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6/26/2025, 6:58:36 PM
>>24497938
t.Guénonfag here
Not really. For Guénon, the later schools were not the true representatives of the Buddha's teachings; he was influenced by Coomaraswamy in this regard. He was not entirely against Theravadin Buddhism (as his account of the milinda panha shows), but he was (like Sankara) hostile to the nihilistic schools that reified the concept (which was more of a strategy) of anatta for purely polemical purposes. In the Aṭṭhakavagga and Pārāyanavagga, the oldest part of the Pali canon, there is never any question of a non-self as an ontological concept.
>For the benefit of readers who may have been aware of the first edition of this book, we consider it appropriate to briefly indicate the reasons which led us to modify the present chapter: when this first edition appeared, we had no reason to doubt that, as is usually claimed, the most restricted and most clearly antimetaphysical forms of the Hînayâna represented the very teaching of Shâkya-Muni; we did not have the time to undertake the lengthy research which would have been necessary to explore this question further, and moreover, what we knew then of Buddhism was in no way of a nature to lead us to it. But, since then, things have taken on a completely different aspect as a result of the work of A. K. Coomaraswamy (who himself was not a Buddhist, but a Hindu, which sufficiently guarantees his impartiality) and his reinterpretation of original Buddhism, from which it is so difficult to extract the true meaning of all the heresies that have been grafted onto it subsequently and which we naturally had especially in mind during our first writing; it goes without saying that, as far as these deviated forms are concerned, what we had written at first remains entirely valid. Let us add on this occasion that we are always ready to recognize the traditional value of any doctrine, wherever it may be found, as soon as we have sufficient proof of it; but unfortunately, if the new information that we have had has been entirely to the advantage of the doctrine of Shakya-Muni (which does not mean all Buddhist schools indiscriminately), it is quite different for all the other things whose anti-traditional character we have denounced.
t.Guénonfag here
Not really. For Guénon, the later schools were not the true representatives of the Buddha's teachings; he was influenced by Coomaraswamy in this regard. He was not entirely against Theravadin Buddhism (as his account of the milinda panha shows), but he was (like Sankara) hostile to the nihilistic schools that reified the concept (which was more of a strategy) of anatta for purely polemical purposes. In the Aṭṭhakavagga and Pārāyanavagga, the oldest part of the Pali canon, there is never any question of a non-self as an ontological concept.
>For the benefit of readers who may have been aware of the first edition of this book, we consider it appropriate to briefly indicate the reasons which led us to modify the present chapter: when this first edition appeared, we had no reason to doubt that, as is usually claimed, the most restricted and most clearly antimetaphysical forms of the Hînayâna represented the very teaching of Shâkya-Muni; we did not have the time to undertake the lengthy research which would have been necessary to explore this question further, and moreover, what we knew then of Buddhism was in no way of a nature to lead us to it. But, since then, things have taken on a completely different aspect as a result of the work of A. K. Coomaraswamy (who himself was not a Buddhist, but a Hindu, which sufficiently guarantees his impartiality) and his reinterpretation of original Buddhism, from which it is so difficult to extract the true meaning of all the heresies that have been grafted onto it subsequently and which we naturally had especially in mind during our first writing; it goes without saying that, as far as these deviated forms are concerned, what we had written at first remains entirely valid. Let us add on this occasion that we are always ready to recognize the traditional value of any doctrine, wherever it may be found, as soon as we have sufficient proof of it; but unfortunately, if the new information that we have had has been entirely to the advantage of the doctrine of Shakya-Muni (which does not mean all Buddhist schools indiscriminately), it is quite different for all the other things whose anti-traditional character we have denounced.
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