The Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture

Reviewed by Chris Arthur

Contemporary Review

Vol.266 No.1552

May 1995

Pp.271-272

Copyright by Contemporary Review Company Ltd.

            A recent history of Buddhism declares that it has touched more human 
            lives than any other faith. With its influence on the huge 
            populations of India and China, and its success in Sri Lanka, Burma, 
            Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Tibet and 
            elsewhere, there is considerable plausibility in this claim. Given 
            its immense scale and the impact it has had on the culture, history 
            and politics of a whole swathe of Eastern nations, one of the most 
            remarkable facts to emerge from Stephen Batchelor's fascinating 
            study is how recently Buddhism appeared as a topic of serious 
            interest on the horizon of the Western consciousness. 'Europeans and 
            Americans', Batchelor tells is, 'had no coherent conception of 
            Buddhism until 150 years ago' (xi). What the great Russian 
            orientalist Theodore Stcherbatsky described as 'perhaps the most 
            powerful movement of ideas in the history of Asia' has been 
            effectively invisible to the West for the bulk of its 2,500-year 
            history (the Buddha was born c.563 BC). Yet, as the Dalai Lama 
            observes in his foreword to The Awakening of the West, 'at this 
            stage in its history Buddhism is more than an Asian religion' (ix). 
            Batchelor's wide-ranging, thoughtful and well-informed account 
            demonstrates convincingly the truth of the Dalai Lama's observation. 
            The reader is taken from the first encounters between ancient Greeks 
            and Buddhist monks, through centuries of European ignorance, 
            indifference and rejection, to the first scholarly studies in the 
            nineteenth century and the beginning of the most recent and exciting 
            phase of the story, starting only in the 1960s, when Buddhism began 
            to be practised as a religion by increasing numbers of people in 
            Europe and America. How many Western Buddhists are there? Recent 
            assessments suggest anything between 10,000 and 100,000 in Britain 
            and three to five million in America. Understandably, in view of the 
            difficulty of arriving at an accurate figure, Batchelor himself does 
            not give an estimate. However, it is clear from the numbers 
            attending various meditation classes, retreats and so on which he 
            does cite, that even in crude numerical terms Buddhism is fast 
            becoming a force to be reckoned with. This is an engaging book, 
            written in an easy, accessible style, pleasingly unencumbered by 
            technical vocabulary or distracting scholarly apparatus. (Dispensing 
            with footnotes, Batchelor sources his wealth of quotations by a 
            commendably unobtrusive method.) The author is deeply immersed in 
            the story he is telling, yet despite his own active involvement with 
            Buddhism, his account is by no means uncritical, nor does it gloss 
            over those aspects of Buddhist history which show it in a less than 
            favourable light. Alongside his account of key personalities, both 
            ancient and modern, whose spiritual qualities are enormously 
            impressive, he notes the excesses of some of those jet-setting lamas 
            whose exploits have brought Buddhism into disrepute. It is sometimes 
            suggested that part of Buddhism's appeal in the modern West stems 
            from its unblemished record of eschewing persecution in order to aid 
            conversion. This is a view strongly advanced by Walpola Rahula, for 
            example, in an influential essay in Zen and the Taming of the Bull 
            (1978). Batchelor's chapter on the experience of the Jesuits in 
            Japan in the seventeenth century, and the involvement of Buddhists 
            in the torture and killing which took place there (pp161-183), 
            provides a useful counterweight to the historical naivety of such a 
            view. Such are the number of colourful characters involved, the 
            geographical range covered and the author's skill at moving between 
            the contemporary situation and ancient Buddhist history, that the 
            book often reads with the pace of an adventure story. He manages to 
            convey the sense of writing at a crucial point in the history of 
            Buddhism, when it may be poised to develop into new forms 
            specifically suited to its growing presence in the West. Batchelor 
            is adamant that 'the survival of Buddhism today is dependent on its 
            continuing ability to adapt' (p278). Properly aware of the enormous 
            diversity within Buddhism and the dangers of trying to insist on any 
            single normative type, he suggests a 'spectrum of adaptation' (p337) 
            to identify the forms which Buddhism may come to take in the West. 
            It might have been useful at this point to have had some reference 
            to the work of Martin Willson and Deirdre Green, who have also 
            suggested ways of charting possible varieties of Buddhism in the 
            West. However, The Awakening of the West makes no pretence at being 
            a comprehensive survey, so one cannot expect everything to be 
            included. Batchelor is particularly adept at creating eye-catching 
            cameo scenes which offer fascinating snap-shots of Buddhism's 
            Western presence and forcefully claim the reader's attention. For 
            instance, it is intriguing to discover that by the late 1970s, such 
            was the interest in Buddhism in Russia that 'only 3-4 months would 
            elapse between publication of a Buddhist book in the West and its 
            appearance in a Russian samizdat edition' (p299); or to find that 
            Windhorse Trading, a Buddhist organization, was one of the 100 
            fastest growing companies in Britain in 1992 (p323); or to learn of 
            the Dalai Lama's lighting a candle at the already crumbling Berlin 
            Wall in 1989 and his meeting a few weeks later with Vaclav Havel, 
            the first head of any European state in history to receive a Dalai 
            Lama (xv); or to be given a glimpse of eleven thousand years of 
            religious history in France, moving from Cro-Magnon man's cave 
            paintings near Rouffignac to the Centre Bouddhique now flourishing 
            there (p53). Sensibly, in view of Rick Field's narrative history of 
            Buddhism in America, How the Swans Came to the Lake (1986) and Paul 
            Croucher's Buddhism in Australia 1848-1988, Batchelor confines 
            himself to Buddhism's encounter with Europe. Different readers will 
            no doubt have different ideas about the relative emphasis he should 
            have given to the situation in Britain, France, Germany, Spain and 
            so on, but as a single volume account of so multi-faceted a story, 
            Batchelor's introduction is first rate. Given that this is a book 
            likely to make readers want to read more, Robert Ellwood's excellent 
            article on Buddhism in the West might have been specifically named, 
            rather than just listing the 16 volume encyclopedia of religion in 
            which it appears. By and large, though, bibliography and glossary 
            are appropriate, well-judged and useful. Three years ago the Bishop 
            of St. Andrews spoke of 'a major step forward in the spiritual life 
            of Scotland'. He was referring to the purchase of Holy Isle in the 
            Firth of Clyde by the Samye Ling Community, one of Britain's most 
            well-established Buddhist groups, and their plans to turn it into an 
            ecumenical retreat centre. If we contrast the Bishop's remark with 
            those of typical church-men only a generation or so before him, we 
            surely get a sense of an altogether new religious climate. One hopes 
            that there will be sufficient chroniclers of Stephen Batchelor's 
            calibre to chart what forms of faith are hatched, as this reverse of 
            a spiritual ice age begins to take hold. CHRIS ARTHUR