Three readings on Humanistic Buddhism
Lancaster, L 2008, Burke Lecture: Buddhism in a Global Age of Technology, online video, University of California Television, 29 May, viewed 27 October 2021,
In his lecture, Lewis Lancaster (2008) introduced Buddhism as probably the first religion to break out of its cultural, linguistic, and geographic confines to become a world religion. He credits this to the portable sanctity of Buddhism, facilitated by: (1) bodily relics of venerated dead; (2) texts; (3) monks; and (4) images.
Lancaster discussed how Buddhism started as a relic cult. A relic carries its power with it without needing a fixed sacred place. The place where a relic is carried becomes a sacred site. As they had relics, Buddhism did not need images at first. It was the encounter with the Bactrian Greeks that inspired the first images of the Buddha based on the iconography of Apollo. Lancaster considers monks, nuns, vows, and monasteries that spread along the Silk Road as one of Buddhism’s greatest contributions to Christianity. Due to restrictions on what Buddhist monastics could do they relied on merchants to help them travel along the trade routes. The monasteries housing the relics established by the monks along the trade routes became caravanserais where diverse peoples met each other. Lancaster characterised the core Buddhist teaching as being able to describe things as they are which allows it to be said in any language, anywhere, anytime which made Buddhist texts portable.
Towards the end of his lecture, Lancaster discussed what made Buddhism portable in today’s global age of technology. These include Buddhist practices of meditation, mindfulness and modulation of the senses congruent with current cognitive science. Then there are the teachings on perception, valid means of knowledge, interactive causality in holographic multiverses, karma as cellular automata, endlessness, fractals, and complexity. Finally, the key insights are that we are here and that this moment is sufficient.
I value the breadth and depth (in time, space, and concepts) covered by Lancaster’s lecture. And he presented it in such an engaging and friendly manner. Judging from the video’s comments several others equally shared this appreciation. I believe this video could be a wonderful introduction to Buddhism to someone interested not just in the practices or the doctrines of the religion but also in its rich history and its enmeshment with world history, particularly the intermingling between what has been commonly referred to in the past as East and West, Asia and Europe.
Dhammika, S 2016, Like milk and water mixed: Buddhist reflections on love, 2nd ed, The Buddha Dhamma Mandala Society, Singapore.
As the book’s title suggests Dhammika (2016) presents how he sees different kinds, aspects and definitions of love primarily from Buddhist texts and points of view. He at the same time contrasts these with Hebrew, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Mohist, Confucian, Greco-Roman, and contemporary psychological, and political views. The first part of the title refers to how in Buddhist texts monks living together with love for each other are described as mixing well together like milk and water. Dhammika intersperses his exposition with stories from the Jataka as well as from his own personal lived experience.
In the middle of the book are images of artwork such as mosaics, sculptures, paintings and carvings relating to the different aspects of love with the Buddha, Avalokitesvara and scenes from the Jataka tales made in different cultures such as India, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Cambodia, and China.
The last third of the book is devoted to (1) mettā (“highest, most spiritual and sublime love”); (2) the brahmavihārās (mettā, karuṇā (compassion), muditā (sympathetic joy), and upekkhā (equanimity)); (3) bhāvanā (meditation); (4) mettā meditation; sati (mindfulness); (5) how being loving adorns and beautifies the mind; and (6) images of love. The appendices relate to instructions for mettā meditation, instructions for mindfulness meditation, and extracts from early Buddhist literature on love, kindness, and compassion.
I find this book to be an easy-to-read, rich and colourful introduction to the Buddhist notions of love. To me, it highlights the humanistic nature of Buddhism. The benefits of becoming loving are portrayed as accruing to the well-being of individuals and their communities. Not to serve or please a supernatural god. It also indirectly shows the Indic origins of Buddhism and how it spread across cultures and time, eventually reaching our own. The cross-references to other beliefs and cultures made it easier for me to grok peculiarities of relevant Buddhist concepts.
Thompson, E 2016, Why I am not a Buddhist, Yale University Press, New Haven.
I appreciate Thompson’s (2016) critique of Buddhist modernism. In his view, it is a form of exceptionalism that portrays Buddhism as above other religions. Buddhist modernism portrays Buddhism as inherently rational and empirical. And that Buddhism is not a religion but a kind of philosophy, therapy, way of life or science of mind based on meditation. Removing the soteriological and normative (ethical) aspects of Asian Buddhism. Thompson considers this as a mischaracterisation of both Buddhism and science. He recounts his own experience with Buddhism as someone who grew up surrounded by it practised it for a while and used it side by side with his research on cognitive science.
Thomson first tackles the myth of Buddhist exceptionalism. He then goes on to explain why the question “Is Buddhism true?” is the wrong question to ask. He continues by looking deeper into what is really meant by “no-self” in Buddhism and how this has been selectively watered down or reduced in Buddhist modernism. He takes a dig at the mania of mindfulness sweeping the West including the obsession with neural correlates of consciousness and confining consciousness to the brain in contrast to the more recent theories of 4E cognitive science (embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive). He then gives a historical account of how European religious scholars who translated Buddhist text during the Age of Enlightenment or Age of Reason translated Buddha “the awakened one” to the enlightened one and Bodhi (awakened) as enlightenment. And linked Buddha’s objections to Brahmanic teachings and societal structures with the Protestant Reformation. He shows how this has narrowed the West’s conception of what awakening is away from its South Asian philosophical, religious and ethical origins. Lastly, Thompson gives a constructive reflection that cosmopolitanism and conversation between the various lineages of Buddhism with science may be what is needed, not Buddhist fundamentalism or Buddhist modernism. He noted that this was how Buddhism itself grew out of its conversation with Jain, Hindu, and other religions, philosophies and traditions influencing each other at the time of the Sanskrit cosmopolis.
I see Thomson’s work as contributing to the field of Humanistic Buddhism as a secular scientific practitioner of Buddhist concepts and philosophy in contrast to Buddhist adherents and religious studies academic scholars. I would recommend people with a scientific bent and who are curious about how Buddhism and science relate to each other to read this book. To me, it goes quite deep in parts, and I struggled to fully comprehend parts of it on my first reading but that just made it more satisfying in the end and made me want to read it again soon and read the book’s sources to even go deeper.