India). If after such a concerted effort sufficient evidence is not found, then the modernists’ contentions regarding the discontinuity between modern “engaged” Buddhism and premodern “traditional” (“disengaged”) Buddhism must be conceded. (The question of how such a new Buddhism should be related to traditional forms [perhaps a new vehicle]—including what it means to call it “Buddhism”—however, will remain). But if sufficient evidence is found, then a well-documented, “concerted argument” can be formulated in favor of traditionists’ insistence on continuity.

“Gimme Distance”

I have proposed that many Westerners do not seem to be able (or willing) to assimilate Buddhism organically and that Buddhism’s many and varied seeds cannot be allowed to simply take root on our soil. We must tinker with those foreign seeds, genetically re-engineer them, and clone and graft them to make our own hybrid, indigenous forms. If they are made “new” in this way, it seems that we assume they will necessarily be improved. Of course, if we did allow for a more organic transfer, they would still become uniquely ours (I certainly do not subscribe to the perennialist notion that Buddhism is a set of eternal, unchanging principles that are transferred intact throughout the centuries from country to country). A variety of Buddhisms would still adapt and become uniquely American (for example) for the simple fact that they would be growing in American soil, in the diversity of American climates, nourished by American nutrients, and so forth. But for some reason, this is not enough for us—it seems we must make Buddhism over in our own image. In short, having recognized (constructed) something in Buddhism that we want, we must appropriate it and then distance ourselves from its original (Asian) sources.

Due to the force of this strong inclination, modern Western engaged Buddhists are being told (and are telling themselves) that they can have their seeds and eat them to they can have their Buddhism and not call it “Buddhism”(38)—or, in the terms of the present essay, they can appropriate their Buddhism and distance themselves too. Thus, as Kraft declared in one of his earlier essays:

Nor is any conversion to Buddhism required. The ideas and practices offered here are assumed to be effective whether or not a Buddhist label is attached to them. (1988: xv)

Kraft is, of course, correct about this, but I wonder if modernist engaged Buddhists, with their zeal for newness, are not too eager to throw off the “Buddhist label” (and any possible continuities that may have been associated with it). Much is lost in this process. The entire past is lost in this process.

Continuity or discontinuity? Ruegg on the use of “source-alien terminology”

We saw that many modernists are quick to emphasize the differences between the “simpler” times of the Buddha and our own, more “complex” times and that modernists use such differences to assert, for example, that “it is unscholarly to … proclaim that the Buddha was a democrat and an internationalist” (Jones, 1989: 66). Likewise, many (not all) of the papers submitted to the first JBE online conference argued that the concept of “human rights” is a uniquely modern, Western innovation.

However, in an essay entitled “Some Reflections on the Place of Philosophy in the Study of Buddhism,” David Ruegg offers some very useful methodological observations that suggest an alternative to such a rigid prohibition of “source-alien terminology.” He writes:

[H]owever much a philosophical insight or truth transcends, in se, any particular epoch or place, in its expression a philosophy is perforce conditioned historically and culturally.
But when saying that it is historically and culturally conditioned, I most certainly do not mean to relativize it or to espouse reductionism—quite the contrary in fact. The often facile opposition relativism vs. universalism has indeed all too often failed to take due account of the fact that what is relative in so far as it is conditioned in its linguistic or cultural expression may, nonetheless, in the final analysis have a very genuine claim to universality in terms of the human, and hence of the humanities. It seems that this holds true as much when we postulate some “Western” or “Eastern” philosophy of this or that period as when we consider what is now termed human rights, which by definition must transcend specific cultures in time and place. (1995: 155)

Thus, it may well be valid to say that the Buddha did espouse “democracy,” “internationalism” or “human rights,” regardless of the fact that what he espoused may not have been exactly “the same as” what we now mean by those terms. But for that matter, one cannot say that all people in different times and places throughout the modern era have used those terms in exactly (or sometimes even approximately) “the same” way. A similar observation could be made about the use of the term “engagement” in general. (39)