Buddhist Romanticism

tested through action.
Despite Huxley’s rough treatment of Buddhism, The Perennial Philosophy
has had an enormous influence on the development of Buddhist
Romanticism: both directly, on those who read the book, and indirectly,
through the book’s influence on Maslow.
Part of this influence can be explained by the fact that the book opened
the minds of many Westerners to the idea that religions of the East, such as
Buddhism, have something valuable to offer, and that the preference of one
religion over another could be simply a matter of personal taste—as long as
that religion was interpreted in a monistic way. People already favorably
disposed to monism—through Emerson and other transmitters of Romantic
religion—found this condition easy to accept. Those with a positive
relationship to the Judeo-Christian tradition felt that they could adopt
Buddhist teachings and practices without conflict; those with a negative
relationship to that tradition felt that they could find spiritual nurture in
Buddhism, free from the faith demands of the synagogue or the church. In
this way, the idea of a perennial philosophy eased the way of many
Westerners into Buddhist thought and practice.
But even though The Perennial Philosophy helped open the way for
Buddhism to be accepted in the West, it did so at a price. Because it
misrepresented the Buddha’s teachings, it brought many people to
Buddhism on false pretenses. To the extent that Huxley’s rewriting of the
Dhamma contained many elements of Romantic religion, it led them to
believe that the Dhamma and Romantic religion were the same thing. This
is one of the reasons why the development of Buddhist Romanticism has
been so invisible, even to those responsible for it.
At the same, because The Perennial Philosophy claimed that the choice of a
tradition was merely a matter of taste and personal attraction, it
downplayed the extent to which the choice of a practice really does make a
difference in action. In this way, it has led many Westerners to believe that
the act of mixing and matching the Dhamma with other teachings carries no
practical consequences, and is instead simply a matter of aesthetics and
taste. This in turn has led many Western Buddhist teachers to believe that
their primary duty as teachers is not to remain faithful to the tradition, but
to make themselves and their teachings attractive through an appeal to
ecumenism. This is why teacher biographies often list non-Buddhist
teachings from which the teachers take inspiration, and why Rumi, for
264