Rev. Danny Fisher

Today’s quote is from our friend and heroine Janice D. Willis, a preeminent scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and Professor of Religion at Wesleyan University; an Outstanding Woman in Buddhism for 2009; author of, among other books, On Knowing Reality: The Tattvārtha Chapter of Asaṅga’s Bodhisattvabhūmi and Dreaming Me: An African American Baptist-Buddhist Journey; and one of Time Magazine‘s “Spiritual Innovators for the New Millennium.”  This is it:

I wonder what particular skills and qualities we scholar-practitioners of Buddhism within the academy are trying to foster in our students when we offer our various classes on Buddhist subjects. Are we attempting simply to get students to facility with a Buddhist vocabulary, to help them comprehend a few major tenets of the dharma, or to somehow encounter Buddhism’s essence (pardon the misnomer)?

The Buddha famously announced to his followers, Ehi passika; that is, “Come and see (for yourself)!” He went on to lay out a hermeneutical code to be followed when engaging in gaining knowledge of his dharma, namely, “Do not be led by reports or tradition or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, nor by mere logic or inference, nor by considering appearances, nor by delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, nor by the idea, ‘This is our teacher.’”

Though clearly challenging, these principles are decidedly not the ones that guide most university courses! Rather, an “established body of knowledge” is the professor’s-and the students’-presumed stock in trade.

I am not trying to suggest that intellectual pursuits are not good things; they are. In Buddhism also, critical reasoning is highly regarded. Wherever we look in Buddhist discourses, we read over and over again about the importance of developing critical reasoning and insight. Still, ultimately, there are limits to discursive reasoning, and nirvana is beyond concepts. Thinking alone will not get to it, and no matter how fine-tuned our reasoning ability, it will not save us from the facts of birth and death.

Buddhist studies professors are not lamas or geshes (the true scholar-practititioners), capable of imparting lung and dbang-that is, direct spiritual guidance and empowerment. But it seems that our aim as professors is not even to offer the students experience, though this is what true knowledge and insight into Buddhist thought and practice requires. We cannot sit on the cushions for our students. And yet, if they don’t sit on the cushions, what are they, or we, really doing?