Uposatha Day, New Moon, March 11, 2012
Chapter 8. Negotiating the Dharma
Buddhism is radical in any culture. It goes “against the stream.” The Noble Ones understand that virtually all progress toward peace, happiness, virtue and understanding one is likely to make on the Buddhist Path will be directly correlated with what is given up or curtailed: the physical trappings of life, relations and obligation like fame and car ownership, self-view, identity or being somebody, behaviors like partying flirtatiously, and particularly the clinging emotions rooted in greed or anger. The practice of the Noble Ones has been no more and no less than a long process of disentanglement strand by strand from soap-operatic existence, a process of progressive renunciation. This makes little sense to normal folk.
The Noble Ones extol Awakening as the highest attainment, one that entails not only the complete eradication of personal desire and aversion as motivating factors and ultimately the elimination of intentional action altogether, completely relinquishing the quest for personal advantage. They practice kindness to their worst enemies. People of the folk culture can only scratch their heads and blink their eyes.
For the Noble Ones it is like being surrounded by fools, as if having entered Alice’s looking glass almost everyone around them is intent on doing everything backwards. To go up they go down, to go fast they go slow. To become happy they want. When they get what they want, yet are still unhappy, they think they must therefore need more. When out of greed or hatred someone does harm to another, they respond with hatred, not kindness but hatred. When something burns they pour on gasoline to quench the flames. The Noble Ones can only scratch their heads and blink their eyes.
The Buddhism of the Noble Ones mixes with any general folk culture as oil with water. In the thick of this seismic contradiction of values, nestled between the general folk culture and the Buddhism of the Noble Ones, is Folk Buddhism, in direct dialog with each.
A Variety of Negotiations
It Core Buddhism is the oil and folk culture the water, then Folk Buddhism is the dispersant. It plays a central and difficult role in making Buddhism culturally relevant and accessible. Folk Buddhism has one foot in Core Buddhism because it places its trust and veneration in the Triple Gem, even while it has yet to fully explored the depths of what they have to offer. It has its other foot in the folk culture, which informs most of its values and defines most of its behaviors. Folk Buddhism is thereby in negotiation with radically different systems of thought and practice. Yet this gives Buddhism a significant presence in the society and influence in its affairs.
Folk Buddhism is in a very real sense a kind of watered down Buddhism. Its means of expression are accessible to the folk culture and many of the more obscure or objectionable (from the folk perspective) teachings of Core Buddhism are glossed over or disappear altogether, with some awareness on the part of the Folk Buddhist that they are there somewhere to be learned from the Adepts when the opportunity arises. Folk Buddhism is far less challenging than Core Buddhism and much more reassuring to people’s lifestyles as they are currently constituted. Nonetheless at the same time it helps people over time gently ease toward the path of liberation as it conveys values and practices in the language of the folk culture that reflect or support parts of Core Buddhism.
Core Buddhism is actually mediated by its teachers and representatives, the Adepts. The Adepts are therefore also negotiate with two distinct parties, Core and Folk. It is in the negotiation of the Adept Buddhists with Core Buddhism that the integrity of the local Buddhism can be said to be preserved or to fail. The implicit demand is that Adept Buddhism is authentic, that it is consistent with and inclusive of Core Buddhism.
The structure of this communication is held in place traditionally by the Buddhist community, particularly the Sangha and by the Refuges as we have discussed.
The Adepts’ Conversation with Core Buddhism
This is the most important negotiation of all for without it everything falls apart. Core Buddhism is the standard of authenticity. It is in its conversation with Core Buddhism that the Adepts maintain the ultimate integrity of the Buddhist enterprise. It is the Sangha’s obligation to let the Dhamma-Vinaya be their teacher and I will assume that this obligation extends to the non-monastic Adepts as well. We have seen that what constitutes the Dhamma-Vinaya a moving target: Core Buddhism is an understanding kept in place by scriptural sources, tradition, experience and attainment, dialog among the Adepts and increasingly through scholarship. Noble Ones are its most important arbiters. The integrity of Buddhism is only fully realized in the Adepts’ conversation with Core Buddhism, but as we will see there is a more limited integrity that can be realized in Folk Buddhism as well.
It is only to the extent that the Adepts adhere to Core Buddhism, and leave nothing out, that Folk Buddhism is anchored in authentic teachings. If the Adepts preach a corrupted Buddhism, or if there are no Adepts venerated by the Folk Buddhists as the authorities on matters of Dharma, then the comet loses its head and will drift apart as various cultic bubbles in every direction, much like a nova, the remnants of an exploded star. Because the Core teachings of Buddhism are so sophisticated and so radical they are also fragile and vulnerable to mis- and re-interpretation. This is a reason the Buddha instituted the monastic Sangha to ensure that there are Noble Ones and adherents of the Core teachings they preserve, so that Folk Buddhism has an anchor and the Dhamma will not be lost.
Adept Buddhism is the expert understanding as it is presented to the Folk Buddhists. Ideally it manifests Core Buddhism. However the Adept Buddhists are also in conversation with the Folk Buddhist culture and generally were themselves raised as Folk Buddhists. The Adepts have almost invariably throughout history become so through the monastic path. Today in Western Buddhism, on the other hand, lay teachers predominate, or at least those not fully ordained into the Sangha, such as priests in Japanese traditions. In many places the Adepts might in fact have an incomplete or faltering understanding or practice of Core Buddhism, or have altered Core Buddhism in order to accommodate some nonnegotiable features of the local culture.
The Adepts Tell Folks What’s What
A sincere Buddhists will generally take seriously the advice of the Adepts and develop understandings, practices and a way of life partly under the influence of that advice. After a time these factors will fall roughly into three groups:
(1) friendly,
(2) neutral and
(3) unfriendly.
This factors are figuratively friendly, neutral or unfriendly toward Core Buddhism, but more immediately friendly, neutral or unfriendly to the owner of these factors himself, since whether he realizes it or not they correlate with the benefit to their owner as well as to those who benefit from or fall victim to his actions.
In brief, the Adepts advice will be aimed at improving (1) and getting rid of (3), but probably will not concern itself much with (2). The friendly factors either will be as taught by the Adepts or will represent close and sufficient approximations thereto that have been imperfectly understood by the Folk Buddhist. The neutral factors most likely derive from the folk culture but are harmless, and may be shared by the Adept Buddhist, who is likely to have grown up in that culture. The unfriendly factors conflict with Core Buddhism and may arise through the influence of seismically contradictory values that have made there way from folk culture into Folk Buddhism, or simply popular misunderstandings of Buddhism.
The friendly factors generally begin with those learned at a young age in community. Most critical are the Refuges, since these anchor Fold Buddhism in Core Buddhism. Teachings in generosity and virtue may be absorbed, and probably an appreciation of the goal of higher Buddhist practice and an appreciation of the personal qualities of the Buddha and the Noble Ones. For those intent on the Path, wisdom teachings, a meditation practice and a very simple lifestyle that encourages contentment may be acquired and developed. And of course all of this can lead eventually to Adeptness.
The neutral factors include almost all those cultural accretions dripping in religiosity. Often these accrete around friendly factors as well. For instance, it is common among the Burmese, a fundamentally animist culture, to attribute magical powers to senior monks of great attainment. The presence of monks is generally regarded as enormously good luck and making offerings to monks, particularly offering a meal to monks, is karmically hugely meritorious. Offerings are often made on auspicious occasions such as weddings and birthdays, as well as periods of misfortune when people feel they need a karmic boost.
A Burmese doctor in Texas a specialist in sleeping disorders, was delighted to be able to offer her services for free to a visiting Burmese monk who suffered from sleep apnea, which required that he stay overnight in a specially outfitted room hooked up to various monitors. She was particularly pleased with the auspiciousness that he was the inaugural patient of a new room they had just added to their lab. This was a doctor.
A frequent visitor to our monastery, also in Texas, who likes to come on weekends to prepare food for the monks, was up late one night and spotted a monk standing in the air above one of the new buildings near where the new pagoda was beginning construction. She called other people hither who indeed verified the presence of this monk in the sky, only now he was meditating. It was generally agreed that this monk had teletransported from Burma. A couple of weeks later I heard the story retold and it turned out that the monk in question was our own founder, who lives in Burma, checking out a new construction site.
These are all neutral factors, or even mildly friendly understandings since they may serve to encourage reverence for the Third Gem. Asian Folk Buddhisms tend to embellish the Triple Gem quite a bit, often turning them from objects of reverence to objects of deep devotion and worship, often wrapping mythology around the objects, stories of supernatural forces and miracles, and in the case of the Buddha a kind of cosmic existence. These embellishments, although often not easily transmitted to dissimilar cultures, nonetheless generally remain close to the function of the Triple Gem in Adept Buddhism in that they serve to enhance the authority of Adept Buddhism, to inspire and make the mind that much more open to its influence.
Although an upstanding member of a dissimilar culture I find in myself a playful enough disposition to enjoy these things — I’ve even been coerced to talk to tree spirits in Texas when there was a concern that they might not understand Burmese. — but I cannot say that I have assimilated them into my world view, nor do I feel obliged to assimilate them. In fact in many cases it is the Burmese monks who correct Folk errant views of the efficacy of rites or rituals by pointing out quite rationally that there is no magic involved beyond the positive mental attitudes then invoke in the beneficiary.
An unfriendly yet common view in Western Folk Buddhism has direct relevance to the broad topic of Religiosity. Not infrequently a Western Buddhist is moved to reject a list of things, almost in the same breath, that are found both in Buddhism throughout Asia and also quite characteristically in much Western religion:
“Organized religion, hierarchy, bah!”
“Religious authority, priests, monks, rules, humbug!”
“Religious imagery, sacred objects, twaddle!”
“Religious doctrine, poppycock!”
“Rituals, bows, balderdash!”
This has developed into a broad-based but not entirely homogeneous movement, often called Secular Buddhism, in which the targets of criticism taken as a whole correspond remarkably closely to what I have heaped under the category “Religiosity.” Also often included in the attack is the notion of transcendence as well the presence of cultural elements of Asian origin in Western Buddhism. It might well be characterized as a collection of pet peeves, since individually Secular Buddhists may be quite tolerant to some “religious” elements and quite biting in their criticism of others.
Furthermore, these pet peeves are often attached to alarmingly vehement assertions that the Buddha never taught such things at all. The view has even been espoused that the Buddha was really a Twenty-First Century man caught in the wrong time and place and that every Asian tradition made a huge muddle of his teachings, but that Twenty-First Century Westerners will finally vindicate them.
This attack on religiosity simply flies in the face of Core Buddhism as I have abundantly attested here and certainly enjoys no scriptural support. They are twaddle and, uh, poppycock. So where did they come from? If they did not come through Adept Buddhism they must have come from Western folk culture.
We don’t have to look far to see the origin of the rejection of Buddhist religiosity. It has “Reformation” written all over it; these are the very things that Protestant Christians objected to in the Catholic Church and sought if not to eliminate altogether at least to challenge and minimize. This Protestant confrontation with the structure and practices of the hugely hierarchical and therefore easily corruptible Catholic Church has a bitter and painful history in Europe, including thirty years of bloody warfare, and has certainly left deep religious scars on Northern European and thereby North American and otherwise geographically situated consciousness. Of course that particular conflict had nothing to do with Buddhism, which has its own history and radically distinct structure of authority.
This view is unfriendly because it undermines a number of aspects of Core Buddhism, including the institutional Sangha and the structure of the Buddhist community as laid out in the Vinaya, established expressions of respect, Dhamma and the culturally fashioned implementations of Dhamma practices. In short, it is a view with little sense of gratitude for the past nor responsibility for the future.
Folk Buddhists Negotiate with the Folk Culture
A challenge to Folk Buddhism is the danger of succumbing to the onslaught those personal and cultural factors of the wider society that cause the distress and suffering Core Buddhism is intended to resolve. Rather than following the direct path advanced by Adept Buddhism unwary followers of Folk Buddhism may come under distracting or unsavory and opprobrious influences inimical to the teachings, practices and values of Core Buddhism. For instance, Folk Buddhism might begin to assume much of the materialism, acquisitiveness or intolerance of the embedding culture, and in the worst case even think some of this belongs to the Buddha’s teachings! It may even come under manipulation of special interests who exploit Folk Buddhism, for instance, for commercial interests or as a means of controlling public opinion and legitimizing the illegitimate.
An unfriendly factor that all Western Folk Buddhists encounter in their negotiations with the general folk culture is the culture of consumerism. Consumerism in some form has probably been a part of almost all folk cultures, but took on a particularly virulent form with the rise of the commercial marketing industry and public relations starting in America in the early Twentieth Century, which developed the art of mass manipulation of human drives to specific ends and has since gone global. It was discovered that desire and craving could be stimulated to increase market demand and that fear and hatred could be stimulated to promote a war or a political movement. Stimulation largely played upon the irrational, emotional and delusive aspects of human cognition rather than upon clear rational thinking, which was discovered to be not only harder to manipulate but in much shorter supply than anyone had ever imagined.
Now, from the perspective of Core Buddhism this is all an, uh, abomination. Modern consumerism is of an order that goes beyond satisfying human need to feeding human greed, which Buddhism teaches will never ever be satisfied and will in fact lead to bottomless depths of human misery. This conclusion is clearly verified in lands like America in the generally feeling of impoverishment even in the midst of wealth, the enormous degree of drug and alcohol abuse, the rate of suicide, the huge market for antidepressants, the ubiquity of daily fear, the widespread unraveling of social networks, the dissolution of families and the renewed strength of class and racial oppression. And in the presence of so much stuff, we are choking on it. Ultimately this order has produced endless war, poverty for much of the world’s population and brought us to the brink of ecological collapse.
In moments of distraction Folk Buddhists may lose their exemption from the allure of the consumer culture. It is Adept Buddhism’s responsibility to bring the wisdom into Folk lives that recognizes the dangers and encourages the escape from the ravages of consumer culture. In the West many come to Buddhism partly out of an appropriate fear of the consumer culture in which they were raised.
Often historically it is the wider folk culture that succumbs to the onslaught of wholesome Buddhist influences conveyed primarily through the Folk Buddhists. Buddhism has often been regarded as a civilizing force in the world. It is perhaps telling of the popular perception of Buddhism that the British economist E.L. Shumacher, not himself a Buddhist, in considering an alternative to the consumer economy, “economics as if people mattered,” called his model “Buddhist Economics.”
Folks Edify the Adepts
The dialog between the Adepts and the Folk Buddhists also works both ways. Although the Adepts have traditionally spoken with great authority, they are not authoritarian. One of the effects of the Buddha’s creation of an absolute daily dependence of the monastic Sangha on the laity, simply to be able to eat, is that the laity always served as a check on the monastics, particularly as a check on the behavior of the monastics. When monastics stop living the pure life, when they party, flirt, gamble, drink beer, seek amusements and don top hats, in other words, act like lay people, then the laity tends to become disinterested in providing support.
This also applies when the monastics become too aloof or uptight for Folk Buddhist standards. The Buddha was much concerned about harmony between the two parts of the Buddhist community, once relented to Folk Buddhist demands with admirable discretion with words that still echo from yester-chapter, “Monks, householders need blessings.” In fact even in Burma many monks eschew worship of tree spirits and of relics as not pure Buddhism. King (1964, p. 59) reports of a monastic sect that that tried to eliminate pagoda worship and worship of images of the Buddha and were met with hostility on the part of the laity until the sect disappeared.
There appear at times to be critical points where Core Buddhism does not have its way, where values contrary to Core Buddhism are so entrenched in the culture that they cannot be dislodged and must be accommodated somehow within Adept Buddhism. Toe meets thorn. We have seen one such point that was reached in China where the Core Buddhist value of home-leaving ran right up against the unshakable value that family represented for the Chinese folk culture. We saw that the resolution seems to have been a clever side-step, a high point in the annals of public relations: Represent the Sangha as a great big family, with family lineages, heritages and a very long history. Just as a bride leaves one family to join another, so does the aspiring monk.
Another such point sees to have been reached even at the time of the Buddha or shortly thereafter, and also entailed a similar clever side-step engineered either by the Buddha himself or later by his close disciples. As far as I can see, gender equality is a fundamental principle of Core Buddhism. It was inevitable that it would step on the thorn of patriarchy endemic in Indian folk culture at the time of the Buddha (and up to the present day for that matter). I have written of this elsewhere (Dinsmore, 2013), but let me summarize.
Evidence of the first point is that the Buddha stated that women were as capable of Awakening as men, that he created a women’s Sangha, with participation in the privileges, obligations, independence and expectation of veneration that that entails, that he took great care in the monastic code to ensure the safety and well-being of the nuns, and perhaps most tellingly to ensure that they do not fall into conventional subservient gender roles with respect to the monks. His great concern would have been the acceptability of this arrangement within the prevailing folk culture and even among his folk following, particularly since the nuns like the monks would be dependent on receiving daily alms, and since the kind of independence he secured for nuns would be that commonly associated in that culture with “loose women.” The resolution was symbolically to put the nuns under the thumb of the monks, without ceding real power to them, through the now infamous Garudhamma Rules.
If this analysis is correct then Original Buddhism is not strictly speaking Core Buddhism. It is compromised not according to principle but for pragmatic means, to sustain harmony with Folk Buddhism. This is the function of Adept Buddhism: to adhere as closely to Core Buddhism as possible, to teach according to Core Buddhism wherever possible, but to be willing to compromise when necessary. Sometimes Adept Buddhism must adapt and adopt. Original Buddhism is the Buddha’s Adept Buddhism.
Neutral elements of Folk Buddhism seem to enter Adept Buddhism quite readily. Since Adept Buddhists generally start out as wee Folk Buddhists and in their studies of Core Buddhism would see no reason to evict these elements, this is hardly surprising. Accordingly we find monks generally offering blessings, consecrating Buddha statues, sprinkling wisdom water on people, engaging in elaborate rituals, even exorcizing ghosts as part of their routine tasks, or simply incorporating folk customs and artifacts into the manner of performing various tasks. If an Adept tradition travels to a culturally distinct land these neutral elements may lose their currency. The Asian teachers that have been particularly successful in transmitting Buddhism to the West, for instance, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Chogyam Trungpa and Thich Nhat Hanh, I speculate, are teachers with a good sense of what is Core Buddhism and what is a cultural accretion. Most Adepts forget. The culturally determined features that they retained even in the West, the clothing, the incense, the bowing, many ritual practices, the rules of etiquette, and so on, by this account would be ones that have been integrated into the functions of Core Buddhism. For instance, when Buddhism came to China it encountered a highly ritualized culture which provided rich resources for the practice of mindfulness, that were then carried along as a part of Adept Buddhism. Western standards of scholarship and pedagogy similarly are already quickly finding their way into Adept Buddhism and into the understanding and interpreting of Core Buddhist concepts with profound and beneficial consequences.
A different kind of influence on Adapt Buddhism has not yet been mentioned: government interference, particularly in Sangha affairs. Emperor Ashoka in the early centuries of Buddhism undertook to reform the Sangha during his reign, which he felt had become corrupted and divided, by expelling wayward monks, or at least monks of whose waywardness he was advised. In the Nineteenth Century King Yule Brenner of Thailand undertook to reform the Sangha, actually creating a hierarchy with government involvement at all levels in Sangha affairs which persists to this day. In Ninth Century Japan in the government strictly regulated monastic ordination in an attempt to reduce the number of monks, forcing many monks into a lesser non-Vinaya ordination from which it never recovered. In Nineteenth Century Japan a hostile Meiji government reformed the Buddhist clergy substantially by disallowing the requirement of celibacy. None of this is envisioned in the Vinaya and most seem to have in the end disrupted the proper functioning of the Sangha. But as they say, you can’t fight city hall.
When Adepts Make a Desperate Appeal to Folk Buddhists
Professional scientists often disparage their colleagues who are intent to popularize science. The ivory tower and the institutions that support it, the tenure system and the tradition of academic freedom, ensure that scientific results are not biased by popular taste or current affairs. The Buddhist adepts cannot afford to be so aloof; they are expected to teach the regular folks and make a direct difference in their lives. Yet they also require a degree of isolation from popular taste and current affair lest these draw them afield o the core teachings of the Buddha. And in fact the Buddha demanded that aloofness. A series of monastic rules of etiquette ensure that the monastic not teach to someone, for instance, who does not show the proper respect. This is probably why Buddhism has had a scant history of proselytization.
In the late Nineteenth Century there began a particular strong movement among the adepts to bring Buddhism into line with Western tastes, a movement motivated largely by politics, and a movement not of Western origin but of Eastern. The European colonial empires in Asia presented a challenge to Asian culture in general and to the Buddhism in particular and Buddhist adepts most notably in Ceylon and Japan took up the challenge. The challenge was the presumption of the superiority of Western culture in general, along with Western science and technology, and of the Christian faith in particular. These were desperate times for a dispirited East. Buddhist adepts with Western educations began to promote the idea of a Buddhism that was compatible with Protestant values yet of superior rationality and of greater compatibility than Christianity with science. The result was a renewed confidence for Asians in the strength of their own culture and faith, and an explosion of interest in Buddhism in the West. Shaku Soen Roshi of Japan and Anagarika Dhammapala of Ceylon were figures identified with this movement on the Asian side, and D.T. Suzuki took up the banner in the early Twentieth Century. Colonal Oltcutt of America and Rhys-Davids were Western figures who responded favorably to this movement.
This movement certainly provided a big boost for Buddhism around the world. The question naturally arises: Was this movement purely on the level? That is, To what extend did this movement stretch the authenticity of Adept Buddhism? Or an alternative question: To what extend did this movement breath new life into the calcified thinking of Adept Buddhism by opening alternative interpretations of Core principles and fresh options for the implementation of Core functionalities?
In the meantime the media of negotiation have changed radically in the last century. Buddhist teachings once passed quietly from the Adepts to the Folks and the Folks, hearts opened to the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, encountered monastics on their alms rounds or approached them at their monasteries with questions or in order to hear Dharma talks, or simply learned to emulate their demeanor, their behavior, the simplicity of their lives and their kindness. The Dhamma was always offered freely, never as a means of livelihood (Once when a layperson declared he was offering a meal in recompense for the Buddha’s offered teaching, the Buddha refused to teach!), and therefore was honest and direct, unbiased by Folk understandings. One’s development as a disciple of the Buddha build organically from community involvement to climbing the stem of intensive practice toward the flower of Nibbana.
Today Buddhists and would-be Buddhists in the West encounter a media-enabled onslaught of teachings, practices and teachers from which American Folk Buddhists are free, at a cost, to select those that appeal most, mixing and matching the various options much as they do with home furnishings or kitchen utensils. This is the way of the modern marketplace. Teachers and authors correspondingly fall into the role of promoting and selling particular practices and teachings as commodities, for a price, taking care how they are packaged and presented, for instance, in the form of popular self-help books, lectures, seminars, CD’s, stage performances and personal hourly consultations.
Information, good information, about Buddhism is available as never before. Along with improving standards of eductation this should be a great boon for Buddhism. However the model of dissemination raises questions: Can the disciple of the Buddha develop in a organic way? Can the adepts convey the teachings in a direct, honest and complete way? Can the adepts engaged in the teaching marketplace maintain a clear connection and dialog with Core Buddhism? If the answer to any of the foregoing is “no,” what do we do about it?
The market produces a saleable Buddhism. This will almost inevitably be a less than radical Buddhism, one that fails to challenge the assumptions of the folk culture in any way that might make too many shoppers uncomfortable. Renunciation and restraint, fundamental Buddhist concepts, will likely be relegated to the fringes of the Folk Buddhist vocabulary and consumerism as a life style will remain unchallenged.
The market produces a piecemeal Buddhism. Buddhist nuggets of wisdom and practice are added one piece at time, for instance, adding a meditation practice much as one would add a regular gym workout or skydiving lessons, without otherwise substantially changing any other parts of one’s life. Just as American homes and lives become cluttered with market products, Folk Buddhist lives become more cluttered with the accumulation of practices and teachings. Progress in Buddhist practice will add but rarely subtract anything. Renunciation (all about subtraction) therefore will find no place, and practices of virtue and generosity little because there would be nothing to acquire. Mixing and matching of freely selected teachings and practices will damage the coherence of a Core in which all the parts of the practices are intended to work together as a unified organic whole. The piecemeal accumulation of spiritual products will largely exclude plunging boldly into a new way of life or taking on a Buddhist way of being in the world as the defining framework into which the details of one’s life are to be integrated. There is accordingly generally little mention in American Folk Buddhism of faith or vow, nor of aspects of Buddhism as a community project, nor a deep understanding of the Triple Gem. There will be little opportunity for Buddhism to shake one’s life to the core.
The market produces an impersonal Buddhism. When Buddhism is sold, an opportunity for generosity is lost on the part of the seller, and a resource that could be turned to generosity is lost on the part of the buyer. Instead a mutually self-interested exchange takes place. A global market undermines communities in this and many ways.
Conclusions
All over the world people are expounding Buddhism, in tea shops in Burma where people draw on the previous lives of the Buddha in evidence, in lectures at German universities where professors hold forth on text analysis of ancient documents, in paying respects to nuns in temples in Taiwan where questions are posed, in monasteries in Texas where young novice monks receive instruction, not far away in Texas where recent Western enthusiasts sit in a circle and relate their personal meditation experiences to one another, deep in forests where a young monk after weeks of search finds the legendary meditation master and requests instruction, in temples, in monasteries and in pagodas where people recite ancient texts together, in books, in blogs, in recorded Dharma talks, in Hollywood movies, in phone counseling sessions.
Just as people expound Buddhism in many languages — Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Thai, Spanish, French — they expound Buddhism blended and washed over with, and understood in terms of, elements of many different cultures — animist, Taoist, Confucian, European Romantic, Western Materialist, Punk, Geek. All of this shapes and reshapes Buddhism, and over many centuries has produced a rich literature of many alternative selections of sacred texts.
However, none of this generally degrades the integrity of Buddhism because Buddhism has a strong anchor, an anchor secured in the Adepts’ adherence to Core Buddhism, most traditionally in the Third Gem. And the Refuges provide the chain that keeps the ship of Buddhism from going completely adrift. This is what allows Buddhism in spite of its radical message to hang on in almost any cultural context. And it all depends once again on the sun, water, soil and a community with roots in a life of Dharmic purity.
Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework. Draft, July 2013. “The individual or collective Western response has often much like that of the new landowner who discovers an overgrown but still potentially productive corn field on his property and with limited understanding of both corn and non-corn, dauntlessly hacks away with a machete only to destroy half of the corn and to leave half of the undergrowth, then plants one row of Monsanto super-corn and row of squash to make it look right. It looks pretty good, so we call it Western Buddhism and expect it to save Buddhism from centuries of Asian misunderstanding and cultural accretions. We have all the hubris and discernment-level of rowdy teenagers.”
