"Buddha Nature," Ven. Thanissaro?

In honor of Festivus, which customarily begins with the "Airing of Grievances," let's take a critical look at Tan Geoff (American translator Ven. Thanissaro, abbot of Wat Metta, California) and the Mahayana-Hindu concept of [some sort of self to cling to through the idea of an essential] "Buddha Nature." Feel free to differ in the comments section for the traditional "Feats of Strength." Happy Festivus, the holiday for the rest of us!

What is "Buddha Nature"?

Ego Podcast (Buddhism) Discover the Buddha’s profound teachings on the nature of the mind (citta) and the path (magga) to true freedom (nirvana). Learn why the mind is neither inherently good nor evil, but capable of immense transformation. This video explores the Buddha’s insights into intentional actions (karma), freedom of choice, and the process of dismantling ignorance (moha, avijja, miccha-ditthi) to achieve liberation (mokkha, moksha). Find out how understanding (panya) and training the mind leads to ultimate peace and Awakening (bodhi).

#Buddhism #BuddhaNature #Mindfulness #Freedom #Awakening #Discernment #Dhamma #TrueFreedom

COMMENTARY

I have a right to my opinion! - Yes,
venerable sir, but state it as such.

Alas, this podcast suffers from too many Ven. Thanissaro (American Geoffrey DeGraff) bad translations, using his idiosyncratic renderings of many Pali terms one might otherwise recognize as countless other Western Buddhist translators have kept them. If one gives a new rendering, it would be customary to provide either the Pali term being translated or the common rendering.

But Ven. Thanissaro doesn't care anything about that, recklessly innovating and misleading countless readers through free distribution on websites like accesstoinsight.org and his English language books. If advice from Bhikkhu Bodhi couldn't restrain him, what could?

Therefore, we try to avoid his translations altogether, opting for the much more reliable and useful work of Bhikkhu Bodhi, Maurice Walshe, Andrew Olendzki, Ajahn Sujato, the Buddhist Publication Society and the German-Jewish monks who, following in the footsteps of the British team who worked on the Pali Text Society translations, give reliable and illuminating renderings of difficult Buddhist terms and concepts.

The one-man wrecking crew that is Ven. Thanissaro (Mr. Geoffrey DeGraff) will either go down in history as the biggest English-speaking goof with poor grammar (Hire a reliable editor and don't brow beat the person into submission with your heavy-handed opinions and quirks!) or the man who saved a generation of would-be Buddhists who never read the legends of Pali-English translation.

The other less serious but equally annoying problem is the A.I. voice can't pronounce even simple words like simile, making one realize that for a podcast on ego, there doesn't seem to be anyone home, just a machine reading text that seems tailor made by Thanissaro (aka Ajaan Geoff).

• Long ago his first Western student (Ven. Mahindo or Tan Jess) was inducted to Wat Metta and had a miserable time until he quit, as many others had who visited and were brow beaten and yelled at by the know-it-all monk-in-charge who had been thrown out of Thailand, it is rumored in Thailand, for trying to break Thai law and take over a temple. If one becomes abbot, one de facto owns the property, which Thai law did not allow. We tried to warn Tan Jess to go to Thailand and ordain there or at least see the tradition there, but he was being bossed around by Ven. Thanissaro by then so only did what he was told. This was long ago, when the latter was writing Wings to Awakening. Having a look at the manuscript, we thought it was garbage -- exactly for its idiosyncratic renditions of Pali words in needless misleading ways, bad grammar, and questionable novel interpretations of things -- and urged Tan Jess to say so if he were reading it over and being asked for notes. He was seized with terror; he wouldn't dream of making an actual note, correction, comment, or criticizing his "all-knowing" teacher, thinking what he might suffer as retribution for his candor and honest evaluation. Because he was a coward, and because Ven. Thanissaro surrounded himself with cowards or yes-men to look at his manuscripts and praise him, they are of poor quality. This is the way we revere monks in the tradition. It's wonderful that Ven. Thanissaro tackled these texts. What might have been if he had done so in a peer-reviewed way or with an editor to put his jumbled writing and invented-grammar into standard English? We were shocked to be told by Bhikkhu Bodhi that he corresponded with Ven. Thanissaro because this meant it was not that help and guidance was not available to Tan Geoff but that he apparently dismissed it, rejected it, or ignored it altogether, much to the detriment of the world. If you make people fear you and you don't take anyone's advice, this is what you can expect to happen to you. He photographs his own covers, edits his own writing (which is one way of having them go unedited), gets someone to proofread the obvious errors, and viola -- a generation of readers who think he's faithfully rendering the Pali canon. It is a pity. So we are reluctant to feature this nice sounding mechanical video, which makes some good points but makes the poorly, almost certainly reading verbatim from some Tan Geoff tome.

Otherwise, a good point is being made. By relying on such post-historical Buddhist concepts -- seemingly derived from Brahminical Vedic Hindu ways of thinking, which insists there is identity, and luminous consciousness is it (and identical with Brahman), an Atman of one kind or another, a waterdrop longing to return to the ocean (samsara) and be forever at rest in an eternal heaven.

Mahayana evades the impersonal nature of all things, preferring in its philosophy to go on and on about "emptiness" without seeming to know what phenomena are empty or devoid of. Self-nature, yes, but also of self or anything belonging to a self (soul, ego, personality). The Mahayana majority reads the Heart Sutra and it never occurs to them to study it, analyze it, and see how straightforward the point is being made: shunyata = anatta.

• Ego Podcast (Buddhism), Winter Solstice, 12/21/24; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY