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My daughter delivers the Sun newspaper and this morning’s issue contained a long article about people who are better off collecting welfare than going after jobs. The reporter, posing as an unemployed labourer, was able to find no less that seven full time jobs. But he claimed to understand why many would prefer to stay on welfare. If one includes the benefits that one gets on welfare, he pointed out, the difference between welfare and a low wage is insignificant.

This simple equation between remuneration and work seems to me to obscure some of the most profound problems surrounding the conception and reality of work in the modern age. The reporter seemed not to appreciate the importance of the stand made by one individual that he described. This individual has back and kidney problems which leave him with few jobs to chose from. So he collects welfare. At the same time, he goes to Yonge and King every day with his dog Hobo and his guitar and sings. He treats it like a job although he only makes $25 a day.

How does one account for the number of people who avoid the contemporary workplace? And how does one begin to understand Hobo’s owner who is willing to put in long hours as a busker in order to earn a mere $25 dollars per day.

I think we need to take a quick trip back into history or into some accounts of modern day anthropologists to look at societies which functioned differently and which did not have a ‘work problem’. Peter Timmerman has already told you a little about this, so perhaps I can cut a bit to the chase. Medieval society divided its social order into those who pray, those who protect and those who work. The clerisy — those who prayed — were the first order. The aristocracy — those who protected were the second order. And everybody else — those who worked — were the third order. Now, while those who worked may have been at the bottom of the social order, this turned out to be no great problem for them. They learned something about work that too many of us have forgotten. They learned that it was a natural part of life, and they got satisfaction from the things that they produced — be they crops or crafts.

Preindustrial societies don’t have a work problem. In fact, their members get a deep sense of identity from the work that they do. In one sense, it was easier for them than us — despite our much higher standard of living — because the work that they did — and in some places still do — is closer to the rhythms of nature and life. Many of us work in large and complex bureaucracies or engage in a specialized division of labour which robs us of feelings of identity with what we do and the satisfaction that derives from the results. Some of us are deeply alienated from our work, and view ourselves in terms of our leisure activities, our home lives and our spiritual exercises rather than what we do in the increasingly abstract and alien world of work. Alienation is a fact of modern working life and helps to explain why — if given a choice — Hobo’s master might prefer to collect welfare and to sing on street corners. Singing on street corners is in a very real sense a more human and natural activity that working on a conveyor belt or accepting work that is degrading.

All of my commentary so far is the stock in trade of social historians, sociologists and cultural anthropologists — to which tribe I belong. My most recent job configuration is to help those same university professors and future university professors to teach as well as they can. I’m still a relative beginner as a Zen Buddhist but I do want to get closer to making what I think are some important connections.

Like many of my colleagues, I became a professor precisely because I didn’t want to be an alienated worker. I liked the more natural rhythms of student and academic life — which are task oriented rather than clock dominated. I loved the master-disciple relationship and aspired to become a master myself. I liked the entire set of medieval preindustrial values of university life and viewed them as ideals for preserving human curiosity and creativity and as a protection against the inexorable mechanization of human life. And I hoped that — even if the universities could not help to mould a more humane existence — I would at least be free to follow my own values and promote them among my students.

If you have been following what has been happening to the universities and colleges over the last decade, you may recognize that institutions of higher learning have been going through some very difficult times. They can no longer easily set themselves apart as ‘ivory towers’. They are beginning to be run much more like corporations and their administration keeps growing while the percentage of teachers is in steady decline. They are being forced by governments and by the electorate to be much more cost effective and accountable in what they do. And, typically, accountability is being measured in terms of creating individuals who fit into the requirements of the job market. This pattern is reflected in the attitudes and choices which are students make. More and more of our students are shunning personal development in favour of job certification.

Far from being a refuge and a corrective to alienating labour, the universities and colleges are becoming their handmaidens. In this environment, even those who love to teach and encourage students to explore their potential are becoming increasingly dispirited and, in some cases, even bitter. And its my job to rejuvenate them, to make them think of teaching as fun again, and to help them understand their students.

Zen Buddhism is helping me here — to do this job properly and to maintain my ethical underpinnings. I would not have been attracted to traditional Buddhism because it appeared to me to be too medieval in its emphasis on those who pursued the spiritual path. I would have found its definition of ‘right livelihood’ too limiting since I never had any intention of entering a harmful occupation and since I had a cultural historian’s understanding of the ’spiritual value’ of work in everyday life.

My personal definition of ‘right livelihood’ in my admittedly neophyte Zen Buddhist terms might be as follows:

• everyone needs to work, it is a fundamental component of human life
• meditation is a critical life affirming activity — it is not something which is confined to the mat, it is an integral part of practising one’s livelihood
• practising mindfulness in one’s work is personally rewarding and exhilarating
• practising mindfulness towards others helps create non-alienating workplaces and, ultimately, a harmonious social universe

The other speakers have told you something about the way that Buddhism helps them. I hope you will bear with me while I give you one simple example of the way in which Zen effects what I do. Sunim and Samso may not suspect this, but they have taught me to be much more disciplined and attentive to my environment than I was formerly and to begin to understand what it means to change behaviour that is not effective. A big part of my job is making people more comfortable and accepting of change. Now when individuals come to me for advice — who are frustrated about the increasing size of their university classrooms, and the lack of appreciation for what they do on the part of both students and the general public — I try to give back some of what I have learned. I ask my colleagues to put aside their fear of the changes that are taking place around them and to take charge of those things that they can control. Then I give them some very easy exercises for getting in touch with their students, understanding where their are coming from and what their needs and expectations might be.

I’m always surprised by the power of mindfulness and honest communication. It can be a powerful weapon for good teaching. When I talk to my colleagues later, they invariably have a much stronger connection with their students. That’s when they can begin to excite their curiosity and advance their learning in a relationship based on trust.

By accepting the inevitability of change, teachers can promote values which seem to me to be timeless. And they can discover ways to restore the entire personality of the teacher and the student to learning process.

Then all the arts of teaching can come into play, arts which the great Zen masters seem to have understood in very profound ways. We can try to relate to those beginning their intellectual journey by grounding our examples in concrete ‘real life’ experiences. We can encourage more sophisticated students to explore the different realms of meaning that allow them to free themselves of customary patterns and to begin to make intellectual choices. Finally, we can put them on the path to developing — for themselves and in their own way — higher order values. We may encourage, cajole and even trick them into taking any steps that they might be reluctant to take. And we will know that we are successful when they become autonomous agents and no longer require our help.

These lectures are based on Stephen Batchelor’s book ‘The Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture’.

Background

It’s fascinating that so many people think of Buddhism as a religion that is ‘other worldly’ — that is a religion that doesn’t much pay attention to events in the world. Its equally puzzling that it is so often described as a ‘selfish’ religion in the sense that the Buddhist meditator seeks the harmony and peace of his or her own mind, without reference to others. These are fairly common stereotypes, but they bear little resemblance to the spirit of Buddhism as a living religion.

Few westerners would ever thing of describing Christianity in this way, and yet there is probably as much, if not more, reason to stereotype Christianity as another worldly religion. In the first place, its focus in clearly on the world to come — the heavenly kingdom is quite distinct from the world that we live in and the focal point of Christian believers. An important theme in Christianity is personal salvation and an obsession with one’s own spiritual development, in an often hostile world where Satan and his forces provide a constant threat of temptation.

The connection between Christianity and social and political change, at least on the face of it, would appear to be just as complex and problematic as the Buddhist involvement in the world of every life and social organization. Any yet we have no problem recognizing the powerful role that Christianity plays in human interaction and politics. We might occasionally think that Christians are misguided — say in the case of those religious fundamentalists who might oppose things that we believe in — but we accept that their motivations are genuine and that their actions are influenced by their beliefs.

So, let’s begin by saying that, while Buddhists may sometimes disagree about the details, they are equally likely to want to view their religion as a guide to their social behavior and to their political action. And they are likely to be at least as committed to an ‘earthly’ social and political vision as their Christian brothers and sisters, because they:

1. do not believe in God or heaven as an alternative to ‘human’ life
2. are committed to living entirely ‘in the present’ or the ‘here and now’
3. feel a connection to all living things
4. have a cyclical, rather than millenarian view, of life

Meditational Practice

There’s usually a grain of truth in every stereotype. I’d like to take a moment to describe why it is that ZEN BUDDHISTS have a bad rap as unconcerned spectators in the things of human life. Zen is focussed particularly on meditation. The goal of that meditation to escape from suffering that characterizes all life by connecting with emptiness or the void and understanding that all forms — and especially the most problematic for us, the self — are ultimately illusory. The eventual ideal is to melt into nirvana and to completely leave the cycle of birth, death and determination. One major traditional school of Buddhism — Hinayana –pushes this theme so far as to suggest that the only sensible form of activity is to enter a monastery, to meditate, and to seek enlightenment through personal effort.

Hanayana Buddhism is not Zen Buddhism, however. Zen has a similar emphasis on meditational absorption, but it places this meditation within a much broader framework. Zen is an offshoot of Mahayana Buddhism. Mahayana doesn’t concentrate on individual liberation, but seeks enlightenment for the sake of all other beings. In other words, a Zen Buddhist doesn’t place its highest emphasis on monasticism but upon service to other beings. This emphasis clearly has ramifications for social practice.

Why does a Zen Buddhist meditate? A Zen Buddhist meditates to eliminate cravings and to attain enlightenment. But a Zen Buddhist falls short of seeking entry into final nirvana until such a time as all beings are liberated. A Zen Buddhist seeks decrease the emphasis on self and to help all others to attain enlightenment. The ideal for a Zen Buddhist is to become a bodhisattva — someone who helps others, someone who takes on their suffering and transfers his or her own merit to help them.

When a Buddhist meditates within this framework, his or her way of looking at the world is changed utterly. An increased understanding of the nature of suffering leads to greater compassion for others and a desire to help them in whatever way one can. And because meditation is something quite different from a monastic exercise, one practices meditation or the focus on the present moment in all aspects of ones daily life. The compassion one feels isn’t abstract, isn’t produced merely under ideal conditions of peace and quiet, but is exercised constantly. And the form that it takes is service to others.

In fact, compassion has to be exercised constantly if selfishness is to be overcome. It has to be exercised constantly if it is to develop the strength that the Dalai Lama talks about and that we all know is needed in practice. If compassion is not deeply rooted, it will be crushed by the ‘nay sayers’ out there, some of whom are just confused but others who are really hostile and toxic beings who will try to harm you rather than repay your kindness. Buddhists like Christians realize how important it is that compassion is rooted in religious principle and practiced as part of the religious life.

There are two impulses towards a social vision for Zen Buddhists. One is the natural impulse that comes from compassion. The other is the imperative to decrease ones attention to oneself by extending it towards others. Both the impulse and the imperative have implications for social and political practice.

Towards a Buddhist Social and Political Vision

Non-Violence

The social and political thrust of Buddhism is best summed up in the words of the Dalai Lama. He said: “We should realize that the purpose of taking birth in this world is to help others. If we cannot do that, at least we should not harm other living beings.” The fundamental axiom of Buddhist society and politics, therefore, is non violence. Human beings have a historical tendency to be violent towards one another in both speech and action. Good Buddhists try not to hurt one another in any way. Buddhists’ first priority in the social sphere is to avoid gossip and stereotype and to seek to diffuse anger. Buddhists’ first priority in political sphere is to seek vehicles for preventing conflict between nations.

I am sometimes surprised at the way in which non-Buddhists fail to realize the pervasiveness and power of the principle of non-violence. In the social realm, it has enormous significance that one individual simply stops gossiping or speaking ill of others. It helps to create a sense of community where non had existed before. Best of all, its a kind of behavior pattern that, while it may be difficult at times, is certainly within our attainment and it opens us up to others and prompts us to more positive patterns. The political ramifications are if anything more dramatic. Buddhism enjoins us to be activists for peace and to follow in the footsteps of those preachers on non-violent protest against injustice like Ghandi and Martin Luther King.

Charity

Compassion as impulse and imperative implies active charity. There is no better way to develop ones feelings towards others while decreasing them towards oneself than to practice and to encourage charity. This is a Christian as well as a Buddhist axiom but, whereas Christ asked his followers to ‘love thy neighbors as thy self’, Buddhists go even farther by saying ‘love your neighbors and forget about yourself’. For Buddhists, charity in the form of comforting and helping others is one of the most important ways of combating the cravings that keep us attached to the world of forms and exercising our compassion. Buddhists are convinced that charity that simply comes from impulse is too weak to help society or to form one’s spiritual character. Thus, the Dalai Lama enjoins us to “cultivate a deep-felt sense of responsibility to work for their benefit and shoulder the task of relieving sentient beings of suffering and providing them with happiness. Throughout your daily life and activities, wherever the occasion arises, you should immediately seize that opportunity to train in this mediation. Only then can you begin to hope for progress in the realization.”

Charity cannot merely be something personal. It is crucial to the attainment of enlightenment that we understand the interconnectedness of all beings. We cannot separate ourselves from the good or evil that others do. Therefore, we must try to create and support organizations and governments that have a deep sense of responsibility for other’s welfare. We need to constantly remind governments of their duty towards weaker members of society. And we need to need to cultivate their altruism. Buddhism calls upon us not to distinguish between ourselves and others. That clearly means that we must do all that we can to cultivate the charity of the representatives of the collective — political parties and governments.

There is one thing that must be said about the exercise of charity if it is to have a truly Buddhist character. It needs to be done for the right reasons. It should not be tied to abstractions like the eradication of poverty. Nor should it be connected to feelings of pity that denies the fundamental equality of the other person and our intimate connection with them. It should not be done with an attitude of discrimination, even though it is clear that we should pay particular attention to the sufferings of the very poor and helpless. To pit one group against another, or to favor one constituency more than others, goes against the very essence of Buddhism; it is socially divisive ; and it is politically unjust.

Social Justice

I come now to a more delicate and specifically political area of concern, that of social justice. When we enter the realm of social justice, we are in the domain of both law and the economy and these are human contrivances that are subject to many inconveniences and differing interpretations. More important, perhaps, than talking about specific social and political relations is talking about the Buddhist principles that should inform them.

Societies need to affirm the essential equality of all their members: When the Buddha developed his ideas in India, they flew in the face of case and hierarchy; his were ideas of progress and emancipation not a rigid status quo.

Societies need to protect and support their weakest members: Individuals cannot achieve enlightenment if they are constantly subject to poverty or oppression; the Buddha achieved enlightenment under the banyan tree only after he had rejected the path of the half starved aesthetic; we need to do our utmost to provide our fellow human beings with the minimum to achieve liberation

Societies need to limit greed and the effects of egoism: Buddhism is all about letting go of one’s cravings and desires; the ethical spirit of Buddhism ensures that the attachment to life is circumscribed by ideas of fairness, sharing of wealth, and protection of all living things; a Buddhist society disapproves of those who place the making of wealth above all other things

Societies must not allow the exploitation of one human being by another: A Buddhist society is one in which individuals with power or wealth are not permitted to exploit one another ; it also seeks out and condemns hidden more hidden forms of exploitation

Social and Political Practice

Buddhism is not deterministic. In social and political life, Buddhists typically seek to find a middle way — an avoidance of extremes or the choosing between opposite opinions. That is why, for example, many Buddhists can find things of value in materialistic political philosophies like Marxism, in literary theories like postmodernism, and among scientific theories like chaos. Even more surprising, they appear capable of dramatic revitalization even within highly consumerist and competitive capitalist societies like our own. In practice, of course, Buddhism has not always been so resilient. As the famous sociologist Max Weber noticed, traditional Indian Buddhism fell victim to Hinduism a religion that, at is time, was more supportive of economic change and growth. After being virtually eradicated in India, Buddhism continued to thrive in the fairly closed environments like Ceylon, Burma and Tibet. Even here, it demonstrated considerable weakness under the dominion of the British empire and the rise of Indian immigration. Buddhism needed to redefine itself in the very changed conditions of a world so very different from the one in which it was born.

Buddhism in North America is still in its infancy and it is difficult to know precisely the political and social directions that it will take. At the present time, it is so highly dependent upon the charisma of foreign masters from foreign cultures or highly dependent upon the teachings of foreign masters that it has had trouble establishing an identity of its own. The key to its development, I would argue is the development and extension of what Akizuki Ryomin calls ‘lay Buddhism’. The key to this development resides in the evolution North American sanghas. A recent book entitled Buddhism in America mentions the sangha only twice, and then in a way that shows the obstacles faced rather than the opportunity available. When asked about the development of the sangha in North America, a Issei minister was too eager to suggest that the message of Buddha remained unchanged; it only required some very minor cultural adaptations to make it more comfortable.

The social and political history of Buddhism in Ceylon, Burma, Tibet and Japan indicates otherwise. There Buddhism became a potent social and political force during the 1950s and 1960s, largely because of the ways that its ethical spirit was revitalized by national leaders and local sanghas. The founders of modern Burma, U Nu and U Ba Swe, for example, advocated a revolution on Buddhist principles. Pointing to the Buddhist principles of equality, the ravages of greed, and the non reality of possessions, they felt justified in demanding the nationalization of land. The Japanese Society for the Creation of Values, which began among a small group of lay people in 1940 numbered in the hundreds of thousands by 1960. It supported political candidates who were dedicated to improving social and political conditions in Japan. Another Lotus sect, the Reiyo-kai had 3,000,000 members in 1960. Their political philosophy revolved around social altruism and, particularly the construction of modern hospitals and homes for the aged.

The Japanese Lotus sects indicate the kind of dynamism that results from lay movements that begin small in the sanghas but begin to spread their ideals of community and social justice outwards. Despite their successes, these sects remained very faithful to Buddhist principles. The female founder of the Rissho-kosei-kai sect, for example, pointed out that:

“As long as a person is governed by his selfish ego, he cannot grow up. We are therefore not important people, and all our education counts for nothing in the eyes of Buddha. All of us are nothing.”

Only through humility and social service can individuals free themselves from their selfish ego.

My point in describing these Japanese developments — and you should know that my knowledge of these matters is very limited — is to show the extent of social and political involvement that Buddhism not merely condones but actually enjoins. The patterns in Burma, Ceylon and Japan are not necessarily the ones that will fit the culture in North America. But they show that a religion is vital and relevant.

Embarking on the North America Path

Buddhism in North America still hasn’t outgrown its leading strings. It will show that it has done so if and when it becomes a powerful cultural force. And it will perhaps demonstrate that it has become a powerful cultural force when it enters more forcefully into the social and political domain.

Until it does this, North American Buddhism remains in a problematic cultural position. It runs the risk of being a form of ‘psychic masturbation’ and a highly individualist one at that. At present contemporary North American Buddhism parallels psychology in highly capitalist societies — it is regarded as a method for exploring and repairing the self rather than dissolving it in a sense of oneness. It is my guess that most North American sanghas are still a group of disparate and constantly fluctuating individuals rather than a real community. And until the sangha itself becomes a community, how can it begin to dissolve the chains of ego and begin to create community throughout the world?

These lectures are based on Stephen Batchelor’s book ‘The Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture’.

The Thick-Headed Monk

There is a fairly common Zen story about the ‘thick-headed’ monk who, no matter what his master tried to do, seemed incapable of grasping the nature of his mind. He just didn’t get it. One day, his master got him to carry a sack of barley up to the top of the mountain without stopping. By the time he reached the top, he was so overcome with exhaustion that his everyday mind completely relaxed and he understood the nature of his true mind.

This simple story is interesting in a number of ways. In the first place, it shows us that you don’t have to be brilliant to achieve enlightenment — you have be able to let go of your ego, attachments, expectations and cravings. Second, it shows us that the point of Buddhism is not the understanding of dogma or doctrine but to break through to a completely different level of awareness. Third, it illuminates the critical importance of the Zen master who has achieved a certain measure of enlightenment and who knows how to guide and occasionally push a person into this new comprehension.

What is easy to overlook in the story is the archetypic nature of the ‘thick-headed’ monk. There’s a tendency for us to think of him as stupid. If only he were a little more intelligent, we suspect, he’d probably get the message. The Zen master had to resort to extreme measures to drum some sense into his head. But when we think this way, we are missing the point. The monk could be ‘thick-headed’ and be an intellectual. The ‘thick-headed’ monk could be someone who was capable of elucidating all the intricate metaphysics of Buddhism and still ‘not get it’. The ‘thick-headed monk’ could especially be someone like me who has been asked to talk to you about the dangers of intellectualizing Buddhism. ‘Thick-headed’ people can often have interesting, impressive, and practical things to say. What they often lack is the authentic insight and the practiced discipline that give there words authority.

So let’s admit up front that I’m not enlightened, have only arrived at short glimmers of understanding that have certainly not transformed my usual perceptions let along my life. I speak with absolutely no sense of authority. What I hope that I can provide in what follows is a certain ‘authenticity’ and perhaps some ‘insights’ into the problems the westerners who confront Buddhism may have.

Intellectualization and Buddhism

Intellectualization is something that seems to happen in all sophisticated cultures and the culture that gave rise to Buddhism is no exception. You all may have heard of dueling dharmas where clever Hindus or Buddhists vied with one another in order to attract disciples. There’s one story about a monk who had an inflated idea of his own learning. He confronted a Dzogchen yogi who had no intellectual training but had acquired a large following because of his teaching. He scorned the yogi for meditating too much rather than teaching the dharma. The yogi replied in the form of a question “What is there to meditate on?” The monk thought he now had him in his intellectual grasp and said “See, you don’t even meditate.” To this the yogi answered “But when am I ever distracted?”

I think that the religious point of the story is that, while intellectualization can serve as a tool to help us to arrive at a state of concentration and ‘no thought’, it can be a real hindrance if it detracts us from the purpose of our search. The yogi had achieved a state of profound wisdom and clarity, the scholarly monk was still driven by ego. The yogi had a deep intuitive awareness of spiritual practice while the scholarly monk was obsessed with competing and humiliating others. To put it in a somewhat deeper language, the yogi knew that ultimately all dharmas are empty while the scholarly monk was piling dharma upon dharma as a measure of his own brilliance.

When we say something like all dharmas are empty, many of you immediately recognize that we are speaking the language of the very famous Prajnaparamita Texts and particularly the relatively short Heart Sutra that is so often chanted in this temple. Those of you who have sturdy constitutions might want to try reading some of the longer Prajnaparamita Texts if only to see just how intellectually sophisticated Buddhism can be. Those who have philosophical training, in particular, will soon realize that Buddhist metaphysics rivals anything that Western philosophy has to offer. It is an intellectual system of considerable subtlety and almost impossible to refute on is own grounds. The description of perfect wisdom as something that goes beyond any system that can be incorporated in symbols shows a sophistication that is lacking in most religious tracts and even seems to anticipate our modern philosophical ideas that symbols, signs and texts can never tell us what philosophy really is. And Buddhism is the most self-critical and self-negating system that I have ever encountered. The Buddha explains, for example, that the ‘cutting off’ of any outflows or conceptual categories that prevent us connecting with the absolute is simple a convenient phrase. No teaching, Buddhist or otherwise, can really describe an experience that completely beyond categorization. Hence the saying, if you are enlightened and you see the Buddha in the street kill him. With true enlightenment, all conventional categorizations cease.

It’s tempting to look for philosophical parallels then you read the Prajnaparamita Texts. I found many, including links to Plato, to Nietzsche, to Postmodernism, to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and even to chaos theory. Being a publishing academic, I felt the immediate temptation to work up some of these things as articles in scholarly journals. I’ve notice that the magazine Tricycle likes to do this sort of thing occasionally too. But I think that it’s dangerous to intellectualize Buddhism in these ways. It focuses on the wrong aspects of Buddhism and leaves us open to all of the egoism displayed by the scholarly monk. Even when generated within a traditional Buddhist culture, intellectualization needs to follow, rather than precessed, realization. It is always counterproductive when the intellectual wagon precedes the spiritual horse.

What I’d like to do now is to talk for a few minutes about the relationship between spirit and intellect in Buddhist teaching and to make it more clear why I view intellectualization as a dangerous process if not carefully contained. Then I’d like to say why I think it is that intellectualization is a particular problem for those of us living in the West and something that we really need to come to grips with if Buddhism is to make strides within our culture.

The Spirit and the Intellect

The nature of human intellect, no matter how refined, is spiritually problematic. In fact, the human mind is crowded with all kinds of thoughts that interfere with the attainment of spiritual wisdom. Whereas intellectual training might conceivably get rid of some of the rubbishy thoughts that we carry around, it ain’t necessarily so. Many so-called intellect’s minds are crowded with philosophical notions, ideas and assertions. And even when people of real intelligence work hard to come up with a few ideas or an idea that is more cogent, they fall into another kind of trap. They become so attached to those ideas and so egotistical about their ownership that they often interfere with their own spiritual growth. To put it in Buddhist terms, they are no closer to understanding their own nature.

The more sophisticated an intellect is in conventional terms, the more it can be an enemy to spiritual development. The well-honed intellect is taught to distrust, to be suspicious and to hold back. Religion, on the other hand, always calls for a leap of faith, a movement based upon trust and a putting aside of doubt.

In Zen Buddhism, the problem of intellect is confounded for several reasons. First, Zen Buddhism calls for a training of the mind that allows it to see itself as it really is. Our intellects often try to sabotage this process and, the more sophisticated the intellect, the more capable it will be of sabotaging a process — a process, remember, that seriously threatens to eradicate its hegemony. This is why we see so many smart people being attracted to Buddhism but having greater difficulty making progress within it.

Second, the concept of concentrating in a state of no-thought , complete emptiness or the “self-nature of immaculate thought” is much more threatening for those who have learned to control their environment and their fellows through the use of intellect. ‘Letting-go’ of our intellectual controls is like being completely naked and defenseless.

Third, those who like to intellectualize typically view rational thought as the very height of human abilities. They find it the most difficult to let go of reason, will and memory. Even when they meditate and begin to get in touch with emptiness, they have a naturally tendency to begin reflecting upon and deconstructing the process.

Fourth, those who like to intellectualize are usually the same people who have lost a great deal of their ability to understand things intuitively and common sensically. We all know stories about absent minded professors who are completely out of touch with the obvious or who feel that they have to analyze everything. And yet Zen Buddhism is largely about knowing the intrinsic nature of ourselves and reality directly.

Zen in the West

All of this leads me to the particular historical experiences and associated problems that we Westerners have when we are introduced to Zen Buddhism. Buddhism has a considerable attraction for westerners but especially for western intellectuals. Many of us are beginning to realize that we live in a society that has done serious damage to our psyches and our sense of inter connectedness to nature and the universe. We therefore have begun to look to our own past — for example, in the Celtic Revival and the New Age Movement — in order to get back part of what we have lost. Many of us also feel that modern life is far too rational, bureaucratic and disenchanting. So we have begun to explore the spiritual worlds of other cultures — particularly Eastern cultures — in order to see whether there are alternative ways of looking at ourselves and the cosmos.

For the longest time Buddhism’s appeal in the West was largely confined to intellectuals. In the early decades of the nineteenth-century it appealed to those who felt that all their values had been rendered meaningless by philosophy, war and the inability of western civilization to provide people with meaning. In Buddhism they discovered a philosophy that was not merely exotic but very deep, and one that allowed sensitive people to make sense of change, destruction and death. They found Buddhism compelling because to a certain degree at least it looked to the individual to explore himself and his own mind as a path out of alienation and despair. This jived with the ever increasing emphasis on ‘self’ that had become a part of the western tradition and the exploration of the unconscious that had been begun by Freud.

For nearly a century, the crucible of Western Buddhism has been the Universities. I certainly remember being introduced to some Buddhist concepts in Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf, a book written by a German intellectual looking for his soul in a soulless world. We were impressed, to say the least, and Buddhism had and still has a cachet at the universities.

But if Buddhism is to grow and prosper in the West, it really needs to understand the limitations of the environment that encouraged its development and of the kind of people who continue to be attracted to it. Western scholars have tended to intellectualize Buddhism in such a way as to rob it of a great deal of its spiritual value. Let’s look at each of the types in turn:

Zen Scholars

These either play the role of the ‘scholarly monk’ who is proud of his specialized knowledge of Buddhism and its metaphysics, that they are not inclined to share with the great unwashed. Or they go to the other extreme and attempt to usurp the role of the Zen Master, by composing books that explain what Buddhism is all about complete with directions for attaining the nirvana that they themselves have never reached.

The problem with this point of view is either that it confines an appreciation for Zen Buddhism to an elite and makes it more difficult to disseminate to the wider community, or it runs the risk of reducing Buddhism to a set of rules or self-help strategies.

Zen Freelancers

These find Zen Buddhism attractive to the degree that it allows them to focus on themselves, but they remain highly egotistic and individualistic. They are primarily interested in Zen as a form of “psychic masturbation”, as a compensation for the inadequacies and unhappiness that they find in modern life. But they are rarely interested in being a part of a scholarly community. Their ethos is still highly rationalistic and their way of approaching issues overwhelmingly logical and critical.

The problem with this point of view is that it is far to selfish and egotistical to ever contribute to the creation of a living Zen Buddhist community, and it is interesting to note how reluctant these Zen ‘intellectuals’ are to take part in communal activities unless they are permitted to adopt a position of status or leadership.

The New Christian Mystics

The Christian Mystics are those religious academics and thinkers who want to revitalize the exceedingly rationalistic and increasingly individualistic religion of the west by introducing a mystical element. Rather than returning to the more primitive mysticism of early and medieval Christianity, they have discovered in Zen Buddhism a path to a more intuitive form of spiritual realization and a more direct appreciation of God, emptiness, silence or any of the words that they like to use.

The problem with this point of view is that, while it acknowledges the spirituality of Zen Buddhism, it uses it a very calculating fashion. Zen becomes an add-on for a conventional and highly bureaucratic Christianity of the kind that destroyed the passion and authenticity of mysticism.

Everyday Life and Everyday People

Reason, memory and the human will serve valuable purposes in everyday life, and I am certainly not saying that we should jettison them. What Zen Buddhism can do is to prevent us from being unnecessarily distracted by these capacities and instincts. It transforms everyday life by allowing us to perform necessary actions without any craving or attachment. But all of this requires considerable discipline. Intellectuals in the West have gravitated towards Buddhism because it fulfils certain needs, but, past a certain stage, they are bound to find Zen difficult because it requires that they let go of some of their most cherished beliefs in logic, professional status and the pursuit of the icon that is the self.

But it would be misleading if it was to concentrate my criticism only on academics and intellectuals — the people who some might call ‘eggheads’. These individuals are interesting because they were first attracted to Zen and have helped it spread to a certain degree in the west. Nowadays, however, there are a lot of other kinds of westerners who are attracted to Zen and we are beginning to witness the creation of a small cohort of western Zen practitioners.

Many westerners may not always be professional ‘thinkers’ but they demonstrate many of the same tendencies as the ‘eggheads’. They have a tendency to value logic and to place an inordinate emphasis upon Zen as a rational system rather than an religion. Many people use Zen as a substitute for Psychology Today or as a device for exploring their personality and feelings and creating a separate identity. They have lots of thoughts banging around in their heads and are constantly analyzing and reconstructing them, with Zen only being part of the mix rather than a spiritual way of life. This kind of intellectualizing may not be as pompous as that practiced by ‘eggheads’ but it seems to me to be just as much an obstacle to enlightenment.

In fact, given the historical emphasis on superficial cleverness and fashionable scepticism in the west, our intelligence may be more of an obstacle to lasting spiritual growth than craving or attachment. Sogyal Rinpoche puts it very well when he says that:

Our society promotes cleverness instead of wisdom, and celebrates the most superficial, harsh, and least useful aspects of our intelligence. We have become so falsely ‘sophisticated’ and neurotic that we take doubt itself for truth, and the doubt that is noting more than ego’s desperate attempt to defend itself from wisdom is deified as the goal and fruit of true knowledge.”

True knowledge, however, lies elsewhere. If westerners are to attain it they need to work extra hard to counter the effects of historical development and to ‘train’ their minds to grow a different way. They need to tame their minds, make them more receptive and eventually master them. That’s not done by reading or intellectualizing in the way that I’ve described it above; it’s done by meditation.

I hope that I’ve explained why meditation, at least past a certain stage, is so difficult for westerners. It requires that we block tendencies that are not merely powerful but that have taken on some of the connotation of the ‘sacred’ for us — for example, logic, doubt and the search for the self. But it also hope that I’ve at least hinted at the kind of liberation that we can expect if we persevere.

Its a well-known fact that individuals are attracted to Buddhism when they are in pain. For almost a century, western culture has been breeding a great deal of pain. Zen can help to relieve that pain if it is not allowed to become the grist for scholarly cleverness, a fashionable cultural ‘add on, or a form of ‘psychic masturbation. It is as a living breathing religion rather than as an intellectual construction that Zen will have its greatest success.

These lectures are based on Stephen Batchelor’s book ‘The Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture’.

Introduction

In a recent talk that was delivered to the Temple in Chicago, I pointed out that one of the real ironies of history was that so many people consider Buddhism an other worldly religion — one that doesn’t may sufficient attention to the real world. This is not only a stereotype, but it’s a stereotype that is absolutely nonsensical when one considers the evolution of Buddhism since the 1940s, where it has become synonymous with the peace movement, environmentalism, working with Indian untouchables, caring for the aging, and stimulating the kind of anti-colonialism and nationalist fervour that has profound implications for the west. What North American, for example, would deny the profound social and psychological effect of the Indo-Chinese war. And in this war, Buddhism played a pivotal role, symbolized most powerfully perhaps by the image of the burning monk — an image so powerful that it now graces the record cover of a popular alternative group called Rage Against the Machine. Alternative groups, as you may or may not know, like to place the most shocking and dramatic images on their product.

The burning monk had a name — Thich Quang Duc. In 1963, he sat down in a street in Saigon in the meditative position. He poured gasoline all over his body and set himself alight. He maintained a calm and meditative posture as his body burned, and then he simply toppled over. His death was dramatic but not all that different in nature and spirit from the deaths of many other Buddhist leaders and saints. One remarkable difference, however, was that his death was shown on many different televisions all around the world.

Whether you agree with his actions or not, Thich Quang Duc’s immolation tells us at least three things that I want to talk about tonight. The first thing it tells us is a deeply Buddhist, but sometimes forgotten, truth — that human beings are capable of incredible actions when they practice mindfulness. It was only by understanding the power of meditative awareness that Thich Quang Duc was able to have the courage to act with such purpose. The second thing that it tells us is that Buddhism can be an engaged religion. Thich Quang Duc made a statement about the oppression of the Vietnamese people that will outlast the ideological propaganda of the Americans or the Communists. The final thing that tells us is that Buddhism ultimately is not about nationalism or particularism, it is all about interbeing and interconnectedness. Thich Quang Duc’s death lamp was lit on television sets all around the world. Thus, a simple Buddhist monk turned the primary instrument of mindlessness and consumerism into a vehicle for interconnectivity.

Understanding the Stereotype

As thinking human beings, we are supposed to clear our minds of stereotypes. But for historians, stereotypes can be useful indicators. How was it that Buddhism’s image came to be seen as that of the removed meditator, seeking the harmony and peace of his or her own mind, without sufficient concern for the social and political welfare of others? The answer to this question can tell us a lot about the relationship between the Buddhist East and the Christian West.

As Western culture developed, within it grew a strong rationalist ethic. This ethic was important to emerging Protestantism because it organized the behaviour of its adherents and allowed them to use their own minds to break with Catholicism. In many ways Catholicism resembles conventional Buddhist religion because of the emphasis that it places on religious faith, tradition, hierarchy, and the passing down of the teachings. The Protestant’s faith was of a completely different order. Its purpose was to demonstrate salvation, not to organize behaviour. The behaviour of the good Protestant was ruled by orderliness, reason, logic and an individualistic attention to one’s behaviour and the actions of others.

Protestantism may have ushered in a new kind of rationalism and individualism, but rationalism and individualism only really flourished when Protestantism was left behind and a more secular culture emerged. That secular culture in the West ushered in capitalism, the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution. It changed the face of the West and eventually the face of the East. In the face of the increasing superiority of the West, the East tried unsuccessfully to isolate itself. Traditional Buddhist communities were confronted with a new challenge from a Western culture that was still ostensibly Christian. Their reaction was to retreat in one two directions, either to monastic meditation — the ascetics of the woods and mountains — or into an emphasis on preserving formal rituals and ceremonies.

While the reaction was perhaps natural, it was misguided. For better or worse the new intellectual and social culture of the West was here to stay and its political and commercial aspirations were global. It would inevitably transform all culture. To retreat meant that one had no power to change or amend it. It also meant that Buddhist practitioners got stereotyped as being other worldly, superstitious, overly ritualized, and irrelevant.

Setting the Stage

I’ve argued in a number of places that, in order to be successful, religion must be integrated and relevant to its external society. That sometimes means that religion will lose some of its purity and will make mistakes. But, to a historian, the real sign that a religion is thriving is that it is viewed as part of the entire social fabric and is not simply an escape or an add on.

During the late nineteenth-century, Western culture began to go through a crisis. Sensitive people began to question the ability of reason and progress to make a better world. It is not surprising that it was at precisely this time that the spiritual alternative of the East began to be explored and Orientalism came into vogue. But during much of the period that we’ve traversed in the course, Buddhist teachings were ways of bandaiding the pain that all human beings experience but that the Western consciousness confronted most starkly. The wealth and consumerism of the West was no consolation for its loss of meaning and, in fact, merely increased the cravings that are at the root of human suffering. Buddhism seemed to offer a path out of suffering for many, and a superior reality for others.

It was still far from being a living and breathing religion in the West. It attracted adherents, of that there is no doubt, but one has only to read the literature to discover how unsettled the followers of Buddhism were, how they were so easily split apart by factions and arguments, how individualized Buddhism was by many of those westerners who practiced it, and how others sought psychotherapists, gurus or substitute fathers who would obviate the need for any independent thinking whatsoever.

But while there was nothing that we could label authentic Western Buddhism during most this period, historians can see a framework being established that would be needed for a more robust form of Buddhism. The translation of Buddhists texts by scholars was clearly a key. The training of Europeans and North Americans in particular forms of Buddhism, and their attempts to pass on what they had learned, was another. Perhaps the most important aspect of all of this energy and cogitation was the gradual introduction of some admittedly basic Buddhist concepts into popular culture. Nirvana was the name of two popular pop groups, one in the sixties and another in the nineties. Mindfulness we see even in television shows like Kung Fu, superficial perhaps, but certainly not the worst television show in the world. Interconnectivity — something that had been obscured by individualism and capitalism — has found a profound resonance in environmental circles and it is not surprising that environmentalists are among those most attracted to Buddhism as a religion.

All of this set the stage for a more authentic Buddhism in the West. But it is naive to think that, just because you set the stage, it is inevitable that there will be a performance. It is still not clear that Buddhism will take its place as a genuine alternative to spiritual growth and social evolution in the West. But there is reason to believe that the chances are far greater than they once were. Not because the West is seeing the light, but because the East has once again become engaged in ways that make Buddhism relevant and vital.

Mindfulness

For most Westerners who practice Buddhism today, mindful awareness is a critical concept. It is something that was clearly a major part of the Buddha’s teachings in the Pali Canon and was instrumental to his own reaching of awareness. So important is mindful awareness to us, that we prefer to refer to mindfulness as opposed to meditation. Mindfulness means being absolutely in touch with one’s being and environment without any distractions from thoughts, whether they be of the past, the present and the future. Mindfulness means that time itself is removed as a barrier and a moment of mindfulness is worth more than a thousand years of well meaning activity.

What mindfulness tells us is that there is no coherence or continuity, only change. There is no individual or self, only oneness. Emotions themselves are delusive transitional states. We can never escape our feelings or even the sufferings that they cause. But what we can successfully do is to stop them from running our lives.

Mindfulness is sometimes talked about in a vacuum, which has nothing to do with the stillness or the void that we tap into. The vacuum is one that posits mindful awareness as a separate state of being. Mindfulness, rather, is something that puts us in touch, that makes us available, that allows us to act. It is the most powerful social ethic imaginable, since it minimizes the cravings that distract us and the fears that incapacitate us. It is an immense source of energy.

The Buddha’s discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness was an important part of the Asian canon. But it got pushed into the background and into a few monasteries as Asians retreated from Western acculturation. It was only when the people who most deeply understood Buddhism themselves began to meet the challenge of the West that mindfulness was restored to its proper place and Buddhism revitalized. Buddhism moved out of the monasteries and onto the offensive.

In Burma in 1941, a Buddhist monk by the name of Mingun Sayadaw began to teach practical courses on mindfulness to ordinary people. Since then, 45,000 students trained in Mingun’s Rangoon Centre including many Europeans and Americans. These, in turn, have taught at least another 600,000. The impact of this and other Burmese monks has been immeasurable. Working in what is called the vipassana tradition, these monks eschew dogmatic orthodoxy in order to focus on practical experience. That adaptation alone made Buddhism much more approachable for Westerners who, if they can understand some of the dogma, have real problems with ritual and tradition. And because this Burmese tradition steered clear of any of the ideological isms that characterize politics and religion, their message was one that could be adapted to a diverse society like North America.

Although the Burmese message was non-sectarian, that did not stop followers from adapting it to their own convictions, specializations and ideological positions. Those who were trained in the vipassana tradition have gone on to establish Buddhist communities that are committed to political causes, environmentalism and feminism. Some psychoanalysts who have been attracted to Buddhism have gone so far towards practicality as to redefined the religion in psychological terms. To someone with deep religious convictions, this may appear to be a travesty of spirituality, but it is also a sign that a religion is relevant. And wherever a religion is relevant, there will be those who will explore its deepest reaches.

Interconnectivity

The focus on mindfulness allowed Buddhism to create a teaching instrument that transcended cultures. It also unearthed a concept that might make it easier for a highly individualistic society to reconnect with one another. Again, this was a spiritual direction that came from those most intimate with Buddhism and its teachings. While it certainly was not a North American innovation, it has potentially profound consequences for Europeans and Americans. It is the concept of empathy.

Going back to the teachings of Gautama Buddha, the vipassana teachers emphasized that fact that meditation did not detach us from our fellow human beings and make us feel superior. Quite the contrary, it effected a systematic cultivation of loving-kindness towards others. The vipassana teachers returned to the Mahayana Buddhist teachings on the Bodhisattva. This is a teaching that has been there from the early days of Buddhism, but Buddhism is a complex religion and one that can lead in many different directions. By asserting loving-kindness, the vipassana teachers were directing Buddhism in a potentially fruitful direction.

I talked about the Bodhisattva Ideal in my third talk, so I wont go into it in any detail here (although I’ll be happy to give you a copy of that talk if you missed it, or you want to go over it). What I will do instead is make some suggestions as to why this direction was so important for Europeans and North Americans.

As capitalism developed in the West, many thinkers and writers struggled to create a new moral and social code that would be consistent with individualism. They hit upon sentimentalism, a cultural force that is extremely powerful emotionally but more difficult to translate into practice. Essentially, sentimentalism says that individuals are naturally connected to one another by sympathy or the desire to feel others joy and pain. By cultivating our sympathy towards others, we can become better neighbours, friends, parents and lovers. Sentimental literature encourages us to have a little cry at the suffering of others, on the grounds that this will strengthen the social bond. A classic example is Dicken’s A Christmas Carol which remains a perennial favourite around Christmas time, the sentimental season.

But neither Christianity not sentimentalism have shown themselves to be very powerful at stopping the kind of greed, self-centredness and desire to win that now consume Western society. Many perceptive Westerners are aware that there is a real dissonance between our actions and our ideals that are not being bridged by culture. Enter Buddhist empathy or loving kindness. Loving kindness goes way beyond sympathy, which is a form of pity, right to the absolute and immediate identification with others that we sometimes call empathy. During meditation, we become aware that the self is simply a fiction and that we are totally interconnected with all other beings. In their deepest sense, all other human beings are Buddha’s.

This understanding, especially when suggested as part of our practice, makes meditation less of a self absorption than a connection with everything around us. It is an exhilarating connection, and one that makes us want to do everything we can to help those around us. It is an ethic that encourages us to make ourselves more available for other. And it is not a stretch or contrived because it comes out of a deeply rooted spiritual experience.

While intrinsically Buddhist in nature, loving kindness bears a sufficient resemblance to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount when he told us that the greatest commandment was to “love thy neighbour as thyself” or sentimentalism’s exhortations towards general humanity and specific acts of kindness. But, in a word where personal cravings often upset good intentions, Buddhism provides the discipline and the insight to make our good intentions stick.

Engagement

Westerners find it difficult not to seek to control all aspects of their environment. As Buddhism develops in the West, one of its greatest challenges will be to transform the clutching hand into open palms — accepting what comes, whether it be good or bad.

In the meantime, however, it would be difficult to conceive of a religion making inroads into Western society if it did not at the very least offer a real possibility of creating a better world, if not in our own lifetimes, at least in the foreseeable future. All relevant religions do this, no matter how much their focus may be on a heavenly kingdom or the millennium.

Buddhism is no exception. It has had its share of millenarian and reformist phases. But if we want to single out the episodes that have demonstrated Buddhism’s commitment to social reform in the twentieth century, we need again to look — not to North America or Europe — but to Asia. We need to look specifically at Vietnam and Tibet. The story of Vietnam should be familiar to many of us. When I was young, I saw the Vietnamese war being fought on television. At that time, I was all for the Americans and for freedom as opposed to what I saw as Communist aggression.

Like so many others, I learned that the issues were not so simple and that the Vietnamese had suffered greatly and deserved to create their own society, free from warring ideologies. Into this debate stepped perhaps the most influential of modern Buddhist teachers Thich Nhat Hanh. Nhat Hanh brought together many strands of Buddhism simultaneously. He promoted Buddhism as the national religion of Vietnam and as a cultural vehicle for unification. He showed that dogmas and isms need not be victorious by creating a Unified Buddhist Church for Vietnam, the first time “such a feat of reconciliation has ever been achieved.” And he demanded that Buddhism modernized its outlook and connected with the social issues of the day.

What did Buddhist engagement mean to Thich Nhat Hanh. It meant rebuilding villages ravaged by the Vietnamese war; it meant helping Vietnamese boat people, even if it meant breaking the law; it meant criticizing unjust regimes, even when this was life threatening. It even meant the burning monk.

Many might consider suicide a quintessentially unreligious act. Thich Nhat Hanh praised those monks who immolated themselves in order to make the complacent and the selfish consider the injustices that were perpetrated on the Vietnamese people. The motive of the monks was to move the hearts of others and to make the most sincere statement possible. For Thich Nhat Hanh, every burning monk or nun was a lotus in a sea of fire. You can’t get any more engaged than that.

A remarkably similar message has been preached by the Dalai Lama, who seeks not only to make the sufferings of his Tibetan people known to the world but also to develop an ethic of interbeing or universal responsibility. For the Dalai Lama, it is not enough to criticize the Chinese communists for the damage that they have done to his country. He always seeks to uncover the underlying motivation that makes people cause damage to their planet. Self-centred attachments and hatreds result in deluded thoughts and actions that hurt others. These delusive attitudes can only be removed or remedied by spiritual practice and discipline. But that is still not enough.

The Dalai Lama tells his followers that, even as they begin practising meditation, they should be at least as concerned about the liberation of others than themselves. What distinguishes human beings from animals and makes them special is that they can wish to work for the benefit of others. He makes a direct connection between the Bodhisattva tradition and Gandhi’s work among the untouchables or Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves. He even goes so far as to suggest that any falling away from this compassion for others is the sign of a spiritual decline that cannot be compensated for by any spiritual realization. Bodhichitta, or the “compassionate wish to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of others,” is the “essence of practice.”

The Dalai Lama’s attack on purely intellectual Buddhism, and his ideal of the Bodhisattva, results in a plea for engagement in the things of this world and helps to explain his popularity in the West. Unlike many religious writers and thinkers, the Dalai Lama appears to be like one of us. His compassion and his humanity shine through all of his teachings and many parts of the message that he preaches have resonance for us.

While many Westerners have difficulty understanding or believing the doctrine of karma or rebirth; while few Westerners find the esoteric nature of Tibetan teachings or even the position of the Dalai Lama convincing; all can understand the teachings of interbeing and engagement. Twentieth century Western culture has enough touchstones to be receptive to the kind of practical teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama.

Even where Western culture prides itself most — on its rationalism — it is now susceptible to Buddhist influence. Not only are Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama able to write and speak in ways that are open and inviting to Westerners, but even where they criticize the Western tradition of individualism and intellectualism, they speak a language that is nearly a century old among Westerners themselves. Revitalized Buddhism finds many bridges to Western culture.

Epilogue

Nor should this be surprising. As I end this series of talks, it should be clear that Buddhism and the West are not two separate entities attempting to dominate or control one another. Instead, the two cultural developments have been influencing one another for over two thousand years. The influence of the West on the East has been at least as powerful of that of the East upon the West, although the latter has been our focus in this series of talks. The West not only gave the Buddha his face but helped to create a vibrant and engaged form of Buddhism that is changing Asia and now threatens to transform the West.

The amount of Buddhist activity in the West has accelerated exponentially in the last two decades and, at present, shows no signs of abating. We may appear to be on the cusp of an enormous religious revival in North America where Buddhism will play a major role.

But we should perhaps pause and measure of our excitement. Earlier Buddhist missionaries spoke of the lotus clinging to the rock in North America. Its hold is still more tenuous than its influence might appear. Even in the East, Buddhism was on the road to becoming moribund until it re-energized itself in ways that were relevant to the hopes and aspirations of the society in which Buddhism found itself.

Similarly in the West, we will only know that Buddhism has become a socially integrated religion when its name is invoked as something more than an oddity. Only when Buddhism outgrows its priestly leadings strings and becomes a more indigenous cultural force will we be able to say more positively that it is here to stay. Only when it more actively challenges the status quo of a consumerist, individualist and divisive society, will Buddhism rise above its present ambiguous cultural position. Only when Buddhism becomes more than yet another form of psychic masturbation or a substitute for psychiatry, will it begin to remake our culture. And only when it contributes to alternate frameworks for social interaction and political progress — some of which we may not like — will we know that it has become vital.

These lectures are based on Stephen Batchelor’s book ‘The Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture’.

Introduction

One of the most monumental developments in the history of Buddhism was the way it began to catch on in North America. Its an incredible story, partly because Eastern and North American cultures are so very different, and for the longest time, it looked as though Buddhism was only a fad. How it gained intellectual and cultural respectability, therefore, is a very telling social event. Its an incredible story because, unlike other religions in North America, its spread of Buddhism that I’m going to talk about has little to do with the religion of immigrant communities coming to this country. North Americans had to have a good reason to reach out and try to connect with this foreign religion. And that tells us a heck of a lot about North American culture as it has developed since the fin de siecle. But perhaps the strangest aspect of the growth of Buddhism in North America is the role played by those on the fringe of society in its developments: the beatniks, the hippies and even a group that called themselves the Theosophical Society, who were much more interested in magic and the paranormal than what we would call mainstream Buddhism. Just the fact that the Buddhist baby survived in the midst of all the freaky BATH WATER is fascinating.

The Pioneers

Of course, it would be an exaggeration to say that everything out the development of Buddhism in North America was weird or even peculiar. Part of it was simply the product of curiosity and intellectual interest. Modern American society was born in the eighteenth-century and was a society that stressed the freedom of the individual and the freedom of thought that we see in the American constitution and the individualism of Americans today. That robust individualism causes North Americans to have some difficulty with Buddhist discipline and its emphasis on the absence of a isolated self. But in the eighteenth century, it meant that some scholars would be interested enough in the religion and behavior of other societies that they would break with tradition and begin to explore the wealth of thought outside their own land. It meant that they began to compare their own society with societies outside. And it meant that they began to develop the tools that they needed to understand other societies and their writing. One of those tools was Sanskrit.

Some of you who have seen the Indiana Jones movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark may have a romantic notion of those who know and study eastern languages and society. Well, Indiana Jones had a real counterpart in the eighteenth-century. His name was William Jones, but he was also known as Oriental Jones or Persian Jones because of his extensive knowledge of the East and the fact that he put it on the academic map. He wasn’t American, he worked and taught at Oxford rather than Princeton, but he was friends with many American scholars and figures like Benjamin Franklin, and what he told them was that countries like Persia had legends and literature every bit as deep and important as the Greek Iliad or Odyssey. He provided translations from Persian and Indian literature and founded the Asiatic Society where papers were read on oriental topics. He learned about Sanskrit writings while acting as a diplomat in India and he encouraged others to translate them. He was unimpressed with some of the translations he read, so he learned Sanskrit himself and found that Sanskrit was a “goldmine”. He started the journal Asiatic Researches which contained the first translations from Sanskrit and by so doing he opened that “goldmine” and began to make it available to others, especially the Americans.

Now literate Americans became more familiar with Indian philosophy. They still didn’t know very much about Buddhism but now they began to have books on Eastern philosophy in their libraries. It was a start. The famous writer Ralph Waldo Emerson turned the wheel when the journal of himself and his friends, the Dial that was founded in 1840 began to explore the scriptures. As you might expect, at first the scholars had a hard time distinguishing Buddhism from Hinduism. Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to get them mixed up. But eventually, he began to learn that Buddhism nullified the concept of the self and looked to have all uniqueness absorbed in something infinite called Nirvana (to be distinguished of course from the popular group). Ralph was typically American in that he didn’t like the idea of losing himself in nirvana and he was also a bit perturbed when he discovered that Buddhism was a religion without a God.

On the Dial, Ralph got himself a young assistant whose name was Henry Thoreau. Thoreau was a neighbor who did odd jobs. He would go on to become the author of Walden — one of the most influential books in all of North American Literature and recently a new age classic again. But long before he wrote that, he made his own translation of a fragment of a very important Buddhist writing — the Lotus Sutra and he was amazed at the combination of contemplation and practice. While be kept Emerson’s woodlot full in 1841, he found that Buddhism encouraged him to get in touch with something deeper by going inside himself in order to get outside of himself. He settled into a cabin on one of Emerson’s woodlot just outside of Walden Pond and he began to explore non-theistic contemplation. He was determined to get to the very bottom of existence and, without much formal knowledge of Buddhism, or an understanding of Sanskrit, he began to do something that goes to the very heart of Buddhism. He began to try to live in the present moment without being distracted by ideas of past and future, or of a need for possessions, or of unruly emotions. He created for himself an environment perfect for meditation and he waited for realization to come, much as the Buddha had done before him. And he discovered many of the same things that the Buddha did. In a very real sense he became a Zen master.

How much of a Zen master? Well, if you read a modern American Buddhist classic Wherever You Go, There You Are, you will find that it is filled with Thoreau. Let me read you just one quote (35). Thoreau gave all future American Buddhists, be they hippies, beats or freaks a truly American way of talking about Buddhism and an emphasis that got completely away from religious rules and rituals in order to concentrate on the very kernel of Buddhism — the stress on being in complete touch with the present moment with absolute clarity and the depths that this insight could provide. Anyone who read Walden, and most North American university students do, has a non-threatening introduction to some of the most fundamental Buddhist principles.

The next big event in the history of American Buddhism was a scholarly one. It was the publication of The Light of Asia on the teachings of Lord Buddha by Edwin Arnold. Arnold sent a copy to Bronson Alcott in philosophy at Concord Summer school. The American academic love affair with Buddhism began as the academics praised the book and began to get excited about it. Academics are influential teachers and they instruct the country’s elite. Alcott became a teacher and a proselytize for Buddhism. Published in 1878, The Light of Asia soon sold close to a million copies and was loved by writers like Oliver Wendell Holmes — the author of Sherlock Holmes. Buddhism became a household word and an academic fad.

The Bath Water Begins to Get A Little Murky

The American Buddhist baby was born. Babies, like the rest of us, are simple and in their own way perfect little Buddhas. Its when life and karma begins to intrude that things get a bit murky. The baby soon finds itself in some very serious BATH WATER. With popularity, all sorts of things can intrude into the bath water and make it difficult to see the essentials. That’s one of the problems faced by a spiritual insight when it intersects with a real society and a larger group of individuals. Religion is particularly susceptible to corruption since it hovers around the brink of the irrational and the mystical. Once formulated, religious belief has all the shortcomings of thought generally and there is no absurd idea ever conceived that has not been able to find a spiritual rationale.

In the 1870s, Americans had gone through a Civil War. They were no longer so sure that their society was perfect or that they could create a rational paradise on earth. Some of them began to explore the irrational — the spiritualist movement. Ghosts, spirits, messages from the spirit world became another flavor of the day. And even very serious people got caught up in the mod. One of these was a man by the name of Colonel Henry Steel Olcott. He heard about strange phenomenon at the Eddy Farm in Vermont. Olcott thought he’d go down and expose the fraud, instead he met a strange powerful big boned woman in garishly bright clothing who called herself Madame Helena Petrova Blavatsky. They became chums. She was a real character, had fought with Garibaldi in Italy and still had bullets that you could feel in her shoulder. And she was a spiritualist but with a difference she claimed to be able to talk to spirits and that she learned her wisdom from ancient Buddhist elders who were know to those in Tibet where she had traveled. She believed in spirits but thought that most of them were distractions, except for the elders who spoke to her directly as a medium. These were the only true spirit guides.

Olcott was fascinated. Together they formed the Theosophical Society. None of this would be particularly interesting, except for the robust character of Madame Blavatsky, except for the fact that the Theosophical Society were the biggest defenders of Buddhism in North America and made Buddhism exotic and occult in a very new age sense. Eventually, both Blavatsky and Olcott were seeing white garmented orientals with raven hair coming to them and telling them that they had a role to play in creating a society and promulgating ancient wisdom. They composed occult works that brought together western magic but put it in a fuzzy eastern framework. Even more important they began to lionize the Hindu swamis and Buddhist monks who were, supposedly, in touch with the eastern wisdom. And some of the people that they brought to lecture were not weirdos, they were serious religious men and women.

Eastern religion was still a second class citizen in the world of spiritual life. Buddhism was a formal religion for many and a serious religion for monks in many parts of Asia. But it lacked real energy, vitality and contemporaneousness. These are characteristics of a religion in decline. All that began to change as the Theosophical Society funded trips to India and Ceylon. The trips were of crucial importance in harnessing the energies of Indian Hinduism and Sinhalese Buddhism to a nationalist cause. For once, westerners were coming and praising indigenous religion and spirituality rather than trying to convert them to Christianity. Americans were legitimizing Eastern religion and making a connection, however strange and tenuous it was. The Sinhalese realized that they could not turn the Theosophists into true Buddhists but they were happy to have them as allies. 7 branches of the Buddhist Theosophical Society were established in Ceylon. An environment had been created for a more serious look at Buddhism. Olcott even helped the Sinhalese to produce a simple Buddhist catechism or Buddha Dharma . He was invited by Japanese Buddhists to come and to help revive Buddhism in that country. He gave 75 lectures telling the Japanese that they were on the tide of a real turn towards Buddhism that would eventually transform the West. In the words of the Japanese, “Olcott san has come.” Buddhism was beginning to feel its own strength and power.

The Theosophists were plagued with scandals as it appeared that Madame Blavatsky’s communication with spirits was fraudulent and the Society began to cave in upon itself. But they had put Ceylon and Buddhism on the cultural map. In 1881 a scholar by the name of Thomas Rhys-Davids collected Buddhist sutras and founded the Pali Text Society. The hunt for Buddhist texts had begun and the process of serious translation was underway. There were even a few westerners who were beginning to seek out Zen masters. At the World Parliament of Religion held in 1893 held in America, the Buddhists were part of the agenda. For the first time, Buddhism was put on something like a level footing with Christianity. and maybe Zen masters were beginning to think in ways that would bring them to the West in the confidence that they had something to offer rather than some vague ancient wisdom and magical knowledge and, more important, that Americans might be ready to listen.

By 1897, the first Buddhist master to come to the Americans was T. Suzuki. He stayed with Dr. Paul Carus who composed a highly popular book called The Buddhist Gospel which seemed to show the parallels between Jesus and Buddha. Suzuki got 3 dollars a week and was engaged in translating Buddhist texts. Carus was interested in developing Buddhist writings that would appeal to North Americans. The process of Westernizing Buddhism had begun.

The Beats

The period between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the end of World War II has been referred to in American Buddhism as the “lotus clinging to the rock.” Buddhism grew very slowly and remained largely academic. But this was the period where many Buddhist texts were developed and serious Americans became exposed to the sophistication of Buddhist religion and to Buddhist masters who began to visit, at first intermittently but eventually establishing their own zendos or temples. It takes a special kind of person to be the first at anything and to put up with the trials of establishing a community. Often these individuals are eccentric. Such a one was Noygen Senzaki, a student Soyen Shaku, a Japanese Zen master who could speak with authority on meditation and who himself spent 9 months teaching in America. Another Japanese missionary was Sokatsu Shaku. Both came to San Francisco. It is interesting to see how they related to Americans. Shaku had a student who told him that she had been studying art for 6 years. He asked her to carve him a Buddha. When she gave him the carving, he threw it out the window. He wanted her to carve a Buddha inside herself, but like all Zen masters, he tended not to explain himself but to try to get the student to have an immediate insight. Sometimes this worked with North Americans, probably much more often it didn’t. Shaku demanded obedience. He bought a ten acre farm on warn out land and expected his students to make a go of it. Naturally, they couldn’t compete with experienced farmers and became the laughing stock of the community. Stormy meetings meant that groups broke up. It was difficult to get North Americans to behave like Buddhist monks. Shaku was also typically Japanese in his authoritarianism and his demands on his student. His prize student rebelled when he tried to get her to be an expert at flower arranging and tea ceremony before he would ordain him. He ended up never speaking to him again.

That student, Sokei-an, started his own community in Greenwich village. In four years the zazen only grew from 8 to 15 students and they sat in chairs rather than cross legged. Meanwhile Senzaki created a ‘floating zendo’ that moved around Los Angeles. His students too sat in chairs; the community constantly changed; Senzaki was so irresponsible about money that he gave it away or spent it just as soon as it came in. Hardly the way to establish a permanent zendo. And behavior between these two was hardly conducive to spreading the Buddhist message. Sokei-an once told Senzaki “Senzaki-san, I think you are an egotistical ass.” Another time, Senzaki threatened to slap Sokei-an’s face. And yet deep Buddhism sometimes prevailed. Senzaki once told a supporter that when Sokei-an talked about human nature or ego, he always listened. Over the years these two pioneers had lots of listeners but very few converts. With World War II all things Japanese were taboo. Sokei-an and Senzaki found themselves in different internment camps. In 1945, finally freed Senazaki returned to Los Angeles where he composed a poem complaining about not being able to establish a zendo in “this strange land.”

Following the war, the Zen writer and teacher with the most authority in America was Suzuki. By 1953, he had become a figure and his age and bearing fit the mold of the gentle scholar. His informal style appealed to Americans. But most of all — unlike other Zen teachers who had tried their hand in America — he was willing to try to explain Buddhism “even if it might seem like pointing a finger at the moon.” And that’s what smart North Americans needed in order to get to first base with Buddhism — more of an explanation. But even someone as capable as Suzuki wouldn’t have been able to make much of an impact were it not for one of the great ironies of cultural history. The conjunction of Buddhism with a North American preoccupation. North Americans are obsessed with finding themselves. It could be said that this is what makes them interesting and curious and allows them to explore Buddhism. But the impulse is one that causes them to feel always dislocated, always needing to prove themselves, to rebel, to become individuals. The preoccupation leaves many people dissatisfied — hence the need for healing. The form that North American healing usually takes is psychoanalysis — helping you to find yourself and to accept the things you cannot change.

Now, while Buddhism seeks to negate the notion of the self and, ultimately, the need for psychoanalysis, both are concerned with healing. And Buddhism, like psychoanalysis encourages individuals to turn within themselves to find the answer. An understanding of the suffering in life is common to Buddhism and Freudian analysis. But, in the final analysis, Buddhism has to be critical of psychoanalysis because it believes that there is “no beyond, no underneath, no upon in our consciousness.” The mind cannot be shrunk nor dissected; it has no secret recesses; it is one indivisible whole connected to everything. But those who were interested in psychoanalysis were also interested in Buddhism, and particularly the practical method for awareness known as Zen Buddhism. In 1957, a Conference was held on Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis that featured Dr. Suzuki as a speaker. A long-term relationship had begun. Those who were attracted to psychology were attracted to Buddhism. And those who were most rebellious in their search for individuality were the ones who were most attracted to Zen. Among these were the beatniks.

Jack Kerouac was obsessed with the first noble truth of Buddhism — that all human life was suffering. And he tried to describe that suffering and human nature in starkly realistic terms. Gary Snyder, a friend of Kerouac’s, bummed around from job to job and finally explored Buddhism — like Thoreau — when he became a fire lookout in Washington. Allan Ginsberg alternated drinking, drug taking and experiment with Zen. In the case of Kerouac and Ginsberg, we have spokesmen for a new generation, incredibly modern writers, who — at least at some level — embraced Zen. These were university trained people, but their influence was not confined or even complementary of university life. They were bold adventurers and the created a new form of literary Buddhism in Ginsberg’s poetry and in works like Kerouac’s Dharma Bums. They were still typically American. Ginsberg didn’t like nirvana. He resented thinking of himself as nothing. Kerouac thought that Zen teachers were far too tricky and intellectual, even though he agreed that suffering was what life was all about. Only their friend Snyder really embraced the religion and then in a typically individualistic way. He didn’t like the way his legs hurt when he tried to meditate properly. Alan Watt wrote extensively about Zen but he wouldn’t meditate in even the quarter lotus position and criticized those who did. All of these people adopted a very easy and free floating, and entirely undisciplined, approach to Zen, as did many of their artist friends.

But they brought Zen squarely into the center of an American cultural event and extended its influence from scholarship and the fringe. Beat Zen was subjective, self-conscious and strident. It was used where it fit the mood. It wasn’t a real practice even in the sense that it had been for Thoreau. Zen was like Jazz. It was serendipitous and you simply took what you wanted. As Allan Watts put it — “it’s a free country”. They sometimes referred to themselves as Zen Buddhists.

Flower Power

The sixties generation gave Zen something quite different and thereby extended its influence. Their search for freedom built on the foundation of the beats but took a very different and more optimistic approach. They rejected the society in which they lived and they looked for happiness. They had little time for the grappling with suffering that plagued Kerouac. Instead, they wanted to drop out and seek their own answers. And the ultimate method towards happiness and new answers was the trip.

It is often claimed that the sixties was an irresponsible generation. But the reality is that the generation of the sixties was able to pursue their optimistic dreams with an energy that seems difficult to imagine today. They did not only drop out, but they created communes, developed different ways of making a living, pursued more natural lifestyles, effectively opposed a major and unjust war, and left an indelible imprint in their search for social justice and a better society. They may have been naive in some ways but their optimism allowed them to act and to seek.

There were different kinds of trips that need to be understood. Marijuana and LSD were not merely ways to deaden pain, they were ways of achieving new insights that would help with life. The culture of marijuana taking was so different from today that such a process now seems impossible or at best unlikely. But drugs were not the only trip. Individuals read deeply — for North Americans — in oriental religions. And the children of the sixties were willing to learn new disciplines and postures. For the first time, they were willing to try out meditation the way that it should be done. They gave up the rigid, defensive attitudes of their elders and were willing to try out new diets, new exercises and to trip out in meditation.

Imagine, if you will, how useful this was for Zen masters. In order to trip out, students were willing to sit peacefully and still. They had far less trouble just sitting and allowing the present moment to appear to them. Marijuana and LSD had already shown many of them the fulfilment in simply experiencing normal things, but these drugs had limitations — they were not enough and caused people to look deeper. But more important, these people were open minded. They had what Zen masters call beginners mind — they were willing to let Buddhism just happen to them.

And Suzuki, the Buddhist papa was in the right place at the right time. He didn’t want to give people new dogmas and rituals; he wanted them to have a practice that was useful. Useful immediately, but something that could provide even more for those who wanted to go deeper. And Suzuki spoke a language that Americans could understand. He spoke about a different kind of freedom — the freedom of the mind that comes from doing a practice without question — and he spoke the language of individualism with a new twist — not the discovery of our self but the discovery of our true nature.

Americans will still be Americans. The new generation had more patience than the past, but they were still in a hurry to live their freedom. Enter Yasutani-roshi, a 77 year old Zen monk with huge ears who crisscrossed America between 1962 and 1969. He felt that it was essential to experience enlightenment in some form quickly, so he introduced pressure cooker meditation sessions that attacked individuals’ sense of reality and pushed people through the barrier. He capitalized on the energy of a new generation and their desire to strike quickly. Many traditional Zen teachers are indifferent to kensho or think that it will arise gradually. But Yasutani made it a self-contained trip that could influence one’s life indelibly.

Towards a North American Buddhism

The emphasis on the first awakening or kensho fit in perfectly with the flower power generations notion of a tripping out and it supported the rush that people were in to achieve a new level of happiness. By this time, some intrepid North Americans like Phillip Kapleau had gone to Japan for serious training in Zen and had returned. North Americans by temperament and culture were now writing and teaching North Americans. Kapleau took the risk, even more than Suzuki, of explaining Buddism to North Americans, understanding that they needed to feel that they understood before they would commit. But here also was someone who would not compromise with North Americans where it counted. He disapproved of eclectic Buddhism and of sitting in chairs instead of using the correct posture.

Kapleau’s books made a huge difference in that they established the beginnings of a model for North American Buddhism and made it something far less exotic and mysterious. He took the chance of explaining it and tearing away the veil of secrecy. In so doing, it could be argued that he did some damage to the traditional master disciple relationship where the emphasis is on the master working with the evolving consciousness of the disciple. But North Americans have been exposed to many religions and cultures; they are a rationalistic culture; they will not simply have faith or be

obedience unless they are informed. This poses problems down the road for American mediators since it gives too much prominence to thinking. But it is an essential foundation for the involvement of North Americans.

Kapleau’s books got me into the Temple here because they answered many of my misgivings. Like most North Americans, my approach to Buddhism was highly rationalistic and I wanted enlightenment in two weeks or less. But I think that I am fairly typical of most North Americans in the way that I came to Buddhism and I think that Kapleau was right in his basic approach. It caused him some serious problems and an ultimate break with his own teacher in 1967.

The author of How the Swans Came to the Lake describes the period after 1960 very optimistically. Zen groups, he claims, have appeared like “mushrooms after a spring rain.” But, as I have argued elsewhere, I think that Buddhism still has a precarious foothold in North America. It is still highly reliant on the charisma of priests who either come from or have been trained in other countries. Its often a stage of intellectual growth rather than a way of life. Its still a junior partner even where it is paired with psychology and psychiatry. It hasn’t developed a robust culture of its own.

Zen Buddhism, the form of Buddhism that fits best with the North American culture, can no longer be termed a fad or an intellectual cum literary cultural form. But it has yet to establish firm roots. Whereas once the lotus clung to the rock; it has now embedded itself in the mud. Whether it will grow and spread depends very much on the cultural connections that it can make with North American society.

None of this, of course, impacts upon the truth of Buddhism as a spiritual way of connecting with all that is and truly reforming one’s life. The issue is one of cultural and historical importance. But whether or not Buddhism will become a real presence in North America in our lifetimes is still very much an open question.

These lectures are based on Stephen Batchelor’s book ‘The Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture’.

Introduction

If the History of Buddhism tells us anything, it is that religion should not be reified either as dogma or as the product of a particular time and place. It is constantly adopting, conforming and making alliances with its environment. One of the reasons that Buddhism is a truly great and robust religion is because it has recognized this fact. The Dharma, as the Dalai Lama says is something that you ‘can never quite put your finger on’. Practising the Dharma means becoming one with it and not viewing it as a teaching or a consolation separate from life. But since it can never be organized in a rational way, living the Dharma means following a middle way between such extremes as ‘rationalism’ and ‘irrationalism’, ‘reason’ and ‘romanticism’, ‘intuition’ and ‘technique’.

In this talk I want to take us through a worldwind tour of the West’s encounter with Buddhism from the sixteenth century Renaissance to the early twentieth century. It’s a messy tour, and if we expect either the West or the Buddhist East to play sensible roles or if we expect a gradual progression of authentic Buddhist wisdom in the West, we are in for a disappointed ride. It’s a herky jerky kind of back and forthing with a lot of factors involved.

Historians, to which tribe I belong, try to organize these events and exchanges in a sensible way. But in so doing, they often obscure what is a very murky business. So I want you to know in advance that I am going to organize about 400 years under a very simplistic theme — the rise of nationalism — because that will allow me to give some structure to my ramblings and to set up what I think is the most important difference between the twentieth century and the world of the past — the triumph of globalism.

Renaissance Humanism

But History is full of ironies. The most profound intellectual movement in the sixteenth century west was Humanism and its origins were anything but nationalistic. The Humanists were reacting to the increasingly fossilized doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. They found religious teaching to be more obscure and less relevant to living real life in the real world. Moreover, they believed that Christianity in its present form was too intolerant towards the riches and experiences of this life. Thus, they began to refocus philosophy and literature back on human life as it was really lived and posited the then remarkable theory that one could only grow spiritually by learning, enjoying and moving beyond the things of this world. In order to learn about the things of this world — rather than how many angels one could get on the head of a pin — the Humanists rediscovered and devoured the writings of the Greeks and Romans. They began the process of translating and learning from classical western texts in order to provide an alternative vision of life. And they were particularly excited by the teachings of Plato who showed, for example, that earthly love and beauty were stepping stones to higher concepts.

This movement was, for its time, extremely internationalist. It encouraged people to look for wisdom outside of themselves and it stimulated a great curiosity about the world outside of central Europe. It began to focus scholarship on comparative literature and it revitalized a kind of historical curiosity about other societies that had lain dormant since the Greeks. It laid the groundwork for the modern university and the undogmatic search for knowledge and truth. But most of all it allowed for the freeing up of art and culture, the kind that you can see in Michelangelo’s paintings for the Sistine Chapel or his sculptures that detailed the beauty of the human body and, occasionally, the human spirit.

But as the Humanists were redefining beauty and affirming the ‘here and now’ of human existence, a totally different movement was emerging — nationalism. The humanists, as writers and artists, were quickly swallowed up by monarchs who were attempting to unify feudal kingdoms and to give the royal household and the courts greater clout and prestige. Thus, for example, Thomas More was employed and beheaded by Henry VIII in England. Machiavelli worked for the Italian princes and tried to get a job with the Borgias, the folks who kept poisoning their enemies in order to gain control of the state. All the while, the Pope, who felt the threat of rising monarchs, began to try to enter into the fray and to build up the power Papal States, by religious threat and, if necessary, physical force.

The popes had one real, but potentially difficult, ally in their own quest for temporal domination — a new international religious order that you have all heard about, the Society of Jesus or the Jesuits. Now there’s lots that can be said, both good and bad, about the Jesuits, but there’s only two things that I really want to focus on here. The Jesuits were influenced by humanism and tended to be internationalists; the internationalism of the Jesuits meant that they were much more inclined to try to learn about and to understand other cultures than most other westerners and it is from the Jesuits that we first begin to get more accurate information about other societies in the world. The second is that the Jesuits were often hated by rulers and even some popes because they went against national ambitions at precisely the same time that nations were growing more powerful. Thus, they were from time to time outlawed or banished from states, and even by the popes that they served. For the growing power of nations meant that countries like Spain or France could get their national candidates elected as popes.

The Jesuits, therefore, were the most influential anachronisms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. What is more, they followed the explorers to new societies in India, Ceylon, China and, eventually, Japan and Tibet. What they wanted to do was to make converts to Christianity. Francis Xavier, for example, set out in 1549 to convert Japan. He was the first to learn something about Japanese Buddhism and even provides us with a clumsy account of the way in which Japanese Buddhists of the Rinzai school were using koans. Of course we shouldn’t expect too much in the way of a deeper understanding of Buddhism from this Christian missionary, who basically regarded the Japanese as idolaters. But he and his friends were humanists enough to be able to appreciate the politeness and etiquette of their hosts, and Xavier even became friends with the Abbot of a Soto Zen monastery. The Jesuits were eventually able to convert a powerful Zen master Kesshu and to build up their mission in Japan. 50 years later, they had 200,000 Christians in Japan.

The Jesuits excelled as educators of missionaries. Matteo Ricci was a prize candidate and he was sent to convert the Chinese in 1578. China at that time had both Confucians and Buddhists with the state favouring the Confucians. Ricci went so far as to study Confucianism and to tress like a Confucian patriarch. He got along fairly well with them, even though he was thought of as unusual. The Christian emphasis on hierarchy and religious rule helped him understand Confucians but he had a harder time with Buddhists and refused even to learn the basics of the religion. What bothered the missionaries most about the deeper forms of Buddhism was the denial of a personal savour and soul and the desire to melt into Nirvana rather than to enter into a heavenly kingdom. Buddhism seemed particularly alien to the Western mind. Dialogue was limited.

The First European Zen Buddhist

The only reason that there was any dialogue at all was because the East was more tolerant than the West and did not have such a need to define heresy or to stamp out religious dissent. But the West and the East began to converge by the end of the sixteenth century and Eastern rulers too began to establish authoritarian political regimes and to increase state control over religious activity. The Japanese Buddhist church became subject to state controls and Buddhist monks became state administrators. Japanese nationalism and religious chauvinism was clearly on the rise when the Jesuit Christovao Ferreira made the mistake of trying to go to convert the Japanese.

Christianity had previously flourished in Japan but now came under scrutiny. As in many European countries, the Jesuits were considered particularly dangerous and outlawed. For a long time Ferreira ran the Japanese Church for the Jesuits from underground and lived a shadowy existence. Christians were now persecuted for their beliefs and Jesuit missionaries were high on the government’s hit list. At first, the Japanese authorities just killed those Christians it found most offensive, but they soon discovered that this created martyrs which increased the rate of conversion and strengthened those in opposition. So they began to devise ways to make the leadership turn.

And their favourite way was to hang people upside down in a big vat of excrement. The anestethized the brain by splitting the skull to keep people from passing out too easily and they made sure that people were not totally suffocated by the fumes. It could take many hours, and in some cases, days to die. But most Jesuits were tough customers and they simply died. They did not raise their one untied hand to indicate apostasy. That is all except for Ferreira. He lasted six hours before he apostatized. It was a big victory for state Buddhism in Japan and a severe blow to the mission, especially since Ferreira now began to write anti-Christian tracts for the government.

It is difficult to know if Ferreira ever became a true Zen Buddhist. His writings seem to indicate a blending of Confucian and Taoist beliefs. But his conversion is historically relevant only as an example of the way that religion was increasingly tied to the ambitions of secular rulers and how it was used to serve nationalistic ends. The Japanese were certainly no different from the Europeans in this respect. They were consolidating the state by using and controlling religion.

Similar events unfolded in other Buddhist countries. Buddhism was established as a theocracy in Tibet for the pure reason of consolidating the rule of a Mongol leader and later it was supported by Chinese Ming emperors for much the same reason. Spiritual men cut deals with secular leaders in order to promote their brand of Buddhism. The results could help the spread of the dharma In Tibet, for example, Jamchen Choje was able to create the largest 3 monasteries in the world, with over 20,000 monks. By the 1640s, Buddhist regimes had been established in Tibet, China and Japan. But the spirit of Buddhism, its essential core of teachings, was successively overlaid with formality, state concerns and a fossilizing of dogma.

The Mongols, perhaps because of the disconnected nature of their empire, were more internationalist and accepting of religious difference than most. Their intermittent power over Tibet allowed for some toleration, and the Jesuits were permitted to come in to preach in 1716. Once again they prepared to debate the merits of Christianity under the terms set by the Khan. But the Khan was a remnant of the past. The Manchu dynasty was the future. The Tibetans would only manage to shake of that yoke in 1912, but it would take only 40 years for the Chinese to return in the form of a powerful Asian government committed to communism.

Back in the late sixteenth century, internationalism was pretty much dead and the old humanist ideal of an international community could barely be glimpsed. In 1721, Rome ordered the Jesuits out of Tibet and sent the Capuchins in their place. In 1773 the Society of Jesus was suppressed throughout Europe and inconsequential in Japan.

The Legacy of Enlightenment

In order for cosmopolitanism and internationalism to arise again, there needed to exist a whole new set of conditions. And even then, you can imaging that the results would need to be complex and even messy, with all sorts of different developments and theories cris crossing in a way that makes the transmission of a complex and alien religious system difficult. But something did happen around the middle of the eighteenth-century that had an important impact on the exchange of ideas. It was a movement called the Enlightenment.

In Zen Buddhist teaching, enlightenment is the moment that you intuitively understand the interconnectedness of all things, and the complete transparency of both mind and what we conventionally term the material world. The eighteenth-century European enlightenment was very different. It was about applying human reason systematically in order to understand nature and human nature. It was about discovering the laws of science and human psychology so as to change and improve the way we live. It had a deep commitment to historical evolution and progress, something that we still cling to very tightly in our western minds.

To a Buddhist, much of this would not be considered enlightenment and it differs dramatically from the intuitive mind that achieves kensho or enlightenment. But you should understand how liberating this form of Enlightenment seemed to people living in European nations. It meant prosperity, scientific advancement, and the power that seems to come from controlling one’s environment. To be fair to the Enlightenment theorists like Voltaire, Adam Smith, Condorcet and Beccaria, the Enlightenment was all about appreciating nature, achieving a moral society, and providing a higher standard of living for all members of a society. The emphasis on a universal human nature made these people tolerant; their desire to advance human civilization made them polite and sympathetic and their desire to understand nature led to extremely valuable scientific discoveries.

In their search to discover human nature, the Enlightened philosophers began to see the moral basis for all religions. They wanted to study these religions more closely in order to understand where spiritual values came from rather than simply to believe in dogma. They believed that human nature was fundamentally good and moral, so they looked for what was good and moral in other societies. This sense of toleration and curiosity was mitigated somewhat by their belief in progress — so it was natural for them to consider the economies and the philosophies of the East as inferior to those of the West. The West was higher in the evolutionary scale, something that seemed to be confirmed half a century later in that true product of the Enlightenment — Charles Darwin.

Enlightenment curiosity about other cultures was aided and abetted, therefore, by an entire process of colonization — bringing the benefits of western rationalism and civilization to the East. And while it cannot be said that the Enlightenment was much less chauvinistic in its attitude towards the East than the Renaissance, there was something very valuable in its desire to find out about others and to look at the data scientifically. As early as the mid seventeenth-century, the Jesuits and others had been buy composing Sanskrit grammars and working hard to solve the riddle of complex primitive languages. But now there was a much more concerted movement to speed up this kind of scholarship and to do it in a systematic way, characterized by a specialized division of labour. The Science of Philology was born and with it the Royal Asiatic Society.

And the kind of understanding of foreign cultures that the West now thought was far more conducive to increased understanding, for it wanted to penetrate past the dogma and the history of foreign cultures to a deeper meaning — it wanted to appreciate the spirit of the East. Of course, this was often a way of criticizing the inadequacies of a foreign culture, but you can’t let scholars loose on material without having some unexpected outcomes. They tend to fall in love with what they study and to see its advantages. Buddhism could never have made serious inroads into the West had it not been for some very peculiar and often quite dislikable scholarly men. The spread of the Dharma works in some very mysterious ways.

Philology, or the study of languages and symbols, had some very interesting beginnings in its contact with Buddha. In the first place, it gave the Buddha a name. But it tended to make him an Egyptian god, or a Teutonic god, or one of the lesser Hindu deities. Buddhist texts were in scarce supply, so everything discovered was subject to conjecture. But the Philologists were real enlightenment scholars in so far as they were looking for the source of all religions, and in the process what they found was sources — sources that had often been overlooked or overly glossed by present day Buddhists. The rediscovery and availability of those sources put Buddhism on the map. A man named Csoma de Koros spent years in Buddhist monestaries developing a grammar. For his efforts, he was officially canonized as a Bodhisattva in a Tokyo university in 1933. A man named Hodgson put Sanskrit Buddhist texts and Tibet on the Map. But the guy who really made Sanskrit studies the thing was a French academic by the name of Eugene Burnoff. He realized while translating Sanskrit and Pali texts that the historical and orderly Western mind would never understand Buddhism without a historical introduction, so in 1844 he composed one and its became the essential foundation on which all Buddhist studies since have been based. He may not even have been a Buddhist himself, but he was the link to taking on Buddhism on its own terms.

A Romantic Engagement

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