A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack (review)

David Loy has done a masterful job of condensing and assessing more than two thousand years of Western religious, philosophical, and cultural history "from a Buddhist perspective." Basing his discussion on the premise that the predicament of Western civilization can be traced to a search for metaphysical origins and the subsequent attempt to "reify the sense of lack" in both the Christian doctrine of "original sin" and the secular preoccupation with "freedom," he systematically deconstructs the foundations of our monotheist/humanist society. Arguing that fame, romantic love, and money are the major Western devices for reifying the self, Loy makes a strong case against the possibility of ever resolving our sense of lack if we are to continue pursuing those devices. In their place, he offers the Buddhist solution of "forgetting" ourselves through meditation, which he defines as the technique of "[losing] our sense of separation and [realizing] that we are not other than the world." Following the dualistic course of searching "out there" to satisfy what Sakyamuni Buddha called drshna, the unquenchable thirst for experiences that delude us into believing in a permanent self, Western theologians and philosophers, from Plato to Augustine to Locke, have engaged in a desperate game of "consciousness attempting to catch its own tail." It is this never-ending game that the Buddha saw as the cause of all human suffering, which can only end with the realization that there is "no-thing at my core," in other words, that there is no permanent self, and therefore nothing to liberate.

Loy claims that "the lack of an overtly spiritual grounding to our lives" is intrinsic to "the basic nihilism of modernity," and he ingeniously reveals a link between totalitarianism and dualistically envisioned individual freedom. He goes on to posit the Buddhist notion that victimhood is yet another way of "[reinforcing] one's delusive sense of self as that which has been abused." It is here that Loy comes dangerously close to arguing in favor of the otherworldly kind of quietism that Westerners too often associate with Buddhism and meditation in general. While touching on the inner tension between the inner-worldly Buddhism of Southeast Asia and the more socially engaged Mahayana form adopted by China, Korea, Japan, and Tibet, the author nonetheless skirts the most crucial issue faced by the majority of Western Buddhists: how much involvement with the suffering of the world beyond the meditation cushion is too much? And are my efforts to "save the many beings" not merely another way of aggrandizing the self? Ascribing the Western obsession with progress and subsequent destruction of the environment to the largely Protestant construction of a worldly solution to the spiritual sense of lack does not account for the fact that ancient societies under Buddhist rule such as China were no less aggressive in their search for wealth and power, and, in several cases, equally brutal in their persecutions of non-Buddhists. Loy makes a valid distinction, however, between Buddhist and Western core values: "Most of us [in the West] have lost faith in collective solutions . . . we are more in the grip of individualistic ones, such as the craving for fame, the love of romantic love, and of course an obsession with money."

Loy's discussion of our three favorite "devices" for solving our sense of lack is truly admirable. Devoting an entire chapter to "The Renaissance of Lack," he meticulously traces the current obsessive craving for fame, romantic love, and money to the late Middle Ages and the decline of Christianity. Though not a new phenomenon by any means, the "fever of renown" has assumed a peculiarly warped form in the democratic West, where individuals are less worshiped than celebrity—or, lacking that, notoriety—itself. Loy's Buddhist insight into this endemic postmodern disease is poignant yet hopeful.

When fame symbolizes my need to end my lack and become real, . . . disappointment is inevitable: No amount of fame can satisfy me if there is really something...