It seemed to be counted the perfection of scholarship and good breeding among them not to have—much less to express—an opinion on any subject on which it might prove later that they had been mistaken. [Erewhon, Ch. 22]'The scholars' says Graves [p. 21] 'can be counted upon to refrain from any comment whatsoever'.)[a]
So then, assuming that there are people in England (there are,
certainly, a few in Germany and perhaps France), neither stuffy scholars
nor yet silly sheep, who might read the Notes, what is needed
is a publisher who is prepared to accept a work that is both unpopular
(learned) and unpopular (unorthodox). But is the Notes
respectable enough? I have sprinkled it with references to reputable
philosophers, but I can't be sure that the cloven hoof is not still
showing through this disguise. (Take Zaehner, for example. He has his
own ideas about Pali Buddhism, holding, in spite of the Pali Buddhists,
that it can be included under the general heading of 'Mysticism'. Is he,
or is he not, one of those who, according to Samuel Butler, 'devote
themselves to the avoidance of every opinion with which they are not
perfectly familiar, and regard their own brains as a sort of sanctuary,
to which, if an opinion has once resorted, none other is to attack it'?
Would he or his colleagues approve of publishing the Notes?)
But perhaps it would be a waste of time to try and get such a book published in England—it is, as Graves said about his White Goddess,
'a very difficult book, as well as a very queer one, to be avoided by
anyone with a distracted, tired, or rigidly scientific mind'. (p. 9)
Besides, I have never heard the book criticized, and it may be, for all I
know, a bad book (I mean as regards form and style and so on: I myself
am prepared to answer for the content—except, perhaps, for the last
part, which is my own speculative effort, and for which I can cite
neither chapter nor verse in support). I am certainly more than half
inclined to make no effort to get it published, particularly if it is
going to encounter difficulties. (I think I told you earlier that both
the P.T.S. and the Buddhist Society have been sent copies of the
cyclostyled edition of the Notes and have 'refrained from any
comment whatsoever'. It is hardly likely, though for different reasons,
that they will have approved of the book.)
[a] The real trouble is not the mere difference of opinion, as between one scholar and another, but the fact that Graves (like myself) refuses to treat his subject as dead. A scholar only feels secure if he is sure that the subject of his study is not one day going to get up and look him between the eyes; and nothing could be in worse taste than a suggestion that anything more is required of him than a chaste rational disinterestedness. Both the Buddha and the White Goddess, it is felt, have been safely dead these two thousand years and more, and the professors of these subjects congratulate themselves on having chosen such admirably extinct fields of study. (Quite the last thing that a professor of Buddhism would dream of doing is to profess Buddhism—that is left to mere amateurs like myself.) But what happens? Here comes Graves and myself shouting out one, that you cannot know the Goddess unless you worship her—and in the flesh, to boot (or, should I say, to buskin?)—, and, the other, that you cannot understand the Buddha unless you practise his teaching—in the jungle, preferably, and barefoot. If I have my way, these comfortable scholars will have to exchange the fleshpots of Oxford for the almsbowl of India; and if Graves has his, their dutiful wives will become Bassarids, dancing naked with Dionysian fury on Boar's Hill, and tearing the Vice-Chancellor to pieces and devouring him raw at the summer solstice. And that would never do, would it?
***
From preface to Notes:
These Notes assume, also, that the reader's sole interest in the Pali Suttas is a concern for his own welfare. The reader is presumed to be subjectively engaged with an anxious problem, the problem of his existence, which is also the problem of his suffering. There is therefore nothing in these pages to interest the professional scholar, for whom the question of personal existence does not arise; for the scholar's whole concern is to eliminate or ignore the individual point of view in an effort to establish the objective truth -- a would-be impersonal synthesis of public facts. The scholar's essentially horizontal view of things, seeking connexions in space and time, and his historical approach to the texts,[1] disqualify him from any possibility of understanding a Dhamma that the Buddha himself has called akālika, 'timeless'.[2] Only in a vertical view, straight down into the abyss of his own personal existence, is a man capable of apprehending the perilous insecurity of his situation; and only a man who does apprehend this is prepared to listen to the Buddha's Teaching. But human kind, it seems, cannot bear very much reality: men, for the most part, draw back in alarm and dismay from this vertiginous direct view of being and seek refuge in distractions. (...)
Existential philosophies, then, insist upon asking questions about self and the world, taking care at the same time to insist that they are unanswerable.[3]
[1] The P.T.S. (London Pali Text Society) Dictionary, for example, supposes that the word attā in the Suttas refers either to a phenomenon of purely historical interest (of the Seventh and Sixth Centuries B.C.) known as a 'soul', or else to the reflexive 'self', apparently of purely grammatical interest. All suggestion that there might be some connexion (of purely vital interest) between 'soul' and 'self' is prudently avoided.
And here is Nietzsche.Let the enquiring scholar labour with incessant zeal, even to the extent of shortening his life in the enthusiastic service of science; let the speculative philosopher be sparing neither of time nor of diligence; they are none the less not interested infinitely, personally, and passionately, nor could they wish to be. On the contrary, they will seek to cultivate an attitude of objectivity and disinterestedness. And as for the relationship of the subject to the truth when he comes to know it, the assumption is that if only the truth is brought to light, its appropriation is a relatively unimportant matter, something that follows as a matter of course. And in any case, what happens to the individual is in the last analysis a matter of indifference. Herein lies the lofty equanimity of the scholar and the comic thoughtlessness of his parrot-like echo. --- S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. D. F. Swenson, Princeton 1941 & Oxford 1945, pp. 23-24.
The diligence of our best scholars, their senseless industry, their burning the candle of their brain at both ends -- their very mastery of their handiwork -- how often is the real meaning of all that to prevent themselves continuing to see a certain thing? Science as self-anaesthetic: do you know that? --- F. Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay.And so, in the scholarly article on Tāvatimsa in the P.T.S. Dictionary, we are informed that 'Good Buddhists, after death in this world, are reborn in heaven' -- but we are not told where good scholars are reborn. We do not, naturally, forget what we owe to scholars -- careful and accurate editions, grammars, dictionaries, concordances, all things that wonderfully lighten the task of reading the texts -- and we are duly grateful; but all the science of the scholar does not lead to a comprehensionof the texts -- witness Stcherbatsky's lament: Although a hundred years have elapsed since the scientific study of Buddhism has been initiated in Europe, we are nevertheless still in the dark about the fundamental teachings of this religion and its philosophy. Certainly no other religion has proved so refractory to clear formulation. --- T. Stcherbatsky, The Conception of Buddhist Nirvāna, Leningrad 1927, p. 1
[3]The scholar or scientist, with his objective method, cannot even ask such questions, since on principle he knows and wishes to know nothing of self, and nothing, therefore, of its inseparable correlative, the world. (The world, we must understand, is determined as such only with reference to self; for it is essentially 'what belongs to self', being that in which self is situated and implicated. My world, as Heidegger notes, is the world of my preoccupations and concerns, that is to say an organized perspective of things all significant to me and signifying me. The collection of independent public facts produced by the scientific method is inherently incapable of constituting a world, since it altogether lacks any unifying personal determinant -- which, indeed, it is the business of science to eliminate. Things, not facts, pace Wittgenstein, make up my world.)