This generalization is somewhat strange because this anthology contains essays by several outspoken traditionists. Return to text

In her preface to this passage, Simmer-Brown herself states that the “BPF … analyzes … especially suffering caused by social, economic, and political structures,” then unabashedly concludes that “[t]his analysis goes beyond the Buddha’s.” Return to text

This is one of the earliest book-length studies of “engaged Buddhism,” and though it is largely modernist in tone, it is perhaps one of the most sophisticated and well-balanced works on this topic. We will be returning to his arguments extensively below. Return to text

We will be discussing Jones’s notion of “reductive modernism” below. Return to text

It is significant to note that this 1988 essay, as bold (or extreme) as it may sound, has had an important and enduring history of its own in publications on engaged Buddhism. It was selected for inclusion and reprinted essentially unchanged in the 1996 Engaged Buddhist Reader (pp. 64-69), and the very passage cited here was also quoted by Queen in the culminating paragraph of his introduction to his 1996 Engaged Buddhism. Return to text

Robert Aitken, The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics (San Francisc North Point Press, 1984), p. 164, as cited by Queen in Queen, 2000: 17. Return to text

Indeed, earlier in his essay Lopez quotes an article published by Hodgson in 1828 that clearly shows “the ambivalence of trust and suspicion of the native that would come to characterize the study of Buddhism in the west.” (3) Return to text

On the untenability of a theory/practice split, cf. Catherine Bell’s Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Return to text

It should be noted that modern Buddhologists have widely (if not universally) deconstructed and discredited at least this particular Orientalist formulation (real Buddhism equals pure philosophy). Return to text

Such a dubious split parallels the nirvāṇa/saṃsāra split clearly refuted by Nāgārjuna, among others. It must be admitted that such a naïve, dualistic split certainly was maintained by certain “early Buddhists” (the ones who Nāgārjuna was claiming to refute), but it must equally be admitted that there were probably “early Buddhists” who did not accept such a split (the ones who Nāgārjuna would have been claiming to side with—for Nāgārjuna himself did not claim to be an innovator, but rather claimed to be speaking within and for the Buddhist tradition). Return to text

Modernists might “expect” that scholars from historically Buddhist counties would naïvely misconstrue their own history in this way, but they would also probably “expect” that Western scholars such as Thurman or Macy “should know better.” Return to text

Note that to refer to “my sources,” “my texts,” “my native informants,” and so forth is already to engage in a subtle act of appropriation. Return to text

Cf. Tuck (1990: 10-11) on the significance of a descriptive tone that sounds as if something has been discovered or observed, rather than interpreted or constructed. Return to text

I am here using “false consciousness” in the most generic sense, as nicely defined in the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (ed. Robert Audi, Cambridge (1996): 262): “lack of clear awareness of the source and significance of one’s beliefs and attitudes concerning society, religion, or values.” Return to text

A similar East-West dichotomy (and the need for a similar synthesis) is espoused by Eller in 1992:

Some … thinkers suggest that … “social gospel” or “social and political theory” is precisely what the West (or Christianity) has to offer to Buddhism. Through a melding of these two traditions, they believe, a more complete philosophy of life and the world will come to light. Gary Snyder takes this position when he says, “The mercy of the west has been social revolution; the mercy of the east has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.” (1992: 102)

Here both “West” and “East” are construed as having had (presumably always) intrinsically “incomplete philosophies,” each waiting to find the other to “complete” itself. This stereotypical portrayal seems again motivated by the kind of neo-colonial, “appropriative” disposition that we have been discussing: East and West may be said to complete each other, but the final synthetic hybrid is accomplished by Western practitioners, defined in Western terms, used in a Western way, on Western soil (primarily), and so forth. Return to text

Queen says of himself, “As one trained in the Theravada practice lineage that produced American Dharma teachers Jack Kornfield, ... [etc.], I imagine myself as a ‘hinayanist.’” (2000: 31, note 52) Return to text
It is impossible for me to see how Queen could consider (1) to be part of a “new” outlook. However, as the main topics of our discussion here are really (2) and (3), we shall leave the issue of (1) aside. Return to text