I've been writing this post in my head for several days, and I suppose the time has come to commit and keyboard the thing. So here goes --
This is contrasted with the view of a western Buddhism "with notably different belief structures and/or particular practices, art forms, pilgrimage sites, etc." And that's fine, I suppose. The thing is, I don't know anyone who actually thinks
"any authentic Buddhism will always be in Asia and the best that Westerners can do is to mimic that as much as possible." Maybe there are such people out there, but in going-on-three-decades of hanging out with western Buddhists, I've yet to meet one.
On the other hand, I have met westerners "into" Buddhism who have a deep, visceral opposition to anything "Asian," and these people often accuse sanghas that practice with robed clergy and traditional liturgy of just mimicking Asians. But I don't think that's what's going on at all.
I've complained before that any attempt to jam Buddhism into either a "religion" or "philosophy" western conceptual box distorts it, and if you want to understand it on its own terms then let it be on its own terms. Don't put it into a pre-formed conceptual box at all.
But if you have to call it something, I'd argue for tossing out "religion" and "philosophy" and just calling it a "discipline," or even an "art."
How do you learn an art? You learn by studying the great masters of the past. And then when you have attained some mastery yourself, you make it your own.
For example: I belong to a choral society that is rehearsing a Magnificat written by Felix Mendelssohn when he was only13 years old. It's a lovely piece of music that leaves one in awe of what a prodigy the kid must have been. I bring it up because young Felix deliberately wrote the piece in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach, who died about sixty years before Mendelssohn was born. So it was mimicry, in a way.
However, although the Bach influence is obvious, it wouldn't be confused with a composition by Bach. And that's not because the child prodigy did a bad job. Mendelssohn lived in a different time, long after Bach's baroque period had faded into Mozart's classicism, which then melted into Schubert's romanticism. Mendelssohn's orchestration included instruments that hadn't been invented in Bach's time. And, most of all, he was not Bach. He was Felix Mendelssohn, with an entirely different set of experiences and perceptions. And all those influences come out in the music.
Yet to become the composer he eventually became, he did a lot of mimicking and copying and studying of the works written by the old masters who went before him. That's how you become a master.
Contemporary composers such as Philip Glass create works that don't sound a thing like Johann Sebastian Bach. But Glass says he learned counterpoint and harmony by studying composers such as Bach, Mozart, and Schubert. So even if what you end up doing is very, very different, you still build a foundation on the old traditions. You master the masters to become a master. And then you do what you like.
My sense of where we are in western Zen is that we're still struggling to master the masters. Most of us don't get to spend time in Asian monasteries, so we're doing our best to teach each other. And most of us have a lot to learn. We're still in the phase of copying the notation of old masterpieces to learn how they are structured.
But even as we attempt to do things the "old" way, it's still not an exact copy. That's because the many influences in our lives are expressed, however, subtly. And as we master the masters, I have no doubt we'll also compose our own variations, adding the richness of western culture to the richness of the Zen tradition. But I think that if we skip the "student" phase, and charge right into doing our own thing, western Zen will be poorer for it.
And if the music analogy doesn't work for you, try martial arts. There's a martial arts academy in the neighborhood that provides instruction in "Brazilian jui-jitsu." My understanding is that the patriarchs of Brazilian jui-jitsu were Brazilians who studied traditional jui-jitsu, mastered it, and then created their own version. They didn't invent it from scratch.
The biggest mistake most westerners make about Buddhism, IMO, is that they assume it's something you do with your head -- it's an intellectual discipline or a way of re-aligning cognitive infrastructure. And that's not what it is at all. I honestly do think that "discipline" or "art" comes closer to what it is than either "religion" or "philosophy."
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