"Why Study Buddhism" Michel Clasquin. Department of Religious Studies. University of South Africa. Pretoria RSA From Theologia Evangelica June 1992 vol 25:2 pp 58-63 Reproduced without the kind permission of the editor, but then, he never made me sign a copyright release form, either! And you are all going to rush out and order a legit copy from your library, right? ----------------------------------------------------------------- ABSTRACT In this essay, the value and relevance of the study of Buddhism generally and at the University of South Africa in particular are described. Despite the small number of Buddhists in South Africa, Buddhology can benefit us by provide valuable clues to our understanding of contemporary social events and by providing an alternative paradigm for the appraisal of philosophical and theological questions. ----------------------------------------------------------------- It is valuable for academics to reflect from time to time on why they do what they do, and the relevance of their study fields for the wider community. Not that relevance is the only criterion by which to determine what should or should not be studied - the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake has ever been a driving force of the human species with its innate monkey curiosity. Furthermore, what is irrelevant today may be of vital importance tomorrow and vice versa. The periodic table, for instance, is the crowning achievement of nineteenth-century physics, but at the time, its relevance was highly dubious: it would simply not have been possible for Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln or Paul Kruger to assemble the foremost scientists of the day and say, "Gentlemen, I should like you to invent the fast breeder reactor". The acquisition of knowledge and understanding for their own sakes is and should remain an important aspect of any university's academic programme. But even if the contemporary relevance of a given field of study is only one factor in determining whether it is worth studying, it is nevertheless an important one. In this essay, I shall examine my own primary field of interest, the academic study of Buddhism, and attempt to justify its existence. Needless to say, an "objective" approach to such a topic is almost a contradiction in terms - this is primarily an apologetic for Buddhology, and I shall leave it to others to criticise my work and judge whether my attempt has been successful. Hopefully, this will start a debate on the justifiability of other religiously- oriented disciplines as well. So, why study Buddhism? And more particularly, why study Buddhism at Unisa? The first, most immediately obvious answer is that there are Buddhists in this country, and that by studying the fundamental tenets and the practical implications of their tradition, we can render the same kind of service to them that, say, a theologian can render to the Christian community or an expert in Islam to the Muslim section of the population. While this argument is valid on the face of it, it contains two defects. Firstly, it does not question the societal worth of theological and religious studies; it simply assumes that such studies are worthwhile. As I shall attempt to demonstrate below, the study of religious phenomena, in this case Buddhism, is in fact indispensable for our complete understanding of the human life-world in general and contemporary society in particular, and brings many practical benefits, but this must be established by argument, not merely assumed. Secondly, the argument falls rather flat in a country like South Africa, where Buddhists make up a negligibly small part of the population. If the number of adherents is to be the deciding factor on the question which subjects are to be studied, then the existence of Buddhist studies at South African universities would imply that we should also have scholars and even whole academic departments specialising in the fulltime study of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam, Zoroastrianism, and so on. In fact, while there are certain scholars of religion with a interest in these fields, they generally subsume their studies under other headings, subdivisions of Religious Studies such as Hindu, Islamic or Ancient Near Eastern studies. But Buddhology is recognised as a distinct research field with equal status to these; it is presented by Religious Studies departments worldwide as an integral part of the curriculum and in more affluent societies such as the USA, there are in fact academic institutes entirely devoted to this subject (e.g. the Kuroda Institute for the study of Buddhism and human values at the University of Illinois). Not many of them, it is true, but the subject is clearly recognised as a valid and valuable area of study. It is however true that an understanding of Buddhism will assist us in our understanding of and dealings with traditionally Buddhist societies. Since many of these are situated on the Pacific Rim, currently the global economic growthpoint and containing some of South Africa's major trading partners, such as Japan and Korea, this may yet become an increasingly important issue. If Japanese businesspeople attain their competitive edge by reading the deeply Zen Buddhist-inspired "Book of three rings" by the legendary samurai Minamoto Musashi (1982:22), perhaps they know something we do not. A more sophisticated variant of the above argument is as follows: while it is true that there are but a few committed Buddhists in South Africa, western society, of which South Africa is at least partly a member, is slowly being permeated with oriental influences. Youngsters who thirty years ago would have taken up boxing now do karate. Even small towns have ikebana displays in the annual show of the local flower arranging club, not to mention the popularity of bonsai trees. Certain trends in art, fashion and architecture show an affinity with Japanese ideals of simplicity and spontaneity or, conversely, with a riotous display of colours and patterns that may be seen as a manifestation of Sino-Tibetan influences. The inspiration behind all these new Oriental influences, the argument continues, is Buddhist philosophy and the Buddhist view of reality and the ideal life. Thus, if we wish to understand what is happening to our society and possibly take steps to either prevent or facilitate this paradigm shift, we should study Buddhism. A similar argument could naturally be made in respect of the popularity of hatha yoga and the study of Hinduism. It was on grounds such as the above, that the Northern Transvaal synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in 1983 expressed its concern over the Buddhist influences discernible in the practice of karate (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk 1983: 177; see also Gous 1983: 125-208). While I do not share the negative assessment of Buddhist influences that underlies this decision, the logic underlying their decision is valid and, in my opinion, sound within the synod's prevailing paradigm. Other commentators, especially, it appears, those of a Jungian bent, have reacted in the opposite way, welcoming the change with open arms (e.g. Standen 1987: 125-143). Such an argument can easily be taken to quite ridiculous extremes, as can be demonstrated by inverting it; baseball and golf are currently two of the most popular spectator and participant sports, respectively, in Japan. Purely on this basis, would we advise the Japanese to study Christianity? (cf. Schmidt, quoted in Gous 1983: 192) But such flippancies apart, there remains an element of truth in the argument. It is true that traditional oriental society did not draw the rigid distinctions between the "sacred" and the "secular" spheres of existence that westerners are accustomed to. Martial arts can serve as a way of losing the concept of selfhood and attuning to the totality of existence, and ikebana can be an expression of one's understanding of the emptiness of conditioned reality. They need not be this, of course. Most occidental practitioners of karate see their pursuit of this art purely as a form of physical exercise and self-defence. But, the argument goes, something of the original inspiration behind these activities remains. If we prefer not to understand this on a too esoteric level, then perhaps we can express it as follows: the possibility exists that the practitioner of karate or ikebana might decide to read books about their respective arts, and there encounter descriptions of the origins of their pursuits and how these are related to Buddhist philosophy. This might then lead, if not to an outright adoption of Buddhist principles, to an appreciation of and behaviour commensurate with Buddhist practices. If this were to occur on a sufficiently large scale, the result would be a drift towards the gradual Buddhification of society. Naturally, whether one approves of such a process or not depends on one's own prior commitments and one's opinion of Buddhism. But then at least let this be an informed opinion; and for this we need to study Buddhism. Forewarned is forearmed - we cannot leave an important social development such as this to the historians of future ages. Only a thorough understanding of how Buddhist philosophy has influenced societies in the past will enable us to predict how it may yet influence our own world. A personal anecdote may be apposite here: when my sister was still at high school, she attended a meeting in which a locally well known evangelist told her that Buddhists worshipped by rubbing the fat stomachs of Buddha statues! This shows the enormous extent of ignorance of other faiths in our society. Not only is the corpulent statue commonly seen in the west an image of a Chinese saint called Pu Tai (Jap. Hotei), and not of the historical Buddha, but anyone even slightly familiar with Buddhist philosophy would be aware that such behaviour, if in fact it exists anywhere, would be on the same level of religious behaviour as a westerner "touching wood"; in other words, the level of popular ritual and superstition rather than orthodox spirituality. While the evangelist in question is undoubtedly entitled to his views, Buddhology could ensure that at least he would be able to base his attitude on factually correct information. On a more strictly academic level, one could mention that Buddhist philosophy has addressed many of the same questions as other religious and philosophical traditions, but starting from often radically different starting-points. This provides us with an unique vantage point from which to examine our own beliefs and arguments, and discover the often well-hidden presuppositions, prejudices and apparently self-evident "facts" on which our arguments are so often based. For instance, in the western theistic religious tradition, one problem is why there is such a thing as evil in a world created by a loving deity. Possible answers to this question are called "theodicies" and it would be beyond the scope of this article to describe the history this philosophical debate. Buddhists have a similar dilemma, but couched in slightly differing terms; "why is there suffering?". Let us briefly look at the ways in which the Buddhist paradigm would approach the question. "Is there a problem of evil?" asks Marco Pallis (1980: 31-51), a contemporary Buddhist thinker. He comes to the conclusion that the imperfection of the world is an inseparable aspect of its finitude and therefore a normal part of phenomenal existence (Pallis 1980: 39-40). Moreover, he points out that in Buddhism no "beginning" or "end" to phenomenal existence is posited: thus evil is merely "... a particular case of the relative, viewed from its privative angle. Suffering in all its forms is then accepted as a measure of the world's remoteness from the divine principle" (Pallis 1980: 45-46). In other words, "evil" is merely our word for that aspect of existence which we dislike. And in Buddhist philosophy, the fact that we like and dislike demonstrates how far we are from enlightenment, thus "(the problem) is neither the existence of the world nor our idea of what a world might have been like had we been asked to create one, but solely the question of how best to rejoin our own centre, which is also the centre of all things ..." (Pallis 1980: 47). In other words, the reason for the existence of evil or suffering should not be sought in the world's constitution so much as in the way we approach and interact with the world: more specifically, it is stated that a grasping, self-centred attitude towards existence will produce suffering. In Buddhist mythology, too, the abstract nature of "evil", as opposed to the more immediate, existential nature of "suffering", is symbolised by the tale of how it was the very presence of sickness, disease, old age and death that prompted prince Siddharta Gautama to set out on the road to his eventual Buddhahood. Good, therefore, needed the presence of evil to allow its full fruition. This is not seen in the Buddhist tradition as a suggestion that the "evil" was somehow an expression of a "higher good", but as a symbolic expression of a higher "nirvanic" view of reality which is beyond our good/evil system of classification. In the higher reaches of Madhyamika Buddhist philosophy, the distinction between good and evil is completely eradicated: samsara is itself nirvana, being is emptiness, phenomenon and noumenon are one in all their apparent diversity. While nonBuddhist thinkers may have arrived at similar conclusions, and some have, the value of seeing Buddhists handle such issues lies not so much in the conclusion reached as in the way it demonstrates how a different set of initial assumptions change the entire approach to the question. The same is true, of course, of oriental scholars now becoming aware of the western religio-philosophical tradition. Let us take a perhaps even more fundamental issue: Buddhists deny the existence and relevance of a personal, all-powerful deity, the very life-blood of western, theistic religion. Yet Buddhists, by general consensus, have managed to be religious people. Does this then imply that the category "religion" transcends theism, or is there something fundamentally wrong with our understanding of what religion is, when we can lump such philosophically incompatible phenomena as traditional Christian monotheism and near-nihilistic Buddhist causal interdependency within this category? In other words, when we start to define religion, do we not already have an mental impression of what religion is, to which we then accommodate our definition? The Indian nontheistic religions have been a gadfly to those who sought an easy definition of religion ever since the founding of Religious studies as an academic discipline towards the end of the nineteenth century. By raising such questions, the study of Buddhism can clarify matters in sometimes surprisingly remote corners of academia. And that might well include theology: Kruger (1989: 98) makes the point that "... a Christian theology conceived of in terms of the philosophy of Gotama rather than that of Plato, Aristotle or Plotinus is not unthinkable". But of course the same type of argument could be raised to support the study of, say, Jainism or the religion of the Inuit. Why Buddhism in particular? The answer would appear to be that most of the other religions mentioned are too interwoven in a particular set of sociohistorical circumstances to be broadly applicable to the outside world. Religions like Hinduism have developed a missionary outreach in the last century (e.g. the Ramakrishna Mission and the Hare Krishna movement), and other religions like Judaism, while rarely proselytising actively, have always been open to converts, but only three religious traditions are universal religions, that is, only three have from the outset regarded their message as important for all humanity: Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (Schmidt 1980: 55-62). Accordingly, only these three have developed their philosophical and theological theses, arguments and positions in a way that allows a relatively easy transition to other, very different cultures. When I say "easy" I do not imply that we do not require a sophisticated hermeneutical strategy to understand the transition; to the contrary, I merely mean that, by and large, only these three traditions have "designed" their doctrines to be understandable to outsiders who are unfamiliar with a thousand details from everyday life. Other religious traditions, venerable and instructive though they might be, are simply too closely involved with the experience of a particular group of people to be readily assimilated into the universe of general academic discourse. But the "family resemblance" between Islam and Christianity, at least as seen from the Buddhist perspective, is sufficiently great to enable us to see them as variants of one religio-philosophical tradition for the purpose of macro-cultural information interchange and comparison (cf. Scharfstein 1978: 49-52). And perhaps that by itself is an indication of how attention to the Buddhist paradigm can demonstrate our intellectual blind spots. That leaves us with two great religious systems of thought, Buddhism and occidental theism, here represented by Christianity, but what about nonreligious thinking? In 1920, H. G. Wells co-authored a series of essays on the "six greatest men of all time" (described in Wells 1970: 209). They were, in no particular order, Jesus, Aristotle, Asoka, Roger Bacon, Abraham Lincoln and the Buddha. If we see Aristotle and Lincoln as standing at the very beginning of the western liberal and scientific tradition (of which Marxism too is an offshoot), the Buddha and Asoka (a Buddhist monarch famous for his clemency and wise administration) as representing Buddhism and Christ and Bacon as the Christian representatives, then this leaves us with three great paradigms or systems of thought; Buddhism, Christianity and science. And this is yet another reason to study Buddhism: being a religious tradition that takes all truth-claims with a generous pinch of salt, it may yet serve as a mediating factor between the conflicting claims of the other two traditions. If Buddhism, and the study of Buddhism, can serve as an honest broker, if it can allay the fruitless war between faith and reason that has so severely split western society for well over a century, then perhaps the study of Buddhism is the best possible investment we can make in our own future. Those, then, are some of the reasons for studying Buddhism. As intimated above, to these very pragmatic reasons must always be added the value and sheer joy of gathering knowledge purely for its own sake. The final relevance of Buddhist studies will be for history to decide, but I hope that I have demonstrated that from our perspective Buddhology, apart from its intrinsic fascination, is more than a mere intellectual luxury. Even in the absence of a substantial Buddhist community, it helps us understand other societies whose importance in the global economy is increasingly rising, it gives us valuable information about contemporary changes in our own society, and it serves as a critical tool for nonBuddhist thinkers that can enhance academic discourse as a whole. A nonsectarian university such as Unisa is then particularly well suited to take advantage of these benefits of academic Buddhology. REFERENCES Gous, A. 1983. Perspektief op Satan en sy werkinge - joga, transendentale meditasie, karate. Pretoria: N. G. Kerkboekhandel. Kruger, J. S. 1989. Metatheism. Early Buddhism and traditional Christian theism. Pretoria: University of South Africa. Musashi, M. 1982. A book of three rings. (trl. V. Harris). London: Allison & Busby. Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk 1983. Agenda vir die negende gewone vergadering van die sinode van Noord-Transvaal van die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk. Pretoria: Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk. Pallis, M. 1980. A Buddhist spectrum. London: George Allen & Unwin. Scharfstein, B. 1978. Philosophy East/Philosophy West. New York: Oxford University Press. Schmidt, R. 1980. Exploring religion. Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth. Standen, R. 1987. The changing face of the hero. Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing House. Wells, G. H. 1970. The works of H. G. Wells. New York: Burt Franklin. --- FMail 0.94 * Origin: EDUCARE BBS LENASIA +27-11-854-5524 *Dharmanet 96:5001/1