Customer Reviews

The New Buddhism

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There's a lot of excitement in this book. There might be in "The New Christianity" too if Brazier gets around to presenting the image of Jesus as social activist as he has done with Buddha. Human society certainly could use changing. Social activism can use all the spiritual teachers it can get.

Good things about this book: questioning a religion, how and authority shapes the teachings. The lineage system seems an easy target but a worthwhile one. Showing how enlightenment has been interpreted in so many ways. Speculating just why Buddha left the palace and just why people back then became enlightened so quickly.

Not so good things about this book: it seemed at least twice the length it needed to be. I began skimming thru the 2nd half, hearing the same exhortations to save the world that the first half is full of. Not a bad message but it becomes a drumming. Brazier warns early this is not an academic book and it isn't. Footnotes and credits are scarce. The style and confidence is that of a college sophomore sermonizing to exhort us to save ourselves. That may not be a bad way to be these days, but it seems to skip over a lot of tough questions about Buddhism and about us. Once the cheerleading stops, where are we? If it continues, where are we? Following Buddha or Brazier? Perhaps Brazier would be happy if we were following our hearts.

There might be four books inside this one: 1) Brazier's image of what a social activist should be and why one should be one 2) Brazier's Buddha as the ideal 3) Specific and shared problems with each of the branches of Buddhism 4)One or more utopian visions (e.g. as Pure Lands) that seem unbelievable but wouldn't they be very nice.

This is a provocative read. I'll probably change my view of it a number of times. I agree with Brazier that religions that lead to withdrawal aren't what we need right now. And that Buddhism has much within it to guide our efforts to help our world. Which Buddhism and which Buddha are questions Brazier has tackled. But if may depend more on which of us.

This is both an intellectually stimulating and entertaining book by a revisionist author who is attempting to forge a new Buddhism for modern Western consumption. It certainly resonates with the Critical Buddhism movement that has been largely erupting in Japan over the last couple decades, and as such shares its strengths and weakness. See Hubbard's Pruning The Bodhi Tree for an overview of this. Being attached to this outlook, Brazier turns a rather skeptical eye to the history and doctrines that have been historically associated with Buddhism, overturning and casting out anything that doesn't fit into his agenda of socially engaged Buddhism. In the process, he turfs many positions that great numbers of Buddhists would think of as being core issues in Buddhist faith. To think that they can be as breezilly dismissed as Brazier handles them is a mistake. How much can be cut out before it's Buddhism in name only? In fact, which of the eight very different views of enlightenment he presents is really ultimate when they each claim to be and shoot down some or all of the others? And if there's so much allowable diversity, why not allow a New Buddhism, even if it comes close to being a Buddhist Brazierism? These are all questions worth hard thought, particularly for a religion without canon or (allegedly) dogma. Given that the Buddha welcomed all questions, however, and preached critical analysis, even of his own views, Brazier has stirred up a tasty pot of issues for thinking Buddhists. Whether you end up agreeing or disagreeing with him, this is one of the most provocative books about Buddhism around.

After finishing this book I found myself deeply frustrated and annoyed. I had picked this book to read because of what I thought was extremely relevant to modern studies, namely "socially engaged Buddhism". While I couldn't agree more with the majority of Brazier's ideas, I found them horribly developed, opinionated, and almost egotistical.

The central theme of this book is the attack on modern "extinction Buddhism", which I agree is very important. Brazier attacks many of the metaphysical concepts that have come to define modern Buddhism and the problems that they introduce. He does this by appealing to the Buddha's views and the passages that support a more engaged form of spiritual practice.

And that is where the positives end and the negatives begin. Because several other reviewers have elaborated many criticisms of the work, I want to focus on some of the more important problems that I have with the book.

The first criticism is that the critiques are extremely underdeveloped. Brazier admits that he doesn't want to make this an academic work and I am fine with that. However, if you want your book to stand up to any kind of assessment, there is a certain amount of "academic" work that needs to be done. His sources and referencing are very obscure and lacking in number, and thus it is very obvious from the start that this is merely Brazier's opinions on certain matters. He uses passages from Buddha almost always without context. I am not extremely familiar with Buddhist scripture so I will not say he uses these passages out-of-context, but everyone knows how easy it is to misrepresent a position by referring to one specific quote. That said, one of the main reasons I picked the book up was to read insightful commentary of the Buddhist scriptures in light of a more engaged philosophy. This I did not find. This book is simply Brazier running with certain disconnected tidbits of the Buddha's sayings to support his own ideas.

The second problem I have is that his opposition is not clarified. Again this boils down to some basic academic work that must be done for an argument to be taken seriously. In the same manner that he creates his argument for an engaged Buddhism (mere opinions and un-contexted tidbits of writings), he creates the opposition that he attacks. Again it is more disconnected bit of writings by various persons that Brazier disagrees with. The only arguments against his opposition are again, mere opinion. The specific schools of Buddhism and ideas of Buddhism that Brazier does bring up in a referenced manner are never given any kind of critical assessment (his two chapters entitled "Critical Buddhism" are hardly critical). He again simply picks certain aspects of these schools that he doesn't like and simply just states that they're wrong. Often he goes to extremes in his opinionated critique, leaving the reader with the feel that this is an extremely polarized piece of work.

There are several problems that develop because of the first two, namely it reeks of arrogance and could be easily be countered by his opposition. Again Brazier seems so arrogant in his presentation because he tells the reader what is right by his opinions and alludes very obscurely to other sources. He actual never develops why or what socially engaged Buddhism actually is. He directs the reader to help in society and be more engaged and liberated, but never elaborates how one should go about doing this, or even what the point of doing it is. Just simply do it because Brazier says so. Also any opponent of Brazier's ideas or socially engaged Buddhism in general could shred this book up in any kind of debate or argument. The lack of proper referencing and source work, the underdeveloped analysis, and the massive amount of arrogant opinion will most likely allow anyone of any authority to simply ignore Brazier and his ideas.

I felt the book as a call. It is a passionate description of a social view of the Buddha. It repeats the same concepts many times throughout the chapters ... but I think this is part of his style.

David Brazier makes a fascinating case for the "lost mission" of the Buddha: Enlightenment is about waking up to reality so that we can set about making the world a better place for all living beings. Unfortunately, the emphasis of the Buddha's original teaching was distorted and buried by millenia of misinterpretation as the Dharma became "Buddhism" in its various incarnations. "The New Buddhism" is quite effective in raising crucial questions about what the Buddha was all about and offers ideas for putting the Buddha's message into practice as a way of life that is logical and beneficial. The purpose of awakening is not about sitting on cushions and purchasing trendy "Buddhist" accessories, nor is it about substituting one set of rituals for another; it is about making changes that promote healing and peace for all living beings through compassionate, logical action. "The New Buddhism" should be recommended reading for those interested in building a better world. It is in working for the good of all that we can change ourselves, and it is in working with ourselves that we can create a sane, peaceful and healthy world.

A provocative manifesto for a more active, compassionate, politically and socially engaged Buddhism. Brazier compellingly argues that Buddha was a radical critic of society, and that his vision of a new social order transcended racial and economic boundaries. He distinguishes between "extinction Buddhism" and "liberation Buddhism"---the former seeks to release the individual from the world, while the latter seeks to perfect the world by freeing it from the forces of greed, hatred and delusion. This book should be read not only by all Buddhists but by everyone enamored of Eastern religion and spirituality. It is an excellent critique of those dogmas urging us to renounce political concerns as an "illusion" which interferes with our spiritual development.

It is hard not to be infuriated by a book that unblushingly says things that just plain aren't true. First the author tells us that Buddhism was fatally weakened early on when it compromised with the political powers of the day. Maybe so. (Similar things have been said about Christianity and the Emperor Constantine.)

Then, in line with Japan's Critical Buddhism, that Mahâyâna is all wrong because it adopted "Monism," alien to the Buddha's teachings, from "folk religion." Also arguable, (sort of.)

So: we should go back to the Buddha and to his pure original teachings. Fine. We have those teachings in the hefty volumes of the Pali Canon. The Buddha taught that life is suffering, but through renunciation, virtue, meditation and balanced asceticism we can escape from endless rebirth and enter Nirvana, ceasing to exist in any definite form. This is spelt out as clearly as possible, although Pali is short on words of one syllable.

Yet Brazier, contrary to thousands of pages of evidence, insists that the original Buddhism was a social movement aimed at bettering the world. Where he can possibly have got this idea from is a mystery. If you want to work towards Utopia, feel free. This quest has been going for over 200 years now, with the impressive results we see all around us. (Brazier's imagined "Pure Land" bears an uncanny resemblance to the dreams of Pol Pot.) But why blame it on the Buddha, who taught his followers not to imagine there is, was or ever could be a place where all was peace, joy and harmony; that having a body entails inescapable suffering?

The "social activist" Buddha Brazier presents constantly bristles around the edges with the very desire and animosity that the Buddha warns against. One could recuperate the author's stance by arguing that it reproduces something of the tensions between the first and second Buddhist vehicles: the Hinayana that concerns the person's relation with his own, ultimately evanescent ego; and the Mahayana which turns the resolutions of the Hinayana toward the problems of society. But "activist"? I keep hearing echoes of the standard marxist self-deception, which hides (unsuccessfully) the activist's own self-aggrandisement behind the rhetoric of "concern for social injustice," etc. Brazier knows enough about Zen to know that when human constructs (like "society," which is the standard "essentialist" nostrum of the marxist and marxoid aggressor) become the object of our concern, we have thrown ourselves back into the cauldron of samsara.

Brazier makes his case very well, starting with Buddha's own time & leading on down to our own. Bring an open mind to this read. I cannot look at the history of the Dharma's presentation the same way after this book!