Yavanay?na Buddhism: what it is
by Amod Lele on Jul.14, 2009, under Buddhism, Early and Theravāda, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Supernatural, Yavanayāna
Academic scholars of Buddhism (often referred to by the ugly term “Buddhologists”) today spend a great deal of time and energy pointing out ways that particular features of contemporary Western-influenced Buddhism are not present in earlier or classical tradition. At least four features appear strikingly new: Engaged Buddhism and its concern with politics; the relative absence of monks; the strong emphasis on meditation; and the rationalistic denial (or minimizing) of supernatural forces.
It’s pretty clear that most of these features were not there in most premodern Buddhist traditions. So, for example, Walpola Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught, while taken from the Pali suttas’ record of what the Buddha supposedly taught, turns out to be an extremely selective reading. Even if we take the suttas as an accurate record of what the Buddha taught (which they probably aren’t), if you read the whole collection you would get a very, very different picture of Buddhism than the one Rahula gives you: a world inhabited by gods and spirits, focused on monks, with limited emphasis on meditation and almost none on politics. What people like Rahula did is a genuine innovation.
This innovation departs enough from earlier tradition that one could call it a fourth y?na, a new Buddhist “vehicle” or tradition. Traditionally there are held to be three y?nas: the Therav?da of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia which adheres to early, pre-Mah?y?na teachings; the Mah?y?na prevalent in East Asia; and Vajray?na, the tantra-influenced variant of Mah?y?na prevalent in Tibet. I like to call the new Buddhism Yavanay?na – after yavana, the Sanskrit and Pali term for Hellenistic Greeks, and by extension for Europeans. A four-y?na distinction makes for an easy mnemonic – to Therav?da in the south, Mah?y?na in the east and Vajray?na in the north, one adds Yavanay?na in the west.
Christopher Queen has recently been arguing that Engaged Buddhism itself constitutes a fourth y?na; but modernized Buddhist traditions share other characteristics as well, such as meditation and non-supernaturalism. Goenka vipassan? is not very political, but it is very different from the Therav?da of eighteenth-century Burma, and seems like it must be considered a part of fourth-y?na Buddhism. Queen has noted in conversation that Engaged Buddhism (and other forms of modernized Buddhism) are not just a Western invention; many of its most noted practitioners, including Rahula and Goenka and other luminaries like Thich Nhat Hanh, are Asians. This is certainly true, but it would also be hard to deny that their Buddhism owes a great deal to the influence of Western reformers (Christian, Theosophist and secular). Some take this point as a criticism: this so-called y?na is just a bastardization, a pandering to Western tastes. I strongly disagree with this criticism, but that’s a topic for my next post.
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July 16th, 2009 on 5:07 pm[...] Amod on Jul.16, 2009, under Buddhism, Chinese Tradition, M.T.S.R., Mah?y?na, Yavanay?na In my last post I spoke of Yavanay?na Buddhism, the new modernized, Western-influenced Buddhism (including Engaged [...]
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July 14th, 2009 on 11:15 pm
I find the declaration of a Yavanay?na absolutely fascinating. (Well, “cool/awesome” is more like it.) Silly reason: I guess I’m a Yavana, and the extent of my exposure to that word (by the kind of people who reference it) associates it mainly with “interlopers from the northwest” and anxieties about clash-of-civilizations. A 2nd-gen Indian-American friend of mine once told me a hilarious/telling anecdote about a medschool interview where Alexander’s victory at Hydaspes came up. My friend’s Greek-American interviewer seemed to take a certain pride in mentioning this victory, and the two of them engaged in a barely-suppressed power play for the rest of the interview.
Serious reason: I think that, as scholars of Asian thought, one of our self-appointed jobs tends to be correcting American misperceptions of the traditions we’re expert in. We get so used to telling people “that’s not how it really is” that we may end up overlooking the fact that Western appropriations of Asian thought may have created genuinely new and interesting intellectual products.
July 15th, 2009 on 1:32 pm
Thanks, Stephen. I really like the word “yavana” here; it’s a descriptive classical Indian word for the philosophical ancestors of the modern West, without the kind of pejorative connotations associated with, say, “mleccha.” And I think it’s very important to acknowledge that “new” does not necessary mean “illegitimate” – I’m going to take that point up further in my next post tomorrow. I would love it if the term Yavanayana caught on. I think the most reasonable objection to the term is probably Queen’s – there are plenty of non-Westerners, like Goenka and TNH, who are integral parts of Yavanayana, so it’s not just a Western thing. Still, what they’re doing is very much a creative reaction to Western influence – and one which adapts Buddhism to Western ideals and situations (as it previously adapted to China) rather than reacting against them.