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Apologia Report 18:17 (1,153)
May 8, 2013
Subject: Recognizing symbolic intent in Asian mysticism
In this issue:
BUDDHISM - when symbolic meaning overrides empirical facts
ECCLESIOLOGY - "Spiritual But Not Religious" isn't enough
MORMONISM - clumsy scripture alteration for the sake of plural marriage
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BUDDHISM
In her essay "The Matter of Truth," Rita M. Gross strives to communicate "the heavy cost of literalism" (Tricycle, Spr '13, pp60-63, 105, 106). She begins: "Years ago, at the Brooklyn Museum, I was looking at a Tibetan statue of a multi-armed figure when a middle-aged white couple stopped to view the statue, and as they did, one said to the other, 'What is that about? Do you suppose they were trying to portray a freak who was born that way?' Then, before I could say anything, they moved on. As I, or anyone else familiar with the Indian cultural milieu, might have told them, the multiple arms were not intended to be a photograph-like portrait. Their intent is symbolic, not literal. They symbolize the deity's multiple abilities and capabilities. Only if one were completely blind to symbolism could one so completely misread the meaning of the statue's multiple arms....
"Many modern Buddhists understand traditional narratives and practices in much the same way. What I mean is that for many modern Buddhists, the symbolic meanings contained in traditional forms are approached with an outlook steeped in the worldview of the European Enlightenment, in which truth and value lie mainly with empirical facts. ... There is little room in this view of things for affirming meaning as it is communicated through symbolic forms or for the understanding that, for some purposes, the value of symbolic meaning can override empirical facts or even that sometimes factual information is irrelevant to symbolic meaning. ...
"One finds in Buddhist tradition a distinction between 'words' and 'meaning,' which are often very different from one another, and we would do well to consider the traditional advice - whether we are looking at statues or interpreting teachings - to pay attention to symbolic meaning and not be limited to literal meaning. ...
"We moderns, however, though we think ourselves incomparably more sophisticated than traditional people, have little understanding or appreciation of symbolic experience and, having committed ourselves to an empirical worldview, we live within its narrow confines.
"Virgin births, for example, are quite common in the stories of heroes. A virgin birth signifies an extraordinary person, someone who will accomplish great things with her or his life. That, and not the claim that the normal processes of human conception and birth have been contravened, is the main message of the story.
"The modern person of a literalist mind-set will, however, focus on the unusual conception or birth and thus miss the story's meaning. Not only that, but such a person, if religiously inclined, would likely insist that it is only by interpreting the events literally that one can be a faithful and true practitioner of that particular tradition. ... On the other hand, another kind of literalist will reject the whole story outright as worthless because it is pure fantasy. In both cases, the modern literal interpreter may well be much more naive about the main messages of such stories than are those who hear them in a traditional manner. ...
"We modern people must differentiate clearly and carefully between facts and symbols, between history, which is an empirical discipline, and the traditional stories whose purpose is primarily symbolic.
"Many religious people resist giving up literal interpretations of their most valued stories, because they think, erroneously, that they must either accept such stories as factual accounts or reject them entirely. But this dualistic assumption is the most dangerous conclusion people could draw regarding the relationship between fact and symbol, between narrative and history. A narrative can be both true and false at the same time - factually false yet symbolically true. It is not at all necessary either to edit traditional narratives to make them conform to modern sensibilities or to insist, against all common sense, that unless they happened literally as presented they have no truth value. ...
"It can be upsetting to hear that a treasured religious story simply is not historically accurate, but it need not be so. ... Why doesn't such flexibility come naturally to speech about traditional Buddhist narratives and claims? ...
"The traditional Buddhist map of the world describes a flat earth at the center of which is Mount Meru. ...
"The geographical exploration of the physical world that revealed a very different map caused consternation to Buddhists. Many Buddhists continued to hold to the traditional view, which cost some of them their trust in Buddhist teachings altogether. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Christian missionaries - who no longer believed in a flat earth even though they continued to reject more recent discoveries about the age of the earth - in Asian Buddhist countries routinely peppered their anti-Buddhist polemics with references to the fact that no explorer had ever found Mount Meru anywhere on the globe. Even while they continued to reject new European knowledge about the earth, Christian missionaries argued that if Buddhist texts were *so* wrong about the physical description of the earth, they must be untrustworthy in other ways as well. ...
"While contemporary Buddhists seem to have little trouble distinguishing between literal and symbolic meaning in some situations, in others this flexibility is less often found. People seem to really hold tight to their traditional stories, for instance, when it comes to the various accounts of how their particular school developed. These stories are often highly sectarian and historically inaccurate, yet because they speak to issues of authenticity, they retain a great deal of dogmatic power. ...
"If the Mahayana teachings, or any other teachings, are not those of the historical Buddha, it is feared that they are inauthentic.
"From a historical perspective, Mahayana Buddhism displays many of the features of a new religious movement. There are, for example, very few references to the Mahayana in the texts of older Buddhist schools. That these Buddhists rarely bothered to refute Mahayana teachings indicates that the older schools did not perceive them to be much of a threat. Mahayana texts, however, constantly justify themselves by contrasting themselves, in a very positive light, with the older, more established schools.... Both tendencies occur commonly when a new religious movement is emerging. Jews, for example, did not spend a lot of time or energy denouncing the new Jesus movement, but the Christian New Testament is full of claims about the inadequacy of Judaism.
"Even the Mahayana account of its own origins betrays that it is a new religious movement. ...
"That the early Mahayanists felt they must attribute their teachings to the historical Buddha is not surprising. When people innovate within an established tradition, they always claim direct inspiration from the teachings of the founder. ...
"Give up on even trying to read traditional texts as factual history. Then, as separate but intertwined projects, take up discerning an accurate history of Buddhism, as much as you can, but also interpret the symbolism and meaning of traditional narratives on a level beyond ordinary space and time. But don't conflate and confuse the two! ...
"My own teacher, Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche, told me as much, when she said that learning that many of her traditional beliefs were not historically accurate only made her think more deeply about their spiritual meaning. This is really the point. When we cease to confuse history and stories, when we look at traditional stories outside the context of literal truth and sectarian debate, we are freer to appreciate the imaginative truths they convey." <www.ow.ly/kI3oU>, <www.ow.ly/kI3Te> (Only fragments available.)
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ECCLESIOLOGY
When "Spiritual But Not Religious" Is Not Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church, by Lillian Daniel [1] -- "The primary theme of Daniel's book," according to this review by James C. Howell, is "the wonder of the church ... the endearingly laughable aspects of real church life that are essential to the life of faith.
"In a surprising way, Daniel [Senior Minister of First Congregational Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois] has served up a curious kind of apologetics - not the sledgehammer type that unsheaths rational arguments to crush disbelieving foes, but a warmer, anecdotal narrative of God's sneaky habit of showing up, a cheeky defense of the fact that we need a church is as wobbly, bewildered and uncouth as our own souls."
Daniel "is sick and tired of those who trash the church in the name of vapid spiritualities that can't carry the freight. ...
"My reservation about Daniel's diatribe is that she seems to imply that goofball congregations are, precisely in their innocuously droll vapidity, faithful and necessary exemplars of the gospel. The sadder truth, which she never divulges, is that far too many congregations are just plain awful or downright harmful; they can bore you to death and produce sheer meanness. In some congregations worship is rigid and pointless, or it is cutesy and titillating but devoid of substance - the latter perhaps especially in churches that are successful and popular. ...
"As Daniel so wonderfully puts it, after she sighs that she's tired of stupid versions of Christianity and weary of trivial spiritualities, 'I am really just tired of myself. In criticizing others in their faith, I hardly live up to the best in my own faith.' Those who irrate us expose our own flaws - 'and this is why I can't do this religion thing all by myself,' Daniel writes. 'This is why I need a community.'" Christian Century, Mar 6 '13, pp36, 37. <www.ow.ly/kIcSN>
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MORMONISM
A word of appreciation for Jim Catlin who called our attention to an item from Doug Gibson, editor of the Ogden Standard-Examiner's opinion page, which amounts to "a nice introduction to the controversy surrounding the 'article on marriage', monogamous marriage, that was section 101 in the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. It stood as a mocking condemnation of the plural marriage practices of the church from 1835 until 1876 when it was unceremoniously 'retired' and replaced with the supposed 1843 revelation on Celestial Marriage. The newcomer was D&C 132, a section that I'm sure the church wishes today it could as easily expunge as it did section 101 back in 1876.
"Two years after the conspicuous change in marital policy was canonized in the new 1876 Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph F. Smith felt compelled to publicly defend the change. His explanation? That bad, bad [Book of Mormon witness] Oliver Cowdery authored monogamous section 101 and snuck it past the prophet's disapproving scrutiny to see it distributed to the faithful in the inaugural edition of Doctrine and Covenants! Part of the 1878 address by Joseph F. Smith is included in the blog and I quote a significant line: '...hence the publication, by O. Cowdery, about this time, of an article on marriage, which was carefully worded, and afterwards found its way into the Doctrine and Covenants without authority.'
"And just when I had settled on telling folks that if it's in the D&C then it is canonized doctrine. Oh well, if the likes of an 'iconified' member of the three witnesses can be caught red-handed inserting unauthorized doctrine under the noses of the 19th-century 'correlation committee,' then what can we trust?" <www.ow.ly/kIeJ6>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - When "Spiritual But Not Religious" Is Not Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church, by Lillian Daniel (Jericho, 2013, hardcover, 224 pages) <www.ow.ly/kIeVb>
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