Risks, Writing, Memory, and Intentions: Reflections on the Process of Creating Introductory Texts on Buddhism and Hinduism

Abstract

This essay is intended to assist other scholars who might be writing or thinking about beginning to write an introductory textbook for use in college-level courses. After recently completing contracts to produce four texts, this essay is an attempt to share my experience with others in order to make potential authors more aware of the publishing process and the kinds of things that one might have to consider or encounter.Many writers can agree with Jacques Derrida, an influential postmodern philosopher, that writing is a risky and dangerous endeavor. Part of the danger is associated with the commencement of the process, because a writer does not know where he or she is going, and a writer begins by wandering in a free and playful way. Another danger is producing something without meaning (Derrida 1976(Derrida , p. 135, 1981. From Derrida's perspective, a writer is a thief because she is engaged in an act of stealing, and she is a ghost due to the fact that she can represent anything because writing stands for nothing in particular. If writing is a strange kind of ghost, it signifies forgetfulness and the subverting of spontaneous memory (Derrida 1978, p. 178). The act of writing is a peculiar kind of secondariness, absence, lack of immediacy, unintelligibility, and estrangement from the truth, whereas speech represents presence, immediacy, intelligibility, and possible contact with the truth. For the most part, traditional Indian thinkers would agree with Derrida's distinction between writing and speech, and they would caution that attempting to write books on Buddhism and Hinduism, which are based on an oral culture, is risky, but a writer can also never accomplish anything unless she is willing to accept the dangers associated with the act of writing that is associated with teaching and learning. This essay is an attempt to share with others in the process of writing an introductory text, editing a body of literature, or simply contemplating such a project, about potential dangers that one might encounter.