In Chapter 3 of The Making of Buddhist Modernism , David McMahan writes that "a few dominant colors in the prism of western modernity have picked up different hues of Buddhism while obscuring others." This is something I've observed also, on several levels.
From the 19th century to today, westerners from Theosophists to the Beats to the New Agers to the "Buddhist naturalists" have looked at Buddhism and seen what they wanted to see. Whether they wanted to see something mystical, rational, or empirical, somehow they managed to see that.
One gift to us from the 19th century Transcendentalists is the notion of some idealized cosmic divine something that is the common root of all religions, or the ultimate aim of all religions, or both. The Transcendentalists talked about a "Universal Religion" that would someday supplant the crude sectarian institutionalized dogmatism that is "organized religion." You see their influence today whenever anyone claims to be "spiritual but not religious."
From the earliest western scholarly study of Buddhism to the present day -- a period of 150 years or so -- this perennialist ideal has both helped and hindered Buddhism in the West. It has been used to promote and idealized Buddhism, but it also has placed limitations on it. McMahan writes,
"The perennialist model marginalizes and relativizes that which is specific to any tradition. If the specifics of a Buddhist text or practice did not conform to the tenets of the perennial philosophy, they were deemed incidental, parochial, institutionalized, ritualized, corrupted, or simply for the common people."
Something weird I've noticed often: Many aficionados of Buddhism in the West have adopted the view that the historical Buddha was a font of pure wisdom who, remarkably, perfectly reflected their personal ideals. And then they decide that anything about Buddhism they don't like, including texts thought to be the historical Buddha's own sermons, must be corruptions that those superstitious Asian wrote in later.
For some reason, they can't bring themselves to conclude that (a) the historical Buddha might really have taught something that doesn't conform to their personal belief system; and (b) if he wasn't a God, why is it so unthinkable to disagree with him?
A variation on this is the Buddhism-can-be-whatever-I-say-it-is fallacy. I sometimes run into people who are actively hostile to the idea that Buddhism really does have some doctrinal parameters. If I say no, you cannot dump belief in an individual immortal soul and a Creator God into some New Age soup and call it "Buddhism," they have a fit and call me a "fundamentalist."
The issue of Buddhism and culture is a very complex one. Buddhism is so woven into the fabric of many Asian cultures that it's unsettling to Asian to see it ripped out of those contexts. But we in the West would do well to empty our cups, also.
Recently there was some heated discussion in the comments about exploring parallels between Buddhism and western philosophy. While there's nothing inherently wrong with it, such exploration been done to death already, I would think. What else have we in the West been doing with Buddhism for the past 150 years?
What such "exploration" usually comes down to is westerners twisting Buddhism around to make it fit into western philosophical contexts. To understand Buddhism as-it-is, westerners would do well to stop doing that. At least once in a while leave your cultural assumptions and philosophical heritage at the door, with the shoes, and let the dharma speak to you with its own voice.
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