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Writing As Enlightenment

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Writing As Enlightenment Introduction John Whalen-Bridge and Gary Storhoff Is it not singular that, while the religious world is gradually picking to pieces its old testaments, here are some coming slowly after, on the sea- shore, picking up the durable relics of perhaps older books and putting them together again? —Henry David Thoreau, Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844 Now that Buddhism has taken root in America—a process characterized by Zen pioneer Sokei-an as “holding the lotus to the rock”—those who have managed to survive their first enthusiasm are busy tending the new growth. The ground has been broken and we are now in a period of cultivation and settlement. —Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake In his recently published North American Buddhists in Social Context (2008), Paul David Numrich wonders if scholarly research on American Buddhism really constitutes a “field of study.” Although the interest in Buddhism in North America is, as Thomas A. Tweed asserts, much greater currently than in the past (2000, xv),1 Numrich feels that it is too early to tell whether Buddhist Studies in the United States represents a true field of study. In fact, Numrich equivocates in his judgment, concluding that in the first decade of the twenty- first century, Buddhist study in North America has attained only the status of a “protofield,” not having “progressed beyond the earliest stages of development” (8). In order to evaluate the strength of Buddhist Studies in North America, Numrich devises three criteria: 1 2 Writing as Enlightenment 1. specialization, which includes scholarly training, research ques- tions, and professional commitment; 2. organization, which includes meetings and conferences, academic programs, university departments, and so on; and—perhaps most important 3. publications such as books, refereed articles, and journals (1–13). Even though Numrich acknowledges that the impressive number of publica- tions in North American Buddhist Studies constitutes the best case for a field- of-study status, he also is concerned that there is yet to be a “high level of cross-disciplinary productivity, sophistication, and integration” on the topic of Buddhists in America. He concludes, “scholars have yet to achieve significant interdisciplinarity” (9). Our series from the State University of New York Press, Buddhism and American Culture, is an important interdisciplinary milestone, for it is the first edited collection on the comprehensive topic of Buddhism in the expressive arts and living styles in the United States. In short, the series answers Numrich’s urgent, timely call for a cross-cultural discussion of Buddhism in the United States. This series attempts to increase understanding of how Buddhism has become an important cultural dimension of America, and it is necessary to look at the contexts of literature, film, visual art, and social thought—to name just four domains—to do this work. The first volume of this series, The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature, demonstrates the profound influence of Buddhism on American literature since the beginning of the twentieth century; the eleven essays included in that volume constitute an astute examination of literary work within the context of a decidedly immigrant faith. Indeed, Emergence represents the most complete treatment to date of Buddhism in literature, including dis- cussions of seminal writers of High Modernism such as Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound; innovative treatment of the Beats, such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; and—perhaps groundbreaking for contemporary studies of American Buddhism—analyses of Buddhist principles in literary works by contemporary writers of color, such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Lan Cao, and Charles Johnson. Our second volume in this series, American Buddhism as a Way of Life, explores in wide-ranging essays how Buddhism has been transmitted to America spiritually and materially in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Rather than focus solely on a cultural practice such as literature, however, this volume considers particular social problems as a way to understand the social context of American Buddhism. We have become used to a discourse in which “Buddhism is a philosophy rather than a religion,” but to the degree that this is so, Buddhism is also at variance with traditional approaches to philosophy. We Introduction 3 can think of it as philosophy as a “way of life”—to paraphrase Pierre Hadot, from whose book Philosophy as a Way of Life we took our title. American Bud- dhism is “a way of life, both in its exercise and effort to achieve wisdom, and in its goal, wisdom itself. For real wisdom does not merely cause us to know: it makes us ‘be’ in a different way” (Hadot 265). In eleven far-ranging chapters in this volume, authors consider the developing social needs of Americans as they face the new millennium. Contributors explore the ethical challenges posed by contemporary medicine; the special needs of gay persons as they search for refuge in Buddhism; feminism and a Buddhist response to the abortion debate; and the Japanese-Americans as they found solace in Buddhism while experienc- ing discrimination after Pearl Harbor. Writing as Enlightenment: Buddhist American Literature into the Twenty-first Century, the third volume in this series, is meant to re-engage literary scholars. The literary richness characteristic of early Buddhist texts has now become an important part of American literary history in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and literary scholars schooled in Buddhist thought know that to dispense with literary features identifiably Buddhist is to engage in one more futile dualism of ancient, doctrinal texts versus contemporary expressions of the dharma. In the discipline of anthropology, “indigenization” refers to transformations that occur within an imported cultural system, changes that enable it to better fit local customs. And a certain degree of indigenization is only to be expected when Buddhism migrates to America. Buddhism under- went indigenization when it moved from India to Tibet, and when it crossed from India to China and then to Japan. Certainly, Buddhism is undergoing this process as it moves from Asia to the United States. But when any cultural system undergoes indigenization, some people will discover creativity and inno- vation—as Buddhism finds contemporary expression in literature, film, and life writing—whereas others will bemoan the loss of authenticity as ancient texts, doctrines, and principles are adapted and transformed to an American culture. The study of indigenization as Buddhism engages with America is the project of this series on Buddhism and American Culture. There is much to explain and interpret, despite the resistance to inter- pretation that some strands of American Buddhist discourse have occasionally foregrounded. This resistance to an analysis of a text is common to Buddhist critical discourse broadly understood—to interpretations, explanations, and ratiocinations generally. The Buddhist reader will remember that near the end of Buddha’s life, he took his disciples to a pond for instruction, and instead of a usual philosophical discussion, Buddha simply reached into the pond, picked a lotus flower, then twirled it in his hand. Although many of his disciples attempted to analyze the gesture, explain the symbolism, and interpret the scene, Buddha approached his follower Mahākāśyapa, who simply smiled in understanding. 4 Writing as Enlightenment Buddha replied to the followers, “What can be said, I have given to you; and what cannot be said, I have given to Mahākāśyapa”—and it was Mahākāśyapa, not the interpreters, who became Buddha’s successor. In yet another wonderful story, the interpretive endeavor itself is mocked. A visiting monk admits to defeat in a dharma contest by a one-eyed monk. The visiting monk relates the nature of his defeat: First I held up one finger, representing Buddha, the enlightened one. So he held up two fingers, signifying a Buddha and his teaching. I held up three fingers representing Buddha, his teaching, and his followers, living the harmonious life. Then he shook his clenched fist at my face, indicating that all three come from one realization. Thus, he won. His interpretive discourse, however, collapses under the testimony of the one- eyed monk, who has an entirely different interpretation of this dharma contest: The minute he saw me he held up one finger, insulting me by insinuating that I have one eye. Since he was a stranger, I thought I would be polite to him, so I held up two fingers, congratulating him that he has two eyes. Then the impolite wretch held up three fingers, suggesting that between us we have only three eyes. So I got mad and started to punch him, but he ran out and that ended it. If, as Dōgen tells us, enlightenment cannot be achieved unless the practitioner “ceases to cherish opinions,” literary critics are apparently quite far away from satori; we are much more like the visiting monk or Buddha’s followers at the pond. We need to explain. This volume is composed of chapters written by those who indeed have opinions, but do not “cherish” them, as Dōgen warns us against. Instead, the authors in this volume wrestle with the question of Buddhism’s place in America’s postmodern culture. The volume’s first section, “Widening the Stream: Litera- ture as Transmission,” begins with a study of how America came to Buddhism originally, and how that origination persists into twenty-first century American culture. How is it that America, known for its pragmatism and muscular Christianity, would embrace a religion that seemingly is its opposite, especially given the orientalist stereotypes current at the turn of the century? These early, negative stereotypes of Buddhism are discussed in Jane Falk’s “The Transmission of Zen as Dual Discourse: Shaku Soen and Okakura Kakuzo,” which discovers a major source of postmodern America’s fascination with Zen Buddhism in its transmission by two Japanese, Soen and Kakuzo, whose contributions to the origination of Buddhism in America have heretofore been underestimated.
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