[Buddha-l] "Western Self, Asian Other"

[L.S. Cousins]

On 29/12/2009 06:11, Richard Hayes wrote:
> Now here are my first questions about the article. Have any of you 
> witnessed the sort of "rancor and finger-pointing" that Quli refers 
> to? Have you seen academic scholars of Buddhism accused of 
> Orientalism? Have you seen people like Suzuki and Dharmapāla dismissed 
> for the reasons she states; that is, have you seen them dismissed for 
> offering a picture of Buddhism that is inauthentic because it is mixed 
> with Western ideas?
> I have to say that in thirty-seven years of being an academic student of Buddhism I have never been aware of myself or my colleagues accused of Orientalism. As I understand the charge of Orientalism, it is the charge that a scholar either deliberately or unwittingly portrays a culture in an unflattering way and thereby reinforces the idea that the other culture is backwards and perhaps in need of being nudged toward higher levels of civilization by another culture; Orientalism, as I understand it, goes hand in hand with justifying colonization, invasion and warfare. This charge is often made by Muslims of European and American scholars of Islam. But is it made by Buddhists of European and American scholars of Buddhism? I haven't seen such a charge made, but perhaps I live in a sheltered world

I have to separate the two issues.

There is no doubt that Suzuki and Dharmapala have often been dismissed 
for the reasons indicated. The whole concept of 'Protestant Buddhism' 
(and to a lesser extent 'Buddhist Modernism') is used in this way.

I am not so sure about Orientalism. Since the work of Said, the terms 
'Orientalist' and 'Orientalism' have become negative ones in the Islamic 
world and to a lesser extent among some Hindus. This is clearly much 
less true among Asian Buddhists, especially in East Asia. In general, 
much of what Said says is simply wrong, if applied to many nineteenth 
century scholars of Ancient India or China.

Lance Cousins