[Buddha-l] "Western Self, Asian Other"

[Richard Hayes]

On Dec 28, 2009, at 10:33 AM, Richard Hayes wrote:

> There is an interesting article in the current edition of the on-line Journal of Buddhist Ethics. It's entitled "Western Self, Asian Other: Modernity, Authenticity and Nostalgia for 'Tradition' in Buddhist Studies," by Natalie E. Quli. It can be downloaded from the Buddhist Ethics website: http://www.buddhistethics.org/current.html

Quli's article begins with this observation: "There has been considerable rancor and finger-pointing in recent years concerning the intersection of the West and Buddhism." This observation is followed by two claims. The first claim is that Western scholars of Buddhism and Western converts to Buddhism are "regularly labeled Orientalists." The second claim is that Asian Buddhists who appropriate Western ideas are "routinely dismissed for appropriating Western ideas and cloaking them with the veil of tradition, sometimes for nationalistic purposes, and producing 'Buddhist modernism.'" The examples she gives of Asians who are subjected to this treatment for this reason are Anagārika Dharmapāla and D.T. Suzuki. 

Later in the article, Quli paints a picture of general hostility toward all people who mix Western and Buddhist modes of thinking. Scholars who do so are accused of imposing their cultural biases on what they study. Converts (or Asian Buddhists writing for Western audiences, or Asian Buddhist who now live in the West) are accused of contaminating the Buddhist tradition with foreign elements. As the picture she is offering comes into focus, Quli claims that there is a persistent trend so oppose a Western Self with an Asian Other and to perceive Buddhism as authentic only when it is seen purely as Other. Some, she suggests, glorify the Other and portray it is being free of all the shortcomings of the Self; others glorify the Self and see the Other as less civilized and refined; but whether one glorifies the Western Self or the Asian Other, she claims, one is trading in a false dichotomy. Moreover, she claims that this false dichotomy has damaging consequences. (More will be said about that in a subsequent post.)

I believe what I have said so far is a fair, although (for now) somewhat simplified, account of what Quli says. Others of you, as you read her article, may disagree with my reading and offer refinements or corrections to it.

Now here are my first questions about the article. Have any of you witnessed the sort of "rancor and finger-pointing" that Quli refers to? Have you seen academic scholars of Buddhism accused of Orientalism? Have you seen people like Suzuki and Dharmapāla dismissed for the reasons she states; that is, have you seen them dismissed for offering a picture of Buddhism that is inauthentic because it is mixed with Western ideas?

I have to say that in thirty-seven years of being an academic student of Buddhism I have never been aware of myself or my colleagues accused of Orientalism. As I understand the charge of Orientalism, it is the charge that a scholar either deliberately or unwittingly portrays a culture in an unflattering way and thereby reinforces the idea that the other culture is backwards and perhaps in need of being nudged toward higher levels of civilization by another culture; Orientalism, as I understand it, goes hand in hand with justifying colonization, invasion and warfare. This charge is often made by Muslims of European and American scholars of Islam. But is it made by Buddhists of European and American scholars of Buddhism? I haven't seen such a charge made, but perhaps I live in a sheltered world.

Twenty-seven years have passed since I officially and openly went for refuge to the three jewels and took on a Buddhist name. During that time I have been accused a number of times (almost always by other Buddhists) of not really understanding Buddhism. Even more often than being accused by others of intellectual density, I have readily admitted that there are many aspects of Buddhism I don't accept or understand, and that my failure to understand them comes from a clash between some of the dogmatic aspects of Buddhism and my childhood upbringing in a home where the dominant outlook was rational skepticism and secular humanism. And yet I can't think of a time when I, or others who think as I do, have been "dismissed" (even once, let alone routinely) for "cloaking [Western ideas] with the veil of tradition, and producing 'Buddhist modernism.'" But again, perhaps I am so obtuse that I fail to see what is going on around me, and perhaps (no, certainly) my memory is quite selective. That's what human memory is: a filter that sifts out everything that does not fit with one's current world view.

So on the first page of this article I see a problem being identified as important, and I see a hint of a promise that the article will help provide a solution to the problem, but I find myself never having seen this problem in either the academic world or the world of Western Buddhist practice. So I'm thinking "This article is off to a very bad start; it sees a problem where none exists." (I went on to read the article anyway and found it quite interesting, because I have learned over the years that bad starts can sometimes lead to good finishes, or that a bad opening and a botched endgame can still have some interesting moves in the middle.) 

If any of you have managed to download the article and read the first page, please share your impressions. Or read the second page and give your impressions of that.

Perhaps we should invite Natalie Quli to join this discussion. Or maybe it would be better to send her the archives of the discussion after it has taken place (if indeed one takes place at all) and let her respond if she feels so inclined.

Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
rhayes at unm.edu