David Loy - Why Buddhism Needs the West

I've been thinking and reading a lot about Buddhism and its relation to Western culture. Here David Loy writes for Tricycle on why Buddhism NEEDS the West.

Why Buddhism Needs the West

Buddhism has been a boon to the West. Can the West return the favor?

By David Loy

In an oft-cited statement, which might be apocryphal, the British historian Arnold Toynbee said, “The coming of Buddhism to the West may well prove to be the most important event of the twentieth century.” Given the monumental social, political, and scientific changes of the last century, that claim seems pretty unlikely. But Toynbee may have noticed something the rest of us need to see: that the interaction between Buddhism and the West is crucial today, because each emphasizes something the other is missing. Whether or not Toynbee actually made this observation, the significance of the encounter may be nearly as great as his statement suggests.

For many Western convert Buddhists, including much of Tricycle’s readership, the claim that Buddhism provides what the West lacks seems reasonable enough. They are, after all, converts. But I believe the opposite is also true: the West offers something just as important to Buddhism, something Buddhism needs if it is to fulfill its vision of human potential. In a way that neither seems to be aware of, Buddhism and the West need each other to complete themselves. To many partisans of either tradition, this idea may sound absurd or even insulting. Certainly it is challenging. Above all, however, it is hopeful.

In his 1969 book Earth House Hold, the Buddhist poet and essayist Gary Snyder wrote, “The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.” Over the years, this observation has been quoted many times by those making the case for a more socially engaged Buddhism. The challenge is to better understand the relationship between the two: the mercy of the East and the mercy of the West.

What mercy does Buddhism offer the West? For those who read this magazine, answers to that question may already be apparent, but let’s be precise. Buddhist teachings emphasize the basic connection between suffering (dukkha) and the absence of an abiding self (anatta). Why are we constantly dissatisfied? It’s because our sense of self, being a delusion, is incapable of finding lasting satisfaction. We are unable to find happiness in our lives because we are haunted by a sense that “something’s wrong,” something we do not understand, and ego-driven attempts to resolve this just make things worse. According to Buddhism, the self, by its very (illusory) nature, is dukkha.

In contemporary terms, the sense of self is a psychosocial construct: psychological because it is a result of mental conditioning, and social because it develops in relation to others. Since “my” sense of self is composed of habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, letting go of those mental habits (through a practice such as meditation) is like peeling the layers of an onion. Through practice, one eventually realizes directly the emptiness—the lack of self—at one’s core. Awakening is recognizing that awareness is nondual: because “I” am not inside, the rest of the world is not “outside.”

In the context of social ethics, this recognition implies that without individual transformation, social transformations are bound to be impaired. Why have so many revolutions and reform movements ended up replacing one gang of thugs with another? Because, many Buddhists will say, if we do not address our own greed, ill will, and delusion (the three unwholesome motivations, also known as the “three poisons”), our efforts to challenge them in their collective forms are likely to be useless—or worse. Certainly history provides us with many examples of tyrannical leaders emerging from movements whose initial goals were largely just.

But wait a moment … what does Buddhism have to do with political movements? Buddhism, so the response often goes, is a spiritual path for individuals, not a platform for social change. The problem with this way of thinking is that it is not always clear where one ends and the other begins. Buddhism is about ending dukkha by transforming the three poisons, yet those poisons are all the more toxic when they infect a ruler, who easily can—and often does—create widespread dukkha. As Buddhists, we need to consider how much suffering is perpetuated by social and political conditions as well as by individual tendencies.

We know that the historical Buddha applied his teachings to the social world with an insight and vigor unique for a religious figure of his time and place. In the earliest scriptures there are many instances in which the Buddha challenges prevailing social attitudes and advocates reform. Still, social analysis and criticism had a marginal role in the corpus of his teachings. The main thrust of the Buddha’s teachings addressed the problem of individual suffering, and his thoughts about society were never elaborated in a similarly sophisticated or systematic way. As a result, after the Buddha passed away, the sangha (monastic community) for the most part adapted itself to the social forms and norms of Asian cultures. Buddhism has historically tended to passively accept, and sometimes actively support, social arrangements that now seem unjust.

In Asian Buddhist countries, for example, the monastic community has often relied on royal patronage. In these cultures, rulers were not only patrons and defenders of the sangha, they served as cultural ideals and living symbols of the social order, fulfilling a role that was necessary to maintain harmony between the state and the cosmos. In other words, their role was religious as well as political. The sangha generally accepted this view and, along with it, whatever injustices might be part of the social structure, for to challenge the order of society was to revolt against the order of the cosmos itself. What’s more, such a state of affairs can be, and often has been, justified by a simplistic interpretation of Buddhism’s doctrine of karma. The view that there is an infallible and precise cause-and-effect relationship between one’s actions and one’s fate implies that justice is already built into the way things happen. Karma has thus provided a rationalization for discrimination based on ethnicity, caste, class, birth handicaps, illness, and so forth. It has also justified the authority of those with political and economic power and the subordination of those who have neither.

By modern standards, this is an example of collective mystification. But such a way of viewing society is distinctly Western, rooted in ideas that originated in ancient Greece, particularly in Athens. The Greeks’ understanding, which began to develop about the same time as Buddhism, was revolutionary in the way it challenged false ideas about society—in fact, just as revolutionary as the Buddha’s challenge to delusive ideas about the self. It has been the norm in societies not exposed to these ideas to view their social structure as being in some way inevitable: as reflecting natural order or divine will. In the West, this way of thinking was challenged and eventually overthrown.

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Tags: Why Buddhism Needs the West, Tricycle, David Loy, Buddhism, culture, Arnold Toynbee, socially engaged Buddhism, Gary Snyder, suffering, dukkha, anatta, no self