To Jikan and Jnana
The answer to your question is because nobody has any idea what you are talking about when you use those foreign terms.
What you call "Buddhist terms" (and I think you mostly mean "asian" terms) are not more prevalent to most new Buddhists at all.
Most people who are new to Buddhism in the west are coming out of Abrahamic backgrounds, and have little to no knowledge of Buddhist terminology.
It just creates more confusion and complicates things for people when you use these foreign terms. Especially when there are English close equivalents that can be used.
Nobody knows what the word "dharani" means.
They just might know what the word "litany" means though.
Some words don't have an English equivalent, such as Bodhisattva names.
The point of teaching the Dharma is to show people how to do Buddhist practice, not to memorize a glossary list of foreign words.
New practitioners end up spending much of their first year or so, just learning what those foreign words mean.
Jnana when you wrote:
The Indian Buddhist traditions spent 1500 years hammering out precise tenets, definitions of terms, epistemology, etc. So when someone now wants to use idiosyncratic terms and definitions it's to be expected that they're going to be called on it. Even in one of Rev. Jiyu-Kennett's books there's a forward that acknowledges and attempts to account for her use of theistic language. Her novel linguistic conventions are rather far removed from the mainstream Indian Buddhist thought-world.
Is completely ignoring the fact that every single culture that Buddhism has gone into has changed or translated the previously used words into the local native equivalents when there were equivalents or "good enough" words to use.
You think in countries often had lots of illiteracy and farmer and peasant populations, they forced them to use exotic foreign words?
Buddhism, does not depend upon the use of exotic terms.
Tibet, uses Tibetan language words, China uses Chinese language words.
Japan, uses Japanese words.
Vietnam and Korea use Vietnamese and Korean words.
India, uses Indian words.
So here in the west, we can't use English words?
We have to say "dharani" huh Jikan?
"litany" doesn't work?
The question I would ask you is why
do you use asian words when there are English or close/English (there are always translation problems when translating a language) equivalents?
Does it "sound cooler" or "more exotic" if you say "dharani"?
Buddhism is supposed to be practical, and of immediate use to people to help them with their life and suffering.
If you use foreign terms, where they are not necessary, it ceases to be of immediate use to people or becomes less so because it becomes daunting that they have to spend extra time learning what exotic terms mean.
Have you considered how this effects lower class people? Or poor people, or working people who don't have time to learn exotic scholarly terms?
Buddhism is for everyone. Not just upper-middle class white people.
It has to
be accessible to everyone if it's to be of any use to people.
Minimizing the amount of culture shock goes a long way toward helping people with that.
In Gassho,
Sara H
"Life is full of suffering. AND Life is full of the Eternal
IT IS OUR CHOICE
We can stand in our shadow, and wallow in the darkness,
OR
We can turn around.
It is OUR choice." -Rev. Basil
" ...out of fear, even the good harm one another. " -Rev. Dazui MacPhillamy
