Thesis issues.

[icarus]

So my thesis proposal is due this Tuesday. This is a proposal that will go to a committee who will decide if my project is worth working on. Then, if accepted, I will be spending the next year on this topic.

I originally wanted to research the history of tantric Buddhism, find the connections between tantric Buddhism and Indian esoteric Buddhism. But my professor wanted me to ask a why question. She said, "Your question is about definitions and the committee doesn't want that."

So I struggled to come up with a "why" question on the subject of a religion where the Buddha, when asked 14 different "why" questions, remained utterly silent. On a subject where "why" is utterly irrelevant. Why? Because you want to get enlightened, because suffering exists and you want it to end, that's why.

I didn't want to ask a "why" question.

So I tried to find something that worked for her (and the committee). The main problem being that although I'm in the International Studies, my subject is really more in the field of Asian Languages and Literature.

I found that I did have access to data on empowerments and initiations, and that no one had studied them. Okay. Maybe I could go there.

But. No one had studied them for good reason. They're secret. I worked up a few sections of the proposal, using that as my source of data, and my qualms started growing other qualms. I justified looking at this information as data because some of it had been made public by Buddhist teachers. I decided I could use that as my guideline as to what could be treated and secret and what couldn't.

Finally, I couldn't ignore those qualms. I had an ethical dilemma.

I spoke to my professor. She didn't see it as an ethical dilemma. Fuck. Every Buddhologist out there calls it an ethical issue. Conze (very famous non-Buddhist Marxist Sanskrit translator) calls it an ethical issue. If you give your word to keep something private, even in an ordinary situation, breaking your word is unethical. THIS IS NOT THE QUESTION I WANTED TO ADDRESS IN THE FIRST PLACE. I didn't yell at her. I don't call myself calm. When people tell me astounding things I tend to just stare at them and wonder, "am I the one wrong here?" But no, no, I'm not.

So we shifted the topic to "secrecy" in tantric Buddhism. And I am so, so, so very bored with this topic. Because this is of no interest to me whatsoever. It is not an important issue in the field of Buddhist studies. It hasn't been studied much that I can tell, but largely because no one cares.

Including me.

How did I get redirected from my initial fascinating historical project on the roots of tantric Buddhism and its transference from India to Tibet, into "Why are Secret Practices Secret"? Although yes, I agree, most of the misunderstanding about tantra comes from its secrecy. Of course it does.

Fine, fine, secrecy. I'll have to cobble together a new theoretical model based on semiotics, memory studies, and -- of all things -- medical studies of how people attempt to describe indescribable experiences like severe pain.

I have to (re)write 25 pages of a topic that I don't care about, that no one in Buddhology cares about, where the two theoretical models that apply to it (not that I have much reading in this area because I was planning to do a history project) pretend that spiritual systems exist only for social reasons and have nothing at the core. Today.

*curses a long blue streak*

I've been avoiding this all week.


ETA: There's one thing I trust about my professor. Her students have consistently brought down the house with their honors theses. They win the prizes every year--to the point where it's been proposed that our program be excluded from the competition because too many from it win. So I know she's right when it comes to what scholars in International Studies want to see.

ETA2: I feel like I've totally failed and that there's no way I can do this. If I tell wildernessguru my issues, he will equate them to his own negative experiences in school (his parents were both teachers and therefore had no perspective when it came to their own kinetic-learning-style kid and totally wrecked his education). He'll just tell me "You're not capable."

ETA3: No, no, no, the musician downstairs may not use today to sing off-key. No.

Comments

[sarka.livejournal.com]

Agh. I have zero experience in your field of research (I'm in the European part of International Studies) but two things, from your post: What happens when one tries to reframe one's research question into academese and come at the subject from an angle because that's how someone else wants you to do it is almost never pretty.

Two, going in on something you're hardly interested in is not likely to increase your interest in the long run.

Is there any way you can change your research proposal again within the time constraints that you've been given?

Given my limited knowledge of your field of research but having some idea of the discipline as a whole, my suggestions for why questions would be something like; "Why are *definitions-from-one-belief-system* inadequate to explain *practices/whatever-of-other-belief-system*?" or "Why does the *study-of-one-belief-system/definitions* cast light on *other-belief-system*?" or even "Why does the history of *belief-system-1* viewed in combination with *history of belief-system-2* give a better picture of the gradual development of the *belief systems* than a more narrow historical perspective?"

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Almost everyone in this program has had the same problem. They've had to fight to keep their focus on the topic they want to do. What one person has told me:

She tends to push (sometimes strongly) her ideas for where we should take our research, and I, at least, find it rather hard to resist. Her "contribution" to mine was the youth aspect, and the idea of youth fashion as part of shaping identity. My strategy for keeping the project my own was keeping the focus overall on biracial identity in Japan. I tried to remain firm on that, which was my main goal in doing this project.

Hmm. My main goal, to sum it up in plain language, was to fight the way tantra has been vilified, abused, and misunderstood.

The best way to do that, because of the lack of new historical evidence I can bring to the table, is to point out--hey, the thing that's being vilified (in this case, sexual tantric practices) isn't that important to the whole of tantra. What's the point defining a tradition by something that nobody does? Here's the real present day world of tantra, here's what is important (tantric initiation) and this is what it is. Have a look. Golly. That's not so bad after all.

I hit a snag because of the secrecy concerning tantric initiation. I thought could give some things out that I can't. Also, I've identified that the problem partially lies with the tantric Buddhists themselves. They're the ones keeping secrets, which means it's irresistible to make things up about it. And you can't refute the crazy stuff because you can't talk about it.

My professor jumped on that. She likes secrets. She immediately started saying, "Well, why is it secret? What sort of people are attracted to secrets, what does that create...?" which is... no, no. I don't think that's going to end up where I want to go. That's going to end with "Hello! Look at these freaks!"

Then the research on secrecy (so far) is all about the subversiveness of this group (CIA, anyone?) or the elitism of that one (Freemasons, anyone?). It totally ignores that the nature of the secret and the purpose of the secrecy will shape it. The Buddhists? They're secrecy is because words change experience. They talk about "purity" as being the reason for this secrecy.

So I sat down and wrote my own theory, using a grab bag of language theory of meaning creation (semiotics), and research on intense totally non-linguistic indescribable experiences (medical studies of pain), to describe why there are some things you can't talk about without degrading the meaning like a bad Xerox. You end up using metaphors and analogies and those are only partially successful. Buddhism says that enlightenment is indescribable.

And (this part I haven't found a theory to support me yet) you actually change and lose the original experience as you yap about it. I need to find something about memory formation, but my experience says that memories get reshaped, reformatted in the telling. Sort of like an internal game of telephone.

Anyhow, that's as far as I got when I realized that it was all about defending secrecy, when I wanted to study tantric initiation.

[twistedrecesses.livejournal.com]

The comment about memory brings me back to Psych 101. Of course, I probably couldn't find the reference even if I still had the book. I know I've read about theories like that before though, so they are out there somewhere.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'll scan the psych databases for articles on memory formation. I was looking in anthropology.

[sarka.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. That last bit sounds a little like the stuff I'm doing, on collective memory and identity creation. That's Aleida Assmann or Jan Assmann, or a number of others... there is heaps of research on the subject of collective memory/cultural memory. It might not be precisely what you're looking for, but it's a start.

Basically, it mostly deals with the transformation of individual memory into cultural memory, like you're saying, how the storytelling reshapes the memories - it has a lot to do with the extensiveness of memory and the medium in which the memory is transmitted. If you're intrigued, there's a really theoretical chapter on this subject in Contextual Political Analysis, published by Oxford University Press in 2006, edited by Goodin and Tilly. The chapter itself is by Aleida Assmann.

I think it's an intriguing idea, but I get that it's not what you wanted to do. The best way I could see to break out of your dilemma is to do the research on secrecy, but really focus on how that secrecy has shaped the popular view of Tantric Buddhism, which gives you the opportunity to explain the difference between the view of Tantric Buddhism and Tantric Buddhism itself. Which should give you some room to do research on Tantric initiation, right?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, I want to smooooooch you. This. This is solving my dilemma in so many ways.

1 - You've given me the missing puzzle piece for my memory research, to support the why of the secrecy.

2 - This is an excellent way to do both, because the tradition breaks with secrecy on the question of inition due to concerns over misunderstandings. I don't yet have a handle how to organize these ideas, but now I have a way to direct it back to what I want to do.

*smishes you and rumples you and overall acts in a highly grateful and relieved manner*

[sarka.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm glad I could be of assistance :) I hope this still holds up when you actually start looking into the research - a lot of the collective memory stuff has been done with reference to either nation formation or generational studies. That's the angles I'm working with the most, these days. But I'm sure there's a lot out there I haven't seen, I've barely scratched the surface :) (There's an actual journal out there titled History and Memory!)

*grins*

*takes opportunity to smooch you back*

;)

[ursula]

Yay!

My thought based on your initial proposal was that there is a why question in there, but it's not why about the history, it's why about the historiography-- why tantric Buddhism has been dismissed (orientalism, much?).