BUDDHISM COMES WEST 307a result, she said, the job of a Western Buddhologist was to ferret out the few
remaining glimmerings of the original teachings and to expose all life-negat-
ing elements as later interpolations. Throughout the first half of the twentieth
century, westerners who went to Asia in search ofBuddhist truths-including
Alexandra David-Neel, Dennis Lingwood (Sangharakshita), and Ernst Hoff-
man (Lama Anagarika Govinda)-lectured their Asian hosts on how monasti-
cism had perverted the Buddha's doctrines. Although a number of westerners,
beginning in 1900, went to Asia for ordination, not until the 1950s did any of
them submit to long-term training under an Asian Buddhist master on Asian
terms. The year 1962 marked the first time a Western Theravadin bhik~u un-
dertook the requisite five-year apprenticeship under a senior Asian mentor.
Prior to that, all Western bhik~us had either returned to the West soon after
ordination or had established their own centers in Asia where they could study
and practice the Dharma as they saw fit, thus effecting their own personal re-
forms in the tradition.
With the establishment of Buddhist centers in the West in the latter half of
the twentieth century, the clamor for reform has become more widespread
and intense. Some of the proposed reforms simply combine various Buddhist
traditions, a combination now possible because, for the first time since Bud-
dhism left India, all surviving Buddhist schools speak a common language
(Strong EB, sec. 9.2). Whether or not this eclecticism becomes institutional-
ized, it is already a fact of life, with Theravadin vipassana teachers studying
Dzogchen, Zen priests studying the Pali Patimokkha, Tibetan lamas quoting
Zen masters in their talks, and practicing Buddhists of all schools reading books
by Buddhist masters of every available tradition.
Other de facto reforms have integrated Western values into Buddhist prac-
tice. These include the increasing role played by women in the running of
Buddhist organizations and the larger role played by laity in the teaching and
practice of meditation. These reforms, however, are not without precedent in
the Asian traditions (see Sections 6.3.4, 10.5.2, 10.10). What is unprecedented
is a reform that has gone virtually unnoticed: the redefinition of the Third
Refuge, the Sangha, to include all people who practice Buddhist meditation,
regardless of whether they regard themselves as Buddhist or not. This con-
cept-fostered in particular by Chogyam Trungpa and Thich Nhat Hanh (see
Section 9.11), and accepted by many Western Buddhists of all schools-has
expanded the notion of Sangha to cover an area wider than that of even the
classical notion of pari~ad (see Section 2.4), including in the Third Refuge
people who have not taken refuge themselves. It has also changed the notion
of the kind of refuge one might expect from the Triple Gem-in this case,
the psychological support one might receive from those who are sympathetic
to one's chosen path of practice.
Whether these reforms will become distinctive, long-term features of
Western Buddhism or are simply part of a passing phase is too early to tell.
But a number of writers have advanced the case that the reforms should be-
come normative-not only for Western Buddhism, but for Asian Buddhism
as well. The most comprehensive and systematic argument for this case has