A Critique of Western Buddhism: Ruins of the Buddhist Real (original) (raw)
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Dynamic Encounters between Buddhism and the West
East Asian Journal of Philosophy, 2024
Contents -Dynamic Encounters Between Buddhism and the West Introduction Laura Langone & Alexandra Ilieva 1-6 -Early Encounters With Buddhism Some medieval European travelogue authors offer first insights into a foreign religion. Explorations of an unchartered territory Albrecht Classen 7-24 -Declaring Buddhism Dead in the 19th Century The Meiji oligarchy and protestant mission in Japan a foreign religion. Explorations of an unchartered territory Tomoe I. M. Steineck 25-45 -Between Awakening and Enlightenment The first modern Asian Buddhist and the first Buddhist Englishman Iain Sinclair 47-73 -Sublime Disappearances Feeling Buddhism in late-nineteenth-century Western music Julian Butterfield 75-93 -Absolute Nothingness and World History Universalizing Asian logic as a world-historical mission Niklas Söderman 95-113 -Befriending Things on a Field of Energies With Dōgen and Nietzsche Graham Parkes 115-137 -Wabi-Sabi and Kei How Sen no Rikyū’s Zen-inspired ideas of human placedness and interpersonal respect enable a human-present world-harmonizing (Wa) within object-oriented ontology Jason Morgan 139-157 -The Question Concerning Technology A Japanese reply Tiago Mesquita Carvalho 159-187 -Madhyamaka and Pyrrhonian Approaches to the Skeptical Way of Life Christopher Paone 189-209 -Two Paths A critique of Husserl's view of the Buddha Jason K. Day 211-232
Religion, 2012
Review of book edited by David L. McMahan, Routledge: London and New York, 2012, xiv + 329 pp. ISBN 978 0 415 78014 8, US$125.00 (cloth); ISBN 978 0 415 78015 5, US$39.95 (paperback).
Engaged Buddhism’s overall mission is to show that Buddhism can be “a force to soften the damage caused to the human spirit by the onward march of globalization. ” This paper examines propositions put forward by three of the most influential contemporary Engaged Buddhists – Thich Nhat Hanh, Sulak Sivaraksa and the Dalai Lama – for changing the course of contemporary globalization. With a geographical focus on South East Asia, it first explores the theoretical and practical propositions Engaged Buddhism offers for resolving and preventing armed and religious conflicts. It further lays out Engaged Buddhism's answer to the global economic crisis, stressing the importance of giving a voice to the voiceless in our system, and to reform the current educational systems and the content they propagate. It will be shown that the movement of Engaged Buddhism is a strong advocate for more sustainable lifestyles, seeing nature and humanity as one inseparable entity.
Nascent Speculative Non-Buddhism
The present article is a contribution to a particularly urgent issue that is unfolding in Buddhist circles in North America and Europe. Although this issue is framed in various ways, it revolves around a single question; namely, what form will contemporary reconfigurations of Buddhism take in the twenty-first century West? The most influential groups in this discussion to date are those that style themselves secular-, progressive-, atheist-, agnostic-, liberal-, and post-traditional Buddhist. As these groups gain adherents in the West, traditional organizations, such as the various Zens, Tibetans, Vipassanas, etc., are stating their claim to "Buddhism" with increasingly vehement proprietorship. The present article, however, is not yet another attempt to reformulate or reform (in any sense of the term) "Buddhism." Neither is it concerned with ameliorating traditional Buddhism's relationship with contemporary western secular values. In performing its first task, however, my emerging theory, called "speculative non-buddhism," can contribute to the current debate in a decisive way by showing that all forms of Buddhism are identical. What makes them so is that they are all governed by what I call "buddhistic decision:" the syntactical structure that constitutes all things, discourse, and people, "Buddhist." Decision thus constitutes both the ideological nature, and the ideological constant, of "Buddhism."
Buddhism and West: A Philosophical Take
2024
In here, there are two studies which try to problematize the philosophical relation between Buddhism and Western culture, especially through figures from history of philosophy. With this problematization, which takes in a comparative and fusionist manner, it is aimed to see whether it is possible to create some new insights on rather well-known philosophical themes or not. The main enterprise is first to cover the issues at hand historically and contextually, and later to open up new and thoughtful discussions which might be overlooked within curent philosophical consensus. First study examines the famous non-self or no-self discussion in Hume and Buddhism. When Hume’s understanding of empiricism is handled, his ideas towards human self are usually narrated with the phrase of bundle theory of the self. This understanding of him, allegedly, has shown a similarity with the term of Anattā from Buddhist teaching which mentions that there is no permanence or unchanging substance in existence and beings. With this comparative reading, how much Hume’s opinions are related to Anattā is opened up to debate with problematizing the concepts like sameness, difference and similarity. Second study examines the notion of sleeplessness as it is understood and portrayed in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Buddhism. It tries to clarify the philosophical importance of this notion both in Nietzsche’s works, especially focusing on his Zarathustra, and in Buddhism through a comparison between these two. With centering Nietzsche’s relation with Buddhist thought, the study aims to explain how the notions like sleeplessness, sleeping, lucidity, meditation, deep sleep, awakening, enlightening, wakefulness etc. are considered, and in which contexts they are problematized.
Some Reflections on Critical Buddhism
1999
The intellectual movement known as "Critical B u d d hism " (hihan Bukkyd 批判仏教)began around the mid-1980s in Soto Zen circles, led by Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shiro, both Buddholoeists as well as ordained Soto priests. Since then it has indeed raised storm waves on the normally placid waters of Japanese academic Buddhist studies. "Criticism alone is Buddhism， ， ， declares Hakamaya, by which he means the critical discrimination of truth from error. Aggressively normative, Critical Buddhism does not hesitate to pronounce on what represents "true" Buddnism and what does not. By its definition, Bud dhism is simply the teachings of non-self (anatman) and dependent origination (pratitya-samutpdda). Many of the most influential of Mahayana ideas, including notions of universal B uddha nature, tathagata-garbha, original enlightenm ent, the nonduality of the Vimalakirti Sutra, and the "absolute nothingrness" of the Kyoto school, are all condem ned as reverting to fundam entally non-Buddhist notions of dtman, that is, substantial essence or ground.1 hus they are to be rejected as "not Buddhism"一 the "pruning" of this volume's title. At stake is not merely a claim about doctrinal correctness but a reform of Buddhism's social role. For Critical Buddhists, the proposi tion that all things participate in an innate, original enlightenment, far from being egalitarian, has in fact engendered and perpetuated social injustice by sacralizme the status quo. The present volume both examines the issues raised by Critical Buddhism and introduces to a Western readership the major points of
The metaphysical implications of the Yogācāra-Vijnanavada 'consciousness-only' school of Buddhist psycho-metaphysics has become an issue of some debate amongst some Western philosophers with an interest in Buddhist philosophy. The 'canonical' view amongst many significant scholars is that, as the name suggests, this perspective asserts that the ultimate nature of the process of reality is nondual primordial consciousness/awareness. On this 'Idealist' view the external apparently material world is considered to be a mind-created illusion. However, some contemporary Western philosophers are offering seemingly more materialist, or non-committal as to the existence of an external material world, versions. This article examines such claims and exposes their deficiencies. A quantum-Mind-Only Yogācāra-Vijnanavada perspective is explored.