More MD & GEB stuff

[Rick Vosper]

At 02:00 PM 6/11/97 BST (Buddhist Standard Time?), Andrew Dinn writes: 

>The Pali texts are the nearest thing we have to the Buddha's actual
>sermons. They predate Zen Buddhism by quite some time. Since this mu
>stuff is most definitely Zen it's hardly surprising that the Pali does
>not contain commentary on it. 

My point exactly. In fact, there's something like a thousand years' disparity.

And it is somewhat misguided to take
>Buddhism by the slab since there are such vast differences amongst the
>1000 or so different schools of Buddhism. Zen is a long way from the
>Dharma

Matter of opinion, I suppose. Any number of Zen practitioners might
politely disagree. You're right about "slab Buddhism" though. It's much the
same as talking about World Christianity: a Coptic in Jerusalem has far
less in common with a Jehovah's Witness than the slab approach would suggest.

. And then there is the question of language. `Buddha-nature' is
>not a universal term and many English-speaking Buddhists would not
>even recognize it.

Actually, I thought the term was fairly well-known; at least it's tossed
around freely in _Tricycle_, for instance. Perhaps I am mistaken.

>Also note that Western Buddhist texts tend to present Buddhism in a
>very different way to their Eastern counterparts. Firstly, it is
>usually less authoritarian since we in the West tend to respond less
>well to dogma than most Eastern Buddhists. Secondly, it often imports
>Western terminology, in particular from psychology, in order to make
>the concepts more familiar (though of course it usually perverts both
>the original Buddhist concept and the psychological concept in order
>to do so, with the result that this tactic amost always clouds the
>issue more than it clarifies it).

Indeed they do, although this is not without precedent. 

As to the clouding/clarifying issue-- and US Buddhism in all its many
flavors goes--  I guess only time will tell. But the rampant mis-use of pop
Buddhism aside, the intention of American writers was to place their
understanding of Dharma into a context the locals could understand, just as
it was when Buddhism was transplanted from India to China and thence to
Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc.

There is, within world Buddhists, a consensus that "American Buddhism" is
an emergent sect of its own which may (or may not) in time develop into
something unique. Would you say that Tibetan Buddhism "clouds the issue
more than clarifies it"? Free Land? Vipassina?

Gassho,

--rick
(who, for the record, practices Americanized Soto Zen)