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

Reviewed by Wesley Palmer

Whole Earth Review
No.84 (Winter 1994)
p.20

COPYRIGHT POINT 1994

            The encounters between Buddhism and European civilization have, from 
            the time of Gautama to the present been marked by indifference, 
            rejection, and conflicting philosophical and cultural attitudes. 
            Although chronologically organized, this story moves ahead and 
            flashes beck in time to reveal the interconnectedness of the 
            historic, psychological, and evolutionary changes in this 
            fascinating but obscure relationship. Stephen Batchelor provides a 
            clear, informative overview, from the time of Alexander the Great to 
            the end of the Cold War, of a religious tradition that become one of 
            the most influential spiritual movements in the West. During the 
            thousand-year period from the Buddha until Augustine, the impact of 
            Buddhist and Hellenic/Christian thought on each other was at best 
            marginal. Their relationship was largely one of mutual ignorance and 
            disinterest, tinged, in periods of self-confidence, with the 
            assurance that all other peoples were barbarians, and, in periods of 
            self-doubt, with the romantic notion that "people of whom we know 
            little or nothing have all the virtues we lack." The attribution of 
            Buddhist origins to Christianity removed the need to acknowledge any 
            Jewish contribution to European religious life. Later in the 
            century, Emile Burnouf (cousin of Eugene) claimed to have 
            reconstituted the "Aryan philosophy" inherited from the Buddhists by 
            the Essenes and then passed to Jesus. In shifting the origin of 
            spiritual and mythic truth to Asia, the Oriental Renaissance could 
            thus sanction the centuries-old resentment against the Jews. Aryan 
            supremacy, combined with the anti-Semitism of Gobineau and 
            Nietzsche's concept of the Ubermensch, all contributed to the 
            2Oth-century horrors of Fascism and Nazism. While it would be 
            unjustified to lay blame for such future atrocities at the feet of 
            Romantic Orientalism, the movement unwittingly cleared the way for 
            an unprecedented eruption of violence from within the European 
            psyche.