Questioning Height

[ground]

well i would say to you...does it matter...does it really matter....all this stuff works with faith and dedication...

Friend

that is what human existence is about: "faith and dedication". Therefore that is a human capacity.

Now the crucial point is to have faith in the right goal and to have faith in the wholesome and conducive with reference to this goal and to dedicate this existence to the wholesome and conducive with reference to this goal.

Kind regards

[Hanzze]

What do you think, who is faster? Who is in front and who is behind?

[tobes]

Well, I think that modern textual analysis has gone one click beyond materialist assumptions, scientific methodologies and strictly linear views of history. I suppose we could call this method orthodox Buddhology, which has a great fidelity to philology.

Sure, but in academic publications I can't say Maitreya taught the text to Asanga as probable truth. I can only say that the little brown natives think or thought so until superior western scholarship showed them the error in their misguided ways.

I think the era of orientalism has (thankfully) long past in western Buddhist studies.

It depends which publication you write for. I think the argument you're making here would be a cherry ripe little article in many journals. Why retain such a post-colonial assumption of western superiority?? This is really not the case in contemporary Buddhist scholarship.

[tobes]

And then you have someone like Thurman who is speaking from more inside the tradition.

Even if Thurman wasn't inside a tradition, what is so wrong with asserting Asanga had a vision of Maitreya and was taught the text?

Nothing. Haven't I already said that I agreed with him?

In saying that Thurman was speaking from inside the tradition, I meant that he was ordained as a Tibetan monk, and therefore, his standpoint is somewhat different from a scholar like Conze who whilst extremely sympathetic to Buddhism, was not a practicing Buddhist.