An interview with American Pali scholar and Buddhaghosa specialist Maria Heim. It's actually from five years ago but I've learned of it only today.
Maria Heim is Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Religion Department at Amherst College, MA. She specializes in Pali Buddhism, and her recent book is entitled “The Forerunner of All Things: Buddhaghosa on Mind, Intention, and Agency.” She is currently working on a book on emotions in premodern South Asian texts and a second one on interpreting the Buddha’s words.
Insight Journal: Tell us something about your path to the Dharma.
Maria Heim: I became interested in Buddhist philosophy studying it in college, but that was in the context of being fascinated by Indian thought more broadly.
IJ: Buddhaghosa evokes some strong reactions among some Western Buddhists. Some tend to blame him for what they see as the intransigently conservative aspects of Theravada Buddhism. What is your take on who he was and what his intentions were?
MH: Buddhaghosa is very forthright about his intentions. He sees himself as a caretaker of the teachings in that he is preserving and extending them so that future generations (like us) will have access to them. While he, like other commentators in the premodern Indian tradition, disavows originality, I see him as offering startlingly fresh readings of the texts. What I appreciate about him is his very humane and down-to-earth exploration of human psychology, though this is couched within a very erudite and sometimes forbidding scholarly idiom. People should keep in mind that the majority of the work attributed to him has not been translated and very few scholars work on him, so the full extent and depth of his thought is not well known.
I am writing a book on what Buddhaghosa had to say about the process of interpreting the Buddha’s words. In particular I am exploring the rather sophisticated ways he thought that scripture might be read so that we could begin to grasp how the Buddha’s omniscient understanding could be conveyed in the limited vessels of texts to very limited (that is, not omniscient) understandings like ours. Buddhaghosa thinks that reading and interpreting the Buddha’s words should be an endless practice — there is no way one could come to the end of reading and grappling with even one sutta , for example. This very open-ended, but still highly disciplined, interpretative practice makes the teachings live in both the past and the present. I don’t see this as a conservative reflex.
Thank you Bhante. Very interesting. It’s a shame he is treated with such scorn in some circles.
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
Buddhist Studies Podcast, Ep. 4: Maria Heim – Learning How to Read Buddhist Texts with Buddhaghosa
Nov 4
2021
In this episode, Dr. Kate Hartmann speak with Dr. Maria Heim about her beginnings as a scholar of classical South Asia, the role of commentaries in Buddhism, and the importance of emotions to the Buddhist path. We also preview her upcoming online course, BSO 202 | Visuddhimagga: The Path of Purification, which will focus on this important Theravada text written by Buddhaghosa in the 5th century and cherished by Buddhists ever since. We discuss Buddhaghosa's theory of the Buddha's speech as endlessly meaningful, and what that means for how we might read Buddhist texts ourselves.
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Dr. Maria Heim is George Lyman Crosby 1896 & Stanley Warfield Crosby Professor in Religion at Amherst College. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 1999, and was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. She currently chairs the Department of Religion at Amherst.
Heim works on Sanskrit and Pali textual traditions. She has written three books on Buddhaghosa (The Forerunner of All Things: Buddhaghosa on Mind, Intention, and Agency, Oxford, 2014; Voice of the Buddha: Buddhaghosa on the Immeasurable Words, Oxford 2018; and Buddhist Ethics, Cambridge, 2020). She is currently working on emotions in ancient and classical India, and her most recent book, A Treasury of Emotions from Classical India, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. She is also translating the Milindapañha for the Murty Classical Library of India.
Yena yena hi maññanti,
tato taṃ hoti aññathā.
In whatever way they conceive it,
It turns out otherwise.
(Sn. 588)
Dhammanando wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 9:34 am
Here's a recent podcast with her.
Buddhist Studies Podcast, Ep. 4: Maria Heim – Learning How to Read Buddhist Texts with Buddhaghosa
Nov 4
2021
In this episode, Dr. Kate Hartmann speak with Dr. Maria Heim about her beginnings as a scholar of classical South Asia, the role of commentaries in Buddhism, and the importance of emotions to the Buddhist path. We also preview her upcoming online course, BSO 202 | Visuddhimagga: The Path of Purification, which will focus on this important Theravada text written by Buddhaghosa in the 5th century and cherished by Buddhists ever since. We discuss Buddhaghosa's theory of the Buddha's speech as endlessly meaningful, and what that means for how we might read Buddhist texts ourselves.
---------------
Dr. Maria Heim is George Lyman Crosby 1896 & Stanley Warfield Crosby Professor in Religion at Amherst College. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 1999, and was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. She currently chairs the Department of Religion at Amherst.
Heim works on Sanskrit and Pali textual traditions. She has written three books on Buddhaghosa (The Forerunner of All Things: Buddhaghosa on Mind, Intention, and Agency, Oxford, 2014; Voice of the Buddha: Buddhaghosa on the Immeasurable Words, Oxford 2018; and Buddhist Ethics, Cambridge, 2020). She is currently working on emotions in ancient and classical India, and her most recent book, A Treasury of Emotions from Classical India, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. She is also translating the Milindapañha for the Murty Classical Library of India.
Dhammanando wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 9:34 am
Heim works on Sanskrit and Pali textual traditions. She has written three books on Buddhaghosa (The Forerunner of All Things: Buddhaghosa on Mind, Intention, and Agency, Oxford, 2014; Voice of the Buddha: Buddhaghosa on the Immeasurable Words, Oxford 2018; and Buddhist Ethics, Cambridge, 2020). She is currently working on emotions in ancient and classical India, and her most recent book, A Treasury of Emotions from Classical India, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. She is also translating the Milindapañha for the Murty Classical Library of India.
Bhante, I have seen somewhere that she is conducting 18hours course on Visuddhimagga, these days.