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I've frequently seen "Buddhism" adopted by westerners from a secular or Judeo/Christian background and treated as though it's some sort of feel-good practice wh

I've frequently seen "Buddhism" adopted by westerners from a secular or Judeo/Christian background and treated as though it's some sort of feel-good practice which lets them feel vaguely superior to other religions without any serious changes in beliefs or practices. I saw a well regarded movie recently where the main characterized Buddhism as "a philosophy rather than a religion" which made it clear that no Asians had been involved in the making of that film. I was with a friend at a Asian market and he looked snottily at some of the Buddha statues and said "Those don't have any relationship with _my_ religion". I wanted to ask if they'd ever been in a Thai restaurant. It's such a dismissal of the way Buddhism has been practiced in cultures for a couple thousand years - but this white American clearly knows better.

potatoman22 5y ago
Why villainize the "white American", portraying them as "knowing better"? Yes, the mischaracterization of Buddhism is disrespectful, but it comes from ignorance, not malice.
- copio 5y ago
  How can you pick and choose without on some level being aware of what you are excluding?
- nineplay 5y ago
  It is ignorance that borders on arrogance. They must know that Buddhism is over two thousand years old. They must know that it is central to many cultures all over the world. Yet they somehow are confident that their way is the 'right' way.
  - medstrom 5y ago
    Ah, the amorphous "they". Like the amorphous "many". I'm not sure there's all that many that do this.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      "I was with a friend at a Asian market and he looked snottily at some of the Buddha statues and said "Those don't have any relationship with _my_ religion"."
  - potatoman22 5y ago
    Perhaps you should approach this issue with more compassion.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lhorie 5y ago
I'm confused by this comment. Do you mean to say that Buddhists ought to engage in religious flame wars? FWIW, Buddhism is fairly centered on self-improvement, with idolatry being generally seen as respectful reverence, or at worst as lucky charms. I don't see the problem in taking just the teachings of a belief system while ignoring the idolatry aspect. In fact, some western takes on religion could use less idolatry.
- hangonhn 5y ago
  "Do you mean to say that Buddhists ought to engage in religious flame wars?" We have engaged in far worse than flame wars. Buddhists have fought in actual wars at various points of history and done other not so great things. For example, D.T. Suzuki is known for his writing on Zen Buddhism but he was also something of a right-wing nationalist. I think GP is advocating that we approach Buddhism in its whole form rather than just the bits and pieces we are most comfortable with.
  - rendall 5y ago
    Buddhists are currently engaging in the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar. No philosophy is beyond being subverted to evil, and ascribing to a particular philosophy will not protect you from doing evil.
- nineplay 5y ago
  I think it is pure ignorance to call Buddhism a "philosophy rather than a religion" and sneer at idols. You might as well sneer at a display where a round, black-and-white ball is called a 'football'. It shows a complete lack of knowledge about any form of Buddhism practiced anywhere outside of your little world view
  - lhorie 5y ago
    So, for a bit of perspective, as a child, I was mostly exposed to the ritualistic aspects of buddhism, which is probably the closest experience to what a westerner thinks of when thinking of "religion". Do I think that people prioritizing mindfulness to de-stress and calling it Buddhism are kinda missing the point, sure. Do I get offended that they aren't aware of the existence of things like buddhist prayers, for example? No, not really. Honestly, assuming that "bastardizing" buddhism would offend people like me seems like needless SJW-ness for its own sake, especially considering Buddhism has already been bastardized to the wazoo throughout history. </two-cents>
pmoriarty 5y ago
"I saw a well regarded movie recently where the main characterized Buddhism as "a philosophy rather than a religion" which made it clear that no Asians had been involved in the making of that film." Asians are as capable as anyone else at secularizing Buddhism (or of doing anything else, really). Take the example of D T Suzuki[1] himself -- the man who is arguably more responsible than anyone else for bringing Buddhism to the West. "In the mid-20th century, Japanese lay scholar D. T. Suzuki was instrumental in creating a Zen which would be acceptable to Westerners, a project undertaken to position post WWII Japan as a modern, powerful nation and its culture as refined and superior in the face of Western hegemony. Suzuki sought to remove Zen from its historical and cultural context and make it accessible and applicable to everyone. This extraction cut its ties to monks and monasteries, the precepts, sangha life, rituals and teachings, and set up instead the individual internal experience of awakening as the only reliable "truth." Positioning Zen as based on the truth of personal experience protected it from rejection as superstition or as a creation of a bewildered community. At the same time, it could not be replaced by science or rationalism because the awakening experience was said to be subjective and ineffable. It was beyond all the limitations of organized sects, cultural manifestations, or political exigencies. As Robert Sharf explains," "The notion of "pure Zen"--a pan-cultural religious experience unsullied by institutional, social, and historical contingencies--would be attractive precisely because it held out the possibility of an alternative to the godless and indifferent anomic universe bequeathed by the Western Enlightenment, yet demanded neither blind faith nor institutional allegiance. This reconstructed Zen offered an intellectually reputable escape from the epistemological anxiety of historicism and pluralism."[2] "Several scholars have identified Suzuki as a Buddhist modernist... Buddhist modernist traditions often consist of a deliberate de-emphasis of the ritual and metaphysical elements of the religion, as these elements are seen as incommensurate with the discourses of modernity. Buddhist modernist traditions have also been characterized as being "detraditionalized," often being presented in a way that occludes their historical construction. Instead, Buddhist modernists often employ an essentialized description of their tradition, where key tenets are described as universal and sui generis. It was this form of Zen that has been popularized in the West... In his discussion of humanity and nature, Suzuki takes Zen literature out of its social, ritual, and ethical contexts and reframes it in terms of a language of metaphysics derived from German Romantic idealism, English romanticism, and American transcendentalism."[1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_T_Suzuki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_T_Suzuki [2] - https://ancientwayjournal.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/origins-of-secular-zen/ https://ancientwayjournal.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/origins-o...
pradn 5y ago
Throughout Buddhist history, the contemplative, meditative, "philosophical" Buddhism has always been practiced by a small minority of monks and nuns. Even at the height of Buddhist fervor in the middle of the first millennium, far under 0.5% of the population of, say, China were monastics. (In fact most of those simply had certificates of monkhood that exempted from corvee labor - taxes in the form of labor, and weren't seriously committed to spiritual practice.) Most Buddhists have been lay followers content to pray at temples to ease their worries and bring good luck, seek the monastics for ceremonies like weddings and funerals, and donate to monasteries to keep their spiritual practices going. The whole of Mahayana Buddhism is far more concerned with the worship of spiritual intercessors called Bodhisattva's, those who have achieved enlightenment but have chosen to stay behind to help devotees. This form of Buddhism constitutes the bulk of religious practice in East and South East Asia. To ignore it in favor of only one strand of Buddhism is like seeing Christianity only through the eyes of Flagellants or Dominican monks or anchorites.
- travisjungroth 5y ago
  The source of the conflict is that when most people in the US say “Buddhism”, they mean “Buddhism that was exported to the US in the 60s.” which was an odd combination of monastic and secularized. It’s actually a strange combo when you think about it. Most Buddhists are more like Americans on Easter Sunday.
astrophysics 5y ago
Ugh, a WHITE american. They are the worst. Also, what is a racist like you doing in a thread about mindfulness?
bobthechef 5y ago
I don't understand the mention of "Judeo/Christian background"[0] or the invocation of race where religion is concerned (cultural is downstream of religion, anyway), but in any case, it is true, based on what I have read, that "American Buddhism" as practiced in the United States is sort of a consumerist ethos dressed up in Buddhist garb. The case is similar where Hinduism is concerned. The phrase "I am God" coming from the mouth of a traditional Hindu means something different than it does coming from an American who has immersed himself in a kind of Hindu-coated consumerism. The latter is sort of a pantheistic claim, at least theologically, while the latter is likely the expression of consumerist egoism. [0] Btw, I would suggest using "Christian" or "Jewish or Christian" instead of "Judeo-Christian". There are important incompatibilities between post-Christian Talmudic Judaism and Christianity (itself fractured) that cannot be glossed over with a hyphen.
- nineplay 5y ago
  Thank you for pointing that out, it is an unfortunate shorthand and I should stay away from it. I tend to use it as a hand-wavy way to say "fair-skinned Americans who probably celebrated Christmas or Hanukkah growing up" but I'll stop.
hef19898 5y ago
Buddhism always had a lifestyle aspect to it in the West. We have benn in Ladakh once, for the monastery festival season. There we also witnessed a procession around one the holy mountains. The monastery festivals were quite touristic, especially the ones in famous locales. This procession was a purely local thing, besides my parents and myself there was another tourist couple. The people there measured, above 3,500 meter over sea level, heat and dust the distance of the route in their body length for a full day. That quashed any illusions I might have had about Buddhism being an "easy" religion. Also the people their were just sincerely nice. I didn't want to bother them, keep a distance during their break. 20 minutes later I had lunch with them.

potatoman22 5y ago

Why villainize the "white American", portraying them as "knowing better"? Yes, the mischaracterization of Buddhism is disrespectful, but it comes from ignorance, not malice.

copio 5y ago
How can you pick and choose without on some level being aware of what you are excluding?
nineplay 5y ago
It is ignorance that borders on arrogance. They must know that Buddhism is over two thousand years old. They must know that it is central to many cultures all over the world. Yet they somehow are confident that their way is the 'right' way.
- medstrom 5y ago
  Ah, the amorphous "they". Like the amorphous "many". I'm not sure there's all that many that do this.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    "I was with a friend at a Asian market and he looked snottily at some of the Buddha statues and said "Those don't have any relationship with _my_ religion"."
- potatoman22 5y ago
  Perhaps you should approach this issue with more compassion.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lhorie 5y ago

I'm confused by this comment. Do you mean to say that Buddhists ought to engage in religious flame wars? FWIW, Buddhism is fairly centered on self-improvement, with idolatry being generally seen as respectful reverence, or at worst as lucky charms. I don't see the problem in taking just the teachings of a belief system while ignoring the idolatry aspect. In fact, some western takes on religion could use less idolatry.

hangonhn 5y ago
"Do you mean to say that Buddhists ought to engage in religious flame wars?" We have engaged in far worse than flame wars. Buddhists have fought in actual wars at various points of history and done other not so great things. For example, D.T. Suzuki is known for his writing on Zen Buddhism but he was also something of a right-wing nationalist. I think GP is advocating that we approach Buddhism in its whole form rather than just the bits and pieces we are most comfortable with.
- rendall 5y ago
  Buddhists are currently engaging in the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar. No philosophy is beyond being subverted to evil, and ascribing to a particular philosophy will not protect you from doing evil.
nineplay 5y ago
I think it is pure ignorance to call Buddhism a "philosophy rather than a religion" and sneer at idols. You might as well sneer at a display where a round, black-and-white ball is called a 'football'. It shows a complete lack of knowledge about any form of Buddhism practiced anywhere outside of your little world view
- lhorie 5y ago
  So, for a bit of perspective, as a child, I was mostly exposed to the ritualistic aspects of buddhism, which is probably the closest experience to what a westerner thinks of when thinking of "religion". Do I think that people prioritizing mindfulness to de-stress and calling it Buddhism are kinda missing the point, sure. Do I get offended that they aren't aware of the existence of things like buddhist prayers, for example? No, not really. Honestly, assuming that "bastardizing" buddhism would offend people like me seems like needless SJW-ness for its own sake, especially considering Buddhism has already been bastardized to the wazoo throughout history. </two-cents>

pmoriarty 5y ago

"I saw a well regarded movie recently where the main characterized Buddhism as "a philosophy rather than a religion" which made it clear that no Asians had been involved in the making of that film." Asians are as capable as anyone else at secularizing Buddhism (or of doing anything else, really). Take the example of D T Suzuki[1] himself -- the man who is arguably more responsible than anyone else for bringing Buddhism to the West. "In the mid-20th century, Japanese lay scholar D. T. Suzuki was instrumental in creating a Zen which would be acceptable to Westerners, a project undertaken to position post WWII Japan as a modern, powerful nation and its culture as refined and superior in the face of Western hegemony. Suzuki sought to remove Zen from its historical and cultural context and make it accessible and applicable to everyone. This extraction cut its ties to monks and monasteries, the precepts, sangha life, rituals and teachings, and set up instead the individual internal experience of awakening as the only reliable "truth." Positioning Zen as based on the truth of personal experience protected it from rejection as superstition or as a creation of a bewildered community. At the same time, it could not be replaced by science or rationalism because the awakening experience was said to be subjective and ineffable. It was beyond all the limitations of organized sects, cultural manifestations, or political exigencies. As Robert Sharf explains," "The notion of "pure Zen"--a pan-cultural religious experience unsullied by institutional, social, and historical contingencies--would be attractive precisely because it held out the possibility of an alternative to the godless and indifferent anomic universe bequeathed by the Western Enlightenment, yet demanded neither blind faith nor institutional allegiance. This reconstructed Zen offered an intellectually reputable escape from the epistemological anxiety of historicism and pluralism."[2] "Several scholars have identified Suzuki as a Buddhist modernist... Buddhist modernist traditions often consist of a deliberate de-emphasis of the ritual and metaphysical elements of the religion, as these elements are seen as incommensurate with the discourses of modernity. Buddhist modernist traditions have also been characterized as being "detraditionalized," often being presented in a way that occludes their historical construction. Instead, Buddhist modernists often employ an essentialized description of their tradition, where key tenets are described as universal and sui generis. It was this form of Zen that has been popularized in the West... In his discussion of humanity and nature, Suzuki takes Zen literature out of its social, ritual, and ethical contexts and reframes it in terms of a language of metaphysics derived from German Romantic idealism, English romanticism, and American transcendentalism."[1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_T_Suzuki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_T_Suzuki [2] - https://ancientwayjournal.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/origins-of-secular-zen/ https://ancientwayjournal.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/origins-o...

pradn 5y ago

Throughout Buddhist history, the contemplative, meditative, "philosophical" Buddhism has always been practiced by a small minority of monks and nuns. Even at the height of Buddhist fervor in the middle of the first millennium, far under 0.5% of the population of, say, China were monastics. (In fact most of those simply had certificates of monkhood that exempted from corvee labor - taxes in the form of labor, and weren't seriously committed to spiritual practice.) Most Buddhists have been lay followers content to pray at temples to ease their worries and bring good luck, seek the monastics for ceremonies like weddings and funerals, and donate to monasteries to keep their spiritual practices going. The whole of Mahayana Buddhism is far more concerned with the worship of spiritual intercessors called Bodhisattva's, those who have achieved enlightenment but have chosen to stay behind to help devotees. This form of Buddhism constitutes the bulk of religious practice in East and South East Asia. To ignore it in favor of only one strand of Buddhism is like seeing Christianity only through the eyes of Flagellants or Dominican monks or anchorites.

travisjungroth 5y ago
The source of the conflict is that when most people in the US say “Buddhism”, they mean “Buddhism that was exported to the US in the 60s.” which was an odd combination of monastic and secularized. It’s actually a strange combo when you think about it. Most Buddhists are more like Americans on Easter Sunday.

astrophysics 5y ago

Ugh, a WHITE american. They are the worst. Also, what is a racist like you doing in a thread about mindfulness?

bobthechef 5y ago

I don't understand the mention of "Judeo/Christian background"[0] or the invocation of race where religion is concerned (cultural is downstream of religion, anyway), but in any case, it is true, based on what I have read, that "American Buddhism" as practiced in the United States is sort of a consumerist ethos dressed up in Buddhist garb. The case is similar where Hinduism is concerned. The phrase "I am God" coming from the mouth of a traditional Hindu means something different than it does coming from an American who has immersed himself in a kind of Hindu-coated consumerism. The latter is sort of a pantheistic claim, at least theologically, while the latter is likely the expression of consumerist egoism. [0] Btw, I would suggest using "Christian" or "Jewish or Christian" instead of "Judeo-Christian". There are important incompatibilities between post-Christian Talmudic Judaism and Christianity (itself fractured) that cannot be glossed over with a hyphen.

nineplay 5y ago
Thank you for pointing that out, it is an unfortunate shorthand and I should stay away from it. I tend to use it as a hand-wavy way to say "fair-skinned Americans who probably celebrated Christmas or Hanukkah growing up" but I'll stop.

hef19898 5y ago

Buddhism always had a lifestyle aspect to it in the West. We have benn in Ladakh once, for the monastery festival season. There we also witnessed a procession around one the holy mountains. The monastery festivals were quite touristic, especially the ones in famous locales. This procession was a purely local thing, besides my parents and myself there was another tourist couple. The people there measured, above 3,500 meter over sea level, heat and dust the distance of the route in their body length for a full day. That quashed any illusions I might have had about Buddhism being an "easy" religion. Also the people their were just sincerely nice. I didn't want to bother them, keep a distance during their break. 20 minutes later I had lunch with them.