The Experience of Buddhism

·期刊原文
The Experience of Buddhism: Sources and Interpretations by John S. Strong
Reviewed by Herbert V. Guenther
The Journal of the American Oriental Society
Vol.116 No.1
Jan-March 1996
P.181
COPYRIGHT 1996 American Oriental Society

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This book, intended as a companion volume to The Buddhist Religion:
A Historical Introduction, by Richard Robinson, as revised by
Willard Johnson, contains a well-written account of the main tenets,
belief systems, rituals, and practices in daily life within the vast
sociocultural field that goes by the name of Buddhism, from the time
of the historical Buddha up to the present. It is divided in two
parts: "The Experience of Buddhism in South Asia," comprising five
sections with several subsections, and "The Development of Buddhism
Outside Asia," comprising four sections with several subsections.
For each topic in the various sections, the author has included a
selection from a relevant text in a very readable English
translation that will readily appeal to the modern reader. The
selected passages are taken from important classical texts as well
as from hitherto neglected treatises. Sanskrit and Pali passages
have been newly translated by the author himself and reveal his
competence and understanding. Where he relies on older translations
within the Sanskrit tradition, too many misinterpretations of
technical terms due to the translators' inability to distinguish
between ontology and epistemology, as well as the unavowed
fore-structure of their thinking, are simply repeated. This
statement is not meant as a blur on the overall competence of the
author, but is meant to highlight the low level of linguistic
(formerly called philological) studies in the field of Indic
studies. Since one person is hardly proficient in all the languages
in which Buddhist texts have been written, the author had to rely on
scholarly works dealing with Buddhist topics in the Chinese and
Japanese languages, to say nothing of works in the various South and
Southeast Asian languages. A map of important shrines and sites
relevant to the text of the whole book is particularly valuable.
The author's acquaintance and familiarity with the rich narrative
literature of India, by which abstruse ideas and doctrinal points
are brought to life, will certainly appeal to and help the reader to
come to an understanding of what Buddhism may still have to offer in
the modern world. After all, in dealing with life's problems a
person does not usually escape into the arid domain of formal logic
or into the realms of rational philosophy that, set as absolutes,
have had and still have devastating effects, but finds solace and
likely solutions to his problems in stories, narratives, and novels.

Considering the scope of a work like the one under review, it is
only natural that much that might have been said could not be said
for fear of being sidetracked. What about the many cult groups, some
devotional in character, some openly political and even apocalyptic,
that have been mushrooming in recent decades and years? But maybe
this is a question that has to wait for some years to be answered.
In conclusion, the author has to be congratulated for a highly
satisfactory presentation of a problem of far-reaching implications.

HERBERT V. GUENTHER UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN