Short Reviews and Book Notes 1 85: Postfactum

Short Reviews and Book Notes 1 85
from the synagogue . Instead Dr Bradshaw finds an early fourfold pattern of daily
prayer-morning, midday, evening and at night-and also suggests that prayer at the
ninth hour was common as marking the breaking of the fast on days of fasting . The
pattern of prayer was intended to further the ideal of continual prayer as unbroken
communion with God, and consisted largely of intercession ; it is to be contrasted with
monastic prayer which gave the psalms a prominent place and was intended primarily
to provide a context for individual spiritual growth . The prominence of morning and
evening prayer in the Cathedral office of the fourth century is largely, it is argued, due to
practical considerations, and the justification found for it in the morning and evening
sacrifices of the Temple is a justification postfactum . All of this is well-argued and will
have to be taken account of by future scholars .
Despite its title, this book is really only about the development of the divine office .
Though, for example, Dr Bradshaw pays more attention to early Christian utterances
on prayer than earlier scholars (and to good effect), he is more interested in settling the
primitive pattern of prayer among Christians than discussing why they prayed, how
and what for . He has some good things to say about prayer in the night as watching for
the Second Coming of Christ, but one wishes he could have said more in this vein . But
that would have meant another book than the one we have, which is scholarly and
worthwhile as it is .
ANDREW LOUTH
Worcester College, Oxford
Winston L . King, Theraváda Meditation : The Buddhist Transformation of Yoga,

Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park & London 1980 .
viii+ 172 pp . £9 .00 .
Most works on Buddhist meditation have confined themselves to summarizing and

restating Buddhaghosa's classic account in the Visuddhi magga . The present work has a
slightly wider perspective . The first chapter looks at the canonical accounts of the
Buddhist path . This is followed by five chapters which discuss and evaluate different
aspects, following Buddhaghosa's order and classification . The final chapter and a short
appendix focus on modern Burmese meditational methods . The problem with this
arrangement is that it is simply not possible to handle the material in a balanced way .
The chapters based on the work of Buddhaghosa give a good and well-written account
in some detail . King tends rather to over-emphasize the world denying and `world
recessive' qualities in Buddhism due no doubt to a tendency to identify the `good' with
the `personal' . Hence the use of expressions such as `dematerializes and etherializes' or
`depersonalization and etherialization' . For the Buddhist however this is a progression
from narrow selfishness to a more sensitive and universal stance . In canonical
Buddhism this was certainly understood as leading to the `welfare of the manyfolk' and
tending towards a transformation of society .
Burmese material is relied on almost exclusively for the modern situation . The result
is a rather superficial description, which gives a very misleading impression in two
respects . Firstly it overlooks the great variety and richness of extant meditational
traditions in the Buddhist countries. (See for example the survey in the final chapter of
Jack Kornfield's Living Buddhist Masters.) Secondly it relies too much on interpretations
derived from the twentieth century revival in insight meditation . This seriously distorts
186 Short Reviews and Book Notes
the account of ancient Buddhism . For King the non vipassaná aspects of Buddhist
meditation are `an alien, or non-Buddhist, element', which he attributes to the influence
of brahmanical-yogic techniques . This begs the question as to the role of non-
brahmanical traditions such as those of the Jains and Ajivakas . In actual fact most
ancient Indian systems of thought contain a transit element as well as a component
concerned with disciplining external activity . Both of these are part of the spiritual
milieu-important but not distinctive . Quite naturally it is usually the intuitive-
intellectual side which is more unique .
L . S . COUSINS
Department of Comparative Religion, University of Manchester
Gregor T . Goethals, The TV Ritual : Worship at the Video Altar, Boston, Beacon
Press 1981 . ix+ 164 pp . $11 .95
Gregor Goethals is an art historian and designer . She has acutely combined her
image-appraising eye and a thoughtful assimilation of themes from the history of
religions . The result is an analysis of American television, in particular U .S . Television,
as itself projecting religious-type images and as creating its own ritual dimension . For
instance she analyses the symbolic meanings of various goings on as seen through the
screen at political conventions (particularly Reagan's in 1980) and inaugurations . Thus
part of what she brings out is the force of what in other contexts comes somewhat under
the head of civil religion . A taste of her approach can be had from the following
quotation .
As we approach the end of the twentieth century the mass media, especially
television, have emerged as major conveyors of public symbols . Television has
woven a web of myths, furnishing the rhythms, the visual extravaganzas, and
pseudo-liturgical seasons that break up the ordinariness of our lives .
In particular she tries to convey connections between older and newer forms of symbolic
communication, relating television to earlier American myths .
But of course America is an iconoclastic society too . And wisely Gregor Goethals
includes a chapter on the way images themselves are used critically, as before in
etchings and cartoons, then documentary film and now television documentary and
investigative reporting, cross-questioning of the powerful and so forth . Watergate is a
natural for treatment here, of course ; but there have been various other ways in which
television has substituted the disturbing for the traditional image-over McCarthyism,
during the Vietnam War, over Three Mile Island and so forth .
I have a few criticisms of what otherwise is a good pioneering book . One is : it is
confined rather parochially to America . Some comparative material might be inter-
esting . Soviet television and socialist realism, British camera-work and meiosis, pirate
television stations in Italy . . . . ? Second, she does not directly discuss civil religion, and
though good on nationalism she perhaps underestimates the way television is rein-
forcing national solidarity . It is not a global village yet, but there is the national village,
with television as a substitute among other things for gossip . At any rate Gregor
Goethals has usefully shown how religious studies is an export industry of some
importance . Its ideas and theories can illuminate secular phenomena .
NINIAN SMART
Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster

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Winston L . King, Theraváda Meditation : The Buddhist Transformation of Yoga,

Most works on Buddhist meditation have confined themselves to summarizing and

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