Hi Meitou
Thank you so much for sharing this.
I must say I have quite a lot of sympathy with what David Brazier has to say, but also agree with Jundo that he is presenting his own view of what Buddhism should look like, in just the same way as Stephen Batchelor does when he advocates for a more secular version of the dharma.
Personally, I don't have a problem with either way but the issue I do take with Buddhist Modernism is that it often now seems to be, in the west, and on the internet, as the true form of Buddhism, stripped of all of that unnecessary woo-woo and Asian mumbo-jumbo. This position I dislike intensely as it ignores a lot of stuff that appears in the Pali Canon and Buddhism as it has been traditionally practiced in Asia. It is as if we are saying the the Buddhadharma had to wait for nearly 2500 years for western scientific materialism to appear so we could properly understand what the Buddha taught.
As many wise people have pointed out, Buddhism has taken on different forms when its seed has fallen in different countries and in different hands and this I see as a strength. That Buddhism has drawn on psychology and neuroscience, gender equality and LGBTQI+ rights in the west has given rise to a vibrant new tradition of practice.
However, putting that new form over and above how it has been practiced before is something I do not like.
We are part of a new stream but doubtless the dharma will mutate again and take on new forms. I recently saw an invitation to submit to a haiku anthology about Buddhism which listed various traditions including Celtic Buddhism to which I raised an eyebrow!
The quote that Nenka picked out is interesting and shows that there is a push-pull relationship between modernising Buddhism and maintaining extant traditions. I think this will continue to be the case for a considerable time and different sanghas in both west and east will fall in different places on that continuum.
For me, Treeleaf gets the balance right but that will not be the case for everyone. It is good that we have David Braziers sticking up for the old, Stephen Batchelor looking at post-Buddhism and Jundo somewhere in between.
There are plenty of Buddhisms to go around, and plenty of space to put our own point of view. Really, though, as long as how the teachings are presented maintains the essence of the Buddha's original teachings, I think that plurality is a good way to go. No one way is superior or the one true Buddhism for the age, but many have something to offer with their own particular flavour.
As the Buddha himself is reputed to say:
Just as the great ocean has one taste,
the taste of salt,
so also this teaching and discipline has one taste,
the taste of liberation.
--
Udana 5:5
Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-