October 24: A Mahayana commentary on Mark / Resurrection

David Vishanoff

Tuesday, July 21st, 2015

Assignment

Read the selections from John Keenan, The Gospel of Mark: A Mahayana Reading that were handed out in class.

• This is a tricky reading, I think, because it stays so close to the Biblical Gospels, so that Keenan’s own specific interpretive contributions are less obvious than the modifications introduced by our other authors. Is anything new, distinctive, or surprising about Keenan’s interpretations of Jesus’ death and resurrection?
• What specific Buddhist concepts shape Keenan’s understanding of the Mark? How do you see these appearing in his commentary on Jesus’ death and resurrection?
• Is Keenan’s interpretation really Buddhist? He is not a Buddhist; he is a Christian who is attempting to think like a Buddhist. Does he succeed in giving a truly Buddhist interpretation of Jesus?
• Is Keenan’s interpretation basically Christian, or does it depart in fundamental ways from what you know of Christian ways of understanding Jesus?
• Do you think one can interpret Jesus from two religious perspectives at once (in this case Buddhist and Christian)? In other words, is “multiple religious belonging” possible (being a Buddhist-Christian, for example)?
• Does Keenan’s approach give you any ideas or insights into your own interpretive process as you construct your own interpretations of Jesus?

Then write a first draft of your gospel’s section on Jesus’ resurrection (or whatever will take its place).

Notes from class

We decided that Keenan has not created a Buddhist-Christian interpretation of Jesus, but a strictly Buddhist one:

• Some of his interpretations are shared by some Christians:
  • The teaching that this world is impermanent.
  • The call to convert people.
  • The value of compassion.
  • The emphasis on practical daily life in community rather than doctrine.
• But others eliminate what many Christians would regard as central points of the Gospels, of Christianity, or even of religion generally.
  • Christology has been central to Christian theology, but Keenan argues that Mark prevents readers from assigning Jesus any fixed identity.
    • We too seem to be agreeing that Jesus has some essential identity that must be respected for an interpretation to be about him at all.
  • He regards Jesus as an ordinary human with no supernatural nature, exceptional only in his practice of the middle path taught by Buddhist Madhyamika philosophers.
  • That middle path involves engaging the world of conventional truth while knowing it to be empty of meaning or reality, whereas Christian interpretations (including the other three canonical Gospel) insist on assigning meaning to Jesus, and to life.
  • This means denying there is any plan or meaning behind Jesus’ suffering, or our suffering; whereas most Christians (and religious people generally) want to find meaning in suffering–that’s one of the main points of religion!
  • Keenan also interprets Jesus’ resurrection as just a call for his followers to reengage in ordinary life, rather than as something that happened to Jesus himself.
  • In the end Keenan makes Jesus an almost incidental figure in the gospel; his significance stems only from the way Mark tells his story, which is a skillful way of disrupting people’s desire for meaning and doctrine.
• So Keenan has done what Yogananda did: he has transposed the text of a canonical Gospel into an Indian philosophical framework, and has taken it to be essentially preaching the Buddhist Madhyamika philosophy of the middle path (or at least his rather postmodern interpretation of it).