Secularising Buddhism: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Tradition

Richard Payne’s edited volume Secularising Buddhism: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Tradition contains 13 chapters examining the complex, dynamic, and ongoing process of Buddhist secularisation at work in historical and contemporary Buddhist communities and traditions. In his introduction, Payne distinguishes three dichotomies that pervade discourse in this area: secular and religious, traditional and modern, and Eastern and Western (1). He points out that we should not define what a category is or is not but acknowledge that categories are fluid, socially constructed, and artificial, in order to see how processes change and evolve. This book succeeds in achieving this goal by discussing transformative processes of secularising Buddhism across multiple themes and contexts such as during the colonial period in Asia, through meditation, economics, politics, and contemporary movements to secularise Buddhism.

Chapter 1 opens with Sarah Shaw’s work which problematises the assumption that features associated with secularism are uniquely modern. As an example, she points out that King Ashoka in the middle of the third century CE showed support for multiple co-existing religions that we tend to now associate with secular society. Drawing on examples from the Japanese, Tibetan, Theravada traditions, and a story of Buddha’s son Rāhula, she argues that the ways in which Asian Buddhists adapted their traditions to make them more palatable to the Westerners were an extension of the ways in which Buddhism has always adapted, not only after the Buddha but during the Buddha’s own lifetime. She also traces the history of the term ‘secular’ itself from Latin to its use in early modern Europe and to now, in order to suggest readers not to take the word ‘secular’ for granted.

David McMahan’s Chapter 2 discusses a socially constructed ‘subjectivity’, unpacking the interaction between Buddhism and secularity. He suggests that secularity inclusively describes beliefs that evolve around a naturalistic worldview and late-modern lived experience (59). He presents the modern Western development of ‘selfhood’ before defining secular subjectivity as independent, singular, and autonomous, and as a sense of ‘fragmentation of the self into multiple identities’, suggesting that the growing acceptance of a ‘secular selfhood’ has led to secular interpretations of Buddhist doctrines and practices. Then, McMahan discusses how secular subjectivity transforms interpretations of the Buddhist doctrine of non-self, dependent origination, and some meditative practices to accommodate a modern, secular lived experience (60). In my view, McMahan’s essay succeeds in pointing to the interconnected power relations between secular subjectivity and Buddhist secularisation at the micro and macro levels.

Funie Hsu’s Chapter 3 points out racial conflicts as a cause of secularising Buddhism in America. That is, ‘secular Buddhism’ is mediated by power relations that alienate Buddhism as a cultural threat. She identifies this as a contributing factor in a number of high-profile murders of Buddhists, frightening Asian American Buddhists into denying their religious identity. Studying secular mindfulness in public schools, Hsu shows how interpreting meditation as scientific can ‘cleanse’ the supposed cultural threat of Buddhism to the dominant ‘white society’. Hsu then explains how meditation has become a popular ‘positive behaviour intervention’ because the economic imperatives of neoliberalism celebrate individualism and so blame the individual for structural problems (90). Hsu’s essay succeeds in pointing out that the ‘racial-religious shame and neoliberal self-regulation’ caused by a ‘longstanding Orientalising and exclusionary history’ of the United States has led to the secularisation of Buddhist practices (91).

In Chapter 4, Pamela Wingfield examines secularised Buddhism in modern Japanese temple museums and explores the tensions between aesthetic values and colonial exploitation. Winfield argues that temple museums allow the co-existence of religious versus secular and icon versus art, displaying Buddhism’s multiple agencies. Then, Winfield unpacks three steps of the historical processes of ‘secular museumification’ in Japan: ‘from persecution to preservation and then to paradox’ (103). After the persecution of Buddhism between 1868 and 1872, Japanese Buddhists ‘preserved Japan’s Buddhist imagery in both foreign collections and through the Japanese National Treasure system’ (103–108). In the early 20^th century, it was paradoxical that Japan’s Buddhists built temple museums to display material arts of Buddhist ritual, which mirrored European colonial secular organisations that displayed temple treasure (108–109). Winfield suggests that we should deconstruct the illusory dichotomy between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’ to unveil a richer meaning behind Buddhist artefacts in the museum.

Charles B. Jones in Chapter 5 analyses Taixu’s views on the problems of humanity, preparations to go to the pure land, and vows of compassion (122). Taixu was famous for proposing Humanistic Buddhism in early 20^th century China, which considers the transformation of Buddhism in modern China (Wei and Cheng 2010, 171–173). Jones revaluates Taixu as a traditional Buddhist, critiquing some Western depictions of Taixu as a moderniser and secularist figure. He demonstrates that Taixu attempted to use the Buddhist tradition to deal with modern social issues rather than ‘replace the traditional with the modern’ (131). To me, Jones’s essay suggests that readers should analyse trends of secularisation within a specific tradition and context. To get a greater sense of the global impact of Taixu, I suggest looking at ‘Migrants, Monks, and Monasteries’ by Jack Chia (2020).

In Chapter 6, Kate Crosby argues that fear that the Dharma would disappear shaped radically different responses that led to traditionalism and secularism emerging within the same Theravada contexts (136). Crosby first presents how the Opium War opened a door for European expansionism in Asia before suggesting that the British non-interference policy in religion allowed a cross-national revival of Buddhism among the laity as a direct reaction to colonialism, driven by fear of the disappearing dharma (142–149). Crosby also shows that this fear of decline, which led to the rejection of secular affairs, was not a uniquely colonial response but already inspired reforms and revival in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand long before colonialism. Finally, Crosby concludes with a case study of Burma’s heresy trials to show tensions between secularising and traditionalising dichotomy (156–158).

In Chapter 7, Bhikkhu Bodhi discusses three forms of participating in Buddhism in the United States nowadays which run parallel but often intersect (169). First, followers of ‘Secular Buddhism’ do not believe in rebirth, karma, and liberation, second, followers of ‘Traditional Buddhism’ acknowledge what the former rejects, and third, ‘Immanent Buddhism’ is the most secularised form of the three and most popular among Western Buddhists. This group almost completely focuses on psychological and existential issues. To Bodhi, Secular and Immanent Buddhism overemphasise science and rationality, at the risk of losing the religious context of Buddhist practices, specifically the loss of the Dharma as a way towards liberation (170–178). Finally, Bodhi suggests that Western Buddhists should use the Buddha’s wisdom to improve social conditions, such as in dealing with suffering from war, poverty, hostility, and so on, rather than merely focusing on improving one’s spiritual life (178–183). Bodhi’s chapter, therefore, reminds us to critically assess trends of secularising Buddhism.

Chapter 8 is Philippe Turenne’s critical response to Stephen Batchelor, an influential representative of secular Buddhism. In After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age (Batchelor 2015) and Confession of a Buddhist Atheist (Batchelor 2010), Batchelor offers solutions to problems he identifies in traditional Buddhism and puts forward a secular interpretation of the meaning of Buddhism that avoids all transcendental aspects and fully focuses on this-worldly issues (185). Turenne suggests three mistakes of Batchelor’s opinions: cherry-picking references to Buddhist literature; mistakenly translating his interpretations of Buddhist doctrine as Buddhism’s historical views; and unconvincingly using modern ideology as the only criterion, implying that traditional Buddhist views that do not support modern ideology are inauthentic (193–198).

In Chapter 9, Ron Purser proposes economic and political factors that led to the popularity of Immanent Buddhism in America. He begins by suggesting that secular Buddhism is driven by neoliberalism (208). Neoliberalism provides a rich ground for secular mindfulness to grow because secular positivity encourages people to look inside for the causes and solutions to suffering, which is in line with the neoliberal aim of stabilising the status quo by regulating subjectivity. Purser then draws on Mark Fisher and Wendy Brown’s opinion that ‘in neoliberalism, public discourse gives ways to private gain’ to explain the privatisation of the causes of stress (214). Hence, secular mindfulness is the result of the interplay between religious, economic, and political development.

Chapter 10 from Kathleen Gregory studies secular mindfulness as Western ‘psychologisation’ to unpack how this process, alongside recent neurologisation, reflects ‘modern psychology and accustomed ways of thinking’ of mindfulness (222). The psychologisation of mindfulness reinterprets Buddhist meditation from a Western ‘gaze’, aiming to achieve the ‘psychological redemption’ of ‘feeling, thinking, and bettering’ (223). Gregory traces the earliest secular mindfulness movement to the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn who introduced psychological benefits of Theravada Buddhism to clinical settings in 1979 (223–224). Finally, Gregory discusses the limitations of understanding the ‘self’ through practising secular mindfulness due to tensions between psychologisation and neuralisation (234–236).

Roger R. Jackson’s Chapter 11 discusses the validity of ‘rebirth’, a core Buddhist doctrine, in the context of secularising Buddhism. He first reviews contemporary debates regarding the doctrine of rebirth (240), namely, Stephen Batchelor’s rejection of the relevance of rebirth (239), which is refuted by Robert Thurman, a renowned Tibetan Buddhism scholar (240). Jackson argues that assessing whether rebirth was a core doctrine in ancient Buddhism or interconnected with the doctrine of karma is difficult and that not all Buddhist traditions see rebirth as central to liberation (242–245). Then, Jackson discusses debates regarding the validity of rebirth in modern philosophical contexts before he concludes the reasons and ways in which rebirth is or is not valid to certain groups (254–256).

By associating but not equating Buddhism with philosophical naturalism (266), Gil Fronsdal’s Chapter 12 proposes the type ‘Naturalistic Buddhism’. Naturalistic Buddhism ‘refers to Buddhist teachings that rely on what can be observed in this very life through our natural senses. It does not require any beliefs, agency, entities, or experiences that are supernatural’ (266). Naturalistic Buddhism does not hold on to truth claims of the supernatural as it is believed to have natural explanations in the future (267). Fronsdal suggests that Naturalistic Buddhism has long been rooted in the Buddhist tradition as an early Buddhist text The Book of Eights (Aṭṭhakavagga) and Taixu’s Humanistic Buddhism movement show a naturalistic tendency (269–275). Finally, Fronsdal offers Naturalistic Buddhism not as superior to other forms of Buddhism but as a valid way to interpret the Buddha’s teachings (283).

In Chapter 13, Richard Payne concludes this book by critically evaluating terms like ‘secular Buddhism’ to reveal underlying mechanisms and power relations. From a conceptual perspective, ‘secular Buddhism’ is characterised by the West as ‘normal’, ‘modern’, ‘rational’, and ‘democratic’, which implies a ‘traditional Buddhism’ as ‘deviated’, ‘religious’, ‘authoritarian’, and ‘irrational’ (286–287). The use of ‘secular/traditional Buddhism’ in the West inadvertently led to the ‘othering’ of minorities (287). Then, Payne suggests that ‘much of the rhetorical dynamics of the secularising discourse draws on the structures of Protestant thought, that originated during the Protestant Reformation’, which have shaped the secularisation of Buddhism, such as the ideas of a ‘priesthood of all believers’; ‘opposition to ritual’; ‘textual fundamentalism’; and a ‘quest for the purity of origins’ (289–297).

Secularising Buddhism offers extensive research in line with my own academic interest in the forms of power relations behind the secularisation of Buddhism, specifically in relation to the adaptation of Buddhism to the socio-political dynamics of contemporary China. One strength of this book, I suggest, is enriching classic academic debates regarding the relationship between the secular and the religious. These debates originated with Max Weber (2002) and Karl Marx (1994), who both thought that through modernisation, secularisation would marginalise or replace religion. Secularising Buddhism provides various historical and contemporary analyses to show how Buddhism has transformed and accommodated the modern world without disappearing but, sometimes, thriving. This widens a reader’s scope to see the cooperation between the secular and religious in general and how the cooperation operates specifically in the Buddhist tradition.

The other strength of this book, in my opinion, is that it provides a multi-dimensional analysis to unpack secularising discourses of Buddhism. First, we gain both historical and contemporary information on forms and trends of secularising Buddhism. Second, we gain a lot of information on the conceptual and terminological analyses of the secularisation of Buddhism. Third, we gain both an insider’s and outsider’s perspectives to approach forms of secularising Buddhism. If I were to change one feature of the book, it would be the uneven coverage of Asian and Western Buddhism: of the 13 chapters from 12 contributors, only 4 chapters focus on Asian Buddhism.