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THE RE-ORIENTATION OF BUDDHISM IN NORTH
AMERICA1
Ellen Goldberg
1 I would like to thank Ann Baranowski. Without her efforts this paper would not
have been possible.
2 In a more recent study, Lopez (1998: 5) acknowledges the "legacy of colonial
ism" in the "nineteenth- and early-twentieth century constructions of Tibetan Bud
dhism."
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 1999 Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
11,340-356
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THE RE-ORIENTATION OF BUDDHISM IN NORTH AMERICA 341
Baumann 1997). The term 'transplantation' was first used by van der
Leeuw (1964: 609) in his theory of the dynamic of religions. By this
term he meant a complex interplay between interpretation and tradi
tion, and this is how I will use the term in this paper. The term,
however, has been the subject of debate. Eva K. Neumaier-Dargyay
(1995) contests Martin Baumann's (1994) use of the term. According
to Neumaier-Dargyay (1995: 18) the "imported religion is already in
an altered state before it ever gets appropriated by the host culture."
Thus, for her the metaphor used by Baumann does not work.
Baumann (1996) responds by saying Neumaier-Dargyay offers a lim
ited reading of the term. Baumann, it might be noted, follows van der
Leeuw's use of the term as discussed by Michael Pye (1969). While
Baumann's insights into a strategic adaptation model for the trans
plantation of Buddhism to Germany are important and clarifying,
Baumann does fail to note that Germany has inherited the deeply
embedded structures of Orientalism and that these structures shaped
the entire transplantation process he describes.3 Briefly, Baumann
outlines a five stage adaptation process that includes; (i) contact; (ii)
confrontation and conflict; (iii) ambiguity and adaptation; (iv)
recoupment (reorientation); and (v) innovative self-development. In
this essay I will extend this model to an analysis of Buddhism in
North America. (It is important to add that this model may very well
describe the broader strategies of adaptation of Buddhism beyond its
homeland in India to other Asian countries.) Since recoupment and
innovative self-development are, for my purposes, overlapping cat
egories, I will simply use the single phrase "reorientation and innova
tion" and reduce the five stages to four stages. For each of these
stages in the adaptation process I will show how specific structures of
Orientalism articulate more thoroughly the dynamics involved in
transplantation. The stages, it might be added, do not necessarily
proceed sequentially or chronologically. Rather, the categories are
fluid and the actual transplantation process is complex.
Said's structures of Orientalism can be summarized briefly as fol
lows: mystification, essentialization, textualization, polarization of
false geo-political categories, marginalization, and generalization.
(Although it is well beyond the scope of this paper, one could also
apply these categories as broadly defined by Said to a discussion of
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342 ELLEN GOLDBERG
1. Contact
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THE RE-ORIENTATION OF BUDDHISM IN NORTH AMERICA 343
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344 ELLEN GOLDBERG
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THE RE-ORIENTATION OF BUDDHISM IN NORTH AMERICA 345
For example, they both are text-based and their tendency toward
scientific/rational thought proceeds from this text-dependency much
like the European Protestant world from which it emerged. Queen
(1995) shows new reliance in Sri Lankan Buddhism on "the authority
of scriptures." Dharmapala and Olcott composed Gihi Vinaya based
on Christian missionary manuals and Buddhist Catechism respectively.
The latter has seen 40 editions in 20 languages and is still in use in
Buddhist communities. This is equally true of B. R. Ambedkar and
his The Buddha and his Dhamma. As Queen writes (1995: 26): "each
sentence is versified, and the style imitates that of the English Orien
talist T. W. Rhys Davids, whose renderings of the Pali scriptures
were featured in Max Muller's Sacred Books of the East." Specifically,
however, this Protestant influence can be most clearly seen in its
struggle for social justice. As Christopher Queen (1995: 30) puts it,
"The Buddhism that attracted Americans was not one of pessimism,
resignation, and retreat, but a vigorous religion of optimism and
activism."6
6 Stephanie Kaza (1993: 64-65), however, argues that the emphasis on individual
liberation within Buddhism is an obstacle to social engagement. Rather, North
American Buddhism draws its impulse for social justice from Christian and Western
feminist ethics.
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346 ELLEN GOLDBERG
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THE RE-ORIENTATION OF BUDDHISM IN NORTH AMERICA 347
Along with Said we must note that the privileged Occident not only
establishes a polarized East and West, but casts these polarities in
gendered terms. This gendering is a requirement for the Orientalist
project to succeed. The uneven exchange of power between men and
women in patriarchal cultures provides the perfect metaphor for
domination and subjugation. It allows the male creator to control
and manipulate for his own purposes the female subject. Said hints at
the feminization of the Orient throughout his study, but the full
articulation of the implications of this gendered discourse has yet to
be put forth. Here I can only begin to show how this feminization is
operative in the transplantation of Buddhism to North America.
While the Occident, according to Said, is perceived as male, ra
tional, liberal, logical, and holding real values, the mechanism of false
dualism recasts the Oriental as female, passive, non-autonomous,
non-sovereign, alienated, silent, supine, irrational, gullible, deficient
in logic, devoid of energy, liars, and wanting in symmetry (Said 1994:
49, 56-57, 97, 138). This strategy of femininization is part of the
inherited legacy deeply entrenched in the image of the Buddha, and
Buddhism, in the West (Stanley K. Abe, 1995: 75, for instance,
quotes Alfred Foucher's observations of the effeminate nature of the
Gandhara Buddha images). As heirs to British and French Orientalist
scholarship, the United States assimilated these characterizations
without question since this was their primary avenue of contact with
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348 ELLEN GOLDBERG
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THE RE-ORIENTATION OF BUDDHISM IN NORTH AMERICA 349
instance, as exotic and mystical was a panacea for the social ills in the
host culture. To illustrate, in the 1960s, there was enormous social
and political protest in the United States (and, to a lesser extent, in
Canada) because of the war in Vietnam. Racial and political unrest
swept major American urban centers. The foreign idea of ahimsa
(non-violence), the then "exotic" practice of vegetarianism, and so
forth, attracted many non-Asian North Americans. In a decade of
wide-spread experimentation with psychedelics, Buddhism also of
fered the alien practice of meditation as an alternative to drug-use. In
addition, this pacified form of Buddhism seemed to provide options
to the militaristic and aggressive socio-political problems that the
U.S. faced.7 It is by virtue of its exotic otherness, expressed in these
practices, that Buddhism offered a romanticized emancipatory vision
of social reform to non-Asian North Americans. This can also be
seen, as Lopez notes, in the West's attitudes toward Tibetan Bud
dhism in the West; "Tibet is seen as the cure for an ever-ailing
Western civilization, a tonic to restore its spirit. And since the Ti
betan diaspora that began in 1959 there seems an especial urgency
about taking this cure, before it is lost forever"(Lopez 1998: 10).
These examples point out how Buddhism provided solutions to
deficiencies in the host culture. The second phase of this stage of
conflict and confrontation, as articulated by Baumann, is that the
host culture willingly admits the foreign culture into its geographical
space. The example that most poignantly expresses the openness and
willingness of North American countries to admit Buddhism is the
case of the Tibetan exiles.8 The 1960s marked the beginning of a
significant interest in Tibetan Buddhism in North America. The in
vasion and occupation of Tibet by the Chinese Peoples Liberation
Army in the 1950s, and the flight of the 14th Dalai Lama from Tibet
in 1959, initiated a significant shift in the North American perception
of Tibetan Buddhism.
As is well known, in 1959 approximately 70,000 Tibetan refugees
followed the Dalai Lama into exile. Most of the exiled Tibetans
settled in India on land donated by the Indian government specifi
cally for the Tibetan refugees. Numerous problems—such as dra
matic climate change, lack of food, and so forth—seriously threat
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350 ELLEN GOLDBERG
9 See also recent Hollywood films such as The Little Buddha (1996), Seven Years in
Tibet (1997), and Kundun (1998). As Lopez notes (1998: 7): "Tibetan Buddhist culture
has been portrayed as if it were itself another artifact of Shangri-La from an eternal
classical age, set high in a Himalayan keep outside time and history."
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THE RE-ORIENTATION OF BUDDHISM IN NORTH AMERICA 351
foreign culture borrows jargon and terminology from the host. This
pattern is already familiar to Buddhism in its adaptation to Asian
countries outside its Indian homeland such as China and Japan (for
an excellent account of this process see Maspero, 1981). Buddhism in
China, for example, looked to the indigenous philosophy and religion
of Taoism for adaptive terminology while in North America, Bud
dhists turned, for example, to the language of Western psychothera
pies and Christianity. This process of adaptation also involves the
appropriation of concepts and terminology by the host culture from
the foreign religious tradition. Examples of this appropriation can be
seen in the work of Carl Jung and his influence on North American
psychologists such as Erich Fromm, Abraham Maslow, Ken Wilbur,
Roger Walsh, and Ron Kurtz. Jung's experimentation with "the wis
dom of the East" is well-documented. However, his ambivalence
toward Eastern philosophy and his ultimate rejection of Hindu and
Buddhist psycho-spiritual methods such as yoga reveals the implicit
Orientalism in his writings on Eastern spirituality. Gomez (1995)
shows that Jung functions as an intermediary between East and West,
but it is an Orientalized rendering of the East that is communicated
via Jung to the West.
Another strategic mechanism in the third stage of adaptation
available to Buddhism in North America is marketing, consumerism,
and electronic media. The Snow Lion Fall '96 Newsletter, for instance,
sells Buddhist dharma items such as an inflatable meditation cushion
(zqfu) for $22. Under the caption, "Liberate your senses!" we find
Khatsa: a three-some of Tibetan hot sauce, barbeque marinade and
salsa, listed at $17.95.10 It also advertises a peace mandala computer
screen saver ($43.95) as well as a peace mandala jigsaw puzzle
($20.00). In addition, the catalogue highlights a limited edition de
signer Kalachaba watch for $120 endorsed by the Dalai Lama. Adap
tation through consumerism and marketing can also be seen in the
North American fascination with exotic practices such as tantra. The
Snow Lion book catalogue offers a variety of texts written specifically
with the Westerner in mind including tantric manuals, biographies of
10 The advertisement explains that these sauces are "from Dahen Kyaping's fa
ther who was able to leave Tibet after 21 years as a political prisoner.... These sauces
are not only authentic but they taste fabulous—spicy but not too hot for most
people.... The ingredients are vegetarian and are packaged in a gift box made from
recycled cardboard....This is a great gift item." It also says that Khatsa is available
for business in the food industry (Snow Lion Fall 1996 Newsletter and Catalogue. 23).
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352 ELLEN GOLDBERG
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THE RE-ORIENTATION OF BUDDHISM IN NORTH AMERICA 353
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354 ELLEN GOLDBERG
5. Conclusion
Queen's University
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