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comparison to the development of mindfulness and insight, it is a more
advanced liberating process. The Buddha, then, can be characterized first and
foremost by his yogic attainments, but if the ascetic is to follow in Buddha s
footsteps, then he or she must know the path, and thus the primary danger in
the yogic ascension is the danger of mistaking blissful heavenly states for the
final goal.60
It is clear that Eliade s portrayal develops a dichotomy between the Ther-
ava\da presentations of the life and character of the Buddha and those of the
Maha\ya\na, which are seen as being much later compositions. The idea that the
Buddha appears to be a rationalist in his representations by the Therava\da
tradition is a perspective that many now see as a product of the imagination
of early American and European scholars of Buddhism and an issue that may
have had some impact on Eliade s work. However, Eliade does point out some
crucial distinctions to the rationalist image of the Buddha that temper his
The Debate over Dialogue 87
analysis significantly. The most important of them is his strong awareness of
the tension between what he calls gnosis and mystical experience, which
he discusses subsequent to the dhya\na attainments. These are seen as being
representative of two trends, namely, the experimentalists (jha\ins) and the
speculatives (dhammayogis).61 This split is particularly important regarding
conceptions of the nature of Buddhist practice, the differentiation of numi-
nous and cessative types, and the shift or relationship between óramane"a tradi-
tions as being either central or peripheral with the culture at large. This dis-
cussion elucidates the idea that Buddhism contains a tension between
scholastic tendencies that is oriented toward Abhidharma-type pursuits and
those of the more yogic character. Eliade believes that there is sufficient evi-
dence to prove that the Buddha always closely connected knowledge with a
meditation experience of the yogic type. 62 This is further illustrated, accord-
ing to Eliade, by the characteristics of the monks who constituted the Sangha
and were distinguished according to their respective discursive and experien-
tial knowledge. This issue culminates in the question of the possibility of
nirva\ne"a without recourse to the enstatic means of yogic meditation, a subject
that is of great significance to conceptions of Buddhist soteriology but in
which Eliade senses a resistance to yogic excesses as its basis.63 The dis-
tinction between the experimentation and scholasticism also demonstrates one
of the fundamental rifts in the interpretation of religion, between doctrine and
experience, and it can also be compared to ritual, another dimension of reli-
gion that is often portrayed as being in a unique domain.
However, according to Leah Zahler, Eliade s view on this matter is prob-
lematic, due to the predominance of the óamatha precedes vipaóyana\ model
in Therava\da and Maha\ya\na contexts, and due to the fact Eliade seems to
want to split apart experience from doctrine.64 Zahler, in association with Col-
lett Cox, argues that there may well be a praxis to scholasticism as well that
lies somewhere between the conceptions of pure practice or pure scholas-
ticism. 65 Zahler relates this to Gelukpa presentations of óamatha-vipaóyana\
that serve only as scholastic subjects but are not formally put into practice.
This is related to our earlier discussion, in that it hints at the idea that even
practice texts can serve a more scholastic-ritual practice. Although there is
significant evidence to argue for a ritualized aspect of scholasticism, a con-
cept that scholasticism has a praxis dimension to it, there is still an important
difference here. What makes more sense, rather than collapsing the whole dis-
tinction, which is what Sharf attempts to do, is to find the middle ground in
the discussion. Scholasticism is not a passive endeavor and may well have
a sense of experience or experimentation common with meditative enter-
prises. On the other hand, meditative praxis has a doctrinal, conceptual foun-
dation, however few the superstructures may be, that provides for its devel-
opment as a nondiscursive enterprise. Each shares in the other to some degree,
88 Sama\dhi
but there is no question that there is a significant difference in the degree to
which each dimension intersects the other. Just as you might not expect a
scholastic to have a profound sense of what the fruits of óamatha are experi-
entially, one should not expect the yogin, who has devoted a more significant
amount of time to cultivating those states, to be able to situate his or her prac-
tices in the greater scope of doctrine in a defensible way. We have to be care-
ful, however, in making this distinction too strict, and in postulating that a
religious practitioner must be one or the other, when in fact he or she may well
be both to a greater or lesser degree.
Speaking from the viewpoint of History of Religions, Eliade argues that
the methodologies of liberation may well be understood to yield similar fruit.
As with comparisons of different types of practices, such as are found in his
comparisons of yoga and shamanism, Eliade argues that the different per-
spectives are nevertheless oriented toward the experience of the sacred
through the abolition of mundane life and through a symbolic death and
rebirth process.66 In this vision of phenomenology, these different methodolo-
gies present different strategies for accessing the timelessness of the sacred in
the midst of profane reality, a transformation that he believes lies at the heart
of religious phenomena. He argues that the Buddhist monk performing ritual
circumambulation entered into this alternate universe and annihilated pro-
fane experience, just as the meditating monk did. This is a step farther, in
some respects, from other arguments considering the range of Buddhist prac-
tices that has attributed the differences to either the development of the Bud-
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