Buddhist Romanticism

under the title, “Romancing the Buddha”) and “The Buddha via the Bible.”
In my original conception for this book, I planned simply to patch those
two articles together. But after doing further research, I realized the need
for a much larger work. This was partly to correct some of the mistakes in
those articles (for instance, I originally identified Schiller as a Romantic, but
now I understand why it’s more accurate to treat him as pre-Romantic), and
partly to fill in a large gap in the existing literature on Romantic religion.
The earlier articles prompted some criticisms and objections, three of
which I would like to respond to here.
• Many features of Romantic religion resemble Mahāyāna doctrines, so
the question is: To what extent can Buddhist Romanticism really be traced
to Romanticism, and to what extent is it simply the importing of Mahāyāna
ideas into Theravāda? This question, however, begs two other questions: (1)
Central Mahāyāna ideas, such as emptiness, interconnectedness, and the
innate goodness of Buddha nature, are interpreted in Asia in a wide variety
of ways. Here in the West, though, the interpretations closest to Romantic
religion are predominant. What is that, if not a sign of the influence of
Romantic religion in Western Mahāyāna? (2) Why would a Western teacher
trained in Theravāda want to import Mahāyāna ideas into the Dhamma if it
were not for the fact that those ideas correspond to ideas already popular in
Western culture?
• The approach adopted in the above articles and in this book is
sometimes dismissed as fundamentalist. But this begs another question:
What does “fundamentalist” mean in a Theravāda Buddhist context? Given
that the term has applied both to Buddhist monks in Asia who advocate
genocide, and to Buddhist monks in America who argue against condoning
any form of violence, even a “just war,” is “fundamentalist” anything more
than a pejorative meant to put a stop to the conversation? The usual image
of fundamentalism equates it with unquestioning faith in harmful and
irrational beliefs. Although it’s true that we are here measuring Buddhist
Romanticism against fundamental Dhamma teachings, I hope to show that
those fundamentals are far from being harmful or irrational. And the whole
thrust of the book, instead of advocating an unquestioning attitude, is to
raise questions that haven’t previously been asked.
• The growth of Buddhist Romanticism is sometimes portrayed as a
dialogue between ancient Buddhist and modern Western ideas, a dialogue
that needs to happen if Buddhism is going to make sense in the West. But as
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