[Buddha-l] Re:American Mahayana/British Theravada?

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Wed, 2006-01-18 at 12:46 +0000, Andrew Skilton wrote:

> From this side, to me at least, the colonial connection seems obvious,
> overwhelming and unremarkable.

Yes, I quite agree. I think that is likely to be a much more significant
factor than reference to carefully selected intellectual trends. I
suppose this is why I find myself being surprised to find, say, Sanskrit
studies in Mexico City. I immediately ask "Why would a Mexican study
Sanskrit?" The answer that usually comes to mind is pretty torturous.
Mexico was a colony of Spain, and Spain and Portugal or closely related,
and Portugal had colonial holdings in Sri Lanka and India. But unless I
can find some obvious or subtle colonial ties, I am always a bit
surprised when someone in one part of the world takes an interest in
anyone who is not bombing them or whose material resources they do not
crave. 

Of course, not everything is due to colonization patterns. It always
intrigues me to discover that there are German scholars who find North
American native peoples fascinating. Why? But then again, why not? It
could be that there are some human enterprise things that are just
intrinsically interesting to human beings everywhere. (Sorry to sound so
un-post-modern.)

> Maybe I am being dumb or something, but can't we also see the US
> preference for Mahayana/Vaj (if such exists) resulting from patterns
> of immigration to the US either from East Asia in the C19th, or Tibet
> and Japan in the mid-C20th?

Had it not been for the craving for cheap labour in a rapidly expanding
American empire in the 19th century, there would have been far fewer
Chinese and Japanese immigrants. Many of them, of course, tried to
minimize their religious differences from the mainstream population,
with the result that many either converted to Christianity or let their
Buddhism manifest in ways that could hardly be distinguished from
Lutheranism or Presbyterianism. All that notwithstanding, I suspect the
immigration patterns in North America have done more than anything else
to shape not only popular interests but also academic interests.
Academic trends are no exception to the dictum "follow the money." The
Numata foundation, and various Korean organizations, are pouring huge
amounts of much-needed money into Western academic institutions, with
the result that the study of Japanese and Korean Buddhism is becoming
more popular than ever before. Not much money is flowing into academic
coffers from Theravadin countries.

> And are there not nowadays a number of excellent US scholars working
> in areas of Theravada adjacent to the cold war border in E/SE Asia,
> i.e. resulting in the last case from American colonial activity, much
> as British interests had been moulded in the previous centuries? 

In addition to "follow the money" I suppose we have to say "follow the
bombs."  One could be forgiven for thinking that at least some of the
interest in Cambodian Buddhism in the USA was a more or less direct
consequence of 1) the huge military campaign that the US conducted
there, which ended up generating a lot of sympathy for the bombees, and
2) the US obsession with Communism, against which Buddhism was perceived
as an ally. Pol Pot put Theravada Buddhism on the map by nearly
obliterating it during his brief but horrible reign of terror.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico