Aloha,
On 12/4/2005 at 12:12 PM Margaret Gouin wrote:
>This does appear to have been somewhat lost in the west, as suggested
>from the desire of Western disciples to see Buddhism as pure, atheistic,
>philosophical, rational and so on.
Let me try to be careful in my comments about communities of Westerners
who are Buddhists, since they are not based on Buddhist texts or teachings
but rather on my more or less casual and incidental observations and
reflections.
I resided in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years. The SF Bay Area
is chock-a-block with Buddhists centers and activities representing most
major currents, including a sizeable Tibetan Buddhist presence. Most of
the Tibetan Buddhists that I interacted with were from the Nyingma line,
some Tibetan but mostly Westerners.
Even so, the SF Bay Area Buddhist presence as a whole formed a complex of
enclaves more or less within a larger counterculture. The dominant SF Bay
Area
culture was indifferent if not mildly intolerant.
I think that, in the SF Bay Area, at least, as an element of
counterculture,
Buddhist communities of Westerners attempted to offer a Buddhist model
that emphasized alternative but personally liberating ethics. And I suspect
that this rather ethical model of Buddhism was popularized.
Plus, the first established community of Buddhists who are Westerners being
the SF Zen Center probably reinforced the ethical model. Certainly the
scandal
during the 80s centered on the leadership of then-abbot Philip Baker made
other leaders and communities retrench their ethical approach.
Tibetan Buddhism appeared in the SF Bay Area some time after the Zen
Center, and probably adopted to the ethical model of Buddhism that had
already
come to exist in Bay Area counterculture.
I suppose that what I'm getting at it is that in the Bay Area
counterculture,
at least, Tibetan Buddhist magic was acceptable and taken up by some
Westerners, but that the general presentation of Tibetan Buddhism observed
the by-then existing ethical--if countercultural--model of Buddhism.
Musing Mainstream American Buddhism...Hmmm!?! Rose,
Pitch
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