A second group takes a very different approach and arrives at a decidedly different conclusion. While this group admits that there have been doctrines and practices with socio-political relevance latent in Buddhism since its inception, it insists that these “latencies” have always remained relatively “untapped,” that they have not been (or often could not have been) fully realized until Buddhism encountered various Western elements unique to the modern era. Modern “engaged Buddhism” may share some essential features with traditional forms of Buddhism, but it also contains enough substantive differences to warrant calling it a relatively “new” form of Buddhism unique to the modern era.(3) Thus, due to their emphasis upon discontinuity with the past, I will refer to members of this group as modernists.(4)

In addition, most members of these groups have tacitly considered their own position to be relatively natural or self-evident, and thus (until the last couple of years) neither group has taken the other’s position very seriously—or at least they have given this impression by spending a minimum amount of time discounting the other group’s position.(5)

Traditionists have charged that modernists simply do not understand the “essence” or “spirit” of Buddhism and that such modernists have thus been predisposed to miss the social theories and practices of Buddhists throughout the ages. Modernists, on the other hand, have dismissed traditionists as methodologically naïve and historically “reconstructive,” insisting that traditionists peer unwittingly through a modern lens at ancient/traditional teachings.

As I have examined the burgeoning writings from these two groups, I have become increasingly interested in the question of why these groups take the positions that they do (both have some good arguments, and neither presents a completely self-evident position). What motivates these authors? Who are their intended audiences? Do the different scholars in these groups claim to represent these engaged movements, to be spokespersons ordained to provide a theoretical/historical basis for the activities of engaged Buddhists “on the ground”? Or do these authors seem to want to maintain a stance of scholarly objectivity, merely describing these movements to others? In either case, how might traditional Asian Buddhists respond to these scholarly opinions? And how might different self-styled “engaged Buddhists” themselves respond to these opinions? (Or is it even possible to separate the practitioners of this movement from the theoreticians who would shape their very understanding of who they are and what they are doing?) Thus, this present examination of the phenomenon of “socially engaged Buddhism” represents such a meta-level investigation (and ultimately a philosophical/methodological critique) of the “society” of scholars who themselves claim to represent (or describe) this social “movement.”

In particular, and in spite of their claims to methodological superiority, I have been continually struck by how ideologically motivated the modernists persistently seem to be. Much of what they write seems natural when read quickly and uncritically, but upon closer analysis, this group of authors often appears almost obsessed with demonstrating, for example, what they perceive to be the newness of Buddhism’s socially engaged dimension. The demonstration of this “newness” (and the corresponding emphasis on its previous “latency”) seems to be not an observation, but a necessity. Indeed, in reviewing the relatively short history of modernist writings on engaged Buddhism, it has often seemed that earlier vague descriptions of what it meant to be socially engaged were fine-tuned and developed over time in tacit response to emerging (traditionist) claims that Buddhism historically had been engaged. As traditionists have presented evidence of past Buddhist activities that met the modernists’ criteria for “engagement,” it seems that modernists have been driven to modify their criteria precisely in order to continue to construe socially engaged Buddhism as something new.

It is important to underscore at the outset that in this present study I will not be primarily engaged with assessing these authors’ (historical) truth claims (though to do so is clearly an important desideratum): it is simply beyond the scope of this study to research thoroughly and present the variety of “historical evidence” that would have to be amassed in order to address (or refute) the many shifting modernist definitions of what it means to be socially engaged. Instead, the present essay will attempt to address some of the theoretical and methodological issues mentioned above, particularly as they regard the majority modernists. Nor will I be arguing (at this meta-level) that the modernists’ insistence on discontinuity with the past is entirely wrong (one can, with good reason, easily choose to emphasize either continuities or discontinuities with the past). Rather, I will be striving to accomplish the following two limited objectives. First, I hope to demonstrate that the discontinuity that the modernists emphasize is just that, an emphasis—it is less an observation than it is an ideologically motivated construction. Second, I hope to reveal some of these unarticulated ideological motives that underlie this modernist choice of emphasis, and to call into question the value of this choice.