[Buddha-l] Buddha's Meditation

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 6, 2011, at 14:38 , Franz Metcalf wrote:

> “Like Narcissus, [Western Buddhist] enthusiasts failed to recognize  
> their own reflection in the [supposedly Buddhist] mirror being held  
> out to them.”
> ----Robert H. Sharf, 1993. “The Zen of Japanese Nationalism,”
>     _History of Religions_, 33/1 (1993): 39.

This idea has occurred to many a Western scholar of Buddhism. In his lectures at the summer seminar in Buddhism at Bodhi Manda Zen Center in 1988, Bill Powell told about driving across Arizona from California to New Mexico. He saw a Navajo ceremony off in the distance and began speculating about what it was probably all about. As he was thinking, his focus suddenly shifted, and he saw his own reflection in the car window, superimposed upon the Navajo ceremony. That visual fluke reportedly jolted him into realizing that mostly what scholars of exotic cultures do is to see themselves and imagine they are seeing something from the outside that just happens to confirm most of their own cherished prejudices.

But so what? Why would anyone expect things to be otherwise?

Richard Hayes