Modernism Flashcards
Modernism
Forms of Buddhism produced from the 19th c. by the encounter of Asian varieties of Buddhism with the dominant cultural and intellectual sources of Western modernity
§Global phenomenon: cocreation of Asians, Europeans, and Americans
§ Links to social reform, nationalist movements, and resistance to Western colonialism in Asia
§Key figures are Asian reformers educated in Western and Buddhist thought
Term first established by Heinz Bechert in Buddhismus, Staat und Gesellschaft (1966)
§Richard Gombrich & Gananath Obeyesekere(1988) coined the term “Protestant Buddhism”
Intellectual climate in Europe
§ Geographic discoveries from the 15th c. completing the knowledge of the Earth (incl. the “Discovery” of America)
§ The Protestant Reformation (16th c.)
§ The scientific revolution from Galileo (1564–1642)
and Newton (1642–1727) onwards
§ Rationalism and the Enlightenment (late 17th – 18th c.)
§ The industrial revolution (late 18th – 19th c.)
§ Capitalism, colonialism and the rise of the bourgeoisie
Modernity Impact on Buddhism
1.
Western monotheism: Christian concepts of person and ethical obligations, ramifications of the Protestant Reformation, missionary activity in Asia
§ Response to Christianity (imitation/critique) > “Protestant Buddhism”
Scientific naturalism & rationalism rooted in Western Enlightenment
§ Buddhism as a “rational religion” uniquely compatible with modern science > Scientific Buddhism & “Mind & Science”
Romantic expressivism: movent of response to alienation from industrialization, materialism, and militarism, seeking sacrality and mystery, “pining for a homeland” > Orientalism (construction of West/East opposition and exoticization of the “East” )
§ Zen and “Inverted Orientalism”
Orientalism
§1978 influential book by Edward W. Said (1935–2003)
§ critique of cultural representations of “The Orient” based on Eurocentric prejudice
construction of “the other”
construction of a binary opposition East-West mirroring, supporting, and justifying an unequal power relationship (colonialism)
=> post-colonial studies
Protestant view on Buddhism
§ Buddhism is initially portrayed as nihilistic, pessimistic, idolatrous, superstitious
§ “Religion” is divided from “magic” and “superstition”
§ Concept of a “degeneration” or “corruption” of religious traditions and the fascination for origins
§ Emphasis on texts, ethics, and individual responsibility
§ Devaluation of rituals, devotional practices, and myth
Theosophism
§ Formation of a universal brotherhood
§ Conception of a universal Wisdom Religion with common
religious truths, subject to evolutionary developments
§ Encouragement of studies in comparative religion: phenomenology
§ “Eastern” religions are closer to the source
§ Tibet as the source and preserve of secret knowledge and as the abode of lost races
§ Madame Blavatsky herself claimed to have spent seven years in Tibet as an initiate of a secret order of enlightened masters called the Great White Brotherhood
§ Interest in science, magnetism, and the investigation of unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man
§ Olcott helped the Ceylonese revival and reform of Buddhism
Chicago 1893
World Parliament of Religion alongside World Exhibition
fascination for the exotic
dominant christian religions wer internsted, nit threatened
Buddhism presented as “rational religion”
Darmapala
one of the two buddhist speakers: Darmapala A leading reformer and revivalist of Buddhism in Sri Lanka
§ English schooling, close connections with the Theosophical movement in America and Europe (Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott)
aligned B very successfully to rational science
Darmapala
§ “In the religion of Buddha is found a comprehensive system of ethics, and a transcendental metaphysics embracing a sublime psychology. To the simpleminded it offers a code of morality, to the earnest student a system of pure thought. But the basic doctrine is the self-purification of man”.
§ “Buddhism is a scientific religion, in as much as it earnestly enjoins that nothing whatever be accepted on faith. Buddha has said that nothing should be believed merely because it is said. Buddhism is tantamount to acknowledge of other sciences”.
§ “…the conflicts of labour and capital and other problems which confront Europe are not to be met with in Buddhistic countries”.
From Anagarika Dharmapala, The World’s Debt to Buddha, 1893
Protestant Buddhism
§ Reaction to European colonization and Christian missionary endeavours, while adopting elements of Protestantism
§ Linked with urbanization, the rise of the burgeoisie, and of a class of Western educated Asian intellectuals
§ Blended traditional Buddhist ethics with Victorian social mores
§ Aimed at reforming Buddhism
§ Aimed at promoting Buddhism within nationalistic discourses
§ Emphasis in individual spiritual goals (versus communitarian rituals): “religion is internalized and privatized”
§ Emphasis on ethics & personal responsability
§ Spiritual egalitarianism
§ devaluation of the clergy in favour of the laity
§ avilability of teaching and religious progression for laity &
women
§ Devaluation of ritual, myth, divination
§ Delocation of “true Buddhims” form the lived religion to a distant past
§ Fascination with origins & texts
Cultural Cannibalsim
§ Meditation (like yoga) becomes a “technique” that can be extracted from its religious context
§ From soteriological mean Þ to consumer good or
Þ therapeutic technique
auto orientalism-self-inverted orientalist
D T Suzuki : “Zen is the keynote of Oriental culture; it is what makes the West frequently fail to fathom exactly the depths of the Oriental mind”
(Suzuki 1969) Ethnocentrism /exoticism beyond eurocentrism
Mirrors and Reflections =
Inverting stereotypes (positive/negative values)
Appropriation of discourses and values (mimesis)
Zen Romanticism
Suzuki Quotes: § The West is “logical” and the East “intuitive”
§ “the most characteristic thing in the temperament of the Eastern
people is the ability to grasp life from within and not from without”
§ far better suited to address “the most fundamental things in life,” particularly religion, art, and metaphysics
§ “satori” as “emancipation, moral, spiritual, as well as intellectual”
§ The union with the absolute involves transcendence of the “rational” and “logical”
§ deprecation of “concepts” and “verbalism,” which obscure the true nature of things as they are
§ awakened beings are “totally identified with Nature”
§ “[Nature’s] ‘irrationality’ transcends our human doubts or ambiguities, and in our submitting to it, or rather accepting it, we transcend ourselves”
