PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

76Pacific Worldticed in American universities. What better way for Buddhists to testthemselves against a renewed and revivified tradition than with traditionalsources that were also critical and uneasy about tradition? To saythat sixth-century Buddhist intellectuals were crypto-moderns would notdo justice to them or to us, but they shared just enough of the ambiguitiesof the modern world to be intriguing foils in the contemporary strugglewith tradition.