Two Research Papers on Religious Experience and Artificial Intelligence

I have just drafted two papers: How might Artificial Intelligence be Approached for Research in Religious Experience? (available on Academia or on my own website), and How might Artificial Intelligence Support Research in Religious Experience? (also available on Academia or on my own website).

These papers came about after the Journal for the Study of Religious Experience  put out a call for papers for a special issue on AI. I was initially reluctant to respond as I had (and still have) reservations about the list of topics and areas. However, I was urged to apply by a member of the Alister Hardy Trust, who pointed out that I have studied both computer science and religion. So, I sent off an enquiry, establishing that this was to be the first issue to treat AI.

After a bit of further thought, I submitted the following abstract for consideration:

This paper explores the subject of Artificial Intelligence with a view to enhancing research activities in religious experience.  It starts with a broad examination of AI from a historical perspective as an evolution in notions of computation and in the development of machines, with comparisons made between machine and human intelligence. Further evaluation is carried out on the nature of the systems and theories, using a Buddhist lens, focusing especially on intention, agency and creativity, with references from the Theravada canon.  Observations on stillness draw out profound distinctions, providing indications of what is or is not appropriate in terms of AI expectations and engagement.  From these considerations, a practical application of AI emerges in terms of augmenting human intellect, along the lines envisaged by Douglas Engelbart, a pioneer in the field. Accordingly, initial indications are provided of how the work of RERC may be enhanced by the analysis of its archive of personal testimonies using machine learning to implement techniques in natural language processing.  These may include topic analysis of, for example, subject matter and circumstances; and sentiment analysis of emotional states induced, thereby helping to corroborate and extend existing findings.

The journal’s editorial team accepted the proposal, indicating that they were particularly interested in the possibility of AI assisting with the database of accounts at the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre (RERC). So I subsequently registered for database access, chose a theme (stillness) as a basis for comparing human and machine intelligence, and proceeded to draft a paper, which I managed to submit by the deadline.

My submission was reviewed and after a few weeks I received some feedback. This made me pause to reconsider and after a few days deliberating I decided to withdraw my submission. I shan’t go much into the reasons, but evidently, I had not conveyed clearly enough the main argument, expressed in the opening pages, plus the various applications of AI drew attention away from this argument to the affordances that AI offers. That is what I wanted to avoid. So, the paper needed to be split into two (the argument followed by the application), whilst keeping the existing order. After the split, I expanded the first paper a little to add a key message: scholars and practitioners of spiritual and religious experience should become more involved in the evaluation of AI especially because they have a fuller understanding of what it means to be human.

It is becoming common for universities to address this question (a Google search over the Oxford University domain), quite often in interdisciplinary panels, but I find they do little to affect the general direction of travel, which continues with rapid extensions and expansion of development, albeit with some regulatory hurdles? One of the underlying problems is the repeated pairing of human intelligence and machine intelligence, as though they are comparable side by side. Other terms have built up and established anthropomorphic language (machine learning, deep learning, and so on), which compounds the issue and leads to tacit acceptance.  

There are, in my view, more suitable alternatives. Whilst working on the KEPLAIR project, I was made more aware of the contrast between neural networks as a ‘black box’ technique and transparent techniques based on logical reasoning. In this connection, I was introduced to Douglas Engelbart’s work on Augmenting Human Intellect. Rather than frame questions around AI, we frame them in terms of enhancing humanity.  Accordingly, this framework underpins the second paper, which is more conventional in that it makes suggestions of machine learning applications to support research into religious experience, particularly the RERC accounts. This is largely in the area of hermeneutics (for which Voyant Tools is well-suited), though the requirements on data protection encourage more unusual possibilities.

The papers are currently unpublished drafts. I’d welcome suggestions for open access publication.

A Rare Opportunity: On ‘Buddhism and Pali’

There's a new book that I'd like to introduce:

Cover for 'Buddhism and Pali' (from mudpiebooks.com)

A little over 10 years ago I had the good fortune to study under Professor Richard Gombrich at the OCBS Pali Summer School of 2008.  I subsequently used the knowledge gained to read and translate from the Pali some passages in the Theravada Buddhist canon as part of my Master’s thesis.   So, I was pleased to see the publication of Prof. Gombrich’s latest book, Buddhism and Pali.

In this post I offer some thoughts about the material - they're more ad hoc responses to some ideas put forth than a book review because I’m not qualified to assess the finer points of linguistics.

Introduction

The title of this post is quoted from page 8 of Gombrich’s ‘Buddhism and Pali’, where the author indicates why, despite being somewhat sceptical about its appeal to members of the public, he decided to go ahead and write this small volume: he sees its potential to raise awareness about the far-reaching significance of Pali.  I think he went ahead because he is a believer!  That is, he truly believes in the importance of the Buddha as a historical figure, in the value of his teachings, particularly for the depth of the philosophy, and in the necessity of knowing Pali as the means to properly access that knowledge and interpret it accurately.

I remember maybe 20 years ago hearing about the Jesus Seminar and its efforts to determine the historicity of Jesus and what could be reliably attributed to him.  It seems that in recent years this kind of approach has been attempted in respect of the Buddha Gotama, leading to similar results, where some academics deny that the canonical texts can be attributed to the Buddha himself and hence cast all kinds of doubt on the material.  As someone who is interested in Buddhist texts primarily as a practitioner, I’ve always felt that these kinds of scholarly views are rooted in a kind of hindrance, specifically sceptical doubt (Pali: vicikicchā - for the definition, I'm linking through to an online edition of the Pali Text Society's Pali-English dictionary).

So I naturally welcomed this new book, which constructs an argument, mainly linguistic, but backed up by cultural, historical and other observations, that shows how Pali could in fact be the language the Buddha actually used in his teachings across a vast swathe of what we now refer to as India.  As a scholar specialising in Indo-Aryan languages over his long career, Gombrich is sensitive to various issues that need to be addressed, especially concerning matters such as the integrity of texts and their preservation.

The book itself comprises four chapters and I’ll briefly introduce them and pick up on points I found interesting.

1. Pali in History

In the first chapter, Gombrich sets the scene, indicating the current use of Pali in the canon of the Theravada School of Buddhism, how it was essentially a language of recitation used by monks and nuns to maintain the teachings.  He then traces its linguistic history back to a few centuries BCE, showing in particular how it relates to Sanskrit.  The book is concise and succinct, making it easy to digest and follow the lines of thought.  Thus, we have a nice overview of the history of the Buddha, the geography of India and the modes of usage of Pali, especially among monastics.  Then the ancestry of Pali is outlined in three steps, altogether covering a single page.  So it’s a kind of primer, with some footnotes provided for further exploration.

Being condensed, many points are made only briefly. One of the first to catch my eye was that the word phāsa (p.11), which means ‘language’, was originally attached to ‘Pāli’ .  The same word has been brought into Thai (phāsa is rendered as ภาษา, hence ภาษาไทย). In fact, Thai has incorporated many such ‘loan words’ from Pali and Sanskrit, but also from many other languages (its influences are complex)!

The transmission of the Buddha’s teachings was initially an oral tradition, only later written down, typically on palm leaves.  We may take writing for granted now, but (I didn't see this mentioned by Gombrich) one doesn’t have to go back very far to find practitioners who did not make use of written texts.  For example, the founder of Wat Phra Dhammakaya on the outskirts of Bangkok was an illiterate nun, Khun Yay Upasika Chandra Khonnokyoong.

It's remarkable that the texts have been handed down over the centuries with hardly any corruption.  Gombrich uses his philological expertise to cleverly argue how Pali has been preserved and evolved for a variety of pragmatic and conventional reasons, usually under the influence of Sanskrit, but used in a distinct way; its distinction arising because it is an artifice - a vehicle for transmission that needs careful memorisation, but also reflects adaptation to local environments.  He makes the argument easier to follow by comparison with the use of the English language, which he furnishes with examples.

In passing, he also makes the point that the teachings tell us that all this is subject to impermanence and will eventually perish.  From a professional perspective, as another aside, I wonder about the digital context, where we can easily replicate data in the Cloud and ensure integrity using checksums.   Well, checksums are themselves subject to bit rot (corruption) and according to Buddhist cosmology our world and many realms above eventually get destroyed, so that would include all the data centres in the Cloud and in clouds!

I find conservative Gombrich’s statement that “as far as we know” Theravada Buddhism was confined in its first millennium to India and Sri Lanka (p. 22): I am persuaded by the thesis proposed by Lewis Lancaster in the Maritime Buddhism Project that traders carried religious practices across South and South-East Asia much earlier (e.g., across the Bay of Bengal, the Andaman Sea, through the Malacca Strait, and up to the South China Sea).  Collaborative research is ongoing to form an electronic atlas.  Whilst the picture is patchy, there is significant archaeological evidence - for example, in Thailand, as reported by Suchandra and Lipi Ghosh,  excavations have unearthed objects with Buddhist inscriptions (in Pali or Hybrid Pali and Sanskrit) dated to the Dvāravatī period that have strong associations with the sea: such as amulets, carried by seafaring merchants to ensure a safe voyage and even images of Buddha Dipankara calming the waves.  I also asked my uncle, Sean Trafford, who spent his working life at sea, much of it in and around SE Asia, and he found the thesis credible.

Perhaps the first intimation I received of such early connections for Thailand was a visit to Phra Pathom Chedi in 1988, which I subsequently wrote about as one of my first articles on the Web.   A traditional overview of how Buddhism came to Thailand was compiled by Ven. Dr. Saddhatissa  There is, of course, a large gap between the time of Emperor Ashoka and the mid first millennium C.E., but it’s narrowing - see e.g. Stephen A. Murphy and Miriam T. Stark’s introduction to period transitions. (Coincidentally, one of my cousins has just started her first year as an undergraduate in the Faculty of Archaeology at Silapakorn University, so I may get to hear about further developments!)

2. The Linguistic Character of Pali

The second chapter - on ‘The Linguistic Character of Pali’ - is the most technical.  It contains material that is second nature to the author, so it’s both easy for him to spell out and difficult for him to gauge how accessible it might be for the reader.  For anyone who has made an initial attempt to learn the language it’s a useful refresher of the main concepts, but others may well observe the guidance, thoughtfully inserted, to just read some of the more general remarks.

These include the use of verse, which I tend not to give much attention to, even though I frequently come across them in sutta study; although the texts are largely prose, verses do feature.  My appreciation and understanding of verse is limited, but some while ago I became keen to learn the meaning of a daily chant called 'A Buddha Prayer Song', so eventually I produced a translation, aided by Thai friends.  It was an example of prosody, so I was pleased to learn more about the metrical structure of such verse. 

3. Pali Prose Style

In the third chapter - on ‘Pali Prose Style’ - Gombrich discusses how its style was especially shaped by the oral tradition.  He also explores the question of how the oral transmission has been so efficient, with some corroboration from neuroscience and illustrations from other disciplines such as music.  There are practical strategies indicated for memorisation such as the division of labour and Gombrich indicates how the Buddhist Councils have helped ensure their preservation.

He goes on to use a linguistic argument based on an incremental style of prose, where words are successively augmented - in length and meaning.  When considered from the view of the practice, we find that the experience is often of gradual development, gradual evolution and progression, so to record this it is fitting to choose words that reflect this in structure and meaning.  This insight helps in the validation of texts, i.e. there is scope for validation through practice. This is particularly the case when undertaking a practice with a sequence of steps, as exemplified by the Ratha-vinita Sutta  (Relay Chariots, translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu).

Gombrich takes as an example (pp. 57-61) the homage (vandanā) in the iti pi so formula, which is a standard recitation in Pali chanting.  I think it’s an ambitious choice because it’s very condensed with meaning at mundane and supramundane levels, but I think through meticulous analysis he arrives at a sensible interpretation, showing the value of a proper understanding of Pali - it makes rational sense.

However, the scholarly method follows a particular intellectual discipline, so the result is often carefully couched and sometimes speculative; perhaps its deeper meaning cannot be convincingly made by linguistics alone.  In particular, whilst Gombrich also makes the important point that the text carries with it an injunction, of ‘ought’, scholarship doesn’t necessarily bring about this ‘ought’ response, i.e. "Right, let’s undertake the practice!"  To me it seldom is that compelling.  Even from the perspective of practice, it still is a matter of interpretation dependent on view (diṭṭhi) and according to the path (magga) taken.  However, to some extent the words can help to validate practice, so it works both ways.  

Indeed, the linguistic reading can lead on to practice and I’ll try to illustrate this by focusing on the ‘ought’, drawing on the Dhammakaya tradition to which I belong.  I’ll start by making the assertion that the presentation style of a practitioner can be more persuasive about the ‘ought’.  I think especially of the late Chao Khun Phramongkolthepmuni, the re-discoverer of this practice.  When he was delivering sermons as Abbot of Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen in Thailand he spoke with a directness and assuredness that arose from meditation experience.  His audience was roused in large numbers over the years and it came about as the audience engaged a different mode of listening and interpreting, through the citta, a Pali word that I would render along the lines of “heart-mind”, to distinguish it from the brain alone. 

The Chao Khun explained every word in the iti pi so, and gave the formula a sense of direction reflecting investigation within what the Buddha referred to as “this fathom-long body” (Rohitassa Sutta).  I summarise the respective interpretations in a table as follows:

Term	Gombrich	Dhammakaya tradition	Comment (Dhammakaya)
svākkhato	well-taught	well-taught
Bhagavatā	Blessed One	Blessed One	Because the Buddha is breaker of the wheel of Samsara
Dhammo	Teaching	Dhamma	Teaching (mundane) and Truth as supramundane reality
sanditthiko	practical	to be seen	Directly observable
akāliko	immediate	timeless and ever-present	Whether there are Buddhas in the world or not, the Path to Enlightenment lies open, all the same
ehipassiko	Come and see	Come and see
opanāyiko	useful	leading inwards	the operative mode is given by phrases such as kāye kāyānupassī, ‘contemplating body in body’ in accordance with the Middle Way.
paccattam	individually, by oneself	individually, by oneself
veditabbo	o be understood	to be realized	directly, not just intellectually
viññuhi	by the intelligent	by the wise

This practice-based approach was even reflected in the design of published materials.  For example, several of the terms, including opanāyiko, were employed on the front cover of a magazine of the Bhikkhus of Wat Paknam, surrounding the image of the Buddha in meditation.

Another area where the orientation of practice can prompt or fashion a different response concerns repetition (pp. 62-68). Certainly some formulaic repetition acts as little more than packaging, but the repetition in the ‘contents’ does need care.  As mentioned, repetition aids and reinforces memory, but it also establishes a rhythm, which can be cyclical in nature, like a spiral staircase, where the completion of each full 360 degree rotation brings a different aspect viewed from a series of successively higher windows (perhaps these are the “small changes” that Ven. Dr Walpola Rahula alluded to?).  Lists are usually intentionally ordered.  Hence the khandhas (pp. 64-5) are to be contemplated, each in turn (it’s not an intellectual exercise, it’s a sermon on practice, not about the practice).

But some cases of repetition do appear to be far less necessary: repetition that arises through reporting - the convention of repeating verbatim each time a new person is to hear what has been said.  Such preservation can make for excessive, even quite absurd, repetition as illustrated (p. 66) and I confess that in study groups we often skip reading out such repeated reports.

Gombrich makes the key point that repetition occurs at every level, which suggests that the Buddha used repetition in his speeches, thereby strengthening the case that the Pali does indeed record the Buddha’s own words.

4. Pali in Buddhist Ideology

Having laid the foundations, the final chapter presents the main thesis: that the Buddha gave his teachings in Pali as part of his ideology; the use of Pali emerged in opposition to Sanskrit as integral to the Buddha’s teachings being in contradistinction to the Vedas.  I hadn’t thought that the Buddha might so deliberately using language (or avoid the use of a particularly structured language) to take an ideological stance, but I can imagine it fits like this. 

Then Gombrich builds his case, showing how the Buddha gave his teachings to anyone who was prepared to receive them, instructing his disciples to make language accessible and adaptable to locality.  A particularly difficult area is establishing what language was used between the time of the Buddha and when it was first formally written down in Sri Lanka.  So Gombrich proceeds to develop a linguistic argument, inviting the reader to imagine the conditions in which the Buddha roamed far and wide and how Pali appears to have accommodated a wide range of dialects to match whilst being based on a predominant dialect, a ‘lingua franca’, becoming the ‘argot’ of the Buddha and his followers (rather than quoting Google, I suggest the entry in an online etymology dictionary).

Such language was used in a pragmatic fashion to convey meaning, so it can be argued that implies purging language of foreign terms.  I’m cautious about that; some terms need to be introduced with all nuances of the original meaning properly established or else much can be lost.  I think, for example, of the term “mindfulness”, which is typically used for sati, but in the process the sense of clear comprehension with an ethical basis has often been removed (think about the sequence of the Eightfold Noble Path).

Conclusion

In the epilogue, Gombrich leaves us with an open problem: how best to teach a basic course in Pali that will enable students to tackle the translation of texts with the aid of a dictionary and other tools.   From past experience, Gombrich has found that the course needs to be intensive over a short period, usually 2-3 weeks, but that has presented various challenges in terms of organisation and commitment irrespective of whether that is offered in person at a physical location or online. 

Efforts are currently being made to provide a more sustainable option through online courses with recorded sessions, which should improve retention, though it will mean reduced personal interaction.  Having been involved in developing and support e-learning platforms, and even a little research, I expect A.I. to offer considerable potential, especially assistance in understanding particular concepts being taught in drill practice.  Financial support would make things easier, remove some barriers, but overall I think that it still largely depends on the student's determination as to whether there will be a successful outcome.

---

Overall, this little volume has been stimulating and enjoyable and I'm pleased to recommend it.  It has reminded me how fortunate I was to learn the rudiments of Pali from an expert so that I could be in a position to explore the Buddha's teachings with more assurance; today, I mainly use that knowledge outside the academic context, in a local Buddhist group (where we follow chanting and meditation with sutta study, using a plethora of books and some electronic tools).

Postscript [12 January 2019]

After posting the article, I recalled having written about how the Buddha transmitted Dhamma based on knowing the receptivity of his audience and their kamma.  To explain how this worked, I tried to use analogies with concepts in physics (mainly holography, first introducing the basic idea and then elaborating with a further analogy of a radio set.

The significance of Dhamma eye in Buddhavacana

[updated: 22 January 2010]

In earlier drafts of my Master's dissertation I started exploring a number of avenues as I tried to trace the historical development of certain concepts insofar as they might have had a bearing on the understanding and practice of the Fifth Precept. Along the way I considered the concept of Buddhavacana in relation to what might be accepted as an utterance of the Buddha, but largely omitted my ideas owing to lack of space. So I would like to take the opportunity of sharing here an observation about this concept. It's a concept that's largely treated in Mahāyāna Buddhism, where using Sanskrit spellings is the usual convention and where discussion concerns Mahāyāna sūtras I'll use these spellings. However, I'm more at home with Pāli and as the discussion proceeds to draw on early canonical materials, I shall switch to mainly using the Pāli forms. I hope this doesn't cause much inconvenience.

In my dissertation I quoted the Pāli-English dictionary to translate the term vacana as 'speaking, utterance, word, bidding' (Rhys-Davids and Stede:1921-5). I made reference to investigations carried out almost 30 years ago by Graeme MacQueen (1981,1982), which has established itself as a key work in scholarly discussions about who and what the Buddha might have authorised as regards his teaching. Its currency, at least for the study of Mahāyāna, is evident from the way Paul Williams cites from it in the second edition of Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations.

The interpretation of Buddhavacana can vary according to whether it is regarded historically or ahistorically. Is it legitimate to trust more than what the historical Buddha Gotama (or Sakyamuni) is recorded as having taught? What about his disciples? Were they necessarily Arahants? Or is the criterion more on the speech itself? So is there an ongoing process of 'revelation'?

One of the initial clarifications MacQueen makes is that taking even the Pāli canon as the primary text Buddhavacana becomes not merely what the Buddha uttered, but also what some disciples uttered (1981:306). MacQueen then leads us into an analysis of pratibhāna ('inspired speech') and the other prati-bhā constructions (1981:310-314). He discerns two categories: “Someone is invited (usually by the Buddha) to have something 'occur' or 'be revealed' to him, whereupon he gives a doctrinal, prose discourse” (310) and “Something spontaneously 'occurs' or 'is revealed' to someone and he gives notice of this; after having been invited (usually by the Buddha) to give expression to his inspiration he gives a verse of praise” (311). Even with this latitude, MacQueen remarks towards the end of his first paper that the sūtra-piṭaka “was in fact established as a stable body of literature quite early” (315). In conclusion he states, “Hence it is fair to say that the concept of buddhavacana, historically understood, put strong limits on the contribution people's pratibhāna could make to the corpus of religious truth. By and large, then, the religious community did indeed see itself as belonging to a closed tradition.”

However, with some of the early Mahāyāna sūtras, the interpretation was changed – “a closer look reveals a startling break with traditional Buddhism”(1982: 49). MacQueen analyses especially the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, “generally considered the earliest of the existing sūtras of the Perfection of Wisdom group and, in fact, one of the earliest of the existing sūtras we possess.” The very mention of perfect wisdom in the title indicates a new emphasis – the source of what the Buddha expressed, thereby legitimating further expression as long as it came from that source. MacQueen quotes the opening dialogue in which Venerable Subhuti advises Ven. Sariputra that “Whatever, Venerable Sariputra, the Lord's Disciples teach, all that is to be known as the Tathagatha's work” (49). MacQueen highlights that Subhuti thus gives voice to extended Buddhavacana and it comes from his own mind. As he notes, there is a process whereby what is authoritative is “not so much that which has been spoken by a particular individual at a particular time as it is that which is of the highest value from the religious point of view.” Such a view lends itself very much to an ahistorical interpretation of Buddhavacana (51). MacQueen goes on to present a broad twofold division between roughly faith-based and wisdom-based traditions, the latter of which is central to the Aṣṭasāhasrikā. where “The function of a Buddha is precisely to make known such [liberating] wisdom [or prajñāpāramitā] to others” (52).

Furthermore the importance of the wisdom is enforced by quotes indicating that the Buddha refused to appoint a successor saying that the dharma would succeed him, for which MacQueen gives several canonical references (53). One of these is the following: “And the Lord said to Ānanda: 'Ānanda, it may be that you will think: “The Teacher's instruction has ceased, now we have no teacher!” It should not be seen like this, Ānanda, for what I have taught and explained to you as Dhamma and discipline, will, at my passing, be your teacher” (DN II 154). This naturally and readily legitimises succession in a way that reduces the primacy of the historical context of the Buddha and all his disciples.

The key word here would appear to be Dharma, but rather than discussing this term, MacQueen just states: “the essence of Dharma is again liberating wisdom” and has a footnote referencing verses 460-4 of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā. Yet Dharma has many meanings in the canon – for instance, the Pāli-English Dictionary devotes four pages to its entry, so it's this term that I want to explore here.

In one sense Dharma may be maintained by the teachings that are kept through recitation and this appears to be the fundamental meaning with regards to transmission. The sūtra records that having stressed to Ānanda the importance of memorising this sūtra exactly word for word, the Buddha explains: “For as the dharma-body of the past, future and present Tathagatas is this dharma-text authoritative” (Verse 462 translated by Conze (1994: 267)).

(Now I switch to Pāli spellings :-).

The emphasis is on preserving the text, but the text serves only to point to that Dhamma, and not the basis of insight alone. If Dhamma is what needs to be preserved, then what is said about it in the canon to make it so special? Rather than talking about Dhamma as an object that has been produced, we can focus on the action or faculty of Dhamma realization; in terms of liberating wisdom, it makes sense therefore to specify these in terms of seeing. I'd suggest that such a Dhamma faculty is fittingly conveyed by the formula the “pure spotless Dhamma eye,” (viraja vītamala dhammacakkhu) which is the eye that can see things as they truly are. If one is to argue that inspired utterances are legitimate Buddhavacana, then this statement indicates some support for that Dhamma eye to be a necessary requirement.

So it's worth investigating this formula further. Such an attainment is characteristic of breakthrough as mentioned early on in the Vinaya accounts of the Mahāvagga (Great Division) with reference to the first lay disciple, Yasa in Mahāvagga 1.15 verse 9 (a passage that also includes the ubiquitous formula: "as if set upright something that had fallen; lit a lamp so that those with eyes might see shapes ...") It's mentioned further in many descriptions as the basis for subsequent progress to the eight Aryan states. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, a practitioner in the Therāvāda tradition, who himself addresses issues of authenticity and authority in ‘When you know for yourselves...' The Authenticity of the Pali Suttas, makes the statement:

“Traditionally, the texts state that uncertainty about the Dhamma ends only with the attainment of stream-entry, the first of the four levels of Awakening.”

Ven. Thanissaro has also written a two part article discussing stream entry, and indeed there's no mention of in the first part (before Stream Entry), which includes developing the Seven Factors of Awakening. However, in Part 2: Stream-entry and Beyond, Thanissaro indicates its profound significance:

“This standard formula — it is repeated throughout the Canon — may not seem that remarkable an insight. However, the texts make clear that this insight is not a matter of belief or contemplation, but of direct seeing.”

I think it adds weight to the value of the Dhamma eye (and the need to attain it). Another view echoes this, coming from my own tradition of Dhammakāya. This is what the founder, the late Chao Khun Phramonkgolthepmuni had to say on the matter:

“Now the virtues of the Sangha. The Order of disciples is twofold. That is, ordinary disciples, and Noble Ones. Ordinary disciples differ from the Noble Ones in that they do not possess the dhamma eye, which the Noble Ones do. Here, therefore, only the virtues of the Noble Ones are implied. There are four pairs, eight in all. The stream enterer path and fruit, the once-returner path and fruit, the non-returner path and fruit, the emancipated path and fruit.”

(from a book on his life and teachings by Terry Magness ).

It's echoed in contemporary teachings from the temple on the Four Noble Truths:

Such Buddhist nobles have overcome craving, even though some have not yet attained Nirvana - they have seen and known Nirvana via their Dhamma eye i.e. by meditational insight.

(The Buddha's First Teachings: The Cessation of Suffering by Phrabhavanaviriyakhun)

Are all utterances of equal value among those who hold the Dhamma eye? There might be different levels of response to this question. In terms of secular or historical authority, we might expect a process of 'graceful degradation' whereby the greatest authority (from whom there are no doubts about proclaiming Buddhavacana) are the utterances from a Buddha; these are followed by utterances of a Chief Disciple, then the Arahat in general, then Anāgāmi (Non-Returner), Sakadagami (Once Returner) and finally the Stream Enterer (Sotāpanna). Recall both lay and ordained can be members of the Āriya Sangha, though it's said that a lay person can't survive as an Arahat without ordaining very quickly.

If we assume the necessity of the Dhamma eye, then for the historical context we should consider questions regarding the sustenance of its practice. Did the Buddha make any remarks about its prosperity? If we consider this, then we may find a historical override to perpetual argumentation in the Buddha's prediction that his dispensation would be limited: “...now, Ānanda, the Brahma-faring will not last long, true dhamma will endure only for five hundred years.” (Vinaya: Culavagga X: I.6, I. Horner trans.). It is made in the context of the establishment of the bhikkhuni order and the recorded detrimental affect (halving the time of dispensation) grates against modern sensitivities, but it should not be dismissed out of hand as the account makes clear that gender is no barrier to attaining nibbāna.

What might the impact be on Buddhavacana? If this statement is true historically and we assume the necessity of "true dhamma" for the extensions to Buddhavacana, then it would appear to restrict such extensions to no later than the 1st century CE and it would imply a more conservative view of what constitutes early Buddhist texts. It would certainly negate assumptions that the transmission of any text per se legitimates or supports in perpetuity the extension of Buddhavacana.

However, this statement does not imply that henceforth there will be no new Buddhavacana. The statement about "true dhamma" is made only with respect to Buddha Gotama's dispensation since, at the very least, it is recorded that there is Buddha Metteya still to come in this world cycle, who in turn will set forth "true dhamma". But again, we may ask what is this "true dhamma"? Some scholars have interpreted this only as a historical material corpus of texts (transmitted orally or in written form). Yet I think it likely that the present canon is substantially a reliable record of what was originally said, so it seems unlikely to me that this is what the Buddha was referring to. A more pertinent interpretation in my view is that the Buddha is referring to dhamma practice, sublime practice, difficult to discern, that is essentially based on the Dhamma eye. Thus the statement is more fundamental: it states that the core of what he taught as practice (i.e. the 'Middle Way' etc.) would be lost.

At first glance, pondering the implications of this can be discouraging, but if we continue to focus on the faculty of the Dhamma eye in relation to "true dhamma", we can ask is it sufficient to proclaim Buddhavacana (as well as necessary)? If it is sufficient, then there arises the possibility of new Buddhavacana if the Dhamma eye is re-discovered without the historical material presence of a Buddha.

References

Rhys-Davids and Stede, Pāli-English Dictionary, Pali Text Society, 1921–5. [Available online at: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/pali/]
Conze, Edward trans. 1994[1973]. The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 lines [Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra], Sri Satguru Publications
MacQueen, Graeme. 1981. Inspired Speech in Early Mahāyāna Buddhism I. Religion 1981 vol. 11, Academic Press, 301-319
MacQueen, Graeme. 1982. Inspired Speech in Early Mahāyāna Buddhism II. Religion 1982 vol. 12, Academic Press, 49-65

Master's Dissertation on Buddhism: On the Fifth Precept as Avoiding Heedlessness

สวัสดี ปี ใหม่! Even if you don't read Thai, I think you can guess this annual greeting. :-)

The customary celebrations have been accompanied by the usual over-celebrations with adverse consequences reported in familiar headlines such as Rising alcohol addiction costs 'could cripple the NHS'. So it may be an appropriate time to share some research into the Fifth Precept in Buddhism, which I undertook as part of my Master's in the Study of Religion.

Observing this precept is an undertaking to avoid intoxicants. So what was the original meaning of this precept? How is it interpreted today, particularly in social contexts? Do practitioners from different traditions have the same attitudes or are there variations? I explored these and other issues in my Master's dissertation on Avoiding pamāda: An analysis of the Fifth Precept as Social Protection in Contemporary Contexts with reference to the early Buddhist teachings. The exploration is essentially concerned with just the one Pali word, pamāda, which can be translated as 'heedlessness.'

As with my essays in Christianity, I was being a bit ambitious, perhaps trying to bite off more than I could properly chew. It's commonly known that there are variations, but I'm not aware of research that has shown this empirically. So I've made a little step in this direction by carrying out a survey, looking at people's understanding of the precept in theory and how they put it into practice in particular social scenarios. I wrote this up as a separate piece of work as it was too big to fit into the dissertation (but since all Master's work was marked anonymously, I had to make cryptic references so that the author of the dissertation wasn't made explicit).

I was able to establish with reasonable confidence that there were indeed variations in attitudes among practitioners in different traditions, so how did the variations arise? In my background reading I made use of quite a few Mahāyāna texts, especially those relating to the Bodhisattva ideal. Along the way, Graeme MacQueen's fascinating study of Buddhavacana prompted some reflections. Again, owing to space limitations, I couldn't write much about this in the dissertation, but at least there are some notes that I could write up at a later date.

Just one other observation. Although pamāda is most commonly connected with alcohol and mind-altering drugs, the Buddha indicated a more general scope in his guidance to avoid the intoxicated mind. I found this in the early texts when I came across the compound, jūtappamādaṭṭhānānuyoga, which I've translated as 'gambling, a yoke that is the cause of heedlessness.' I think it's apt to point to this now as I think it is this mentality that has contributed in no small measure to the global financial crisis where trading on the financial markets has been - as far as I can tell - a kind of gambling. The more I explore the texts, the more I see how fundamental heedfulness is to developing one's practice.

I hope the dissertation is interesting and helpful. Any feedback - comments, suggestions, critiques - would be welcome, either by email or as comments to this blog. I think there's a lot more research that could be pursued in this area, especially in relation to physical and mental health.

Orientation for a student pre Parliament of World Religions, Melbourne

What has religious studies got to do with interfaith? If that question prompts blank looks or a state of denial, then for scholars of religion, I would recommend doing what I finally got round to doing on a plane - read Peggy Morgan's paper, 'The Study of Religions and Interfaith Encounter.' (in NUMEN, Vol. 42 (1995)). It's very timely, especially for myself with the prospect of the Parliament of the World Religions approaching very fast.

Morgan's paper (even though I'm blogging, I feel academic matters assert some formalities) was authored in 1993, the year that the International Interfaith Centre was co-founded by three organisations. In her second footnote, Morgan writes: “The International Interfaith Centre is intended to provide Westminster College with a research resource and has been set up jointly with the World Congress of Faiths and the International Association of Religious Freedom.” Her paper makes a number of references to the World Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893, from which the present series, the Parliament of World Religions, is derived. It's very absorbing, the kind of paper that distils evidently many years of study and engagement with topic, offering various reflections that give shape to how the academic deliberations of and encounter with inter-faith can point to ways to that sharpen that encounter, make it become more (self-)aware of possible effects and contributions. It also gives some pointers as to what academics may usefully investigate, with some underlying directions. The suggestion is amply made that the tools offered by various disciplines – of anthropology, sociology and phenomenology – offer considerable potential to enhance interfaith very broadly.

My passage to this year's Parliament in Melbourne has been kindly sponsored by the IIC and as part of the deal I've been asked to write an article on interfaith developments, in quite broad terms. Given Morgan's article and my recent studies in religion, it seems appropriate to observe and try to survey and evaluate – in a very partial way – what's going on now and compare the situation with that of 15 years ago.

From a personal perspective, I tend to come in and out of these large gatherings (8,000 expected on this occasion), as my usual work is in academic IT. So I imagine that if you're an interfaith veteran, I may be repeating things in ways that have been far better expressed before. However, Morgan also raises questions about how one's personal background affects the nature of the study. So it may be interesting to see (for others to commnt on) how having had two parents practising devoutly their religions and having imbued me with both – something rare even in mixed marriages – may impact on my more academic writings.

From the other side, my personal practice means I can seek to validate what goes on among (amid the many lofty words of) the academics, according to my experience. From my time in Oxford's local interfaith scene (which usually means informal gatherings where there's food!) there's been more than a passing mention of indifference to Oxford University's academics, who are perceived as in their own self-created ivory tower. However, Morgan provides an excellent demonstration of thoughtful concern, dealing on the human level, yet subjecting her reflections to the particular rigours of academic analysis - though it's just one kind of rigorous analysis, I'd add. As a result, she comes up with very interesting and pertinent questions – asking the right questions and collecting quite a few in this paper. It's particularly some of these questions that I should try to keep in mind as I explore the Parliament (and other related gatherings).

Here are a few of the questions Morgan raises:

Academics in attendance of such meetings raises the question of identity and its relationship to the subject of study: “Are they there as members of a faith community, which many are, but which is not a requirement for research in the study of religions?” [This latter point about requirement can be challenged with regard to the quality of study – there's a whole raft of insider/outsider discussions with which I know Morgan is very familiar]. I like to consider: Who speaks for whom? When listening for whom are you listening?

Morgan asks further: “If they are there as academics first and foremost what relevance do such gatherings have to their academic work? Does participation in any way tinge the academic agenda with a kind of para-theology?” And Morgan is ready with some illustrations of this. Another question: “Does the agenda of interfaith work potentially cast a shadow over the shape of the study of religions in the same way that concerns of an individual religion might?” (We can consider, for example, how does a Divinity department deals with the study on World Religions). Further, “Is interfaith a kind of new religious movement?”

Not sure how far I'm going to get into this, but at least it could be useful to lay down some markers.

[sent from Federation Sq., Melbourne]

Three Essays in Christianity: Miracles, Meditation and Marriage

Having finished the Master's, I'm now pleased to share some of my writings. Here I make available with very brief descriptions copies of the essays I submitted.

• Religion and Healing: Miracles and the Shrine of St. Frideswide in the late Twelfth Century
  I focus on two narratives penned by Prior Philip, the head of the monastery of St. Frideswide in the 1180s. Many miracles were claimed at that time around the translation of her purported relics, so the Prior crafted a vivid record so as to promote her name.

• Visions Within: Spiritual Development and the Evolution of Imagery in Teresa of Àvila's The Interior Castle
  I attempt to highlight and clarify different stages of the inner journey by reference to a number of different approaches to the identification and analysis of patterns in her imagery.

• The Catholic Church and Inter-religious Marriages: Reflections on Pastoral Theology and Practice after Vatican II
  Vatican II is famous for many efforts at modernisation of the Church's religious mission. It laid foundations for increased ecumenism, including the case of mixed marriages, where the non-Catholic party is a Christian of another denomination. However, what about marriages with non-Christians? Much depends on canon law...

Comments are welcome - you can post them on this blog.

Avoiding 'Invisible Idiots' in the translation of Vatican documents

The dust is just settling as this course comes to a conclusion. I have some time now to cast my mind back on some particular episodes as a student on this M.St. course.

One of the challenges I faced was finding tantalising references in footnotes, especially those which promised to provide some special insights or even definitive analysis by which to anchor an argument. To what lengths should one go to follow such references...?

Such was the case when I worked on my essay, The Catholic Church and Inter-religious Marriages: Reflections on Pastoral Theology and Practice after Vatican II. I was focusing mainly on those marriages where the non-Catholic party was not a Christian, for which there is a rather unfriendly formal term in Latin, disparitas cultus, though it is rendered more softly in English translation as "disparity of worship." The analysis depends on canon law and Bishop John McAreavey gives a good overview of the this and what it can mean in the parishes where there is an ecumenical union (i.e. marriage with another [baptised] Christian: Mixed Marriages: Conversations in Theology, Ecumenism, Canon Law and Pastoral Practice. In one of the footnotes he refers the reader for a comparative analysis of this case with that of disparity of worship: a paper by Urbano Navarrete, an expert in canon law, who, we are informed, has described this as "a symbiotic relationship."

That sounded intriguing! But the reference in question was an official Vatican publication: L'impedimento di "disparitas cultus" (Can 1086), a chapter in I Matrimonii Misti, a volume in juridicial studies from the Vatican Library. Dated 1998, it seemed fairly recent, but it was also in Italian. I've never learnt Italian...

Libraries at your service

Undaunted, I opened up a Web browser tab and pointed Firefox at Oxford's online library catalogue system. However, no trace of this chapter or volume in the Bodleian. I did find it on sale from a couple of Italian online book sellers, but it seemed an expensive route. So I trundled over to the Enquiries Desk at the Bod and asked about inter-library loans. According to COPAC, there was no copy available in the UK, so it would require an international inter-library loan. I was encouraged to get in touch directly with the Vatican. So I duly wandered over to the Vatican Web site, found its library, which is currently closed to members of the public. In any case, I filled in an online registration and found a way to submit a query. I received a prompt reply indicating that actually the the Vatican Library generally holds works of antiquity, at least the volume I requested was considered too recent.

Back I went to the Bod and steeled myself to request an international interlibrary loan. According to Worldcat, which can list libraries in order of proximity, there were several European libraries that had the title in stock. I cast my eye down the list and singled out a German library, the Bavarian State Library (positive discrimination - Germans are efficient!) And a few weeks later it arrived.

The Bodleian is a reference-only library, so any items acquired through inter-library loans are subject to these constraints. Furthermore, although I could take notes, I wasn't allowed to photocopy anything myself - that had to be done by the library staff and according to copyright law they could only do this for one chapter. Accordingly I requested the copying of Cardinal Navarrete's chapter, but I became interested in another chapter on pastoral issues - Matrimoni misti e problemi pastorali by Agostino Montan. This meant I had to take notes - in Italian - from a chapter of 30 pages! This is where I was confronted with not having learnt Italian. What to do? Fortunately, my situation wasn't desperate (timewise or linguistically). I had studied French, Spanish and Latin at secondary school and could gain the gist of a paragraph. From this I could see several sections that seemed particularly useful, including some stats about the religious make-up of marriages carried out in Rome, and some interesting pastoral initiatives in some Northern Italian towns and cities involving groups of couples getting together in marriage preparation. It was these that I copied - sloowly, word for word, like a boy in primary school!

In possession of one nicely produced scan of one chapter plus some notes from another, I now needed more accurate translation of the most relevant bits. I pinned up notices in College - Sai leggere l'italiano? and received a resounding zero responses. :-( I started asking any friends who had even dabbled in the language and was offered translations of selected passages at the rate of 1 word a minute! More promising was a kind offer of assistance from one of my father's polyglot friends from church, Tim O'Sullivan, who is competent in most European languages, who knowing my technological leanings offered a particular word of caution...

We may have the technology, but watch out for 'invisible idiots'!

Whilst trying to find a person who could help I was also exploring an automated technological solution. I first had to generate an electronic version of the texts that had been copied and transcribed and I was given a boost as the library-generated photo-copies were nicely done, clear and uniform, enabling very accurate optical character recognition (OCR) translations - even the footnotes were generally accurate, when all I needed really was the body text. Once in possession of an electronic copy I then proceeded to try machine translation, initially through Babelfish. Although I had used Babelfish quite often before for words or short phrases, I had not really tried far more substantial passages of text. Alas, in this case I found it seriously deficient and discounted this tool as an aid.

However, no online search is complete without Google ... and Google's offering impressed me immediately in being so accommodating, happy to consume large chunks of text and produce translations for the whole lot. More importantly, it was a world apart in quality. Why? I think there's a combination of reasons that make it a good match. It uses statistical methods, trained on large corpora of texts. The core texts in question (see e.g. Wikipedia for discussion) were UN documents - they are formal, rambling, extensive and translated into many languages. And Vatican documents are ... likewise! There are few colloquial idioms used. Even so, word combinations can be parsed and interpreted in so many different ways that it's easy to get the wrong end of the stick, as we might say.

Mr. O'Sullivan was keen to relate to me a story that he had heard in the 1960s concerning English-to-Russian translation (when we met it was topical coming shortly after Hillary Clinton 'pushed the wrong button' on a state visit, but at least both sides saw the funny side!). The story, which was probably very popular at the time of the Cold War, ran along the following lines: boffins produced a computer program into which you could input one or more words. Enter a single word and out popped the correct Russian equivalent and vice versa. However, they next tried "out of sight out of mind" and after a slight pause there emerged the Russian equivalent of "invisible idiot"! I gather that it is actually apocryphal, traceable to an earlier period in which scientists were speculating about possible issues - anyway John Hutchins debunks the myth and offers to explain what was actually going on. Even so, you can still catch out many tools by entering a phrase and translating it back again. This is where, I guess, statistical methods are very useful. In any case, where a translation looked odd in a particular context, I would break it up into smaller chunks and translate those separately, repeating the process until it became clearer or made sense.

At the end of the day I read closely perhaps a dozen pages and quoted from just a few paragraphs. That must seem a very poor rate of return on such efforts, but in this instance I'm going to claim it was how I got there that was more informative and entertaining!

Encountering the Miracle Collection of St. Frideswide

Another topic that I'm delving into for an essay takes us back to medieval times, specifically to the end of the 12th century. Here the focus of attention is a figure who actually lived in Anglo-Saxon times: St. Frideswide, the patron saint of Oxford, but there's not much known about her: the academic literature indicates that there's no contemporary account; the earliest manuscripts concerning her life were written several hundred years later. (See e.g. a brief summary).

However, in 1180 there was a great ceremony to translate her purported bones to a new shrine, carried out under the direction of Prior Philip of the Augustinian Monastery of St. Frideswide. He left us with a record of miracles in a series of narratives, a little over 100 in total. They're written in Latin and apparently, unlike her life stories, there's no English translation available of the miracle collection apart from the odd passage and a few quotes.

At least the collection is available conveniently in printed form in the Acta Sanctorum (Acts of the Saints), which is a compendium of documents detailing the lives of saints, organised according to each saint's feast day. They were published by the Société des Bollandistes from 1643 till 1940 and are accessible online from various sites, I think. I made use of the Chadwyck-Healey database available on subscription. Frideswide's Feast Day is October 19th and the miracles are contained in an appendix. Hence the reference is: Acta Sanctorum. Oct. VIII (Main volume text) Dies Decimanona. De Sancta Frideswida Virgine, Patrona Oxoniensi in Anglia. Appendix ad Acta S. Frideswidae.

Prof. Henry Mayr-Harting and Dr. Simon Yarrow have explored this collection in book chapters ('Functions of a Twelfth Century Shrine' in 'Studies in Medieval History Presented to R.H.C. Davis' and in 'Saints and their Communities: Miracle Stories in Twelfth-century England' respectively), revealing some fascinating insights, especially in social and economic history. Yet, I think they may have only scratched the surface as a print-out of the collection runs to dozens of pages! It could be studied a great deal more, for further exploration into medieval life regarding the Church's relation to wider society - religious, social, economic etc.

So as a small contribution I am pleased to offer a translation of one of the narratives, aided especially by Whitaker's Words and a windows front-end called Latin Assistant. Many thanks to Joerg Friedrichs for looking over the translation and correcting a few things, but any remaining errors, awkwardness etc should be regarded as mine (I am only an amateur at this)! I'll reproduce the Latin and then present the translation underneath.

The Miracle Narrative

[9][Alteri puellulæ lumen oculorum restituitur.] Erat in eodem pago juvencula quædam Adelitia nomine, extra muros ejusdem pagi habitans h, quæ aliquanto tempore ante beatæ Virginis Translationem, tali correpta fuerat incommodo, quod ciliis oculorum nimio tumore depressis, præ nimia ciliorum gravedine nec oculos aperire, nec quicquam videre poterat. Mater itaque ejus filiæ, materna pietate compatiens, pro salute filiæ medicos consulit, frustra id modicum quod habebat in medicos expendens, languore jugiter ingravescente, et incommodo de die in diem in deterius vergente. Convolat demum mater ad divinæ miserationis asilum, per dies multos ad beatæ Virginis ecclesiam filiam ducens, et pro ejus salute devotissime supplicans. Nec tædium parit dilatio, spes diffidentiam relegat, perseverat impetendo fides, ut humani defectum auxilii divina suppleret potentia. Nec repulsum passa est devotio, desiderantem rei desideratæ consolatur effectus. Quippe feria quinta in Cœna Domini, antequam Missarum agerentur sollempnia, cum in oratione super beatæ Virginis sepulcrum juvencula prostrata persisteret, subito tota ciliorum gravedine tamquam manu scalpente detersa, tumor paulisper resedit, videndique perfecte recepit officium. Profluebat autem diutius ex oculis sanies, et non multo post interjecto tempore, sic divinæ manus beneficio curata est, ut in ea nulla prorsus ægritudinis pristinæ remanerent vestigia.

English Translation

There was in that municipality a certain young woman whose name was Adelitia, living beyond the walls of that municipality, who for some time before the Translation of the blessed Virgin, had been struck by such inconvenience with her eyelids shut from excessive swelling, and because of very great catarrh of the eyelids she couldn't open her eyes and hence she could not see anything. And so the daughter's mother, compassionate with maternal devotion, for the sake of her daughter's health consulted a doctor, spending that small amount she had in vain, as the feebleness was constantly growing more serious and the inconvenience was getting worse day by day, going downhill.

Finally, the mother had recourse to the asylum¹ of divine mercy, for many days taking her daughter to the church of the blessed Virgin, and praying most devoutly for her health. And the delay did not bring weariness, [for] hope eased the doubts, faith persisted by intense petitioning, so that divine power could make up for the inadequacy of human help. And her devotion was unyielding², as her longing for the [anticipated] outcome of her yearning had a consoling effect.

In fact, on Maundy Thursday, before the solemnities of the Mass were carried out, while the young girl lay prostrate in prayer over the tomb of the blessed Virgin, suddenly just as if all the catarrh of her eyelids was surgically removed by hand, the swelling shortly subsided, and she was re-installed into the capacity of seeing perfectly. Moreover, pus was continually flowing out of the eyes, and not much later, she was cured by the kindness of the divine hand, in such a way that there remained in her absolutely no vestiges of the original sickness.

Note

• For asilum read asylum since a gad-fly doesn't make sense! (It was explained to me that the use of 'y' is uncommon and this was originally a Greek word).

Perhaps a community wiki would be a good way to enable much more of this collection to be translated?

Waltzing around the libraries

It's Week 0, bringing very quickly the prospect of another term. I realize I've hardly posted anything at all about my course, so before I feel deluged with reading and essays, I'll offer a glimpse of what a day is like on my course (the M.St. in the Study of Religion). The main theme will be libraries.

This is a taught course, so I have tutorials, especially on the Nature of Religion. We've already received in advance a reading list for all the tutorial sessions this term, arranged week by week. Typically they consist of books and conference papers and the first port of call is the online library catalogue - the entrance is through SOLO, which is a kind of portal offering a number of services. The two that I use most are OLIS and Oxford e-Journals. OLIS has a remarkably high proportion of the millions of (physical) items catalogued; and with the e-Journals service, the University has subscriptions to many electronic editions of journals, all of which are now conveniently available through single sign-on.

So you can plan beforehand where you need to go to find X, Y and Z. (I think it would make a nice project in operational research / mobile learning to develop a tool where you could feed in a reading list, your travel preferences (foot, bike etc) and then out pops your itinerary... actually just these kinds of ideas have been bounced around in the Erewhon project ...)

There are some grand and elegant library spaces, but for myself, I prefer to borrow books to read in the comfort of my home, with a cup of tea. So on Monday, equipped with a reading list, scribbled with libraries and shelf numbers, I descended on the town, arriving first in the Social and Cultural Anthropology library (aka Tylor Library). It's a departmental library that sprawls across several rooms and a couple of floors - fairly typical arrangement. Like many (most?) departmental libraries, it opens its doors to graduate students from around the University. It has a photocopier, but its own card system - the Bodleian photocopy card doesn't work here.

After some copying and a book loan (concerning Hindu diaspora), I jogged down the Banbury Road to OUCS to join the meditation group there just before they got started. I'm very happy that they keep this going and allow me to join after I left the department. :-)

Then lunch in college (St. Cross), a bit of e-mail in the common room, and on into town. I tried to collect lecture lists for this term from OUP, but they were closed: a sign indicated "stock taking." Hmmm.. Subsequently I popped into Blackwells, made my way upstairs to the 2nd hand department and bought a copy of 'Teresa of Avila' ('Outstanding Christian Thinkers' series) by Rowan Williams, now Archbishop of Canterbury. Now I can find out a bit more about the way he thinks.

Then on to the Social Sciences Library, which is in a modern building, with large rectangular floor areas. I found their photocopiers do accept Bodleian photocopy cards and so I copied an article from a journal on diaspora, this one focusing on Muslims in Ethiopia and Canada. Afterwards, coming across the science area, I made my final call at the Radcliffe Science Library and bumped into a neighbour from the Close, who has been doing research there for many years. We exchanged a few words about aspects of healing - I'm hoping to write an essay that will focus on this in the Medieval period in relation to the translation of St. Frideswide's purported relics. More large rectangular floor spaces. I had a reference to 'BP..' (Dewey Classifications system) but initially all I could find were letters near the end of the alphabet - plenty of familiar QAs (Mathematics). Eventually found 'Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe' right towards one corner.

Curious to see the spread of libraries, I've looked at the loans record for last term and come up with the following figures (apologies for the poor formatting, but I don't find it easy to control the styling in blogger):

Library
	Theology	Social and Cultural Anthro.	Oriental Institute	Social Sciences	Radcliffe Science	Balfour (Pitt Rivers)	Harris Manc. College
Subject Area
Nature of Religion	2	13		7	2		1
Buddhism	3	1	5			1	2
Total	5	14	5	7	2	1	3

Maybe a little surprising... Anyway, I hope to repeat this exercise at the end of this term.

Weber's Sociology of Religion: Problems in the Methodology of Difference

I have only initial impressions from reading a small fragment of Weber's work and a scholar's overview, but there are some issues which have emerged to do with his methodology and I think they are significant.

To paraphrase from my readings - Weber observed that in Protestantism, especially in Calvinism, there were beliefs and practices that had an important bearing on economic affairs; key was thrift, which was pleasing to God in that it reflected values that rejected this world and sought the divine. This led to the amassing of capital and the development of capital was a reflection of this process; it subsequently became something that was regarded as being of positive worth. This was a spark for Weber's main thesis that Protestant asceticism was a major factor that led to economic growth in Western Europe based on the 'spirit of capitalism.' Having written the early work 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism' Weber sought to investigate more deeply religious phenomena with respect to the social context and thus he spends quite some time developing his notions and analysis, especially - as reported in my previous post - of the 'ascetic' and 'mystic.' He establishes that this ethic in relation to its creating conditions for the spirit of capitalism contributes to Western Europe having a pre-eminent position in terms of capitalist development.

However, from reading the literature the analyses vary about what is unique, the extent to which the religious practises caused the spirit of capitalism - some muffle it and just refer to it as a 'factor', in which case what were the causes, were there any?! I guess also that the views have shifted over time! I wonder with so much ambiguity, how far can this work be fairly called scientific? In terms of being systematic, what do academics agree upon? I'll try to indicate some of this variability below

In trying to develop such a broad systematic treatment, Weber inevitably had to make quite a number of efficiency gains (to use economic parlance!) He had to make deliberate choices ranging from particularities in definitions (as in his treatment of 'asceticism' and 'mysticism') through to methods designed to extract distinctive features and marked results. (The particularity of the choices becomes obvious as I start reading a rather different book - 'The Idea of the Holy' by Rudolf Otto...)

One of Weber's fundamental tools was to isolate on the basis of difference and attempted to do this in a way that accounted for subjective individuality, whilst avoiding complexity. For this he formulated the notion of 'ideal type.' For analysis at a particular moment in time I think this seems reasonable, but problems crop up when you start moving forward along the timeline because becomes completeness becomes critical ... and I wonder whether this notion is really adequate when analysing collective social situations?

In discussions on Weber's treatment of difference there's quite a diversity of views! Some claim or assume that Weber chose to base this on John Stuart Mill's Method of Difference, which he defined in his book A System of Logic (1843)], see e.g. Benjamin Nelson (1973): "tells us plainly that he applying Mills 'Method of Difference' and, therefore, looking for the factor or chain of circumstances which helped to explain some unique outcome of a given experiment" [sorry, I only have a second hand reference (further commented on below)].

Certainly, Nelson makes reference to it a year later: "Weber does not deal here in detail with the problem in the logic of the method of differences which he knew from the discussion of John Stuart Mill." p.274 [Max Weber’s “Author’s Introduction’’ (1920): A Master Clue to his Main Aims in Sociological Inquiry 44(4): 269-278]. I think that sentence is ambiguous - ir could read as "... deal with the problem in the logic..." though I don't think that's what was meant!

In notes on Max Weber: On Capitalism, John Kilcullen, appears to consider that Weber was indeed trying to apply Mill's method of difference to show that religion can be isolated as the factor that distinguishes the development of modern capitalist Europe from its Asian counterparts. However, he goes on to say:

"But Mill would have been horrified at such a crude application of his method of difference. It overlooks his warning that 'consensus' means, in social inquiry, that major institutions in one social context cannot really be compared directly with, and pronounced to be similar to, the 'corresponding' institutions embedded in another social context. This is drawing lessons from history in just the way Mill warns against (e.g. Logic, Book 6, ch.10, para.4). ['On the Inverse Deductive, or Historical Method']"

I better just note the definition!

Definition: Method of difference

If an instance in which the phenomenon under investigation occurs, and an instance in which it does not occur, have every circumstance in common save one, that one occurring only in the former; the circumstance in which alone the two instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or an indispensable part of the cause, of the phenomenon.

A B C D occur together with w x y z
B C D occur together with y w z

Therefore A is the cause, or the effect, or a part of the cause of x.

Again the problem is in knowing all the variables as well as the problem of abstraction indicated above.

However, it's argued against by others, including Stephen P. Turner [See The Search for a Methodology of Social Science: Durkheim, Weber, and the Nineteenth-Century Problem of Cause, Probability, and Action, Chapter 11, page 211 that Weber actually adopted an anti-Millian doctrine of cause. [I wonder why this book is so expensive - it doesn't help to promote a universal methodology!]

Returning to the comparison with Asian countries, what of the economic boom that developed there, especially in the second half of the 20th century in the 'Pacific tigers' such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia? It might be described as conspicuously capitalist. What gave rise to this? If we take the basic assumption about the Protestant ethic was unique in fostering the 'spirit of capitalism' that lead to capitalist economies and that ethic was uniquely Western European, then applying crudely Mills 'method of difference' implies that Asian capitalist growth must have its roots in Western Europe and to be consistent with that view capitalism was 'exported' to such countries (e.g. through invasion) and only then could it lead to similar kinds of economic development. Weber apparently considered this view.

This thesis, particularly the 'spirit of capitalism' being uniquely Western European in origin has (not surprisingly) been challenged from the East! See e.g. 'Max Weber revisited: Some lessons from East Asian capitalistic development' [Volume 6, Number 2 / April, 1989, Asia Pacific Journal of Management], which specifically contests Weber's Weber's thesis of the incompatibility of the Confucian ethos and rational entrepreneurial capitalism. Randall Collins, 'An Asian Route to Capitalism: Religious Economy and the Origins of Self-Transforming Growth in Japan' [American Sociological Review, Vol. 62, No. 6 (Dec., 1997), pp. 843-865, Published by: American Sociological Association] proposes a model "in which the initial breakout from agrarian-coercive obstacles took place within the enclave of religious organizations, with monasteries acting as the first entrepreneurs. This model is illustrated by the case of Buddhism in late medieval Japan." I haven't read these to check the validity of their particular claims, but papers like this at the very least point to the need for a weaker hypothesis - that doesn't claim the uniqueness of Western European Protestant ethic as providing the conditions of economic capitalism - but rather expressed in terms of looser religious orientations or dispositions of mind that are perhaps culturally-independent.

I think I shall now move on from Weber to get some other perspectives.

Weber's Sociology of Religion: An evolutionary approach?

I haven't finished the introduction by Talcott Parsons, but I decide it's time to look at the actual book itself! Once again I'm going to make reference to my knowledge of Buddhism to sharpen the focus.

The preface and introduction are valuable, but it's still a pity there's no foreword from Weber explaining the approaches in chapter 1 onwards - I wonder if there might be a way of including relevant fragments from elsewhere (more possible for online editions). In the translation there's even some difficulty about the chapter title, given here as 'The Rise of Religions,' which according to the review by Reinhard Bendix may be fine as a rendering of 'Die Entstehung der Religionen' but may not be the right one!

Weber's opening remarks in the first chapter state that one can't define or say what religion is until the conclusion of study, "our task ... to study the conditions and effects of a particular type of social behavior." Presumably, one can know what conditions and effects are religious and can identify their characteristics, attributes, etc... , after the event. But is this a bit 'chicken and egg'? What kind of language do we need for the definitions? It makes sense to informally survey the scene to gain some clues as to the kind of theory needed, but how far do you take that? When do you stop? How do sociologists determine when they've reached appropriate milestones and can start codifying?

Parsons hinted at Weber's problem of being "understood" - and from reading his introduction and literature on the Web, it seems he wasn't always successful. That probably reflects the use of natural language. In contrast, a mathematical approach would use a formal notation, have definitions up front and use these in working forward, to derive initially some lemmas and work up to major theorems. Imagine if mathematical theories were subject to such vagaries of uncertainty in translation and interpretation!

The second paragraph indicates the scale of the challenge: "the external courses of religious behavior are so diverse that an understanding of this behavior can only be achieved from the viewpoint of the subject experiences, ideas, and purposes of the individuals concerned - in short, from the viewpoint of the religious behavior's 'meaning' (Sinn)." (Sinn is a German word translated as 'sense' or 'connotation' - for the same reference objects, there may be different connotations.)

The third paragraph talks about "elementary forms of behavior." So the initial perspective appears to concern the origins of religious activity in terms of primitive elements. I guess this is meant to be analogous to the way we can talk in science about atomicity/irreducible elements, simple forms and so on. And of course some branches of science try to make sense of this through theories of evolution, but it's a major/critical step to apply this evolutionary approach to society ...

Accordingly Weber asserts that [in primitive religion] the primary orientation is this world - and the quote from Deuteronomy is intended to illustrate such a "primitive" viewpoint: "That it may go well with thee ... and thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth." But it is just one quote and even a hundred such quotes can't be proof [by example]! What about other viewpoints, e.g. the pursuit of Heaven? Consider e.g. Job 14:14 - "If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come." (King James Version of the Bible, [see KJV online])

The historical viewpoint is further hinted at with the analogy with making fire, traditionally associated with signs of emerging civilisation in early homo sapiens - it's tempting to map religious development to such evolutionary theories. Compare (and contrast) this with, say, a Buddhist view of humanity's evolution. It's described as a cycle (of Samsara), in which there is both human evolution and devolution with lifespans ranging over many thousands of years (DN. 26 Cakkavatti Sutta - The Wheel-turning Emperor: partly translated into English, with an introduction and also a full translation). However, it's a moral evolution and devolution that the Buddha describes... it is the nobility and virtue of mind that is regarded by the Buddha as a measure of the evolved nature of a human.

Weber states that the "ends are predominantly economic." Is this just reflecting the fact that the approach observes only what is observable...? I wonder to what extent this viewpoint affects the [sociological] analysis of different religious groups today? Is there the assumption that the primary orientation is this world, implying it must be material? What methodologies are used? An appropriate tool might be to carry out surveys of literature and questionnaires of adherents.

Whilst I readily accept that "religious or magical behavior or thinking must not be set apart from the range of everyday purposive conduct," I would query the paragraph's concluding clause: "since even the ends of the religious and magical actions are predominantly economic." If talking about evolution, how about evolution of views within an individual during their life, an evolution that could go from material to transcendental, i.e. [internal, subjective] lower and higher orientations? Given Parson's indication of support for describing changes within spheres, I guess the theoretical framework could support this.

It's tempting to think that current society represents somehow an advance over earlier (and hence primitive) societies. Weber tries to identify early forms of spiritual activity in groups, again leaning on what is observable, and states (p.3): "orgy is the primordial form of religious communication." and goes on to describe how intoxicants induce ecstasy and the aids to reach that transient state: "he may employ any type of alcoholic beverage, tobacco or similar narcotics - and especially music ..." This is a description that could easily apply to many people today who go out for the night, roving pubs and clubs! In fact the run-up fits also: "Because of the routine demands of living, the layman may experience ecstasy only occasionally, as intoxication." This matches the habits of people unfulfilled in their daytime jobs, living only for the weekends and its night-time attractions. But would we call this 'religious behaviour'? I think not - just 'hedonistic behaviour' would be more likely and what can we deduce about evolved humanity then ...?

What about silence as promordial communication? Before the noise there was the silence. Yes? But silence may not be easily registered - it can be only momentary, yet deeply communicative.

Taking things further, what about observations of a monastery where most inhabitants spent most of their time in silent meditation? Most of the 'action' - in terms of experiences of rapture, altered states, jhanic absorptions and so on might be vivid and deeply meaningful, yet have little or no outward manifestation. One might argue that this is not characteristic of primitive religion, yet it is commonly said that children, unencumbered by too much thinking (rationality) can access deep states very quickly and perhaps the same applies to 'simple cultures' in general.

I think this is evidence of the problem of the external descriptive approach.

In theory, sophisticated religion evolves so that magic is left behind. According to Parsons, "In the end, the study of Protestant ethic, according to Weber, merely explored one phase of the emancipation from magic, that disenchantment of the world that he regarded as the distinguishing peculiarity of Western culture." To what extent does that really hold today? Many of the top sports people still exhibit what might be regarded as superstitious behaviour: consider Rafael Nadal's pre-match routine just before play commenced at the classic Wimbledon 2008 final - the cameras showed him sipping out of one water bottle and then the next. More generally, what is/are the attraction(s) of the Harry Potter novels?

Weber then comes to the concept of the soul (which is acknowledged as not being universally accepted) and states: "...what is primarily distinctive in this whole development is not the personality, impersonality or superpersonality of these supernatural powers, but the fact that the new experiences now play a role in life." i.e. A raison d'etre (internalised) in themselves; and the example given is ecstasy. The example of burials is given, useful in showing particularly how the development of belief in the soul changes the associated customs and rituals, which have to accommodate more their needs after death of the physical body, resulting in extra parameters (positioning of body, items placed with the body etc). Of course, a further refinement in belief may remove some of these and not necessarily put anything in their place. There are also other implications we can read into these practices, including some belief in rebirth or reincarnation (or at least some contiguous existence).

Parson's introduction hints at considerable debate around the extent to which Weber's approach was evolutionary and remarks intriguingly that anthropologists were strongly anti-evolutionary. Was that some or most of them? I wonder what their views are today?

That's the last post for today and I still haven't got far into the text - I think before I post again, I need to read a fair bit more.

Weber's Sociology of Religion: Using Differentiation as a Key

Still basing my analysis mainly on Talcott Parson's introduction, I come to Weber's initial topic: primitive religion.

According to Weber, all human society possesses what sociologists would classify as 'religion,' being inter alia "conceptions of a supernatural order, of spirits, gods or impersonal forces which are different from and in some sense superior to those forces conceived as governing ordinary "natural" events...." It's mentioned in particular that work by anthropologists has confirmed that the belief in the supernatural is universal.

Weber is particularly interested in distinguishing between primitive and sophisticated forms. Parsons explains by making the distinction between "natural man," a man belonging to primitive history, and rational man, of more recent times (note the absence of quotes) - it's insisted that for the former "cultural baggage" exists, and only the latter has the level of consciousness to consider dispensing with it. Or is it's removal in practice more of an orphaning of or divorce from practices that contain relevant spiritual meaning?

Continuing the distinction, for Weber breakthroughs [from primitive religion] is an important topic, searching for the directions they take and so on. From what to what? He uses the method of binary differentiation related respectively to and within the spheres 'material'(utilitarian-oriented, associated with daily living) and 'ideal' (to do with meanings and conceptions of the supernatural and the experiential dimension). The binary approach is applied repeatedly to gradually draw out finer distinctions. The outcomes of binary decisions impact change: either evolutionary changes in established order or consolidation of the established order [and institutionalisation]. It's subsequently reiterated that the primary interest for Weber is religion as a source of the dynamics of social change, not stability, and I take it is looking for conditions for processes of change with breakthrough.

A key dichotomy is expressed in terms of the functions of magician vs priest as mediators between humans and the supernatural: the former's ad hoc use of formulas vs the more systematic 'cult' that uses ritual and worshipping agents. Around this is the development of conceptions of the supernatural ... and hence relationships, claims, obligations etc. (using intermediaries). Note that for him the existence of the supernatural doesn't imply transcendental goals, especially not for primitive society.

Their functions are distinguished especially by their handling of another fundamental dichotomoy - between ethics and taboo: priests are concerned more general and universal orientation, and pattern of actions, whereas magicians deal with specific prescription and proscription of actions.

A footnote to this post: the dispensing with cultural baggage has been quite topical in Western Buddhist circles - some want to detach themselves from what they perceive as unnecessary cultural trappings, particularly the rituals, which come from e.g. the Far East - so as to live the 'pure' and 'pristine' teachings of the Lord Buddha. This might in Weber's perspective be a reflection of sophisticated culture - indeed the removal of attachment to rituals would remove one of the lower samyojanas binding to the 'lower shore' of samsara, but that's a really advanced state of practice...

Weber's Sociology of Religion: Setting up the Theory

The introduction to this edition of [Fischoff's translation of] Weber's Sociology of Religion is given by Talcott Parsons, who appears to be a very distinguished American sociologist, the 39th President of the American Sociological Association. It's quite weighty and I'm not sure how much I'll read before I move on, but I'm grateful for any elucidation.

Early on, Parsons states:''his focus was not upon religion "as such," as the theologian or church historian conceives it, but upon the relations between religious ideas and commitments and other aspects of human conduct.'' The foundations were laid in his earlier work 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism' (see e.g. the online transcription at the University of Virginia) - the Wikipedia entry describes how it is "an introduction into Weber's later studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economics."  In my first post I had highlighted the element of change and in the subsequent post, I picked up on Fischoff's attention to the processes of association.

Where does it all lead?  That earlier work's conclusion paints an image of how mechanistic working has become. "The Puritan wanted to work in calling; we are forced to do so."  He continues, "For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order." The detachment from the puritan roots, Weber reasoned, was reached post-reformation, without the Church, where most people couldn't determine for themselves a replacement religious authority apart from every day senses of achievement.  In the process of rationalization [Parsons emphasizes the centrality of this conception, pp. xxxii-xxxiii] there would be a tendency based solely on efficiency or calculation and so detachment from the religious roots.  It seems a very bleak picture (at least from a spiritual perspective).

Problems in Concepts and Analysis

After describing some context for Weber's work, Parsons introduces some of the major challenges in developing a systematic approach.  The first problem listed concerns our conceptual frameworks of the cosmos, covering divinity and religious interests. Do these influence mundane activities, e.g. economic action?

A second major problem is an analytical problem: the isolation of variables is sought so as to effectively measure their significance, which requires experimental methods that hold factors constant. It's then asserted that 'degrees of favourableness' of material factors approximate to the varying levels of development of capitalism. If all the materials factors can be held constant, the differing outcomes would point to religion being a significant factor.

So I expect analysis could be carried out between cities in Western Europe and South Asia and South-East Asia, not just overall, but at different levels of material wealth - what account should be taken at the extent of variability? I think it might be instructive to look especially at what happens at different levels of poverty, because it's often observed that, say, people with few possessions in Thailand and other Asian countries are seemingly quite content - since long before major economic development.  Is this contentment with materially little the case in the UK? Probably less so now than before because material expectations are greater nowadays (a facet of consumerism).

There have been many attempts at devising a global 'well-being' index, but different cultures have different values, so it's fraught with difficulty. For example, work on a Personal Wellbeing Index, devised in Australia indicates that objective measures are often idiosyncratic and thence, "With these issues in mind, the Personal Wellbeing Index has been developed to measure the subjective dimension of QOL – Subjective Wellbeing. "

A major issue is the completeness of variables in something so complex as society. It is readily acknowledged that there are many variables that would, for example, have a bearing on economic capitalism - the Wikipedia entry on the 'Protestant Ethic and Spiritual Capitalism' lists some examples: "the rationalism in scientific pursuit, merging observation with mathematics, science of scholarship and jurisprudence, rational systematisation of government administration and economic enterprise." So isn't the method somewhat on shaky ground, because can we ever be sure when we have an exhaustive list?   I reflect that the challenge is to determine meaningful conclusions about causality needs to deal with complexity and yet be sensitive to the tiniest vibration - famously expressed in chaos theory as the butterfly effect - though I actually think causality needs a moral basis - as expressed in the Buddha's teachings on kamma-vipaka.

[Pause for reflection: consider how the Buddha instituted the Sangha, and the economics that flowed associated with that, a veritable ecosystem - here the economics clearly followed from religion.]

Methods

A couple of new terms for me:

(i) Idiographic methods (the book spells 'ideographic' but that seems to have another meaning) -- the study of the individual, which tends to specificity and deals with subjectivity.

(ii) Nomothetic - the study of cohorts - the methods of natural science, which tends to generalisation and deals with observation.

A theory of human behaviour needs principles, definitions of processes, propositions and so on.  As Parsons states: "Causes of human behaviour cannot be found and established without implicit or explicit use of abstract and general concepts and propositions." An illustration or two would have been helpful, but I take it that this will become evident.  He goes on to stress that Weber retains some elements of historicist and idealist traditions, but the shift to general observation evidently carries many risks and I'm not surprised at the remarks by Parsons about the prominence of positivist reductionism with "Behaviorism an extreme manifestation."  There comes to my mind scenes from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in which the world is a laboratory experiment created by mice ... I think it reflects movement towards a kind of void.

One of the primary issues is a tendency to relativism, a term I've heard a lot with plenty of discussion, views and opinions etc.

Two foci:

1. Interpret action by understanding motices from "subjective" viewpoint [i.e. understanding intentions], put oneself in their shoes; but use patterns of meaning.

   This leads to ideal types, a cornerstone in Weber's system, of which 'Protestant Ethics' and the 'Spirit/Esprit of Capitalism' are two such types.  [Weber defines this there as: "An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct. [The methodology of the social sciences (Edward A. Shils & Henry A. Finch, Trans. & Eds.; foreword by Shils). New York: Free Press, 1997 (1903-1917). p.88.] 

   Weber's concept of the "ideal type" was the main path to the formulation of a general theory which incorporated "subjective" factors, the method of Verstehen.  So this is the response to my query in my previous post about the collective orientation.  Will it work sufficiently well...?

   The word "ideal" may seem odd to an English language speaker as it's usual connotation is to do with a goal of perfection, but I've seen it before - ideals are commonly found in algebra, specifically in ring theory.  The algebraic concept looks similar in vein in that it deals with groupings/representations of elements that exhibit properties common among individual numbers.  The algebraic term was apparently coined by Dedekind, a German mathematician, so I guess the word has a subtlety of meaning in German that doesn't get carried over in translation.

2. System of meaning (Sinnzusammenhänge): this links interests (motives) with situations to "understand" peoples' individual actions.

Weber was thus trying to develop a technical framework (German: Handeln) and found that a generalised framework was easier to work with than one treating specifics.

I'll end this post with a couple of questions.

1. To what extent are religious teachings idiographic or nomothetic?  In comparison, the Buddha formulated systematic teachings himself - in his great teachings on Paticcasamuppada (Dependent Origination) [a translation available] is about individual behaviours, but with collective effects.  It might be regarded as the epitome of process-oriented systems of thought! Incidentally, the fact that one may observe a group with same outward properties (e.g. a group receives an apparent windfall) doesn't imply any group actions to earn that windfall - the kamma could have been carried out separately by each individual, but with similar vipaka.]
2. What are the implications of paying attention to external vs internals (of spiritual life)?  I think it leads to diminished significance of the spiritual life (and so works against Weber's wish to adopt the "subjective" point of view).