Experience and Faith

Podcasting while sheltering in place. We’re going to restart the DharmaRealm, recording via Zoom, shorter episodes, and posting here, SoundCloud, YouTube, and, as always, your favorite podcasting service. Send us your questions, subscribe to our feeds, and keep your eyes open for updates. And above all—stay home! Wash your hands!

The nerds nerd out about nerdy things! Specifically, a couple of Buddhist Studies scholars (nerds) discuss (nerd out) what it means to be a Buddhist Studies scholar (nerdy things). It’s our third and final conversation with the brilliant Dr. Natalie Quli in a conversation that meanders through the academic construction and boundary maintenance of Buddhism-as-religion, the role of scholars and teachers vis-a-vis Buddhism, and how we participate in authenticity discourses about what is and what isn’t Buddhism.  We want to thank Dr. Quli for joining us! Check out our other episodes here. And the “someone” Scott couldn’t remember in-episode is Stephen C. Berkwitz, “Textbook Buddhism: Introductory Books on the Buddhist Religion.”

It’s our second episode with our special guest, Dr. Natalie Fisk Quli. We’re continuing our conversation about authenticity, this time around beginning with a conversation about merit, merit accumulation and transference, in the Mahayana and Theravada traditions. This gets us going into other weird and cool places like economic models for karma, the declining age of the dharma, how texts and monks function as fields of merit, and colonialism and Orientalism. Oh, and because it would be the DharmaRealm without a little nerdiness, D&D. Check out Dr. Quli’s last episode, and stick around! She’ll be back for one more!

We’ve got a special guest today! Dr. Natalie Fisk Quli is a teacher at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, author, and co-editor of a couple of books with Scott. She’s joining us today to discuss the idea of authenticity, building off a post on the website Fake Buddha Quotes that sort of maybe possibly suggests that Pure Land (and all of Mahayana?) contradicts the authentic teachings of the Buddha. So in our usual fashion, we meander through the ideas of canonicity, discourse, power, boundary construction and maintenance, and how all of these things co-create this thing we conveniently think of as “Buddhism.”  Dr. Quli’s going to be joining us for a couple more episodes, so stay tuned! Image credit: Buddhism with Lord Buddha https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buddhism_with_Lord_Buddha.jpg (c) Priyanka250696, some rights reserved

In a weird way, this is sort of part-two of our post-truth conversation since we’re tackling a perennial problem in the contemporary study and practice of Buddhism — can we know what the historical Buddha really taught? Can we know what he really said? And should that even matter? As always, by tuning in to the DharmaRealm podcast, you’re not going to get an answer to that question, and will probably walk away more confused than you were before. But, hey, we will tell you something about canonical texts, fake Buddha quotes, buddhavacana.  Image credit: Alles liegt im Auge des Betrachters, jodage https//www.flickr.com/photos/buchenmann/14280945373/ (c) jodage, some rights reserved

I didn’t want to talk about flat earth or post-truth or aliens! But Harry made me!  Anyway. If you listen to this episode, you’ll get an earful of Star Trek, X-Files, aliens, conspiracy theories, multiple interpretations of reality, and even some Buddhism, Shinran, and the Tannisho mixed in as well. Enjoy!

Faith! We’re bouncing off a question about faith in our personal experience with Buddhism. Now, we know that having said faith, half of you said “There’s no faith in Buddhism!” And the other half said, “Well, what do you mean by faith?” We’re gonna tell you what we mean by faith and hopefully the other half are still listening as we take a deep dive into different aspects of faith, blind faith, believing in things in the absence of evidence, secularism, and eventually shinjin, a foundational concept for Jodo Shinshu which, apparently, we’re not supposed to talk about. But we do. Because that’s how we roll.

A little while back we did an episode on no self and identity — and what do you know? It was wildly popular. Go us. So we decided to come back to the issue. But we’re not gonna deal with identity; we’re just going to do a deep dive into no self. This deep dive goes through no self, emptiness, Sarvastivada, Pudgalavada, Madhyamaka, Yogacara, the store-house consciousness, killing the Buddha, Shinran, the Jodoron, the Pure Land, karma, and rebirth. (No Star Trek, though. Sorry.)

Somewhat in response to a listener question, we dive into the question of practice versus academic study. Is there a difference between academic study and the practice of Buddha? Is one more valuable than the other? Does academic study undermine religious/Buddhist practice? Or can academic study be, in itself, practice? Well, if that’s the case, then what do you mean by “practice”? And that’s really what this episode is about. We do a deep dive into scholar-practitioners (a la Charles Prebish), the multivalent senses of the word “practice” (a la Charles Bielefeld), the role of study-as-practice historically both in the West and in Buddhism, the age of the degenerate Dharma, and, yes, even Star Trek. Bottom line: don’t get stuck in your head. This week’s image is of a photographic reprint of Shinran’s original handwritten manuscript of his Kyogyoshinsho on display at the library of Ohtani University in Kyoto. Who says Buddhists don’t study?

Hooray! It’s been ten years since we started this show, and this is our 100th episode! We hit the highlights in this one, themes and topics we’ve touched on several times over the years, including how to practice Shin Buddhism at a distance from a sangha or community. Years ago we tossed out the idea that someone should have a “starter kit” for Shin Buddhist practice – and, what do you know? The BCA Bookstore’s new online store sells one now! We also tackle a listener question about Buddhist tattoos and dance around some touchy issues before settling on the middle way between extreme views. (Today’s cover image is an old photo one of Scott’s tattoos, by the way.) Also, in celebration of the 100th episode and 10th anniversary, Harry made a mega-mix of all the different versions of the DharmaRealm theme song. It’s been uploaded to SoundCloud so be sure to check that out. Thanks to everyone for your decade of listening. We’ll be back soon with new episodes!