History of Religions
Vol.37 No.3
Feb 1998
Pp.289-291
Copyright by University of Chicago
By Jose Ignacio Cabezon. Toward a Comparative Philosophy of
Religions, vol. 6. Edited by Frank E. Reynolds and David Tracy.
Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 299.
The tide of this book is perhaps a bit misleading: it is not a book
about "Buddhism" in general nor does it deal in any comprehensive
manner with the enormous variety of ways in which language has been
used throughout the Buddhist world. The truth is that Cabezon's
project here is both less and more ambitious than his title would
suggest. Less because he has chosen to focus on a single school of
Tibetan Buddhism, more because through a detailed discussion of this
school he intends to demonstrate how the notion of scholasticism can
serve as a valuable category for the comparative study of religion.
In order to do so, he must rescue the term "scholasticism" from its
parochial application to a brand of philosophy and logic
characteristic of medieval Europe, where it was anchored in an
Aristotelian empiricism based on premises quite different from those
that powered Tibetan Buddhism. He must accomplish this goal without
sacrificing the descriptive force this word has acquired in its own
arena since at least the beginning of the ninth century And finally,
he must indicate the specific usefulness of the concept of
scholasticism to scholars of comparative religion, as a lens through
which one might see things--interesting things--that would otherwise
remain invisible. In fact, Cabezon has succeeded, to a considerable
extent, on all three counts.
His task is not without precedent nor are the problems he confronts.
This is certainly not the first time that a construct of the
Euro-American academy has been pressed into service to describe a
variety of cross-cultural phenomena. "Religion" is, of course, the
primary example that comes to mind, but there are others: deity,
pilgrimage, ritual, virtue, and so forth. This is the vocabulary on
which the study of comparative religion is based; each word has its
own history, in which its strengths and weaknesses have been played
out. Such words do not simply appear; they must be groomed as
comparative categories through a rigorous process of argument and
application in the field. I think, for instance, of a recent study
of scripture by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, which raises issues very
similar to those discussed by Cabezon: "Scripture is a Western term,
one that previously specified the Bible as revered by Jews and
(differently) by Christians; it has as yet hardly been reconceived
to do justice to what we now know of differences among varying
centuries, let alone among diverse communities, treatments, and
texts...For scripture has been and is different from what we have
come to imagine. This is so in especially two crucial matters: it
has been more important in more ways to moire people than we have
acknowledged; and it has been, is, moire varied than our
understanding has recognize."(1)
Cabezon's strategy is, first, to develop an abstract,
decontextualized understanding of scholasticism and, second, to
apply this understanding to the analysis of a specific non-Western
tradition. Chapter I sets out the theoretical framework for the rest
of the book. Building on an essay by Paul Masson-Oursel, one of the
pioneers in the comparative philosophy of religions, Cabezon
isolates various relevant features of scholasticism: a concern with
scripture, language, logic, and reason as necessary sources for
spiritual insight; an intense preoccupation with hermeneutical
method; and, finally, an introspective, self-critical need to
legitimize its own rational-analytical approach to spirituality.
Chapters 2 through 9 show how these same general features of
scholasticism are characteristic of the dGe lugs pa tradition of
Tibetan Buddhism founded by Tsong kha pa (1357-1419). One could
hardly quarrel with this choice. In the centuries following the
introduction of Indian Buddhism to Tibet, many lamas were concerned
with reconciling the theoretical and experiential dimensions of the
tradition, but it was Tsong kha pa who created what was probably the
most influential of all syntheses of scriptural exegesis and Tantric
ritual. Moreover, when it coma to the dGe lugs pa school, Cabezon
speaks with an authority that only a handful of Western scholars can
command; his previous translation of mKhas grub's sTong thun chen mo
is a fundamental contribution to scholarship in this area.
All of this is not to imply that I am in perfect agreement with
everything he has to say in this book. His remarks on Madhyamaka
"nominalism" (pp. 161 ff.), for example, reflect what seems to me to
be a basic confusion about the issue of linguistic reference. To say
that language is "nonreferential"--at least as the expression is
used by Wittgenstein and his interpreters--is not, as Cabezon
apparently believes, the same as saying that words refer to nothing.
A "no-thing" is still a something from the point of view of
reference. What is required is to step entirely outside the paradigm
of referential meaning, to abandon a way of thinking bound up with
the compulsive search for some kind of secure ontological ground.
For Nagarjuna, this search is simply another manifestation of
clinging. It is safe to assume that Cabezon's views on this subject
are derived from his close study the dGe lugs pa texts, which
suggests that the real source of the confusion is located somewhere
deep in the tradition itself. But where?
In the final chapter of his book, Cabezon raises the intriguing
question of the socioreligious origins of Mahayana scholasticism. He
notes that "texts and movements before the second century C.E. share
fewer [scholastic] traits" (p. 197). This should come as no surprise
if, as I am inclined to do, one views early Indian Madhyamaka as a
species of what Michael Sells calls "performative apophasis."(2)
Such discourse is in many ways allergic to the very features of
scholasticism that Cabezon has so convincingly uncovered in his
study.(3) All of which suggests a provocative irony; for Tsong kha
pa's deep commitment to the principles of scholasticism and the
associated need to fit early Madhyamaka treatises into an
essentially scholastic mold, would have compromised Ins ability to
appreciate the real strength of Nagarjuna's writing.
These an technical questions, however, and Cabezon's book is not
directed solely, or even primarily, to specialists in Buddhist
studies--an encouraging sign for those of us who are concerned about
the lack of knowledgeable comparative work in a field that has grown
far too insular for its own good. In this respect, his work
represents a new generation of scholarship and a welcome opportunity
for interdisciplinary dialogue.
(1) Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What Is Scripture? (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1993). pp. ix. 2.
(2) Michael A. Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 3-4.
(3) Compare ibid., p. 4.