The Example of Western Folk Buddhism

Buddhism
has by norms of Buddhist chronology only begun to blend with Western
folk culture. Tweed (2000) examining the first wave of this process,
ending some hundred years ago, identifies three types of early
adherents, each with its own focus of interest: The esoterics were
attracted to the occult metaphysical and experiential aspects of
Buddhism, the rationalists to almost the opposite, to the discursive,
scientific and non-religious aspects, and the romantics to the exotic
aspects of Buddhist cultures, to their art and architecture. Each of
these had a distinct understanding of what Buddhism is all about, all
found what they were looking for, and all of these are still with us.
McMahan (2008) provides an excellent catalog of a broader range of
trends in current Western Buddhist practice and understanding that have
clearly traceable Western cultural roots, roots generally in Protestant
Christianity, in the European Enlightenment and scientific rationalism,
in Romanticism or in psychotherapy. Let me consider just one example of
this kind.

A
popular understanding in the West is that Buddhism is about freeing
one’s authentic (or innermost or true) self (or nature or voice or
heart), a self that has been suppressed by social conditioning and other
unnatural factors, but when unleashed is the source of creativity,
spirituality, virtue and wisdom. This authentic self is typically
accorded the following qualities:

The authentic self exists independently of social roles, culture and conventions.

Social roles, culture and conventions are oppressive to the authentic

81 Sharf(2003)reviewsthisevidenceforthehistoricaldependenceofPureLandon other schools of Buddhism.

A Culture of Awakening self.

Creativity,
spontaneity, goodness and art are external expressions that flow out
from the authentic self. This is known as self-expression or being
natural.

Spirituality adheres in the authentic self, while religion is found in external rules, conventions and dogma.82

We
must learn to trust the inner experience and inner vision of the
authentic self, that which comes naturally, that which is true to
ourselves.

Although
such statements have a long and venerable history, they have only a
short Buddhist history. In fact, this authentic “self” is far more
metaphysical than what an Adept Buddhism generally endorses. The idea of
the authentic self does bear a vague kinship to practices of
introspective examination in authentic Buddhism, but we would be hard
pressed indeed to find any of the rather specific statements above
represented in Buddhist literature of any tradition.

If
the notion of the innermost heart does not have a Buddhist origin,
where did it come from? The answer is: from European Romanticism and its
later expressions.83 It is found in people like Rousseau, Schiller and
Schleiermacher, representing the idea of human thought free from social
constraints, of morality and wisdom coming directly from the human
heart, of naturalness. The outflow of the inner self is often taken up
in the art of the Romantic era; Wordsworth, for instance, stated that
“all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”84
Such Romantic themes can be traced forward through the American
Transcendentalist movement and through turn-of-the- last-century
metaphysical movements, where they played a role in the early attempts
to comprehend Buddhism in the West,85 then later entered the American
countercultural movements of the middle twentieth century, which
provided the fertile soil in which Buddhism began to take root in the
West.86

The
authentic self is probably useful in highlighting the importance of
interior or introspective experience in pushing up and ascending the
stem of the flower. The Path is in many ways a solitary one. I don’t
want to dismiss its useful role in Western Folk Buddhist understanding
out of hand. However, from the perspective of authentic Buddhism it has
some problematic inconsistencies as well. First, until one has reached a
degree of attainment, the uninstructed worldling is assumed, in the
Buddha’s understanding, to be enormously deluded, mired in greed, hatred
and delusion. Under this condition, trust in any inner voice would seem
most ill-advised indeed. Second, the authentic self does not seem
particularly helpful in the project of deconstructing the self and in
fact contains its own potential for self- centeredness. Third, the inner
self would seem to dismiss the role of the Buddhist community and the
importance of the Sasana as social constructs, inimical to the authentic
self, and therefore irrelevant to “real” Buddhism.

In
short, the authentic self, while a pervasive and popular understanding
in Western Folk Buddhism, lacks a firm basis in authentic Buddhism. To a
great extent, the popular understanding of Buddhism in the West is a
patchwork of many analogous understandings sewn in with some pieces of
authentic Buddhist cloth.

Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron – What is Western Buddhism?

Study Buddhism

26.3K subscribers

Is
there such a thing as Western Buddhism? Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron
explains that because no single form of Buddhism could ever satisfy
everybody, and Buddhism already has such a wide variety of traditions
and lineages, its future existence in the West relies on the adoption
and development of the different lineages among Westerners.

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