I read Conze’s Sanskrit “translations” as a teenager. They were exciting because they made so much sense. Which—of course they did! They expounded familiar Western ideas in Buddhist drag. Only much later, reading Tibetan commentaries, did I understand Conze’s fabrications.
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Tibetan understandings of Prajñaparamita draw on late Indian commentaries; there’s a dozen strata of accumulated reinterpretations. None is any more “authentic” than any other; Conze is no worse than (say) Tsongkhapa. But you can’t understand the texts without the history.
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IMO, if we could recover the original meaning of Prajñaparamita, it would have no special status. Humans with limited understanding composed the texts, not supernatural Buddhas, as myth has it. Personally I find late tantric reinterpretations more valuable than earlier versions.
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Buddhism, like Troy, is a city of ruins: countless layers of rebuilding on top of doctrines and practices that served their time and place, became obsolete, and were mainly ground underfoot, but whose most durable remnants poke through later constructions.
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Reinterpreting “Buddhism” as something completely different is utterly authentic. Leaders have insisted that their brand-new religion is “the original Word Of The Buddha” for at least 2000 years. A genuinely modern Buddhism shouldn’t need to lie about this any longer, though.
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I was about to write that he was not alone, e.g. DT Suzuki bears similarity. And now I read the article (thanks) and the two actually had a contact :)
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Yes, DT was a main vector of Romanticism into Western Buddhism. David McMahon’s book is excellent on this.
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Dukka everywhere! And at all times... This is fascinating, thanks. I was looking for that 'science is a bag of tricks' quote/idea recently - did you tweet something on that in recent weeks?
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I've always been curious how Buddhism became so popular, but Advaita and other Vedantic schools remained obscure.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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