The Making of Buddhist Modernism Hardcover – 20 Nov 2008

This book should be essential reading for anyone currently involved with the practice of Buddism in America. The author does a superb job of explaining the connection between our heritage of the philosophies of the Enlightenment and Romanticism and Buddhism. The book cleared up for me the odd blending of modern science and neo-romantic (new-age) ideas espoused by many American Buddist teachers. It also clearly explicates the differences between many Asian practices of Buddhism and the modern emphasis on or perhaps even over emphasison meditation. I am a Buddhist and I highly recommend this thoughtful, erudite exposition by David McMahan.

David McMahan does an excellent job of explaining the intersection of Buddhism with the West - both the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the Romantic reaction to that - in the past 100-125 years or so.

But, he also notes that it's more than just an intersection. It was a reaction to colonialism penetrating ever more of the Buddhist heartland. And, while Emerson and other Transcendentals may have made Eastern religion (much more focus by them on Hinduism, though) synthesized with new thoughts from the west, Buddhist thinkers, in trying to defend Buddhism against colonialism and reinvigorate it, willingly did their own synthesis.

And, not all Buddhist modernism, certainly not in its homeland, nor even in the West, has been demythologized today, McMahan notes. For example, though he professes to be willing to drop any belief incompatible with science, the Dalai Lama still holds firm to both karma and reincarnation.

McMahan focus on specific areas of "dialogue" in Buddhist modernism, such as science, meditation, Buddhism as psychology and more. He then concludes with a chapter on the idea of Buddhism postmodernism.

If you're looking for a great intro to where today's ideas about Buddhism, both West and East, have arisen, just how selective they may be in what parts of traditional Buddhism they use as their base and more, this is the book to read.

Meditation, compassion, tolerance; spirituality, freedom, rationality: why do these adjectives characterize modern Buddhism? Why not temple worship, ancestral cult, or monastic ritual? How do the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, or Chögyam Trungpa incorporate "strategic occidentalism" into open-minded versions of Buddhism compatible with scientific rationalism, feminism, democracy, ethics, agnosticism, and liberal Christianity? How do Tibetan, Zen, and vipassana "insight" schools of practice adapt for Westernizing markets, whether in Asia, America, or Europe? McMahan mixes theory with examples to explain how both West and East interpret dharma for modern audiences--schooled in abstract thought, raised with consumer capitalism, and participants in globalizing media.

Using Donald S. Lopez' definition of a modern form that "stresses equality over hierarchy, the universal over the local, and often exalts the individual above the community," McMahan begins his study (qtd. 8). By demythologizing, detraditionalizing, and psychologizing, the twentieth century continued the efforts of Romantics and rationalists to prove that not only might Buddhism be compatible with post-Enlightenment thought, it might better Christian or scientific models.

Chapter Two, "The Spectrum of Tradition and Modernism," takes the case study of the "Shukden affair" to show how tensions brought in-- via psychological definitions-- to the Tibetan controversy have been heightened as the "self-understanding" of those involved has been transformed by this modern version of dharma. Pico Iyer's recent "The Open Road" (also reviewed by me) discusses this awkward P.R. situation for the Dalai Lama at more length.

Scholarship enters most doggedly into the middle chapters. Discourses of modernity bring Buddhism into a complicated relationship with rationalism, Christianity, and Romanticism. Countering, since the 1870s, the charges that it represents a decayed tradition, Buddhists have rallied to compete against Western liberalism as well as cohabit with its individualism, freedom of choice, and market-driven goals.

Chapter Four extends the scientific dialogue with modernizing Buddhism. Chapter Five elaborates Romanticism within theories of art, spontaneity, and the "wellsprings of nature"; the New Age overlaps and neo-pagan sympathies flow in and out of a section that could have benefited from deeper attention to such cross-currents. All the same, McMahan excels on his inclusion of Western Buddhist theorists Anagarika Govinda and Sangharakshita.

Interdependence in the sixth chapter dominates the discussion. "Meditation and Modernity" enlivens Chapter Seven's presentation with what today may be the most recognizable attribute of the dharma, if one increasingly separated from Buddhism itself. Despite the persistence of the Eastern "Other" as more "spiritual, subjective, and intuitive," vs. the Western "materialistic, rational, and extraverted" contender, there persists in the Western reception of Buddhism a strong Romantic tension. Fierce individualism alongside "cosmic unity" in New Age movements and neo-pagan communities infiltrates Buddhist modernism.

The eighth chapter moves into literary predecessors of Buddhist modernism that helped popularize among an educated readership the concepts of mindfulness and the "affirmation of ordinary life." In conclusion, McMahan displays the dharma's current phenomena. Postmodern inevitably follows modern Buddhism. Another work worthy of comparison to this final section goes unmentioned by McMahan; "The Monk and the Philosopher" (1996; reviewed by me) from Jean-François Revel and Matthieu Ricard, discusses the clash and coupling of many Tibetan and Western political, artistic, and philosophical contexts that might have deserved consideration by McMahan. Future trends he includes: a backlash returning to tradition; "free-form spirituality" divorced from Buddhism, as has been attempted increasingly with Zen; privatization and commodification; social engagement; ethics; ecology; feminism; and New Age appropriation.

Again, it may be a sign of the book's success that I wanted to find out far more about these quickly reviewed topics. I sense the compression exerted by a publisher upon the length of this work tilted the work more to satisfy the historian of religion than the general reader who might welcome a longer tour of the popular culture contexts. Yet, this book is more about the making than the merchandising of what has become marketed and manifested as modern Buddhism. Among its passing attractions further research will emerge, into the impermanent, ever-changing parade of the dharma's production, importation, and reception across the world. (This is excerpted from my review for "The Journal of Buddhist Ethics" 17 (2010): 41-49.)

If you seek to understand how the "Buddhism" we know in the West was created, this book is essential. In this day and age, when even purportedly well-informed authors still depict a rational, proto-scientific physicalist Buddha, and claim that everything incompatible with modern sensibilities in Buddhist traditions is the result of later interpolations and corruptions, this book is a vital and much-needed corrective.

In short, most of what is hocked in the West as Buddhism is a mixture of German Romantic Idealism, Victorian Protestant sensibilities, scientific materialism, and traditional Asian Buddhism of various stripes - probably in something close to that order of prominence. Much (though certainly not all) of the appeal of this concoction for westerners is due to the familiarity that comes with western ideas repacked as Timeless Asian Wisdom.

McMahon does a superb job documenting the many global forces at work in this construction over the past two hundred years.

Enjoyable, but heavy going. In contrast to many of the books out there elucidating Buddhist practice and philosophy, this book delves into how Buddhist ideas have entered Western culture. If you like your readings to contain sentences peppered with terms like 'detraditionalization' and 'hybridity', then this is the book for you. I particularly enjoyed the part early on where David describes 5 different archetypes of people who are into Buddhism, but all of them in completely different ways, and some of them almost irreconcilably so, illuminating the current confusion and identity-seeking that goes on for modern people who consider themselves Buddhist, or who are interested to learn from the ideas Buddhism espouses without living under a label.
Finally, this book is not for the casual seeker of knowledge about Buddhism, but instead for someone well-versed in the subject and the scene, who is looking for some context around the debates and difficulties apparent around the field of modern Buddhism.