1 00:00:04,480 --> 00:00:18,700 So what we are now to make probably the highlights of the conference is that we will be mindful of the number of people 2 00:00:18,700 --> 00:00:32,140 online gradually increasing up to this point because it's time for just Harris's keynote about the leadership expo. 3 00:00:32,140 --> 00:00:44,300 That I'll say again with Chris Harrison was found to be a keynote speaker was very heavy, and I'm sure that's hitting him on presenters. 4 00:00:44,300 --> 00:00:50,260 And joining us now is the end of the first day. 5 00:00:50,260 --> 00:01:00,610 But I did notice to tell you about a spirit to say something to institutions, not just to. 6 00:01:00,610 --> 00:01:09,460 People, because it's the highlight at this point, and I think the wrong way to in the eyes of British law, 7 00:01:09,460 --> 00:01:16,480 Harrison is the George, even now professor of religious studies at Stanford University, 8 00:01:16,480 --> 00:01:25,600 educated in his native New Zealand and in Australia, is specialises in Buddhist literature and history, especially that of Mahayana. 9 00:01:25,600 --> 00:01:34,660 And in a study of Buddhist manuscripts in Sanskrit, Chinese used to be is the author of the summary of their encounters, 10 00:01:34,660 --> 00:01:39,580 what is present in numerous journal articles on Buddhist sacred texts. 11 00:01:39,580 --> 00:01:48,430 And the interpretation is one of the editors series Buddhist manuscripts in the same direction all this time. 12 00:01:48,430 --> 00:02:00,940 These include editions and translations of a number of mainstream Buddhist Sufism chapters, including The Virtues, etc. Democracy in Asia Really? 13 00:02:00,940 --> 00:02:12,280 Chinese Seminar The anthology series is and just put a study at Stanford is currently chair of the department. 14 00:02:12,280 --> 00:02:22,270 Said It's this seen as welcome for our conference today. 15 00:02:22,270 --> 00:02:27,640 Thank you. Matthew, can, can you hear me satisfactorily? 16 00:02:27,640 --> 00:02:37,600 Yeah. Yes. Okay, great. Well, greetings everybody from Menlo Park in California, and I'm very happy to be with you. 17 00:02:37,600 --> 00:02:45,580 I mean, I wish I was with you in Oxford. I have regrets about that, but I'm very happy to be here. 18 00:02:45,580 --> 00:02:50,320 I joined the conference half way through your day, so I realised that for many of you, 19 00:02:50,320 --> 00:02:55,870 you've already had a long day and you'll be looking forward to the dinner in the evening. 20 00:02:55,870 --> 00:02:58,000 So thank you, Matthew, 21 00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:09,970 for inviting me to present here and my thanks also to Oxford University and to the glorious UN Foundation for sponsoring this this conference. 22 00:03:09,970 --> 00:03:13,570 I'd like here to offer a few thoughts, 23 00:03:13,570 --> 00:03:24,160 hopefully not to random or unstructured on the topic of reading my on a scripture and these continue or follow on from some reflections 24 00:03:24,160 --> 00:03:33,460 that I laid out in a recent paper entitled Bending Minds and Winning Hearts on the Rhetorical Uses of Complexity in Mahayana Sutras. 25 00:03:33,460 --> 00:03:38,780 And this was a revised version of a paper I first presented at a workshop in Jerusalem. 26 00:03:38,780 --> 00:03:46,220 In 2019, organised by Terry Shulman, which was the last time I got on a plane and went anywhere, 27 00:03:46,220 --> 00:03:51,020 so, you know, I'm looking forward to being able to do that again eventually. 28 00:03:51,020 --> 00:04:02,300 In that paper, I called for the writing of a comprehensive grammar of Mahayana sutras as a further step in their meta analysis, 29 00:04:02,300 --> 00:04:06,650 with attention to such things as stylistic and structural features. 30 00:04:06,650 --> 00:04:15,950 The use of language. The things features that are well known to all of us who read Mahayana, such as we see them all the time, but we haven't yet. 31 00:04:15,950 --> 00:04:22,860 As far as I know, subject of them to systematic analysis, things like the alternation of prose and verse. 32 00:04:22,860 --> 00:04:27,590 What's going on there? The recurrent metaphors, the narrative tropes and so on. 33 00:04:27,590 --> 00:04:35,810 So this list is by no means exhaustive. There are a lot of things that we're very familiar with when we read Mahayana sutras, 34 00:04:35,810 --> 00:04:42,410 and by way of illustrating the challenges and possibilities of of writing such a grammar, 35 00:04:42,410 --> 00:04:50,480 I dealt in this paper with two very important and well-known semantic and structural features of these texts. 36 00:04:50,480 --> 00:05:02,030 One is the whole question of self reference, which David Druce is already drawing attention to in his paper and. 37 00:05:02,030 --> 00:05:11,000 And the the other the other feature, somewhat less, I think sympathised, is the question of interlocking formulae. 38 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:17,990 And these these two things are typical of many examples of Mahayana surgeries, but by no means found in all of them. 39 00:05:17,990 --> 00:05:23,240 So self-referential reality seems to me rather distinctive. The Mahayana surgery literature. 40 00:05:23,240 --> 00:05:27,590 The use of interlocking formulae is found to a certain extent in mainstream literature, 41 00:05:27,590 --> 00:05:32,340 in the argaman and also in other Indian religious texts such as the Upanishads. 42 00:05:32,340 --> 00:05:39,530 But one could say that it reaches new heights of complexity and in Mahayana sutras. 43 00:05:39,530 --> 00:05:41,990 Now much interesting, stimulating, 44 00:05:41,990 --> 00:05:49,460 occasionally provocative work has already been done on different aspects of MHI on the Suchas to which I am greatly indebted. 45 00:05:49,460 --> 00:05:57,930 And here I must mention the work of Alan Cole, Natalie Gama, David Drews, Christian Wade Amar and others. 46 00:05:57,930 --> 00:06:04,940 And this work is ongoing with some particularly interesting contributions to the conversation in Paris right now. 47 00:06:04,940 --> 00:06:13,310 And here I refer to a special issue of the history of religions on rhetoric and high on the suchas, which is due to appear in November. 48 00:06:13,310 --> 00:06:20,630 Something to look forward to. And secondly, a volume edited by Natalie Gunma in honour of Luis Gomez, 49 00:06:20,630 --> 00:06:29,430 entitled The Language of the Sutras, which is due to appear by the end of this year from Mangalam Press. 50 00:06:29,430 --> 00:06:35,170 But one thing that strikes me about most of the work that's been done so far is that it 51 00:06:35,170 --> 00:06:40,390 often deals with only a single feature of the genre or a limited number of features, 52 00:06:40,390 --> 00:06:46,720 and it often takes has its evidential basis, a single text or a small number of texts. 53 00:06:46,720 --> 00:06:52,930 So but the main thing is is clearly a lot of activity devoted to the business of 54 00:06:52,930 --> 00:06:58,700 interpreting Mahayana sutras in this conference is just one example of that. 55 00:06:58,700 --> 00:07:02,780 So that paper that I've just referred to springs out of a sense, as I said, 56 00:07:02,780 --> 00:07:07,610 that we should be doing more to stand above the genre to consider the individual stories that 57 00:07:07,610 --> 00:07:14,210 some of us get completely hooked on as part of a vast symphony of texts or as participants, 58 00:07:14,210 --> 00:07:18,500 if you like in a vibrant conversation stretching over many centuries, 59 00:07:18,500 --> 00:07:25,550 a conversation that must have proceeded according to certain rules and conventions, which as eavesdroppers on it, so to speak. 60 00:07:25,550 --> 00:07:29,900 We might want to understand or if you want to look at it in another way, 61 00:07:29,900 --> 00:07:40,170 you can see these searchers as part of a complex ecosystem of which we have only fragmentary remains, but we want to know how this ecosystem function. 62 00:07:40,170 --> 00:07:44,610 And it's clear that some of the surgeries have survived refer to and presuppose other 63 00:07:44,610 --> 00:07:49,680 surgeries which must have preceded them to which they sometimes refer even by name. 64 00:07:49,680 --> 00:07:55,260 And the paper presented by David Drews addresses this issue in part. 65 00:07:55,260 --> 00:08:03,510 Now, I don't believe myself that somehow they were all in contact with each other, that all parts of this ecosystem were in communication. 66 00:08:03,510 --> 00:08:12,540 But the obvious presence of certain literary conventions that many structures employ indicate that their composers were not working in a vacuum. 67 00:08:12,540 --> 00:08:21,600 They were not completely isolated from each other. They shared a common language, even if they used it to express different purposes sometimes. 68 00:08:21,600 --> 00:08:30,480 So today I want to move on from that. I don't want to rehash that paper, but I offer a few reflections on the theme of our conference, 69 00:08:30,480 --> 00:08:33,540 which is reading MHI on the scripture and the sounds simple. 70 00:08:33,540 --> 00:08:42,840 But as my title suggests, reading takes many forms and serves many purposes depending on who is doing it and how and why. 71 00:08:42,840 --> 00:08:50,100 And those of us doing Buddhist studies are clearly who have been often clearly been reading for. 72 00:08:50,100 --> 00:08:56,850 In other words, approaching these texts looking for information that we might extract from them for writing history, 73 00:08:56,850 --> 00:09:00,000 understanding doctrinal developments and so on. 74 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:09,180 And this this kind of extract of reading has, I think, quite rightly been seen as sometimes problematic from a scholarly point of view. 75 00:09:09,180 --> 00:09:19,110 Practitioners, on the other hand, may be reading them, may have been reading them for guidance and inspiration or reading them for merit. 76 00:09:19,110 --> 00:09:24,450 But these ways of reading for are not always straightforwardly extractive, since in the process, 77 00:09:24,450 --> 00:09:31,790 we and others may be reading things into the text, which others would not see, or it might not even be there. 78 00:09:31,790 --> 00:09:40,800 I think a simple example of this is the complicated problem of translation that arises when we try to deal with the gendered language of the texts. 79 00:09:40,800 --> 00:09:47,040 That's to say, especially if we're reading them in Sanskrit, which is a gendered language itself. 80 00:09:47,040 --> 00:09:51,600 And a problem that many of us face, both as scholars and as practitioners, 81 00:09:51,600 --> 00:09:57,480 is whether to go with the presumed generic male emphasis of the text in which say the body, 82 00:09:57,480 --> 00:10:03,120 but is always or referring to Stephanie's paper, almost always male, 83 00:10:03,120 --> 00:10:10,700 or to use inclusive language to alternate between he and she or to address the problem by, in effect, dodging it. 84 00:10:10,700 --> 00:10:13,430 And switching everything to plurals and whatever we do, 85 00:10:13,430 --> 00:10:20,360 we can scarcely avoid importing into our translations and thrust into our reading a sensibility, 86 00:10:20,360 --> 00:10:26,480 even a hypersensitivity which would have been foreign to the original composers of the sutras. 87 00:10:26,480 --> 00:10:37,230 So the more I think about that, the more it looks like a losing game in which the reading for and the reading end become hopelessly tangled. 88 00:10:37,230 --> 00:10:40,470 So in general terms, then whenever we are reading for something, 89 00:10:40,470 --> 00:10:49,230 we run the risk of finding what we are looking for by seeing what is not there and missing what is there, and this is perhaps unavoidable. 90 00:10:49,230 --> 00:10:55,380 I myself find that every time I read any, given Moo-Hyun Sutra, I see something new, 91 00:10:55,380 --> 00:11:02,640 which I never noticed before, and I think that's part of what makes studying them so rewarding. 92 00:11:02,640 --> 00:11:06,360 And along with that sort of more positive observation, 93 00:11:06,360 --> 00:11:12,840 there is the least comforting feeling that I have anyway that I never know enough to see everything there is. 94 00:11:12,840 --> 00:11:22,080 There's always some part of the jigsaw that I just don't understand that I that I know that I don't have the key to unlock and probably never will. 95 00:11:22,080 --> 00:11:30,510 And I think here group reading is a means to be helpful of the kind that we, as teachers normally do with our students, 96 00:11:30,510 --> 00:11:40,680 in which we can test our interpretations against those of others and be confronted with our successes and mistakes and their successes and mistakes. 97 00:11:40,680 --> 00:11:49,830 And I think this leads to a certain feeling of humility, which I think is always a good attitude with which to approach our reading. 98 00:11:49,830 --> 00:11:57,840 For me, part of that means always assuming that the text makes sense, even if I can't see the sense it makes. 99 00:11:57,840 --> 00:12:04,920 In other words, thinking that, you know, at least as a starting point, it's my problem and not that of the text. 100 00:12:04,920 --> 00:12:16,680 So, you know, this leads, I should think to a kind of respectful engagement, even while I alert to the rhetorical strategies which the texts betray. 101 00:12:16,680 --> 00:12:25,350 So what does it mean to read on my on a scripture and more importantly, to understand it and deploy their understanding in a meaningful way? 102 00:12:25,350 --> 00:12:31,290 And here I refer you in advance as it were to the very insightful essay by Charles Halsey, 103 00:12:31,290 --> 00:12:36,990 which begins the soon to appear volume the language of The Searchers, 104 00:12:36,990 --> 00:12:48,880 which speaks of this problem, invoking Luis Gomez again concerning and I quote maintaining a certain degree of openness to the text. 105 00:12:48,880 --> 00:12:54,010 And, of course, very resonant for me because it recalls very, 106 00:12:54,010 --> 00:13:01,400 very vividly the experience I had stretching over many years reading the re Maliki intimidation with Greece. 107 00:13:01,400 --> 00:13:07,310 And which we did usually on Skype, so in a kind of forum rather like this. 108 00:13:07,310 --> 00:13:12,020 And and that was an experience of questioning and open dialogue, just about everything. 109 00:13:12,020 --> 00:13:17,270 We were reading every single word and not taking anything for granted, trying. 110 00:13:17,270 --> 00:13:25,910 If I can use this metaphor to keep the wheels of our understanding out of the ruts into which they so easily tend to slide. 111 00:13:25,910 --> 00:13:39,140 And I'm I'm happy to announce here just in passing that our joint or rather group translation of the Maliki city near Daysha is now in Paris, 112 00:13:39,140 --> 00:13:44,240 and it should appear by January of next year. 113 00:13:44,240 --> 00:13:51,290 So the problem of reading for and reading into applies with similar force to 114 00:13:51,290 --> 00:13:56,150 our attempts to make inferences about the people that first read the texts. 115 00:13:56,150 --> 00:14:01,370 We have so little knowledge about them and about how the texts were first used that we are 116 00:14:01,370 --> 00:14:09,080 reduced to inferences and guesswork based almost entirely on the what the texts themselves say. 117 00:14:09,080 --> 00:14:17,960 And so the first order of business in this regard is the problem of ties or just pause to reflect on the term reading itself. 118 00:14:17,960 --> 00:14:27,200 Since we assume that the checks were not in fact read by many people, but heard and so being careful as some people are, 119 00:14:27,200 --> 00:14:39,290 we refer to readers slash heroes, or we could talk more neutrally about the receivers or users or addresses of the text or as a of the audience. 120 00:14:39,290 --> 00:14:47,780 But whatever term we pick carries its own freight and associations, some of which may be entirely anachronistic. 121 00:14:47,780 --> 00:14:56,480 For example, even when even reading when the sutures were composed, if we use that term may have been or not, some silent and moreover, 122 00:14:56,480 --> 00:15:05,710 private operation, but the voicing of the text in a public setting in that way more akin to a kind of performance. 123 00:15:05,710 --> 00:15:13,900 And here we come to the role of the Dharma Bonica, which long ago, she's a tiny mussel and then more recently, David Drews, 124 00:15:13,900 --> 00:15:19,480 Natalie Gummer and others have paid a great deal of attention to those speakers or 125 00:15:19,480 --> 00:15:26,100 preachers of the teaching who do appear to have been performers in some sense. 126 00:15:26,100 --> 00:15:35,520 Now, one might think we know very little about how they operated, but against that we must admit that Mahayana sutras do in fact come with their own 127 00:15:35,520 --> 00:15:42,300 set of instructions in the form of a sequence of verbs well known to all of you. 128 00:15:42,300 --> 00:15:49,430 Typically in the Op-Ed or in the future tense, which take the text as their object. 129 00:15:49,430 --> 00:16:01,610 To take up or learn it, Drahi Ashanti, to retain or memorise it the heart of the U.S.A. to recite it, watch Ashanti to master or internalise it. 130 00:16:01,610 --> 00:16:11,240 How do you have ups the ante to teach it day, show U.S.A. and explain it or elucidate it at length or in full to others? 131 00:16:11,240 --> 00:16:16,040 Parade bias, child restraint. Some Prakash Ashanti too, 132 00:16:16,040 --> 00:16:21,320 which are sometimes added to here through Ashanti to write like Ashanti to cause to 133 00:16:21,320 --> 00:16:29,060 be written like Ashanti or lick up Ashanti to ponder thoroughly unleashed on us, 134 00:16:29,060 --> 00:16:36,560 Scottish Yankee, etc., etc. inserted at appropriate points now. 135 00:16:36,560 --> 00:16:41,570 The precise meaning of these boobs has had a lot of ink spilt over it. 136 00:16:41,570 --> 00:16:49,100 And I hear, again, refer to David's very useful discussion and a 2015 paper. 137 00:16:49,100 --> 00:16:54,200 But if we look at the sequence as a whole, it appears to be feasible and cogent. 138 00:16:54,200 --> 00:16:59,600 These are all things one could conceivably do with the text and the sequence. 139 00:16:59,600 --> 00:17:05,990 You may have noticed generally forms a logical progression in two ways from beginner to 140 00:17:05,990 --> 00:17:14,060 expert in relation to the text and from self to other in relation to its deployment. 141 00:17:14,060 --> 00:17:19,610 Now, all these operations would demand time and dedication and faith. 142 00:17:19,610 --> 00:17:28,840 But writing the sutra presupposes literacy while causing it to be written presupposes a certain level of affluence. 143 00:17:28,840 --> 00:17:37,240 Especially if we consider the probable cost of having a scribe copy out one of the larger text like the progeny are putting me down, I think. 144 00:17:37,240 --> 00:17:42,430 I think the ambush might be going to talk about these issues tomorrow. 145 00:17:42,430 --> 00:17:50,910 I hope so anyway. Here, I found it especially interesting in the course of writing the previously mentioned paper to consider 146 00:17:50,910 --> 00:17:58,490 the list of actions laid out in Chapter five of what we now know as the Ash disaster again. 147 00:17:58,490 --> 00:18:07,790 To give the perfection of insight, the president has a book to others and have them copy and recite it. 148 00:18:07,790 --> 00:18:14,020 To recite it for oneself. Sorry to recite it for others, oneself. 149 00:18:14,020 --> 00:18:18,700 To explain its meaning for others oneself. 150 00:18:18,700 --> 00:18:25,950 To give it as a book to others and have them copy and recite it, telling them that they should acquire its merit and blessings. 151 00:18:25,950 --> 00:18:32,260 To give it as a book to a single non regressing bodhisattva urging them to train in it. 152 00:18:32,260 --> 00:18:38,130 To give it as a book to a single non regressing bodhisattva explaining its meaning to them. 153 00:18:38,130 --> 00:18:44,160 To teach the perfection of insight to a single body after wanting to attain awakening more quickly. 154 00:18:44,160 --> 00:18:53,460 Now there are some problems with variance here, but the sequence, which we find a version of in the Gundry version edited by Falcon Charisma, 155 00:18:53,460 --> 00:18:59,720 does appear to list these actions in ascending order of meritorious ness. 156 00:18:59,720 --> 00:19:03,890 So the effect that just giving the traditional perimeter as a book to other people for them 157 00:19:03,890 --> 00:19:09,890 to copy and read is trumped by taking the trouble to recite the text for them yourself, 158 00:19:09,890 --> 00:19:15,650 which is in turn trumped by actually teaching them what it means and so on, 159 00:19:15,650 --> 00:19:23,240 with interestingly, verbal operations assuming a higher status than those involving writing. 160 00:19:23,240 --> 00:19:32,570 And all this suggests to me a rather active culture of proselytise zation of sharing the text so as to enlarge the reading community. 161 00:19:32,570 --> 00:19:39,320 If we can call it that, or at least it suggests the envisaging of such a culture is desirable. 162 00:19:39,320 --> 00:19:45,410 But the key thing here, I think for me is the interpersonal nature of the operations involved, 163 00:19:45,410 --> 00:19:50,210 the social nature of the relations between the text and its addressees, 164 00:19:50,210 --> 00:20:05,660 and between the addressees themselves, which the composers of these texts certainly wanted to promote as a religious activity in itself. 165 00:20:05,660 --> 00:20:20,810 Now, lately, my thinking about these, these issues have been greatly stimulated and pushed in a new direction by work by Pierre Brancaccio on the art, 166 00:20:20,810 --> 00:20:28,100 historical and archaeological record, and I'm very happy to see that Pierre is here today along with many other friends of mine, 167 00:20:28,100 --> 00:20:33,320 so it's great to see you all even in this, this digital medium. 168 00:20:33,320 --> 00:20:41,810 So, so Piers Work has specifically dealt with narrative depictions in Gandara and Up, 169 00:20:41,810 --> 00:20:50,100 which appear to reference dramatic art and incorporate images of the spectators sometimes seen from behind. 170 00:20:50,100 --> 00:20:56,060 Also of great interest in a similar fashion has been ongoing research on donor depictions in South Asia. 171 00:20:56,060 --> 00:20:58,490 Buddhist Art by Rob Lin Roth. 172 00:20:58,490 --> 00:21:06,740 Which seems to evidence in an analogous, self-referential city insofar as the donors are depicted as part of the images they are donating, 173 00:21:06,740 --> 00:21:10,700 sometimes engaged in the very act of consecrating those images. 174 00:21:10,700 --> 00:21:21,200 And this is quite intriguing when you think about it, because the funding of the image also it involves funding an image that that also incorporates 175 00:21:21,200 --> 00:21:26,690 a picture of the funders doing something that at the time it has made has yet to happen. 176 00:21:26,690 --> 00:21:34,190 That is to say, we have a similar interplay in the art historical record between the inside and the outside, 177 00:21:34,190 --> 00:21:39,320 the before and the after or kind of crossing of the boundaries between them. 178 00:21:39,320 --> 00:21:44,960 The said donors and in the case of liberal. So it being in two places at once, 179 00:21:44,960 --> 00:21:53,060 which is certainly reminiscent of the ways in which the audience within Mahayana Sutra is connected with the audience outside it. 180 00:21:53,060 --> 00:21:59,660 And so what this suggests to me is a kind of triangle of three forms of communication or of art, if you wish. 181 00:21:59,660 --> 00:22:09,440 Dramatic performance, literary production and sculpture, all of which appear to be invoking or evoking each other and alive to the creative 182 00:22:09,440 --> 00:22:16,070 possibilities of self-referential reality and of drawing the spectator into the action. 183 00:22:16,070 --> 00:22:20,960 Now, of course, at present, this is little more than a hypothesis. 184 00:22:20,960 --> 00:22:29,330 Perhaps even a schnapps day, as the Germans would say, but following it up seems worthwhile, and this is something I've only just begun to do. 185 00:22:29,330 --> 00:22:33,890 And I think I think pursuing it through any kind of conclusion would would take, at the very least, 186 00:22:33,890 --> 00:22:39,630 a more thorough knowledge than I presently have of the various forms of drama current at the time. 187 00:22:39,630 --> 00:22:49,920 Mahayana sutras began to be produced both forms of drama, I might say, deriving from the ancient Mediterranean and those developing in India. 188 00:22:49,920 --> 00:22:55,230 Now, the idea that Mahayana sutras have certain dramatic qualities and resonances is nothing 189 00:22:55,230 --> 00:23:00,840 new in care and advanced it in regard to the sediment from the Frederica in 1884, 190 00:23:00,840 --> 00:23:04,310 if you look at the opening remarks of his introduction. 191 00:23:04,310 --> 00:23:10,400 Arthur buried Dalkeith classic work on the Sanskrit drama, which was published in Oxford in 1924, 192 00:23:10,400 --> 00:23:17,870 also notes in passing the imprint of Buddhist dramas on the form of that particular text. 193 00:23:17,870 --> 00:23:25,640 But these and similar remarks up to the present, such as Natalie Gama's reflection on race theory in the Savannah, I have been as far as I know, 194 00:23:25,640 --> 00:23:35,090 mostly references to this or that aspect of the text, rather than a comprehensive effort to look at the genre as a whole in this light. 195 00:23:35,090 --> 00:23:42,320 And so I would say any attempt to produce a grammar of Mahayana sutras might provide a platform to pursue this idea, 196 00:23:42,320 --> 00:23:49,910 which I freely admit may lead us nowhere. But why not try it anyway and to do this anyway? 197 00:23:49,910 --> 00:23:57,950 To make a start on this, I I've been reading a work by my Stanford colleague, Rush Rim and the classics department. 198 00:23:57,950 --> 00:24:06,860 For those of you taking notes, rain and spot are him understanding Greek tragic theatre, and I found that surprisingly illuminating, 199 00:24:06,860 --> 00:24:13,490 I must say, although it deals with the plays of Aeschylus Sophocles in Europe at ease and 5th century BCE Athens. 200 00:24:13,490 --> 00:24:22,880 So a point in space rather different from the locations in which Mahayana sutras were conceived on practically every page of Russia's book, 201 00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:31,040 I find perceptions and Insights, which I could transfer to the study of Mahayana sutras Mutantes MetaMaus. 202 00:24:31,040 --> 00:24:33,830 But even if there were no relation between them at all, 203 00:24:33,830 --> 00:24:42,740 it would still be useful to compare to complex communication systems with their own sets of conventions and modes of operation. 204 00:24:42,740 --> 00:24:48,680 So I find this very illuminating, especially, you know, just thinking in general terms. 205 00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:56,650 Rush Rooms frequently voiced caution against interpreting Athenian drama in the light of our own experience in theatre. 206 00:24:56,650 --> 00:24:59,770 And here the word light is in fact, very important for us. 207 00:24:59,770 --> 00:25:08,200 Theatre is something intimate and close up under electric lights where we can see and read the actor's facial expressions for the Greeks. 208 00:25:08,200 --> 00:25:17,800 In fifth century B.C. Athens, it was in the open air in bright sunlight, with distances requiring far greater vocal projection by the actors. 209 00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:23,800 All of them masked. What a weird thought. Everybody wearing masks. 210 00:25:23,800 --> 00:25:26,710 The same caution goes for us. 211 00:25:26,710 --> 00:25:34,870 I think not to impose our own ideas of what reading entails on the way in which South Asian Buddhists could read received. 212 00:25:34,870 --> 00:25:39,370 I am a surgeon and again, on a general level, 213 00:25:39,370 --> 00:25:47,980 I'm particularly interested when rain refers to the audience's imagination as the Ancient Theatre's greatest resource. 214 00:25:47,980 --> 00:25:52,550 And he does that when speaking of the Convention of Mask Acting. 215 00:25:52,550 --> 00:25:58,760 And it prompts us to think that the imagination of the audience is no less important to Mahayana sutras, 216 00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:05,810 as that audience is encouraged to imagine all kinds of wonderful scenarios conjured up by the spoken or the written word are 217 00:26:05,810 --> 00:26:13,160 taken back and forward through time are instructed and challenged by conversations between the various characters the Buddhas, 218 00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:21,140 the Great Shava, because the body sounds, etc. As we know, there are typically two audiences involved. 219 00:26:21,140 --> 00:26:28,340 One inside the searcher, often conceived on the grand scale with beings of every sort in attendance, 220 00:26:28,340 --> 00:26:34,760 which gathers at the beginning in the night Donna and rejoices at the end or applauds if you like. 221 00:26:34,760 --> 00:26:41,240 And then there's the audience outside the suture. The scale of which we can only guess that. 222 00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:46,400 What is more, the audience on the inside reacts to what is happening at various points, 223 00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:53,600 usually by realising different attainments, sometimes by applauding or offering encouragement and support. 224 00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:59,780 In that sense, getting in on the action in a way which perhaps mimics some of the responses which the 225 00:26:59,780 --> 00:27:07,610 composers of the texts hope to elicit in their addresses and their hearers and readers. 226 00:27:07,610 --> 00:27:16,880 That's the missile scene resembles a dramatic performance. The action proceeds primarily by dialogues with an interesting mixture of longer 227 00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:23,840 speeches and rapid fire exchanges resume resembling the sticker Museu of Greek plays, 228 00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:25,820 although they're not averse. 229 00:27:25,820 --> 00:27:35,060 The scene changes occur occasionally and so on, and all these features, I must say, are nicely exemplified by the movie Malachite near Daysha. 230 00:27:35,060 --> 00:27:42,760 But we find them aplenty and other Mahayana sutras as well, even if not in all of them. 231 00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:51,030 So what's also interesting to think about is the very notion of mitter theatricality in which is, you know, 232 00:27:51,030 --> 00:27:59,080 it's somewhat contested right and vague and difficult to define in relation to the self-referential 233 00:27:59,080 --> 00:28:03,970 city of Mahayana sutras and the tendency to sort of borrow an idea from Christian Way, 234 00:28:03,970 --> 00:28:15,130 a monitor to constantly breach the fourth wall and and and speak to the audience in a way that pulls them into the action. 235 00:28:15,130 --> 00:28:21,970 And all this I regard as an exercise in reading as rather than reading into in the hope that from it, 236 00:28:21,970 --> 00:28:30,070 I we might gain a fuller, more nuanced understanding of my sutures. 237 00:28:30,070 --> 00:28:37,870 But of course, it's not. Read Reading as in that way, reading Mahayana sutras sutures is dramas is not necessarily in conflict with reading, 238 00:28:37,870 --> 00:28:46,390 for reading, for information and reading them for inspiration, even for pleasure, which it can be pursued alongside. 239 00:28:46,390 --> 00:28:52,960 So to sum up, I thought I would go on too long, but in fact, I'm finishing early. 240 00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:58,360 I think the short talk with a plea for continuing to experiment with different 241 00:28:58,360 --> 00:29:05,500 approaches to reading by my reiterating the point that it is time for us to 242 00:29:05,500 --> 00:29:11,170 work towards writing a comprehensive grammar of Mahayana sutras so that our 243 00:29:11,170 --> 00:29:16,270 reading reading of them at our interpretive work on them is better informed. 244 00:29:16,270 --> 00:29:20,890 I'm not sure if I have the wit, the stamina or the years left to do this myself, 245 00:29:20,890 --> 00:29:29,830 but I think it should be done and at the same time, we should carry on thinking about how am on a suchas workers complete text, 246 00:29:29,830 --> 00:29:37,240 what the influences are and what kind of dynamic social arrangements and processes they are part of in a way 247 00:29:37,240 --> 00:29:45,040 which gets us to move beyond always talking about individual features and singular examples of the genres. 248 00:29:45,040 --> 00:29:49,720 So I leave you with that, with those thoughts. 249 00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:59,646 Thank you for your attention. So.