Hi Geoff,
Finally got around to reading the article. I appreciate Wallace’s up-front manner, which i don’t find at all vexatious, as his apologetic tone in the introduction would have us believe. It’s a straightforward set of principles, clearly and energetically set out. I would have thought most of what he says is fairly standard fare in the realms of ‘secular Buddhism’, but he seems to be presenting it as a controversial statement. Perhaps it is, I’m not very familiar with the world of american Buddhism.
There are certain problems with the paper. First up is his dismissal of being able to sort out the original teachings on text-critical grounds. Like so may, he seems to have absorbed second hand the opinions of Schopen, which simply don’t establish what they are supposed to. Most of the basic arguments that Schopen uses to demolish the findings of the text-critical studies are simply wrong: i have demonstrated this at length in two essays. This is not a matter of interpretation (only), he misreads his texts and draws false conclusions. When his mistakes are rectified, the readings in fact tend to support the text-critical consensus.
Wallis describes the nature of Buddhist texts as “heavily edited translations of older oral compositions”. This is misleading, and perpetrates a number of misunderstandings. First, the Pali texts are not ‘translations’ in the sense of translating from French to English; they are ‘translations’ in the sense of translating English to Australian (ok, some might think there’s an even bigger linguistic gap there!). The translation, or more precisely, dialectical standardization, does not seriously affect the meaning. Second, there is no evidence at all that an oral tradition of the type of early Buddhism is in any way less reliable than a written tradition. Finally, they are ‘heavily edited’. So what? A newspaper article is edited, does this mean we simply throw out the idea that it in any way reflects the opinions of the author? This is not reason, it is the rejection of reason.
What our understanding of the nature of early Buddhist literature means, rather, is that we have to understand the nature of the editing process, the kinds of changes that may have been introduced, the manner in which the means of transmission may have influenced the final product. This is simply to say that the Buddhist texts, like all other texts, do not exist in some arbitrary socio-historical vacuum, but must be read in context. Sure, this means that we nuance, refine, criticize, and sometimes reject the theories of earlier scholars. It does not mean we stop trying.
The outcome of this kind of ‘reasoning’ is that most of the western scholarly world has stopped paying serious attention to the early teachings, while a few dedicated scholars like Ven Analayo do the heavy lifting that is required to actually improve our understanding.
This then leads on to Wallace’s Dhamma principles. First, Wallace redefines the four noble truths to strictly exclude rebirth – including saying samsara is ‘neurotic pressure’! Then he goes on to say that these definitions are “so basic to Buddhism that it hardly requires comment”. Umm, no. They are a radical revisioning of the Dhamma, which is a product of 20th century American secularization, and which would be unrecognizable as Buddhism to any previous generation.
Wallace is honest enough to admit the obvious: that references to devas and the like are fundamental to early Buddhism. (Note how he has now switched from first decrying the text-critical process, to now relying on it, implicitly assuming that the early Sutta, not the Mahayana, etc., are the best guide to what “Gotama” taught.) What he omits is the elementary distinction between narrative and doctrine; between the ‘story’ of a deva who comes to visit the Buddha, and a direct and specific claim made by the Buddha when speaking of central matters. It is in the first kind of teaching that we find the Indian cosmology, the use of ‘special effects’ for narrative spice, and the other matters that Wallace quite rightly points out (including “(i) genre restraint and requirement, and (ii) advertisement and propagation”.)
In the Buddha’s own direct statements on the matter, however, we do not find these things: we find a consistently worked out, philosophically coherent system that the Buddha says he has realized with his own direct knowledge. Wallace avoids the implications of this, having previously snipped rebirth out of the four noble truths. Remember, the second truth is not, as Wallace says, “you ask too much of the world.” It is “That craving that leads to future rebirth”.
Wallace goes on to say that “supernatural” teachings contradict the phenomenological approach of the Buddha. I agree completely. It is just that the Buddhist teachings are not in any sense “supernatural”. This is an imported western concept, derived from Aristotelian metaphysical dualism, which is unknown in India. The gods and the rest are very much a part of nature, subject to the same laws that we are. This does not mean such teachings are true; but it does mean that this critique is misguided. We need to ask the Indic tradition how they conceived these things, how they reconciled the different aspects. Contrary to Wallace, we have not received mainly the Buddha of the devotees – in fact the vast majority of Buddhist texts are precisely the Buddhism of the philosophers – they’re the ones who write stuff. This means that there are many highly intelligent, critical, inquiring minds who have reflected on these questions before us. While we won’t come to the same answers that they have, as we are in a different context, we should not labor under the conceit that we are the first generation to notice these things.
So, then, are the Buddha’s claims about rebirth “true”? There is a genuine issue here, and a case to be made on both sides. Those who attack rebirth, to my mind, accept too readily the hubris of modern science, which itself does not in any way understand the anti-metaphysical nature of Buddhism, but is still fighting its battles with Christianity. On the other hand, perhaps, as Wallace suggests, Gotama simply got it wrong. Those who defend rebirth often misunderstand or misrepresent the extent to which traditional Buddhist beliefs have genuinely been undermined by science. I just heard a story of a senior monk who insists that the moon is a silver mansion inhabited by a deva, who used his magic powers to create a false surface of the moon in order to deceive the astronauts who went there. Sad and a bit pitiful, yes, but it is honest in representing the kinds of ideas that 2500 years of Buddhists have accepted without question.
Okay, fair enough, intelligently interrogate Buddhist notions in the light of modern science, modify or reject when required – on both sides. In this sense I agree with Wallace that we should be critics of tradition – although this does not exclude being a custodian as well. In fact, any good custodian must always be a critic, to decide what is worth preserving.
Our understanding of early Buddhism – of “Gotama”, if you like – is imperfect and always will be. Nevertheless, there are some things we do know pretty well. If we are to embrace Wallace’s project of rescuing Gotama from the Buddha – a project I have considerable sympathy with – then it is a bad move to start by throwing away some of the few things we know with reasonable certainty. When we cut ourselves loose from the moorings of history, we end up with a Buddha who looks very much like, well, us. And how exactly is that meant to lead to any radical transformation?
If you read to the end, you see that he's taken a quotation from some other author waxing poetic about the liberating potential of literature and made some substitutions in it.