The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia: Second Edition

Buddhism and the West

buddhism and modernization 197 Lay Buddhist educational, social welfare, and human rights organizations andmovementsaregrowingworldwide.Theirproliferationreflectsthevitality oflayleadershipintherevivalofBuddhisminthemodernperiodinSoutheast Asia,butalsounderlinestheincreasingambiguityoftheleadershippositionof themonkintheTheravadatradition.Whatjustificationremainsforthemonastic order as traditionally defined if laymen and laywomen are able to become meditationteachersandprovidethesocialservicesoncerenderedsolelybythe monasterythatonceservedasthemostimportantorganizationbeyondthefamily ?Canthedominantmalecharacterofthemonasticorderbesustainedwhen it is challenged by respected Buddhist women’s organizations? Such questions are both immediate and practical in the Theravada cultures of Buddhist Asia. Buddhism and the West The future of Theravada Buddhism will unfold in the West as well as its natal countries of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia, although intercourse between the West and Theravada Buddhist countries is far from new. Travelers’ accounts written during the early colonial period often portrayed Buddhism in either unsympathetic or exotic and esoteric terms, however, by the end of the nineteenth century, Western interest in Buddhism had become both intensive and extensive. Westerners made many contributions to Buddhist scholarship, and some took a personal interest in the tradition. T. William and Caroline Rhys Davids founded the Pali Text Society, an organization devoted to editing and translating Pali canonical and commentarial texts. They also helped to found the London Buddhist Society. These early Western Buddhists and sympathetic scholars were responsible for creating and promoting a rationalized, demythologized Buddhism that appeals as much to twenty-first century Europeans and Americans as it does to Western-educated Asians.143 In this section we shall explore three distinct but related aspects of a new ecumenical Buddhism: the emergence of an international Buddha-dhamma; the popularity of Theravada insight meditation (vipassana); and the expansion of expatriate Buddhism. 198 part iii In1959What the Buddha Taught,authoredbytheSinhalesemonk-scholareducatorWalpolaRahula ,waspublishedintheWest.Soundlygroundedinthe Pali scriptures, the book discusses such seminal teachings as the Four Noble Truths, not-self, dependent co-arising, meditation, and nibbana. Like D. T. Suzuki’s idealistic interpretations of Zen, Rahula’s clearly articulated interpretation of Theravada thought is still regarded as a masterpiece of apologetic literature. It presents a rationalized, demythologized version of Buddhism devoid of reference to aspects of popular Buddhist beliefs and practices such as the Buddha cult or merit-making rituals. The Venerable Rahula did not intend for his interpretation of Buddhism to be a comprehensive treatment of the variety of genre in Buddhist literature; rather, What the Buddha Taught represents a tradition of modern, rationalist reinterpretations of Theravada doctrine propounded by both Asian Buddhists and Westerners. A modern, rationalized Buddha-dhamma gauged to appeal to a Western -educated audience has many representatives from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, and the West. Sinhalese scholars have been particularly influential. The late K. N. Jayatilleke of Peradeniya University, Sri Lanka, who studied with Ludwig Wittgenstein, and several of Jayatilleke’s students, most notably David J. Kalupahana and Padmasiri de Silva, have written sophisticated interpretations of Buddhist thought in dialogue with modern epistemology , British empiricism, American pragmatism, and Western psychology.144 Kalupahana argues that the middle way philosophy of early Buddhism was fashioned as a counter to essentialism on the one hand, and nihilism on the other. He contends, furthermore, that the history of Buddhist philosophy— ethics,epistemology,psychology,andlogic—hasbeenanendeavortomaintain that middle way. Western philosophers in this tradition find parallels between Humean empiricism and post-modern deconstructionism.145 This modernized view of the Buddha-dhamma demythologizes the tradition in the service of ethical and psychological values. Nibbana, for example, is interpreted primarily as a nonattached way of being in the world that affects how we act, rather than as an extraordinary and difficult-to-achieve state of enlightenment. Prince Siddhattha, the mythic hero of the Buddha legend, is transformed into a social critic and moral exemplar.146 However, buddhism and modernization 199 this is not to say that the modernized Buddha-dhamma misinterprets the inherited tradition of Buddhist doctrine, but rather, that the tradition is skillfully reinterpreted to appeal to a rational, Western-educated audience. Although critics have faulted this modernized Buddha-dhamma for its overemphasis on Buddhism as a philosophical and ethical system while ignoring the rich textures of Buddhist practice and nonphilosophical forms of Buddhist thought, without such reinterpretations, a religious tradition loses its relevance and saliency for the twenty-first century. There is a risk, however, that in the service of rationality and relevance, the varied and challenging complexity of the tradition is ignored or lost. The sine qua non of Buddhism in the West has been and continues to be the practice of meditation. Beginning with the popularity of Zen Buddhism in America after World War...