[Buddha-l] Buddhism and Blasphemy

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Fri, 2006-02-10 at 00:46 +0000, Mike Austin wrote:

> In message <000801c62dbb$83b4b430$0201a8c0 at stationr>, Jørn Borup 
> <jornborup at mail.dk> writes
> >Well, Mike, you were not the only one. There were some (ethnic) Buddhists
> >who were quite offended by the bikinis
> 
> I was only referring to this forum.  At the time, I was surprised nobody 
> was interested. But now I note an increasing interest in more peripheral 
> topics - politics, other religions etc. The interest in Buddhism appears 
> to be more at arms length and academic, and less hands-on and practical.

That is not quite the conclusion I would draw from discussions that have
taken place here during the past several years. I do think there is a
pretty wide gulf between some kinds of practitioner and other kinds,
which mirrors the very wide gulf between theologically liberal and
theologically conservative Christians. (I have just been reading about
some of the bitter polemics in the early- and mid-19th century between
professors at Harvard, then a bastion of theological liberalism, and
professors at Yale, then a bastion of revivalist evagelicalaism. Those
battles, which actually began in the 17th century, have changed
location, but they have not ended.)

Some Western Buddhists, it seems to me, are strongly influenced by
values of the European enlightenment and by rationalism and/or
empiricism and by science, and have little or no positive interest in
the religious side of Buddhism. Other Western Buddhists are much more
drawn to the devotional and religious side and have somewhat less
interest in the philosophical and political side and Buddhism. Buddha-l
has always had plenty of representation on both sides of this divide. As
I said above, I'm inclined to think that the real divide in between
styles of practice, not one between academics and practitioners or
"hands-on" and "hands-off" approaches to Buddhism. 
They're both very much "hands-on"---they just have their hands on
different parts of the Dharma-dhatu.

As for the political and social angle, it is reported that the vast
majority of Buddhists in the USA rank themselves 8 on a scale from 1 to
10, where 1 is politically very conservative and 10 is politically very
liberal. The same study shows a whopping 2.9% of USAmerican Buddhists
are Republicans. (I personally suspect that number, since most of those
came from Ohio and answered the questionnaire on electronic voting
machines owned by Diebold.) All these statistics and a set of essays on
the relationship between political and (a)theological liberalism and
Buddhism can be found on a link entitled "Society and morality" on my we
site, the address of which is in my signature file.

In the squib that Jørn Borup sent in, it looked as though most of the
Buddhists who were agitated by the bikini issue (and by bars and various
products using images of the Buddha in a commercial way) were Asians.
Just why that is so (if indeed it is so) would be interesting to
explore. My own quick take rests on a vast generalization that I know to
be problematic but will state anyway as a heuristic hypothesis: Asian
Buddhists tend to be much more religious and probably more culturally
conservative than their Western brothers and sisters (brethren and
cistern?) Progressive people in Asia seem to abandon traditional
religion altogether, while progressive people in the USA (I know little
about the UK and Europe on this matter) abandon religion altogether or
join really liberal more-or-less Christian churches (Unitarians,
Quakers, Congregationalists, United Church of Christ, Disciples of
Christ etc) or find a Dharma center that can't afford to buy Buddha
statues and meets in somebody's living room or in the basement of a
fitness center or a natural foods emporium.

Yours with hands on,
Richard
http://home.comcast.net/~dayamati/squibs.html