On the perennial issue of “the 12 links” I recently saw a hilarious comment from Robert E. Florida that makes precisely [the typical kind of ahistorical] mistake [in Buddhist studies]: “From the very earliest days, the theory of co-conditioned causality, or pratītyasamutpāda, the teaching that every thing in the universe is interrelated with every other thing, was interpreted embryologically.” [p. 14 of Buddhism and Abortion, 1999, U. of Hawai’i Press] Of course, this is so hilarious because Florida is here presuming (without proving) that the modern, western interpretation is correct, whereas the “traditional interpretation” is false; if he were capable of reading the original text, he would see that there is absolutely nothing in it (i.e., not one word) “teaching that every thing in the universe is interrelated with every other thing”. On the contrary, there is a very good basis for that embryological interpretation, if anyone cares about the writ of what the text says and doesn’t say (a subject I’ve already written about at length). In the very next sentence, the R.E. Florida follows this up by invoking Vasubandhu (!) as an authority for his titular topic of “Abortion in Buddhist Thailand” (without one word to justify what influence Vasubandhu has ever had in the history of Theravāda Southeast Asia, nor explaining why the author has turned to a uniquely Mahayana source first and foremost). Given that this type of buffoonery is what passes for the highest level of academic expertise (on matters as contentious as the politics of abortion) there can be little wonder that the common run of Buddhists labor in ignorance.
Eisel Mazard, Vegetarianism and Theravada Orthodoxy