Buddhist Romanticism

example and start using Buddhist ideas to question our own Dhamma gate
—Romanticism—to see exactly where the gate and the Dhamma are in
alignment and where they are not. If we don’t raise these questions, we run
the risk of mistaking the gate for the Dhamma itself, and of never going
through it to the other side.
So, to follow the example of Tao-an and Hui-yüan, we will adopt an
approach in this book that reverses a common tendency in modern
Buddhism. Instead of questioning the Dhamma from the Romantic point of
view, we will question Buddhist Romanticism from the point of view of the
Dhamma.
For the purposes of this book, I will treat Buddhism not as a single
religion, but as a family of many religions, the primary three being
Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna. Although Buddhist Romanticism
has shaped all of these religions as they have come to the West, my focus
here will be on the Dhamma as taught in the suttas, or discourses, of the
Pāli Canon, which forms the basis for the Theravāda. I do this for three
reasons:
1) Of all the various sources of the Buddha’s teachings, the Pāli suttas—
together with the Pāli Vinaya, or monastic rules—seem by far to be the
closest record we have of the Buddha’s teachings.
2) This is the Buddhist religion with which I am most familiar and in
which I was trained.
3) Of all the Buddhist religions, the Theravāda contains teachings that
differ most sharply from Romantic ideas. Yet modern discussions even of
the Pāli suttas are strongly influenced by Romantic principles, which means
that modern Theravāda provides a clear test case for how pervasive
Buddhist Romanticism can be, even in a tradition that offers the fewest
possible points of overlap.
To maintain this focus, when I quote from the writings of Buddhist
Romantics, I will limit my sources to those Buddhist teachers who—
whether they identify themselves as Theravādin or not—engage with the
Pāli suttas when commenting on what the Buddha taught.
The book is arranged in seven chapters, followed by an appendix.
Chapter One begins with some biographical sketches to give a sense of
the people responsible for the ideas that are the focus of the book. It starts
with a sketch of the Buddha’s life—for, although it can’t be said that his life
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