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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Mahāvaṃsa

Does the kammatic/nibbanic distinction fit the facts?

16 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Karma, M.T.S.R., Monasticism, Self-Discipline

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Burma/Myanmar, Charles Taylor, Damien Keown, Henpitagedara Gnanavasa, Mahāvaṃsa, Melford Spiro, Pali suttas, rebirth

How helpful is Melford Spiro’s kammatic/nibbanic distinction in describing Buddhism? It can be tempting to line it up too closely with other dichotomies – to say that kammatic Buddhism is practised by householders and nibbanic Buddhism by monks, for example. Damien Keown (Nature of Buddhist Ethics 86) notes that in Spiro’s own survey of Burmese villagers, many laypeople say that they would prefer nirvana for their next life and most monks do not describe striving for nirvana as one of their main functions; so such a mapping of kammatic/nibbanic onto householder/monk would be false.

But Keown takes this point about laypeople and monks much too far when he draws the conclusion that therefore Spiro’s kammatic/nibbanic “theory does not fit the facts”. Continue reading →

Kammatic and nibbanic Buddhism

02 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Karma, M.T.S.R., Place

≈ 2 Comments

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Abhidhamma, H.L. Seneviratne, Mahāvaṃsa, Melford Spiro, Sri Lanka

Last winter my wife and I made a wonderful trip to Sri Lanka. Before I say anything about the trip’s philosophical implications, I just want to note that you should go there if you have the money and time to travel off-continent. This cradle of Theravāda Buddhism has spectacular beaches, deliciously spicy food, and no less than eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites in a country the size of West Virginia or Latvia. Sri Lanka’s friendly and cheerful people make a great deal of their living from tourism – and it saddens me to think that last year’s well-publicized bombings might devastate that living, especially since one’s actual risk of being a victim of terrorism is no greater in today’s Sri Lanka than it is in France. They and their country deserve better. Please visit Sri Lanka. You won’t regret it.

ruwanwelisaya-stupa-srilanka-serendipity_holidays_hyderabad_telangana_india_largeBut to return to the topics of this blog. We visited several of said Buddhist World Heritage Sites, including Buddhaghosa’s home of Anuradhapura (whose great stupa is larger than any other ancient building save the Pyramids). We talked about Buddhism with our tour guide there. We passed many Buddhist temples and shrines on the road. I read the Mahāvaṃsa, the old historical chronicle of Buddhism’s arrival in Sri Lanka. And all of it was very far from the Buddhism I profess – even though they and I would all claim to be Theravādins. Continue reading →

A Buddhism very different than the one we think we know

19 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Early and Theravāda, Flourishing, Hermeneutics, M.T.S.R., Pleasure, Politics

≈ 7 Comments

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Aśvaghoṣa, H.L. Seneviratne, Justin McDaniel, Mahāvaṃsa, rasa, Sallie King, Śāntideva, Sri Lanka, Stephen Jenkins, Steven Collins

Weterners who have studied Buddhist philosophy and ethics, even when we have done so at length, are often thrown for a loop when we read the Mahāvaṃsa. This text – one of the most historically oriented texts in premodern South Asia – has been a central part of the Theravāda Buddhist canon for over a thousand years, and played a central role in creating the very idea of “Theravāda” Buddhism.

It also looks very different from the Buddhism we constructive Western Buddhist scholars are accustomed to thinking about. Continue reading →

Asian historicism before Protestantism

18 Sunday Aug 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Confucianism, Early and Theravāda, Hermeneutics, M.T.S.R., Modernized Buddhism, Protestantism, Reading and Recitation

≈ 3 Comments

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Bryan Van Norden, Confucius, Dai Zhen, Dīpavaṃsa, Heinz Bechert, Justin Tiwald, Mahāvaṃsa, Mencius, Randall Collins, Sri Lanka, Steven Collins

We are surely familiar with the pattern by now: members of an Asian tradition are concerned about supposed corruptions in their tradition which depart from the intentions of the tradition’s historic founders, so they turn with renewed focus to the historical texts that they take to be at the tradition’s centre. We, with our historical hindsight, now know that this Asian concern with texts and founders is an alien importation, the work of colonial subjects aping their Protestant missionary rulers’ search for textual historicity.

Except for one thing: it isn’t.

Continue reading →

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