Das kindt mit dem bad vß schitten

There is a common expression in the English language, you have probably heard it before, that goes like this: “Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.” It is such a ubiquitous expression that most English-speakers assume it is of English origin. But its not— actually, this was a colloquial German expression long before, somehow, it was translated into English, as detailed by the German philologist Wolfgang Mieder, "'Das Kind mit dem Bade ausschütten': Ursprung, Überlieferung und Verwendung einer deutschen Redensart.” How many of you are surprised to learn this expression is actually of German origin?

In my last post, I ended by asking the question, “Is the Buddha Dharma adapting to North America, or being ruined by our shallow commercialism and consumerism?” Like so many things of foreign origin which are translated into English, Buddhism still seems exotic and incompatible with American society, and hence there is a strong urge among many non-Asian Buddhists to “Americanize” or “Westernize” the Dharma. Clearly, there are many non-Asian Buddhists who seem to be in a big hurry to have this 2,500 year old tradition rendered into the vernacular, and purged of anything which strikes their western sensibilities as strange or uncomfortable.

From my perspective, there are clearly some aspects of the Dharma which seem to be an ill fit with the consumer capitalism and individualism of North America. Where American society extols the virtue of “rugged individualism” (a mythology held over from our long-vanished frontier society), Buddhism preaches Sangha and community. Where our economy and society is built on the consumption of natural resources and consumerism, Buddhism teaches restraint and proportion. Where our society affirms the principle of competition, Buddhism teaches cooperation. It does seem a bit subversive to the American societal ethos of bigger, faster, cheaper, “better.”

However, on the other hand, one could also say that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is also subversive of the established order of things (I don’t think I need to cite chapter and verse here, do I?). Clearly, the religion of Jesus, with its unmistakably subversive message of “love thy neighbor” and “peace on earth, goodwill towards men,” seems to operate well within the established order of things, largely because of its complete integration into western society.

So the idea that Buddhism can never adapt to Western society is simply not true. In point of fact, Buddhism is already adapting to Western society, just not as fast as many Western Buddhists would like. And it is this haste to make the Dharma fit our western-societal comfort zone, which concerns me. I have spoken with several Buddhists— not necessarily those in our Washington Tendai Sangha, but others elsewhere— who seem to demand that the transmission of the Dharma should happen only in English and not include anything too “weird,” by which they mean, “Don’t make me confront anything new or make me change.”

This perspective is shallow. In typical fashion, we North American’s want it all, and we want it NOW. But consider this— by the time that Dengyo Daishi traveled to China to study the Dharma, Buddhism had already existed in Japan for 200 years, and still there were still Japanese monks who traveled overseas for training.

Conversely, Buddhism has only really existed in North America (outside of immigrant Asian communities), for perhaps 50 years, after the end of the Second World War and the advent of Jack Kerouac and the “Beat Generation” who first popularized Buddhism in America. From a historical perspective, we North Americans and non-Asian Buddhists in general, are still newcomers to the Buddha Dharma. So how is it, then, that we seem so impatient to toss out traditions that we know little of, except that they are “foreign” and we don’t understand them? And why is it that the practice of Buddhism among non-Asians seems limited to those who can afford the cushions and puja rites and formal retreats which are the stock-in-trade of North American Buddhism?

Are we commercializing the Dharma and reducing it to a commodity?

I don’t think so… at least not yet, although there are troubling signs that it is headed in this direction, such as the transformation of the word “Zen” into a synonym for “hip” or “cool.” Likewise, so far as I can tell, the impatient push to “westernize” the Dharma has not succeeded in forcing the various Asian schools to change faster than they are comfortable with. I could be wrong about these things but, as I survey the state of Buddhism in North America, these are the conclusions I have reached.

The process of assimilating the Buddha-Dharma into western society is well underway, and there is no need to speed it up. Ancient rituals are being translated into English, Asian ceremonies are being adapted to a North American cultural context, or being discarded altogether. These developments are happening at places like the Tendai-shu New York Betsuin, where ordained western practitioners and Buddhist scholars are making educated and informed decisions about what stays, what goes, what is translated and what is not. Similar evolutionary changes are happening at other Buddhist centers in North America. In the fullness of time— not in my lifetime, but soon enough— a distinctly western form of Buddhism will emerge from these informed and gradual adaptations and changes.

In the meantime, we as western Buddhists must not be impatient or hasty to discard what is uncomfortable or unfamiliar to us, lest we fall into the proverbial trap of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” After all, everyone knows this is an old English expression… right?