20th century “Buddhism” was largely based on Theosophy—a 19th century European pop-spiritual movement.
A major muddler was Edward Conze, whose history @Jayarava reveals here. Important for anyone who thinks they understand Prajñaparamita—or should.
http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2018/09/edward-conze-study-in-contradiction.html …
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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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Replying to @Meaningness @MimeticValue
what are some examples of these most durable remnants?
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Anything that’s left and still operating.
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