Hinduism: once was: RAJARAM EPISODE

[Ven. Tantra]

The learned colleague Stephen Hodge wrote:

1.  <<The problem for me is when the term is applied
retroactively to an era centuries before it was first
coined>>

So long as we keep looking at the past, the past is
bound to change, hence demanding fresh naming. We look
to the remote past and call ourselves �humanity.� We
are bound to do that. We have a term �Hindu,� but are
not sure how to employ it, or what it means. It is
both necessary and cool to try to come to terms.

2. <<I don't think it is helpful to lump Buddhists
together with Hindus -- however you define the term. I
have not encountered any Buddhists who would do so
apart from Ven Tantra.>>

This statement is significant. For I trust and respect
that Mr. Hodge is not only a learned, but also a well
traveled and networked gentleman. And I hasten to add
that I myself have rarely encountered a designated
�Buddhist� with, as it were, �open borders.� And this
fact is both astounding and outrageous. So, the
question arises: What on earth could compel a
designated �Buddhist� (person or church) to place an
apparently irreconcilable point of contention between
themselves and that which they perceive as something
called �Hindu?� This is serious.

I offer the following. The original problem likely
arose from the earliest polemics of the Buddhist
church, as gleaned from the majority of the canonical
texts, which �allege an irreducible distance between
the Enlightened One and his masters and
contemporaries� (Eliade, Yoga, 162). At this early
period, then, it could not have been an �Us
(Buddhist)� vs. �Them (Hindu)� sort of thing at all.
It was perhaps more simply the urge to create a
culture hero and to set the Guru off as historically
unique and without antecedent or peer amidst a rich
and varied field of contending holy men, all of whom
were players in a single broad generic field of
religious asceticism (i.e., the same religion). And
indeed, �this is a polemic position, which requires
[contemporary] rectification� (ibid).

But what exactly is this irreconcilable �point� of
contention? Especially as this seemingly
�anachronistic� polemic continues to this day? It is
this. It is the concept of anaatman (Paalii anatta).
And I further suggest the ancient Sinhalese as the
prime illustration of the truly contemporary
socio-pathological consequence. It essentially stemmed
from political motives, or else it was created out of
fear and the want to engineer and maintain a position
of conflicting theological, cultural, ethnic and
thereby heightened political divergence between
themselves and their rival Hindu monarchs across the
narrow Palk Strait in India. In other words, I trace
the �disease� of contemporary Buddhism, particularly
prevalent among the �Theravaada� designation, to a
Hindu-phobic id�e-fixe, which if not altogether
manufactured by the ancient Sinhalese, they certainly
exemplify. In short, by taking this core-Buddhist
concept of anaatman and bending it all out of sane
recognition by its rearticulation in ways and idioms
deemed incompatible with non-Buddhist thought, the
Buddhists have essentially cursed themselves to be
perpetually hung up on this very exceedingly obvious
Pan-Indian doctrine of �non-entity.�

Most sincerely,

Ven. Tanta


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