those Westerners who, unable or unwilling to confront themselves with their own
Western tradition, frivolously escape to any different world. More than half a century
ago, Jung already criticized such behavior severely. He said, ‘The usual mistake of
Western man when faced with this problem of grasping the ideas of the East is like
that of the student in Faust. Misled by the devil, he contemptuously turns his back
on science and, carried away by Eastern occultism, takes over yoga practices word for
word and becomes a pitiable imitator... Thus he abandons the one sure foundation
of the Western mind and loses himself in a mist of words and ideas that could never
have originated in European brains and can never be profitably grafted upon them’
(Jung 1929: par. 3). The new type of Western intellectuals interested in Buddhism
seems wholly different from the type just described. Neither unable nor unwilling to
accept Western tradition, their concern with Buddhism is not motivated by the denial
of their own identity, but rather by the need for reinterpretation of themselves and
their own culture. They are full of the critical spirit which has been cherished
academically and religiously in the West, and can be directed both to the East and
to the West.
Such a new development among Western intellectuals distinguishable from the
earlier enthusiasm for Zen as a socio-pathological phenomenon can be observed, for
example, in the contributions by the participants in the Kyoto Zen Symposium. They
presuppose a certain breadth and depth that Buddhism has attained in America.
Gomez, for example, suggests the model of a dialogue with tradition as an alternative
according to which one does not have to seek or find a singular voice in it. For him
the ‘nature’ of a religious system and practice is not necessarily an unchanging essence;
rather, the historical reality of religion, like other human phenomena, suggests a much
more complex model. He tries to combine two perspectives: that of a historian and
that of a believer, and proposes to change first of all the assumption that emptiness
(Sanskrit: sunyata) as a fundamental truth of Buddhism has to do with passivity and
resignation. He proposes something like active emptiness. Firmly trained in the
humanities, he alludes to the tasks which American Buddhists and scholars of
Buddhism today find themselves confronted with, but at the same time gives relevance
to Japanese Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism inasmuch as they, too, live in the
contemporary world and have to play an important role therein (Gomez 1983).
Maraldo poses the fundamental question ‘What do we study when we study Zen?’
After summarizing various ways of studying Zen, namely as a topic and a type, as a
phenomenon and historical entity, he attempts to answer the question raised by
himself, saying ‘the Zen tradition proves...a turning point which challenges those
fields to clarify their methods and presuppositions’ (Maraldo 1983).
In the preface to his recent book, the former Zen monk Stephen Batchelor
mentions a crisis in the present condition of Buddhist studies. Between Eastern
teachers insisting upon absolute authority and Western academics studying
Buddhism with scientific ‘objectivity’ he sees ‘an abyss which, despite the occasional
attempts to bridge it, appears as a disconcerting vacuum’ (Batchelor 1983:22).
The general crisis of contemporary Western culture is reflected here; thus he feels
‘it necessary that Buddhist teachings speak to his contemporaries in a language that
BUDDHISM, RELIGION AND PSYCHOTHERAPY IN THE WORLD TODAY 19