DOUBLEEXPOSURE

Buddhist and Cutting Across Discourses Western

Bernard Faure Tlanslated Janettloyd by

STANFORD STANFORD

UNIVERSITY CALIFORNIA

PRESS

20o4

Contents

Stanford University Press Stanford, California of This book has been published with the assistance the French Mhistry of Culture-National Center for the Boolc Double Erponrewas origtnally published in French a Pbi.losophies Religions' in zooo under the title Boaddhisrnes, @ zooo, Flammarion. Engtish translation @ zoo4 by the Board ofTi'ustees of the Ieland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United Statesof America On acid-free, archival-qualiry paper Library of CongressCatalogingin-Publication Data Faure, Bemard. [Bouddhismes, philosophies et religions. English] Double eirposure: cutting acrossBuddhist and western discourses/ Bemard Faure; translated byJanet Uoyd. p. cm. - (Cultural memory in the present) English and French. rsnN o-8o47-43+z-g Glorh)rsnN o-8o47-41+8-Z G"p"r) r. Buddhism and philosophy. z. Buddhism-Relations. I. Lloyd, Janer II. Tide. Buddhism-China. 3. III. Series. l'q46oo.r3V3 zool x8r'.o43-oczr 2oo1oo5749 Odginal Printing zoo4 Last figure below indicates year ofthis printing \3 12 rr ro og o8 07 o6 05 04 TypesetbyTim Robera in u/r3.5 Adobe Garamond
I

Prohgue Do'W'e Know What Buddhism Is? Buddhism and Rationalities 3 Buddhism and ChineseThought 4 A HybridTeaching , The Major Schools 6 "Ti:anscendental" Concepts 7 Twofoldltuth 8 External Thought Epilogue:..,{fter ... All

lx

I8

49 64 85
IOI

r25 r,42 173

Pronunciation of Sans e, hrid Chines andJapanese Sounds Notes Bibliography Ind.ex

175 177

r83
I9T

t
a
I

BuddhismIs? Do'W'e. Know'S7hat

The Indian: "Vh.at can you expect?He has the prejudices of his country, those of his party, and his own, too." TheJapanese:"Oh! That is altogether too many prejudices," -Voltaire, Phi losoplt ha I D ictionaty

i I j I :a il
jj
I

iil

.i Ji
:i

:x iJ 11 I .i: r*

'[ { it -:{
fi ril ,,{

*i -t.. r:!n
.!3 ril'ii -1:r ti:t

i:i

'-'ir ;":i
(il

;# ,i'}
tel ii::l ,ilt,t i*
i1.!i1

el

rig4

i+:l

JI '..-l :if;'..]
i:f.:ai

:,.Pd
rl,l

As early as r92j, the Belgian scholar Louis de la Vallde Poussindismissed out of hand both "right-wing apologetic preoccupations," which sought to prove the superiority of Christian virnre and fuistode's logio and likewise "left-wing prejudices," vfiich tumed Buddhism into a rough draft of atheism, agnosticism,and pragmatism.l That Buddhistlike rejection of excremes still very much to the point today. Ia VhlldePoussinconcluded, is "To plunge Buddhism into the v/aters of Lake Genev& the Spree,or the Thames is to do it a geat injustice." Despite that warning, and no doubt encouraged by the implantation of a Tibetan community in my own neighborhood of Pdrigord, I was seizedby a desire to plunge Buddhism into the waters of the Dordogne, the majestic river whose name, refeccing the meeting of nvo Auvergnat streams,the Dore and the Dogne, put me in mind of the confluence of the two Buddhist truths. 'Within the confines of this work, it is not possibleto give a firll account of the history of the Buddhist doctrines and communities, so, as a first approach,I would recommend that readersconsult the works ofpopularization that have already appearedon the subject. I will be emphasizing in particular two tendencies that seemto realize many of the potendalities of Buddhist thought and that at the sametime reveal the dangers of any radical interpretation: Chanl Z,enand Thnuism (or Vajrayana).I will '7rrf to remind readersof the usethe term "Charf alongsideor instead of Chinese origin of tlis moYement.

t: -1 NA i!

ii,al

Is? Do'Ve Knou'Vhat Buddhisrn Buddhism Forgotten

DoVe l(nowVhat Buddhism Is?

In a work enatled Iioubli de flndc (India forgotten), Roger-PolDroit 'Western noted the paradoxical.amnesia that seelnsto have characterized culrure with regard to Indian thinking, and Buddhism in particular. More recentlS in his Ie cube du ndant (The cult of nothingness),he has logged of the various phases that amnesia.What is the explanationfor this $range phenomenon?First, the disaffection that the secondhalf of the nineteenth cenrury manifested toward India in reacdon against the Romantics' enafter all, in the daysof high colothusiasm for the "Oriental Renaissance": nialism, neither India nor Buddhism could aspire to take the place of were marked by Greeceand Christianity, Moreover, the colonial conquests Irent hand in hand with a condea scorn that, in many ci$es, however, In scendingappreciationofthose colonies' Pastcultural greatness. the field only Tibet, which escapedcolonizaimaginary representations, of'Western don, managedto carve out for itself the preeminent placethat it still holds today. Finally, on the philosophicd level, the Buddhist docuine found itself unhappily classifiedunder the heading of "nihilism,o an error that was encouragedas much by a complacent ignorance as by the anti-Buddhist polemics of Christian missionaries.'Weare still suffering from the effecs of this polemical distortion. "Buddhist philosophy," let done Buddhist cd'West, and Buddhist "spiritudiqi' ofture, ares :ll not fi:lly acceptedin the of exoticism. ten remains the province of fanciers R-P. Droit datesthe epistemologicalrift that gavebirch to Buddhism a scientific object of inquiry to around r8zo.2That rift was a real one' as but it tends to mask the ongoing continuity of a more or lesssubde Orientalist attitude and oftenacious prejudicesthat so-calledscientific'objectiviry" in many instances qimply conceals.The "objectiviq/ in question was certainly not innocent of passingvalue judgments. To parody trGrl von Clausewitzt "'War is the continuation of politics by other means,oyou could say that the scienceof philologywas Orientalis- "by other means" just asOrientalismwas alreadycolonialism "by other 6s3115'-11sre dilute of course,but certainly Orientalism. It was a way of exoneratingoneselfat lirtle cost and yet again reducing the unknown to the known (just as the missionaries,in their own way, did). To some degree,the sameaPPliesto the aposdesof post-Orientalism. The debateover one particular book (Edward Sardt Orientalisrn) and a chorus of mea .olp* are not suffiiient to

I
T

l l t

{
.t
Ji I

'1

.+
I il i :i fi t; il

-: 'i,ii a ' ',

t
ti

. i E 'l ,il

$ ill fl tl :il i*rl til ld

F

'{ ,+

;!l ti. 'jr,rl '!1

:'j il iiil

:rn
.*t

i.ql .E
!:l

put a definitive line through Orientalism, turn the page,and suddenly accedeto true undersanding. The history of the discoveryof Buddhism by Europeansto some deof greeconstitutesthe reverse that ofthe Enlightenment. In the eighteenth cenntry the Europe of the Enlightenment took to lending an ear to Confucian China, in which it fancied it had found a model of enlightenedgovefirment. Knowledge of Buddhism was gleaned essentiallyfrom the "edifying and curious letters" of the Jesuit fathers, who were themselves influenced by the Confucian criticiue, so Buddhism did not enjoy a good press.Buddhist monls, an Oriental version of clerical obscurantism,were perceivedby $e phibnphes x tpack of triclsters and slackers. Things were to change in the nineteenth century, thanks to what contemporarieg perhaps somewhat hastily, called the "Oriental Renaissance.' This renaissance was marked by the rediscovery of India, now hailed asthe cradleof all civilizations, the gushing sourceof all mysticism.3 Amid this enthusiasmfor Indian culture, which lastedfor more or lessthe first half of the cennry, Buddhism wasat first overlooked,but was soon to take its rwenge. The first hints of changewere detecable asearly asr8r7 in entided Recherches a pamphlet produced by Michel-Jean-FrangoisOz-etay sur Bouddou ou Bouddhou, instituteur religieux dz l"4sie orimtale (Researches Bouddou or Bouddhou, religious teacherof EastAsia), a work on that turned the figure not yet known as Buddha into a "distinguished pbilosopher,' rather than just another vagueAsian deity. The first Indian Buddhist texts were not translated until the midnineteenth cennrry. At that time, everything in this doctrine looked very new, for the abundant information provided in the preceding centudes by the missionariesin China and Japan had been virnrally forgotten. There 'tuperstidid not appearto be anphing in common between the uncouth tions" of the Chinese Buddhists and the noble humanism of the Buddha. Indeed, the Buddhist docrine, aswas apparent now that it was becoming bemerunderstood (or so it seemed),even provided a weighty argument that could be usedin anticlerical batdes. In reaction, horrever, this infatuation with Buddhism was about to give rise to a trenchant rejection on the '!?'estern pan of the defenders of culture. A case in point is Jules BanhdldmySaint-Hilaire, adisciple of EugbneBurnouf, the famous "Buddhologist" and a specialistin Greek philosophy, which, in his eyes,was the only true philosophy. As Saint-Hilaire slashedawayat the doctrine of the Buddha, he was really aiming at the emulators of the "Buddhist" nihilist,

Is? Buddhism KnowWhar Do'W'e A Persistent Orientalism

DoVe lGtowVhat Buddhism Is?

At schopenhauer. rhis point a polemic erupted around the "cuh of nothingness,"a polemic for which Hegel, asearly as r8z7,had given the signal, atmcking Buddhism for making nirtdqta"the principle of everything, the ultimate, final goal and ultimate end of everything." Slightly closerto our own times, in 1898,Paul Claudel waswriting from Japanas follows: "But those blinded eyesrefirsedto recognizeunconditional being, and it fell to the one known asBuddha to round offthe paganblasphemy."According to Claudel, "the Buddha found only Nothand his docrine taught a monstrouscommunion.' "For myself," ingness, he added, "I find that the idea of Nothingness is linked with that of jouissance.And therein lies the ultimate, Satanic mystery, the silence of a created being retreating into an integral.rejection, the incestuousquietude of upon its own essentialdifference."4But a soul complacentlyensconced fundamentally,all thesewarnings were concernedto ward offan inner evil, nor ro repulsean external "Buddhist peril." Like the lion in the Buddhist fable, Europe feared no external enemy and could perish only from the worms that devouredit from within. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, such negativeorientalism by was ro be succeeded a positive Orientalism. Buddhism, for so long vilified, was now praisedto the skies.Despite those for whom the doctrine of the Buddha representeda danger to'Western thought, a growing number of admirers of Buddhism found in it an antidote to Christianity. In reaction to various forms of Neobuddhism in which the persistentinfluence of the occultism of the Theosophical Society was detectable, a modernist Buddhism, purged of i15cosmological,magic, and irrational elemenrcnow the'World Parliamentof Religions, a became "religion of reason."In 1893, of an international congress religious studies,was held in Chicago, and, for the first time, was open to non-Western religions.This brought Hinduism of and Buddhism (or at leastcertain aspects them) to the notice ofAmerithat the Japanese can public opinion. It was in the context of this congress scholarD. T Suzuki, who waslater to becomeone of the gleat inteqPreters of Buddhist thought, beganhis work of popularization. For over half a century he acted among'$?bsternintellectuals as the herald of zen (the docthe trine that, for him, represented finest flower of "Oriental" thought) and ofJapaneseculture. Others followed his example,and gradually Budacclimatized to'Westernattitudes. dhism became

Sincethe end of the nineteent} cenrury,two major rypesof discourse on Buddhism have developed:\(estern discourse,frequendy characterized either by a primary Orientalism (rhat is to say,a reducdonist view of East'otherness") ern or elseby a secondaryOrientalism (an exotic idealization of that otherness),and national variants ofAsian discourse,either Tibetan or Japanese, themselvesoften impregnated by second-degree Orientalism (reactingagainst'Western discourse, but still infuenced by it). A typical casein point is that of the Japanese historian Naito K6nan $866-ry4) who, in his work entided Shina ron (On China), declared:'This book aims to srudy China, for the good of the Chineseand in placeof the Chinese." In effect, Naito simply took over the formula of Karl Marx, who, in Th? Eighumth Brurnaire of Louis Bonaltarte,declared that Orientals "cannot representthemselves, must be represented."For the Japanese so leadersof the Meiji period Q868-r9n), Buddhism becamea foreign ideology, the influence of which had to be reduced: on the one hand by wiping our all traces of premodern rymcretism between Shinto and Buddhism, on *re other by dividing Buddhism up into sectarian, isolated,rival institutions, as had already been attempted by the preceding regime of the Tokugawa (16oo-1868)."Easrerno (Indian) Buddhism in this way me to be reviewed and corrected by a Vesternized 'Buddhology'' rhat presentedthe various Buddhist schoolsasso many perfecdy'demythologized"philosophies.In this sense,"philosophical' Buddhism is itself a myth, whereas'mphologicd" Buddhism, for its part, is in many respecrsa philosophy of life. But that is a dimension that disappearswhen the Buddhist docuine is too hastily reducedto ia philosophi."l conrent, to the detriment of its literary and symbolic aspecrs. That type of rationalism obscures extent to which the textual, meditative, and ritual qFstems intermesh within the uadition. Nowadays the study of Buddhism tends to split into rhe hisrory of the uadition and "pure philosophy." In thel7estern philosophicaldomain, the nonhistorical approach of those such as Ludwig'$Tittgenstein has certainly proved very fruitfirl in that it put an end to the routine production 'histories of ofphilosophy." Ho\Mever, the caseof Buddhism, a negarion in (and of anthropology) nrns out to be panicularly dangerous, of history for it opensthe door to a number of forms of Orientalism by dint of representing certain eminendy cultural or ideological tlemes assimply self-evident, natural, and unproblematic.

Is? Know'VhatBuddbism Do'W'e

Do W'e KnowVhat Buddhism Is?

Thus, certain scholars,such as D. T. Suzuki and his'western followit ers,havepraisedthe superiority ofEastern thought, suggesting to be a way of presentingZen to'W'estpanacea -.rn"rs for atl the ills of the'West. Suzukit of Yet ,rrr""L. of a certain condescension. many asPects the Zen exit perience,ashe describes to his American disciples,are-simplyJapanese which his fascinatedin,d"pt"tinrx of the Christian "mystical exPerience'D "Orientd uappings." Io t.do.utorc areunable to recognizebeneathits "ty this Zenisitself only a "reviewedand corrected"versionof traditional case, of modernization and a later version of Zent, aresponseto the "Lr[.ng., period. the "Neobuddhisrrf of the Meiji I, for my part, certainly do not set out to exalt any kind of "Oriental" thought.lb il sure, I do sometimessrumble into the pidalls that I am bury d.rro,tncing for to criticize the orientalism of othersby no meansensuresthat one is immune to it. Likewise, it is hard to avoid value judgthought." Rather ments when dealing *ith abstractionssuch as "'W'estern imporrant is to seewhether, without than allot blame oi praise, what is overly taking sides, it is possible to graft certain Asian concep$ onto our or postmodern discourse.The goal is rwofold: to "defamiliaro*r -od.* ize"'western thought and to demystify Buddhist.thought, to render it philosophically operational by stripping it of its falsb"Oriental aura." Perir"p, *. could then consider thesen.ro systemsof thought not asdifferent ,p..i., doomed either proudly to ignore each other or to observeeach from a dirt"n"., but rather as distinct forms of rationality oth., "orr.rtly that, given a chance,might interacr with each other. Instead of seekingto the one to the orh.r, *. -igh, on the contrary make the most of ,.d* them and the differencein their perspectives, the "play'' that exiss benareen theJy-introducing gfeater depth or relief into our field ofvision. Suchan us to advanceinto open terrain and explorenew doapproachwould "G; with which -"inr *ithout altogether losing sight of the points of reference we are familiar. Hegel is perhapsthe most authoritative sourceof current misunderstandingsabo", ari". According to him, India's is a culrure in which there is nowhlre to be found'any mediation or way to passfrom the inside to the outside and thence back inside oneself.oChina, for its part, certainly does have a history but neverthelessmaintains'an immediate and paralyzingtte-l-tete between the internal and the exftefnal."In Asia, thought .t[pJu".l"rgy from abstraction and as it does so never becomesanything

more, never matures.oTherein, for Hegel, lies its fundamental difference from European thought. "It will neveroccur to the mind of a European to place sensibletJringsso close to absuaction." As Maurice Merleau-Ponty points out, thoseviews of Hegels sdll carry authority. They fuel the seemingly endlessamazementthat China, despite its long head start over Europe, never managed to produce a scientific or industrial revolution. Yet Merleau-Ponty remains a Hegelian when he concludesthat "the'West invented an idea of the truth that obliges and authorizes it to understand other cultures and so to recuperate them as moments of one overall makesa considerableconcession when he admits: truth."5 He nevertheless e'risten@, rather but The philosophies India andChinasoughtnot to dominate of ofour relations with being. \trestern philosophy to constitute echoor resonator an that relationwith being the initial option couldlearnfrom them how to recover the from which &om which it wasborn; it could learnto appreciate possibilities "'W'estern" also,perhaps, to open and offby becoming how wehave shutourselves themup again.6

A Difficult Crossing
By "'Western thought" we generally mean "European thought,' or what Americans call "Continenal thought." That thought sometimeshas difficulties in crossingtheAdantic. 1nry84, a Franco-Americancolloquium washeld atJohns Hopkins University. Its tide was, precisely,"Crossing the Adantic." One of the main panicipants was Richard Rorty, a leader of American pragmadsmand the author of a book that has enjoyedconsiderablesuccess, and Philosoplry theMinor ofNature,The fourdr pageof the introduction to the French translation of this book informs us that Rorty'attempts to do for the entire'Wesrcm e?isern?whatMichel Foucault, in The of Ordzr ofThings, did for the epistarna the seventeenthLentury." No less! 'Western "dialogue" between culture (in this case, Rorty conceivesof the aboveall, trans-Adantic culture) and other cultures asfollows: in Ve [pragmatisa] . . rnaysaythat thingshavebeengoingbetcer the'West over . thepastfew centuries we maysuge$ how theymight further improvein the and centuries come.But ifwe areasked nrhatall this hasto do with the Chinese or to the Cashinahuas, we cansayis that, for all one knows,encfianges these with all peoples modify our'W'estern conceptions the typesof institudons of that may may embodythe spirit of socialdemocracy moresadsfactottly. arewaiting rather \7"

Is? Do'Vel{nowVhat Buddhism

Do'W'e KnowVhat Buddhisrn Is?

may and the vuely, for a timewhenthe Cashinahuas, Chinese (asthecase be)the No communiry. doubt rhat commudemocratic parr of the same will Mardans be today, *ill havedifferentinstitutions&om thoseto whichwe areaccustomed "ity for kind of reforms which and but we think that .h.y *itt incorporate amplifythe and the The our weapplaud liberalancestors. Chinese, Cashinahuas, theManians as mayhavesuggestions to otherreformsto introduce,but we shouldadoptthese aspirasociodemocratic to in only if theysucceed adjusting our qryically'Western beW'e working from a basisof judiciousmutual concessions. pragmatists tions, and is both inevitabls firlly justified.T ethnocenuism lieverhatthis moderate are According to Rorty, cultural difFerences all relative and are basically no different &om those to be found within a single culture. But in otheories," only the differencesbetweenold and new this text he envisages that is ro say,those dated to before and after the Enlightenment' and does not address the gap that might exist within a single culture between worldviews that are irreconcilable. He opts to replaceforce by persuasion in relations with other cultures, to run clashesinto litigation, and to attach "linguistic islands" to t.he continent. The credo of this liberal vicar calls to mind that of one of the charactersin Philippe Curval's book Rrgardzfston iit nlya par un dtra-terrestre derrilre la bouteilledz ain (Have a look, sonny boy, to seeif there is not an extraterrestrial lurking behind the "I desireto meet with other bewine bottle), who declares: passionately and to understand t}em, on condition that I myings, other civilizations, Lyotard, another participant in the self remain the same."Jean-Frangois trans-Atlantic colloquium, was far from sharing Rorryb optimism: "Between *le Cashinahuasand ourselvesthere existsa difference in the genre of discourse,and it is a fundamental one."8 In particular, he took exception to Rorty's "soft" or "conversational" imperialism and accusedconsensus through persuasion,as recommended by Rorty, of being nothing but a disguisedform of violence.e Any comparative enterprise would seem to involve a double standard. In rhe casein which we are interesred, it is clear that Buddhist thought is not judged according to the same criteria as'W'esternphilosophy. Buddhist thought is criticized for being tinged with religion, mpholog"y, and mysticism-as if philosophy iaelf had not, throughout ia history been exposedto the samekind of infuences. If it is culmral conditioning that is in question, what philosophy can ever have claimed to escapeit? Can Rorty conceive of any dialogue with other cultures in terms other than those of American liberalism?Analytical philosophy, too, is affected

by languageand culture. Somewould evensaythat the Cartesian coghoiv self amounted to no more than a languagegame. of One cannot oppose or compare two qFstems thought-lTestern thought on the one hand, Buddhist thought on the other-point by point. There are many reasons why that is so, the principal being that neither "thought" can be reducedto a'pure philosophy." Or rather, even if of they havesought to pffge themselves all dross,in reality, they have been affected by niany kinds of infuences from a cultural context that they have,in return, helped to modify. Buddhist thought cannot be reduced to the philosophy of the Buddha. Nor can W'esternthought be reduced to philosophy. which The'Westerntendencyto line up argumenu for and rgei1s1, is sometimessaid to stem from the confrontational warfare of the Greek and Buddhist phalanxes,is uaceablein attempts to compare'W'estern thought. A telling example is provided by the amitude that results in declaring that, once Buddhist thought has been reduced to its simplest expression, there really is nothing new about it. But why should we expect from Buddhist drought, thus caricatured, what we never demand of any 'Western philosophy, namely, that it should astonish and disorient us? 'W'hy not focus on the features that might enable it to be integrated into philosophical discourse and even to enrich the latter by radically questioning its premises?

The Authority Argument It is said that the cowl nevermade the monk; nor, for sure,did it ever make a Buddhist master.The fust Buddhistvimre is to reject all authority; the secondis to obey one'ssuperiors(or the other way round). One should bewareof the'Panglossian" side of certain Buddhists.'We recall \bltaire's Doctor Pangloss('All Talk) who, amid the smoldering ruins of the Great EarthquakeofUsbon, enplainedto his disciple Candide that thrywere living, as Leibnitzt formula put it, "in the best of all possibleworlds." To wish to changereality is rc refirse,in the name of someideal, to accept it. does,but it may equally be To acceptit is, in somecases, do asPangloss to to affirm life "despite everything." It is essentialto question even the reductionist interpretations that some Buddhist mastersand their disciples provide for their docuine. To parody the well-known quip, one might almost saythat Buddhism is too

ro

Is? DoVe KnowVhat Buddbism

Do W'e I(nowVhat Buddhhm Is?

rr

important to be left to the Buddhists, sincethey aremembersof a religious orthodory, wen if they reject that description. Understandably enough, 'Western experts on Buddhism usudly place more emphasison personal experiencethan on doctrine. Paradoxically,however, they tend to take refuge behind doctrinal generalitieswhen questionedabout their own experiences.Beforeacceptingtheir normative descriptionof awakening,it would be desirable to be sure that these Neobuddhist ses truly have themselvesexperiencedwhat they describe.Vithout a priori denying the we possibility of such experiences, should surelynote that thosewho lay I claim to them for the most part remain in the domain of belief Because or to speakin its name, cannot myself claim to be a part of any onhodory I prefer to dwell upon what ought to go without saying,namely,that what I will be writing about is Buddhism asI seeit, and that my inteqpretation, like all inteqpretations,is largely subjective.

Far from Shangri-la Zen, constitutes one of the Tibetan Buddhism, along with Japanese of main references W'esternNeobuddhism. It was i:arried to the forefront of the politicd and cultural sceneby the Tibetan uagedy, against a backdrop constituted by the Romantic image of ShangriJa, the mysticd Himalayanparadiseclosedto all foreign infuences. As a politico-religious institution, Tibetan Buddhism has been exoneratedof its past, thanks to its identification with the person of an exceptiond spiritual and political that leader,the fourteenth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso.The presentsuccess Tibetan Buddhism enjop stemsabovedl from the intensemedia coYerag of this charismaticfigure, who, in the eyesofworldwide opinion, hascome Tibetan people. Despite the to representthe causeof the entire oppressed inevitable distortions to which it leads,the intense publicity that the Dalai Lama toleratesc:ln be justified from a suategicpoint ofview-and at any rate seemsto produce more results than official diplomacy does. All the same,the penonality cult that someof hh'Weptern disciplesdevoteto him seelns,severaldecades uncannily to echo the exaltedPrayerformulated on, ''We are all your most faithfirl servants' O Great by Antonin Anaud: Ia.ma; pray grveus, bestow upon us, your enlightenment.' It is also fair to wonder to what degreethe Dalai l,ama, despite his sincere ecumenicism, is really representativeof traditional Tibetan Buddhism, let alone of other forms of Buddhism. At a purely doctrinal level,

one specificschool, that of Gelugpa,which c:rmeto he initially represented predominate over t}re rest only after much sectarianrivalry. In this respect, the controversy currendy dividing the Tibetan community in exile is signi6cant.r0 The Dalai l,ama recendy banned the cult of a wratlfirl deiry known as Dorje Shugden.This might be regardedas no more than an admirable decisionmade by a modernist mind struggling against'tuperstitions." But unfornrnateh the situation is not so simple. The deiry in question, a protector of the Gelugplr school, is extremeh popular in Tibetan bythe Dalai l"amahimseLfi The Buddhismandwas for manyyearsrevered decisionto prohibit his cult was made only following an oracleemanating from another deity, that of the Nechung monastery a recognizedprotector of the Dalai Lama and his advisor in all important matters (for example, his decision, in ry19, to flee Tibet). So what in truth is involved here is a struggle between nlro deities and be*reen two currents ofTibetan Buddhism, with the Dalai Lama ught in the middle. This internal quarrel has already produced particularly dire effecm.The Chinese authorities, quick to seetheir interest in the matter, hastenedto condemn the Dalai Iama for his intolerance toward an innocent deiry-they who, for the past five decades,have been mercilessly persecuting local superstitions. The Dalai Lamds partisans,for their pan, mied to smother the affair. Howwer, taking a realistic view of the situation does not mean fdling in with the stratagemsof Chinese imperialism. In the long term, the causeof the Tibetan people has nothing to gain from an idealized conception ofTibetan Buddhism. At this point, a litde history. not all of it contemporary,may be h.lpfrrl to our understanding of what is really at stake here.The Chinese obsession with its control over t}re marchesof the Middle Empire can be The partially explained,but not justified, by a long history of invasions. Tibetans have not alwaysbeen the pacific people whom we recognizetoand in the day. In the past, they threatenedChina on severaloccasions, eighth century even qrptured the Chinese capital. SubsequendSwhen the Mongols c:rme to power in China in the thimeenth century, TibetoMongol'lamaisnf becamethe official ideology in Beijing, the new capitd. It was this spurt of Tibetan Buddhism in China, at the time of Marco Polo, that was used to justify China's fust attempt to seizepolitical control ofTibet. '$V'estern The imagination has long been fascinated by the belief in the reincarnation of the lamasofTibet. This is the belief that alwaysdom-

rz

Is? DoVe KnowVhatBudd.hism

DoWeKnowVhat Buddhism Is? r) ing his more impetuous disciples of the virtues of nonviolence. Similarly, 'Walpola for Rahula, a specialist of Buddhist philosophy, Buddhism is "p*"ly human," and that explains its tolerance, which, he claims, is the reasonwhy "not one drop of blood has been shed in the two-thousandfive-hundred-year history of Buddhism." The JEsuit missionary Maneo Ricci made the very sameclaim for Christianity ro his Chineseinterlocutors, who, howwer, remained somewhatskeptical. Cenainly, the emphasis that Buddhism placeson compassionand detachment ought, in principle, to find expressionin an artitude of nonaggression.But Buddhismt relations with war are complex. In the munrries where it constituted the of6cial ideology, it was expectedto support all bellicose initiatives. Furthermore, Tantic Buddhism has dweloped a whole arsenal of magical techniques designedto overcome demons, and governmentshave always been tempted to assimilatetheir enemiesto demonic hordes and to try to prevail over them byritual warfare. Similarly, Buddhism, in its darker moments, hassometimessought to eradicatelocal cults that stood in ia way. In present-dayIndia finally, the Buddhist renewalresultsfrom the massive conversionofUntouchables uansferring from Hinduism,.and this tends to makeit a religion ofresentment. But overall,in this domain, ithas beenfar more tolerant than other major religions or ideologies. It has seldom resorted to the notion of heresyand has never been led into the erremes of fanaticism that are so familiar in the'West. Should we seeBuddhism as an atheistic humanism?That would be seriouslyto underestimatepopular religroslty.In principle, to be sure, the Buddha is not a god, but in the realiry of the cult he is often worshipped as a deity more powerfirl than all others. Unlilrc the latter, he can moreover create"Buddha fields" in which the faithfirl will be reborn, and this makes him a kind of demiurge-even if Buddhism rejectsthe notion of a crearor. It is nevertheless enough to speak of humanism to the extent that, in fair early Buddhism, man was at the center of everything: The Buddha himself wasperceivedasa man who had realizedall his human potentialities. Furthermore, asin the form of Buddhism calledthe GreatVehicle (Mahayana in Sanslrit) by reasonof its inclusive character,you could say that wery human being is a potential Buddha-dthough that does nor mean quite the samething. Even beneath an animal or demonic mask-a mask drat, alas,sdcls to the skin-it is alwaysa human being who transmigates on the wheel of karmq passing in the course of innumerable lives through every degreeof being.'W'e should not be misled by the relatively humble

of inates discussions the rationality or irrationality of Buddhism. Yet it needsto be replacedin its specificcultural context. It is limited to Tibet and the kingdoms neighboring it and hasplayed virnrally no role in either Indian Buddhism or Indianized or Sinicizedforms of Buddhism. InTibet of imelf, it was only in the fifteenth century with the emergence the instiLama, that it assumedits firll predominance. In parrution of the Dalai ticular, it enabled the fifth Dalai Lama to affirm his conuol over rhe wid the support of the Monof monasteries other Buddhist schools "nd, gols, to becomethe divine ruler ofTibet. The PresentDalai l,ama is regarded as his distant reincarnation and also as a manifestation of Avalokitedvara,the mythical progenitor of the Tibetan race.This bodhisatwa (literally "being of awakenint''), characterized his compassion, vowed by to saveall beings before he entered into niradn. a and subsequendybecameone of the Buddhist figuresmost reveredin EastAsia.The theory of the reincarnation of the Dalai Lamasis simply a local development of the docrine of karrnawhich, in truth, is not specificto Buddhism.'Wewould do well to avoid confusing the doctrinal purity ofTibetan Buddhism, its philosophical and religious superioriry and the political rights of the Tibetan people.

A Number of Other Purveyed Ideas As we haveseen,Buddhism is not solelyTibetan or even "Indo-Tibetan." It is also "Indo-Chinese" and'Sino-Japanese.'From one point of view, it is cenainly tempting to concentrateprimarily on Tibet and Japan, each positioned at one of the two extremities of East Asia: In both counat uies, Buddhism made ia appearance the precisetime when the statewas (one qrnnot reallyspeak ofTibet or ofJapan asentities before aking shape the middle of the first rnillennium, that is to say,some ten cennries after the time of the Buddha). So it was rapidly adopted asthe official ideology of both thesenew states.A similar phenomenon later occurred in various other countries of EastAsia. In contrast, at the beginning of the common era, it took severalcennrriesfor Buddhism to becomeadaptedto the Chineseculture, which was alreadyhighly developedand convinced of its own superiority. It was this significandy Sinicized Buddhism lhat was transmitted to KoreaandJapan,and alsoto Viemam. Is the Buddhist doctrhe a form ofpacifism? You could well beliwe it, listening to the declarationsof the Dalai kma, who is con$andy remind-

14

Is? KnowVhat Baddhisrn Do'W'e

DoVe KnowWat Buddhisrn Is?

rt

statusof the human condition as a fixed position on the ladder of beings: A human rebinh is the only kind that can wentually lead to deliverance. Other forms of rebinh (asdemons, as animals, as gods, etc.) are basically simply dead ends. In this cosmic board game, wen gods have to return to the squarelabeled "man" before th"y * accedeto higher levelsand leave the cycle of binhs and deathsforever. The idea of an atheistic Buddhism is a tenaciouscountertruth (or at the very besta half-truth). The fact is t}at, accordingto the early Buddhist doctrine, atheism is an etror, for it involves falling into an exueme. The idea resultsmainly from the rationalizations and extrapolationsof historians incapable of grasping the realiry of belief in all its complexity. It is a kind of ioft" dogma, a Buddhist doxatharmere observationof the day-toof day rcaLity Buddhist practicesshould sufice to dismiss. Buddhism is not agnostic-let alone nihilistic. Indeed, in its Mahato yd.nistversion,it is presentedpreciselyasa form of access reality, even a form of communication with the invisible. In some of its principal manifestations,it is an esotericgnosis-1uite the con6ary of agnosticism.Nor, asis fornrnately beginning to be understood, is it a kind of nihilism. Bud,'beyo4d good and evil" does not imply indifference to moral valdhismt for much someW'esternexperts,Schopenhauer example,may ues,however in all good faith have believedit did.lr Richard'Welbon and R-P. Droit have retraced the elaboration cif this aberrant interpretation of nirudrla which turns Buddhism into a nihilistic religion, a cult of nothingness. Nowadays,nirudryano longer hassuch a bad press,and an institution such x rhe Cahins dz l'Hernehx even devoted an entire issueto this themesomething *rat would have been unthinkable in past times. Nevertheless, the term continues, altogether mistalrenly, to be bandied about on all *nirsides-and not only with a pqychoanalytic topping of the Freudian vana principle," conceivedasa desire for annihilation. Is Buddhism ar leasran individualistic religion? If the Peli uadition is to be believed,it initially stemmed from the spiritual guest of an individual whose teaching in time becamefirst a religion, then a collective vision of the world. Nieusche declaredthat a given thought should be judged according to ia highest realizations.But in the caseof Buddhism, to declare, aspeople often do, that that realization is nothing but an individud spiritual quest would be to underrate all Buddhismt collective and cultural aspects.A Catholic arguing that the Masswas no more than a late aberration would no doubt be violendy resisted on dl sides by his fellows. Even the

least theological of his critics would object that dre Gregorian Masses and the liturgy of Suger constitute a kind of "total social fact " a harmonious synthesisof art and faith, incorporating a mixture of economic, psychological, political, social, and philosophicalelemenm.One cerainly condemns oneselfto understandingverylitde about Catlolicism if one fails to seethat Scholasticism,dre ritual of Mass, and cathedral art are all aspecs of the same phenomenon. The same applies to Buddhism. The much vaunted art of the Zen gardens,for example,refects more than just an individual meditation on nafi.re and naturalness.It implies a whole collectivity, a religion, a culture. Despite its inherent rationality, however,Buddhism was no prefiguration of modern science.Its apparentmodernity in no way altersthe fact that Buddhism is a fundamentally uaditional vision of the world. The Buddhist cosmologyand mphology are not superficial ornamentsthat are by now superfluous,asis sugesrcd by somemodemist reformers,panisans of a'Protestant" Buddhism that would better suit the needsof modernization. It may be true that a demythologization is called for or may wen be inevitable. In fact, the processhas already been under way for over a century in a number ofAsian countries. But we must recognizethat this affeds the very heart of Buddhist thought and will be, alreadyis, e*remeh costly.'Whenyou condemn "outdated" rituals that, howwer, aresupported by popular fervor-rituals such as the bathing of an effigy of the child Buddha, asis practiced wery spring-you r.iskthrowing out the baby with the bathwater. Buddhism is not simply a pqTchology,a "scienceof the mind." The psychologicaland moral aspects Buddhism, which are generallypushed of to the fore and aken completely out of context, stem from a particular religo* vision of the world, a metaphysics,and a cosmology.The lived reality of Buddhism is not confined to the monastic elite that constitutes its most advancedand modernist avant-garde. Buddhism is not solely, even if it is also, a ?ure experimce, detached from werything else.It is, to be sure, a utopia (in the strict sense a truth of that is "nowhere" to be found), but is at the sametime an institution. Neobuddhism, for its part, is sometimes doubly utopian, in the current sense the term-as a rejection of reality, in pardcular the realiry of conof temporary sociery,but also the reality of uaditional Buddhism, which is reckoned to be insufficiendy \iritud." Neobuddhist enthusiastsavert their eyesfrom prayer wheelsand other embarrassing signsof "popular su-

Is? Do'W'e Know'What Buddhi.srn

Do VeKnowVhat Buddhisrn Is?

17

perstition," raising them up toward spiritual realitiesof a more sublime nature. Those who think that to free Buddhism from mph is the way to attain liberry and autonomy are forgening *re disciplinary aspectof Buddhism, as expressedin particular by the voluminous canonical corpus of the Vnaya. Buddhism is not a libertarian docuine. It is true that a number of libertarian interpretations have seen the light of day' for example among the "mad" mystics of Thntrism and Chan. But we would be misof taken if all that we noticed about theseeccentrics(in the trrofold sense without at individuals both bizarre and marginal) was theii transgression, suict nrles that constitute im framework In a sothe sametime noting the ofnorms hasbecomethe rule and ciety such asour ov/n, where an absence is itself quasi-normative,transgressionakes on a quite different meaning; at any rate it losesits Buddhist meaning. Buddhism is at once an internal experienceand a social strucflrre. There is no universal "mysticisrri': Such an absuaction is to concretereliThere may be phenomenologigions what Esperanto is to real languages. cal and strucnrral constantsto experience,but they in no way prejudgethe tenor of that orperience. It would be mistaken to believethat such experiencetranscendsthe cultural framework. Ifthe absolute,orwhatwer passes for it, happensto manifest itself, it alwap doesso in an eminendy concrete fashion. It is not just that is linguistic expression,a posteriori, fashionsit according to the culturd norms. Right from the start, the latter ffirms all perception,be it normal or supranormal.Like Buddhism, ofwhich it is but all one aspect,7nn may origindly have intended to bypass "-isms." But for all that, it, too, very soon becamea systemthat, assuch, can and should from time to time be called into question.

Buddhism, the Internet, and the NewAge 'Western Buddhism made its appearanceon the Internet, facedwith a new dilemma. The lightBuddhist devoteesfound themselves form of communication, with all its potenning dwelopment of this new tialities and dangers,the impossibiliry of knowing whether it will be able to maintain and bring to fruition the utopian generosityof its founders or will, instead, lead to the individual f"lliog under the control of mercantilism and statepowers in a milder, yet casuating version of GeorgeOrwell's Big Brother-all the above make it hard to tell whether Buddhism will 'When

emerge enriched or impoverished from the experience.Is tfie Internet a modern version of the Great Vehicle or Indra's Net, eachmesh of which is adorned by a pearl that refects all the others-thereby symbolizing the *Web" perfect interpenetration of all phenomena?Or is the cyberspatial rather a trap set for us by Mdra, the Buddhist Tempter? Is virrual reality nothing but a real illusion? Both interpretative grids remain possible. Matters are not much clearerwhere the NewAge is concerned.This phenomenon, likewise of Californian origin, does not simply constitute a newway of adapting religion to local cultures. On the contrary, it involves submitting traditional ways of thinking to one sole form of thought, that local cultures.'Western of modern, capitalistlogic. So in uuth, it negates Neobuddhism, which firts with this tendency without fi:Ily identifying with it, is inclined to become simply one of many forms of spirituality, a Buddhism I la carte, digitalized, flavorlessand odorless (rather asmoney preoccupationwith a purely internal spiritualis). The almost obsessional iry among the Bouvardsand Pdcuchetsof the NewAge, whose position is apparendythe polar opposite of one of submission to the ideology of the body and its desires (as diffirsed by worldwide publicity) is perhapsjust another form of the "will to well-being" that characterizestheir contemporaries. But perhapswe should qualify that judgmem If Buddhism is to 'W'estern root itself in societies, it must clearly adapt-and purists are likely to regard any adaptation as a bastardization. It is not possible to doubt the sincerity of thosewho,like the Vietnamesemon-kThich Nath Hanh and the Dalai Lama, are trylng to meet the challengeof modernity of in order to preservethe achievementsof tradition. The success a film as reductionist as Bernardo Benolucci's Littk Buddha is suqprising, even alarming, but at the sametime, it certainly testifies to the interest aroused by Buddhism-a lasting interest that will survive the fashionsand clichds of Hollvwood.

Notes

PROLOGUE

r. Muji, Sand Pebbles, and ry6.

CHAPTBR I

r. De La Vallde Poussin,Bouddhisrne, x'r, z. Droit, Tlte Cub ofNotbingness, v-ry. 3. On this question, seeSchwab, The Orimal Renaissance. d.e 4. Claudel, Connaissance I'Est, ro1. y. Merleau-Ponty,'tOuest et la philosophie," n Elogede k phibsaphie,t6243, 6. Ibid., 166-67. 7. Ror{r, "Le cosmopolitanismesansdmancipadon," 17o. oDiscussion,' 8. Lyotard, 58r-82. 9. Ibid.,58z. ro. I?'elbon, TheBuddhist Nirudqta rr. On.tlris question seeLopez, PrisonnsofShangri-laCHAPTER 2

r. SeeJullien,Denur andfucess. z. SeeIlvi-Snauss, The Saaage Mind" 3. Yaliry Letnesd queQue*uns,rt3, ofMnality and Religioa 49. 4. Bergson, The Two Sources y. Hegel, ThePhibsoplryof Hisnry, z8o. 5. Montaigne, Essays, 8y6. Z. Quignar4 Rhdnique Elculatiae, 13,r7-r8. 8. Bonnefoy, L'improbabb, rc4. 9. Deleuze and Guattari, Vbat Is Phibsoplry?,41. ro. Ibid., ,r, gr-92. u. Mauss, Aeawes,zzrSS-59. rz. Descombes,Philosophie grostrznps, pa.r r44. 'The r3. Freud, Uncanny," 4oz. 14. Bonnefoy, timprobable, ry