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The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture

       

发布时间:2009年04月18日
来源:不详   作者:Chris Arthur
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·期刊原文
The Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture

Reviewed by Chris Arthur

Contemporary Review

Vol.266 No.1552

May 1995

Pp.271-272

Copyright by Contemporary Review Company Ltd.

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A recent history of Buddhism declares that it has touched more human
lives than any other faith. With its influence on the huge
populations of India and China, and its success in Sri Lanka, Burma,
Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Tibet and
elsewhere, there is considerable plausibility in this claim. Given
its immense scale and the impact it has had on the culture, history
and politics of a whole swathe of Eastern nations, one of the most
remarkable facts to emerge from Stephen Batchelor's fascinating
study is how recently Buddhism appeared as a topic of serious
interest on the horizon of the Western consciousness. 'Europeans and
Americans', Batchelor tells is, 'had no coherent conception of
Buddhism until 150 years ago' (xi). What the great Russian
orientalist Theodore Stcherbatsky described as 'perhaps the most
powerful movement of ideas in the history of Asia' has been
effectively invisible to the West for the bulk of its 2,500-year
history (the Buddha was born c.563 BC). Yet, as the Dalai Lama
observes in his foreword to The Awakening of the West, 'at this
stage in its history Buddhism is more than an Asian religion' (ix).
Batchelor's wide-ranging, thoughtful and well-informed account
demonstrates convincingly the truth of the Dalai Lama's observation.
The reader is taken from the first encounters between ancient Greeks
and Buddhist monks, through centuries of European ignorance,
indifference and rejection, to the first scholarly studies in the
nineteenth century and the beginning of the most recent and exciting
phase of the story, starting only in the 1960s, when Buddhism began
to be practised as a religion by increasing numbers of people in
Europe and America. How many Western Buddhists are there? Recent
assessments suggest anything between 10,000 and 100,000 in Britain
and three to five million in America. Understandably, in view of the
difficulty of arriving at an accurate figure, Batchelor himself does
not give an estimate. However, it is clear from the numbers
attending various meditation classes, retreats and so on which he
does cite, that even in crude numerical terms Buddhism is fast
becoming a force to be reckoned with. This is an engaging book,
written in an easy, accessible style, pleasingly unencumbered by
technical vocabulary or distracting scholarly apparatus. (Dispensing
with footnotes, Batchelor sources his wealth of quotations by a
commendably unobtrusive method.) The author is deeply immersed in
the story he is telling, yet despite his own active involvement with
Buddhism, his account is by no means uncritical, nor does it gloss
over those aspects of Buddhist history which show it in a less than
favourable light. Alongside his account of key personalities, both
ancient and modern, whose spiritual qualities are enormously
impressive, he notes the excesses of some of those jet-setting lamas
whose exploits have brought Buddhism into disrepute. It is sometimes
suggested that part of Buddhism's appeal in the modern West stems
from its unblemished record of eschewing persecution in order to aid
conversion. This is a view strongly advanced by Walpola Rahula, for
example, in an influential essay in Zen and the Taming of the Bull
(1978). Batchelor's chapter on the experience of the Jesuits in
Japan in the seventeenth century, and the involvement of Buddhists
in the torture and killing which took place there (pp161-183),
provides a useful counterweight to the historical naivety of such a
view. Such are the number of colourful characters involved, the
geographical range covered and the author's skill at moving between
the contemporary situation and ancient Buddhist history, that the
book often reads with the pace of an adventure story. He manages to
convey the sense of writing at a crucial point in the history of
Buddhism, when it may be poised to develop into new forms
specifically suited to its growing presence in the West. Batchelor
is adamant that 'the survival of Buddhism today is dependent on its
continuing ability to adapt' (p278). Properly aware of the enormous
diversity within Buddhism and the dangers of trying to insist on any
single normative type, he suggests a 'spectrum of adaptation' (p337)
to identify the forms which Buddhism may come to take in the West.
It might have been useful at this point to have had some reference
to the work of Martin Willson and Deirdre Green, who have also
suggested ways of charting possible varieties of Buddhism in the
West. However, The Awakening of the West makes no pretence at being
a comprehensive survey, so one cannot expect everything to be
included. Batchelor is particularly adept at creating eye-catching
cameo scenes which offer fascinating snap-shots of Buddhism's
Western presence and forcefully claim the reader's attention. For
instance, it is intriguing to discover that by the late 1970s, such
was the interest in Buddhism in Russia that 'only 3-4 months would
elapse between publication of a Buddhist book in the West and its
appearance in a Russian samizdat edition' (p299); or to find that
Windhorse Trading, a Buddhist organization, was one of the 100
fastest growing companies in Britain in 1992 (p323); or to learn of
the Dalai Lama's lighting a candle at the already crumbling Berlin
Wall in 1989 and his meeting a few weeks later with Vaclav Havel,
the first head of any European state in history to receive a Dalai
Lama (xv); or to be given a glimpse of eleven thousand years of
religious history in France, moving from Cro-Magnon man's cave
paintings near Rouffignac to the Centre Bouddhique now flourishing
there (p53). Sensibly, in view of Rick Field's narrative history of
Buddhism in America, How the Swans Came to the Lake (1986) and Paul
Croucher's Buddhism in Australia 1848-1988, Batchelor confines
himself to Buddhism's encounter with Europe. Different readers will
no doubt have different ideas about the relative emphasis he should
have given to the situation in Britain, France, Germany, Spain and
so on, but as a single volume account of so multi-faceted a story,
Batchelor's introduction is first rate. Given that this is a book
likely to make readers want to read more, Robert Ellwood's excellent
article on Buddhism in the West might have been specifically named,
rather than just listing the 16 volume encyclopedia of religion in
which it appears. By and large, though, bibliography and glossary
are appropriate, well-judged and useful. Three years ago the Bishop
of St. Andrews spoke of 'a major step forward in the spiritual life
of Scotland'. He was referring to the purchase of Holy Isle in the
Firth of Clyde by the Samye Ling Community, one of Britain's most
well-established Buddhist groups, and their plans to turn it into an
ecumenical retreat centre. If we contrast the Bishop's remark with
those of typical church-men only a generation or so before him, we
surely get a sense of an altogether new religious climate. One hopes
that there will be sufficient chroniclers of Stephen Batchelor's
calibre to chart what forms of faith are hatched, as this reverse of
a spiritual ice age begins to take hold. CHRIS ARTHUR





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