Abstract
“Buddhism modernism is not just Buddhism that happens to exist in the modern world but a distinct form of Buddhism constituted by cross-fertilization with western ideas and practices.”
“The book creates a lineage of Buddhist modernism that includes liberal borrowing from scientific vocabulary in reformulations of Buddhist concepts of causality, interdependence, and meditation. It also draws upon Romantic and Transcendentalist conceptions of cosmology, creativity, spontaneity, and the interior depths of the human being. Additionally, Buddhist modernism reconfigures Buddhism as a kind of psychology or interior science, drawing both upon analytic psychology and current trends in neurobiology.”
“In its novel approaches to meditation and mindfulness, as well as political activism, it draws heavily from western individualism, distinctively modern modes of world-affirmation, liberal political sensibilities, and modernist literary sources. The book also examines this uniquely modern Buddhism as it moves into postmodern iterations and enters the currents of global communication, media, and commerce.”
Introduction
The abstract for this book can sound technical and dense. I appreciate that the author relays an anecdote that conveys their thesis:
“I asked my students in an introductory class on Asian religions - our first day dealing with Buddhism - to relate some of their ideas and images of the tradition. After the various impressions from popular films and magazine articles, someone faithfully conveyed that semester’s version of what has become a standard view: that Buddhism is a religion in which you don’t really have to believe anything in particular or follow any strict rules; you simply exercise compassion and maintain a peaceful state of mind through meditation. Buddhism values creativity and intuition and is basically compatible with a modern, scientific worldview. It is democratic, encourages freedom of thought, and is more of a ‘spirituality’ than a religion.”
“What many Americans and Europeans often understand by the term ‘Buddhism,’ however, is actually a modern hybrid tradition with roots in the European Enlightenment no less than the Buddha’s enlightenment, in Romanticism and transcendentalism as much as the Pali canon, and in the clash of Asian cultures and colonial powers as much as in mindfulness and meditation. Most non-Asian Americans tend to see Buddhism as a religion whose most importamt elements are meditation, rigorous philosophical analysis, and an ethic of compassion combined with a highly empirical psychological science that encourages reliance on individual experience. It discourages blindly following authority and dogma, has little place for superstition, magic, image worship, and gods, and is largely compatible with the findings of modern science and liberal democratic values. While this picture draws on elements of traditional forms of Buddhism that have existed in Asia for centuries, it is in many respects quite distinct from what Buddhism has meant to Asian Buddhists throughout its long and varied history…”
I’m not a Buddhist, but I am technically Asian American. I would largely agree with everything listed here. The student’s description of Buddhism is almost verbatim what I’ve heard many times over as a description of it by non-Buddhists in America. I’ve distilled Buddhism down in those ways too, especially if I have to quickly explain the concepts to someone who is just looking for a functional idea of what it is. I admit though, if I had known earlier that AA also calls itself “spiritual” rather than religious, I probably would’ve started referring to Buddhism as a religion more assertively.
Don’t mistake my derision for his though. I’m jaded from being bombarded with New Age literature within contemporary spiritual and recovery-oriented circles. I don’t doubt McMahan has a far more balanced set of experiences on the adoption of Buddhism and South Asian beliefs in America than me. I appreciate the perspective he gives in the place of my own hesitation to acknowledge the fusion of beliefs:
“It is, rather, an actual new form of Buddhism that is the result of a process of modernization, westernization, reinterpretation, image-making, revitalization, and reform that has been taking place not only in the West but also in Asian countries for over a century.”
This is a completely fair point, and I concede that I can reconcile my hesitation with it. If we accept that belief systems are constantly being shaped by the circumstances of life, then it stands to reason that religions are always in a state of change. Impermanent, if you will. Where I specifically feel friction is when the modernization of these concepts isn’t part of the narrative presented to us, leading to the impression that we’re receiving universal truths from long-lost ancient sources. McMahan calls out a pitfall I nearly stepped into moments before writing this sentence:
“It is tempting to think of the various modernizing forms of Buddhism as ‘Western Buddhism,’ given the influence of western science, philosophy, and psychology on modern variations of the dharma, as well as the visibility of American and European authors on the subject… The modernization of Buddhism, however, has in no way been an exclusively western project or simply a representation of the eastern Other; many figures essential to this process have been Asian reformers educated in both western and Buddhist thought. Nor can the motivations of major Asian figures in this process, such asn Anagarika Dharmapala, Daisetz T. Suzuki, and of late, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, be reduced to the simple accommodation of Buddhism to western forms of modernity… Buddhist modernism- has been, therefore, a cocreation of Asians, Europeans, and American.”
I nearly used that exact term, in part because I was just reviewing Unsubscribed by Josh Korda where he describes a rationale for his own translation of the Pali Canon, but in ways that appear to inject more of a “Western” existentialist idea of an incomplete self yearning for wholeness. That makes it suitable for a lot of Western therapeutic concepts that discuss a narrative about the self, but misses the emphasis on interrogating the mental constructs that produce cravings for worldly attachments in the first place.
To be continued.