Contemporary Obtusity

I read a great essay on the Mahablog which talked about a Salon article about Karen Armstrong. Among other things, Armstrong mentions that the idea that scriptures should be taken literally is a modern idea, and that people in the past would have found this idea strangely obtuse. Rather, scriptures need to be read more like poetry, often sitting in your head for a while before the meaning becomes apparent. Clearly the Genesis creation story shouldn't be taken literally, for example. After all, there are many creation stories in the Bible, many contradictory. In any event, both of the links above express a lot more than I can, and a lot more eloquently. They are worth the read.

In related news, I just found a copy of The Threefold Lotus Sutra at a local used book store. It goes into a lot more detail than the two other sutras I've encountered. It's also filled with a lot more poetic whistles and bells. For example, we have the following passage:

After the Buddha finished explaining this, the three-thousand-great-thousandfold world was shaken in the six ways; various kinds of celestial flowers, such as utpala, padma, kumuda, and pundarika, rained down naturally from the sky; and innumerable kinds of celestial perfumes, robes, garlands, and treasures of priceless value also rained and came rolling down from the sky, and they were offered to the Buddha, all the bodhisattvas and sravakas, and the great assembly. The celestial bins and bowls were filled with all sorts of celestial delicaciesl celestial banners, flags, canopies, and playthings were placed everywhere; and celestial music was played in praise of the Buddha.

So, are we to believe that flowers rained from the sky! Of course not! The thing that comes to mind for me here is the pictorial language of music videos. I watched quite a bit of MTV when I was younger, and this sort of image would occur fairly often. When I was watching these videos, I wasn't thinking ,"How unrealistic!" Rather I immediately understood the metaphorical nature of the image. I just need to train myself to do that with scriptures too. It makes reading them a lot easier, rather than having to contort your interpretation to be consistent with an ultra-literal reading. Even in the Diamond-Cutter sutra, there were passages that required mental gymnastics for me to take literally. For example, Shakyamuni Buddha says that he knows the myriad streams of thought of all future Buddhas. This sounds very supernatural, but I don't think Shakyamuni meant it in quite the way my Western TV-conditioned mind immediately supposes. Admittedly, I don't have a deep understanding of the meaning of his statement.

Lastly, an example from the Bible. At some point, a voice from heaven declares of Jesus, "This is my son, in whom I am well pleased." Reading this literally is probably a bad idea. What would a voice from heaven sound like? Would it be thunderous? Would it be melodic? Would it be infinitely subtle? Doesn't it imply the existence of an anthropomorphic God? Rather, I think it should be interpreted as a poetic punctuation mark. Just as the flowers falling from the sky underscored the extreme spiritual importance of what the Buddha had to say, the voice from heaven declaring the merits of Jesus underscores the importance of his life and teaching.