American Buddhism as a Way of Life
Language: English
Pages: 231
ISBN: 1438430949
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The US seems to be becoming a Buddhist country. Celebrity converts, the popularity of the Dalai Lama, motifs in popular movies, and mala beads at the mall indicate an increasing inculcation of Buddhism into the American consciousness, even if a relatively small percentage of the population actually describe themselves as Buddhists. This book looks beyond the trendier manifestations of Buddhism in America to look at distinctly American Buddhist ways of life—ways of perceiving and understanding. John Whalen-Bridge and Gary Storhoff have organized this unique collection in accordance with the Buddhist concept of the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.
The Buddha section discusses the two key teachers who popularized Buddhism in America: Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki and the particular kinds of spirituality they proclaimed. The Dharma section deals with how Buddhism can enlighten current public debates and a consideration of our national past with explorations of bioethics, abortion, end-of-life decisions, and consciousness in late capitalism. The final section on the Sangha, or community of believers, discusses how Buddhist communities both formal and informal have affected American society with chapters on family life, Nisei Buddhists, gay liberation, and Zen gardens.
SP_STO_Ch01_011-038.indd 32 11/15/09 8:32:58 AM The Authenticity of Alan Watts 33 of something else than the physical world. On the contrary, it is the clear perception of this world as a field.”67 Much like Stephen Batchelor today, that is, Watts advocated a “Buddhism without beliefs.” How far such a modernizing reform can go before it stops being Buddhist is, of course, a matter of dispute. A related concern of “modern Buddhism” has always been to demonstrate the coherence of Buddhism with
paralleled Carus’s insistence on the compatibility of science and religion. And it is surely no coincidence that when Suzuki subsequently founded the Eastern Buddhist as a vehicle for the promotion of Buddhist scholarship, its format and contents mirrored that of The Open Court and The Monist. Like Carus’s journals, the Eastern Buddhist offered its readers popular as well as scholarly articles and emphasized both English translations and philosophical expositions of Asian religious works.12
Hu Shih insisted on the importance of recognizing Zen’s roots in the Ch’an Buddhism of China. Obviously stung by Hu Shih’s attack, Suzuki responded with uncharacteristic harshness that Zen needed to be “understood from the inside” rather than from the outside as in Hu Shih’s approach.25 In the 1960s other critics, led by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and Ernst Benz, complained that Suzuki’s writings were diluting and psychologizing Zen’s teachings, encouraging a widespread misunderstanding among
be a creative force in the development of American pragmatism. Hull House was situated in a poor immigrant neighborhood where children were sent to work in factories at the age of five, where the garbage could be eight inches deep in the streets, where mothers sometimes had to tie their children to the kitchen table leg to go to work because there was no child care. In this age there was very little charitable backup system—people could starve to death if they lost their jobs. In her work, Addams
unparalleled opportunity to prove that we are good and loyal citizens by living rightfully during this crisis, even at the expense of self-sacrifice.”27 Buddhism here became the mode of expression of the most deeply felt of American values, those which are expressed in the face of extreme crisis. Periodicals like Dobo, Bhratri, and Berkeley Bussei also worked to educate Nisei Buddhists about the history, philosophy and practice of Buddhism. These journals reprinted the speeches and articles of