Abstract

This essay is an inquiry into the religio-cultural background of the opposition to ritual evidenced by many adherents of Buddhist modernism. This background can be structured by three different kinds of questions—historical, philosophical, and cultural.

Highlights

  • As a teenager I was entranced by the exotic Otherness of Buddhism and Daoism

  • Foundational to answering all three of these questions is the cultural assumption that there is a dualistic opposition between mind and body, and that opposition is rhetorically imposed as a dualist opposition between meditation, and ritual

  • As the conception of meditation and ritual as mutually exclusive opposites is shared by all three strands of thought, we will begin our examination with the line of development that runs from the Protestant Reformation, when the distinction is established, through Auguste Comte, to Sigmund

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Summary

Introduction

As a teenager I was entranced by the exotic Otherness of Buddhism and Daoism. Writers like Alan. Foundational to answering all three of these questions is the cultural assumption that there is a dualistic opposition between mind and body (or mental and physical, or spiritual and material), and that opposition is rhetorically imposed as a dualist opposition between meditation (a mental activity), and ritual (a physical activity) Answering these three questions will require identifying unexamined assumptions inherited by Buddhist Modernism from the modern religious culture of Europe and the United States. Making those assumptions explicit allows for critical reflection on the propriety of basing our contemporary understandings of Buddhism—both academic and practice-oriented—on those assumptions. It seems instead to be an almost “natural” tendency to think in essentializing ways, and to be unaware of the selective process involved

The Historical Question
From Protestant Reformation to Comte to Freud
Anti-Ritual Character of Buddhist Modernism
Modernist Occultism
De-Natured Zen
The Philosophic Question
Cultural Question
Are Contexts Actually Important?
Conclusion
Full Text
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