Buddhism and the Self

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, Gregory Goode wrote:

[..]

> I have met a handfull of Westerners really interested in
> Vedanta.  Most others encounter it during a search for exotic,
> Eastern mystical philosophies, which they end up assimilating as
> a big Eastern metaphysical soup.  There will also be Zen,
> Tibetan Buddhism, Krishnamurti, Gurdjieff, and several Kundalini
> yoga theorists in the soup.

I've seen such people too, but I assume that most, if not all, of the
Westerners on this list are here because of more than a superficial
interest in Advaita Vedanta. There also seem to be some very sincere and
thoughtful people who have found points of convergence in various
traditions, and not through the fuzzy thinking described above. And the
last statement about the components of an "Eastern metaphysical soup"
nowadays seems to hold true for many Indians too. "East" and "West" seem
to be states of a person's mind, rather than geographical pointers of
birth! And the situation is not helped by well-knwon writers who talk of
Eastern metaphysics, as if there were only one theory of metaphysics that
all Eastern people subscribe to. Unfortunately, most Easterners nowadays
tend to view themselves through Western eyes.

I believe this is not going to be a big problem for Vedanta. Given its
firm rooting in Indian culture, it will continue to have its traditional
votaries, who will perhaps be wiser for the ongoing contact with the West.
However, in the case of Tibetan Buddhism, I think this is going to be a
factor in its ultimate decline. It has lost its original home in Tibet,
and nobody knows how long the Tibetans will be able to maintain their
traditions in India. The leaders of Tibetan Buddhism themselves seem to be
more impressed with their reception in Hollywood, and its attendant
hoopla, than with the decades of support they have got in India. Given the
fact that the mass following in the West will be of such amorphous kinds,
and the surprising numbers of Tibetan lama reincarnations in the West,
this tradition might well be on its eventual way out. I don't think
America is ready for entire families of fair-skinned, light-eyed,
practising Buddhist. Any Jew who has thought of the eventual loss of
Jewish identity will be able to appreciate this.

Vidyasankar