[Buddha-l] Bourgeois Buddhism

[Dr. Natalie Quli]

Hello lovely Buddha-l,

Franz wrote:

>
> These questions demand further reflection. In addition, the category of
> scholar-practitioner tends to efface the border between subject and object
> of study. Neither Genpo nor I are, fundamentally, fixed entities either
> inside or outside the borders of anything. Letting go of such
> essentializations legitimizes greater freedom for the ?other? as well as the
> ?self.? For now, I reserve the right?precisely parallel to the right Ms.
> Quli assigns to self-defined Buddhist practitioners?to call my own role and
> work as a Buddhist scholar ?legitimate.?


Darn it, Franz! I was trying to stay out of the fray. But okay, my two cents
are contributed below.

I do not wish to deny a practitioner the right to define what's Buddhism and
what isn't, and I think Franz is perfectly within reason to want to do that
as a practitioner. From a scholarly viewpoint, however, I don't think it
serves any useful purpose. What we get from this sort of parsing of real and
fake Buddhism is endless debates about whether Jodo Shinshu is really
Buddhism, if Tibetan traditions are so degraded that they should actually be
called Lamaism, and so forth. As a practitioner, sure: practitioners are
reasonably concerned with maintaining what they themselves see as
authoritative practice. But for scholars, what's the point of excluding
those who SAY they're Buddhist but of whom we disapprove? What practical
good comes out of the project to de-legitimize Mahayana, or Jodo Shinshu,
or, more recently, Western Vipassana, or Americanized Zen (aside, of course,
from feeling very self-satisfied, which I admit I myself enjoy from time to
time)? What is the scholarly interest in this pursuit?

Still, I have had some practical issues in this area myself. I recently
wrote an article about Western interest in jhaana, and I found that a
"self-ordained" person has been writing quite a great deal about the topic.
He and his followers are considered heterodox by, at least, most
self-identified Theravada practitioners in the U.S. who are familiar with
him. Is he a Buddhist? Should I include him in my studies?

To me, the question of who is or isn't "really" Buddhist in scholarship has
the endpoint of deciding who should be studied and who shouldn't be. Those
not-really-Buddhists aren't worth our time and energy, right? And let's face
it, American Buddhists are just poseurs. Urban Sri Lankan Buddhists are
corrupted by the West and should not be considered real Buddhists. This is
the attitude that concerns me.

There is another article I read recently that piggybacks on some of these
concerns, particularly in making Buddhist traditions of Asia the poor,
passive victims of the West, their Buddhism not corrupted not by choice but
by force, rather than appreciating the ways in which they have integrated,
rejected, or transformed practices to suit new social and personal needs:
Justin McDaniel, "Buddhism in Thailand: Negotiating the Modern Age,"
in *Buddhism
in World Cultures*, ed. Stephen C. Berkwitz (ABC-CLIO, 2006), 101-128.

Happy arguing,
Natalie