research for a doctoral dissertation on Shingon practice (Payne 1991). Like other
forms of Vajrayana, Shingon practice is generally described as ritual. However, just
as Zen meditation and monastic practices are highly ritualized, so is Shingon ritual
deeply meditative. Outside of the Western context, with its cultural assumptions, the
dichotomy between meditation and ritual cannot be applied uncritically, i.e. without
considering the nuances and values that the terms carry in our own culture. Failing
to do so deeply distorts the way in which Buddhism is understood.
It has long been held within Buddhism that the teachings themselves are not
timeless, eternal absolutes. The idea that with the passage of time the dharma will
decay in three identifiable stages is very widespread. This can be seen as acknowledging
that the teachings exist in particular social, cultural, and historical locations, and
changes in those locations, even subtle ones, can change the meanings of the teachings.
As Faure succinctly puts it, ‘Similar teachings and behavior or institutions can acquire
a radically different meaning when their intellectual or social context is modified in
sometimes hardly visible ways’ (Faure 1991:16).
There is a difficult balance to be achieved between adopting the entirety of a
tradition uncritically, and recreating the tradition so completely that it only reflects
one’s own preconceptions. At the same time that the various forms of Buddhism are
informed by the religious cultures of their origin, psychology is also deeply informed
by the social norms and values of Western culture (Cushman 1995:2). It also is not
context-free and neutral in the ways in which it structures the discourse by asking the
questions that it does.
This last issue is central to the concerns I wish to raise about the discourse. It was
noted many years ago in relation to the introduction of Buddhism into China that
while the central issues of Indian religious culture are epistemological, the central
issues of Chinese religious culture are ontological. The Chinese, therefore, asked
ontological questions of the Buddhist tradition, and produced thereby a different
form of Buddhism. It is important that there be critical self-reflection on the way in
which we ask questions of the tradition. ‘The spiritual’ and ‘the psychological’ are
not universal categories existing in some metaphysical realm of absolutes. Rather,
they are part of the contestations making up the history of Western culture, and
therefore entail a large number of implicit assumptions.
For these reasons, my tendency is to strongly highlight the distance between the
social, cultural, and historical origins of Buddhist teachings and practices and their
present interpretation in the context of our own highly psychologized social and
cultural location. However, at the same time I think that there are important ways
in which interaction between Buddhism and psychology can be mutually beneficial.
The discourse to date can be organized into three different areas: the hermeneutics
of understanding Buddhism as psychology, the appropriation of meditation practices,
and the problematics of understanding emptiness of the self.
RICHARD K.PAYNE 171