The Four Modes of Knowledge Production: A Buddhist Theoretical Framework

This book presents a theoretical framework for understanding the historical development of Buddhism through four distinct modes of knowledge production: village shamanic, city-state yogic, clerical scholastic, and nation-state academic. Each mode has its own material base and epistemological style that shape how religious knowledge is created, transmitted, and understood.

Drawing on recent breakthroughs in the study of early Buddhism—particularly the work of Johannes Bronkhorst on Greater Magadha and Thai Forest scholar monks on the distinction between early yogic and later scholastic Buddhism—this framework challenges the prevailing assumptions of Western academia and convert Buddhism that Buddhism emerged from Hinduism and that later Theravada scholastic presentations represent the Buddha's original teachings.

Part One examines village shamanic traditions through Lakota cosmology and African religious thought, establishing the characteristics of decentralized, earth-based, oral traditions that likely preceded Buddhism in northeast India. Part Two explores the city-state yogic mode through early Buddhist teachings from the Samyutta Nikaya and Daoist internal alchemy, revealing structural parallels between these contemplative traditions. Part Three analyzes clerical scholastic developments in Theravada, Madhyamika, and Yogacara Buddhism. Part Four examines the nation-state academic mode through Paul Tillich's theology, the French anticlerical movement's influence on Western psychology, and comparisons between somatic trauma therapy and early Buddhist meditation.

This framework offers scholars and practitioners a new lens for understanding how Buddhist teachings have been transformed across different historical and cultural contexts, and for recovering the yogic dimensions of early Buddhism that have been obscured by later scholastic interpretations.