http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?o ... Itemid=243
'...For this reason, most Oriental teachers are very skeptical about exporting dharma to the Western world, feeling that Westerners lack the refinement and courage to understand and practice properly the buddhadharma...'
'...Ideas such as democracy and capitalism, as well as equality and human rights, can be seen to have failed miserably in the West, and to be nothing but new dogmas...'
The Orient never had a French Revolution, or an English Civil War, and Socialism has never made an impression on their societies (except perhaps Kerala
). So their 'refinement' is limited to small elites that are deeply entrenched in their societies. Admittedly, we did not entirely successfully throw off the yoke of the aristocracy in the West, but at least we tried. Even when the ideas of Socialism reached the East they were simply subverted into another kind of Asian despotism. Liberty, Egality, Fraternity and the rights of man are not simply dogmas, they are precious ideals that our ancestors in the West fought and died to preserve, with a kind of courage that is notably absent in the 'refined' Orient. '...Western conceptual frameworks stem from a basic attitude of arrogance in the way that they construct themselves and others. In almost all departments in Western universities that allegedly teach Buddhism, the teachers usually have to hide the fact if they happen to be Buddhists themselves. Do the mathematics teachers hide the fact that they believe in the logic of mathematics? Western scholars need to be more questioning about their own rigid biases that prevent them from being able to appreciate other perspectives. I find heartbreaking the imperialist attitude that arrogantly isolates one aspect of Eastern culture, analyzing it at a careful distance, manipulating and sterilizing it to fit Western agendas, and then perhaps concluding that it is now suitable for consumption. Sometimes it might help Westerners to develop more respect and appreciation for the East if they remember that 3,000 years ago, when the East was flourishing with philosophy, arts, languages and medicine, the Western natives still didn't have the idea to brush their own teeth!..'
I can't think of one Asian country where the school textbooks aren't distorted with some kind of nationalistic claptrap. If a country tries this in the West (like Belgium tidying up it's history of the Congo) then everyone knows about it and pours derision on them, whereas in the East it is almost a national prerogative to rewrite your own history. If we maintain objectivity in the West it is because we value truth undistorted by various agendas. This has enabled us to develop methods such that no country elsewhere in the world can hope to compete against us in innovation, or even in conflict. I hesitate to play the barbarian card, but if the Orient is so refined and great how come every privateer and bandit exported from our lands has effortlessly wiped them out. As for three thousand years ago, Socrates and Pythagoras come to mind. I must admit that we have long departed from their mysticism into more worldly pursuits, whereas in the East they focused on the spiritual up to quite recently, and with hindsight this was undoubtedly the right choice. However, the idea that Europeans were all unhygienic cavemen is jingoistic nonsense. We had Occidental sages just as refined as their Oriental counterparts.
'...The notion of sexual equality is quite new in the West, and because of this there is a certain rigid and fanatic adherence to the specific way it should be practiced. In vajrayana Buddhism, on the other hand, there is a tremendous appreciation of the female, as well as a strong emphasis on the equality of all beings. This might not, however, be apparent to someone who cannot see beyond a contemporary Western framework. As a result, when Western women have sexual relationships with Tibetan lamas, some might be frustrated when their culturally conditioned expectations are not met...'
The idea that Ancient Europe was entirely matriarchal is now discredited, but it is clear that at least some of the societies were matriarchal and that women often had very high if not equal status. It is very hard to find equivalent ideas in the East. Likewise animal rights, and environmental concerns were completely absent in Buddhist countries until very recently, when one would have assumed that such things would be widespread. In part this is due to social rigidity. An example would be the tragedy of the crashed Chinese airliner whose black boxes revealed that the crew spent their last few minutes disputing who had the seniority to decide what action to take. Another effect of this is that education and 'refinement' were the preserve of only a tiny minority, and this group are indeed sometimes capable of an enlightened attitude towards women, equivalent to our own in the West. However huge numbers of Asians remain whose attitudes are those of misogynistic, medieval peasants. Lastly, the author is a monk whose charitable efforts, monasteries, film-making equipment and indeed everything depend on the charity of donors, most of whom are 'Western savages'. So it is inappropriate for him to make ill-considered remarks such as those in this article.
R.
