Eliminating and interpreting as Buddhists

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I wish to flip now to what I feel are the actually attention-grabbing questions raised by Justin Whitaker’s latest post on the Sigālovāda Sutta. These are questions of hermeneutics, of technique in interpretation. As famous, the previous post was exegetical: I feel every part I say there might have been endorsed by a traditionally oriented faith scholar with no stake in Buddhist custom. However Justin and I should not that: we’re Buddhist theologians, who contemplate ourselves Buddhists and search to use the custom to our lives. So I now wish to take the earlier publish’s concepts into that wider theological context.

I feel there’s worth within the two methodological sentences that Justin returns to from his earlier post. I’ve been aiming all through this dialogue to comply with the primary piece of recommendation, “dig past the particular wording of the directions to understand the underlying reasoning behind them.” The reasoning, as I perceive it, is that worldly pleasures, just like the theatre, are inherently unsatisfactory, main one (because the sutta says) to at all times need extra of them, and subsequently the best life is a monk’s life that renounces them; there are nonetheless higher and worse methods to pursue a family life, however the higher ones emulate monkhood, and one of many ways in which one would do that is to keep away from the theatre.

I don’t suppose Justin’s factors about advantages on this life make a distinction in that regard: from the angle of the reasoning underlying this sutta and others prefer it, so far as I can inform, monks too are getting advantages on this life, and the advantages homeowners accrue are those who come from being like a monk. The sutta’s reasoning is that we profit on this life from not attending theatrical reveals as a result of reveals are as unsatisfactory as every other worldly pleasure, and we must always reject them alongside different worldly pleasures – simply as, if we had been additional alongside the trail, we might reject familial love and get a fair larger profit on this life from turning into monks. I derive this interpretation from wanting on the sutta within the gentle of different suttas, and Pali texts modern to them, that specific related concepts. I feel that’s the best manner to determine what the reasoning of textual content’s authors was.

That a lot stays exegetical. However Justin’s subsequent piece of recommendation will get constructive, and that’s the place I feel it will get each extra attention-grabbing and trickier – for each me and Justin. That’s: “As soon as one understands the reasoning, the tough work of making use of it to at least one’s personal life begins.” For us as theologians, utility is important. However it isn’t in any respect clear to me that we wish to apply every part within the suttas to our personal lives, when there’s a important quantity in there that’s flawed and even perhaps probably dangerous. Contemplate right here the Kamboja Sutta within the Aṅguttara Nikāya, whose whole textual content says this (within the Bhikkhu Sujato translation):

At one time the Buddha was staying close to Kosambi, in Ghosita’s Monastery. Then Venerable Ānanda went as much as the Buddha, bowed, sat down to at least one aspect, and mentioned to him:

“Sir, what’s the trigger, what’s the motive why females don’t attend council conferences, work for a residing, or journey to Persia?”

“Ānanda, females are irritable, jealous, stingy, and unintelligent. That is the trigger, that is the explanation why females don’t attend council conferences, work for a residing, or journey to Persia.” (Aṅguttara Nikāya II.83)

Are we going to use that thought to our personal lives? That ladies and women are “irritable, jealous, stingy, and unintelligent”, and that’s the explanation why they shouldn’t work for a residing? And even, are we going to use the underlying reasoning behind that concept? As a result of it certain appears to me that the reasoning right here is that the writer – a person observing a patriarchal society – noticed girls in inferior positions, and subsequently reasoned that they should be of inferior capability (a line of reasoning that also will get utilized to black folks). I wouldn’t wish to apply that underlying reasoning to my life, and I’m prepared to guess Justin doesn’t both.

From my perspective, the concept a very good householder doesn’t frequent theatrical reveals – an thought that is still within the textual content, it doesn’t matter what anyone else has mentioned concerning the textual content within the two thousand years since its writing – is a foul one, identical to the concept girls shouldn’t work for a residing as a result of they’re jealous and dumb. I take a look at what’s within the texts, I infer the underlying reasoning from them and from different texts within the canon, and I conclude that we’re higher off not making use of both of those concepts to our lives.

Now I feel Justin might push me additional on these factors due to the interpretive stance I beforehand took discussing Rudolf Bultmann. Walter Kaufmann had described Bultmann as deciphering as an alternative of saying no; I had supported Bultmann’s technique as follows:

I discover it useful when Bultmann says his “criticism of the biblical writings lies not in eliminating mythological statements however in deciphering them; it isn’t a means of subtraction however a hermeneutical technique.” (99) It’s this strategy, of not eliminating however deciphering, that’s concerned within the undertaking of naturalizing karma.

What the current dialog helps me to appreciate is how a lot will be concerned in “not eliminating however deciphering”. I feel it’s precisely that strategy that Justin needs to take to the Sigālovāda Sutta, and I’m sympathetic to it: we wish to keep away from rejecting a classical textual content, eliminating it. We might disagree with what the sutta says or seems to say, however we are able to nonetheless interpret it on a distinct, maybe greater, stage. This kind of interpretation is what I’ve referred to as reinterpretation: it’s constructive, moderately than exegetical, interpretation. So once I famous last time that I used to be not reinterpreting the Sigālovāda: effectively, this response would go, maybe I ought to be!

Now two factors are essential relating to such a response. First, Bultmann remains to be prepared to confess that, on an essential stage, the textual content does imply what it says. He believes the world image within the New Testomony truly is a legendary one, fanciful and supernatural, and he thinks that these claims are flawed as said: the world shouldn’t be actually like what the New Testomony authors thought it was. The purpose for him, although, is that there’s a deeper stage of that means, existential that means, that was there within the legendary image and can also be there after we learn it now with out the parable. That deeper stage is what has worth to us now. We try to get at that deeper stage with out denying that the textual content typically additionally had literal that means for its authors; as accountable historians, we do want to acknowledge the latter is actual.

Second, although, it appears to me that if we actually take Bultmann’s strategy to the fullest and attempt to reinterpret every part moderately than subtract it, then that doesn’t simply apply to the Sigālovāda Sutta; it additionally applies to the Kamboja Sutta. I feel that what the Sigālovāda says concerning the theatre is terrible; I feel that what the Kamboja says about girls is even extra terrible. The straightforward and simple strategy to those texts is subtraction: we simply ignore the recommendation that we predict is flawed. We can additionally say that these are each sacred texts of our custom and we should take them critically on a deeper stage, however that’s a lot tougher – and we’ll then want to do this with the Kamboja in addition to the Sigālovāda. And I’m unsure what that will contain.

Cross-posted at the Indian Philosophy Blog.



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