Schopen: Buddha as Businessman?

[Bankei]

There is an interesting lecture by Gregory Schopen of UCLA available on the net.

Lecture title is "Buddha as Businessman?"

http://blog.beliefnet.com/onecity/2009/ ... ssman.html

[mikenz66]

Audio or video can be downloaded at http://www.uctv.tv/
http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=16444

It is interesting, with the point that it is useful to ask how the Buddha is viewed in historical documents.

However, I don't recall any mention on the Buddha giving instructions on money-lending to monks in the Pali Canon (which is what Schopen was talking about).

There is a summary here if you don't want to listen to an hour of audio:
http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/two ... 85231.aspx
And here is some other discussion:
http://buddhism.about.com/b/2009/03/21/ ... cation.htm
http://chaplaindanny.blogspot.com/2009/ ... es-my.html

Metta
Mike

[BlackBird]

Glancing over the summary, I think someone's got their facts wrong.

[gavesako]

I think Schopen uses other early Buddhist canons in his writings too, such as the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya, which has more later additions in it (and discusses money issues in particular).

[mikenz66]

Yes, Venerable, I believe that is the Vinaya that he quoted from. All kinds of tricky legal stuff about how if someone died owing money to the Sangha it had to be collected....

Now, I don't think there is anything about that in the Pali Canon. However, it is clear to even the casual observer that quite a lot of money must have gone into building various Wats all over Thailand, not to mention various newspaper articles about the finances of certain sects... So there is still this interesting tension between "homelessness" and "monuments" and it is useful to see how other Buddhist traditions dealt with this issue...

Mike

[gavesako]

Exactly. The question of patronage has never been very far from the minds of Theravada monks residing in large communities and temples. In fact, there are many references in the Vinaya commentraries as to ways of handling monastic property (such as land, animals, crops, etc.) that monks are not allowed to handle themselves but they can get a kappiya-karaka (steward, helper) to do it for them. Whether this still conforms to the Buddha's original intention is questionable of course... (as well as handling money)

[mikenz66]

Apart from the particular issue of money, one of the points about this kind of analysis is that it is interesting to see how the Buddha and the Sangha was understood by people in a time when we have reasonably good historical records. As Shopen says, there are many different Buddhas in these various times and places.

And whether or not any of these historical views conforms with our image of the Buddha and Sangha from the point of view of a practising Buddhist is not really the issue. Or, rather, it is a completely separate issue. I think that it is easy to get confused about this point, and miss that historical analysis is quite a different thing from practise.

Mike