Erin Carver, a regular columnist for a web journal called The Bygone Bureau, has issues with westerners in Buddhism. She writes,
I don't like Buddhism.
I'll be more specific. I don't like stereotypical, be-dreadlocked, two-generations-too-late hippies who extol Buddhism's tenets of peace and tolerance and Zen while they take hits from a water bong... man. And I don't like their much more clean-cut but equally white and middle-class counterparts who have co-opted Buddhism for use in self-indulgent day spas and to repeat "live in the now" while trying to juggle piano lessons, soccer games, and beach vacations. I don't like how Western culture has turned Buddhism into meaningless buzzwords and shallow concepts, making a millennia-old religion and philosophy into something charmingly "Eastern" -- and so calming and peaceful!
I don't remember the last time I laid eyes on a water bong, but I'm pretty sure John Lennon was still alive at the time. One does wonder how many aging Buddhist hippies and Zen day spas can be found in Carver's neighborhood that she would have formed such strong opinions about them.
Still, I rant about the cultural co-option of Buddhism in the West quite a bit, too. I was hopeful the rest of the article, which describes Carver's visit to a Jodo Shinshu temple, would be a little less negative.
I was disappointed, however. And Carver unconsciously revealed something about herself when she wrote --
Before the service began, I had just enough time to glance around at the other pews before and judgmentally categorize the worshippers to be about half "legitimate" older and family-oriented people of Asian descent and half yuppie or hippie "pretenders" like myself.
Got that? To be a "legitimate" Buddhist, one must be Asian.
The assumption that a white convert to Buddhism must be a flake -- and I've seen this many times before -- strikes me as a particularly insidious form of racism. It assumes that Asian religions are fine for, you know, Asians, but a white westerner who turns his back on the assumed superiority of western civilization cannot be serious. So, in this view, for a white person to take an interest in an Asian religion can only be some kind of silly affectation.
(And please, if you are new to this blog, do not be so tiresome as to leave a comment informing me that Buddhism is not a religion. We've all heard it before. Yes, I'm sure you have read a lot of books and know all about it, but I am heartily disinterested in your opinion anyway. Thanks much.)
From there, Carver expresses horror at the dharma talk, which was delivered by a woman who was the "reverend's assistant." The head priest of the Oregon Buddhist Temple, the Rev. Gregory Gibbs, was away. And yes, Carver adds, "I didn't know if I was more taken aback by the fact that the religious leader was clearly not from a long cultural Buddhist tradition, or if he was known by a very distinctly Christian title." Deal with it, lady.
The reverend's assistant based her talk on something she read in the Ladies' Home Journal, which Carver found to be an "absurdly shallow interpretation of Buddhism." I guess Carver should know "shallow." However, Carver admits a couple of paragraphs later that maybe she should have read up on Buddhism on Wikipedia before the visit, which makes me wonder by what standard she would have judged any interpretation of Buddhism.
But, she says, knowledge of a religious tradition doesn't help her understand it, because religion really is "about what emotions and impulses that religion inspires in its adherents, and the faith born form those emotions." Like I said, Carver should know "shallow."
I will say one thing in Carver's defense, which is that she doesn't appear to be singling out Buddhism for particular ridicule. This was one article in a series about her visits to temples, churches, and synagogues of many traditions, and her other articles are about as relentlessly insipid as this one is.
For another look at the Oregon Buddhist Temple, see "A Jodo Shinshu Rohatsu in Portland" from 2008.� The temple community held an 11-hour, all-night chanting of the Nembutsu for Rohatsu, the observance of the Buddha's enlightenment in Japan.
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