Buddhist Romanticism

ange, what kinds of text or behavior deserve to be studied?
Because the historical method cannot judge whether there really is a
path to the end of suffering, historians cannot use that as an anchor point
against which to judge these things. In fact, some scholars have made their
reputation by saying that the Buddha didn’t teach the four noble truths at
all. Thus the default answer to question (1) becomes: Anything done by
anyone claiming to be Buddhist—or inspired, positively or negatively, by
Buddhist teachings—counts as Buddhism, regardless of whether it has
anything to do with the end of suffering. Given that changes are more
interesting to discuss than efforts to maintain teachings and practices
unchanged, the default answer to question (2) is: Any trends or changes in
those teachings that are adopted by enough people or survive long enough
deserve to be studied. The emphasis on change reinforces the Romantic
assumption that changes are actually the life of religion. The question then
becomes, how many people and how long a survival count as “enough” to
deserve study? In this way, Buddhism is no longer about the Dhamma, or
the end of suffering. It’s about patterns of religious change: the way in
which people adapt the tradition—successfully or unsuccessfully—to meet
their perceived needs at their particular point in space and time, with
emphasis placed on the most popular adaptations.
To cite a typical example: Richard Seager, in Buddhism in America, writes,
“Writing as a historian rather than a partisan in current debates, I
am most interested in the long-term challenges involved in building
viable forms of Buddhism, whether among converts or immigrants.
Observing the current vitality of the American Buddhist landscape, I
often wonder how it will change, even within the next thirty years or
so, as some forms continue to thrive and others fall by the wayside.…
The definition of American Buddhism will be determined by those
forms that survive the winnowing process that can be expected
during the early decades of the twenty-first century.” 34
“It is possible to talk about many developments in contemporary
American Buddhism, but impossible to assess which of these ‘has
legs’ and will pass the tests of time required to become a living
Buddhist tradition in the United States.” 35
Notice that the discussion here is not about the Dhamma as something to
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