Dharma cannot be heard in a world dominated by modern science and technical progress. A great deal of adaptation is needed, and a great change is bound to take place in the exposition of the doctrine.
One of my earliest inspirations in Buddhist thought was Edward Conze (1904–1979). Conze was a British-born Buddhist scholar and practitioner who became one of the foremost Western authorities on Buddhism. To me, Conze was prescient in his observations about where Buddhism needed to go.
Echoing over more than sixty years, his words still stand out to me as among the most clear-cut and visionary. His language can be a little dated, but his thoughts are current. I still cherish my original, used copy of his 1951 book, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development.
At the beginning of that book, Conze says:
Much of what has been handed down as ‘Buddhism’ is due not to the exercise of wisdom, but to the social conditions in which the Buddhist community existed, to the language employed, and to the science and mythology in vogue among the people who adopted it. One must throughout distinguish the exotic curiosities from the essentials of a holy life. (p. 12)
Conze could barely have rendered a clearer statement of the challenges I experienced in finding my way through Buddhist thought. “Exotic curiosities” was an apt way to express how Buddhist ideas often appear. There is an undeniable appeal to images of Buddhas, monks clad in robes, ideas about enlightenment, and even people sitting in lotus posture in meditation.
Later, in assessing the real impact of Buddhism, Conze writes:
Although one may originally be attracted by its remoteness, one can appreciate the real value of Buddhism only when one judges it by the results it produces in one’s own life from day to day. (p. 13)
There, in one swoop, Conze cuts through spiritual materialism—the accumulation of spiritual accomplishments—and points to everyday experience as the measure of progress. I could not have said it better. Hillary and I are fond of saying that daily experience is the ultimate test of our practices.
For me, where Conze really shines is in the following excerpt. This is his challenge to the future, echoing across the ages, to pick up the gauntlet of Buddhist thought and move it into a new era.
During the last 1,000 years no new school of any importance has sprung up, and the Buddhists have merely preserved, as best they could, the great heritage of the past. It is possible to believe that the lotus of the doctrine has, after 1,500 years, fully unfolded itself. Perhaps there is no more to come. The conditions of our industrial civilization, however, offer a challenge which may lead to a new synthesis. Unless our present civilization perishes soon from its own violence, Buddhism will have to seek some accommodation with it. Dharma cannot be heard in a world dominated by modern science and technical progress. A great deal of adaptation is needed, and a great change is bound to take place in the exposition of the doctrine. (p. 68)
Nearly seventy-five years later, Conze’s challenge still stands. Buddhism has spread widely in the West. Yet much of its language, culture, and doctrine remain difficult to reconcile with a world shaped by science, technology, and contemporary life.
Rising to Conze’s challenge means doing what he suggested at the beginning of his book: distinguish the “exotic curiosities” from what is essential, and ask how those essential ideas might be understood and practiced today.
Buddhism is well suited to this adaptation. Throughout its history, the Buddhist tradition has changed enormously as it moved from one culture to another. Even its own philosophy repeatedly warns against reducing ideas to rigid, absolute doctrine.
This calls upon us to question the tradition. To separate what is essential from what accumulated around it. To test its ideas against experience. And to find ways of expressing and practicing them that make sense in the world in which we actually live.
That is what I call Conze’s Gauntlet.
We live in a time when I believe we need our spiritual traditions to serve us as much as they ever have. To do that, they must adapt. To this end, Conze’s words have inspired me for twenty-five years.
Source: Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development, Philosophical Library, 1951.