Too often, the denial of the practical function of Buddhist objects and the emphasis on their symbolic or aesthetic value is a way to assert the “spiritual” nature of the Buddhist experience. This interpretation, however, reflects only the views of an elitist minority of Asian and Western practitioners. While the practice of Buddhism aims in principle to transcend any socio-cultural conditioning, it is not simply a “pure experience.” To see Buddhism as pure spirituality, a realization of oneself with libertarian undertones, is to overlook its disciplinarian aspect as expressed in the vast canonical literature of Vinaya. Buddhism is both an internal experience and a social structure at the same time. The reinterpretation of Buddhism as “spirituality” is particularly striking in the case of Zen. In Zen and the Birds of Appetite, the Catholic monk Thomas Merton writes: “To define Zen in terms of a religious system or structure is in fact to destroy it – or rather to miss it completely.” He adds that “very serious and qualified” practitioners of Zen deny that it is a religion, citing as his authorities Dogen – a sect founder who was renowned for his sectarian polemics – and D. T. Suzuki, a renowned ideologist. According to Merton: “Buddhism itself ... points beyond any theological or philosophical ‘ism.’ It insists on not being a system (while at the same time, like other religions, presenting a peculiar temptation to systematizers).” Merton is correct to stress that this demand not to be a system is shared by most religious systems: their very legitimacy is based on this point – making it somewhat suspect.
Faure: Unmasking Buddhism p.70
Submitted December 16, 2018 at 05:06PM by grass_skirt https://ift.tt/2SLqiFS
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