74
TIBET AN SCHOLASTIC
EDUCATION AND THE ROLE OF
SOTERIOLOGY
Georges Dreyfus
Source: Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 20, I (I 997): 3 I --62.The hermeneutical and rhetorical dimensions of
commentary
Education is not the mere handing down of knowledge but the active developing
of the person through the internalization of a tradition's content. If this process
begins in the Tibetan monastic education with the acquisition of basic literacy
and the heuristic of memorization, it continues with the hermeneutical practices
aimed at appropriating the content of tradition as a basis for the cultivation of
virtues. In general, hermeneutics can be defined as the art of interpretation
systematically analyzed from a philosophical or methodological point of view.
Tibetan scholastic educational activities are hermeneutical in that they are reflec-
tive interpretive practices that aim to understand the content of the root-texts
used as bases of the educational process and their commentaries. These root-
texts are themselves commentaries that are memorized and studied in the light of
further commentaries. The interpretation of commentaries is thus one form that
hermeneutical practice takes in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It is not,
however, the only or even necessarily the main one, for a remarkable feature of
much Tibetan scholastic education is the importance of dialectical debates. They
sustain the students in their investigations and lead to an in-depth comprehen-
sion of the tradition. Dialectical debates, together with commentary, represent
the two central aspects of the hermeneutical practices that form the core of
Tibetan scholastic education.
A study of the interpretive practices of a tradition cannot focus, however,
only on the interpre~r:d message. It must also examine the audience to which this
message is addressed and the way in which the author or transmittor of this
message intends to influence its audience. To interpret means to clarify, expli-
cate, explain, but also to translate, render, and transpose. Interpretation is the
work of an interpreter, a go-between, who mediates between an author and an