The Fourth Turn of the Wheel of the Dharma
Dusan Pajin, Ph.D.
Ernest Cassirer wrote in 1961, "The truly great works of culture never confront as things absolutely fixed and unchanging, shackling and stifling the free motion of the spirit in their fixity. Their contact has being for us only by virtue of the fact that they must be continually possessed anew and hence continually recreated.
Buddhism is rarely seen in its role of a pan-cultural mediator, not only in Asia but also in disseminating the cultural influence of Asia in Europe, or the West in general, during the last two centuries. Whereas in Asia Buddhism spread as a living religion and philosophy, in the West it spread mostly as a part of the cultural heritage of Asia in a way that was somewhat similar to the spreading of the Hellenistic cultural heritage during the Renaissance. That is, in the West its reception was mostly considered as part of the "living past," even though it was presented by the living proponents of Buddhism or "Eastern missionaries."
Nevertheless, it offered abundant inspiration and presented a challenge in many fields of cultural interest--in philosophy, religion, the arts and literature, psychology, and psychotherapy. Apart from any academic divisions, its influence was mostly felt in ethics ( understood as a "way of life" ) with special emphasis on broadening ethics ( as a value system governing interhuman relations ) to a value system encompassing the relation of man to nature, or to life in general. It was a discovery to find that something that seemed only a matter of quite recent developments in the West ( an evaluation of man's relation to nature connected with new ecology-consciousness ) had its precursor in Buddhist ethics.
On the other hand, pacifism, as a general rejection of war, especially of aggressive war, was recognized as an outline of a more general principle of nonviolence (ahimsa), whose historical validity in modern times was so magnificently demonstrated by Gandhi.
From a historical perspective we can recognize two general phases in the role of Buddhism as a cultural mediator.
The first falls between the third century B.C. ( when Buddhism was transmitted to Sri Lanka ) and the fourteenth or fifteenth century ( when Buddhist cultural influence in Tibet and Japan was consolidated ). During the classical age the relations between Asia and Europe ( i.e., Greek and Roman culture ) were manifold, but not distinctly related to Buddhism ( exceptions are found in philosophy - cf. the Greek philosopher Pyrrho).
The second phase took place at the beginning of the nineteenth century and extends into our time. In this period Buddhism emerged as one of the important cultural mediators in East-West communications, while its role as an inter-Asian cultural mediator seemed to be a matter of the past.
Partly, this was the outcome of developments in world affairs, since in the meantime East-West relations gained in importance and the West became more susceptible to cultural exchange. However, we cannot understand the present and also the possible roles of Buddhism in our time and the future, unless we understand its interAsian history. Excellent studies have been written on this topic, but perhaps the reception and transmission of Buddhism into China have been most extensively investigated.
There are some important general conclusions that can be derived from the Asian history of Buddhism. First of all we see some of the general characteristics of Buddhism as a religion that spread from India to other Asian countries--north, east, and southeast. In some of these countries Buddhism pushed into the background the popular cults of shamanistic origin, including in its practices and rituals some of the functions of these cults, transforming their indigenous animistic godlings into personages of the Buddhist pantheon and connecting local festivities to Buddhist holidays. In countries that already had established religious traditions (like China), it was founded as a parallel, second (or third) religion, sometimes in peaceful coexistence, at other times in conflict with the domestic religion. After several centuries, during which time it was treated mostly as an intruding foreign factor, it was assimilated and became as native as the forerunning tradition.
Buddhism has accepted the vernacular languages and elaborated new textual traditions that were added to the corpus of translated texts of Indian origin. The ethics and discipline of the monks were partly adapted to local customs. Nevertheless, up to the time of the Muslim invasion (between A.D. 1000 and 1200), when Buddhism declined in India, India was considered as the holy land of Buddhism, where pilgrims would come to seek inspiration and "study at the source", especially at the great universities like Nalanda.
Some of those pilgrims, like the Chinese Buddhists Hsuan-tsang and I Tsing (during the eighth century), have left valuable accounts of their travels, and of Buddhist practices and teachings, ranging from India, and China, to Java and Sumatra.
These events had fostered the role of Buddhism as an inter-Asian cultural mediator, that transcended state borders, political interests, and conflicts, spreading the Dharma from the plains of Central Asia to the jungles of Java, and from the Himalayan peaks to the coasts of the Land of the Rising Sun. Buddhism as a religious community (Sangha) was quite different from the Christian churches (both Orthodox and Catholic), with their centralized organizations and hierarchical structures. Sanghas in other countries were never subordinated to the Sangha in India, a fact equally valid and applicable to the offshoots of the Theravada tradition and to the communities that were inspired by the Mahayanist and Tantric traditions. The trans-national character of the Buddhist teachings was harmoniously intermingled with the national character of the Buddhist Sanghas, a fact that enabled local traditions to find their full expression in the realm of the Dharma. This should be stressed as one of the most important traits of Buddhism in its relation to national cultures. It did not act as a suppressor of national cultural values, but rather fostered the national character that inspired the talents in each given national milieu to express themselves.
Unity in diversity and diversity in unity--that was the feature that gave Buddhism its validity and enabled those various national talents to express themselves while maintaining the essence of the Dharma. This feature was responsible for the fact that Buddhism in various countries had its own schools and sects, besides those it developed during its history in India. These sects were sometimes in conflict with each other, over prevalence, power, or the favor of a particular ruler, but there was no explicit violence concerning heresy, no anathemas, or religious wars and exterminations such as we find in the history of Western Christianity (e.g., the conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism). In contrast to Christianity--whose dissemination and the baptizing of the people were usually a precursor of political or military subordination, or colonization, in later times--Buddhism spread beyond the Indian states quite independently of these factors and interests.
On the other hand, even when Buddhism was the prevalent religion or even a state religion, as in India at the time of Ashoka, other religions were not banished or persecuted, nor had they the status of heresies. In only two countries, Tibet and Japan, Buddhism strongly intermingled with political power or military ethics. In the first case (Tibet) this was due to the fact that no separate administration developed, so that the lamas had to fulfill the role of state bureaucrats; in the second case (Japan) it was due to the need of the samurai to find compensation in religion for the uncertainties of their existence.
Whether in its religious or philosophical guises, certain forms of Buddhism had strongly unworldly or even a cosmic leanings. On the other hand, many of its schools were never confined within monastery or library walls and thus shaped and influenced the everyday life of the laity or the career of many an artiüt, as much as the life of the monks. The influence of Buddhism on the arts was manifold, so that we find the finest examples of this influence in art that was not limited to religious themes, or in art that based its values beyond the immediate religious purpose. Vast indeed is the range of these remnants: the sculptures of the Gupta period in India, the Ajanta cave paintings, Tibetan mandalas and thangkas, Chinese Ch'an and Japanese Zen paintings, Japanese sculpture and Zen gardens, architectural masterpieces in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, all the way down to Java. If we were to compare, for example, three sculptural masterpieces--the standing Buddha from the Gupta period (fifth century ), the seated image of Miroku ( Maitreya ) from the Chugu-ji temple in Japan (seventh century), and the head of Jayavarman VII from Cambodia (twelfth century) -- we would find the same expression of serene purity and compassion, despite the fact that these sculptures bear the distinct features of their time, place, and nationality.
The second phase of Buddhism as a cultural mediator-or should we say, the fourth turn of the Wheel of the Dharma--took place at the beginning of the nineteenth century and embraces our own time. Reviews of the reception of Buddhism in the West, as a religion and a philosophy, have been written, but until now (note: this paper was written in 1984), to my knowledge, there has been no attempt to review the considerable influence that Indian philosophies and religions, particularly Buddhism, had on contemporary developments in psychology and psychotherapy, although the reception of Buddhism in America was presented by Fields (1981). From the time of Carl Jung--before World War II--onward, there have been some attempts to evaluate the complex encounter of psychology with Buddhism, and other influences originating in the East.
The reception of Buddhism in the West was from the beginning an international affair. Buddhology emerged not only as a result of personal efforts (of investigators of various nationalities), but also as a result of their permanent communication and criticism. Certain centers (in Russia, G. Britain, Frnace, Germany) were for a time gathering places for investigators of various nationalities dedicated to a common task: Buddhist studies. This is also the case today in various places in Europe, India, Japan, Hawaii, and North America.
During the last 150 years we can trace a considerable shift of interests and attitudes toward Buddhism. Up to World War II, the prevailing interest in Buddhism was expressed in terms of ethics, religion, mysticism, and philosophy. This coincided with the tendency to import and convey the spiritual traditions of the East on the grounds of mysticism and religion which, after a time (particularly at the turn of the century) it was hoped that Buddhism would serve, either as a moral corrective for the West, or as a source for creating a universal religion that could transcend particular churches, and beliefs. This formed a barrier in terms of history of philosophy, and historians of philosophy and culture had difficulty in proving that Asia had philosophies that were not at the same time mystical or religious, and that the "Asian mind" cannot be reduced to mystical inclinations.
After World War II the interest in the general Buddhist attitude to life and meditation came to the forefront. This was connected with the fact that far more people shared a non-academic interest in Buddhism; they were not professional historians of religion and philosophy, nor philologists, and for them Buddhism was not primary an object of study, but an inspiration that presumed personal involvement (and Buddhist studies were means in developing this goal). Perhaps in connection with this was also the shift of interest from the Pali Theravada tradition, to Mahayana and Tantrayana traditions, particularly Tibetan, after the exile and dispersion of the lamas to the West, from the 1950’s onward. The previous reception of Buddhism in terms of religion or philosophy was followed by a new perspective. Generations of Buddhologists tried to interpret and understand nirvana from various standpoints, but the "psychology of nirvana" has become a recent item in bibliograplüy (Johansson, 1970), and early Buddhist psychology has been included in one of the standard presentations of the theories of personality (Hall and Lindzey, 1978), under a somewhat ambiguous title "Eastern Psychology."
In this still growing field of interest we can see the same oscillations in interpretations from one extreme to the other.
Previously, the interpretation of, let us say, Early Buddhism, or the Pali Canon, swung between categories of mysticism/religion, and philosophy (cf. Chatalian, 1983). On the other hand, in the reception of Buddhism in the field of psychology before the war, psychological, particularly psychoanalytical interpretations of Buddhist meditation, were given in negative terms: it was considered as a regression leading to catatonia (Alexander, 1961). Jung was less negativistic, but concluded that Buddhist (or Eastern in general) types of meditation were definitely not for Westerners (Jung, 1971).
New generations of investigators changed this opinion by considering meditation as one of the possible ways to self-realization, selfactüialization, or personality-growth beyond mere "normality" or healthy-mindedness, which were the traditional goals of psychotherapy.
This reception was a part of a general widening of interest in Buddhist and non-Buddhist "ways of selfrealization" or "transpersonal psychologies," presented in textbooks that gathered similar material from various Eastern traditions (Murphy, G. and L. B., 1968; Tart, C., 1976; Welwood, J., 1979 ).
During the last fourty years, there has been an outpouring of literature presenting various aspects of Eastern traditions from the viewpoint of Western psychology and psychotherapy, as well as their possible application on new grounds. With meticulous analysis it would be possible to reconstruct in detail the process which in reversal gave birth to some new concepts and standpoints in psychology itself, but it is more important to give the main outline.
The psychological approach to Buddhism has been manifested through various modalities.
First, through attempts to present the contents of Buddhist teachings that have psychological relevance.
Second, through presentations that interpreted various Buddhist concepts from a psychological standpoint (Kasamatsu and Hirai, 1963 ; Ornstein and Naranjo, 1971 ; Hirai, 1974 ; Sekida, 1975 ; Brown, 1977).
Third, in striving to deduce, or adapt--from the conceptual framework or from the meditational practices of Buddhism--new concepts of personality-growth and techniques of psychotherapy, or those reaching beyond therapy strictu senso (Watts, 1961; Goleman, 1971; Casper, 1974; Deatherage, 1975; Goleman, 1977; Washburn and Stark, 1977; Welwood, 1977). With the fourth group of authors (Ornstein, 1972; Maslow, 1962; Walsh and Shapiro, 1979) we actually leave the specific reception of Buddhism in psychology and have to deal with concepts and methods that (in this field) represent what Robinson (1976, p. 14) has named as the final stage of assimilation, when the system (in his subject-matter, Madhyamaka in China, in our case, Buddhist psychology in the West) has been critically assessed and transcended.
We can now describe the full turn in the reception of Buddhism in this context: understanding certain Buddhist contexts from the psychological viewpoint, applying them in modified form, being inspired by them and assimilating them by defining concepts and methods appropriate to our time and cultural milieu. When we say this we should bear in mind that meditation cannot be equated with psychotherapy even in its widest sense, leading beyond therapy strictu senso, that nirvana cannot be equated with self-actualization or normality beyond healthy-mindedness, and that Buddhist concepts and practices cannot be reduced to psychological ones without a remainder. Anyhow, such equation is not necessary to a true encounter and if made it would be a misunderstanding.
The encounter between Buddhism and
Western psychology has taken place mostly in the Anglo-Saxon milieu, but
is of importance for the overall reception of Buddhism in Europe and America,
because it probes deeply
into questions concerning the fundamental premises of every culture: What
is the purpose of being in the world? What ultimate goal can fulfill the
life of man? Much of the energy of man is lost in support of the economic,
political, and military interests that divide mankind. We should give more
of our attention to those strivings and cultural values that drive us to
the common enigma of man--how to lead a life that should not be a waste
of the small amount of time and energy that is our lot. Or to quote a Buddhist
dictum: Having obtained the difficult-to-obtain, free and endowed
human body, it would be a cause of regret to fritter life away
(Gampopa, The Rosary of Precious Gems).