I have just begun to read The Making of Buddhist Modernism by David McMahan. McMahan is an associate professor of Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania. Generally, western academic Buddhologists give me the willies. But so far this book has given me hope that it might not be too bad.
I very much appreciate that McMahan has tossed out the common conceit that "modernity" is exclusively the creation of the West, and that Buddhism will be "modernized" by making it more palatable to cultural westerners. Buddhism has indeed been going through some major re-evaluations over the last century or so, but the East v. West dichotomy one sees discussed so often in the West is a gross distortion.
The notion that "European Americans have always been the bold innovators at the forefront of adapting the dharma to the times and Asians always a force for maintaining moribund tradition" is wrong, McMahan says. "In fact, Asian Buddhists have usually been the pivotal figures in the reformation and revitalization of Buddhism in terms coherent with� modernity."
This also is what I have observed. The Asian Buddhism vs. Western Buddhism divide that some think is a big bleeping problem is an illusion, IMO. Well, all things are, of course. The problem is mostly a combination of western arrogance versus Asian protectiveness of cultural turf.� It's more about territory marking than dharma.
However, that certainly doesn't mean Buddhism has existed in some pure, unchanged form lo these 25 centuries. In his introduction, McMahan says "a novel, historically unique form of Buddhism has emerged in the last 150 years." I'm looking forward to his explanation of that.
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