The Modern Buddhism - Research Paper Example

Religion and Theology 17 April Modern Buddhism At the moment, Buddhism, despite the turmoil it endured in the 20th century, is one of the largest religions in the world with about 800 million followers, most of whom live in East and Southeast Asia. Western counter-culture has developed its own, new Buddhism. More exactly - it manipulated with different fragments of Buddhism, inserting them into its own bizarre mosaic. The counter-culture routinized soon and its radical leaders became respectable conservatives. Certain fragments of Buddhism became a part of the mainstream, turned into a politically correct element of Hellenic Polytheism of the postmodern age. It’s a wonder, but many forms of the modified Western Buddhism have become the norm: they are re-exported to Asia and, to some extent, change cultures in Buddhist countries. Global Buddhism was the result of western penetration in Asia and western understanding of Asia. Buddhism gradually transformed into a global intellectual and spiritual resource, open to universal use. This paper is focused on the history of Buddhism, its transformation and western variant, spiritual and political leaders. Buddhism is practiced by 6-8% of the world population, which is much inferior to Christianity (about 33%), Islam (about 18%) and Hinduism (approximately 13%). Buddhism is mostly Asian religion: 99 % of Buddhists live in Asia, in the eastern part of it. General periodization of the history of Buddhism includes 4 stages: 1) canonical Buddhism (from its origin in the 6th millennium BC to the reign of Ashoka Maurya (3 BC)); 2) traditional or historical Buddhism (from Ashoka to the mid / late 19th century); 3) modern or revival Buddhism (from the late 19th century); and, finally, 4) global Buddhism. This typology does not seem very convincing to many scholars, but most of them agree that the mention of the latter stage is correct and symptomatic: it is obvious that something happened to Buddhism that involved it into the framework of global discourse. But there are also quite a large number of religious practices that are passive in global discourse - archaic, traditional elements or elements of orthodoxy / orthopraxy. Such traditional elements are numerically dominant in Buddhism. They are well distinguished if contrasted to a dynamic segment. This contrast can be seen on the example of separation of western Buddhist communities into originally born Buddhists and converts. Tension between ethnic groups and neophytes is so obvious that many suggest existence of two branches of Western Buddhism - traditional, passive Buddhism of ethnic diasporas and dynamic, active Western Buddhism of neophytes. Buddhism in Europe was popularized by the Hungarian Tibetologist Alexander Csoma de Koros (1784-1842) and French Indologist Eugene Burnouf (1801-1852). Choma de Koros was just a lone researcher. Burnouf managed to create one of the most powerful Buddhist schools in the world. Burnouf studied Mahayana, translated and published Saddharma Pundarika Sutra in 1852. His main work is Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism (1844). It contains translations of Sanskrit texts, as well as the first characteristics of Maha-Prajna-Paramita and Lankavatara sutras. He considered that the main benefit of Buddhism study is its contrast with Christianity thanks to which we can better understand the latter. Modern Buddhism became popular and widespread in America thanks to the Beat Generation and the Hippies who happily practiced this peaceful religion. The very combination of words “Buddhistic fundamentalism” seems irrelevant: compared with the Abrahamic religions, Buddhism has no concept of dogma, orthodoxy and heresy. Buddhism has no ontological dualism of righteousness and sin and, therefore, there is no sharp division into believers and disbelievers, chosen ones and infidels; there is no division of the world into dar-al Islam and Dar al Harb (territory of peace and territory of war). Buddhism does not claim a monopoly on truth. That’s why it was so popular among protestants of all sorts. Study of Buddhism in America started later than in Europe. Originally, it was heavily influenced by the British school. At the present time, no doubt, most Buddhologists of the world live and work in the U.S., but we can’t talk about methodological unity of the American school. Even the existence of such a school is doubtful. In fact, the U.S. scientists are engaged in researches of all branches of Buddhism and use a variety of methodological approaches. We can say that study of Pali Buddhism was dominant up to the 50s and Tibetan tradition in the 50-70s (it was greatly stimulated by a significant number of Tibetan Buddhists who migrated to the U.S). In general, Americans transformed the Anglo-Saxon approach - Mahayana Tradition was rejected before as inauthentic and researchers were urged to refer to the Pali texts. The Tibetan euphoria became dominant in the 80s in America - why study the texts of the dead if we can study an ancient, but still living tradition! That euphoria has led to some misunderstandings - all the interpretations of Tibetan lamas were taken as the ultimate truth without any attempt of critical reflection. This situation has changed only after the 80s. The roots of massive American Buddhism lie in the “network Buddhism”- Insight Meditation Society, established in the United States after World War II, based on the Theravada tradition of meditation (Vipassana and Samadhi) and teaching of the Burmese practitioners U Ba Khin (1899-1971) and Mahasi Sayadaw (1904-1982), who rapidly acquired popularity (there are over 50 permanent centers around the world). Another example might be a less thematically focused, but still a global network of Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), founded by Sangharakshita in 1967. Then started the rapid “globalization” of Zen traditions (groups of followers emerged thanks to the Japanese and Western, primarily American, Roshi - teachers of Tibetan Buddhism (e.g., Karma Kagyu inspired by the Danish Lama Ole Nydahl or Rigpa led by Sogyal Rinpoche). A special role in this missionary work and penetration of Buddhism into the USA was played by the doctor Suzuki (1870-1960), a representative of Japanese Zen Buddhism. He wrote numerous books and pamphlets in popular science style, which in a very simple and accessible form explained the tenets of Zen Buddhism. His books have become especially popular in the second half of the 20th century. Of course, such an easy interpretation of the Buddhist Canon led to an almost complete abandonment of rituals and ceremonies and concentration of attention on koans - the puzzles that can’t be solved with the help of logic, but can help a man to move to instant enlightenment. Manifestation of Buddhism in a simplified form set a trend and the other Eastern teachings became cut down and widespread - Feng Shui, fortune telling I-Ching, etc. A good example of such transformations is the phenomenon of meditation. Meditation in general is a key element of global Buddhism. Meditation has always been a central part of esoteric Buddhism, but exclusively monastic. In the 20th century meditation becomes open to the laity not only in America and Europe, but in Asia also: secular meditations became a reality of urban Asian Buddhism since 1950-1960’s. Naturally, the forms of meditation became simpler at the same time. Further, meditation completely breaks away from the actual Buddhist roots (e.g., non-religious meditation centers or New Age syncretism). Meditation becomes just a psycho-therapeutic tool. So, the global form of Buddhism is based on the western understanding or transformation of Asian traditions. It led to simplification of the traditional doctrinal and religious blocs. Buddhism got a specific adaptation for an easy everyday use. Thus, some separate blocks of Buddhist doctrines and practices were transformed into “spiritual software”, easily loaded into new contexts and easily crossed with other elements. References Heine, Steven, and Charles Prebish. Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.  Read More