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Buddhism in the West
11 May 2011
I've been reading James Coleman's excellent book, The New Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2001) of late. Subtitled, The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition, it chronicles the many threads of Buddhism on its complex journey into Western culture. Fascinating, thought-provoking stuff, even if the material is a decade old already. It's the story of how two very different cultures changed one another.*
In the century since its introduction, Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy have undergone a radical change, as remarkable and as deep as the Protestant Reformation in European history. The intersection with Western ideas, ethics and spirituality have irrevocably altered Buddhism to the point where much of Western (meaning pretty much all non-Asian) Buddhism today is very different from its traditional roots in Asia in almost all aspects of practice and belief. In fact, many centres are entirely non-sectarian.
Of course there are traditional schools in the West, where Buddhism is practiced in almost the same form as it is in Asia, simulating, if not always replicating, the look, feel and practices. But many Buddhist centres and schools have taken their own path, accepting or rejecting practices (and sometimes entire belief systems) to create something that falls outside tradition, often radically so. And in turn, these groups and their changes are playing back into Asian schools to create new horizons for traditional practice.
This transformation has happened within the last 50 years, much of it within the last 30. Although there have been Western connections with Buddhists since Greek and Roman times, the effect of these meetings did not result in the sort of transformational cross-pollination we see today.** before the 1960s, Buddhism was a minor interest in the west, practiced mostly by Asian immigrants, and taken up by only a handful of Westerners. That changed in 1959 when Shunryu Suzuki, a Japanese Zen master, arrived in San Francisco and started holding classes. These quickly became popular and filled students, and Buddhism caught on with the writers, musicians and poets of the Beat generation.
In 1965, Philip Kapleau opened the Rochester Zen Center and monks from Sri Lanka established the Washington Buddhist Vihara, a Theravadin community, in Washington, D.C. Tibetan Buddhists like Chögyam Trungpa established teaching centres in the West from the 1970s, as interest in the Vajrayana school grew. In the USA today, Buddhism ranks with Islam and Hinduism for its number of followers. In Canada, the 2006 census listed about 300,000 Buddhists, but that number is expected to rise to 600,000 in the current census - our third-largest religious group - due both to increasing immigration from Buddhist countries, but also more Canadians turning to Buddhism (and that does not include the many Canadians who may read or practice a little but not actually join a group - "nightstand Buddhists").
The most widely visible and vocal Buddhist teacher in the west is Tenzin Gyatso, AKA the Dalai Lama. He first visited the United States in 1979 and has been on state visits throughout North America and Europe ever since. His presence, wit and gentle wisdom has helped promote the popularity of Tibetan Buddhism well beyond its status in the Asian community. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen master originally from from Viet Nam, has also created a powerful, attractive image for Buddhism as a thoughtful, peace-oriented practice in the eyes of Westerners.
Western centres have been able to take their own path in great part because of the non-centralized, democratic nature of Buddhism. There is no heirophant, no central authority to determine proper practice or beliefs, not even an agreed-upon canon among the various schools. Theravadin, Mahayana, Vajrayana, Zen - all are quite distinct in their approach. Perhaps the only things they really have in common is an agreement that Siddhartha was the founder, and his essential teachings about the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path. After that, the application and methodology of those teachings, as well as the philosophical additions and interpretations of them are not always shared.
Over the centuries, a patina of external beliefs encrusted into a thick skin of ritual and cosmology that, in some schools, calcified into religion. A once-flexible approach to philosophy and ethics became encumbered by the rigid vertebrae of superstition and theology. Some of these beliefs have been accepted in the West, but others have found poor soil to take root in our increasing secular culture.
Any teacher can and historically has been able to set up schools espousing his own interpretations. There are manifest difference in rituals, terminology, ascetic approaches and disciplines between schools in Asia, but they also have serious differences in spiritual and cosmological core beliefs. That has encouraged Western teachers to further refine, define and interpret the teachings and practices in efforts to find a better fit with Western views and sensibilities. The result has been some radical shifts in Buddhist thinking and application. These teachers may or may not incorporate traditions from other schools, depending on what they are attempting to present.
Buddhism has been a very resilient and eclectic belief. As a philosophy without deities, it was not, originally at least, even a religion in the Western sense of the word. But as it spread throughout Asia, it picked up local beliefs and incorporated them into itself. Today it runs the gamut from the non-theistic Zen to the complex and even animistic Vajrayana and its pantheon of gods, spirits and demi-gods. Many teachers in the West have stripped away these accrued beliefs to go back to the basics, making Buddhism an ethical and moral philosophy, backed by a stripped-down ritual of practice and meditation, shorn of gods, spirits, demons and other supernatural entities.***
Coleman's book describes how many of these new schools have evolved, changed and adapted in the West, at least up until 2001, including some of the complex personalities behind the teachers. While not sensationalizing them, he documents some of the scandals, rivalries and conflicts that have shaken some of these schools, broken a few apart, but left others stronger. It's not always a picture of placid, genteel growth and avuncular teachers. It's not always a democratic picture, either: and some centres have rigid hierarchies among their membership, and carry over Asian biases about gender and class. Others are far more open to Western social and political views.(Pema Chodron, for example, is a well respected female teacher in the Shambala school).,
Because Buddhism is, in general, non-judgmental, it has attracted a lot of Westerners with liberal beliefs. Buddhist teachers seldom condemn gay and lesbian lifestyles, and accept them as practitioners without criticism. It also tends to attract middle-class, successful people, well-educated, in their 30s or older who are looking for practical, but not necessarily religious, answers to questions about meaning. Tailoring the message to this audience has allowed Buddhism to grow widely in the West, where it has often become an adjunct belief rather than a replacement. When stripped of some of the theistic and supernatural components, many Westerners feel comfortable incorporating Buddhist practices and beliefs into their ostensibly Christian heritage. They see no conflict in celebrating Christmas and meditating on the same day.
Not everyone approves of the changes. Many traditionalists see them as weakening the Buddha's teachings, even corrupting them. Some people see the West in colonial terms, abrogating traditional Asian beliefs and foisting Western ideals and goals on Buddhism to make it fit with preconceived images. In the recent book, Wild Geese: Buddhism in Canada, the authors decry the 'cultural imperialism' behind the transformations that are changing Buddhism in the West.****
Buddhism remains flexible, remains able to adapt and transform itself to whatever cultural milieu it finds itself in. It's myopic to view the changes in the West as merely cultural imperialism in a theological garb. Buddhism is simply doing what it has always done: surviving in its new habitat. Coleman's book is far from the final word on its growth, but it's a good place to start reading if you want to understand the roots of the changes.
~~~~~
* The New Buddhism, by James Coleman. Another book with the same title, by David Brazier, is more a manifesto for socially engaged Buddhism, rather than a historical overview.
** Buddhists were known in the West at the time of Jesus, too, and there is much speculation that Jesus' teaching was influenced by Buddhist philosophy. There are claims, too that the "lost" (undocumented) years of Jesus' life were spent learning from holy men in India. There was a Buddhist presence in Alexandria as early as the 2nd century BCE, and might have even had a thriving Buddhist community there that influenced early Christian thought, especially among the Gnostics.
*** Stephen Bachelor, a long-time Buddhist teacher, wrote Buddhism Without Beliefs, a book that challenges many of the more religious and spiritual components of Buddhism, creating what has been called Agnostic or even Atheistic Buddhism. Bachelor even dismisses the concept of reincarnation - an Indian belief that even the Buddha subscribed to. In that, I prefer to think of Bachelor's work as Existential Buddhism. Buddhism was, after all, Existential millennia before our modern philosophers created the term, but was never the nihilistic expression of writers like Sartre and Camus.
**** To me, that attitude seems too politically correct, and I cannot accept the assumption that mere tradition makes every practice worthy of being retained. Only that which has proven itself of value is worth keeping. As the Buddha himself said, in the Kalama Sutra, "Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them."
In the century since its introduction, Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy have undergone a radical change, as remarkable and as deep as the Protestant Reformation in European history. The intersection with Western ideas, ethics and spirituality have irrevocably altered Buddhism to the point where much of Western (meaning pretty much all non-Asian) Buddhism today is very different from its traditional roots in Asia in almost all aspects of practice and belief. In fact, many centres are entirely non-sectarian.
Of course there are traditional schools in the West, where Buddhism is practiced in almost the same form as it is in Asia, simulating, if not always replicating, the look, feel and practices. But many Buddhist centres and schools have taken their own path, accepting or rejecting practices (and sometimes entire belief systems) to create something that falls outside tradition, often radically so. And in turn, these groups and their changes are playing back into Asian schools to create new horizons for traditional practice.
In 1965, Philip Kapleau opened the Rochester Zen Center and monks from Sri Lanka established the Washington Buddhist Vihara, a Theravadin community, in Washington, D.C. Tibetan Buddhists like Chögyam Trungpa established teaching centres in the West from the 1970s, as interest in the Vajrayana school grew. In the USA today, Buddhism ranks with Islam and Hinduism for its number of followers. In Canada, the 2006 census listed about 300,000 Buddhists, but that number is expected to rise to 600,000 in the current census - our third-largest religious group - due both to increasing immigration from Buddhist countries, but also more Canadians turning to Buddhism (and that does not include the many Canadians who may read or practice a little but not actually join a group - "nightstand Buddhists").
The most widely visible and vocal Buddhist teacher in the west is Tenzin Gyatso, AKA the Dalai Lama. He first visited the United States in 1979 and has been on state visits throughout North America and Europe ever since. His presence, wit and gentle wisdom has helped promote the popularity of Tibetan Buddhism well beyond its status in the Asian community. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen master originally from from Viet Nam, has also created a powerful, attractive image for Buddhism as a thoughtful, peace-oriented practice in the eyes of Westerners.
Western centres have been able to take their own path in great part because of the non-centralized, democratic nature of Buddhism. There is no heirophant, no central authority to determine proper practice or beliefs, not even an agreed-upon canon among the various schools. Theravadin, Mahayana, Vajrayana, Zen - all are quite distinct in their approach. Perhaps the only things they really have in common is an agreement that Siddhartha was the founder, and his essential teachings about the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path. After that, the application and methodology of those teachings, as well as the philosophical additions and interpretations of them are not always shared.
Over the centuries, a patina of external beliefs encrusted into a thick skin of ritual and cosmology that, in some schools, calcified into religion. A once-flexible approach to philosophy and ethics became encumbered by the rigid vertebrae of superstition and theology. Some of these beliefs have been accepted in the West, but others have found poor soil to take root in our increasing secular culture.
Any teacher can and historically has been able to set up schools espousing his own interpretations. There are manifest difference in rituals, terminology, ascetic approaches and disciplines between schools in Asia, but they also have serious differences in spiritual and cosmological core beliefs. That has encouraged Western teachers to further refine, define and interpret the teachings and practices in efforts to find a better fit with Western views and sensibilities. The result has been some radical shifts in Buddhist thinking and application. These teachers may or may not incorporate traditions from other schools, depending on what they are attempting to present.
Buddhism has been a very resilient and eclectic belief. As a philosophy without deities, it was not, originally at least, even a religion in the Western sense of the word. But as it spread throughout Asia, it picked up local beliefs and incorporated them into itself. Today it runs the gamut from the non-theistic Zen to the complex and even animistic Vajrayana and its pantheon of gods, spirits and demi-gods. Many teachers in the West have stripped away these accrued beliefs to go back to the basics, making Buddhism an ethical and moral philosophy, backed by a stripped-down ritual of practice and meditation, shorn of gods, spirits, demons and other supernatural entities.***
Coleman's book describes how many of these new schools have evolved, changed and adapted in the West, at least up until 2001, including some of the complex personalities behind the teachers. While not sensationalizing them, he documents some of the scandals, rivalries and conflicts that have shaken some of these schools, broken a few apart, but left others stronger. It's not always a picture of placid, genteel growth and avuncular teachers. It's not always a democratic picture, either: and some centres have rigid hierarchies among their membership, and carry over Asian biases about gender and class. Others are far more open to Western social and political views.(Pema Chodron, for example, is a well respected female teacher in the Shambala school).,
Because Buddhism is, in general, non-judgmental, it has attracted a lot of Westerners with liberal beliefs. Buddhist teachers seldom condemn gay and lesbian lifestyles, and accept them as practitioners without criticism. It also tends to attract middle-class, successful people, well-educated, in their 30s or older who are looking for practical, but not necessarily religious, answers to questions about meaning. Tailoring the message to this audience has allowed Buddhism to grow widely in the West, where it has often become an adjunct belief rather than a replacement. When stripped of some of the theistic and supernatural components, many Westerners feel comfortable incorporating Buddhist practices and beliefs into their ostensibly Christian heritage. They see no conflict in celebrating Christmas and meditating on the same day.
Not everyone approves of the changes. Many traditionalists see them as weakening the Buddha's teachings, even corrupting them. Some people see the West in colonial terms, abrogating traditional Asian beliefs and foisting Western ideals and goals on Buddhism to make it fit with preconceived images. In the recent book, Wild Geese: Buddhism in Canada, the authors decry the 'cultural imperialism' behind the transformations that are changing Buddhism in the West.****
Buddhism remains flexible, remains able to adapt and transform itself to whatever cultural milieu it finds itself in. It's myopic to view the changes in the West as merely cultural imperialism in a theological garb. Buddhism is simply doing what it has always done: surviving in its new habitat. Coleman's book is far from the final word on its growth, but it's a good place to start reading if you want to understand the roots of the changes.
~~~~~
* The New Buddhism, by James Coleman. Another book with the same title, by David Brazier, is more a manifesto for socially engaged Buddhism, rather than a historical overview.
** Buddhists were known in the West at the time of Jesus, too, and there is much speculation that Jesus' teaching was influenced by Buddhist philosophy. There are claims, too that the "lost" (undocumented) years of Jesus' life were spent learning from holy men in India. There was a Buddhist presence in Alexandria as early as the 2nd century BCE, and might have even had a thriving Buddhist community there that influenced early Christian thought, especially among the Gnostics.
*** Stephen Bachelor, a long-time Buddhist teacher, wrote Buddhism Without Beliefs, a book that challenges many of the more religious and spiritual components of Buddhism, creating what has been called Agnostic or even Atheistic Buddhism. Bachelor even dismisses the concept of reincarnation - an Indian belief that even the Buddha subscribed to. In that, I prefer to think of Bachelor's work as Existential Buddhism. Buddhism was, after all, Existential millennia before our modern philosophers created the term, but was never the nihilistic expression of writers like Sartre and Camus.
**** To me, that attitude seems too politically correct, and I cannot accept the assumption that mere tradition makes every practice worthy of being retained. Only that which has proven itself of value is worth keeping. As the Buddha himself said, in the Kalama Sutra, "Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them."
