April 13, 2004
Kerry and Communion
GetReligion covers the debate with characteristic insight:
And there's the rub. All of these nasty little Catholic doctrines are so, so divisive and, well, doctrinaire.
So true. It's amazing how the times change, no? Kennedy was held with deep suspicion that he would be answering directly to the Church, and now Kerry is being questioned in the New York Times for not slavishly obeying the commands of the Romish Pope.
Good eye by Terry Mattingly to notice the reference to a "New Age" service attended by Kerry in the article. Storm's a'comin! I can't wait to see what the fundies do with that tidbit.
April 11, 2004
Extreme photography
Kimbro Staken is taking beautiful pictures from his local skateboard park in Phoenix, Arizona. Check it out, unless like me you're prone to hardware-envy. =)
BSGSC Roundtable
At Arthur McKeown's roundtable, we touched on issues dear to my heart: theories of mantra and dhāraṇī, and the translation of Buddhist texts.
There's nothing like networking over coffee in the beautiful space of the CSWR.BSGSC Movie
Dr. Peter Gregory, a venerable professor of Chinese Buddhism, showed a film he recently made in collaboration with a student on an innovative American Zen ritual performed at the Los Angeles Zen Center. Beautiful, provocative work.
Beautiful Weekend
The Buddhist Studies Graduate Student Conference was a truly beautiful event— so many memories of late-night conversations, quality presentations, discussions with eminent faculty and brilliant young graduate students. The most profound part of this conference was the theme of community, of scholars of radically different backgrounds, areas of expertise, and approaches to Buddhism working together, talking to one another on a human as well as a scholarly level, and making a real effort to learn from one another.
There are too many memories, inspirational moments, and lasting emotional impressions to express here, especially since I'm so breathless and exhausted now that it's over. But there was one moment in particular, when faculty respondent Charles Hallisey pulled together two radically different papers. One was on wrath in esoteric Buddhism, the other on patronage and community as reflected in the murals of the Dunhuang caves. Hallisey's speech drew from one paper the value of affect and emotion not only for Buddhist aims but for our own scholarly aims— we have to understand that those we study are human, and while our ultimate aim is to find rich detail, we have an obligation to paint broader strokes as well, to empathize and connect. And from the images of the female donors at Dunhuang, standing so beautifully adorned in the mural next to their deceased relatives, Hallisey drew an important lesson. We academics are not unlike the donors at Dunhuang, standing in relations of reverence and power before the image of Mañjuśrī. We stand not only shoulder to shoulder with those who are radically different in object, approach, and disposition, but we also stand shoulder to shoulder with the dead, in constant conversation and debate, inspiration and friendship with those scholars who have gone before. The dead are all around us in academia, they are part of our clans, they forever haunt us.
He said so much more that I dare not try to represent accurately. I could never do justice to Hallisey's eloquence. It was one striking moment in a conference full of such moments. I'm exhausted, but, on both an intellectual and a human level, I am refreshed and renewed.
April 09, 2004
Fantastic Japanese weblog
Go read the Tokyo Times. You won't regret it. The pun in the tennis entry is especially wicked. [Hat tip: Marmot]
April 08, 2004
XeTeX
This is truly a work of beauty: XeTeX for OS X, a simple tool that runs on top of your standard teTeX installation, and harnesses the power of OS X's ATSUI Unicode rendering engine to deliver easy rendering of Unicode documents in TeX. Check out the pictures for examples of implementation. This is the first time I've ever seen Unicode so easily available through a TeX installation- no need to fuck with the ridiculously arcane labyrinths of Omega or TrueType font hacking.
So now I know the next step: I don't need to learn any intimidating XSL-FO to turn ScholarNotes files into PDF. I can write a much more straightforward XSL template to transform TEI files into XeTeX files. Everything is beginning to fall into place! Rock on.
A long way to go
Something I pointed out in yesterday's Tantra class:
Total number of texts listed in the esoteric volumes of the Chinese Tripiṭaka: 572
Approximate number of texts from the esoteric volumes translated into Western languages: 15?
Things are beginning to change, but the sheer volume of unexplored territory is staggering. I could spend my entire scholarly life focusing only on this portion of the canon, and I would not run out of fresh material. And then there's all those esoteric texts in Chinese at Dunhuang just begging to be studied…
April 06, 2004
Life on Caffeine
I'm proud to say that I do four shots of espresso per day (8 in a pinch). Although reading these amazing stories of caffeine consumption from the Chronicle of Higher Education, I realize that I am not so bad after all. Perhaps if I spread out the consumption through the whole day like these guys, I could skip the powernaps! Tempting…
Also, pay special attention to John Sexton's caffeine diary. Such is the life of a university president. Why on earth would anyone want that job?
April 05, 2004
Ready to Roll
How time flies. Only four days until the Buddhist Studies Graduate Student Conference. Young scholars and distinguished professors flying in from all over, so there's plenty of networking to be done. I'm psyched. The details have been mostly ironed out. We are locked and loaded, and ready to roll. Today I took a tour of the facilities at the CSWR. This place is as swanky as it gets. The common room has a ridiculously easy setup for digital projection, a comfortable, open space decorated with Hindu and Buddhist statuary, and a great view of the gurgling fountain and garden outside. And the buffet room is full of windows, presenting a majestic view of Andover Hall. What an amazing space for an intimate conference.
This week will be all about pounding out the work ahead of time, so I can devote Friday through Sunday to the conference. Next week is a repeat, as I try to make space for BloggerCon. The weekend after that, it's Deerhoof and Sleater-Kinney concerts.
Life is hectic, but good. That's what it's all about.
April 04, 2004
Academic Blogging
April 17th's BloggerCon (open and free!) will feature a must-attend session: Blogging in Academia. The discussion leader will be Michael Watkins, an associate professor of the Harvard Business School who, after being denied tenure, had the bravery to speak publicly about the tenure process and ask pointed questions about the direction of HBS. He has foregrounded the pervasiveness of insecurity and intimidation in university politics.
The session will be well worth attending— as Invisible Adjunct's superb weblog has shown, there are pervasive structural problems in the academy, but the culture of secrecy and intimidation prevents them from being publicly aired or debated. Weblogs will have an important role to play in the years to come.
April 03, 2004
Who signs the AAR Petition?
As the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Religion prepares to meet this April, a pressing issue will be the petition urging the AAR to rescind its decision to hold meetings separately from the Society for Biblical Literature. The Executive Committee may well decide that the apparently overwhelming support for the petition, as represented by the large number of signatures on the petition, compels them to put the issue to a vote.
It is clear, however, when one starts examining the pages in detail, that not all signatories are members of the American Academy of Religion. Any person who so desires may go sign their name to the petition- no AAR membership number required, no verification process required.
I mentioned this to a friend, who did the admirable service of checking through a random page of the petition. Around 80 names were browsed, and those names were checked against the 2003 Membership Directory of the AAR. 7 of those names were not members of the AAR:
2821. Peter T. Nash
okay, so I am only SBL
Wartburg College
2807. Terry Ann Smith
2801. Martha Shute Goodman
2800. F. Stanley Jones
2767. Brian Gatewood
2765. Christine Downing
2742. Eric Swensson
The sample is too limited to tell us anything with certainty, but it is very likely that a good number of the signatures on this petition are not from members of the AAR, but of the SBL. Some are courteous enough to announce their affiliation, such as Peter T. Nash above, or #1845 Lamontte M. Luker of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. But others are not so up-front about it. I certainly hope the Board takes this into account when weighing the import of an online petition which requires no verification of identity.
Besides non-AAR members, the petition also contains repeat signatures as well as signatures which have nothing to do with the issue at hand. There are signatures like #1326, which does nothing more than advertise a web site. Especially odious is #1504, Bill Sarders, as well as his alter-ego #1533 Wesley Black, who advertise a website entitled "Exaggerated Suffering of Jews", a horrific piece of anti-Semitic propaganda.
On the lighter side, there are names which make no sense whatsoever, and are apparently intended to be jokes of some sort. Witness #2819 Godzilla McMurphy. Mr. (or Ms.?) McMurphy's institutional affiliation is regrettably unlisted. We are given more information about a #2904 Red Butt Monkey, who apparently hails from the Mel Gibson School of Theology. (Note to Prof. Monkey: You may want to adopt the long-standing scholarly tradition of hiding embarrassing names behind initials: R.B. Monkey sounds much more scholarly. Even better would be to take the classicist route, and simply sign R.B.M.) Then there is the cheerful #2926 RickyXcore, who doesn't like the all american rejects, and who lists his institution as "rock-n-roll baby!"
Yes, it's all quite amusing, but it there is an important point at stake. The function of this petition is to overwhelm the Board with numbers, to give an actual measure to what at the Atlanta meeting was simply an undercurrent, a buzz of discontent among a very limited, if vocal, group of scholars.
This petition seeks to overwhelm. But we should all remind the members of the Board that it has plateaued at around 3000 signatures, and many of those signatures are not from members of the AAR. And, as I have pointed out before, many of those signatures come from people who, if the decision to split is not rescinded, plan on immediately leaving the AAR. The AAR for such people is a secondary commitment. Considering that the total membership of the AAR is well over 9000 strong, I submit that the Board side with over 2/3 of the members of our organization who have not signed this petition, who see no need for this issue to be pursued further with a vote.
