Buddhism in the West (3): New Buddhism

Extract from Huston Smith and Philip Novak, “Buddhism: A Concise Introduction” (2002):

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What is new about the New Buddhism of America? Five things: It is meditation-centered and largely a lay phenomenon. It exhibits gender parity. And it is cross-pollinating. It is socially and politically engaged.

1-2. It is meditation-centered and a lay phenomenon. The first two items must be considered together. Down through twenty-five Asian Buddhist centuries, monks and nuns have been the tradition’s vanguard, and meditation has been almost exclusively their province (and often only for an elite fraction of them). The vast majority of Buddhist laity have limited their concerns to the earning of merit—the accumulation of good karma leading to better rebirth through ethical conduct and ritual observance. The New Buddhism of America, however, has upset this traditional arrangement. First, it is largely a lay movement. And second, meditation is not the province of a relatively few specialists, but the basic practice of the many.

Two important corollaries follow. First, the New Buddhism has redefined the boundaries of the traditional Buddhist Sangha. At its narrowest, in the early days of the Buddha’s mission, the Sangha included only monks and nuns. Soon it was understood to include all people, monastic and lay, who formally took refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, the Triple Gem. In the New Buddhism, however, there seems to be widespread if informal agreement, encouraged by widely influential Asian teachers, that the Sangha includes all people who practice Buddhist meditation, whether or not they have formally taken refuge.

The second corollary is that the primarily lay makeup of the New Buddhism has loosened and in some cases virtually undone the usual lines of authority in Buddhist Asia that automatically elevated monks over laity, elders over juniors, and men over women. American Buddhist groups have been decisively influenced by the pluralist, democratic, and genderconscious milieu in which they find themselves. Governance and decision making in many of these groups is now in the hands of a council or board of trustees that operates by consensus.

3. Women and men are equals. Although America’s New Buddhism cannot be said to have broken completely with the legacies of gender inequality in Asian culture and Buddhist history, Western society’s trend toward gender parity is departing from that legacy. In most American Buddhist groups there are slightly more women than men. The sexes practice together as equals and share the same roles and responsibilities in ways largely unknown in Buddhist Asia.

4. American Buddhism is cross-pollinating. The historian Rick Fields notes that “Asian Buddhists who have not communicated for hundreds or thousands of years now find themselves sitting next to one another in a new [American] home.” Coleman concurs: “Never before in the long history of Buddhism have all of its major traditions entered a new area at the same time, and never before has there been so much contact and exchange among these different traditions.” Most see this situation as an unprecedented opportunity for creative evolution; hybrids are, after all, the very stuff of life. Proponents note that the cross-fertilization of ideas could catalyze a revolutionary critical examination of heretofore unexamined assumptions about sectarian superiority.

5. It is socially and politically engaged. The last element of the New Buddhism is a little different from the others. It is not as broadly characteristic of the whole fabric as are the other four, and to date, it remains an eddy in the larger stream. Like-minded New Buddhists argue that working toward individual inner peace is not enough. What is also deeply needed is a corresponding effort to alter social injustices in order to lessen the suffering of humanity at large.