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

[Richard Hayes]

On Dec 31, 2009, at 10:25 AM, JKirkpatrick wrote:

> Again, during the so-called Bengal Renaissance of the early 19th
> c., Debendranath Tagore and others founded the Brahmo Samaj as a
> means of "modernising" (although they didn't use that term)
> Hinduism. Such movements did appear in response to colonialism,
> but they were not attempts to curry favor with the rulers.  No
> scholars, foreign or Indian, ever referred to that move as
> Protestant Hinduism.

Some people refer to such movements as neo-Vedanta or neo-Hinduism. Sometimes I get the impression that tacking "neo" on as a prefix is a mild form of disapproval. Expressions like "neo-Buddhism" and "Buddhism lite" to refer to the works of people who have been critical of some aspects of Buddhist tradition hardly seem laudatory.

> Moreover, Indian critiques of elite Hinduism
> as widely practiced had begun appearing with the bhakti saints,
> like Kabir, that preceded British colonialism by a long shot.

Kabir, of course, influenced Guru Nanak. Is Sikhism every referred to as Protestant Hinduism or as Hinduism lite.

> Could the process Quli refers
> to--of western scholars dissing western Buddhism--be partly
> viewed as a process and practice of maintaining their control
> over an academic field they long dominated???

I think there is something to this. People who have invested countless hours learning Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, Korean and Japanese are probably murderously resentful of those who get away with studying Buddhism by studying texts that were written in English. Spending a thousand hours reading four pages of Dharmakīrti is somehow presented as more legitimate than spending fifty hours reading the complete works of Stephen Batchelor. But why?

Although Quli's article raises quite a few problems (which several of you have already pointed out), I do think she makes a valid point when she observes that for Buddhists it is quite important to reflect on what counts as legitimate Buddhism, but academics should not engage in this enterprise. So while, say, a Rinzai Zen Buddhist might do well to think about whether SGI, NKT, the FWBO and Stephen Batchelor are really presenting authentic Buddhist teachings, academics should abstain for passing judgement on such matters.

Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
rhayes at unm.edu