Indian Logic Forum

tantidharo · Last edited by tantidharo on Thu Feb 01, 2007 12:27 pm; edited 5 times in total

Or, the unrealistic legalist lineage (from a Japanese perspective)

Originally published at bauddhamata

Reading this, I improvised the following.

Opening statement: I am interested to gain an understanding of the way that liberally educated Japanese monks might deal with the overarching nature of the lineage theme, particularly as it opens to the far more serious discussion of the sense of legality in ordination lineage. I take it as fact that, legalistically speaking, a "philosophical" lineage is not at all plausible.

1. To my own way of thinking, the English word "lineage" is itself exceedingly problematic and significant. In its contemporary idiomatic usage especially, I find it a terribly misconstrued notion as it clearly, if figuratively, denotes a line, which barely mirrors any mark in common to historical reality.

2. There exists in this equation a crucial but unvoiced assumption so strong that it nearly figures as the principal factor to the whole. I shall call it for the time being "the proprietary myth of spiritual legitimacy."

3. Knowingly or not, the discussion at hand is above all a highly consequential legalistic one. Yet to penetrate its unrealistic logic as based on a supposed legal purity, discussants must be willing to admit the following.

4. Short of being able to provide compelling evidence supporting this exposed underlying presumption, or any clear sample of a purely legal lineage, how could a prosecutor ever hope to prove, legalistically speaking, that any said lineage is any way linked to the primal template, pure or defiled, broken or otherwise?

5. The essence of the litigation therefore pivots on submitting to the court what amounts to a pair of DNA results, but where the sampled material of a primal template originating two and a half millennia prior is rejected by the court as being wholly unsubstantiable.

In closing, the objectives of this informal inquiry are presented as those of an independent researcher who does not believe in Buddhism per se.

Plamen · Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 11:22 pm Post subject:

Do you mean this post?

tantidharo · Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 8:58 am Post subject: contextualizing buds forthcoming

No connection after all.

My intentions are simply to develop an appreciation of the ways in which liberally educated Japanese monks might build on the overarching nature of the lineage theme, particularly as it opens to "a probative discussion of the sense of legality in ordination lineage". Watch for contextualizing buds forthcoming .

With thanks.
td harris