Brand New Ancient Buddhist Philosophy, Part 2

I'm back with the Seif scarf but a lot
more stuffable a few hours later to carry on with part 2 of this discussion of the history of Buddhism in the 20th century and the transition of problems from now facing the 21st century there are three big questions that I want to draw together from the observations and commentary offered in part one the first is the general rule that changes in the structure of political power results in changes in religious legitimacy there is no way to exaggerate how profound the change was in Cambodia when France took over the government now you may know nothing about Cambodia small number of people may be watching this appear passionately looking look but what's an easy to think of is that the French didn't care very much about religion in Cambodia and the British Empire really didn't care about Buddhism in Burma but a small number of colonial powers of colonial administrators made changes in the structure of political power that family influenced everything from what textbooks were used in schools - what sermons were being given by village monks if you don't believe me even a cursory reading of modern scholarship on this always reflects this fact and you know in Cambodia if you know nothing about they say well how is that possible you know that the institutions of the French created that directly influenced of Buddhism Cambodia they only employed a small number of people you know the interface between the state religion you know was sort of fleeting and in substantially they didn't create a vatican like structure that you see in italy well that's true but nevertheless though is she is at the pinnacle of political power influence those changes in the opportunities that shape people's motivations looking to move up social hierarchy and access money both government and and donation money have tremendous influence going right down to local village level within just a few years and in the same way that in politics generally changes in one political party will profoundly affect their opposition at a minimum the opposition that changed the way they presented message as soon as the french government takes over cambodia the protectorate of cambodia it doesn't just influence the monks who are willing to play ball with the new girl it also profoundly transforms all of the anti colonial sentiments all of the monks who are in a sense for the opposition of course this is going on in the secular world as well as in the religious world but there's no way to exaggerate that many of you watching this don't care in the least about cambodia everything I've just said you could also say about Myanmar Burma everything I've just said is true of the changes in government in Sri Lanka and everything I've just said whether or not it makes you uncomfortable it's true about Taiwan also if you think that the incorporation of Taiwan into the Japanese Empire didn't have a profound effect on Buddhist institutions and again that it had a profound effect on the textbooks used in schools to teach children about who they were their place well it did profoundly change everything and the outlook of people in Taiwan thinking of the next hundred years in the next thousand years being part of a Japanese world empire that changed everything and then with the sudden dissolution of an empire and the sudden removal of those textbooks from the classrooms the textbooks that talked about what the next thousand years was going to mean the sudden removal even the dictionaries that were loose with Japanese Empire if you think that didn't profoundly affect what was going on in Buddhism as a religion you're wrong changes in political structure even when they involve a small number of people to talk directly it's amazing how those read it down to the bottom it's amazing how they they change the motivations and the substance of what's happening the grassroots and one of the reasons for that is that in the modern era in 20th century religion is not economically independent if you had a country where religion really was based on a feudal system owning slaves and serfs and owning their own farms then probably you would have a structure of monks and latest authorities who were much more resistant to changes both in the government as a source of patronage and indirectly how the government cheats their donors but you don't the twentieth century was an era when monks work as a set length and part one in large part they were refugees but even when they weren't refugees these institutions were beggars that were very responsive to any change in the will of the state and petrie groups that were themselves also seeking upward mobility from the government of the day the second big question is of how changes in technology entail challenges to Authority so if you imagine in part one how do I describe the scarcity of people with the skills and advanced literacy to access the Buddhists Bible to be blunt you know what is the Buddhist Bible certainly it's different in the different context of talking about it's different in Taiwan than it is in Myanmar Sri Lanka but in all of these cases there's a specialized skill set the type of literacy and charisma needed for people to approach and make use of canonical Authority to express what Buddhism is and what Buddhism is supposed to be and in the shadow of World War two at the beginning of this period of time a very small number of people have those skills or can even fake it and that concentrates Authority in a small number of hands you can see that in Taiwan you can see that Sri Lanka all of these diverse situations there are a small number of people who have scholar monks and make claims to Authority and you can then balance political conditions to put themselves in worldly religious authority also um that's changed forever one of the things that has made my own existence in Buddhist world ten if not dangerous or at least perceived as dangerous is that many times I have sat down with people who have pcs in Buddhism who are professors in prison but they do not know the Buddhist vibe even open the question of which tax retired they themselves are PE interpreters ap4 points up a Canon of one kind or another and yet when they sit down to talk to me sometimes in a conference or roomful of people I'm the only one who knows of that Bible says and sadly that's not a boat it reflects what I'm talking to the first fact that many of the people come out a very deprived background and they didn't even have access to the type of education I managed to create for myself I'm gonna complete on the Didact that's another story for another video but very often whether the question is of something like the status of women in Buddhism you know modern topical questions whether the question is the status of suicide and what is it all the questions that come up in 21st century free debate the reality is that the authority figures around me are pretty much winging it very much making things up and they're in fear of people who can put them in check by saying no actually that isn't what the Buddha said in this Sutra and that's one of many things that makes Buddhism dramatically different from Christianity Islam or what have you she wouldn't show up at a conference full of Muslim scholars and be the only person that who knows what's said in the Quran but Buddhism coming out of that post-war era has been in a shifting and unstable relationship to its own sacred texts and those texts made the transition from being an almost unapproachable wall of untranslated and nearly incomprehensible ancient books to being in an instantly accessible digital format very few people now can make use of that digital world various people know what they're doing and list the people who have some competence or eccentric at best and insane worst but nevertheless 50 years ago any authority a monk or a professor could stand in front of an audience and make up doctrine off the top of his head and be confident that nobody in the audience could challenge it and today there could be someone in the audience with a laptop computer or a mobile phone and checking what the ancient text says and possibly they've even got a translation in parallel meet me at halfway decent English median really bad are Japanese bit by bit translations are becoming accessible in this way also so changes in political authority have changed the way legitimate Authority is expressed and appended and changes in technology have changed challenges to that authority and the result is actually quite anarchic and unstable just as the question of how economically there's going to be any future of party these institutions is quite uncertain and unstable the third and final big question that I started to talk about in part one and I was cut off by war planes passing overhead the difference between war and peace is that those airplanes only go overhead during daylight hours here right now it's late at night so we gonna see airplanes going over anymore there was a real war on if the noise wouldn't stop I started to say before the airplanes interrupted me that I do not feel the future of Buddhism can be built on a lie and I condensed the philosophical answer of the late 20th century so one name and one philosopher and the gardener and I still think that's the concise way to do it you can talk about you know what's called human realm Buddhism humanistic Buddhism different attempts to modernize Buddhism some of them quite eccentric but what they have in common is this attempt to reach out to new gardener and the philosophy of and as a sort of proxy in the sense that it's an ancient enough philosophy yeah it's not actually the Buddhist philosophy it's not actually what you find in the Palantir and it's a touchstone of authenticity but it doesn't actually tell it in the institutional bias it doesn't challenge you on the status of women doesn't show anything on the plight of the poor doesn't challenge you on whether or not monks should be going on and helping the homeless the disease doesn't challenge institutionally in any of the ways that 20th century did of course doesn't challenge you but corruptions and mentioned whether or not a monk should even have a bank account simply touching gold and silver have you but it provided this criterion of authenticity that was just so seductive for white range of secular and monastic stories but it's ultimately a distraction from the problems that those authorities will try to solve what's the problem the problem is what we thought was ancient and authentic and Buddhism we now learn in the modern era is not before World War two or four over one obviously the vast majority of people thought of as effective and real Buddhism whatever their grandparents told them and if you go back to the Middle Ages in Europe if you go to any population where most people are literate obviously that's a natural way for worldly Authority and religious faith to become a mission operator but the shark of the modern era is learning that guan yin is not something tough is not than each of the authentic part Buddhist one en is just one example part of the challenge of modernity is rediscovering what's ancient and what isn't is that now all the different texts that before have been rolled into that Canada floor were part of that wall of books it was so hard to finally you were looking for it suddenly each one of those books has a year written to hunt a year of authorship and it's a visa there's an author not the but up so you know who wrote it when where some extent guess what one of the most important texts in the history of Zen Buddhism was written in Korea neither in China nor in India its problematic and this information is available to monks to scholars so so again for an outsider you have to appreciate the passion and desperation with which people wanted to reach out for Nagarjuna to solve these problems or diminish their significance but the gardener just entails further stating the same problem the Buddha did not teach that form is emptiness and emptiness is form we have the same problems in trying to elevate the gardener and as a standard of adequate authentic Buddhism as we would have in try and take pure land and elevate it to be a definitive Buddhist philosophy look millions of people had to face up to the show that what their grandparents had taught them of a Pure Land Buddhism is not what the Buddha taught that's kind of existential anguish it's very easy for scholars to paint over or run roughshod over war just selectively ignored in the twentieth century millions of people believe that repeating a magical phrase over and over again so that you would get into heaven after you died was definitive authentic real Buddhism if we're gonna talk about your panic gets even crazier and the perception of which sutras were the most ancient the most authentic most definitive all of that changed and it changed the midst of these terrible distractions that made people uncertain of whether or not Buddhism had any future just a few decades down the road you know guys like bhikkhu bodhi with a very difficult to relate to bhikkhu bodhi was in vietnam when the bombs were dropping and if he wasn't in Vietnam as a soldier he was there as an American wearing Buddhist monks robes and I've seen his comments on that and says you know it's hard to guess his tone he said well you know people felt very uncertain about whether or not there was any future for Buddhism in Vietnam at all that was the floor of the 20th century if you were in Vietnam and you had American bombs dropping in her head and then looking ahead to the future you had the Vietnamese Communist Party and its policies on reckless this is the Oblivion of the 20th century for Buddhism that now the 21st century is left picking up bits and pieces