> The biggest problem I see with white europeans "recuperating" native
>beliefs is this: it is part of a larger idea in our society, now called
>"post-modernism" but really originating with the birth of the "New Age," that
>western white folks don't need a cultural context for their beliefs, that all
>one has to do is pick and choose the "best" elements for a vast bouquet of
>religions and cultures. Buddhism gets spliced with Toaism which hybrids with
>"the wisdom of India" which invariably becomes wedded to "the native
>cosmology." This attitude has surfaced in more than one of the responses on
>this issue, and reflects a striking western/white-American arrogance of being
>able to supercede centuries of cultural history to select what's finest out
>of "those other people's" religious background.
Buddhism has been an eclectic philosophy happy to merge with the best of
the cultural traditions it encountered ever since it began to spread
throughout Asia 2200 years ago. Indeed few Buddhists today belong to the
Theravada school, which is the one which places the highest store on the
original canonical Pali texts and their commentaries. Most Asian Buddhists
belong to the Mahayana tradition, in which the commentaries of Tibetan,
Chinese, or Japanese teachers is taken as the point of entry into the
teachings. The Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path are still
the core teachings of Buddhism wherever it is found; and those are the
first teachings Gotama Siddhattha formulated sitting under the Bodhi tree.
Our world has changed more and changed faster in the past 50 years than
it has ever in the history of humankind. Centuries of cultural isolation
and antipathy are now being abrogated into immediate cultural contact and
reconciliation. Our cultural history becomes more and more entwined with
others' cultural history until we shape for our world a world culture.
It looks very much as though this is happening. There has been a certain
amount of "commercialized oatmeal culture" spread throughout the world
--which buys a lot of crap American television along with a lot of
quality American television-- BUT! that doesn't mean we are doomed to
a monochrome Cultura Terrae just because we have Internet and TV. It only
makes sense to me for us as individuals exposed to world cultures to
learn as much as we can from each of them we encounter. That means claiming
ideas as one's own. If I really believe in karma and liberation from
suffering, then those concepts ARE now part of EuroAmerican culture. I
expect my children, should I have children, will be taught these things.
Certainly most of my friends have been subjected to them :-)
> I would also note that, within euro-American history there have been
>scores of people professing ideas similar to Native beliefs, without any idea
>of their similarity. Western history is not a monolithic evil. We would do
>much better to draw on our own history of good thinkers [.....] because
>their "closeness" to our own experience renders them more "authentic[".....]
I've always wondered about this question. How do you tell? I speak an
Indo-European Germanic language. All my life they've been telling me that
I owe huge amounts of my culture to Greeks and Romans. Posh. I owe some
civil forms to Greeks and Romans. But I shake hands like a German, I
don't embrace and kiss like a Mediterranean. Which is a more authentic
cultural inheritance? Why did I learn about alien gods like Zeus and
Argos and Hera in school instead of (the much more interesting) Norse
gods like Loki and Ho"dhur and Thorr? Cultural histories entangled.
Goodness, Christianity isn't even an Indo-European religion, though neither
is much of Greek; Minerva is the classic pre-Indo-European neolithic
Bird Goddess found from the Balkans to Ireland ca. 8000-2500 BCE (we
still revere owls as wise (even David Frost)), Medusa was the powerful
snake goddess, whose writhing coils symbolized creative energy--the
Greeks were so frightened of the tradition they were supressing they
made her into a demonness.
Michael Everson
School of Architecture, UCD, Richview, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14, E/ire
Phone: +353-1-706-2745