INTRODUCTION 3ings. Others have regarded any questioning of the tradition's current state as
an act of irreverence. Although one might simply take note that these differ-
ences exist in the tradition, only a historical analysis can help provide an indi-
cation of how these differences came about; otherwise, they appear to be
random, arbitrary blips on our radar screen.
This brings us directly to the pedagogical issues: As a social/ cultural phe-
nomenon, Buddhism can be subjected to two types of analysis: diachronic,
dealing with events over time, and synchronic, dealing with factors abstracted
from time. We have chosen primarily the diachronic approach simply because
the fragmented nature of the tradition does not lend itself to synchronic analy-
sis. Synchronic presentations help make events intelligible only when they are
applied to systems whose component factors are working in interaction. Be-
cause Buddhism has developed in separate cultural spheres that are almost en-
tirely isolated from one another, many different factors have not been
interacting for several centuries. Thus a thematic analysis can simply offer up
an idea of the spectrum of phenomena in the tradition, but cannot help make
it intelligible. Thematic analysis can, for example, tell us the differences be-
tween Tibetan and Theravadin meditation, <;>r between Korean and Japanese
monastic life, but unlike the historical approach it cannot tell us how or why
those differences came about.
Some scholars have attempted to get around this difficulty by dividing Bud-
dhism into Buddhisms, teaching each as part of its cultural environment: Chi-
nese Buddhism as a part of Chinese religion, and so forth. Although this
approach has its uses, it misses the transcultural impact that the Buddha's teach-
ings have had within Asia and beyond. Although Chinese Buddhism has been
influenced by its many centuries of interaction with Taoism and Confucianism,
it has also had a transformative impact on the entire nature of Chinese religious
life. A full understanding of that impact can come only from a knowledge of
what Buddhism was prior to its entrance into China. To use another example,
we can view a thinker such as Dogen as an example of Japanese .religious
thought, when in reality he saw himself primarily as a participant in the Bud-
dhist tradition, and in this instance it is instructive to take him at his word in
order to learn how he absorbed from and contributed to that tradition.
Thus this text takes a historical approach to its subject, although we have
tried to be sensitive to the limits of historical method and the narrative form
of presentation. Paralleling the teachings of dependent co-arising, we have
augmented our diachronic narrative with synchronic depictions of cross sec-
tions in time-portraits of lay and monastic life in early Indian Buddhism; of
"domesticated" Buddhism in a modern Thai farming village; of the dynamics
ofTibetan ritual; and oflife in a modern Korean Son monastery are but a few
examples of this approach. To help draw out thematic cross sections in the
Buddhist tradition, we have cross-referenced the narrative on such topics as
lay practice, Buddhist linguistic theory, and the various permutations ofBud-
dhist monastic life. We have also extensively cross-referenced the text to John
Strong's anthology The Experience if Buddhism (henceforth referred to as Strong
EB), in order to illuminate our account with primary sources.