[Buddha-l] Quli and Imminent Critique

[Franz Metcalf]

Gang,

Since the original thread on Natalie Quli's article has played out,  
I'm taking the liberty of starting a new one. I was struck by one  
thing she said in her post here on buddha-l and can't resist  
commenting on it.

Quli writes,

> I did not go into a detailed list of names of people who espouse  
> such a view [that scholars fail to acknowledge the threads of  
> Orientalism and its inverse in their work] in the article because...  
> 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.


Precisely. This is the work of critical scholarship and I feel the  
proper point of Quli's pen in my own scholarly hide. For example, in  
the paper I'm currently preparing for the "Buddhism without Borders"  
conference that Ms. Quli and Scott Mitchell are organizing, I attend  
to the White Plum Asanga, the organization of dharma teachers in the  
lineage of Zen Center of Los Angeles's founding teacher Maezumi Roshi.  
That is all very well and good but it privileges convert or modernist  
(read: European-American) Buddhist practice. I suppose it is  
permissible, as just one scholar, to so privilege this sort of  
practice. But what when the entire field does so? Is it not the  
responsibility of scholars to promote balance within the field so it  
reflects and properly examines the realities of their object of study?  
In this case, since Asian-American Buddhists probably outnumber  
European-American Buddhists by ten-to-one, shouldn't I and 91% of my  
fellows be studying Asian-American Buddhists?

But, that said, and to return to one of Quli's main points: Are Asian- 
American Buddhist contributions distortions (because they are  
American) or growth (because they are Asian)? And just who *are* Asian- 
American Buddhists, anyway? Wendy Egyoku Nakao Roshi, Abbot of ZCLA,  
about as throughly modern or postmodern a practice center as you're  
going to find, nevertheless chants lineages every day. Is that an  
elite practice? Or consider Rinban Nori Ito, minister of Higashi  
Honganji Temple in LA, who lectures both to his almost entirely Asian- 
American flock and to college students about engaged Shin Buddhism. Is  
that an ethnic practice? And these two, different as they are, are  
both American born Japanese-Americans. The diversity of Asian-American  
Buddhists goes so far beyond what they are given credit for, it is an  
embarrassment to the field of Buddhist studies. (Or so I think,  
anyway. Yet, as I say, I specialize in studying American Buddhist Zen  
meditators, who are almost all European-Americans, so who am I to  
throw stones?)

Am I writing in circles? To some extent, yes. But of course that's my  
point, and, as I read her, a large part of Quli's as well. We *must*  
be self-aware and self-referential if we are to have any hope of  
curtailing our usual human/scholarly tendencies to objectify the  
Other, in a positive or negative light. What I take from Quli's  
article is foremost a strong and sane call to put our own houses in  
order.

Franz Metcalf