Chapter 1: Buddhist Modernism¶

With this part, the book enters the final phase of its mapmaking: the modern and contemporary periods. The preceding eleven parts traced several geographical lines—India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, China, and Tibet—from antiquity into the modern era. This part converges upon the common problems confronting the entire tradition in a modern setting. These problems cross regions and schools; they are challenges and responses shared by every Buddhist tradition in its encounter with modernity.

This chapter examines Buddhist modernism. The Buddhist scholar David McMahan systematized the term to describe a set of strategies for reconstructing Buddhism, developed across Buddhist traditions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that sought to adapt it to modernity. Understanding Buddhist modernism is a prerequisite for understanding every active Buddhist tradition today.

I. What Is Buddhist Modernism?¶

"Buddhist modernism" refers to an orientation of thought and practice that emerged in common across multiple traditions, regions, and centuries. It does not correspond to a school and was not invented by any one person. Its shared background consists in similar responses to several questions. How can Buddhism be defended in an age that treats science as authoritative? How should practice be redefined in an age that values individualism? How should Buddhism's relationship to political identity be handled in an age of nation-state formation?¹

McMahan summarizes several defining characteristics of Buddhist modernism:

Demythologization: mythic elements in traditional Buddhist texts and practices—deities, ghosts, heavens, hells, miracles, and previous lives—are set aside or reinterpreted as metaphors so that a "rational core" can be retained. This bears a structural resemblance to the demythologizing movement in twentieth-century Protestant theology, associated with figures such as Rudolf Bultmann, although there was no direct line of influence.

Psychologization: Buddhism is redefined as a psychology—a system for analyzing mental processes and treating psychological suffering—rather than a religion requiring faith in sacred authority. This makes dialogue between Buddhism and Western psychology, from Freud and Jung to later cognitive science, possible and provides the conceptual preparation for mindfulness's entry into clinical settings.

Universalism: Buddhism is presented as a wisdom tradition suitable for everyone rather than the religion of a particular people or culture. Claims that "Buddhism is scientific" or that "Buddhism transcends all religions" are expressions of this universalization.

Individualism: emphasis falls on individual contemplative experience and awakening rather than participation in a monastic community or ritual tradition. Modernizing Buddhists strongly emphasize the value of ehipassiko, "come and see," which has textual support in the Pali canon and is rendered as "find out the truth for yourself."

Compatibility with science: Buddhist insights are claimed to be compatible or even identical with modern science, especially physics and neuroscience, thereby defending Buddhism in an age of ascendant scientific authority.

These characteristics appear in different combinations and proportions among traditions and regions, producing the many forms of Buddhist modernism.

II. Historical Background: Colonial Encounters and Intellectual Collisions¶

The rise of Buddhist modernism is inseparable from the encounter with colonialism. In Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, China, and Japan, Buddhism met to varying degrees the impact of Western powers, including Christian missions, as well as the challenges of Western modernity—science, rationality, and individualism.

The encounter exerted influence from two directions at once.

From outside: Western scholars, especially German and British Orientalists, discovered and translated a vast body of Buddhist literature and constructed an image of "original Buddhism" or "pure Buddhism." It was often highly rationalized and demythologized, described as the "true Buddhism" separated from superstition. The Pali Text Society, founded in 1881, and Max Müller's Sacred Books of the East series were products of this scholarly construction.²

From within: Asian Buddhist reformers adopted some frameworks supplied by Western scholars to criticize elements of local traditions that they considered "superstitious" or "degenerate," while using the same frameworks to demonstrate to the West that Buddhism possessed a profound rational core compatible with modernity.

The two currents converged in what Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere call "Protestant Buddhism." It applied the discourse by which Protestant reform criticized Catholicism—opposition to priestly authority, emphasis on individual reading of scripture, and emphasis on inward experience over outward ritual—to criticize ritual, image worship, and monastic authority in traditional Buddhism.³

The Theosophical Society also played an important role in the process. Founded in New York in 1875, it became influential in Sri Lanka in the 1880s. Its founders Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) and Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) incorporated Buddhism into a synthetic system of Eastern and Western esoteric traditions. They described the Buddha as one of history's greatest reformers and rationalists and Buddhism as a universal wisdom tradition unburdened by theological dogma. Olcott participated in the Buddhist revival in Sri Lanka and helped design the multicolored Buddhist flag still in use today, symbolically repackaging Buddhism as a "religion" with a unified global image.

III. Several Typical Strategies of Reconstruction¶

Scientific Buddhism¶

"Buddhism is scientific" is one of Buddhist modernism's most popular claims and one of the claims that most deserves careful scrutiny. Its specific forms have changed with time.

In the nineteenth century, the Buddha was presented as a rationalist. His nontheism—his rejection of Brahmā as creator—and his emphasis on empirical verification made him resemble a scientist.

In the twentieth century, the Buddhist view of impermanence was presented as compatible with the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics; dependent origination with systems theory; and the Buddhist claim that "everything is process" with process philosophy.

In the twenty-first century, Buddhist meditation is correlated with measurable changes in the brain; mindfulness can be verified through clinical research; and Buddhist theories of consciousness offer a framework of reference for consciousness studies.

In this book's view, some parts of these claims have substantive content, while others amount to forced analogies. Buddhism and science can of course enter into dialogue, and many such dialogues are valuable. The real question is how the claim that "Buddhism is scientific" presupposes that "science" is the highest epistemological standard and then declares that Buddhism meets it. The value of Buddhism is thereby established within a modern framework, conceding the priority of that framework. This is itself a modernist posture, not a neutral statement.⁴

Emphasis on Lay Subjectivity¶

In traditional Buddhism, ordained monks and nuns stand at the center of practice. Laypeople participate in religious life principally through offerings and merit-making, while intensive practice is the work of a minority. Buddhist modernism fundamentally challenges this structure. Practice, especially meditation, is open to everyone. It requires neither ordination nor spending extensive time in a monastery. Part IX already traced this transformation through the lineage from Ledi Sayadaw to S. N. Goenka in Sri Lanka and Myanmar; in East Asia it occurred by different routes.

The emphasis on lay practice genuinely democratizes practice on the one hand, enabling more people to access meditative tools. On the other, it detaches Buddhist practice from the traditional institution of the Saṅgha and shifts the standard of "valid practice" toward personal experience rather than traditional authorization. This decentralization is a structural feature of Buddhist modernism and its greatest point of internal controversy.

Buddhism and Nationalism¶

This theme has appeared repeatedly in previous chapters: Anagarika Dharmapala's Sri Lankan nationalism; "nation-protecting Buddhism" in Meiji Japan and Buddhist cooperation under State Shintō; Chinese Humanistic Buddhism and national rejuvenation; Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar, discussed in Part IX; and Tibetan nationalism in exile, discussed in Part XI. The binding of Buddhism to national identity is among the most widespread forms of Buddhist modernization in modern history and also one of those that has produced the most negative consequences, including ethnic conflict and exclusionism.

This book holds that Buddhist doctrine does not inherently lead to nationalism. Historically, Buddhism has often crossed ethnic boundaries. Its alliance with nationalism is a product of historical conditions—colonialism and the formation of nation-states—not an inevitable product of Buddhism itself.

IV. Humanistic Buddhism: The East Asian Path of Modernization¶

East Asian Buddhist modernism, especially in China and Taiwan, followed a route different from both Southern and Tibetan Buddhism. Usually known as Humanistic Buddhism, its foundational figure was Master Taixu (1890–1947).

Taixu's Program of Reform¶

During the Republican period, Taixu proposed the slogan "Buddhism for Human Life," which later developed into Humanistic Buddhism. His central criticism addressed several chronic problems in contemporary Chinese Buddhism:

• Funerary orientation: Buddhism had deteriorated into a ritual religion principally serving funerals and the salvation of the dead, earning labels such as "a religion for the dead" or "a Buddhism of ghosts and spirits";
• Scholastic isolation: large numbers of monks remained closed within monasteries performing liturgies, cut off from society;
• Superstition: various forms of popular belief unrelated to the true Dharma had penetrated monasteries.

Taixu's program redirected Buddhism from a tradition serving death and future lives toward one serving the present lives of living people. It centered human liberation, participated in social reform, and used Buddhist wisdom to confront modern problems. He also promoted modernization of monastic education by founding Buddhist academies and emphasized academic Buddhist study, especially dialogue with modern Western scholarship.⁵

Yinshun and Historical Study of Chinese Buddhism¶

Venerable Yinshun (1906–2005), Taixu's most important student, went further than his teacher academically. He studied Chinese Buddhism through rigorous historical-critical methods, distinguishing the "original intent of the Buddha," which he understood as a human-centered teaching concerned with actual life, from the later "celestialized Buddhism" of mystical and deifying Mahāyāna developments. His scholarly position was highly critical. He accepted the methods of modern historical study and was prepared to examine some Mahāyāna developments critically—an approach far outside the mainstream in the Chinese Buddhist world of his time.⁶

Institutionalization in Taiwan: The Four Great Dharma Centers¶

The influence of the Taixu–Yinshun tradition bore fruit in Taiwan, where it produced several of today's largest Buddhist institutions:

These four centers provide the principal institutional foundation of Taiwanese Buddhism today and are the chief vehicles for transmitting Humanistic Buddhism to Chinese communities worldwide. Their practices differ substantially, from Tzu Chi's intensely active social charity to Dharma Drum's stronger emphasis on monastic meditation, but all share Humanistic Buddhism's central orientation toward human life in the present as the focus of Buddhist concern.

V. D. T. Suzuki and the Global Transmission of Zen¶

In the transmission of East Asian Buddhist modernism, Japan's Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870–1966) played a distinctive role. He was the most important figure in bringing Zen to the English-speaking world and one of the principal mediators in the encounter between Buddhist modernism and Western audiences.

Writing in English, Suzuki presented Zen as a direct spiritual experience that transcends culture: a sudden awakening, satori, independent of texts or rituals and occurring only through immediate intuitive recognition. His Zen was highly deculturalized. It contained none of the daily routine of Japanese monasteries and none of the institutional system of teacher authorization—only the pure "experience of awakening."

The presentation was extraordinarily successful. In the 1950s and 1960s, Suzuki's Zen influenced the entire Western intellectual world: philosophers, including Heidegger, who corresponded with him; psychologists, including Erich Fromm, with whom he coauthored a book; and literary figures, including Jack Kerouac and others of the Beat Generation. The Western image of Zen was to a considerable degree Suzuki's construction.⁷

Critics, especially scholars of Japanese Buddhism such as Bernard Faure and Robert Sharf, point out that Suzuki's presentation of Zen was highly selective. It extracted one dimension of Chan and Zen—the direct experience—stripped away the monastic institutions, ritual traditions, master–disciple relationships, and cultural background in which Zen had historically existed, disconnected it from Japanese nationalism, although Suzuki had defended Japan's actions during World War II, and presented it as a universal spirituality without cultural baggage. This is itself a quintessential operation of Buddhist modernism: deculturalization, demythologization, and universalization.

V.1. Secular Buddhism: The Logical Extreme of Modernism and Its Rejection by Buddhist Traditions¶

Buddhist modernism has an internal logical trajectory: demythologization → psychologization → universalization → dereligionization. At its furthest point lies the Secular Buddhism movement that arose in the English-speaking world in the twenty-first century. It explicitly abandons or suspends transcendent presuppositions such as rebirth, the transmission of karma across lives, and a sacred Buddha, retaining only meditative methods and an ethical framework.

The rise and principal figures of Secular Buddhism

"Secular Buddhism" as a self-conscious position took form chiefly within Western, English-speaking Buddhist circles after the 1990s. Its most important representative is Stephen Batchelor (born 1953), a British author trained in Tibetan Gelug Buddhism and Korean Sŏn who later moved gradually toward a secular position. Several of his works constitute the most systematic philosophical statements of Secular Buddhism.

Buddhism Without Beliefs (1997) proposes that Buddhism's core is a practical inquiry into human life and should be treated as "agnostic." It neither affirms nor denies the literal truth of karma and rebirth, concentrating instead on practice verifiable in the present.

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist (2010) argues further, in autobiographical form, that the historical Buddha was a person active within a concrete political and social context, whose teachings responded to specific problems of his age and did not necessarily presuppose eternal life, cosmic law, or supernatural powers.

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age (2015) offers a more positive reconstruction. Starting from early Pali texts, it reads the Four Noble Truths as "four practical attitudes toward suffering" rather than as a metaphysical account of cosmic reality.⁸

At the organizational level, the Secular Buddhist Association was founded in the United States around 2009–2010. Ted Meissner and others promoted its position through podcasts and online communities. Noah Rasheta's Secular Buddhism podcast also acquired a substantial English-speaking audience. These institutions and platforms transformed Secular Buddhism from an individual stance into a community movement of some scale.

The central claims of Secular Buddhism

Secular Buddhism's substantive claims can be broadly summarized as follows: it suspends or rejects rebirth as literal cosmology; does not require belief in the transmission of karma across lives; does not emphasize taking refuge in the Three Jewels, or understands refuge as a psychological and social commitment rather than a sacred vow; appeals to modern empirical frameworks such as neuroscience to understand the effects of meditation; and understands ethics as a common human need rather than commands issued by the Buddha as sacred authority.

This concentrates the characteristics of Buddhist modernism. Demythologization, psychologization, and universalization are each pushed to their logical limits until no "religious faith" in any special sense is required.

Rejection by other Buddhist traditions

Secular Buddhism has provoked broad criticism across traditional Buddhist communities. These criticisms come from several directions, sharing a common center but differing in emphasis.

Theravāda criticism: this direction offers the most systematic and philosophically substantial critique. The American Theravāda monk Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, born Geoffrey DeGraff in 1949 and abbot of Metta Forest Monastery, has written extensively to argue that removing rebirth deprives the Buddha's soteriology of its internal consistency. His central point is that the "suffering" of the Four Noble Truths includes suffering repeatedly arising throughout measureless rebirths, not merely this life, while the goal of the "cessation of suffering," nirvāṇa, means complete departure from the structure of rebirth, not merely reducing psychological distress in the present life. If rebirth is suspended, practice becomes no more than "making this life a little better." In his view, it has thereby departed from the Buddha's teaching and become another form of psychotherapy. Bhikkhu Bodhi, born in 1944, is another important American Theravāda monk. His position is more moderate, but in a 2012 address he likewise expressed concern over "mindfulness stripped from its religious context" and argued that the ethical consequences of mindfulness without the full framework of karma, rebirth, and the Four Noble Truths are uncertain.

Criticism from Tibetan Buddhist communities: Tibetan criticism often arises from dissatisfaction with Secular Buddhism's treatment of the problem of "mind." Tibetan traditions, especially Gelug and Kagyu, hold that fundamental questions about mind or consciousness (citta)—whether it continues after death and how intrinsic awareness or buddha-nature is to be understood—are essential presuppositions of practice. They cannot be treated before practice as "metaphysical options" that may simply be suspended. The scholar B. Alan Wallace (born 1950), a former Tibetan Buddhist monk and practitioner, is among Secular Buddhism's most systematic critics. He argues that Secular Buddhism's treatment of science as the ultimate epistemological authority and its measurement of practice by neuroscientific standards constitute a form of cultural imperialism, trimming Buddhism to fit a modern Western system of knowledge.

Responses from Asian Buddhist communities: this dimension is frequently overlooked. Southeast and East Asian Buddhist immigrant communities in the West often occupy marginal positions. Their everyday religious practices—performing rites for the dead, visiting temples to pray for blessings, and expressing devotional reverence for the Buddha—fall almost entirely under the labels "superstition" or "cultural packaging" within a Secular Buddhist framework. In American Dharma (2019), the scholar Ann Gleig documents this tension. In the West, "serious" Buddhism often evokes an image of highly educated white people sitting in meditation and reading books, while the traditional practices of Asian Buddhist communities are regarded as comparatively "impure." This is itself a prejudice of cultural power.

The central logic of rejection

The common center of these criticisms may be summarized as follows: Secular Buddhism believes it has removed the "cultural packaging" and retained the "core," but critics believe it has removed precisely the core and retained a cultural preference—the preference of modern Western secular psychology. Without rebirth, the theory of karma loses the framework connecting ethical conduct to its full consequences. Without nirvāṇa in a transcendent sense, it loses the motivation for pursuing practice so thoroughly. Without the Three Jewels—Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha—as objects of refuge, it loses the institutional foundation embedding personal practice within a traditional community.

Another layer of criticism is stated less often but is equally real: traditional communities' rejection of Secular Buddhism often targets the latter's communal identity rather than offering a purely philosophical refutation. Traditional communities are frequently unwilling to recognize Secular Buddhists as Buddhists because they do not receive precepts, or receive them in nontraditional ways; do not belong to monastic lineages; and do not accept traditional authority. Institutionally, this amounts to saying: "You are not a member of our community. We need not refute you because you do not possess the qualifications for entry into the discussion."

Fairness requires adding a qualification to these criticisms. Traditional critiques target the completeness of Secular Buddhism's framework, but this cannot negate an empirical fact: ethical transformation, reduced suffering, and greater patience toward others as reported by Secular Buddhist practitioners genuinely occur as experiential changes, and they are not categorically different from reports by practitioners in traditional settings. The substance of the controversy is therefore not "whether ethics can have consequences once rebirth is removed," but "what kind of framework is sufficient to sustain and explain these consequences and carry practice beyond well-being in this life." If critics answer the latter question as though it were the former, half their criticism misses its target.

This book holds that the controversy between Secular and traditional Buddhism is both a genuine philosophical dispute—whether karma and rebirth are necessary—and a dispute over identity and resources: who may use the name "Buddhism" and whose practices count. Both levels exist and should be handled separately. The former calls for philosophical analysis; the latter for historical and sociological analysis.⁹

VI. Internal Contradictions and Criticisms¶

As a strategy of reconstruction, Buddhist modernism has provoked criticism from several directions.

Traditionalist criticism: after removing myth, ritual, rebirth, and deities, is what remains still Buddhism? Traditionalists hold that karma and rebirth form the foundation of the whole logic of practice and are not optional "mythic packaging." If practice in this life does not affect a future life, the meaning of arhatship changes completely. Reducing Buddhism to psychological techniques is a fundamental misunderstanding of the tradition rather than its rational purification.

McMahan's criticism: Buddhist modernism created a new Buddhism rather than merely discovering "true Buddhism." Deeply fused with Western Romanticism, the spirit of Protestant reform, and psychological discourse, its product is less a "revival of original Buddhism" than a part of a new "global spiritual culture." This historicizes Buddhist modernism without disparaging it. The movement has its own sources and background; it is not a rootless universal wisdom.¹

Political-economic criticism: some forms of Buddhist modernism, especially corporate meditation and the commercial mindfulness industry, instrumentalize practice as a means to increase productivity and reduce stress, serving existing political and economic structures instead of criticizing them. "Meditating before work so that you can better withstand stress" does not necessarily lead to "questioning whether the job itself should exist in this form." After McMahan, scholars such as Ronald Purser developed this perspective through the critique of "McMindfulness."

Feminist and postcolonial criticism: whose Buddhism is being transmitted? Whose version is treated as "universal"? Western Buddhist modernism often centers the perspective of highly educated, white, middle-class men while neglecting the traditional practices of Asian Buddhist communities, especially Asian immigrant communities, and questions concerning women's status in Buddhist traditions.

VII. The Question of Authenticity¶

Buddhist modernism raises a metaproblem: what is "real Buddhism"?

The question is more complex than it appears. Declaring Buddhist modernism insufficiently "real" presupposes an original, pure, historically unaccumulated "real Buddhism" against which it can be measured. Yet the eleven parts of history traced in this book show that Buddhism has always changed: early Buddhism into the schools, the schools into Mahāyāna, Mahāyāna into tantra, Indian Buddhism into Chinese Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism into Japanese Buddhism, and so on. Every transmission is a recreation, and every recreation has been criticized by someone for "losing the real Buddhism."

This does not mean that "every version is equally authentic" or that "any change is irrelevant." Versions possess real differences. These differences have philosophical significance and have produced real historical controversies. But "authenticity" is ultimately a hermeneutical and political question: who has the authority to decide which Buddhism counts, according to what authority, and in whose interests?

This book's position is that Buddhist modernism is a genuine construction of its historical age within the long river of Buddhist history. It is neither the recovery of some eternally true Buddhism nor a wholesale betrayal of Buddhism. It responded to genuine historical pressures, posed genuine philosophical questions, and generated genuine contemplative and social effects. Criticisms of it, including traditionalist and postcolonial criticism, are equally real and necessary. Taking sides "for" or "against" Buddhist modernism is not this book's task. Historicizing it and seeing its origins and consequences clearly is, in this book's view, the more honest attitude.

Further Reading¶

• Ronald E. Purser. McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. London: Repeater Books, 2019. (Political-economic critique of the mindfulness industry and a recent form of Buddhist modernism)

References¶