Peter Oldmeadow. Rimé: Buddhism without prejudice. Carlton North: Shogam Publications [facebook], 2012 [forthcoming]. ISBN 9780980502220.
Buddhism without prejudice? That would be the Sanskritic tradition, surely.
But as Dr. Oldmeadow informs me: “I’ve attempted to bring together available material on the Rime movement and its context and present it in an accessible fashion which, hopefully, also throws some light on present-day Tibetan Buddhism.”
Isn’t it amazing that the impartial or universalistic tradition in Tibetan Buddhism time and again attracts the attention of people who have extremely little knowledge about the subject other than the knowledge imparted to them in secondary works by others? Shouldn’t one at least be able to consult the primary sources for a topic like that? This book stands squarely in the tradition of Civilzed Shamans (the title says it all) and its extensive treatment of the said tradition by Prof. Geoffrey Samuels.
A Sanskritist like Dr Oldmeadow writing on the indigenous Tibetan ris med movement for me is like a inorganic chemist writing on particle physics. Having said this one would have wished for the trained theoretical physicist Prof. Samuels to have remained in his original discipline instead of turning himself into a theoretical Tibetologist cum Buddhologist.
B. S. (physicist)
A well-informed treatment of ris med would be a welcome contribution, I feel. Not having seen Oldmeadow’s book, I don’t know if it is. If not, perhaps it will incite one…
Incidentally, knowing Sanskrit is not thought to be a serious obstacle to appreciating Tibetan Buddhism – many Tibetans certainly considered it well worth acquiring – even if it sometimes seems that way today.