The Hermeneutical Feed-back Loop: Or, a Couple of Confessions of a Modernist Buddhist

The Hermeneutical Feed-back Loop: Or, a Couple of Confessions of a Modernist Buddhist June 17, 2015

Wheel

For reasons beyond my ken I’m waking up earlier each day. So, here I am, in the tiny public laundry room at my motel in Harrisonburg, VA. And for equally murky reasons I find myself thinking of the “hermeneutical feed-back loop,” or, in more popular terms, the “pizza effect” in religion. The later term for how pizza has transmogrified in both Italy and America by its lover’s importing, modifying, and exporting and then back again…

The term was coined, I believe, by Agehananda Bharati at Syracuse, for how this happens with religions as they encounter new cultures and as they are embraced and adapted return to their home countries changed in small, and sometimes large ways. Sometimes only to return again in that new way, although often presented as the once and always.

A couple of examples from the late nineteenth century could be how the Bhagavad Gita shifted from being one among many Hindu texts to a primary spiritual text as Westerners tried to find a Hindu “Bible,” and similarly with Buddhism how the Eight Fold Path moved from being a teaching but not particularly commonly known among the laity to being a central presentation of the Buddhist thesis, this time in response to Westerners looking for a Buddhist “creed.”

This train of thought was sparked by two things. First, a delightful NPR interview with Michelle Goldberg about her book “The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the WomanWho Helped Bring Yoga to the West.” It appears much of what we think of as Hatha Yoga was developed by Tirumalai Krishnamacharya in the first half of the twentieth century. And, second, by a brief exchange with Ann Gleig, a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Central Florida. She ran a chapter by me on contemporary Western Buddhist psychological thought concerning sexual misconduct among Zen teachers. As the author of a history of Zen Buddhism in the West, and as a commentator on various of the scandals that have touched Zen in the West, she mainly wanted to know if I caught in egregious errors. The answer to that was no, it is a very thoughtful meditation, and I look forward to reading the larger book when it is published.

It was in my exchanges with Professor Gleig that the conversation turned to that hermeneutical feed-back loop in the development of Zen in the West. There has been a lot of it, starting, perhaps as early as the mid nineteenth century with the remarkable Nakahama Manjiro.

Not long ago one Tibetan authority asserted four principles that describe Buddhism, and if one does not believe them, how that person is not a Buddhist.

They are:

All produced things are impermanent
All contaminated things are suffering
All phenomenon are empty and selfless
Nirvana is peace

I looked at this list and thought I could live with it, although I think the word “contaminated” and “suffering” need a little attention. I would substitute compounded for contaminated, as there is no pure reference point. The point as I understand it is that everything made of parts (and what is not?) will come apart, and that grasping at such things as if they’re permanent or whole or unchangeable brings about a sense of dis-ease, unsatisfactoriness, hurt, sadness, suffering, anguish. Each word pointing to this sense captured in the technical term dukkha.

As to “Nirvana is peace.” That too needs unpacking in that as a Zen Buddhist this is where we come to that Heart Sutra, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” Here the identity of form and emptiness of samsara and nirvana cannot be ignored, and it is in fact the deep insight into this that is awakening. So, this peace that is nirvana also includes all the hurt of the world.

I thought it interesting that in this list the doctrines of karma and rebirth are not included. But perhaps assumed? I believe any forthright examination must include these points. And I know this is where my orthodoxy starts getting a bit shaky. Here the modernism, the rationality, or, as I like to say it, the liberalism of my Buddhism begins to show. And, here we find the great feed-back loop of East to West, and in some degree, at least, of West to East, and, yes, back again begins to happen.

In classical Buddhism karma is all about intention. And those intentions are what directly lead to rebirth, and the normative view has been that “rebirth” refers to post-mortem reanimation.

Out of respect for the tradition I try to maintain an agnostic view in this regard. But I’ve noticed agnosticism tends to lean one way or another. So as regards a subject like theism an agnostic might lean toward theism or atheism while professing not knowing. In regard to theism I lean toward the not very likely. In regards to karma and rebirth taken in those classical ways, I’m agnostic but lean rather heavily against the view.

Rather for me karma describes the connection of an action or thought to its consequences. Although I admit an agnosticism that bleeds fairly quickly into “atheism,” not believing. But within that unity of action or thought and consequence, rebirth describes the shift or immediate result of any given action or thought within, at least, a human being. I am because of what I was and I will be because of who I am — all right here, in each moment…

A, one might find, very Western, certainly humanist, rationalist, this-worldly engagement with the traditional teaching.

Then there are the moral codes, the precepts. Some would include how we interpret them to fall within at least orthodox and heterodox, if not whether one is or is not a Buddhist. The original conversation with my friend turned on how Tibetans in general understand the refraining from inappropriate sexual acts. For the most traditional understanding this means no sex that isn’t for purposes of procreation. With all the fall out that has for homosexual persons…

Again, Western humanism, write large engaging an ancient tradition and something birthing out of that encounter.

And from that cultural stance I find have a very strong reaction to the classical understanding. I find that view ridiculous and body-hating and a shadow of Buddhism writ large. It is part of a Buddhist perspective that needs to be challenged from within the community, as damaging to the wholeness to which we are genuinely called by our tradition. I believe the only appropriate way of understanding the precepts regarding sexuality turn on respect and care and mutuality. Missing this is missing how we engage with open hands the matter of life and death.

Some see “cultural appropriation” in all this. I’m sympathetic to the larger goal of those with this issue, seeing how some cultures are trampled by another who then adopt this or that as a fetish. But this concern is quickly, too quickly extended to all forms of interaction, synthesis and transformation, which reveals a form of ignorance about the nature of religions, how they birth, are maintained, and become what they become. Probably its nastiest expression is the dismissive designation of modernist or liberal Buddhism as “white Buddhism.” Meant to show, I believe, an inherent cultural bias and actually racism in the modernist experience. With its own subtle bit of poison making the admittedly small but real presence of liberal Buddhists who are of Asian and African descent invisible. Not to mention where to put those Asian advocates of modernist views, themselves…

Rather.

We’re talking about the shape of the human heart, of how we encounter reality, and find our true lives…

And with that I assert these positions I hold are Buddhist, if modernist Buddhist, if liberal Buddhist. But, also a Buddhism I’ve found being held by increasing number of East Asian Buddhists.

Still, others, I know, think this means I am not a Buddhist. Or, at best, a marginal Buddhist. As are the rest of us who have been enriched within the great hermeneutical feed-back loop.

The upshot is probably, while quite important, the question of who and who is not a Buddhist is going to remain ambiguous for a while yet…

But, not that feed-back loop.

It is in full motion, dynamic, and, dangerous, and, very, very, exciting…


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