My first ever post (and why Dharmapāla was a snide)

I had the misfortune to be placed on a library training course last week (Effective Information Management, for those interested), evidently my negative karma is not yet fully exhausted, because I must have been a right swine in a previous life to have this day inflicted upon me. In any case, I am sure that anybody enduring a PhD will have had to face the same tedium at some point in their first year, and decidedly tedious though it was in the main, I did glean a few (potentially) useful nuggets from it (maybe).

One of those nuggets was that it might be a good idea for PhD sorts to start up a little blog so that our research interests, research papers, in-progress papers and names in general can be put out into the world with immediate effect - the plus sides to this are, I suppose, to do with open access and wide readership potential. We are all familiar with the relatively small readership of journals and the even smaller access rights that often come as part and parcel of publishing in them! So here I am, starting a blog. Admittedly, it all feels very narcissistic and it is true that generally, this puts me off doing things such as this. 'Why would anyone be interested in anything I have to say?' is the question that tumbles around my mind even now, but there are possibilities. Maybe I write something and I get another philosophy type's feedback on it. Maybe I write something that spurs a conversation that informs future research. Maybe I write something and someone even agrees - that'd be nice! Maybe I write something and it gets read by nobody at all, but is instead lost to the aether of the internet, never to be read again. Any manifestation of any of these outcomes is fine, because as I write this, I realise that just being back to writing something after six months of endless reading and battling with Sanskrit is completely bloody lovely, and that works well enough for me.

Now to the good stuff (if you're an Indian Philosophy nerd like me, at least). I've been reading some translations of Dharmapāla's work lately, in particular Tom Tilleman's excellent translations in 'Materials for the Study of Āryadeva, Dharmapāla and Candrakīrti'. This was never going to be a chore for me in part because Tom Tillemans is quite brilliant, and in part because I love all things Buddhist (apart from the guys in Burma going around murdering Muslims - what's that about?). One thing that screams out from the translation of Dharmapāla's commentary to Āryadeva's Catuḥśatikā (Four Hundred Verses) in Tillman's work is that Dharmapāla was... Well, kind of a nark! We've all taken on writers with whom we disagree, but I hazard a guess that the academic principle of refraining from ad hominem attacks ('against the man' for non-philosophy people - basically insults) has prevented us from getting too nasty (at least, I hope this is the case!).

No such problem for Dharmapāla, however:

The ancient Brahmins, in their shrewdness, secretly invented the Vedas and then said that they existed naturally, that they just came to be incanted of themselves and were not acknowledged as dependent on anything else. The Brahmins were commended as being the most worthy of veneration, while the Kṣatriyas and the rest were all [said to be] inferior; if [the latter] provided [the Brahmins] with the necessities of life, then they would obtain immeasurable merit. Fools, who lack intelligence, do not fathom [the Brahmins' various deceptions]; they wait upon [the Brahmins] with trust and respect, saying that they are a true field of merit.

It's quite clear then that Dharmapāla thinks of Brahmins as little more than charlatans out to manipulate those 'inferior' to them via a sacred system of their own manufacture. The benefits to this are, of course, obvious! It's also pretty clear that he holds a disdain for any 'fools' that do not see through the Brahmins' games - presumably this applies to any non-Buddhist! I know that merely holding such a sentiment as 'all non-Buddhists are fools' is anathema to many practising Buddhists today, never mind freely expressing it! It was put to me by a friend that 'fool' might simply mean 'deluded person' and in this instance, the tone of the passage would change significantly. This is true, it would. However, I don't think that Dharmapāla did mean 'deluded person', I think he meant precisely what he said.  Here's why.

 Even if we are generous with our attribution and say that Dharmapāla is using 'fool' to mean 'deluded person' (and any unenlightened person is deluded, even if they are Buddhist), we stumble into tricky grounds. It would seem more of a jump to say that 'lacks intelligence' amounts to 'lacks ultimate insight' (into the nature of things; the key Buddhist objective) or 'is deluded': it does look as though Dharmapāla is simply calling every Hindu stupid. Why do I think this? Because even Buddhists are deluded up until the point of enlightenment - the point of Buddhist praxis is to dispel delusion and provide insight (though there is much disagreement around exactly how this is achieved and what it must entail). If 'fool' were being used in this peculiar way, then the Buddhists who do see that the Brahmins are deceiving their adherents would be on the same intellectual level as the Hindus who do not see that they are being conned. This would presumably include Dharmapāla himself, but if not, it would almost certainly include his entire readership (monks, from master to novice) - the standout issue being that if this was the case, none of these Buddhist adherents would be able to see that the Hindus were being conned by the Brahmins either! 

Further to this, Dharmapāla continually states elsewhere in his commentary that one of the criteria for following the Buddhadharma is intelligence - it is clear that 'intelligence' here can't mean 'not being deluded', viz. 'enlightened'. If this was the case, then the Buddhist would not require intelligence to follow the Buddha's teachings, for their very possessing intelligence would already mean that they are enlightened! In light of this, it would be very strange indeed if 'lacking intelligence' was synonymous with 'being deluded'. The intelligence Dharmapāla refers to is required to understand some of the Buddha's teachings (not even all of them, illustrating that intelligence is not a final destination, but a tool for the path) and to allow the practitioner to begin to make correct determinations on their interactions with the world; it is not synonymous with enlightenment, but is rather a prerequisite to it.

So... Dharmapāla seems to have had little time for anybody that was not already following the Buddhist path - so much for universal compassion! What a nark. I leave you with a smaller excerpt. Here Dharmapāla even seems to have had it in for lepers - we are now all familiar with the cruelty of making a marginalised group the butt of a joke or derogatory comparison. I appreciate that this was not the case 100 years ago, never mind 1000 years ago, and I am aware that people were, to a degree, scared of things they did not understand (such as leprosy). Still, I am a little disappointed:

...And the Brahmin caste is not in fact worthy of veneration, nor are they a true field of merit, for they continuously engage in asking for more alms all the while that they support a wife and children, just as do greedy lepers. So the intelligent should not take refuge [in such false teachers].

Lovely(!)