Does the modern world know ancient Buddhism or has it simply invented a new version?

[C C]

https://theconversation.com/has-the-mode...ion-191132

EXCERPT: . . . First, I had to overcome my initial assumption that modern Buddhism was a purely western phenomenon. It in fact emerged in the east, as Asian countries wrestled with colonialism and the influence of Christian missionaries.

In the 19th century, visionary monks sought to take Buddhist philosophy and meditation outside the monastery walls, bringing the religion closer to the people, just as Protestant reformers had done with Christianity in Europe. At the same time, western scholars and spiritual seekers saw in ancient texts a non-theistic religion – the belief that whether or not they exist, deities have no impact on how we should live our lives. As it centred on a mortal man not a God it was therefore compatible with modern rationality.

On the one hand, all these revivalists certainly transformed Buddhism, making it unrecognisable to many Buddhists. They invented a new, modern Buddha, no longer embedded in a universe of reincarnation, multiple heavens and hells, demons and gods. Their recounting of Buddhist beliefs edited out those supernatural elements, or made them into psychological symbols rather than real forces.

However, one can argue that Buddhism had already been transformed numerous times as it spread from India to the rest of Asia over the centuries. The efforts of these modernisers were the latest in a long series of reconfigurations of the tradition... (MORE - missing details)

[Yazata]

Does the modern world know ancient Buddhism or has it simply invented a new version?

I'd say both (and neither, perhaps).

There are obviously modernist forms of Buddhism that are popular to the point of almost being universal among convert Buddhists in today's US, Canada and Europe. I emphasize the plural 'forms' because these modernist Buddhisms are developments of several Asian traditions: Zen, Tibetan, Pure Land and Theravada. Some of these are scholastic (Tibetans obviously) while others are almost anti-intellectual (Zen in its Western forms). Some are theist (of a sort, if we accept Bodhisattvas as divine beings) while others are almost atheist. They have differing views about the supernatural and siddhis (supernatural powers).

But I think that it's probably a mistake to assume that the more atheistic and naturalistic sorts of Buddhism are a modern development and a deviation from "true", "authentic Asian", early or original Buddhism. This strand in the tradition has always been there from the beginning. Buddhism arose in a Sramana context that also gave rise to empiricist Carvaka philosophy and to the Ajivika (the word means 'no soul') religious movement contemporary with the rise of the Buddhists and Jains that taught strict determinism in which everything that happens is determined by natural forces (sound familiar?), denied free will, and whose meditation practices revolved around coming to terms with life in that kind of universe.

Some early Buddhist texts like the very famous Kalama Sutta seem to me to show Carvaka similarities. The Carvaka's were mild skeptics regarding the ability of logical inference to deliver truths. So if one tries to infer something from some truths, the Carvakas thought that the conclusion is only probable, not certain. For the Carvakas, the only sure source of human knowledge is first-hand human experience. And sure enough, the Buddha says exactly that in the Kalama Sutta. If you have to decide which religious teaching is true and which is false, don't go by scriptures, traditions, the prestige of the teacher or by inference. You only really know something is true when you experience it for yourself. (Which is the point of Buddhist meditation.)

And certainly today we know a lot (but definitely not everything) about what the Buddha taught and what early Buddhism was like through writings like the Pali Canon and the parallel Chinese Agamas (Chinese translations of Indian Sanskrit versions of the same traditions found in the Pali canon.) There's a large body of exegetical and hermeneutical study surrounding these texts (often modeled on the methods of modern Biblical study). For example, do the various suttas show changes in doctrine, emphasis or other developments during the Buddha's long career? Given that the canon consists of thousands of suttas/discourses in no particular order, how should they be organized? Chronologically? Topically? In terms of some internal development of the teaching, elementary to advanced? And how much of these texts is original with the Buddha and how much is interpolation by the early monks? There's lots of scholarly controversy about all of those things.

EXCERPT: . . . First, I had to overcome my initial assumption that modern Buddhism was a purely western phenomenon. It in fact emerged in the east, as Asian countries wrestled with colonialism and the influence of Christian missionaries.

In the 19th century, visionary monks sought to take Buddhist philosophy and meditation outside the monastery walls, bringing the religion closer to the people, just as Protestant reformers had done with Christianity in Europe.

Yes, that's true. There was also the impact of Western science and technology on these traditional cultures. So their traditions inevitably changed to become more consistent with science and its worldview.

At the same time, western scholars and spiritual seekers saw in ancient texts a non-theistic religion – the belief that whether or not they exist, deities have no impact on how we should live our lives. As it centred on a mortal man not a God it was therefore compatible with modern rationality.

Yes, that too. Those scholars and seekers weren't necessarily wrong either.

On the one hand, all these revivalists certainly transformed Buddhism, making it unrecognisable to many Buddhists.

Many traditional Buddhists in villages in places like Burma still honor traditional local gods and goddesses for this-worldly purposes of abundant crops, health and fertile childbirth, and good luck generally. Villages have shrines to these deities. They believe very much in the reality of the supernatural. But they are Buddhists when it comes to salvation, which transcends all that this-worldly stuff.

We see much the same pattern in all of the places Buddhism entered. China retains its local gods and goddesses, and Taoist magic typically used for this-worldly purposes. (Anyone who has met Chinese immigrants knows they can often be very supersititious.) In Japan, Shinto not only survives but flourishes. Tibet isn't/wasn't (before the Chinese) just monastic scholasticism, geshes and arcane madhyamaka philosophy. It also has a thriving village level undercurrent of magic and local holy men (and sometimes women) that might end up returning to being the region's popular religion given the destruction of monastic centered Buddhism there.

So the point is that what presents itself to outsiders as "true" Asian Buddhism (or Hinduism, or Chinese popular religion) is already very much a syncretism. So pulling apart the strands and forming new cultural hybridizations is something that's quintessentially Asian, certainly not a terrible corruption forced on them by evil colonialists.

Perhaps the reason why it seems strange to Americans is that we instinctively think of religion in "Abrahamic" ways, with initial revelations in the Bible, Quran or wherever representing the exclusive divine truth from which deviation is anathema.

They invented a new, modern Buddha, no longer embedded in a universe of reincarnation, multiple heavens and hells, demons and gods. Their recounting of Buddhist beliefs edited out those supernatural elements, or made them into psychological symbols rather than real forces.

Some of them might always have been psychological elements. There's a strong undercurrent of ontological idealism in much of Buddhist philosophy, which might tend to collapse the psychological/physical and natural/supernatural distinctions right out of the gate.

However, one can argue that Buddhism had already been transformed numerous times as it spread from India to the rest of Asia over the centuries. The efforts of these modernisers were the latest in a long series of reconfigurations of the tradition...

Yes, that's how I see it.