Buddhist Romanticism

pragmatic value for the healthy functioning of the human mind. Thus, even
as the paradigms for the physical and social sciences continued to change,
the principles of Romantic religion were able to survive regardless of what
shapes those paradigms took.
At present, there is no universally accepted scientific theory for
understanding the universe, and yet this fact, too, has helped Romantic
ideas to survive. Assuming that the purpose of the universe is unknowable,
then the Romantic program of focusing on the mind—not as an
embodiment of reason, but as a collection of organic processes, feelings, and
emotions, in search of health and wellbeing—makes sense. If we can’t
understand the purpose of the universe over time, the thinking goes, we
can at least try to find a sense of inner health in the present. And although
the modern/postmodern study of the mind contains many currents of
thought, the current that grants religion a positive role in the pursuit of
inner health tends to think in terms of Romantic concepts, such as
integration of the personality, non-dualism, receptivity, nonjudgmentalism,
and the spiritual benefits of erotic love.
Even though many of these concepts rest on very shaky assumptions,
their absorption into academic fields has given them academic
respectability. Because of this aura of respectability, they carry a great deal
of authority when brought into the popular culture. This authority has
made their underlying assumptions invisible—a fact that has given them
power in shaping attitudes in many areas of Western culture. Those
attitudes, in turn, have served to shape and justify the development of
Buddhist Romanticism.
A thorough study of all the channels through which Romantic ideas
have entered into modern Dhamma would be beyond the scope of this
book. So in this chapter I will simply sketch the ideas of a few of the
prominent thinkers who have transmitted Romantic religion to the present.
My purpose is to show which parts of Romantic religion were altered in the
transmission, which parts remained the same, and how contingent the
whole process was: Much of it was shaped by the personal concerns of the
individual authors; things could have easily come out in a very different
way. I also want to show how various thinkers picked up on some points of
Romantic religion while rejecting others, and yet the cumulative effect—as
we will see in the next chapter—has been that all twenty of the main points
of Romantic religion have reconverged in Buddhist Romanticism. The
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