Buddhist Art and Architecture in Nepal Prof Alexander von Rospatt AAM .
Viewing Buddhism in Nepal is seeing Buddhism in a Hindu (caste) context. Professor von Rospatt tries to enable the participants in this study group understand how scholarship about the West differs from scholarship about the East. The West is constantly seeking innovation and new perspectives while the East is seeking a continuous thread. He discusses the relationship between Buddhism and its origins in India and its passage through Nepal, Tibet, China, and on ward to Korea and Japan and SE Asia. His focus is his specialty, Nepal, which scholarship looks to India.
What the Buddah has said is or must be true. Tibetans believe in Indian scripture, but the Chinese have reinvented text and fabricated text. He mentions the French Belgian Larencin de Poussant (sp)?as being the most accurate translator of texts. One member of the study group, Iowan Tenzig is married to the guide of Tucci, the famous Italian scholar; she was in Rome, and when the library learned who her husband was, he showed her the 11th c sutra that Tucci had found and returned to Rome.
Sanscrit is the language of the Buddhist texts. As readers are victims of attachment, the words must be filtered through their background, knowledge and experience. Buddhism is about how we interact with the world, how we experience the world, which is affected by our conditioning. We are victims of attachment to certain scripts of behavior. We cannot identify, recognize comprehend what we have not experienced, do not know. There are two words for perception: apperception and perception; the first is recognition or identification, and the second is understanding. One of the Skandas: Feeling = Vedana. and our REACTION is our KARMA. (Interpretation) If we are angry, greedy, etc, in our responses, we can change...it. We are a victim of our patterns (our attachment) from which Buddhism can free us.
The language of the texts are available to the monastic elite and were passed on through monasteries, not through the common people. (India) Mahayna Buddhism surpasses Terevadah which is common in Burma and Thailand. .When there is degeneration of Mahayna, oftentimes due to a lack of ordination of monks, then therevadah returns through the common people. There are only monks, no nuns in Therevada. In the East, you do not throw out the old when you embrace the new; it is absorbed. Tantric Buddhism was an extreme, or antimonious, with shock value against normas, violating rules, and not accepting that there is pure and impure. In reforms, Buddhism realized that Tantric practice could be available to a very small population who could practice it without harm. . . There was thus a return to "reunciatory" practice to train the mind, and depart from society, to attain a pure state of mindfulness. Buddhist monks leave society, but when tribute and donors contribute land, property, money to them, then they interact with society and there is room for compromise.
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We view the damage in Kathmandhu which is extensive. We see old prints and archival photographs to learn how Kathmandhu has changed, through the years, but how this last earthquake destroyed the core historical buildings and monuments, though due to the restoration of the main stupa, a couple of years ago(we saw the process and met the team at the AAM in a presentation ) and its repairs and reinforcement it survived. This is in part due to having a large sturdy tree trunk as its core.
Professor Alexander von Rospatt is married to a Nepalese woman with two children. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Kathmandhu Valley Preservation Trust (KVPT) and finds it is the most trustworthy organization, as unlike Western ngos, it does not pay Western salaries or local allowances for houses and cars. It pays its members, who are highly trained and educated in the West, but are Nepalese, who return to help their country. They are all affiliated in "best practice". So, if we want to help the rebuilding, about which he is worried, due to the monsoons arrival, when villages and houses in the valley are levelled and people have no shelter, we can contact KVPT on line.
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The study continues through the day, after lunch of a delicious vegetarian currey and jasmine rice and arugula and apple salad, with a history of Nepal, which centers in Kathmandhu. I may add more details at a later point, from my voluminous notes, but essentially, scholars in the 80s stopped being as text oriented, though he is still primarily text based in his study of Buddhism in Nepal, though he subscribes to the idea of looking at anthropological practice of Buddhism among the common people, as well as the laity practice. Women and the non literate are the primary practitioners of Buddhism on the ground, so it is filtered through their local language and customs. Tibet and India and even China are more accessible today in terms of information and libraries. However typing in the key word in a web search deprives of scholars and researchers of reading the whole work, and appreciating the context, but it has speeded up the process.
What the Buddah has said is or must be true. Tibetans believe in Indian scripture, but the Chinese have reinvented text and fabricated text. He mentions the French Belgian Larencin de Poussant (sp)?as being the most accurate translator of texts. One member of the study group, Iowan Tenzig is married to the guide of Tucci, the famous Italian scholar; she was in Rome, and when the library learned who her husband was, he showed her the 11th c sutra that Tucci had found and returned to Rome.
Sanscrit is the language of the Buddhist texts. As readers are victims of attachment, the words must be filtered through their background, knowledge and experience. Buddhism is about how we interact with the world, how we experience the world, which is affected by our conditioning. We are victims of attachment to certain scripts of behavior. We cannot identify, recognize comprehend what we have not experienced, do not know. There are two words for perception: apperception and perception; the first is recognition or identification, and the second is understanding. One of the Skandas: Feeling = Vedana. and our REACTION is our KARMA. (Interpretation) If we are angry, greedy, etc, in our responses, we can change...it. We are a victim of our patterns (our attachment) from which Buddhism can free us.
The language of the texts are available to the monastic elite and were passed on through monasteries, not through the common people. (India) Mahayna Buddhism surpasses Terevadah which is common in Burma and Thailand. .When there is degeneration of Mahayna, oftentimes due to a lack of ordination of monks, then therevadah returns through the common people. There are only monks, no nuns in Therevada. In the East, you do not throw out the old when you embrace the new; it is absorbed. Tantric Buddhism was an extreme, or antimonious, with shock value against normas, violating rules, and not accepting that there is pure and impure. In reforms, Buddhism realized that Tantric practice could be available to a very small population who could practice it without harm. . . There was thus a return to "reunciatory" practice to train the mind, and depart from society, to attain a pure state of mindfulness. Buddhist monks leave society, but when tribute and donors contribute land, property, money to them, then they interact with society and there is room for compromise.
---
We view the damage in Kathmandhu which is extensive. We see old prints and archival photographs to learn how Kathmandhu has changed, through the years, but how this last earthquake destroyed the core historical buildings and monuments, though due to the restoration of the main stupa, a couple of years ago(we saw the process and met the team at the AAM in a presentation ) and its repairs and reinforcement it survived. This is in part due to having a large sturdy tree trunk as its core.
Professor Alexander von Rospatt is married to a Nepalese woman with two children. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Kathmandhu Valley Preservation Trust (KVPT) and finds it is the most trustworthy organization, as unlike Western ngos, it does not pay Western salaries or local allowances for houses and cars. It pays its members, who are highly trained and educated in the West, but are Nepalese, who return to help their country. They are all affiliated in "best practice". So, if we want to help the rebuilding, about which he is worried, due to the monsoons arrival, when villages and houses in the valley are levelled and people have no shelter, we can contact KVPT on line.
--
The study continues through the day, after lunch of a delicious vegetarian currey and jasmine rice and arugula and apple salad, with a history of Nepal, which centers in Kathmandhu. I may add more details at a later point, from my voluminous notes, but essentially, scholars in the 80s stopped being as text oriented, though he is still primarily text based in his study of Buddhism in Nepal, though he subscribes to the idea of looking at anthropological practice of Buddhism among the common people, as well as the laity practice. Women and the non literate are the primary practitioners of Buddhism on the ground, so it is filtered through their local language and customs. Tibet and India and even China are more accessible today in terms of information and libraries. However typing in the key word in a web search deprives of scholars and researchers of reading the whole work, and appreciating the context, but it has speeded up the process.
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