Joanna Macy echoes Sivaraksa’s and Rahula’s contention that a disengaged Buddhism is a Western construction:

Early Western scholars of Buddhism, beginning with Max Weber, have perceived Buddhism as “other-worldly” and without specific formulations of social ethics. They understood the release from this world as Buddhism’s goal. Yet the Pali scriptures abound in passages where the Buddha deals explicitly with social ethics, and many more cases where the social implications are certainly obvious. (1988: 173)

Indeed, it is not only “[e]arly Western scholars of Buddhism” such as Max Weber who have construed Buddhism as “‘other-worldly’ and without specific formulations of social ethics,” for as Christopher Queen contends in his 1996 anthology:

Today, after eighty years of new research, many specialists are inclined to agree with Weber that, in its essence, primitive Buddhism was not based on service to others, but on the quest for individual enlightenment. (1996: 17)

In a footnote to this claim, Queen cites “Weber, Kitagawa, Bardwell Smith, and others” as being among these “many specialists” supposedly in this (modernist) Weberian lineage who share a “negative assessment of Buddhism’s contribution to social and political thought.” However (ironically), in a 1999 review of Queen’s 1996 book, Bardwell Smith himself objects to “[Queen’s] contention that scholarly discussions of Buddhism have typically characterized this tradition as one of ‘personal liberation’ to the subordination, if not the neglect, of any social message,” and he particularly objects to being associated with any such (modernist) scholars:

As is accurately indicated in the other essays (including Queen’s own chapter on Ambedkar), these two thrusts [personal and social] in Buddhist teachings and practice were never intended to be separated, however much they may be distinguished. Ironically, though I am cited as among those who provide this negative assessment, I agree fully with what Queen and the others are saying about the connection between personal and social liberation. … If some interpreters of Buddhism, as cited by Queen, separate these goals, this has never been my position. (1999: 501)

From this we can see that the “disengaged” label is not only misapplied (according to traditionists) to traditional Buddhism by certain (namely modernist) Western Buddhologists, but that it can also be misapplied to other Western Buddhologists themselves! (We can likewise watch out for misapplications of the modernist “engaged” label.)

Overview of the Modernists

Modernist engaged Buddhist scholars are comprised of a few scholars from historically Buddhist cultures and what would appear to be the vast majority of scholars from Western cultures. Some Modernists include Cynthia Eller, Nelson Foster, Richard Gombrich, Ken Jones, Joseph Kitagawa, Kenneth Kraft, Christopher Queen, Aitken Rōshi, English-born Sangharakshita, Gary Snyder, Judith Simmer-Brown, and Max Weber, among others.

Traditional Buddhism has not been socially engaged—Only latent implications

Modernists make either the strong assertion that historically Buddhism (and especially early Buddhism) has not been socially interested at all or the somewhat moderated assertion that it has been only indirectly or latently so interested. Joseph Kitagawa makes the stronger claim in “Buddhism and Social Change: An Historical Perspective” when he writes:

[In early Buddhism] neither the monastics nor the laity seemed to have given much thought one way or the other to the norms and structures of the social or political order, which to them had no immediate religious significance. (1980: 89)
[T]he kingship and the state … had no religious significance to the early Buddhist. (1980: 91)

And Kitagawa’s assessment of Buddhist social engagement in East Asia is not much better:

Chinese Buddhism contributed very little in the way of guiding principles to the Chinese society and nation. … Similar observations may be made regarding the influence of Chinese Buddhism on the socio-political order in general. (1980: 97)

Likewise, Ken Jones states that “present-day interest in Buddhist activism has little warranty in scripture, history and tradition” (1989: 207). Such activism is historically unwarranted, he claims, because Buddhist philosophers have in fact never been interested in the social realm. To back up this contention, he quotes Gary Snyder [from The Path of Compassion, 1988: 82]:

Historically, Buddhist philosophers have failed to analyse out the degree to which ignorance and suffering are caused or encouraged by social factors, considering fear-and-desire to be given facts of the human condition. Consequently the major concern of Buddhist philosophy is epistemology and ‘psychology’ with no attention paid to historical or sociological problems. (Snyder, as quoted by Jones, 1989: 207-208)