[Buddha-l] Western Buddhism

[Joy Vriens]

Dan,
>The article is not challenging the idea that various people -- of a certain 
>generation -- have found some satisfaction with their flirtation with 
>Buddhism. The question it is asking -- which I think is an extremely 
>legitimate question, and one which I have raised for many years -- is the 
>question of transmittability. Is the sort of "Western Buddhism" that has 
>enjoyed some popularity in recent decades capable of any staying power, or 
>will it disappear with the present, aging generation, that has been 
>embracing -- the article claims -- not so much Buddhism per se, as that term 
>applies historically to Budddhists of the last 2500 years, but to an 
>experiment in the name of an imagined Buddhism, so divorced from actual 
>Buddhism, that it cannot pass down to another generation, who will either 
>have to invent their own experiment (if so inclined), or turn to some other 
>type of experiment having nothing overt to do with Buddhism, real or 
>imagined. The article raises this question with some melancholy, since the 
>author finds the experiment otherwise worthwhile. 
 
>The crux, though, is the transmittability issue. Has this "experiment" 
>created something that can be transmitted, passed on, or is it merely a 
>single generation's indulgence? Interesting question. 

I can't imagine any Buddhism that isn't an imagined Buddhism. As for transmission, what do we understand by that? If we transmit data, the data are packaged in such a way that none of them will be lost. But the experience of the same data by the sender will not be the same as the experience of them by the receiver. It's very likely that they will not focus on the same data and therefor not have the same experience. When they transmit "the package" they may give more importance to specific data, but since the receiver has access to the whole context, he can readjust the bias and pick his own pet data.  

What is different between an imagined traditional Buddhism and Western Buddhism is that the former may have been more preoccupied with the transmission and the goods that are transmitted and the latter by what one can get out of those goods on a personal level. It is perhaps more consumer-oriented and less culture-carrying. But the whole package of fundamentals is and will be available, I have no doubt about it.

Again what is transmission? Isn't intentional transmission itself an illusion? As a parent what do we think we transmit to our children? As children what did our parents succeed in intentionally transmitting to us? Did we *really* assimilate what they intentionally wanted to transmit, or did we simply receive them as transmittable goods to be further transmitted to our children? 

Think of scepticism and of how it is transmitted. There is no actual school or tradition and it has no dogmas, in theory, and yet it manages to survive without an actual transmission. :-)

Joy