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Prebish, Charles S H-Buddhism Prebish, Charles S. Page published by A. Charles Muller on Tuesday, January 15, 2019 BAT OUT OF HELL Charles S. Prebish Professor Emeritus, Pennsylvania State University & Utah State University And you know something is happening, But you don't know what it is, Do you, Mr. Jones Bob Dylan Introduction More than two decades ago, a former Penn State colleague wrote a playful book called The Accidental Buddhist. Many, if not most people who read it thought the title was silly at best and inappropriate at the worst. I, however, was not one of them as his title came utterly close to being the very best description of how I began my more than fifty year career in Buddhist Studies and equally long commitment to private Buddhist practice. In the Fall of 1965, I walked into my very first class in Buddhism at what was then called Western Reserve University. "Reserve," as almost everyone referred to it, was known for its amazing Medical School and its vast majority of Pre-Medical and Pre- Dental students. No doubt that's why I was there. But the week before classes began in that eventful semester, along with a bevy of my college fraternity brothers, we stumbled across a class in the university roster of classes called "Buddha and Buddhism," to be taught by a new, young, Harvard-educated Hindu specialist named David McGregor Miller. About a dozen of us immediately enrolled, despite not having a clue what to anticipate. Most assuredly, I did not know that in 1965 the United States had just changed its outdated immigration laws, finally making it easier for immigrants from war-torn Asia to gain entrance to the United States. The incredibly racist Chinese Immigration Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Japanese Immigration Exclusion Act of 1924 were things I wouldn't discover till much later. Up until the moment of course registration, I had clearly done all the proper things a Pre-Dent student was supposed to do. I had completed my Chemistry major, taken all the requisite science and math courses needed for a successful Dental School Citation: A. Charles Muller. Prebish, Charles S.. H-Buddhism. 01-15-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/6060/pages/3571853/prebish-charles-s Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Buddhism application, registered for the "Dent Boards" examination, and sent off about a half- dozen initial applications to various Dental Schools. Now, in my senior year, I could indulge both my intellectual passions and academic curiosities. Sure, I'd done that a bit previously, having weaseled my way into an upper level poetry class populated mostly by graduate students during my sophomore year. I even submitted what I thought was a great paper on Bob Dylan's lyrics as poetry. I'd had a brief romantic fling with a much older but not so popular touring folksinger named Penny McIntyre, and become a fair guitar and harmonica player as well. But I'd never imagined taking a course in Buddhism. I didn't even know what Buddhism was. On the first day of class, David Miller strolled into class wearing a blue and white carefully pressed seersucker suit with an accompanying dark bow tie which augmented his curly hair and spectacles. He sat on the desk in the front of the class, and began to read his lecture from what appeared to be newly prepared 4x6 index cards. It was his first tenure track academic position, and he was clearly nervous. Unlike my college cronies, I was mesmerized. As soon as Professor Miller began talking about the life of Siddhārtha Gautama—the historical Buddha—and his discovery of the "Four Noble Truths," I was hooked. When I heard that Buddha claimed that the first basic truth of reality was that "all life is suffering," my life changed forever. One wouldn't think that a privileged kid from the wealthy suburbs of Chicago would know much about suffering, but I did. Shortly before my thirteenth birthday, as I continued to prepare for my impending Bar Mitzvah, my father began to experience strange headaches, usually accompanied by brief losses of balance. As my father's illness progressed, we eventually found out that he had a brain tumor the size of a small orange, situated in his cerebellum. In a horrifying irony, he was alert, clearly aware that he was trapped inside a dying body. Every possible treatment was considered and tried, and when it became clear that death was imminent, we turned our family room into a hospital so my father's wish to die at home could be honored. Needless to say, I had no adolescence. Every member of my family became a nurse and caregiver. On December 4, 1961, my father's nurse apparently inserted a suction tube somewhat too far into his tracheotomy apparatus, causing my father enormous pain. Five minutes later he was dead. And I was no longer a Jew. From the vantage point of my seventeen year old immaturity, I could simply not understand how a benevolent, forgiving God could take a brilliant, compassionate man from his family at age forty-eight. As I said, I was no longer a Jew. However, what I was just Citation: A. Charles Muller. Prebish, Charles S.. H-Buddhism. 01-15-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/6060/pages/3571853/prebish-charles-s Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-Buddhism wasn't clear. I began college in Fall 1962 with an enormous chip on my shoulder, hating virtually everyone and everything, and with huge uncertainty as to just what the point of life might be. David Miller's course, and Buddha's teaching, changed all that. While my college pals continually made fun of the Buddha and Buddhism course, I devoured all the reading. I scoured Cleveland's bookshops for more, visited the John G. White Collection at the Cleveland Public Library, and pestered Professor Miller for more and more information. To his credit, he was as supportive and encouraging as a young undergraduate student could have ever hoped to find. Better still, he invited me to his home regularly, where I got to know his wife, children and dog. He understood my interest and my pain. Along the way, he even pointed me to the Washington Buddhist Vihara, one of the very few Buddhist organizations in the United States at that time, and it was there that I formally converted to Buddhism under the guidance of the Venerable Bope Vinita. In the Fall of 1966, I enrolled in the Dental School at the newly renamed Case Western Reserve University. By this time I was doing four hours a day of sitting meditation, with occasional day-long sessions, and even a couple of month- long retreats alone in the woods. From day one, I hated Dental School. Just before the end of the Fall Semester, I knew I had to leave . and I did. I withdrew. This was a tricky decision because the United States was squarely embroiled in the Vietnam War, and the loss of my student deferment would make me clearly eligible to be drafted into the military. David Miller immediately came to my rescue and got me admitted to the M.A. Program in Religion at Case Western Reserve University, thus allowing me to retain my student deferment and short circuit a quick trip to Saigon. While doing my Master's degree, I was able to apply to the prestigious Buddhist Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin. I was initially accepted into the Master's Program in Buddhist Studies, but after one semester, my status was changed, and I formally became a Ph.D. candidate under the guidance of the eminent, transplanted Canadian Buddhist scholar Richard H. Robinson. Prior to arriving at the University of Wisconsin, I didn't know much about Richard Robinson, relying on David Miller's high praise for his work. Yet Robinson's first letter to me, in the Spring of 1967, scared me to death. He noted that my transcript indicated excellent grades in Humanities courses, and genuine acumen in German. Yet he doubted that I'd be able to master Sanskrit, which was required of all Ph.D. students in Buddhist Studies, and snidely remarked that he didn't think I'd be much good at other languages like Pāli or Chinese or Tibetan. He made it sound like it was a miracle that I'd be accepted at all . but I was. In the 1960s there were really only two North American universities offering Citation: A. Charles Muller. Prebish, Charles S.. H-Buddhism. 01-15-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/6060/pages/3571853/prebish-charles-s Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3 H-Buddhism sophisticated graduate education in Buddhist Studies: Harvard and the University of Wisconsin. Sure, there were a few highly trained Buddhist Studies specialists in other universities—like Alex Wayman at Columbia and Stanley Weinstein at Yale—but Wisconsin and Harvard were the places for young would-be scholars like myself. On first glance, there was certainly a huge disconnect between the overall ambience of an Ivy League university and that of a mostly rural Big Ten school, but in Buddhist Studies Harvard and Wisconsin were a lot more alike than one might imagine. Each featured the presence of an utterly brilliant scholar at the helm. As mentioned above, Richard Robinson dominated the Wisconsin scene, while at Harvard a young professor named Masatoshi Nagatomi was in charge.
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