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The New Buddhism: the Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition

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The New Buddhism: the Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition James William Coleman OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS the new buddhism This page intentionally left blank the new buddhism The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition James William Coleman 1 1 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and an associated company in Berlin Copyright © 2001 by James William Coleman First published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 2001 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York, 10016 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2002 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Coleman, James William 1947– The new Buddhism : the western transformation of an ancient tradition / James William Coleman. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-19-513162-2 (Cloth) ISBN 0-19-515241-7 (Pbk.) 1. Buddhism—United States—History—20th century. 2. Religious life—Buddhism. 3. Monastic and religious life (Buddhism)—United States. I.Title. BQ734.C65 2000 294.3'0973—dc21 00-024981 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America Contents one What Is This? 3 two Asian Roots:The Origins of the Buddhist Tradition 23 three Western Flower:The Growth of the New Buddhism 55 four At the Marrow: Practice and Belief 91 five Sex, Power, and Conflict 139 six Why Buddhism? 185 seven The New Buddhism Takes Shape 217 Appendix I 231 Appendix II 237 Notes 243 Index 255 This page intentionally left blank the new buddhism This page intentionally left blank One what is this? Everything changes.This fundamental fact lies at the marrow of Buddhist realization, and throughout its 2,500-year history Buddhism itself has cer- tainly lived up to this dictum. First in India and then throughout the Asian world, Buddhism has continually adapted to the changing circumstances of time and place. Yet against the panoramic diversity of the Buddhist tradition, what may be the most sweeping change in its long history is passing unnoticed by most of the world. After fading out in the land of its birth centuries ago and teetering on the edge of twentieth-century extinction in Tibet and China,a new Buddhism is now emerging in the in- dustrialized nations of the West.This Buddhism is fundamentally different from anything that has gone before, yet, in the best tradition of Buddhist logic, it remains at its core completely unchanged from the moment of Siddhartha Gautama’s great realization under the bodhi tree. A slim, thirtyish woman comes home from work to her New Jersey apart- ment. After a suitable greeting for the cat and a quick shower, she changes into some loose-fitting clothes and goes barefoot into her extra bedroom. The room is bare of furniture except for a multishelved altar against the far wall that holds a bewildering assortment of statues, icons, religious objects, and photographs. She lights a long stick of incense and 3 plants it in an intricately carved pot full of fine white sand. In the center of the altar is a photograph of her guru—a Tibetan man with a brilliant smile who looks to be in his middle sixties and is wearing brightly col- ored monastic robes. She bows and moves back a few feet. Placing a thick pad on the floor in front of her, she puts her hands together with palms and fingertips touching and brings them over her head. She quickly drops to the floor, her knees landing on the pad and her hands sliding until her body lies flat—arms outstretched, head, chest, and hips touching the ground. After she lurches back up to the standing position, she repeats the whole thing over again, quietly reciting a prayer with each prostration. After about ten minutes she is glistening with a thin film of sweat, but she continues until the incense has burned out and she has repeated this ritual more than two hundred times. When she is done, she records the total in a book she keeps in the corner and goes to the kitchen for a cold drink. The Buddhist Tradition Before we can understand the new face Buddhism is assuming in the West, we must look at the old. For most Westerners a mention of Buddhism is likely to bring to mind head-shaven monks in exotic robes, a kung fu mas- ter dispensing wise sayings after vanquishing evildoers in a cloud of kicks and punches, or some other image of the mysterious and foreign. Some Western scholars have even questioned whether or not Buddhism is really a religion, since it doesn’t give the kind of attention to God (or gods) that many assume to be the sine qua non of all religious life. Buddhism is certainly not a Western religion, but only the most ethno- centric observer could attend a Buddhist service, with its robed priests, its rituals, and its devoted followers, and fail to see the similarities with Western practice. From its very beginning the central goal of Buddhism was, nonetheless, radically different from that of the Western faiths. In- stead of glorifying or praising a deity or seeking to live in accord with the divine will, the goal of Buddhism is personal awakening: even the gods bow to the truly enlightened one. Many Western mystics have trodden a path familiar to the Buddhist seekers. But mystics have always remained on the margins of the Western religious establishment; in Buddhism they are its core.The Buddha made no claim to be any kind of deity or to have 4 the new buddhism some special message from God. He said he was simply someone who woke up and saw things as they are. His goal was not to teach a new creed or new way of life but to help those who gathered around him to see the truth for themselves. The Buddha was, in other words, not a Buddhist. It was the institu- tional structures and traditions that grew up around Siddartha Gautama’s teachings that made Buddhism into what we traditionally call a religion. As the great German sociologist Max Weber pointed out, once any charismatic religious teacher dies, the message must be “routinized” if it is to continue. The inevitable result is a more formalized doctrine and some sort of established institutional structure. The paradox, often evi- dent in Asian Buddhism, is that those same structures too easily become an end in themselves, preserving the letter but not the spirit of the founder’s teachings. What was the Buddha’s message? Spiritual seekers, scholars, and intel- lectuals have struggled over that question for centuries.Although it is rel- atively easy to describe what Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) said or at least what the surviving texts claim he said, the point was not to learn a set of doctrines but to experience the reality that underlies them.When they become an end in themselves, the fine words and the intellectual knowledge can actually become a barrier to true understanding. The marrow of Buddhism is the actual experience of the awakened state, but the words that describe it can at least give us some clues if we don’t confuse the description of the food for the actual meal. Looking through awakened eyes, everything is a vast interdependent stream of changing phenomena. Things arise from an infinite chain of past causes and produce effects that have endless consequences. Everything is related to and dependent upon everything else. Nothing, including ourselves, has any independent being or unchanging essence. We are simply an ever changing stream of experience. In realizing this great truth, Siddhartha also saw the origins of human suffering in our deepest desires and attach- ments.We cling to one passing phenomenon after another and struggle endlessly to hold back the inevitable tides of change.We vainly strive to colonize our experience: to create an artificial world of safety and pleas- ure and to exclude the inevitable human experiences of pain and uncer- tainty.The Buddha was not, however, the life-denying pessimist that he is sometimes pictured to be, for he also saw the end of suffering through the cultivation of ethical behavior, meditation, and transcendent wisdom. what is this? 5 As Buddhism developed into an institutionalized religion, the struggle to wake up to those great truths fell primarily to the monks who gave up their everyday lives and dedicated themselves to the pursuit of en- lightenment. But of course everyone can’t be a monk, and it was left to lay Buddhists to lead ethical lives and provide the material support the monastics needed, so that in some future time (perhaps in a future life) they might have their own opportunity to realize enlightenment. Thus Buddhism came to be split into two institutional realms. The monastic elite continued on Gautama’s quest for enlightenment, while new forms of mass Buddhism sprang up that were more concerned with earning an auspicious rebirth—usually by accumulating merit through good works, by faith, or by chanting some magic formula.Although the Buddha never laid claim to any kind of divinity, the stories of his incredible abilities and accomplishment grew over the years, and he became an object of popular worship in many forms of Buddhism.
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