"American" Buddhism

[Nicholas Weeks]

Good insight on converts making Buddhism in America more "American" or Western than Buddhist:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/0 ... hists.html

[Ceisiwr]

Good insight on converts making Buddhism in America more "American" or Western than Buddhist:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/0 ... hists.html

"After my months of unease with the conversations being had among American Buddhists, Font-Clos had finally articulated my skepticism. The white Americans who taught me Buddhism were choosing to follow the parts of Buddhism they found appealing, while rejecting parts that didn’t align with their values. Rather than acknowledging how their Western values affected their understanding of the Buddha’s teachings and Buddhist culture, they claimed that their Buddhism was more progressive than other forms."

This happens quite a lot. I remember once a middle-aged man suggested that in addition to the NEFP we could also add "Right Entertainment" and "Right Leisure". When I objected to this, I was told something along the lines of the lines of we make the Dhamma suite us. I was also told I was being out of order for criticising the idea.

[DNS]

This is a common issue / problem in all religions and probably one of the main reasons religion in general is on the decline; that is, members conflate the message with the messengers. Some adherents are not following the teachings of the founder (Jesus, Buddha, etc) and engage in judgmental and hypocritical actions, but that doesn't mean the 'message' of the founder is bad.

[dharmacorps]

There is definitely a long western tradition of interpreting non-western traditions in a western way, or adapting them to suit our own ends. This is instead of giving the teachings a chance on their own merit.

It is interesting in reading about the earlier european colonists or interactions with Asian Buddhists, that the europeans came to the conclusion, after reading the Pali Canon, that Asian people didn't understand their own religion (in this case, Thervada Buddhism). I am not sure what the hippies of the 60s and 70s did was materially different. And those were my first meditation teachers. It took some investigating on my part to realize they were cherrypicking teachings.

[JamesTheGiant]

...the europeans came to the conclusion, after reading the Pali Canon, that Asian people didn't understand their own religion...

There is some truth to this. For example, when westerners started ordaining in Thailand they read the vinaya and discovered that the Thai monasteries had not been doing the sanghadisesa procedures properly for hundreds of years. The whole country had to change to the proper way of doing it, and they were ashamed that obviously nobody had read that part of the vinaya or cared to do anything about it for centuries.

[Goofaholix]

The kissing game stuff is pretty weird.

Some of what is mentioned in the article is more prevalent among Mahayana converts where people are more likely to embrace Buddhism as a religion with everything that goes with that.

I guess when I hear the phrase "American Buddhism" I tend to think of IMS or similar where the religious side of Buddhism is de-emphasized while still seeing it as a path to awakening and not just a therapy.

[cappuccino]

"Right Entertainment" and "Right Leisure"

perhaps for lay people

[SarathW]

...the europeans came to the conclusion, after reading the Pali Canon, that Asian people didn't understand their own religion...

There is some truth to this. For example, when westerners started ordaining in Thailand they read the vinaya and discovered that the Thai monasteries had not been doing the sanghadisesa procedures properly for hundreds of years. The whole country had to change to the proper way of doing it, and they were ashamed that obviously nobody had read that part of the vinaya or cared to do anything about it for centuries.

This is something great that comes out of non-traditional Buddhist converts.
People started looking at the teaching with a fresh eye.

Having said that Westerners tend to take whatever suits them in teaching.
I think many same-sex people are attracted to Buddhism as they were rejected by Christianity.
Even Abdekar Hindu converts mainly joined Buddhism due to the caste system and their Buddhism is still very much Hinduism.

[TRobinson465]

Very interesting read! Thanks for the share. Reminds me of a lecture i saw on academia that talks about American/Western Buddhism vs Eastern Buddhism.

https://www.academia.edu/courses/d1mmY1?tab=0&v=Eg2l6b

Her experience is quite interesting, what she describes growing up is very similar to what a lot of ex-thiests describe before they moved toward athiesm. Naturally this type of thing happens in every religion of course, so its interesting seeing a take on it from Buddhists. although some of her stories seemed quite extreme, even among the more karmic minded/monks on a pedestial Asian Buddhist temples ive been to i dont think they took it quite to the level she describes in the article. ("you must have hurt her in a your past life", "lets let a tibetan monk kiss our daughters etc.")

[TRobinson465]

...the europeans came to the conclusion, after reading the Pali Canon, that Asian people didn't understand their own religion...

There is some truth to this. For example, when westerners started ordaining in Thailand they read the vinaya and discovered that the Thai monasteries had not been doing the sanghadisesa procedures properly for hundreds of years. The whole country had to change to the proper way of doing it, and they were ashamed that obviously nobody had read that part of the vinaya or cared to do anything about it for centuries.

This is true in every religion when it becomes ingrained in the culture. Like how native english speakers dont catch grammar mistakes non-native english speakers often get. Many christians today believe angels are people with wings when the bible describes them as these really wacky monstrous things, or that you go to heaven right after you die when in reality the Bible says nobody except the prophets and angels are in heaven. The bible clearly states ppl only go to heaven after the day of judgement after God raises the dead. Nobody goes straight to heaven/hell after they die if you go by the Bible.

[TRobinson465]

I do agree with the author about the western Buddhist outlets just completely ignoring asian buddhist perspectives. Like what, 40% of Buddhist in america are Asian and ive seen almost no asian american authors on places like Trycycle or Lions Roar except for like established masters. They even once did a bit about "lower income" Buddhists, "conservative" Buddhists, and black/hispanic Buddhists i think for the sake of "diversity" and just totally ignored the Asian Buddhists...

Even worse is western Buddhists claim thier cherrypicked version of Buddhism is the "purer" Buddhism. As if modern western values was closer to ancient india culture/values than modern asia. I find it interesting she decided to leave Buddhism for that though. Most people who complain about that just kinda acknowledge it and think twice about thier cherry picking of Buddhist doctrine rather than flat out leave. although im sure her upbringing played a role in that decision.

[mikenz66]

The tricycle article by Bernat Font-Clos https://tricycle.org/magazine/early-buddhism/ referred to the OP link, was discussed here a while ago:
https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/pr ... hism/22134
including some input from him: https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/pr ... m/22134/22
It's an interesting article, but with a rather confusing title, which may have been an Editorial decision.
The article ends with:

The recent trend in dharma circles that we may call “neo-early Buddhism” differs in fundamental respects from the early Buddhist texts it claims as basis, and it should be more open about that. Chiefly, it is life- or world-affirming, which early Buddhism is not. I have argued that the doctrine that “everything conditioned and impermanent is dukkha,” one element of the rationale for wanting to leave the world, is a renunciant doctrine. Since in affirming life neo- early Buddhism affirms the impermanent and conditioned rather than attempting to get away from it, it is senseless for it to maintain that everything conditioned and impermanent is dukkha. I have suggested that this inconsistency stems from two things: from not instinctively regarding life as cyclical and from an emotional difficulty in disagreeing with the Buddha. The latter facilitates relating to those teachings that create cognitive dissonance in a way that is dishonest and unhelpful, planting the seeds of future confusion, stuckness, or even crises of faith, and that does not help to harmonize our values, our goals, and our means to reach them. I hope I am exaggerating.

On another point, I was surprised that according to the statistics here: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/re ... nformation only 33% of the Buddhist the US are Asian.
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_in_New_Zealand the estimate is around 30% converts, which still sounds high to me (hard to see how the converts can compete for numbers when I consider the number of Chinese [some here since the gold rush], Thai, Sri Lankan, etc), but I see (having just filled in a census form) that it's purely a self-identification thing, so it's perhaps hard to tell what the numbers mean.


Mike

[dharmacorps]

There is some truth to this. For example, when westerners started ordaining in Thailand they read the vinaya and discovered that the Thai monasteries had not been doing the sanghadisesa procedures properly for hundreds of years. The whole country had to change to the proper way of doing it, and they were ashamed that obviously nobody had read that part of the vinaya or cared to do anything about it for centuries.

Well, sure fresh eyes help understanding the written word, but there is a difference between a vinaya procedural propriety and re-shaping the dhamma as needed so it is more palatable to personal preferences (e.g. jettisoning anatta, precepts, rebirth, sila,etc).