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

[greenling.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Good luck.

It's always annoying when they don't like what you're doing because you're not using the right vocabulary words in the question. I'd probably try to write a "why" paper on why "why" is a stupid question to ask or "why" my question is a really neat one- but then that's probably why you're largely an A student and I'm not. :3

[malnpudl.livejournal.com]

Well, hell. How immensely frustrating.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

It's a proposal for a project that I'd be working on for the next year, not a paper.

Not to mention the proposal's supposed to be 25-pages long and I will not have any time this weekend on to work on it. So today's it.

[seekergeek.livejournal.com]

Could you perhaps do a paper giving your take on *why* tantric Buddhism developed from those roots? Why do you think that this thing and that thing interacted with each other to become this whole new fascinating thing? I'm not an standard academician, but I have had occasion to do historical research papers of this sort before. I don't think you have to change your subject so much as you have to reframe it in the context that they want you to approach it from. Basically what they want from a thesis is for you to develop an opinion about something and then defend it. Hence the emphasis on the "why". You just have to critically analyze the history instead of simply reporting it. Does this help any? *is hopeful*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I don't want to report history, and the "why" question is unanswerable. We don't know why. There's not enough information from that time period. Most of it is destroyed.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

And what I wanted to work on was of no interest to my professor or the committee because it involved questions of defining tantra and distinguishing Buddhist tantra from Hindu tantra. Buddhologists care about these questions. International Studies does not.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

This is why I've been avoiding it all week. I'm so fucked in this thesis thing. And wildernessguru is singularly unhelpful.

[seekergeek.livejournal.com]

Damn. That sucks. Well, since my advice was completely useless, here - have a cookie. *hold out plate of chocolate chip cookies*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I complained to WG last night, and he said, "You're letting this one project take over and wreck your performance in your other classes." I told him that this one project is my entire grade for this class, which is one third of my grade for this quarter. Not that I tend to think in these terms because he sucked as a student in college and doesn't get that performance is never driven by concern for grades, especially not in my case. Grades are rewards at best, not motivators. If you use grades as motivators you'll do the minimum.

"Class? What class?" he said. "I thought this was an honors project."

WTF?

"It's a class connected to an honors project, to which I'm going to be graded, yes."

"You're going to be graded on this?"

Oh, good grief.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the cookie. Even experts in this field have nothing to work with. And the committee doesn't want to see me rework what is already known.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Also, dammit, this is the one that's due first. The other two aren't due for another two weeks.

[seekergeek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's frustration in a box, right there. *hands the plate over to you again*

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Maybe the problem is that they don't know what tantra is or WHY (there's that word) that you think it's important.

I would tell them about your whole progression of getting re-directed further and further from actual history, and that what you want to do is to increase the history known about the subject, rather than trying to answer a question that, in the context of the religion and those who study it, has no meaning...and would be speculative fiction at best.

They might understand that.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Good point.

[malnpudl.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. That is so very unhelpful. And so not what you need right now.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Thanks, WG. Tell me just to give up. And while you're at it, let's talk about why I'm a better (more determined, more interested, more hardworking, more motivated) student than you were. He seems to think that I'm magically smarter than him, but I'm getting the vibe that he doesn't understand the... struggle. Like, like, if it's hard, that's the point you give up-?

Sheeeiiiit.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's that he understands the value of not pussing out on a physical challenge, like his years in Outward Bounds and the outdoors, but doesn't get that the same applies to intellectual pursuits.

[twistedrecesses.livejournal.com]

If you go into the project already resenting it...well, I really don't think great things will come about from it.

[lherelenfeline.livejournal.com]

I had a very similar experience on my honours thesis, and was told, in plain text by a professor who was not my advisor to deliver what they want to head and save what i want to study for the post PhD world...

What are your constraints?

[libitina]

I have no idea if this is even true, but is there a chance you could do

Why did doctrines on secrecy change as tantric Buddhism transfered from India to Tibet?

[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.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

My main constraint is that I am out of time. It's due Tuesday, and I've got committments that I cannot break all weekend (that are related to my original topic, sigh).

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

She says the opposite. She says that you're freer now, and later you'll be more bound by the rest of academia.

My main constraint is that I am out of time. It's due Tuesday, and I've got committments that I cannot break all weekend (that are related to my original topic, sigh).

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I can't see how either. *nods* But this is due Tuesday, either way, whether I get accepted to the program on the basis of this proposal or not.