[Buddha-l] Response: Western Self, Asian Other

[Natalie Quli]

Dear Buddha-l friends,

I’m very happy to see my article was interesting enough to spark a
discussion, even if it was to denounce it as badly written (but Palinesque?
Ouch!). I think most of Richard’s summary of my points was accurate and
fair. But I hope I can clear up a few misunderstanding, which were probably
due to my less than stellar writing.

First, I want to say that I was not in any way advocating, as Richard
suggested, “...letting students read materials written in their own language
by practicing Buddhists, especially by ‘white’ Buddhists...” instead of
studying Pali, Sanskrit, etc. Ack, no way! I am arguing for legitimizing the
study of Western (including Asian American, etc.) Buddhists and their
writings, certainly, but I am definitely not in favor of replacing language
studies.  I would not suggest substituting Batchelor for Dharmakirti. I
think the textual studies in classical languages are very important. But I
also think it is worthwhile to study how Buddhism is being reinterpreted in
the West among Asian Americans (my biggest interest) and non-Asian
Americans, which might entail reading whatever they themselves deem
authoritative. For my subjects (Sri Lankan Americans), I’m usually going
back to Pali texts, but if one wants to study the Vipassana movement, then
yes—reading Batchelor may be important. Also, Richard writes, “Moreover,
professors of Buddhism are, she claims, much more inclined to have students
read texts than take field trips, analyze rituals, or study iconography.”
Hmm, I wouldn’t claim that, actually. My professors have always encouraged
the study of ritual and iconography, so that hasn’t been my experience. But
they have discouraged the study of Buddhists in Western countries.

Richard comments, “The bias for texts, and especially old texts, and
especially texts written in Asia, she claims, helps maintain the impression
that Asian Buddhism is somehow authentic, while modernized Buddhism is less
so.” I’m not sure I would call it a “bias” for texts, it’s just the dominant
methodology in the field. All methodologies have their weaknesses; this is
one potential area of weakness for textual scholars certainly, but I would
not say it is an inherent problem if people are aware of it. As long as we
can see this potential weakness, I think we’re in good shape. And I do like
Schopen’s work in that it shows instances of conflict between what Buddhist
texts say about Buddhist behavior and how Buddhists actually behave, but I
am a bit concerned by his idea that Western scholars have focused too much
on text because of a “Protestant” bias. Charles Hallisey made a good point
in “Roads Taken and Not Taken in the Study of Theravada Buddhism” (in
_Curators of the Buddha_) that Theravadins themselves have historically
valued texts, so the fact that early Buddhologists would have focused on
texts may be more a case of “intercultural mimesis” than Protestant bias.
The idea that all things Buddhist that resemble Western or Protestant ideas
must have somehow come from the West is actually something that concerns me
a great deal, which is why I didn’t really mention Schopen, though I do
think he has produced good research.

Regarding Hallisey, I think he has made some convincing arguments about the
limits of Orientalism as a theoretical model for studying Buddhologists, and
I would agree with most of his points. But interestingly, it appears that
some people have taken my paper to mean that I am accusing the entire field
of being Orientalist. This is not the case. I have found that some of the
most troubling claims about Buddhist modernism come from people who are a
bit hyper-sensitive to Orientalism for my taste. The article was not
intended to lament the “horrors” of Western colonialism nor to paint a
picture of innocent Asians as the recipients of corrupt Western violence.
Indeed, that is the very attitude I am critiquing. Attributing all things
negative to the West and making the West the sole cause of changes in Asian
Buddhism is part of the trope of Western modernity being a “corrupting”
influence, and I just don’t buy it. I also think we risk ignoring Asian
history by arrogantly making the West the most important influence in
Asiawhen we employ Said’s Orientalism too hastily. This point was made
by Anne
Blackburn in her Nethra article (listed in the bibliography) and elsewhere
when she notes that some changes in Sri Lanka may be arguably due to Burmese
influence, for example, when scholars have attributed those changes to
Western influence alone--what she calls “a monocausal” explanation for
change. This is another reason I am suspect of claims of Orientalism and
Buddhist modernism.

I name only a few people in the article, though I certainly could have named
more. I think Bartholomeusz’s “Spiritual Wealth and Neo-Orientalism” is a
good example of someone who expresses feelings of guilt over colonialism and
connects the study and practice of Buddhism by Westerners to Orientalism.
There are many other examples of using Orientalism as a theoretical
perspective to study Buddhism throughout Buddhist Studies (and
anthropology), though the most obvious authors are in _Curators of the
Buddha_, who accuse early Buddhology of being Orientalist. The more
troubling assertions to me derive from the similar claim that Buddhist
modernists or “Protestant” Buddhists (Westerners studying Buddhism and Asian
Buddhists influenced by Westerners) are all Orientalists. Borup's “Zen and
the Art of Inverting Orientalism” calls Dharmapala et al. Orientalists, for
example, as does Prothero in his book on Olcott in Sri Lanka, _The White
Buddhist_. Yarnall critiques Westerners studying Buddhism as Orientalists in
“Engaged Buddhism: New and Improved!(?): Made in the USA of Asian
Materials.” There are many, many other examples. I did not go into a
detailed list of names of people who espouse such a view in the article
because (a) I’m still a doctoral candidate and think it would be academic
suicide to do so and (b) I’m more interested in getting people to pay
attention to how these issues may play out in their own and others’ work
than in attacking specific scholars. And so many of the articles and books
above (and others not listed) have such great insights as well—I did not
wish to trash them. It's difficult to critique without creating hostility.

That brings me to Sharf (who’s work I admire, incidentally) and the issue of
distortion. Professor Nance is absolutely right when he comments that the
word “distortion” does not occur in the “Buddhist Modernism” article. I am
quite embarrassed to say that I sloppily cited the incorrect article (though
the “Buddhist Modernism” article is similarly concerned with the decline of
Buddhism by dint of its contact with the West and suggests the “distortion”
idea without directly using the word). The article in which he explicitly
uses the term occurs in “The Zen of Japanese Nationalism”: “How was it that
the West came to conceive of Zen in terms of a transcendent or ‘unmediated’
personal experience? And why are Western intellectuals, scholars of
religion, Christian theologians, and even Catholic monastics so eager to
embrace this distortion in the face of extensive historical and ethnographic
evidence to the contrary?” (p. 108 in the _Curators of the Buddha_ reprint
of the article).

I’m not so concerned with Sharf creating transhistorical essences as I am
concerned with his description of Western influence as “distortion.”
Apparently indigenous changes in Japanese Buddhism are not distortions, or
at least I’ve never seen him describe them as such. Nor is influence from
other Asian Buddhist countries described in such a way. But if a change in
Asian Buddhist understanding is produced via Western influence, it is a
“distortion.” Why? Why is “the Western” notion of experience (if it is
indeed a strictly “Western” category) capable of corrupting (“distorting”)
Japanese Buddhism, while indigenous changes, or even other Asian influences,
are not? If it’s Asian, it’s authentic; if it comes from the West, it is
inauthentic. That is the subtle claim. I don’t think Sharf generally falls
into the mistake of making Buddhism or the West into transhistorical
essences, but I think he teeters on it in this particular instance, though
to me that is much less important than the trope of “contamination” that is
employed in the article. So I ask: If the concept of “experience” that
Suzuki used to promote Japanese nationalism was found to have been
introduced to Japan through Ceylonese rather than Western sources, would the
category of “experience” still be a "distortion"? If we are content to label
any change in Buddhism, regardless of its source, as a "distortion," we have
created a transhistorical essence that is capable of being distorted. But if
only Western-influenced changes are distortions, we are labeling Western
influence as the distortion.

To look at it from another angle: Certainly adherents of many religions
introduce innovations/discontinuities and try to label them as continuities
("tradition"). This is not unique to Zen nationalism. But I think it's
dangerous territory to judge--as a scholar--certain changes as
"distortions," with all the heavy pejorative baggage of that word,
particularly when we know that nearly all religions introduce innovations
that they try to pass off as traditional. So to me the emotional charge of
"distortion" suggests that he sees *the West* as the corrupting influence,
not that the innovations themselves should be seen as distortions. No one
claims Zen Buddhists never innovated under the guise of "tradition," but no
one seems to call these innovations "distortions" prior to Western
influence. So why is an innovation under Western influence a "distortion,"
but other discontinuities with tradition are just innovations? If we agree
that it is Western influence, and not mere innovation, that destroys and
distorts Buddhism, then it follows that Asian American Buddhists and anyone
else affected by Western ideas have a distorted Buddhism, no? But I am open
to other interpretations of Sharf's intentions. Perhaps I am wrong in this
instance.

That said, I did not at all say or mean to suggest that this was the central
thesis of his article rather than simply one aspect of that article. In any
event, it’s worth reading Francisca Cho’s “Religious Identity and the Study
of Buddhism” for a critique of Sharf’s disdain for modernist Zen. And of
course Southwold uses the word “distortion” and expresses contempt for Sri
Lankan Buddhist modernism throughout his _Buddhism in Life_, as I listed in
my footnote. I find a lot of contempt for Western influence in Lopez’s
works, too, but I also think he is an amazing scholar and produces great
research, so I would not dismiss his work because of it. After all, we all
have our opinions.

I do indeed suspect much of this has to do with Western scholars competing
with Western Buddhists and "new age loonies" over who gets to speak for
Buddhism, as several people noted. And I must confess I am not immune to
becoming annoyed with white middle-class Buddhist dabblers who make stuff up
about Buddhism--someone recently told me Buddhism is about finding the
highest purpose of your soul (!!!). I think the annoyance is understandable,
but I think we need to go beyond it and remember that scholars are trying to
understand and accurately describe Buddhists. I don't own Buddhism. It is
going to take directions that I don't like. My job is not to say, "This
person isn't a real Buddhist," but rather to reflect on why it is important
to this person to have a Buddhist identity, and simply note the
discontinuities with tradition without the contempt. It's easy enough to
say, "What this person describes as Buddhism is very different from previous
Buddhist traditions in the following ways...." There's no need for talk of
corruption or lunacy in my opinion. That just makes me a mud-slinger, not a
scholar striving for objectivity.

I also want to make clear that I am under no illusion that the phenomena of
creating Asian (or Western, for that matter) Others is the exclusive
property of the West. In fact, this is precisely the kind of attitude I
would like to guard against. Setting aside the lingering trope of Western
modernity and its “corrupting” influence, I rather like the point that Sharf
and others make when they note how Asian Buddhists have appropriated Western
ideas about Asian Others for various purposes. It brings agency back into
the picture. I think creating "others" is part of the human project of
drawing group boundaries. And I should also add that many Buddhists embrace
being called "modern," though I'm more concerned in this article with the
ways in which scholars use the category.

Anyway, I thought your responses were really helpful and interesting, and I
thank you very much for inviting me to respond. I gained some insight into
some other perspectives that I had not considered. Thank you! I also
recognize that I am not the best writer and that frequently the way I word
things is overly confrontational. I have so much to learn.

And yes, I am co-organizing with Scott Mitchell (and under the guidance of
my advisor, Dr. Richard Payne) the event “Buddhism without Borders” at the
Institute of Buddhist Studies (at the Jodo Shinshu Center in Berkeley,
CA)in March. I will be chairing the panel on transnational Buddhisms,
which
includes a paper by my friend Prof. David McMahan on “Buddhism and Multiple
Modernities” that I am really excited about! The whole conference looks to
be very interesting, and I hope to see you there. Here is a link to the
event’s Web site: http://www.shin-ibs.edu/eventreg/Berkeley2010.php

Wishing you happiness,
Natalie Quli
---------
PhD candidate, Graduate Theological Union
Asst. Editor, *Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies*