourse that glories in
specificity, growing from and shaping particular human needs in particular
cultural contexts. (Griffiths 1990, 64-65)
Nor is it difficult to appreciate why early Madhyamaka texts have been
read the way Griffiths wants to read them, as instantiations of an essen-
tially ahistorical, "denaturalized" discourse. There are more than enough
places where it certainly seems as if Nagarjuna is arguing for something
of universal significance, where it certainly seems as if he wants to prove
something objectively. And if this is not the case, then what exactly is
going on?
The hermeneutical problem raised by Griffiths' criticism is a real one.
It is not so much that there are no options to reading Early Indian Mad-
hyamaka in this way; it is simply that in this context the model of denat-
uralized discourse seems so, well, natural, that we almost forget we're
looking out at the text through a set of rather thick theoretical specta-
cles-a prescription inherited not only from later Indian and Tibetan
commentaries but from our own deeply embedded preconceptions about
what constitutes legitimately "philosophical" language. There is, how-
ever, a very real alternative, with a pedigree that goes back, in the West,
to Plotinus, who shaped certain scattered elements of an ancient language
HUNTINGTON 283
of mysticism into a powerful new form of discourse. Some three-hun-
dred years later a companion of Saint Paul, known to us only under the
pseudonym Dionysus, wrote of a "mystical theology" in which the Greek
word kataphasis (affirmation, saying, speaking-with) is juxtaposed with
apophasis (negation, unsaying, speaking-away). During the ISO-year
period from about the mid-twelfth through to the start of the mid-four-
teenth century apophatic mysticism reappeared in a series of virtuoso
performances by Christian, Jewish and Islamic writers including Ibn
, Arabi, Rumi, Abraham Abulafia, Moses de Leon, Hadewijch,
Marguerite Porete, and the comparatively well known Meister Eckhart.
In the East apophasis has been identified as characteristic of certain early
Taoist writings and, of course, of the Madhyamaka tradition in general
and Nagarjuna in particular. The two verses from the Madhyamaka-
astra cited in the epigraph to this paper are a perfect illustration of
apophatic discourse, which displays, in the words of Michael Sells, "a
distinctive dialectic of transcendence and immanence in which the utterly
transcendent is revealed as the utterly immanent" (Sells 1994, 6). Else-
where he calls this "the refusal to resolve the apophatic dilemma by pos-
ing a distinction between two kinds of names"; or simply "the letting go
of the generic name" (ibid., 189-190).
At the center of apophatic discourse is the effort to speak about a sub-
ject that can not be named. The suspension of the logic of non-contra-
diction necessary to accomplish this aim means, as Sells has shown, that
apophasis has much more in common with poetry, narrative fiction,
drama, and other forms of non-discursive writing than it does with tradi-
tiona1 philosophical and theological texts. This is not to say that apo-
phasis is devoid of deductive argument; however the appearance of
argument and grounds in apophatic writing has generated a great deal of
confusion among philosophers, theologians and critics who fail to appre-
ciate that even the most rigorous logical form can be exploited for a
variety of literary and rhetorical effects. For instance, the same argu-
ment might appear in Aquinas' Questiones Disputatae and in a novel by
Dostoyevsky, but no critic would be naive enough to apply to both pas-
sages the same hermeneutical tools. And yet all too often this is just
what happens in the interpretation of apophatic writing. "Apophatic
texts," Sells tells us, "have suffered in a particularly acute manner from
the urge to paraphrase the meaning in non-apophatic language or to fill
in the open referent-to say what the text really meant to say, but didn't"
(Sells 1994, 4). Or, in other words, ... to read this literature as an ex-
ample of denaturalized discourse.
284 JIABS 18.2
If the Madhyamaka's arguments are not to be evaluated as "genuine"
arguments, but rather as a species of apophasis, then we require some
other coherent interpretive model, some other way of understanding that
would allow us to make sense of these texts as either philosophical or
religious discourse. The model I shall propose here takes seriously the
similarities traced by Sells and others between apophatic writing, poetry
and narrative.
Like poetry, apophasis is not a discourse that everyone will appreciate
immediately. Like poetry, apophasis resists paraphrase into other linguistic
modes; paraphrases can only be partial. When we write about a poem, we
do not attempt to express the meaning of the poem-if the meaning could
be expressed discursively, it would not have required a poem. In trying to
understand how the poetry works, we are led more deeply into the event of
reading the poem. What that event means to different readers may well dif-
fer strongly from one to another. Yet what has been commonly accepted
for poetic discourse-a resistance to semantic reduction-is frequently
viewed as a form of mystification in apophasis. (Sells 1994,216)
My project in what follows may be viewed as a contribution to a con-
versation already in progress, for Griffiths' original paper on denatural-
ized discourse provoked an insightful response from Francisca Cho
Bantly. In an essay titled "Buddhist Philosophy in Fiction," Bantly
pointed out that "the insistence that universal truth claims about reality
are best made through philosophy, or denaturalized discourse, itself
makes tacit assumptions about that reality .... Behind this drama, how-
ever, it is not too difficult to glimpse a cultural bias, itself rather tempo-
ral and limited ih scope, which responds in terror to the suspicion that
our truth-concepts are only masks for our embedded interests" (Bantly
1992, 85 and 87). Interests-whatever they might be-are always em-
bedded in an ontology, and "the means by which one can best express
ontological truths depends significantly on the structure of that ontology
itself' (ibid., 101). Like fiction, the subject of Bantly's article, apo-
phatic writing has the capacity to express, or embody, an ontology that
radically destabilizes traditional philosophical and religious assumptions
about wisdom and ignorance, sacred and profane, mundane and tran-
scendent, reality and illusion, error and truth. But to make the shift
between alternative ontologies demands an alternative way of reading.
This is, as well, a point forcefully made by Bantly, when she asks: "How
far are we willing to go in undermining some of our own ontological
HUNTINGTON 285
grounding for the sake of casting new molds for our understanding of
cultural discourse?" (ibid., 85).
Whatever this alternative way of reading and understanding might be,
we need to recognize, first, that it will necessarily entail a certain set of
methodological presuppositions, and second, that the effects of those
presuppositions will reverberate throughout the conclusions of our
research. Any discussion of Indian Buddhist philosophy is also, by
implication, a discussion of critical theory. Which is to say, for us there
can be no other form of early Indian Madhyamaka than the one we
retrieve from the texts, and what we find there ("the Madhyamaka's
philosophical and religious project") will necessarily bear the indelible
stamp of the critical theory that powers our interpretive work. This will
no doubt come as a great disappointment to those among us who hoped
to uncover some form of pure Madhyamaka untainted by a context which
includes the reader's interest and all the vicissitudes of history. Never-
theless, as text-critical scholars with an interest in Buddhist thought we
can scarcely avoid being drawn into a conversation between our col-
leagues in literary criticism and philosophy that has been in progress for
some twenty years now. This has nothing to do with any anxious cry for
relevance-though, for the record, I see no great merit in the willful cul-
tivation of irrelevance. What is required of us, as a discipline, is only
that we make the effort to articulate the principles of our critical theory
and so infuse the practice of textual interpretation with a greater level of
self-awareness.
II
For many of those involved in the discussion of critical theory, the
decade of the eighties was a time of "revisionary madness" (O'Hara,
1985). Structuralism, semiotics, hermeneutics, deconstruction, speech-
act theory, reception theory, psychoanalytic theory, feminism and Marx-
ism were only some of the various interpretive schemes that vied for
attention in literature departments. As W. J. T. Mitchell wrote in 1985,
"The general assumption is that everyone has a theory that governs his or
her practice, and the only issue is whether one is self-conscious about that
theory. Not to be aware of one's theory is to be a mere practitioner,
slogging along in the routines of scholarship and interpretation."
(Mitchell 1985, 2) Mitchell made these comments in the context of his
introduction to a collection of papers he edited for The University of
Chicago Press, a series of articles that had appeared in the journal Criti-
286 JIABS 18.2
cal Inquiry between 1982 and 1985. The book takes its name from an
essay by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels titled "Against The-
ory," and it is, in fact, the record of a heated debate provoked by their
work. The controversy stimulated by Knapp and Michaels elicited
responses from several of the most prominent critics of the time, includ-
ing Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish-both of whom were conunissioned
to write special pieces for this volume, which has attained, in some cir-
cles, the status of a kind of intellectual cult classic, in that the views
exchanged there became emblematic of an influential approach to textual
interpretation called pragmatic theory. Over the course of the next sev-
eral pages I shall draw on the rhetoric of this debate and on the central
concerns of pragmatic theory as the initial step in offering what seems to
me to be a powerful alternative hermeneutic for the interpretation of
early Indian Madhyamaka.
"Pragmatic theory" could be construed as an unfortunate misnomer for
a form of critical discourse that defined itself largely in terms of its
antitheoretical stance. Knapp and Michaels are certainly the most
extreme of the New Pragmatists in their notorious appeal for an end to
the "career option of writing and teaching theory" (Knapp and Michaels
1985, 105), but all of the central players are in one way or another
opposed to the theoretical enterprise as it is traditionally conceived. To
appreciate what is involved in being against theory it is necessary, first of
all, to have some clear idea of just what theory is in its orthodox form.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, theory is "a looking at,
viewing, contemplation, speculation; also a sight, spectacle." "There is,"
as Mitchell observes,
a tacit contrast here between the visual as the 'noblest' sense and the lower,
more practical senses, particularly hearing, the conduit of the oral tradition,
of stories rather than systems, sententiae rather schematisms.. .. Theory is
monotheistic, in love with simplicity, scope, and coherence. It aspires to
explain the many in terms of the one, and the greater the gap between the
unitary simplicity of theory and the infinite multiplicity of things in its
domain, the more powerful the theory.. .. Theory always places itself at
the beginning or the end of thought, providing first principles from which
hypotheses, laws, and methods may be deduced. (Mitchell 1985, 6-7)
For Indologists the etymology of the word immediately suggests associa-
tions to the Sanskrit d . r ~ t i , especially as it is used by Nagarjuna, who
himself took great pains to reject "the ocular metaphor." All of this sug-
gests in turn certain interesting parallels between Knapp and Michaels'
HUNTINGTON 287
similar rejection of theory; the fact that they are unanimously perceived
by their colleagues to have failed in this effort (to have "out-theorized
the theorists") makes the parallels appear even more intriguing. For as it
turns out, everyone of the "antitheoretical" New Pragmatists is self-con-
sciously committed to defending some alternative form of theoretical dis-
course. To see why this is so, and in the process perhaps to discover
some previously unexplored routes for deepening our appreciation of
Nagarjuna's own antitheoretical rhetoric, I want to take just a moment to
review the familiar distinction between positive, or "foundationalist" the-
ory, and negative, or "antifoundationalist" theory.
Foundationalist theory is concerned with formalizable rules, that is,
rules that can be applied across the board to generate predictable,
methodologically invariable results. It is in this sense that Stanley Fish
contrasts a "rule" with a "rule of thumb." Of course mathematics is the
paradigmatic model for theory as a collection of rules, and Chomsky's
generative grammar is a prime example of how this model can be applied
to virtually any theoretical enterprise: "The Chomsky project is theoreti-
cal because what it seeks is a method, a recipe with premeasured ingredi-
ents which when ordered and combined according to absolutely explicit
instructions ... will produce the desired result. In linguistics that result
would be the assigning of correct descriptions to sentences; in literary
studies the result would be the assigning of valid interpretations to works
of literature" (Fish 1985, 110). This understanding of theory sees it as a
determined effort to govern practice, "to guide practice from a position
above or outside it" and "to refonn practice by neutralizing interest"
(ibid., 110). The argument against theory is, briefly, that the project so
described by theory can never succeed: "It can not help but borrow its
terms and its content from that which it claims to transcend, the mutable
world of practice, belief, assumptions, point of view, and so forth"
(ibid., 111). It is in this sense that "theory hope"-defined by Fish as
"the hope that our claims to knowledge can be 'justified on the basis of
some objective method of assessing such claims' rather than on the basis
of the individual beliefs that have been derived from the accidents of
education and experience" (ibid., 112)-is in vain. Antifoundationalist
theory (whether Kuhnian, Derridean, Marxist, pragmatic or any other)
insists that the search for justification of our claims to knowledge
through some kind of objective method is bound to fail primarily because
we will never be able to trace belief back to its source in something that
is other than belief. Of course the great fear inspired by antifounda-
tionalist theory in all its various guises is that in disposing of any objec-
288 JIABS 18.2
tive criteria for rational inquiry, it is turning back the theoretical clock to
some forbidding pre-Enlightenment era when practice was governed by
nothing more than the individual's own perverse, unprincipled imagina-
tion. Evidence of this fear is not difficult to come by. One need look no
further than a recent edition of the Ann Arbor News, where an article
titled "Scientists deplore flight from reason" describes a recent confer-
ence in New York attended by some two-hundred professionals who had
gathered together from around the country to express their communal
anguish over the escalating intellectual assault on rationality:
... participants at the meeting aimed their barbs at "post-modernist" critics
of science who contend that truth in science depends on one's point of view,
not on any absolute content. Participants deplored what they see as a
growing trend toward the exploitation of scientific ideas to attack science.
They cited the physics of relativity and quantum mechanics as pillars of
20th-century thought that are sometimes distorted by critics of science into
arguments that nothing in science is certain and that mystery and magic have
an equal claim to belief.. . . Dr. Paul Kurtz, a professor of philosophy at the
State University of New York at Buffalo, contended that post-modernists of
both the political left and right denied that scientific knowledge was possi-
ble. The result, he said, was an "erosion of the cognitive process which may
undermine democracy." (Ann Arbor News, 8 June 1995, D5; from a syn-
dicated article by Malcolm W. Browne in the New York Times)
Fish's response to this fear is to point out that antifoundationalism is not
an argument for unbridled SUbjectivity, but rather for "the situated sub-
ject" (Fish 1985, 113), by which he means the individual who is always
already situated in an interpretive community which provides contextual
constraints on his or her judgment. Antifoundationalism is, in this
respect as well as in others, invariably historicist, for as a form of theo-
retical discourse it can only reject assertions of "absolute content" based
on an authority located outside of any particular place and time. What
we have here is in effect a theoretical affirmation of contingency, and in
particular, the radical contingency of knowledge, for any claim to
knowledge must inevitably rest on belief. Insofar as antifoundationalism
is theoretical, however, it is a peculiarly self-defeating kind of theory,
for like all theory, it too finds its origin in belief:
A theory is a special achievement of consciousness; a belief is a prerequisite
for being conscious at all. Beliefs are not what you think about but what
you think with, and it is within the space provided by their articulations that
mental activity-including the activity of theorizing-goes on. Theories are
HUNTINGTON 289
something you can have-you can wield them and hold them at a distance;
beliefs have you, in the sense that there can be no distance between them and
the acts they enable. In order to make even the simplest of assertions or
perform the most elementary action, I must already be proceeding in the
context of innumerable beliefs which can not be the object of my attention,
because they are the content of my attention ... (Fish 1985, 116)
A final curious upshot of Fish's brand of antifoundationalism is that,
according to him, it generates absolutely no practical consequences:
"The fact that we now have a new explanation of how we got our
beliefs-the fact, in short, that we now have a new belief-does not free
us from our other beliefs or cause us to doubt them" (ibid., 114). To say
that theory in itself has no practical consequences is equivalent to saying
that theory is incapable of dictating practice, that no theory can carry
within itself the rules for its application. Here, as elsewhere, Fish betrays
his debt to Wittgenstein (cf. Wittgenstein 1968, Part I, 292). The rules
for application of theory are always supplied by the particular contin-
gencies of a given situation. Some course of action is already in progress
and it is this action-in-progress that supplies the context in which theory
acquires whatever significance it has. The consequences of theory are,
then, a function not of theory itself, but rather of the total environment
in which theory abides. Allegiance to a particular theoretical position
can still be highly significant-though not because the theory informs a
characteristic practice, but rather because certain people declare alle-
giance to certain theories, and to do so is to align oneself with a particu-
lar ideology. Fish's position in this regard does not find unqualified
support among all pragmatic theorists. The work of Edward Said, for
example, suggests to some that even antifoundationalist theory is capable
of generating real and direct consequences:
I do not mean to suggest that a "real" Islam exists somewhere out there that
the media, acting out of base motives, have perverted. Not at all. For
Muslims as for non-Muslims, Islam is an objective and also a subjective
fact, because people create that fact in their faith, in their societies, histories,
and traditions, or, in the case of non-Muslim outsiders, because they must in
a sense fix, personify, stamp the identity of that which they feel confronts
them collectively or individually. This is to say that the media's Islam, the
Western scholar's Islam, the Western reporter's Islam, and the Muslim's
Islam are all acts of will and interpretation that take place in history, and
can only be dealt with in history as acts of will and interpretation. (Said
1981,41)
290 JIABS 18.2
One could not hope for a more radical statement of antifoundationalism,
and yet Steven Mailloux points out that Said's theoretical assumptions
have generated, via his analyses of Orientalism, very real consequences
for the practice of U. S. foreign policy. Even more significant, in
Mailloux's eyes, is the fact that Said's work has been taken up by Orien-
talism's victims as an objective justification for what is, in effect, their
own self-interpretation. "These appropriations of Said's discourse can
occur because a demonstration that others' asserted truth is actually inter-
ested belief always counts as a critique of their assertions in the present
arena of critical and political discussion. In such an arena, to expose
asserted truth as 'mere' belief is to have the effect of undermining that
truth even though the debunker elsewhere insists that all truth is perspec-
tival belief' (Mailloux 1985, 70). Once again I am reminded of the dif-
ficulty so many commentators have had, down through the centuries, in
understanding how the Madhyamaka's antitheoretical theory is able to
accomplish its aim when it is an argument without grounds, and there-
fore, apparently, no argument at all. Recall, for example, the objection
raised against CandrakIrti in Madhyamakiivatiira 171: "When you speak
like this you only defeat your own position, and this being the case, you
are incapable of refuting [the position of an opponent]" (Huntington
1995, 178). As Mailloux explains, "In fact, theory is a kind of practice,
a peculiar kind because it claims to escape practice. But the impossibility
of achieving this goal does not prevent theory from continuing, nor does
it negate the effects it has as persuasion" (Mailloux 1985, 70-71). And
here we have, I think, a cogent response not only to Candraklrti's inter-
locutor, but to Griffiths, perhaps, and to so many others who see persua-
sion only as a matter of deductive argument and "firm grounds."
Throughout this paper I have been interested in stressing the connec-
tions between philosophy and critical theory. Every idea of theory-
what it is, what it can be-comes with its philosophical (ontological,
epistemological) analog, just as every philosophical agenda has its theo-
retical implications for the way we read and interpret texts. If we expect
to find arguments and grounds in Nagarjuna, for example, then it is
important to realize that this expectation is bound up with a certain inter-
pretive strategy based on notions of accuracy and correctness. Adena
Rosmarin unveils the philosophical origins of foundationalist theory:
As their definition of "epistemology" and "ontology" reveal, Knapp and
Michaels take their notion of theory from philosophy as it was institutional-
ized by Kant's followers in the nineteenth century: a project whose business
HUNTINGTON 291
is the grounding and adjudicating of claims to knowledge, where
"knowledge" is defined as the accurate representation of what is known. In
this they are right. Our discipline has envisioned itself as the progressive
acquisition of knowledge about literary texts, and literary theory has
assumed the grounding and adjudicating role of philosophy. It asks: Where
is the essence (ground) of literary meaning located? How do we most accu-
rately represent it? Which interpretations are the most accurate representa-
tions? (Rosmarin 1985, 81)
There is no objective reason why either philosophy or literary criticism
needs to rest forever in this model. Which raises the question of alterna-
tive theories. Based on Rorty's suggestion that we substitute conversation
for confrontation (a groundless give and take for deductive argument) in
our definition of the context in which knowledge is both generated and
understood, Rosmarin develops the rudiments of a theoretical approach
that would avoid the limitations of the representational model, which
depends on its capacity to reduce textual meaning to a formula that can
grasped in generalized rules and methods ("to say what the text really
meant to say, but didn't" [cf. Sells 1994, 4, cited above]). This alterna-
tive theory would rejoice in the very features of textuality that are most
difficult to represent: polysemy, multivalence, change, ineffability,
complexity, uniqueness.. .. It would no longer be bound by a compul-
sive need to postulate objective, extra-textual standards against which we
might judge the accuracy or correctness of our interpretations. Equally
important, a nonrepresentational theory would make it possible to treat
the relationship between belief and knowledge from a whole different
perspective, it would reveal a world where the need for certainty no
longer dominates us the way it has in the past, a world where the primacy
of belief is no longer cause for alarm. This is the world that poetry and
literature has always occupied and evoked, it is world that can be dis-
cussed, felt, entered into and lived, but not re-presented from the outside
in the kind of schematic formulas characteristic of denaturalized dis-
course. Here a semblance of argument and rule may be called upon to
achieve certain metaphorical or literary effects, but these effects take
place in a world entirely beyond the grasp of reason and logic, a world
where one can know without believing and believe without knowing.
Shakespeare's sonnet 138 speaks to us, like Nagarjuna's writing, from
"the other shore," where there really is nothing outside the text (cf.
Rosmarin 1985, 88):
292 JIABS 18.2
When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies.
But Nagarjuna was not writing poetry, nor is a Shakespearean sonnet
philosophy. Shakespeare's writing may have philosophical implications,
but it would not normally occur to us to read a sonnet in the same way
we read a philosophical text. One might come up with all sorts of good
reasons why this is so, but at the moment I am not interested in reasons.
For behind or underneath the reasons hides a powerful intuition-almost
a conviction-that there are, or ought to be, rules to prevent such a per-
version of genres. Philosophy is one thing, literature and poetry quite
another; and even if we concede that they all may simply be styles of
writing, still to conflate them is to lose sight of the fact that philosophy is
anchored not in the free play of language, but in argument and grounds.
To lose sight of the fact . ..
And yet it can be done. What is required is not another argument-
though arguments might come in handy-but an act of imagination, an
exercise of that most subversive, anti-authoritarian and eminently human
faculty. Rorty, among others, has recommended just this kind of imagi-
native leap into a realm where one need have no fear of hitting ground:
If one thinks of philosophy as entirely a matter of deductive argument,
then this game of mirrors will, indeed, be one's only recourse. But one can
also think of philosophy in other ways-in particular, as a matter of telling
stories: stories about why we talk as we do and how we might avoid con-
tinuing to talk that way.. .. The notion of "rational grounds" is not in
place once one adopts a narrative strategy .... For if we ever did get rid of
all the jargon of the tradition, we should not even be able to state the real-
ist's position, much less argue against it. The enemy would have been for-
gotten rather than refuted. If Derrida ever got his "new logic," he would
not be able to use it to out-argue his opponents. Whatever a "graphematics
of iterability" might be good for, it would be of no use in polemic. The
metaphysics of presence was designed precisely to facilitate argument, to
make questions like "How do you know?" seem natural, and to make a
search for first principles and natural resting-places seem obligatory. It
assumes that all of us can tell such a resting-place when we see it and that at
least some of our thoughts are already there. You can't argue against that
assumption by using the vocabulary of the tradition, but neither can you
argue that the tradition is wrong in its choice of vocabulary. You can argue
only against a proposition, not against a vocabulary. Vocabularies get dis-
carded after looking bad in comparison with other vocabularies, not as a
HUNTINGTON 293
result of an appeal to overarching metavocabularies in which criteria for
vocabulary choice can be formulated.
This means that narrative philosophy should not be expected to fill gaps
left vacant by argumentative philosophy. Rather, the importance of narra-
tive philosophy is that persuasion is as frequently a matter of getting people
to drop a vocabulary (and the questions they phrase within it) as of deduc-
tive argument ...
One can still have philosophy even after one stops arguing deductively
and ceases to ask where the first principles are coming from, ceases to think
of there being a special corner of the world-or the library-where they are
found. In particular, I take "literary theory," as the term is currently used in
America, to be a species of philosophy, an attempt to weave together some
texts traditionally labeled "philosophical" with other texts not so labeled. It
names the practice of splicing together your favorite critics, novelists, poets,
and such, and your favorite philosophers.. .. Thinking of it this way helps
one get rid of the idea that philosophy is somehow on another level. It lets
one think of "philosophical" and "literary" texts as grist for the same mill.
(Rorty 1985, 134-136)
III
Having now dispensed with the need for reason, argument and grounds in
my effort to develop a new way of reading Nagarjuna, I want to own up
to some very serious qualms. In a commencement address delivered at
Denison University, where I was teaching at the time, the journalist Anna
Quindlen referred to a comment made by one of her critics: "I don't
believe her," the fellow had written. "She may be the only happy person
in New York, but somehow I doubt it" (Quindlen 1995, 50). I can't
help feeling that something similar could be said about Rorty, Fish and
most of the other New Pragmatists. Their willingness simply to shake
off the dust of traditional philosophical claims to truth strikes me as a tad
cavalier-especially insofar as they seem prepared almost casually to
embrace the lack of objectivity as if it were itself a more profound form
of truth. Perhaps it is, but here I find myself more inclined to trust
Nietzsche's cryptic, almost mystical reserve, when he warns us that
"something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the
highest degree. Indeed, it may be a basic characteristic of existence that
those who would know it completely would perish" (Nietzsche 1966,
39). In any case, one suspects that a problem which has occupied the
attention of philosophers and religious thinkers in the East and the West
for thousands of years is not going to evaporate at the wave of the
pragmatic wand. In fact Rorty has been criticized for over-simplifying
294 JIABS 18.2
deconstruction's complex relationship to the whole problem of meta-
physics (e. g. Norris 1987, 150 ff.), and indeed, a close reading of
Derrida reveals that he does not envision any final escape from tradi-
tional forms of logocentric discourse. For example, consider what he has
to say in Writing and Difference:
But all these destructive discourses and all their analogs are trapped in a
kind of circle. This circle is unique. It describes the form of the relation
between the history of metaphysics and the destruction of the history of
metaphysics. There is no sense in doing without the concepts of meta-
physics in order to shake metaphysics. We have no language-no syntax
and no lexicon-which is foreign to this history; we can pronounce not a
single destructive proposition which has not already had to slip into the
form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to
contest. (Derrida 1978, 280-281)
In what is perhaps the most comprehensive and nuanced exposition yet
to be published of deconstruction's philosophical implications, Rodolfe
GascM explains how Derrida's concept of "metaphoricity" (the metaphor
of metaphor) "names the 'origin' of an unavoidable illusion, the illusion
of an origin" (GascM 1986, 314):
In short, whether discussing Hegel, Hussed, or Heidegger, Derrida is pri-
marily engaged in a debate with the main philosophical question regarding
the ultimate foundation of what is. Contrary to those philosophers who
naively negate and thus remain closely and uncontrollably bound up with
this issue, Derrida confronts the philosophical quest for the ultimate foun-
dation as a necessity. Yet his faithfulness to intrinsic philosophical demands
is paired with an inquiry into the inner limits of these demands themselves,
as well as of their unquestionable necessity. (Gasche 1986,7)
But of all modem philosophers, it is Nietzsche who appears to have
pushed this particular issue to its ultimate, dramatic conclusion. "The
falseness of a judgment is not for us necessarily an objection to a judg-
ment.. .. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-pre-
serving ... " (Nietzsche 1966, 4). Nietzsche alone has the temerity
baldly to declare "untruth as a condition of life" (Nietzsche 1966,4):
From the beginning we have contrived to retain our ignorance in order to
enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, lack of scruple and caution, hearti-
ness and gaiety of life-in order to enjoy life. And only on this solid,
granite foundation of ignorance could knowledge rise so far-the will to
HUNTINGTON 295
knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will: the will to igno-
rance, to the uncertain, to the untrue. Not as its opposite, but-as its
refinement. (Nietzsche 1966, 24)
If Rorty, Fish and the other New Pragmatists seem a bit shallow
alongside Nietzsche it may be because they lack his finely tuned sensitiv-
ity to problems of morality and religion. What is required is a sophisti-
cated concept of religious discourse to which we could apply the analyti-
cal framework of pragmatic theory. Nor must the project begin at
ground zero, for as it turns out we already have a compelling example of
what might be accomplished along these lines in a recent book by Carol
Zaleski.
Zaleski's book, Otherworld Journeys, is built around a comparative
study of near-death narratives drawn from two quite disparate sources:
medieval Christendom and contemporary American society. She has
attempted, in her own words, "to meet the problem of interpretation
head-on" (Zaleski 1987, 7), and it is this dimension of her work that I
want to review here. Perhaps the best place to begin is with Santayana's
famous definition of religion, which was presumably the catalyst for
Zaleski's title:
Any attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is not more
hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall be no religion in par-
ticular.. .. Thus every living and healthy religion has a marked idiosyn-
crasy; its power consists in its special and surprising message and in the bias
which that revelation gives to life. The vistas it opens and the mysteries it
propounds are another world to live in; and another world to live in-
whether we expect ever to pass wholly over into it or not-is what we mean
by having religion. (Cited in Zaleski 1987, 201-202)
In the case of accounts of near-death experience this message is delivered
in the form of narrative descriptions brought back from actual visits to a
realm beyond the world of the living. Reports of these experiences-
whether medieval or modern-are cast in the rhetoric of objective truth.
Although these accounts are structured as narratives and not as a series of
deductive arguments, they nonetheless function, for those who take them
at face value, as conclusive evidence of the existence of a reality every
bit as real as any described in the language of empirical science. There
are, however, two major obstacles to accepting such reports on their own
terms: First, as Zaleski's comparative study shows, despite their remark-
able similarities, medieval and modem accounts of this other world differ
296 JIABS 18.2
in significant ways-ways that frustrate any hope of finding in them a
universal lexicon for the near death experience. In all their various
renditions, the stories brought back from the other world are infused with
the by-products of cultural and social conditioning. Second, even the
striking similarities in descriptions of these experiences have been subject
to a plethora of naturalistic explanations based on neural wiring, physio-
logical mechanisms of dying, repressed memories of birth, and common
psychological responses to the threat of death. Although no single theory
is presently capable of accounting for all the medical, psychological,
philosophical, historical, social, literary, and logical dimensions of the
experience, skeptics are convinced that it is only a matter of time before
the scientific community will be able to put together an entirely mecha-
nistic explanation that will strip near-death reports of any shred of
revelatory power. Zaleski's theological task is, then, to find "a middle
path" between the extremes of scientific reductionism and naive
affirmation. Her solution lies in a return to William James, and to his
suggestion that religious testimony be evaluated not on the basis of its
origin, but rather on the basis of its "fruits for life."
In order to harness pragmatic theory to her theological project, Zaleski
proposes a concept of religious discourse based on an understanding of
symbolism taken over from Coleridge, Tillich, Cassierer, Langer and
Ricoeur: The object or image that functions symbolically does so not
only by representing some reality beyond itself, but also by simultane-
ously participating in what it represents. A symbol neither fully contains
nor copies the transcendent, but it has the potential to communicate some
share of the power inherent in that realm. This understanding of symbol-
ism is linked to a definition of religious imagination as "the capacity to
create or to appreciate religious symbols" (Zaleski 1987, 191). In this
sense, although religious discourse may deal in theory, its does not aim to
satisfy one's curiosity about theoretical questions. "When we think theo-
retically," Zaleski explains, "we must guard against spatializing and
hypostatizing our ideas; perhaps we could not think creatively at all,
however, if we lacked the capacity to imagine, though only subliminally,
a realm in which our ideas can act" (Zaleski 1987, 193). This realm of
religious symbols-the realm governed by the religious imagination-is
what we encounter in reading any religious writing; consequently the task
of the theological critic is to interpret the significance of such language
not as a function of whether it is true or false, but rather to seek to
uncover the vitality of the text as a vehicle for religious transformation.
Any and all of the powers of language may be recruited for this aim, and
HUNTINGTON 297
so the rhetorical devices one encounters in religious discourse run a
gamut from poetry, narrative and didactic prose on through the overtly
argumentative style of abstract philosophical theology. Which brings us
to Zaleski's central claim, in which she identifies the real strength of her
pragmatic method:
One need not abandon the idea that there is an ultimate truth in order to rec-
ognize that for now, at least, pragmatic criteria must be used. If we have no
direct sensory or conceptual access to the reality for which we aim, then we
must judge those images and ideas valld that serve a remedial function,
healing the intellect and the will. In this sense, all theology is pastoral the-
ology, for its proper task is not to describe the truth but to promote and
assist the quest for truth. (Zaleski 1987, 192-193)
Every genre of religious literature has its audience and a language
appropriate to that audience; but regardless of the shape of the language,
it serves, in every instance, a therapeutic end. It can not accomplish this
end, however, unless we are willing to surrender the conviction that there
is, or ought to be, some form of original, authentic religious truth that
can be pried away from language, myth, history and culture. We need
consciously to recognize and affirm not only that religious discourse is
always the discourse of a particular place and time, but that to remain
vital it must be constantly reshaped in the imagination of the reader.
According to Zaleski, "The advantage of this position is that it calls on
religious thinkers to acknowledge and take responsibility for their own
reflective and creative work in framing ideas of the universe and of God"
(Zaleski 1987, 195). This ongoing, creative (re-)framing of the text has
a particular significance in the interpretation of apophatic discourse,
where "the habits of language pull the writer and reader toward reifying
the last proposition as a meaningful utterance. To prevent such reifica-
tion, ever-new correcting propositions must be advanced" (Sells 1994,
207).
As we have already seen above, our willingness to accept the creative
role that we as interpreters play in the understanding of any text is a
direct fallout of pragmatic (anti-) theory. But as adapted by Zaleski to
the interpretation of religious discourse, pragmatic theory becomes much
less hostile to the claims of traditionallogocentric philosophy and meta-
physics. The power of the text no longer hinges on the success of its
arguments in accurately representing truth or reality, for what appears as
argument is equally capable of being interpreted as religious symbol-as
298 JIABS 18.2
a tool of the religious imagination designed not so much to prove as to
heal. In this respect logic and deductive argument can be made to work
for religious purposes in just the same way as does the language of a
near-death narrative-by shifting the grounds for ultimate truth from the
realm of knowledge to the realm of the imagination, or, to say what
amounts to the same thing, by making it possible to believe.
Against the pull of scientific reductionism, which seeks, in the arena of
near death testimony, to undermine the credibility of these stories by
explaining away the central experience as a composite of individual
physical, psychological, and social data, Zaleski reminds us, signifi-
cantly, that the same case could be brought against the experience of
love-a state that can be accounted for as the composite effect of neuro-
chemical and social mechanisms including everything from advertising to
pheromones. The truth-the objective, scientific truth-is, of course,
that every normal state of consciousness is a composite effect of electrical
and chemical events in brain, hormones, inherited drives and various
forms of social and cultural conditioning. If we were to apply reduction-
ist principles across the board nothing would survive, for all of our
experience is in one way or another a composite whole assembled by the
imagination out of threads of sensation, perception, language, memory,
and on and on. Similarly the meaning of a text, whether that meaning is
conceived to lie in its capacity to prove or to heal, is the cumulative
effect of an enormous variety of context-bound elements including
rhetorical style, appeals to authority, ideological associations, an inter-
pretive community and so forth. The integrity of experience, like the
meaning of a text, is only problematized when for some reason our
imagination can no longer do its work and we cease to be captivated by
the effect of the whole.
But let me return to the question of the aim of religious discourse, and
to Santayana's definition of religion cited just above. His work indicates
that all the various components of advanced religious life could be
referred back to a primitive view of the other world as an actual place-a
view that continues to exert its influence on the religious imagination
even where it has been sublimated into a variety of epistemological and
ontological claims about "truth" and "reality." But it is Zaleski who
gives Santayana's ruminations their real force in her suggestion that the
primary value of the human inclination to conceive of another world lies
in its potential to furnish us with "a sense of orientation in this world,
through which we would otherwise wander without direction ... "
HUNTINGTON 299
This has not always been formulated in terms of life after death. Even the
contemplation of death, unadorned by images of the beyond, can have this
orienting effect insofar as it makes us place ourselves, with greater urgency
and purpose, in the midst of life; and a sense of the mystery of existence, of
infinite presence or surrounding emptiness, can have the same value as a
graphic depiction of the steps to paradise and hell. Buddhist evocations of
the inexhaustibly productive void are as well suited as Dante's Divine Com-
edy to meet the need for orientation. .. they call on us to inhabit this cos-
mos, by overcoming the fear or forgetfulness that makes us insensible to life
as to death. (Zaleski 1987, 202-203)
Descriptions of the after-effects of near-death experience seem to bear
this out: "greater zest for life, less concern for material things, greater
self-confidence, independence and sense of purpose, attraction to solitary
and contemplative pursuits, delight in the natural world, tolerance, and
compassion toward others" (Zaleski 1987, 142). Zaleski stresses through-
out her study that the presence of the other world has these same effects
not only on those who actually make the journey, but also on the audi-
ence who hears and accepts their message. In the words of an Australian
woman who wrote to Anabiosis, a regular digest of news for the mem-
bership of the Association for the Scientific Study of Near-Death Phe-
nomena: "I don't fear death now, nor do I fear life" (Zaleski 1987, 143).
IV
It's time to return to the problem with which this paper began: How
does Nagarjuna's apophatic language accomplish its philosophical / reli-
gious work? How are we to "make sense" of the Madhyamaka's uncom-
promising effort to overturn even the slightest suggestion that there is
another, transcendent world of absolute truth and reality with equally
frequent assertions to the effect that the realm beyond thought, "the
essential nature of things"-dharmata, tattva-"neither arises nor passes
away"? I have done my best to ensnare this question in a number of
other issues, to demonstrate how it is both a problem of textual interpre-
tation and of philosophy, both a theoretical problem of the source of tex-
tual meaning and a philosophical or religious question of the distinction
between knowledge and belief and the nature of their objects.
We have seen how, in its antitheoretical polemic, pragmatic theory
incorporates a notion of the primacy of belief over knowledge. As Fish
puts it, "Theories are something you can have ... beliefs have you." In
300 JIABS 18.2
this as well the New Pragmatists have borrowed from Wittgenstein, who
wrote:
All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place
already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and
doubtful point of departure for all our arguments; no, it belongs to the
nature of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of
departure, as the element in which arguments have their life." (Wittgenstein
1972, 105)
In Wittgenstein's vocabulary "system" is synonymous with "language
game;" both expressions refer to the framework of formal and informal
education, social, cultural, and interpersonal conditioning within which
we express doubts, engage in reflection and inquiry, and arrive at con-
clusions. "A language game is only possible if one trusts something ...
[it] is not based on grounds. It is there-like our life" (Wittgenstein
1972, 509 and 559). Justification, argument, evidence, explanation,
grounds, proof, reason, judgments of accuracy and inaccuracy-all of
this takes place within systems, and not between them.
In a wonderful essay called "The Groundlessness of Belief," Norman
Malcolm observes that a language game may be said to be groundless,
"not in the sense of a groundless opinion, but in the sense that we accept
it, we live it. We can say, 'This is what we do. This is how we are.'"
(Malcolm 1977, 208). I am reminded once again of Stanley Fish:
"Someone who declares himself committed to the promotion of individ-
ual freedom does not have a theory; he has a belief. He believes that
something is more important than something else-and if you were to
inquire into the grounds of his belief, you would discover not a theory
but other beliefs that at once support and are supported by the belief to
which he is currently testifying. Now, to be sure, these clustered beliefs
affect behavior-not because they are consulted when a problem presents
itself, however, but because it is within the world they deliver that the
problem and its possible solutions take shape" (Fish 1985, 117). Accord-
ing to Wittgenstein, what is true for the promotion of individual freedom
is equally true for the practice of chemistry, where the Law of Induction,
for instance, is regularly employed without any concern for theoretical
evidence of its validity. It simply would not occur to a chemist to insist
that he knows that the Law of Induction is true. ("Imagine such a state-
ment made in a law court.") On the other hand, if he were to reflect on
the matter at all it would be most appropriate for him to say, "I believe in
HUNTINGTON 301
the Law of Induction." (Wittgenstein 1972,500). And here we reach the
bedrock of what is, ultimately, "religious" belief, defined as "an accep-
tance which is not conjecture or surmise and for which there is no rea-
son" (Malcolm 1977, 209).
"Reason," "argument," ')ustification" and all the rest of it is a function
of what a person lodged in a particular system of belief finds satisfying.
Curiously enough the impulse to locate rational, objective justification
for belief is nowhere stronger than in the philosophy of religion. "The
obsessive concern with [proofs of the existence of God] reveals the
assumption that in order for religious belief to be intellectually
respectable it ought to have a rational justification. That is the misunder-
standing. It is like the idea that we are not justified in relying on mem-
ory until memory has been proved reliable" (Malcolm 1977, 211). It is
Malcolm's opinion, based on his reading of Wittgenstein, both that peo-
ple do not seek grounds for religious belief, and moreover, that there
could be no such grounds. "When you are describing a language-game, a
system of thought and action, you are describing concepts, and yet also
describing what certain people do-how they think, react, live" (ibid.,
214-15). His point is that religion, like every other system of belief, is a
value-seeking enterprise, a groundless viewpoint (Weltbild) from which
. the significance of events and ideas and experiences is judged and
assigned. Religious belief is a particular way of viewing or construing
"the world," embedded-as are all perspectives-in a form of life (the
action-in-progress that Fish mentions in his appropriation of
Wittgenstein). I think of yet another of Nagarjuna' s kiirika-s:
That which is in the process of being born and passing on,
when taken as causal or dependent,
is, taken as non-causal and independent,
declared to be nirval).a. (Madhyamakasiistra XV.9)
All of this finds a good deal of support in no less authoritative a source
than the present Dalai Lama, who explains the significance of Madhya-
maka in terms of a fundamental transformation of one's attitude or view:
We all want happiness and do not want suffering. Moreover, achieving
happiness and eliminating suffering depend upon the deeds of body, speech
and mind. As the deeds of body and speech depend upon the mind, we must
therefore constructively transform the mind.. .. Many such different
methods of transforming the mind have been taught by the many great
teachers of this world, in accordance with individual times and places and in
302 JIABS 18.2
accordance with the minds of individual trainees. Among these, many
methods of taming the mind have been taught in the books of the Buddhists.
From among these, a little will be said here about the view of emptiness.
(Gyatso 1975,51-52)
And so the question of how to read Madhyamaka texts becomes at once
extremely pragmatic, after all, for the meaning of Nagarjuna's writing
must be located not in "the view from nowhere," but rather in its capac-
ity for transforming one's perspective, for shifting one's existential
hermeneutic from one groundless system of belief to another.
But this does not account for the way such a transformation is effected.
We may dispense with the notion of grounds, but still to believe is to
believe in something, and that something is, for Nagarjuna, ultimate
meaning (paramartha), reality beyond the realm of thought and names
(anabhidhfitavyatattva, dharmata), and n i r v a ~ a . Can we find a way to
make text-critical, historical sense of this language that will not reduce
Buddhism's religious message to an intellectual artifact, to yet another
failed claim of an exotic form of denaturalized discourse? For at least
some of us in the field this remains an engaging question. And so it
should, for the question of whether religious belief is necessarily naive or
uncritical deserves to be taken seriously. Which brings me back, one last
time, to Zaleski, and to some remarks that appear near the close of her
study of near-death narratives:
It is one thing to acknowledge in general terms the orienting value of oth-
erworld visions; it is quite another to decide whether their specific content
might be relevant to our own view of life and death. In order to understand
the conditions, both cultural and natural, that shape near-death experience,
we have assumed the role of spectators and can not easily divest ourselves of
that role. In comparing medieval and modern visions, we seem to have
stepped outside our own cultural context and may feel at a loss as to how to
step back into it and make judgments. Such incapacity for wholehearted
participation is the intellectual's occupational disease; among scholars
engaged in the comparative study of religion it can produce a sense of nos-
talgia for days of innocence or for some idealized form of archaic or tradi-
tional religiosity. (Zaleski 1987,203-204)
Malcolm makes the same point more bluntly:
Present-day academic philosophers are far more prone to challenge the cre-
dentials of religion than of science. This is probably due to a number of
things. One may be the illusion that science can justify its own framework.
HUNTINGTON 303
Another is the fact that science is a vastly greater force in our culture. Still
another reason may be the fact that by and large religion is to university
people an alien form of life. They do not participate in it and do not
understand what it is all about. This non-understanding is of an interesting
nature. It derives, at least in part, from the inclination of academics to sup-
pose that their employment as scholars demands of them the most severe
objectivity and dispassionateness. For an academic philosopher to become a
religious believer would be a stain on his professional competence!
(Malcolm 1977, 212)
I would like to respond to Zaleski and Malcolm by taking another look
at the lines from Shakespeare that were cited in Section II, above, and by
reading them from what I take to be a "Madhyamaka perspective." This
time I will supply the text of the entire sonnet:
When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
0, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
That there is some kind of truth or reality that transcends what we take
for granted in everyday experience is more than a message brought back
by those who claim to have journeyed beyond death, more than a series
of "denaturalized" epistemological and ontological arguments-it is an
intuition, one might almost say a conviction, that seems to be built into
human language and thought. But when we tum the light of historical
method on that intuition it quickly fades into a collection of indefensible
propositions, for I can not seem to understand myself completely outside
the identity that has been constructed around and within me by the place
and time where I live. I am unwilling-unable-to step outside of his-
tory . .. Unless, perhaps, in order to love and be loved. For in some
sense all love is illicit love, and the demands it places on us are always
304 JIABS 18.2
exceptional. The middle-aged gentleman who speaks to us from
Shakespeare's sonnet knows that the love he gives and receives is depen-
dent on a lie, and not only on a lie, but on his ability joyfully to take the
part of the naive, ignorant youth, "unlearned in the world's false sub-
tleties." And so he does not feignbe1ief, for the game simply doesn't
work by those rules. He does not pretend to believe; he believes.
(Wittgenstein writes: "A language-game is only possible if one trusts
something." Malcolm comments: "Not can, but does trust something"
[Malcolm 1977,204]). His lover reciprocates, and the act is complete-
an unqualified affirmation of this life and this world that simultaneously
incorporates and transcends "simple truth." Argument works at the level
of discursive, expository prose and rule-governed theory; apophatic dis-
course works best in the vertiginous, slippery world of poetry and narra-
tive fiction, where, even in the midst of argument, knowledge and belief
are conflated ("I do believe, though 1 know ... "), where a promise may
be a curse ("she swears"), and love is indistinguishable from artful
untruth ("I lie with her and she with me"). Wisdom and skillful means
are inseparable.
"Wisdom" is, in this classically apophatic sense, the facility to believe
in untruth. To know that one's belief has no grounds, and yet to believe.
Like the journey of the prodigal son, the path leads through another,
exotic terrain and back home again. But unlike the Biblical pilgrimage
this quest has no end. It is the reality of the other world, and the contin-
uous' circular journey between here and there-a journey of perpetual
transformation-that makes all the difference. Wisdom is the facility to
believe, then, not in any sort of nonsense, but in a particular kind of
soteriologically efficacious nonsense. Wisdom is to know that stories
about a transhistorical, absolute truth, and the realm in which that truth
comes alive, can not be objectively valid. To know this, and yet to
believe. It is wise to believe because familiarity with the other world of
absolute truth and reality orients us here in this world (a mysteriously
textualized world of unlimited interpretive possibilities) by making it
possible to affirm our present existence even in the midst of change and
uncertainty: "I don't fear death now, nor do I fear life." One must first
see this world as false, by leaving it behind; this is the life of reason, the
beginning of the philosophical, religious journey that we find registered
in denaturalized discourse. One must then see the other world as no
more or less real than this one. Two worlds standing across from each
other, face to face like two polished mirrors, the reality of each a quasi-
illusion supported by the other in an endless series of reflected images
HUNTINGTON 305
falling away into infinity, a groundless vortex of belief. "The affirma-
tion of transcendence-when taken up with full apophatic seriousness-
then turns back upon itself' (Sells 1994,212).
The pilgrim begins where he finds himself, in this world, with argu-
ment and grounds. He moves from here to the other world, and back
again (and again and again ... ), to the appearance of argument and
grounds. Antifoundationalism can be used to undermine any claim to
knowledge or objective truth; it can clear away the grounds for certainty,
but in doing away with grounds it also does away with any possibility of
asserting value-free, a priori necessity-that is, any form of ultimately
binding ontological or epistemological relativism-for its own conclu-
sions. The point is that we can not know anything for sure: including
this. Antifoundationalism can not be expected to make good on the bro-
ken promise of denaturalized discourse and foundationalist theory. For
the pilgrim whose travels are never over, belief is no longer justified on
the basis of its proposed origin in rational grounds, but rather in terms of
its "fruits for life."
How, then, do we learn to find meaning in a semblance of reasoned
argument? How do we learn to feel at home in a homeless world of rad-
ical uncertainty and change, of suffering and death? Perhaps the most
immediately relevant question is the one that Francisca Cho Bantly asked
in her response to Griffiths: "How far are we willing to go in undermin-
ing some of our own ontological grounding for the sake of casting new
molds for our understanding of cultural discourse?" To give up search-
ing for what the text really means to say, to know that the object of
belief is a lie and yet to believe, to let go of fear and love life uncondi-
tionally . .. all of this requires something quite outside the realm of
logic and rule-governed theory. There must be some other bridge to
understanding, some kind of hermeneutical perspective from which we
might finally begin to pull all of this together into a meaningful, com-
posite whole. I shall, indeed, make one last suggestion. Or rather, I
shall quote from Nietzsche (again!), for though I am in less than perfect
agreement with Rorty in other ways, I have taken to heart his proposal
that literary criticism, philosophy, and-I would add-Buddhist Studies
as well can "name the practice of splicing together your favorite critics,
novelists, poets, and such, and your favorite philosophers."
With the strength of their spiritual eye and insight grows distance and, as it
were, the space around human beings: their world becomes more profound;
ever new stars, ever new riddles and images become visible to them. Per-
306 JIABS 18.2
haps everything on which the spirit's eye has exercised it acuteness and
truthfulness was nothing but an occasion for this exercise, something for
children and those who are childish. Perhaps the day will come when the
most solemn concepts which have caused the most fights and suffering, the
concepts "God" and "sin," will seem no more important to us than a child's
toy and a child's pain seem to the old-and perhaps "the old" will then be in
need of another toy and another pain-still children enough, eternal chil-
dren! (Nietzsche 1966,57)
It seems to me that Nietzsche's words may offer guidance for those of
us interested in developing some genuinely alternative way of reading
Nagarjuna, those who, having grown weary of "simple truths," are
searching for a middle path out of the extremes of, on the one hand,
compulsive ideological commitment to a reductionistic concept of
methodological objectivity, and, on the other, naive affirmation of some
kind of dogmatic Buddhist absolutism. Perhaps the new toy (and the
new pain) Nietzsche alludes to in this passage has something to do with
symbol and metaphor, with "the 'origin' of an unavoidable illusion, the
illusion of an origin." Perhaps it has to do with the realm of poetry and
narrative fiction (which Plato ironically condemned), and with what
Carol Zaleski calls "religious imagination"-the capacity to imagine "a
realm in which our ideas can act" (cf. Nehamas 1985). If so, then surely
this is no call to unconstrained subjectivity-which has at any rate never
existed. Like any hermeneutical tool the religIous imagination has
always been subject to the constraints of time and place, to the constraints
of the community in which it functions, and to those of the grammar and
vocabulary of the text from which one must begin the journey of inter-
pretation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bantly, Francisca Cho. 1992. "Buddhist Philosophy in the Art of Fiction."
Discourse and Practice. Eds. Frank Reynolds and David Tracy. Albany:
State University of New York Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Writing and Difference. Trans. A. Bass. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
Fish, Stanley. 1985. "Consequences." Against Theory: Literary Studies in the
New Pragmatism. Ed. W. J. T. Mitchell. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press. 1985. 106-131.
Gasche, Rodolphe. 1986. The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy
of Reflection. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
HUNTINGTON 307
Griffiths, Paul. 1990. "Denaturalizing Discourse: Abhidharmikas, Proposi-
tionalists, and the Comparative Study of Religion." Myth and Philosophy.
Eds. Frank Reynolds and David Tracy. Albany: State University of New
York Press.
----. 1991. "Rev. of The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to
Early Indian Madhyamika." Journal of the American Oriental Society 111
.2: 414-415.
Gyatso, Tenzin. 1975. The Buddhism of Tibet and The Key to the Middle
Way. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
Huntington, C. W. 1995. The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to
Early Indian Madhyamika. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Paper-
back edition.
Knapp, Steven, and Walter Benn Michaels. 1985. "Against Theory." Against
Theory: Literary Studies in the New Pragmatism. Ed. W. J. T. Mitchell.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1985. 11-30.
Mailloux, Steven 1985. "Truth or Consequences: On Being Against Theory."
Against Theory: Literary Studies in the New Pragmatism. Ed. W. J. T.
Mitchell. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1985.65-71.
Malcolm, Norman 1977. Thought and Knowledge: Essays by Norman
Malcolm. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Mitchell, W. J. T., ed. 1985. Against Theory: Literary Studies in the New
Pragmatism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Nagarjuna. Madhyamakasastra. Commentary Prasannapada by Candrakirti.
Ed. P. L. Vaidya. Darbhanga: The Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate
Studies and Research in Sanskrit Learning.
Nehamas, Alexander. 1985. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1966. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Walter Kaufmann.
New York: Vintage Press.
Norris, Christopher. 1987. Derrida. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.
O'Hara, Daniel T. 1985. "Revisionary Madness: The Prospects of American
Literary Theory at the Present Time." Against Theory: Literary Studies in
the New Pragmatism. Ed. W. J. T. Mitchell. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press. 1985.31-47.
Quindlen, Anna. 1995. "First Person." Commencement Address. 154th
Commencement 7 May 1995. Denison Magazine, Spring (1995).
Rorty, Richard. 1985. "Philosophy without Principles." Against Theory:
Literary Studies in the New Pragmatism. Ed. W. J. T. Mitchell. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press. 1985. 132-138.
Rosmarin, Adena. 1985. "On the Theory of 'Against Theory'." Against
Theory: Literary Studies in the New Pragmatism. Ed. W. J. T. Mitchell.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1985. 80-88.
Said, Edward. 1981. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts De-
termine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Pantheon Books.
308 JIABS 18.2
Sells, Michael A. 1994. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. Chicago: The Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1972. On Certainty. New York: Harper and Row.
----,. 1968. Philosophical Investigations. New York: Macmillan Pub-
lishing Co., Inc.
Zaleski, Carol. 1987. Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experi-
ence in Medieval and Modern Times. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
JAMIE HUBBARD
Upping the Ante:
budstud@milleniuID.end.edu
Cyborg: a human-machine hybrid; the Bionic Woman;
Robocop; the 21st century Buddhologist.
Profound changes in intellectual culture are heralded by pundits every-
where now that the use of computers is taken for granted throughout the
academic community. Of course, from the point of view of the sociology
of knowledge the cybernetic fact of knowledge production is old news,
dating at least as far back as the first time human communication skills
were augmented by any form of pictorial or writing technology. Still, it
does seem true that we are on the threshold of great changes, even if not
quite as great as proclaimed by the pundits and computer evangelists. At
the same time, the academy has rarely been as self-conscious about its
own role in this production of knowledge as in its (somewhat self-con-
sciously postured) postmodern present, so it seems appropriate to ask
whether or not the "computer revolution" has had any particular effect on
the way Buddhologists do their work. What, if anything, has changed
about the way we do our research, our teaching, and our unsung life as
administrators to both salary-granting institution and professional
discipline?
The three major aspects of computer technology that most visibly have
taken over older technologies are word processing, electronic communi-
cation, and the development of large scale archives of both text and
visual materials. These in tum have led to many other changes that raise
interesting questions about our professional life, including aspects of
pedagogy (using computers in the classroom for everything from interac-
tive exploration of manuscripts to the creation of virtual classrooms),
intellectual community (the wired society of electronic discussion groups
and conferences), economics (the access to these technologies and their
relation to the publishing field, the tenure and promotion process, and
other aspects of institutional life), ownership of our work and our texts
309
310 JIABS 18.2
(copyright and intellectual property issues), and, perhaps most impor-
tantly, the quality of our work. A Committee on Buddhist Studies and
Computers was formed at the 1983 meeting of the lABS in Tokyo, and
so it seems appropriate to ask, more than a decade later, what sort of
impact technology has had on our work of studying Buddhism. With this
in mind, then, I would like to take this opportunity to think about some
of these larger questions while meandering over some of the terrain
(virtual and otherwise) that we have traversed so far.
Text and document processing
I still vividly remember when, back in 1980, my colleague Bill Kirtz
showed me how he used his Apple II to write his Ph. D. examination, for
I was appropriately envious of the time he saved editing and preparing
his answers. Of course, getting the dots underneath the vocalic-r's in
Sanskrit romanization was not so easy, but I was immediately taken by
the soul of this new machine, and before long I too had become totally
dependent on my word processor. Now I cannot imagine writing any-
thing much longer than a shopping list by hand, and in hindsight it often
seems that the most worthwhile course from my highschool days was the
typing course that I took in order to escape calculus. Indeed, the manip-
ulation of text is easier than ever, idea processors help at both the heuris-
tic and the organizing stage of writing, Chinese and Japanese characters
are readily mixed with English and French (though the damn dot under
the vocalic-r is still giving me problems), spell checkers fix our mistakes,
grammar analysis tells us just how impossibly complex our prose is, tem-
plates mold our writing into the format of either the MLA or Chicago
style sheet as we wish and a new recension of an article is but a few key-
presses away. It is hard to even imagine the dark days of typewriters and
carbon paper, much less be nostalgic for them. It is also hard to imagine
where this will all lead.
Some say that this new relationship to our written work indicates a
profound epistemic shift, a shift in the way that we "know" our work,
though not unlike other shifts and drifts in the relationship between
thought, language, reality, and representation that were occasioned by the
advent of woodblock printing, moveable type, and broadcast media.
1
1. See, for example, Michael Heim, Electric Language: A Philosophical
Study of Word Processing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), esp. ch.
2 ,and 3; Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention
of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), esp. ch. 8, "A Cyborg Manifesto:
Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century";
HUBBARD 311
This may all be true. For me, however, it sometimes seems that the most
noticeable difference that word processing has brought to my day to day
activity is to have "upped the ante." That is, it is now expected that a
scholar's work is beautifully formatted, not using Chinese characters
bespeaks a lack of tech savvy, and don't even think about leaving out the
Sanskrit diacritics (especially that vocalic-r). Publishers expect disks in
one format or another, and sometimes even camera-ready copy is
demanded-so forget dot-matrix printing, and 300 dpi laser output
already seems rather old-fashioned. Students, ever ahead of their profes-
sors in the technology game, have been especially quick to make the
switch (perhaps thinking that the very slickness of the product will
enhance their grades), and so I haven't seen a hand-written assignment in
. almost a decade. Thus the expectation for our written word has increased
in a way related more to the presentation of information than to the
information itself. Why do I even know what a font is, much less how to
design one that incorporates Sanskrit diacritics? I am sure that I am not
the only one to have spent inordinate amounts of time wrestling some
new piece of software or hardware into shape, and in fact studies indicate
that if training and implementation time are calculated, the purchase cost
of new technology is only about 20% of the total cost. But even after
this learning curve is left behind, the expectation of a productivity in-
crease is not.
Indeed, in the corporate world it goes without saying that the entire
raison d'etre for the huge investment in computer technology is increased
production, and although some would like to think that the humanities
are immune to such a commodified view of scholarship and the knowl-
edge it produces, such is hardly the case. Just as the ability to churn out
correspondence faster doesn't mean that the secretary gets to go home
any earlier (he just has to be more productive, i. e., write more letters),
so too the advent of word processing hasn't necessarily meant that the
academic suddenly has more time on his hands to think about things.
Whether articles, books, e-mail, administrative memos, or on-line discus-
sions with students, it is hard to escape the increased expectations for
greater productivity, including those new expectations about the visual
appearance of that product (what does your home page on the Web look
like?).
for a wider view of these issues consult Arturo Escobar, "Welcome to
Cyberia: Notes on the Anthropology of Cyberculture," Current Anthropology
35.3 (1994): 211-231.
312 JIABS 18.2
The Jeweled Net of Indra
Nowhere is this huge increase more evident than in the daily deluge of
electronic communications-I am greeted every day bye-mail, electronic
conferences, discussion lists, administration memos, student questions,
correspondence with colleagues and publishers, grant proposals, weather
reports from Mexico City, the latest electronic version of the Mahii-
bharata or Heart Sutra, and even tips on how to get the dot under the
vocalic-r! In spite of severely limiting my participation in electronic
discussion groups, my day usually begins with the perfunctory yet para-
lyzing salutation from my computer, "you have forty unread mail mes-
sages queued;" if I am gone for a week I despair of ever digging my way
out.
Many techno-elites like smugly to assert that 90% or more of this
effluence is garbage best handled with the delete key, but I don't find
this to be true (at least not always). There is, in fact, a lot of very high
quality information available on the net, and this connectivity within our
field also has implications for the academic community. Although at
present many of the senior members of our field are not part of this vir-
tual community, this will necessarily change over time, just as the entire
area of electronic discussions has grown exponentially in the past four or
five years. About ten years ago, for example, the International Associa-
tion of Buddhist Studies sponsored IndraNet, an online discussion forum
co-sysoped by myself and Bruce Burrill (the name was proposed by Alan
Sponberg). Bruce donated all of the equipment and a good amount of
his time to the running of the system, but, with the exception of a hand-
ful of dedicated callers, nobody was interested and it folded after about
two years. Ten years later, BUDDHA-L (buddha-l@ulkyvm.louisville.
edu) has over 600 subscribers from some forty different countries, and
has generated over fifty messages per week this year (all of those glow-
ing computer screens, like the jewels in Indra's net, infinitely and
instantly reflecting the thoughts of scholars everywhere). Of course, and
this is the punch line, just because the information is interesting and often
of high scholarly caliber it still doesn't mean that 90% of it should not be
deleted without reading.
One example of the benefits that the online community of scholars
enjoy is the Journal of Buddhist Ethics (http://www.psu.edu/jbe/jbe.
html).2 Established a little over one year ago, the journal has already
2. See also "Indra's Net and the Internet: Three Scholars Launch New Elec-
tronic Serial on Buddhist Ethics," Religious Studies News (1995): 14.
HUBBARD 313
published more than a dozen refereed articles, freely available online
within mere weeks of being submitted (and once online they are but a
few seconds from residing fully formatted on your desktop). In addition
to articles, the Journal of Buddhist Ethics has also hosted an electronic
conference, spread out over a two week period, with paper presentations,
panelists, and discussions. With over 700 participants world-wide, this
experiment in electronic publishing and conferencing, the first of its kind
in the field of religious studies, heralds new directions for our field.
This form of virtual scholarly community is perhaps especially important
for colleagues in more remote locations or otherwise without access to
the intellectual stimulation of one's peers in the field)
The network explosion is nowhere more visible than in the growth of
the "cybersangha," the online communities of Buddhist practitioners.
Sometimes representative of one or another traditional communities but
more often than not virtual communities existing only in cyberspace,
most every sort of discussion group and resource can now be located on-
line, from the "alt.buddha.short.fat.guy" usenet group and "#technozen"
Internet Relay Chat line (real-time conversation channel), to the Tiger
Team Buddhist Information Network (info@tigerteam.org), and various
electronic journals (Gassho and CyberSangha, to name but two). These
groups generate an immense amount of discussion, polemic, and infor-
mation about contemporary Buddhism. Because these online communi-
ties are almost exclusively Euro-American in constitution and provide a
forum for Buddhists outside of the academy, they are also immensely
fascinating to anybody interested in the transmission of Buddhism to the
West (though of course the highly selective demographics of these com-
munities should not be forgotten).
3. Beyond its own publishing and conference activities, the Journal of Bud-
dhist Ethics is also designed as a jumping off point fQr further exploration of
network resources related to the study of Buddhism, and so its Web page con-
tains links or pointers to over eighty other net sites, such as the Indology
gopher server (where you can get machine readable copies of the Maha-
bharata or Buddhacarita, Sanskrit fonts, and the like), Sakyadhita (the Inter-
national Organization of Buddhist Women), the Asynchronous School of
Buddhist Dialectics and many more. All of this makes the Web a bit easier to
navigate, and the Journal of Buddhist Ethics is the recommended first stop for
the Buddhist scholar just beginning to explore the net.
314 JIABS 18.2
The classroom
Another area in which electronic communication is changing the way we
do things is in the classroom. Many instructors now make regular use of
netnews, lists, simple e-mail, the Web, and other such resources in order
to extend the class well beyond the physical walls of the classroom.
4
The
most common tactic is simply to create a virtual discussion group which,
like BUDDHA-L and other lists, allow participation at any time of day
or night and from most any location. In addition to allowing more dis-
cussion than classroom time permits, this medium also can get students
who don't often contribute in class into the discussion (particularly useful
if your student body includes many non-native speakers). I have also
used programs that allow electronic discussions in real time, which,
although somewhat chaotic and counter-intuitive (why have a group of
students sitting in a room in front of computers typing at each other
instead of talking?), actually do produce more discussion and involve
more students. These virtual classrooms can also be combined with peer
writing review, in which students post their shorter writing assignments
to the entire class for comment and discussion.
In addition to the discussion group, another way that computers and the
net are used in the classroom is to get the students "out there" into the
real world of religious communities and religious studies as an academic
discipline. Students can browse the hundreds of Web sites devoted to
topics relevant to the class, make contact with other students, get biblio-
graphical information from far-flung libraries, take field trips to "virtual
sanghas" of most every sort of Buddhist practice, and even ask questions
of the authors whose books they read. There are numerous other class-
room uses of computers as well-my students have played the roles of
shamans, empresses, and monks in a role simulation program written for
a Japanese religions class, and years ago Dr. Robert Miller worked on the
4. See, for example, John McRae, "Closing report on ASREL-L," posted to
the Buddhist Academic Discussion Forum (buddha-l@ulkyvm.louisville.edu)
25 May 1994; Charles T. Tart (cttart@ucdavis.edu), "Web Uses for Teaching
Religion," posted to the Buddhist Academic Discussion Forum (buddha-l
@ulkyvm.louisville.edu) 26 September 1995; Elizabeth S. Burr, Mary Ann
Clark, and Edith Wyschogrod, "Integrating the Net into the Religion Class-
room: Some Notes from the Field," Religious Studies News (May 1995): 24;
Jay Greco, Jamie Hubbard, and Hugh Burns, "Building Collaborative Spaces:
Software Tools for On-Line Collaborative Writing," The Proceedings of 1994
National Conference on Problem Solving Across the Curriculum (Hobart /
William Smith, June 1994).
HUBBARD 315
computer simulation of Central Asian monastic institutional life.
Another interesting development is "demand publishing," in which cus-
tom textbooks are immediately created from full text databanks of jour-
nal articles and specialized research materials. This approach can also be
used to produce CD-ROMs that incorporate video and audio into the
course materials as well. With the addition of links within the material
and the naturally serendipitous process of text searches and browsing, this
latter technology can become a particularly powerful addition to the
instructor's toolbox, able to wean students away from a passive and lin-
ear approach to their assignments and inculcate more of the dynamic
engagement-heurisis-that scholars bring to their research.
Of course, there is a price to pay for all of this, especially in terms of
one's time. Giving over any significant amount of time to discussion,
for example (even electronic discussions pursued outside of the class-
room), takes time that could be used to other purpose. While many
might think the worth of discussion beyond question, the matter is never
so simple, in either pedagogical or practical terms. Another difficulty is
the entirely chaotic nature of the net and the experience it provides.
Again, while to some this is precisely the "decentered'.' postmodern
experience that they desire in students initial encounter with Asian reli-
gions' the practical effect of hoisting the sail while pulling both rudder
and keel can be overwhelming for the student trying to navigate that first
encounter (the oft-heard comparison likens the vast resources of the net
to a huge library with its card catalog dumped on the floor). For these
and other reasons I have found that the best way to bring, for example,
the net into the classroom is to actually schedule "lab" sessions in addi-
tion to the regular lecture, colloquium, or seminar meetings. The ante is
upped a bit more.
Indeed, the issue of the instructor's time commitment for all of this is
not trivial. My experience is that using one or another form of electronic
discussion in the classroom increases my time obligation almost 40% or
more. Keeping up with the online discussions, commenting on electronic
paper submissions (it is rather hard to "mark up" electronic copy as you
would paper), helping students as they learn the technology, negotiating
with your local academic computer support staff, perhaps learning the
vagaries of listserve management or even a programming language-all
this takes a significant amount of time and planning over and beyond that
required for a traditional class. In many quarters, however, it seems that
such vigorous commitment to the latest trends in educational technology
is now expected of faculty, especially as institutions fight for the tuition
316 JIABS 18.2
dollars of their students and against the image fostered by politicians and
the media of a higher education that is elitist, overpriced, and out of
touch with the needs of their students and vocational realities. I have no
doubt whatsoever that state-of-the-art computer facilities and faculty who
deploy technology in the classroom are very important in the planning of
educational marketeers. Over 25 years ago Newt Gingrich understood
this well: "We must design our campus to be computer-rich," Gingrich
wrote, for
we must train our students so they can function in an increasingly computer-
ized world .... Any steps toward a new library ought to consider the incred-
ible speed of development in this field. It might be cheaper to keep our pre-
sent building and spend any new building funds on the development of
campus-or even community-wide communications systems .... The
communications revolution has made isolation impossible .... West Georgia
College cannot expect to prosper simply because it is the only college in
town ... students can move to the college of their choice or away from a
college that displeases them.
5
As with the expectation of a productivity increase discussed above, there
is definitely a commodity and sales value attached to the use of technol-
ogy in the classroom. Computers might have snuck in through the back
door of the liberal arts as fancy typewriters, but with very little attention
to pedagogical and institutional implications they have quickly come to
be showcased as front-page items in the promotional literature.
Text archives
The aspect of computer use that promises to have the most impact on our
work as research scholars is the development of large archives of
machine readable materials that may be searched, collated, and otherwise
manipulated in ways unimaginable even a few decades earlier. Concor-
dances, for example, have always been an important tool of text research
but have rarely been produced in Buddhist studies due to the huge corpus
5. From a report written by Newt Gingrich in 1971 as an assistant professor
at West Georgia College, published in "Friend and Foe: The Wired Inter-
view," Wired 3.08 (1995): 111 and 162; also available at http://www.
hotwired.comlLiblWiredl). Related to this is the equally undeniable fact that
many administrators have become enamored of technology as a possible way
to control faculty costs wherever possible. This seems especially true of
language instruction, which has traditionally made heavy use of temporary and
part-time staff and TA's, but it is not limited to those fields.
HUBBARD 317
that we work with, funding priorities, and other factors. Back in the
early 1970's, for example, Robert Thurman wrote an NEH proposal to
begin a collective project to input Buddhist materials, but, as with several
later proposals to begin the input of scriptural canons, it was never
funded. Thus this most promising aspect of computer use has been rather
slow in getting off the ground, especially when compared to the progress
made in other fields similarly concerned with texts-the Thesaurus Lin-
guae Graecae project, as but one illustration, now includes over 57 mil-
lion words of ancient Greek text material on CD-ROM.6 Fortunately,
this is beginning to change and several large projects are beginning to
bear fruit, most notably the Asian Classics Input Project begun by
Michael Roach (http://acip.princeton.edu),7 the text input projects of Urs
App at the International Research Institute for Zen Buddhism (detailed
information can be had at The Electronic Bodhidharma Web site, http:
//iijnet.or.jp/iriz/irizhtml/irizhome.htm), the Coombspapers collections of
the Australian National University (start with their Buddhist Studies
World Wide Web Virtual Library, http://coombs.anu.edu.auIWWWVL-
Buddhism.html) and, growing out of Thurman's proposals, the various
canon input projects of Lew Lancaster's international Electronic Bud-
dhist Text Initiative. 8 One particular success of Professor Lancaster's
efforts is that Mahidol University's textbase of the entire Thai edition of
the Pali scriptures is now available on CD-ROM from Scholar's Press,
and other canon input projects are underway in Korea, Taiwan, Thailand,
and Japan.
9
The sort of philological analysis and other studies that these archives
will for the first time allow means that the extensive application of the
methods of higher criticism (applied to the vastly more compact Biblical
6. For rough comparison, the Thai edition of the Pali canon contains over six
million "morphological words," and an average Taisho volume contains
approximately 1.2 million Chinese characters.
7. See also "A Diamond-Cutter Like No Other: The Many Facets of Michael
Roach," Tricycle 3.4 (1994): 64-69.
8. For descriptions of all of the various input projects and much more check
the resources at The Electronic Bodhidharma site (http://iijnet.or.jp/iriz/
irizhtmllirizhome.htm).
9. Professor Lancaster is also chair of the Electronic Publications Committee
of the American Academy of Religion which, through Scholar's Press, has
published the Multimedia Dictionary of Shinto and Japanese Life: Interactive
Introduction to Japanese Culture and Classics by Shigeru Handa (Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1994).
318 JIABS 18.2
materials long ago) will soon be possible in the field of Buddhist studies
as well. Author attribution studies, stylistic inquiry, historical, institu-
tional and demographic analysis-research that used to require a lifetime
of familiarity with a single text or author's ouevre will indeed be
accomplished with almost the press of a single key, and when all occur-
rences of a term, phrase, or textual variant in a given corpus can immedi-
ately be accessed and compared online the very notion of printed concor-
dances and even critical editions necessarily changes. Translator's lexi-
cons, dictionaries, and even human-assisted machine translation are like-
wise all on the horizon. to On top of this is the promise of greatly low-
ered costs associated with electronic distribution-after all, there are
tremendous savings to be had when a sixty volume set of books can be
reproduced on CD-ROM for a dollar or so (and with the quad density
CD-ROM, terabyte storage systems, and fractal compression algorithms
of next year's technology revolution it is not unreasonable to contemplate
all known canons of Buddhist materials online and portable).
One important aspect of the input of texts is the wide-spread recogni-
tion of the need to "mark" or tag texts as part of the input process.
"Markup" means to mark the text for content and structural elements,
elements as basic as title, author, page, and paragraph or as complex and
detailed as morphological and syntactic (e. g., Sanskrit sa1JUlhi). As a
simple illustration of how helpful this could be, imagine that you have a
full text database of all epigraphical records from the T' ang dynasty. A
lot could be done with the plain text alone in such a database, but you
would still have no way of searching for, say, all of the donors, or all of
the calligraphers, or even all of the sites of the monuments unless each of
these elements were somehow tagged within the text itself; this is what a
"markup" language provides. II The most common markup language at
present is SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), while the
related Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange of the
Text Encoding Initiative (TEl) provide specific standards for literary and
humanities markup. 12
10. See, for example, the online dictionary of Buddhist Chinese terms at http:
Ilwww2.gol.comlusers/acmuller/.
11. Markup can also be used with visual or graphic materials, and I, for one,
think that the inclusion of images of the original texts should be an integral
part of the archival process.
12. Cf. http://www.sil.org/sgml/sgml.html for full descriptions of both SG-
ML and TEl, as well as pointers to various sites that archive SGML software,
detail various text archive projects, and the like.
HUBBARD 319
Still, the process of making machine-readable archives of texts avail-
able is slow and filled with pitfalls for the unwary, often involving
thorny and divisive copyright issues as well as technological challenge
and traditional editorial wisdom.
l3
Flaunting many of these conventions,
I was able to publish electronic versions of the Sanskrit and Tibetan
editions of the Prajfiaparamita-h.rdaya-siUra a number of years ago 14 but
many other projects (including the CD-ROM edition of the Pali Text
Society corpus) have run into considerable snags on this front. Further,
it is often hard to make publishers realize that electronic distribution of
texts is significantly different than printed books, conceptually closer to
licensing than to outright sales and resembling video and audio produc-
tion and distribution rather than book publishing. So, for example,
because of the great cost of inputting text materials and the ease with
which they can be copied, publishers often resort to protection schemes
or exorbitant fees to guard their investment. As but one illustration,
recent reports put the impending electronic version of the Taisho canon
at almost $300.00 per volume, exactly the opposite of the reduced-cost
benefit that technology is supposed to confer. In this regard the Asian
Classics Input Project and the International Research Institute for Zen
Buddhism should be praised for their commitment to the free distribution
of their work.
The technological hurdles involved in the creation of these archives are
also formidable.1
5
Questions of coding, for example (the format the
computer uses internally to store the text) have long been among the
most intractable in the field of Asian studies generally, due in large part
to the many and competing national and market standards.16 How will
l3. See the Electronic Bodhidharma site mentioned above for discussion of
some of these issues.
14. Included on the Packard Humanities Institute / Center for the Computer
Analysis of Texts CD-ROM (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1989);
the Tibetan text was supplied by Bill Kirtz.
15. The Rutgers I Princeton Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities
maintains information on all aspects of this endeavor; they may be reached at
http://cethmac.princeton.edu/CETHIceth.html
16. See The Electronic Bodhidharma (http://www.iijnet.or.jp/iriz/irizhtml/
multilin.htm) for a discussion of different formats and the importance of
retaining as much information as possible in the master data set, the solution
implemented at their institute, and various tools for converting among the
Chinese and Japanese standards; see also the files on the Indology gopher (start
from http://www.ucl.ac.ukl-ucgadkw/indology.html) for a description of the
320 JIABS 18.2
Japanese publishers encode Chinese texts? How will mainland Chinese
scholars read texts input with the Taiwanese standards? Although new
standards such as Unicode promise to solve these questions (and eventu-
ally they will be solved), the situation at present is still a mess. In an
International Association of Buddhist Studies presentation over ten years
ago I noted that "the internal storage of CJK [i. e., Chinese, Japanese,
and Korean] characters is an issue that is difficult but one whose solution
is essential to the wide-spread use of computers in all fields of Asian
studies."17 It amazes me that so little has changed on this front, even
with regard to the vastly easier problem of Sanskrit diacritics: if I move a
text from my PC to my Mac, the latter still cannot handle the dot under
the vocalic-r without significant effort on my part!
We have a long way to go before the promised fruits of the technology
revolution are fully realized, for until the technology is truly transparent
and does not require a separate study in its own right it will remain more
of an impediment than a boon; it is therefore understandable that many
scholars complain that time spent learning technology is time detracted
from the business at hand and are hence suspicious of the extravagant
claims made by the savants of the future. There are also, as I have tried
to indicate, numerous issues related to the commodification of knowledge
that demand our attention, because those same savants are no doubt cor-
rect in predicting that every aspect of our life will indeed be affected by
computers (if it isn't already). It is an interesting fact that in spite of the
importance of technology to the corporate, industrial, and military world,
it is the academy that is pushing the edge forward, particularly in the
realm of electronic communications. How we harness the power of net-
worked resources and how it affects the quality of our life, therefore, is
something that we definitely need to think about. The International
Association for Buddhist Studies, for example, is a global network of
Buddhologists, yet as I write these words I wonder if my survey of com-
puter technology is equally relevant to all, or if we too are ending up as
part of a global culture of technology haves and have-nots? What role do
we as scholars play in the changing face of knowledge production, and
how does that role interface with our institutional and educational
responsibilities? After serving for many years on my college's advisory
Classical Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit Extended (CS / CSX) standards
adopted at the 8th World Sanskrit Congress (Vienna, 1990).
17. "Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Language Processing: The Present and
Future of the Electronic Buddho1ogist," Seventh Conference of the Interna-
tional Association of Buddhist Studies, Bologna, 1984.
HUBBARD 321
committee for academic computing I am convinced that while these are
neither easy questions nor solely of interest to Buddhologists, neither are
they matters that we can safely ignore. As Richard Hayes put it,
c:yberspace "is not a karma-free zone."18 And so I think it important that
as we harness technology to the needs of our field we in fact resist the
simple rhetoric of product and commodity and instead remember that as
educators, research scholars, and yes, even as administrators, we have a
deep responsiblity to critical thinking and learning, regardless of how
that fits into the assembly-line procedures of technology implementation
advocated by politicians and cost-cutting administrators alike. The cost
of playing the game-the ante-needs to be considered.
Where, then, does all of this lead? Although we don't yet have the
wetware version of the tripitika (the DNA-encoded "canon on a strand"),
we do have the software version of at least one Buddhist canon-but has
anything really changed about the way Buddhologists go about their
business because of it? In a very important sense, of course, the answer
is "no." Whether we peruse ancient manuscripts, xerox copies,
microfiche, or CD-ROMs, the method of investigation stays basically the
same, though technology will hopefully provide new tools to make some
of our chores easier. Perhaps it won't be so far off that some of the text-
critical research that has eluded our field will be undertaken, but this is
more a matter of depth of coverage or analysis than a different method
altogether. Indeed, I have always thought that one of the reasons that I
am so enamored of computers is because they enhance the excitement of
being very close to the text itself, for the virtual reality of online text has
its own physical reality as well-whether ASCII code or an ancient
18. "[The Internet] is anything but environmentally friendly, economical,
democratic and egalitarian. Much delusion surrounds this toy of the rich.
When I occasionally rail against the Internet, the main thing I am trying to do
is to make people a little more aware of the fact that this is not a karma-free
zone. Even here in cyberspace we have to think carefully about the conse-
quences of our actions." Richard Hayes, "The Perception of 'Karma-Free'
Cyberzones" CyberSangha 6 (summer, 1995): 17. Lest anybody mistake Pro-
fessor Hayes for one of the so-called "neo-Luddites" that are gathering head-
lines these days (ct. "Return of the Luddites," Wired, 3.06 [June, 1995]: 162
ft, and "Interview with the Luddite," ibid.: 166 ff), it should be noted that he
has been a long-time moderator of the BUDDHA-L discussion list (and one of
the most frequent contributors to both BUDDHA-L and BUDDHIST), is on
the editorial board of the electronic Journal of Buddhist Ethics, and is a mem-
ber of his university's committee for computer policy (which prompted the
above remarks).
322 JIABS 18.2
codex, code, after all, is code. To be sure, ink, palm1eaf, and the San-
skrit language are very different media from mouse, computer display,
and the Japanese Industrial Standard encoding system, but it is nonethe-
less equally true that working with fonts, diacritics, archives, and text
markup is quintessentially the work of the textual scholar, and I, for one,
look forward to more of it in the years to come.