Buddhism in the West

Overview

Recall questions on how Buddhism reached the West, its appeal and portrayal in the media, the Dalai Lama, adaptation to Western science and culture, Stephen Batchelor's Secular Buddhism and Paul Knitter's dual-belonging and the criticisms of each.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   How did Buddhism first reach Western countries?

   Model answer

   Through several routes. Colonial-era scholars and translators made Buddhist texts available in European languages during the nineteenth century; societies such as the Theosophists popularised a version of Buddhist ideas; and a meeting of world religions held in Chicago in 1893 gave Asian teachers a platform. Migration then brought communities of practising Buddhists, and later waves of Asian teachers, including Tibetan monastics after the exodus from Tibet in 1959, Japanese Zen teachers and Southeast Asian meditation masters, established centres directly.

2. 2

   What role has migration played in bringing Buddhism to Western countries?

   Model answer

   A very large one. Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Sri Lankan, Vietnamese, Burmese and Tibetan communities have brought their own traditions, built temples and supported monastics, so that much Western Buddhism is the ordinary religion of migrant and descendant communities rather than a convert movement. This produces two rather different Buddhist populations in the same countries: heritage communities where temples are also cultural and social centres and practice is devotional and merit-based, and convert communities that are usually meditation-focused, lay-led and middle class. The two often have surprisingly little contact.

3. 3

   Why have Buddhist ideas appealed in modern Western societies?

   Model answer

   Several reasons are commonly given: Buddhism does not require belief in a creator God, so it appeals to people who have left theistic religion but want a spiritual practice; it presents itself as testable by experience rather than as revealed authority; meditation offers a practical benefit that can be tried straight away; its ethical emphasis on non-harm and compassion attracts interest in animal welfare and environmental concern; and it has a reputation, deserved or not, for being compatible with science and tolerant of other views.

4. 4

   How is Buddhism typically portrayed in Western media?

   Model answer

   Usually as calm, tolerant, exotic and apolitical: robed monks, meditation, mountain monasteries, and a philosophy of inner peace. Zen has become an adjective for minimal design and unruffled temperament. Films and celebrity converts have made Tibetan Buddhism especially visible, and the Dalai Lama in particular is presented as a smiling, humorous moral authority who speaks for humanity in general rather than for a particular religion.

5. 5

   What is misleading about the picture of Buddhism that Western audiences usually receive?

   Model answer

   The portrayal is selective. It largely omits devotion, ritual, cosmology, rebirth, merit-making and monastic discipline, which is what Buddhism consists of for most Buddhists in Asia, and it treats meditation as the whole of the tradition when historically most Buddhists have not meditated. It presents Buddhism as uniquely peaceful, which is contradicted by Buddhist nationalism and violence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar. It also flattens enormous internal diversity, and it carries a long-standing habit of treating Asian religion as mysterious wisdom for Western consumption rather than as a living tradition with its own arguments.

6. 6

   Who is the Dalai Lama, and what is his role in Tibetan Buddhism?

   Model answer

   The Dalai Lama is the most senior figure of the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and, until he relinquished political authority, was also the leader of the Tibetan government in exile. Tibetan Buddhists understand the title as passing through successive rebirths of the same being, identified in childhood, and regard the holder as an emanation of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. The present holder has lived in exile in India since 1959, and his position combines religious authority with the representation of a displaced people.

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