(8 of 9)
A generous response, but one understandably more concerned with the fate of faith in general than the integrity of Buddhism. Most American Buddhists do not see themselves as proselytizers. The Dalai Lama has stated that the age of useful religious competition is past; people should stay with their birth faiths while profiting from other traditions. But some of Western Buddhism's more influential thinkers believe that it has far more to offer than meditation and may lose its essential core if it strives to Americanize too fully. Tworkov, who balances all sides nicely in Tricycle, believes many practitioners of engaged Buddhism are merely aping Christian charity, a trend she fears. "We have a lot of Red Cross Buddhism. I have no problem with the Red Cross. But the question is, Will any of the three Buddhisms survive Protestantism because of [the strength of that] culture?" If they fail, she thinks America will have lost out on their most novel and vital contribution. "What can Buddhism provide this country that it doesn't have? The teachings on mind and the Four Noble Truths. There are enormous absences in the wisdom of this culture."
Even grimmer, in a way that would do Jeremiah proud, is Robert Thurman: father of the actress Uma, adviser on both upcoming films, the Dalai Lama's longtime friend, co-founder with Gere of Tibet House and Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University. Thurman states baldly that those like Batchelor who prefer their Buddhism karma free "are non-Buddhists...they want to live as American humanists and call it Buddhism, [but] it's not really solid." He is only slightly less disdainful of Vipassana seminars that de-emphasize the supernatural side of the faith for the mechanics of meditation, or who, as Thurman puts it, "teach laypeople and rationalize their own departures from the traditional view. I did so for 15 years myself." For Thurman, "Euro-American Buddhism doesn't exist yet," nor can it do so until it can furnish the true motors of devotion and keepers of the flame, "ordained monks and nuns, supported in vows of celibacy and poverty, divorced from everyday life and supported by a community of lay members." Even if the majority of American Buddhism seems to be fleeing such an ideal, he remains convinced that especially within the Tibetan tradition there exists a promising community, and individuals "slowly coming closer and closer to the institutional breakthrough, who could live that way with a lifelong vow."
As I develop the awakening mind I praise the Buddhas as they shine I bow before you as I travel my path To join your ranks I make my full-time task For the sake of all beings I seek The enlightened mind that I know I'll reap
--Bodhisattva Vow, the Beastie Boys
Adam Yauch's recorded voice comes pounding out of the speakers, in support of political justice and inner peace. If the world of Tibeto-Buddhist chic can be said to have a red-hot center, it inhabits the small restaurant in Manhattan's East Village where Yauch and his Milarepa fund are celebrating the release of the Tibetan Freedom Concert's CD. Opinion makers in knapsacks and nose rings schmooze; a large portrait of the Dalai Lama beams.