The Narratives of Buddhism - Tim Loftus

This installment of ReligionWise features Tim Loftus, a recent Ph.D. from Temple University who studies contemporary forms of Buddhism.  In this conversation, we discuss Buddhism in various geographic and cultural contexts. In particular, our conversation turns to the way that Buddhism is imagined in the contemporary world and the relationship between that narrative and the historical record.

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Episode Transcript

Chip Gruen (00:09):
Welcome to ReligionWise, the podcast where
we feature educators,researchers and other
professionals discussing topicson religion and their relevance
to the public conversation. Myname is Chip Gruen I'm the
Director of the Institute forReligious and Cultural
Understanding at MuhlenbergCollege, and I will be the host
for this podcast.

(00:31):
It gives me great pleasure towelcome Tim Loftus to
ReligionWise. He is a recentlyminted Ph.D. in May of 2022,
from Temple University onTibetan Buddhism. In today's
conversation, we not only talkabout Buddhism, but we talk
about the reception of Buddhismin various cultural landscapes,

(00:53):
at different times, not only inIndia, but also in Western
Europe, and the United States. Ithink this is an interesting
conversation, because it seeksto destabilize the idea of a
pure in this case, Buddhisttradition, we could say the same
about Christianity, or Hinduismor Islam. But one of the things

(01:17):
that anybody in religiousstudies, anybody who studies
religion, academically, willattest to is that there are
great diversities of all ofthese traditions, within
different times in differentplaces around the world and
throughout time. And so wereally think about the problems
with thinking about what a pureBuddhism from 500 BCE would look

(01:43):
like, what are the sources forthat, given the absence a lot of
good sources for that, how isthe tradition constructed or
reconstructed in later timeperiods? And then beyond that,
how does that tradition fit ornot fit in the Western cultural
landscape, for example. How doesthe story get told of the

(02:06):
Buddhist tradition that suitsparticular values, agendas, or
narratives? Now, I don't wantthis to seem like this is an
overly pessimistic or cynicaltake on Buddhism, in fact, it's
quite the opposite. Instead,it's a recognition that the

(02:27):
human practice of religion,whether it be in Asia, North
America, Europe, Africa,Central, South America,
Australia, wherever, iscomplicated. And to imagine a
orthodox description of anyreligious tradition becomes a
theological rather thanhistorical or academic endeavor.

(02:50):
And so it was great fun to talkto Dr. Loftus about these issues
and how they pertain toBuddhism, about the translation
of Buddhism to the West, and howthat happens, and a number of
different historical contexts,how Buddhism is considered and
understood today, and how wemight get a richer, more fuller

(03:14):
understanding of this ancienttradition. Welcome to
ReligionWise Tim Loftus.

Tim Loftus (03:22):
Hey, Chip. Thanks for having me. It's really, it's
great to be here.

Chip Gruen (03:25):
So a lot of our conversation today is going to
be digging down into particularcultural translations of
Buddhism, how the traditionchanges when it goes into
different, different culturalmanifestations, and so forth.
But before we can get there, Ithink it would be really helpful
for our audience, just to hearBuddhism on one foot, if you

(03:48):
will, just what you know, forsomeone who doesn't know a lot
about the tradition. Where doesit come from? What are some of
the central tenets? How can webegin to understand this
tradition?

Tim Loftus (03:58):
Yeah, sure. I think there's probably a lot of sort
of, like in the popularimagination, a sense of
Buddhism, being generally anAsian tradition, which is the
case I mean, in root, you know,that's where that's where it
comes from originally. But Ithink it's important to note
that Buddhism comes out of SouthAsia specifically, it's an

(04:18):
Indian religion, originally, andit's coming out of the Vedic
context. So that so when youthink about South Asia and
India, think about Hinduism, Ithink it's important to kind of
put Buddhism into that familyand recognize the Buddha as a
kind of historical figure was inthat milieu. He was a Hindu, if

(04:41):
you will, for lack of a betterterm, and a bit of a reformer.
So he is at the beginning ofwhat we think of as the
renunciate tradition in SouthAsia, so he renounced his status
his his cast his claim to thethrone, he was a prince. And

(05:02):
began wandering and practicingasceticism, meditation in search
of some kind of like higherspiritual knowledge, right
inspired by really theUpanishads. Upanishadic
tradition gave rise to thisrenunciant movement and he is
coming out and we call that theShramana tradition where the
rise of kind of wanderingmendicants in India, which now I

(05:24):
think we kind of associated withIndia generally, but this is
kind of the beginning of thatmovement, Jainism, Buddhism,
Ajiva, these renunciatetraditions have come out of this
moment, like 500 BCE, where thiskind of wandering tradition
really took off. Buddhism beingthe most famous and kind of well
established of those renunciatetraditions that continues into

(05:46):
the present. Um, so, the so kindof, in a general sense, the, the
goal of Buddhism is to emulatethat path that the Buddha kind
of undertook in renouncing hisworldly life. And in search of
some kind of spiritualattainment, there's this kind of
an understanding in the Buddhisttradition, that through effort
on the spiritual path, one canattain kind of a deeper

(06:09):
realization about what it meansto be a human, how to become
free from suffering,essentially, one of the big
insights the Buddha had after heleft his palace and began
wandering was, it's called the,they're called the Four Noble
Truths, where he became kind ofacutely aware of the reality of
kind of a universal sense ofsuffering that people have.

(06:32):
Suffering and kind of a generalsense associated with pain, but
also a more kind of existentialsuffering, where we kind of have
this yearning for deepermeaning, right, like a sense
that something is wrong. Andthat drove him to find
something, something beyond ourkind of regular rat race, sort

(06:53):
of approach to, to living. Sothat's kind of built in or kind
of, baked into the sense of howBuddhism works, I think, at
least in a kind of general sensethat, that through effort on the
spiritual path, one can attainsome kind of deeper
understanding about what istrue, what it is to be a human,
how to break free fromsuffering.

Chip Gruen (07:16):
So one of the things you didn't mention here, and I
just want to underscore for theaudience is that there's not
any, you know, in, in the formsof Buddhism you're talking
about, there's not any idea ofreverence for deity, the
importance of gods, so much sothat in religious studies,
sometimes there's conversationabout whether, you know,

(07:37):
Buddhism, you know, depending onhow you define religion, whether
Buddhism fits into the categoryor not, can you talk a little
bit about that, and how itseparates a little itself a
little bit from that older Hindutradition that you mentioned?

Tim Loftus (07:48):
Yeah, there is.
Yeah, exactly. There is thissort of long standing kind of
tension, I guess, and thereception of Buddhism in the
West about, like, whether tothink of it as atheistic or non
theistic? Or what is the kind ofstatus of transcendence or like,
is there a god or somethingelse? And the kind of settlement
I guess, that's been sort ofreached regarding this, like,

(08:11):
like His Holiness, the DalaiLama has described Buddhism as
like a non theistic tradition.
And that's generally I think,the way scholars and maybe in
like popular imagination, wethink about Buddhism as non
theistic. So this idea thatBuddhism is just not taking a
stance on the issue, that it'smore concerned with describing

(08:33):
kind of mind and mental eventsdescribing the way in which
suffering happens and thenleaving whatever happens after
the alleviation of suffering orthe elimination Nirvana, which
is this word that means likeextinction or the end of
suffering that is leftunarticulated in kind of the

(08:53):
original, maybe, let's say,like, in a basic sense. So it's
almost like this not this thiskind of take on non theism is
sort of like, well, maybe thereis or maybe there isn't we're
not, we're not that interestedin talking about, like, what
what's happening afterwards,it's almost as if, like, one was
stuck in a dark room, you know,I think the Buddhist stance

(09:14):
would be, well, we could sit andtalk about how great it is.
outside the room, you know, wecould describe the the landscape
and the sun in the sky, and thegreen grass and all of that. But
that doesn't help us get out ofthe room, you know. So instead
of sitting around and talkingabout that, we could give
instructions, like maybe take 10steps to the left, feel the wall
and you'll feel the doorknob,and then you can get out. What's

(09:35):
outside is something that likewhat one would would see when
they get there. There's not muchsort of being articulated about
what that world is. So that Ithink is like maybe a way of
thinking about this kind of nontheism. It's not so much like
there is or there, isn't it sortof like, it's not a fruitful
conversation from a Buddhistpoint of view to like, speculate
on that sort of like ontologicalkind of like question, is it or

(09:56):
is it not there, you know?

Chip Gruen (09:58):
So a lot of your work work concentrates on this
contemporary South AsianBuddhist movement that is
associated with B.R. Ambedkar?

Tim Loftus (10:11):
Ambedkar. Right.
Yeah.

Chip Gruen (10:14):
And I want to use that and your work as a doorway,
into thinking about how thistradition emerges, as you
mentioned, in about 500 BCE longtime ago, for people who are
keeping score about 500 yearsbefore the emergence of
Christianity. But then, youknow, over the course of the

(10:37):
millennia, it because of thedifferent contexts it might it
develops, right, and it takes onthe cultural attitudes and
values and so forth, that arearound it. And this is true of
any any religious tradition. SoI want to start with this
contemporary South AsianBuddhism that you do your work

(10:58):
on. And then after that, we canthink also about the translation
to the west. That happens atvarious times, both in, in
Western Europe, in particularand in the United States.

Tim Loftus (11:09):
Yeah, I mean, Buddhism is an interesting case,
right, in some ways in this withregard to this, because it was
eliminated from the Indiansubcontinent, you know, around,
maybe, let's say, 1100 CE, likea roundabouts, right, due to
several factors like Hindu,Hindu pressures, kind of

(11:30):
competitive pressures from Hinduor brahminical, religionists in
India, you could say, and thenoutside Muslim invasions.
Buddhism was basicallycompletely eliminated from the
subcontinent with a few, likeexceptions like Sri Lanka, or
Nepal, but it creates thisvacuum, right where we don't, we
don't know that much about whatnothing was written down in, in

(11:55):
the Buddhist tradition untilpretty late, like some of the
earliest texts that we haveactually, like written texts are
really only around 200 CE ish.
So there's a big gap in thiskind of reconstruction. And then
even from 200 CE until thatending of Buddhism in the
subcontinent, a lot of whatwe're relying on is the

(12:16):
translation worked on by theChinese and in Tibet, to
reconstruct the picture ofBuddhism there. So it creates
this vacuum, where we can sortof imagine we can rely on our
imagination to kind of fill inthe gaps about like, what
Buddhism looked like in India.
And that criss created I think,opportunity for kind of a

(12:40):
particularly like, modernistinflected idea of what kind of
the nature of Buddhism is,because we're kind of, we're
creating it in many ways, in away that's kind of unique to
Buddhism, because of that, thevacuum that was created by its
absence in India. So the storythat I told about the Buddha and
about the kind of the essence ofBuddhism, I think, you can
probably hear in it this, thisparticular kind of maybe liberal

(13:03):
inflection, you know, there'sthis individual sort of quest
for meaning and, you know, thisemphasis on contemplation and
rationality. And I think it'ssafe to say that a lot of that
is present in the texts that wethat we do have, and we look
back to recreate this kind ofidea of Buddhism. It's there, we

(13:24):
can read it. But we also are, Ithink, missing a lot of other
stuff, right? We're particularcreating a particular kind of
like modernist inflectedBuddhism inflected by, like
these discourses of liberalism,in particular individualism,
contemplation, scientificcompatibility, rationalism, the
stuff that we often associatewith Buddhism. So it's a little

(13:46):
bit reconstructive right andAmbedkarite Buddhism. So you
reference my, my particularinterest there, is a
particularly interesting examplebecause it's it's a modernist
movement that for those whodon't know, B.R. Ambedkar was
this figure in monumentallyimportant figure in India, he

(14:06):
was the chief architect of theConstitution. He studied at
Columbia with John Dewey, hewent to London School of
Economics, did a Ph.D. there. Idid a Ph.D. at Columbia. He was
the first Law Minister of India.
Massively important figure, buthe did all of this as an
untouchable. So when you kind offactor that into it, it's almost

(14:26):
impossible, the kind of profilethat he was able to kind of
like, you know, create theimpact that he had. And one of
the most incredible things aboutand that's not often discussed
is that he converted to Buddhismjust before his death in 1956.
He decided there was no placefor him as an untouchable and
other untouchables formallyuntouchable people now called

(14:47):
Dalits in India, and theyconverted to Buddhism in mass
and probably the largest massconversion moment in modern
human history is about 600,000people at the ceremony and then
like millions follow, there'snow about seven million Dalit
Ambedkarite Buddhists in India.
And they created this this newmodernist kind of form of
Buddhism. That is a conversionmovement like we see in Europe

(15:12):
and in America. But this storythat they tell about to the
Buddha was and what theimportant teachings are of
Buddhism are very, verydifferent than what we see in
Europe and in America. So wherein America, we see this kind of
transcendentally inflected kindof inflected by the discourses
of liberalism, as I wasdescribing before, we see this
very ethically orientedtradition in in South Asia. And

(15:33):
Ambedkarite Buddhism, where theBuddha is seen as a social
reformer, or someone who kind ofreally prominently rejected
caste and Ambedkarite Buddhiststoday, like build clinics and
schools and are politicallyactive, and they think about
Buddhism as sort of like atheological ground for social
action, you know, where, in theWest, I think we often that

(15:56):
would be a shock, I think, tothink about Buddhism as being
kind of a liberation theology.
So it yeah, there are all thesedifferent kinds of iterations at
different times, and indifferent places, and even in
like, modernist sort of moments,you know, Ambedkarite Buddhism
can provide this contrast oflike, even just shifting the
dial a little bit to South Asia,you get this very different
modernist presentation ofBuddhism. So yeah, that was a
lot. And you know, I think it'salso interesting to say that,

(16:19):
like, you can watch Buddhism inIndia, even in its original
Indian context, where the earlytradition we associate with
Pali, the Pali language, but asas Buddhism becomes more kind of
marinated in brahminical culturein India takes on Sanskrit,
Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit as atext language develops. And you
get this sort of more highculture, more kind of Buddhist

(16:43):
elite, the establishment ofBuddhist monasteries, and great
universities happens in Indiaduring the golden period. So you
see Buddhism being kind of like,pulled up, out of maybe the
renunciant tradition that theBuddha that is associated with
the Buddha originally, so thiskind of constant shifting, as
you noted, like common acrossreligious traditions, but...

Chip Gruen (17:04):
Yeah, and I just want to jump in here and
underscore lest anybody get themisconception that, ah, you
know, Buddhism is this, youknow, shifting thing that you
can't get your hands on. Notlike my religious tradition,
right? That this is that, youknow, you study religion, you

(17:24):
know, of any stripe,Christianity, Judaism, Islam,
Hinduism, you know, go spreadthe gamut, that you'll see
incredible diversity within anyof those traditions for these
very same reasons, right, thatthe context is different, the
time is different. The valuesthat are espoused by the
community is different. So youmentioned, you know, the sort of

(17:47):
liberation theology kind of tiltof this particular type of
Buddhism and contemporary India,you know, go and look at
liberation, you know, that wordliberation theology comes, comes
out of, you know, Catholictradition in South and Central
America that has particulareither liberal or even more left

(18:08):
leaning, socialist, Marxisttendencies, right, which is, of
course, very different than, youknow, other types of
Christianity that lean, youknow, as we're reminded of
daily, you know, further andfurther right word in many parts
of the world. So, you know, thisis this is the way that that
religion works. It's not, it'snot corruption of religion, it's

(18:31):
not, you know, it's not cynicalin any way. It just reflects,
not only influences, butreflects cultural attitudes and
values that surround it.

Tim Loftus (18:44):
Right. I mean, it's interesting to note like, that
we don't know, Dr. Ambedkar'sname very, most popularly in the
West, where we may know,Gandhi's name right, where
that's Gandhi is a householdname, I think, at this point and
kind of Euro America, but wedon't know Ambedkar's name, and

(19:05):
it's interesting given, like, asI was describing earlier, how
prolific you know, he was is, Imean, he produced like, 17
volumes of writing. He was apragmatist. You know, as a
student of Dewey, he, he wroteon economics, political economy,
you know, he held politicaloffice, he was this huge figure.

(19:25):
We don't know, we don't know hisname, generally speaking. And
you know, he had this huge beefwith Gandhi throughout his life
these two is not an anoverstatement to say they were
actual enemies, you know. Sothis is fascinating, kind of,
like, conspicuous omission inour imagination about what is

(19:45):
removed from my point of view,concerned about religion or
thinking about religion andBuddhism. Why don't we know his
name? And it I think one of theinteresting kind of avenues for
thought about that why is theway in which there is this kind
of like coalescing or kind ofattempt to nail down what like,

(20:06):
that's not Buddhism and a lot ofthe scholarship that has been
written about his approach toBuddhism in particular has kind
of focused on that. Or, youknow, apologists will say like,
well, it is this big deviationfrom the norm, but it still
counts, or or those who, whoargue that it's just too far
afield that it's not, doesn'tconcentrate enough on

(20:26):
meditation, it's not doesn'tlook enough, like the kind of
Buddhism that we imagine in theWest inflected by our own
presuppositions so that it's,it's too far afield. It's it's
not Buddhism. So we see thateven happening right now that
like, there is this thing calledBuddhism and it has these
particular features. And yeah,this kind of natural tendency

(20:48):
and Ambedkar can can reallydisrupt a lot of those
commitments, I think, in a veryinteresting way.

Chip Gruen (20:55):
Yeah, I always find it really interesting that that
can be a kind of distinction,that I'm going to be cynical
here for a minute masquerades inscholarly clothing, right? That
real Buddhism looks like this orreal Christianity looks like
this or what have you. But I'vealways found that when you start
making those distinctions,sooner or later, they become

(21:16):
theological, rather thanscholastic scholarly academic
distinctions.

Tim Loftus (21:20):
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point
Buddhism, again, I mean,obviously, I have, I think it's
an is a particularly interestingexample in this regard. I may be
biased there. But but because,again, maybe because of that
absence, or the initialreception of the category,
through the lens of let's sayTranscendentalism via like

(21:40):
theosophy, which was this kindof movement, this kind of
occultist movement hadspearheaded by people like
Madame Blavatsky, or ColonelColonel Olcott, sorry, these
kind of big, you know,interesting occultist figures
who were kind of like ColonelOlcott. In particular, you know,
we're kind of interested in arespiritualization, of

(22:02):
Christianity, a kind of creationof a universal perennial
spirituality. And they sought todo it through the construction
of Buddhism, and in some ways,really consciously, were, were
constructing a new Buddhism, ifyou will, right? That then got
kind of interculturally throughlike a process of mimesis.

(22:25):
Right, I think Charles Halliseyand Richard King have taken up
this idea of interculturalmimesis, this where, or maybe
the pizza effect, where like,something gets exported, like,
like pizza gets exported fromItaly becomes an American thing.
And then, you know, now there'sPizza Huts all over in Rome, you
know, people buying the sort ofAmerican thing, right, like
Buddhism, you can think about,like the construction of

(22:46):
Buddhism via theosophy is thissort of, like pizza effect,
where they're taking this sortof, ostensibly at least Asian
thing, making it into this sortof rational science, universal
religion sort of thing. And thensending it back, you know, like
to Sri Lanka, in particular,right, Colonel Olcott goes
there, and he does this wholekind of like, through with

(23:06):
Dharmapala, Anagarika, right,they, they create this new,
rational movement that existstoday. Right, so you have this,
this self identification fromAsian elites, Asian monastic
elites, with this Buddhismthat's inflicted by this Euro
American kind of liberalism, ifyou will, right. Without much

(23:29):
memory of anything that was thathappened prior, you know? So
there's this interesting kind ofcase with Buddhism, I think,
where because it's, it'sreceived in this really kind of
consonant way, consonant with alot of the dominant discourses
like of liberalism, then it's,it's kind of a darling, you

(23:50):
know, it's not very threatening,right? It's, it's nice, it's
rational, it's sort of like,it's private. It's not, it
doesn't make any like kind ofdemands socially. Whereas like,
in contrast, we could thinkabout Islam as this sort of
like, like, if Buddhism is thedarling child Islam is maybe the
problem child in terms of theconstruction of a world religion

(24:12):
and, and, you know, EuroAmerican scholarly mind, Islam
is kind of antinomical I think,right. Generally speaking, to
liberal commitments, it's thiskind of, it's imagined to be as,
you know, violent or, orregressive, or primitive or
something and anti liberal. So alot of postcolonial scholarship

(24:33):
people like Saeed or or Assad,right, Saba Muhammad that have
been writing really cogently andcritically about liberalism, you
know, it's no, I think it's nocoincidence that's coming from
this Islamic studies or from theIslamic point of view. Whereas

(24:54):
from the Buddhist work, I thinkfrom Buddhist studies point of
view, we're kind of reallybehind the curve, you know,
there's there's still thisability to just sit back and
translate texts focus on theliterary tradition talk about
meditation, and everybody's finewith that, because there's not a
there's no real sort of push tolike, go harder. You know, I
think there was a moment maybelike 15 years ago, where there

(25:15):
was this, like, this burst ofliterature critic, like drawing
on critical religion theory,from Buddhist studies point of
view, but it seems that we seemto have like, stepped back. And
we're doing a lot of more justsort of good old fashioned
philology lately. So,

Chip Gruen (25:30):
Yeah, it's interesting. It didn't have to
be that way, though, right. Imean, that you could get a
translation of Buddhism, youknow, and I think that we see
this in other parts of theworld, although not major
traditions, where the concept ofthe community is, is big. I
mean, because that's that, youknow, you're talking about the
individual versus, versus thecommunity in Islam, you know,

(25:50):
the sort of the dominantparadigm of how that gets
exported, is very interested incommunity and how one acts in
community with other people.
Whereas, you know, that'spresent in Buddhism, right? It
just hasn't been emphasized.

Tim Loftus (26:03):
Totally, it's almost more compelling. Like, I feel
like you could tell a reallyinteresting, compelling story
through that lens, you know,this, there's a whole body of
text. So the Buddhist canontexturally is divided into three
baskets. It's called like theSutra Pitaka, Abhidhamma Pitaka,
Sutra Pitaka, like the storiesof the Buddha. Thus have I heard
the Buddha was at this place inthis happen, and the Abhidhamma

(26:25):
Pitaka, this basket where a lotof those Sutra teachings get
distilled into like lists andnumbers, it's sometimes thought
of as like Buddhist psychology,describing mind and mental
events are the kind of distilledpoints. And then the Vinaya,
which is the third basket, andthe entire basket is about
basically how to live incommunity. It's ethical

(26:45):
prescriptions for what to do andwhat not to do. These original
followers of the Buddha, when hebecame a renunciant, wanted to
hang out with him follow himaround, and rules had to be
made. And they got more and morecompli-complicated and
articulated. And it turned intoan entire body of texts that are

(27:06):
used to this day to organizemonastic life. You know, we
often Buddhism if there's no wayaround, like, and it is the
case, Buddhism has been prettymonastically oriented wherever
it has gone. And there's someinteresting exceptions,
exceptions to that, but butmonasticism has been a part of
Buddhism from the beginning. Soyou could tell a really

(27:27):
interesting story. And Ambedkaris somebody actually who does
something like this, who reallykind of radically tries to
rethink what the Sangha or thecommunity is in the Buddhist
tradition. And he does it alongthese lines of kind of bringing
the laity in and making thesekinds of demands on them on
monastics to serve as kind ofservants or social models for

(27:51):
how to live an ethicallyoriented life, as opposed to
being renunciate to go kind oflive in a secluded separate
place, which is often the way wethink about it in contemporary
Buddhism, or maybe even has beenpracticed historically. So
there's more kind of engagedidea of sangha that would very
much make demands on, you know,that would raise red flags

(28:13):
about, for example, Google,using mindfulness meditation to
squeeze like more productivityper employee, you know, out of,
you know, to increase revenue orwhatever, right. So like these
kind of questions about like,Well, should the military be
using mindfulness medicatemeditation to be like, helping
snipers fire more, you know,accurately under pressure? These

(28:36):
are these are big questions anda more ethically oriented, maybe
less, darling kind of receptionof Buddhism, I think, what if
you will, would have thisability to push back a little
bit, you know, Slavoj Žižekwrote a piece, not, I guess, a
little while ago at this point,arguing that if we're not

(28:58):
careful Buddhism, the receptionof Buddhism will make, you know,
Calvinism look like kind ofchild's play in terms of its
ability to buttress the, thedominant power dynamic, you
know, capitalism, generallyspeaking.

Chip Gruen (29:12):
So you mentioned something and I want to sort of
take a break and go back alittle bit, just to sort of fill
in some gaps because honestly,because this is something that's
super interesting to me. Butwhen we talk about the
translation of of Buddhism tothe United States, and you can
correct me if I'm wrong, butyou've you've mentioned one that
historical periods here beingyou know, sort of the turn of

(29:34):
the 19th into the 20th centurywe see the rise of
spiritualists, I would alsopoint to the World Parliament of
Religions in Chicago as being areally big point where people
are exposed to Asian, Southeastand East and South Asian thought
from a lot of people if youdon't know anything about out

(29:54):
there and listeners who don'tknow anything about the World
Parliament of Religions, it's aninteresting thing to look up,
you know, simply becausephotography hit emerged at that
point too, it's just reallyinteresting to look at the, the
records of that particularmeeting. So that's one
historical period I'd like totalk about as we get and you've

(30:15):
mentioned this a little bitalready, but I'd like to flesh
that out a little bit. And thenthe other one is that we get the
liberalization of immigrationpolicy from Asia generally in
the 1960s. And I think that thatreally changes the face of the
kinds of your the presence of ofnot only communities, but ideas

(30:37):
in our world that then that thenreally, you know, sort of grow
and develop in that period aswell. So I'd like to highlight
both of those and think abouthow those have affected the
growth and development and howwe think about Buddhism in in
the contemporary West.

Tim Loftus (30:52):
Yeah, that's a good point, I think the World Parl...
1893 World Parliament is this,as you know, a really important
moment and Dharmapala was therelike along with Swami
Vivekananda, I think, SwamiVivekananda, who was this kind
of Neo Hindu, Neo Vedanta,Bengali Renaissance figure who

(31:13):
was engaged along with a fewother kind of modernist South
Asian, kind of pre independencefigures who were interested in
thinking about how to exportHinduism, or respond to the
colonial enterprise in a waythat kind of re empowered people
in the subcontinent, to kind ofpush back right to, to kind of

(31:35):
reclaim some high ground thatHinduism can be conceptualized
as, as rational, as modern, asyou know, we had these ideas in
our Vedas, you know, thescientific ideas in our Vedas,
you know, 1000s of years beforethe Britishers kind of came up
with them, this sort of like reempowering narrative or project,

(31:59):
along with like, the Arya Samajor the Brahmo Samaj, this sort
of like moment that washappening. And Dharmapala was
there as well, who is reallyimportant, Sri Lankan figure and
brought Buddhism into theconversation in a similar way.
But what's interesting thereabout that, I think, is where

(32:21):
Swami Vivekananda made bigwaves, and we are continuing to
continuing to feel them. Thepicture that we get through that
presentation is a prettybrahminically inflected, if you
will, like high caste sort ofway of thinking about what South

(32:41):
Asian religion is, if you will,and it's inflected with this
kind of orientalist, maybemystical East kind of way of
thinking about religion in thesubcontinent. And I think that
continues to this day because ofthe diaspora. The maybe related
to your second point about theway in which the doors opened to
Asia, via immigration, thepeople who were able to come

(33:02):
here from South Asia, largelyhave been continued to be from
Suvarna or higher castebackgrounds, just because maybe
they're more well off, orthey've had access to accumulate
wealth and can leave India. Sothe picture that we've gotten
about religion in South Asia hasbeen sort of from monophonic, if

(33:25):
you will, it's it's brahminical.
Dharmapala went back to SriLanka, through the Theosophists
reanimated this sort of likeBuddhist revival movement, but
then he broke with them overthis construction of like a
Universalist religion more inline with that, like Vivekananda
project that like continues toinflect our understanding about
like yoga and mysticism andstuff. And Buddhism in Sri

(33:47):
Lanka, although having its rootsin this theosophy movement, took
this turn into my ethics, whereSarvodaya Shramadana is this
movement that in Sri Lanka, thatcontinues to be very active and
important in thinking aboutBuddhism as an indigenous and
nationalist kind of nationbuilding project. So there's all

(34:09):
kinds of like road building andworks projects and stuff that
are built on like Buddhistideals in Sri Lanka, that then
influenced Ambedkar in thecreation of his Buddhism in
India. So we get this sort oflike, I think, here in the West,
I guess the point being is weget this kind of particularly
inflected view of what religionis like via Vivekananda and then

(34:30):
continued through this sort oflike imagination of Gandhi as
this, you know, this sort ofmystical man in his dhoti or his
loincloth and staff and youknow, this kind of like,
spiritual thing, we do our yogaand it's all very, like,
spiritual or whatever. Butthat's, it's because I think
through this vehicle throughwhich we're receiving it through

(34:52):
the diaspora that is likelargely high caste and has maybe
benefited from like the BostonBrahmins received a literal
Brahmins from from India toconstruct this kind of elite
transmission line kind ofproject. Lost and that is like
the everyday sort of quotidianaspect of like, you know, the
way in which religion just is abasic meaning making moral

(35:14):
meaning making vehicle inpeople's lives. So, yeah, that's
yeah, I don't know. That's along kind of wandering thing...

Chip Gruen (35:23):
No, no, I mean, well, what's coming through to
me and I'd like your your takeon this is the way in which,
even though we might haveseparate chains of transmission
through Hindu channels, orBuddhist channels, different
immigrant communities, differentleaders, whether they be from

(35:45):
Sri Lanka or Bengal or what haveyou, at the World Parliament are
moving forward. I'm justthinking about the suburbanite
in the contemporary UnitedStates who loves who says, oh,
yeah, I'm a Buddhist, I go toyoga, right, you know, and
really, you know, mixes thesethings up, right, and sort of
takes this sort of general senseof, of Eastern traditions, and

(36:12):
you can't see my scare quotesI'm making, and just sort of put
them in the blender. Right. Andthat that's, that's the, you
know, again, not the proper, thepure, the unadulterated form of
the traditions, but it is thepublic discourse on these
traditions in our world thatthat we encounter.

Tim Loftus (36:30):
Right, yeah, I think a little bit, I'm here, I'm
trying to just be descriptive,but I'm sure there's some hint
of like, a normative stance inhere. And a little bit, I mean,
I know you're like, when youlook at Buddhism, and like in
the, in the West, for example,there largely are two different
camps, like in historically,like scholars have kind of
thought about it this way. Wherethere are immigrant communities,

(36:52):
so people who have come fromAsian traditions and continue to
practice their form of Buddhismwith their community, right. So
like, here in Philadelphia,where I am, there are Cambodian,
Thai, Vietnamese, a lot oftemples in South Philadelphia,
but then there are another camp,right? Where there are these
meditation centers, or even morereligiously oriented Buddhist

(37:13):
centers, but almost exclusivelypopulated by converts, who are
largely white, middle to uppermiddle class, highly literate,
highly educated people who arecoming to Buddhism through this
kind of maybe initial popularcontact via, you know, reading
or whatever kind of media,they've used to consume this

(37:34):
thing, right? So there'shistorically been these two
different kinds of camps. Andthere's a lot of discourse
around why that is, or whetherthat's a problem or not a
problem, or who, who gets toclaim what Buddhism is, is this
sort of, like, open question,you know, but I think a larger
point around that is, is justthe fact that, you know, that's

(37:55):
kind of the way it is, at thispoint, you know, like modernity
is, the tentacles are totallyall reaching now, there's not I
don't think there's a part ofthe world we can say that it's
not affected by modernity, evenlike uncontacted peoples, right
at this point, are like thepressures from, like, modernity
is, like, just a fact. So Ithink we we may be in this is a

(38:19):
normative stance, we do need toget past this discourse of
purity. And maybe a lot of whatI've been saying is like, there
really isn't, it's, it's, it'spretty much impossible, I think,
at this point to articulate orfind some kind of pure Buddhism,
it's so complicated by theoriginal kind of reception, that

(38:42):
vacuum of Buddhism and itsoriginal, that huge vacuum,
right, that it's disappearancefrom the subcontinent, it's,
we're our reliance on itstransmission via, you know,
multiple different kinds ofcultural backgrounds. And then
just our ability to accessbeyond the horizon, if you will,
you know, this is just sort oflike the, the problem that
postcolonial theorists arealways pointing to, or

(39:03):
subalterns at least saying,Well, how can we know what
traditional is, right? We're,we're limited by our own
methodologies. And really, thetask seems to be just to be
honest with like a reflexivestance, and recognize that we're
studying our own kind ofpresuppositions and commitments
as much as much as any kind of asensible object out there. So

(39:24):
there's something sort of maybea little bit not so satisfying
about that stance, but it's alsokind of honest, I think, right?
Where, where there never was aBuddhism, you know? And then
that can kind of you can kind ofgo down a pretty, pretty, pretty
deep hole with that. And somescholarship does thinking about,
like, Where does the idea ofBuddhism actually start? You
know, like, where do peoplewhere do people actually say

(39:46):
like, I'm a Buddhist, and it'sactually I think it's pretty
late. You know, it's, it seemsto be like in the, during the
colonial period, where, wheremaybe prior to that Buddhism is
one of the many kind ofmultifocal You know, you have
you have Yogachara Buddhists andYarmulke, Buddhists. And you
have like Vedanta, proponents ofVedanta and all this sort of

(40:07):
like, tons of loud kind ofchaotic discourse happening in
classical Indian tradition. Andit's not clear that people are
conceptualizing themselves aslike religionists maybe in the
way that that, that we wouldnow, you know, so that kind of
retrospectively, kind ofcreating this category is more
like a product of our own way ofcarving up the world than it is
in anything actually having beenthere and that way, you know?

Chip Gruen (40:31):
Yeah, so you mentioned just the term, you
know, talking about modernism,and I just want to highlight,
you know, it's everywhere, itstentacles are everywhere. And
for those, you know, those outthere who don't sort of get the
implication of what you mean, bythat, I mean, can you highlight
some of the key characteristicsof modernism? Are you talking
about competition? Are youtalking about sort of the

(40:52):
cafeteria attitude towardsculture? Like, what are some of
the things that are reallyhighlight those tentacles of
modernism that you talked about?

Tim Loftus (41:02):
Yeah, I think this sort of, well, maybe just from
my own experience, I could say,so having spent a lot of time in
India. I'm back and forth there,pretty much every year, I lived
there for extended periods oftime. And I'm always still sort
of taken by just how entrenchedthis sort of like how the how
market, market economics arejust sort of ubiquitous how

(41:24):
people like getting an MBA is,you know, there's different kind
of programs, for getting an MBAon billboards all over the
place, like in you know, ruralvillages in India. So, like
this, this sort of orientationtowards consumerism, and kids
wearing like, Marvel t-shirts inlike, you know, Lassa or
something. So there's, there'sthis, this kind of ubiquity of,

(41:49):
I think, if you will, like me,like modernity, for lack of a
better term, I think. And interms of like, maybe Buddhism,
specifically to kind of keep iton topic, even just this idea of
like Buddhism being, so with theAmbedkarites that I've spent a
lot of time with in India, it'sclear to me that the way that

(42:10):
they think about Buddhism issubaltern, if you will, but also
very modernist, you know, theyare text oriented, they are
thinking about this as like anindividual sort of like, path.
And the Buddha is this veryrational kind of person. But
it's an Asian iteration, youknow, Ambedkar was, was a

(42:31):
student of Dewey, but came backand like, engaged with this sort
of indigenous religion, if youwill. There's no real escaping
it, I think. Yeah, I don't knowif that answers it. Yeah,

Chip Gruen (42:43):
Yeah. No, and I'm really interested in this. And
I've run into it in other inother traditions, as well, you
know, talking to other, youknow, other other scholars of
other religious traditions, butI'm interested in the way that,
you know, we think about linesof transmission for influence
that we almost always as sort ofour shorthand think of

(43:06):
influences going one way. Butit's not only going both ways,
but it's imagine a continuingcircle, you know,of things
picking up accruingcharacteristics and then dumping
them back again. That is just,it's just so interesting. One of
the key things I'm taking awayfrom this conversation.

Tim Loftus (43:24):
Yeah, I think this kind of like pizza effect idea.
I mean, I'm particularly kind oflike taking, like, because I
think the implications arepretty big, right? Though, maybe
the natural impulse and sort oflike diving into a more kind of
critical reading of like theconstruction of the category of
Buddhism, where their initialreception or whatever, is to
say, Oh, well, there's nothingthere or we were wrong, there's
this other thing or some kind ofimpulse to go back maybe even go

(43:46):
back further, you know, what isthe Pali say, or to kind of like
short circuit some of thatculturally driven or like the
presuppositions that areunderneath the creation of this
category to kind of shortcircuit that but I think is a
maybe like a fool's errand,right? That's what kind of comes
through from this is that like,even though there's no there

(44:07):
there, so to speak, it doesn'thave to turn into this kind of
like nihilistic project, we cankind of be brought back to like,
let's, let's drop that wholething. And maybe adopt, like,
Richard King has argued for,like, maybe creating, like a
more like, cultural studiesapproach where like, there is
this sort of, like, maybe whatwe're doing is like, through the
merging of horizons, right,we're kind of like, learning as

(44:31):
much about ourselves as we areabout other right, and there's,
and that's the work at the endof the day, right? The work
isn't necessarily to nail downsome kind of museum-afide kind
of, like, accurate pictureobject or something, you know.

Chip Gruen (44:45):
Yeah, I think another way of saying that,
maybe, maybe, and you youmentioned, that you are aiming
in our conversation to bedescriptive. But I really like
and this is something in myfield and in ancient
Christianity that people talkabout redescription all the
time, even though you know, eventhough we're talking about
something from whatever thesecond or the third century,

(45:06):
we're talking about sort ofpicking up and describing it in
its particular context at itsparticular moment. And again,
not necessarily connecting itto, you know, a master narrative
of the history of Christianity,but saying, okay, in I don't
know, Carthage in this year,this is what people are doing.

(45:27):
This is how people are, areliving in their world. And we
can we can describe that, whichis not necessarily navel gazing
about 21st century Americanidentity, right, which I think
is the other side of the slopethat we can go down.

Tim Loftus (45:41):
Yeah. It's tricky, right? I think Ambedkar does
this interesting project. Andone of the reasons he's really
attacked is he, he heavily renarrates the life of the Buddha,
like, it strips out all kinds ofdetails from what we find in
traditional sources, likeAshvaghosa's Buddhacharita that
which he leans on and othersutra sources. But he

(46:05):
unapologetically says straightup what he's gonna do, he's
gonna He's gonna re narrate thestory, eliminate this is kind of
Jeffersonian course, sort of whoreally just cuts out all of the,
all of the magic stuff and justkeeps it super rational. And
and, he gets rid of the FourNoble Truths. So that what I was
saying earlier about this focuson on psycho spiritual suffering

(46:26):
of the individual just cuts thatout, puts this other kind of,
to, like, this other postulatein in its place. And he makes
the Buddha basically like aMember of Parliament, if you
will, like a local parliamentbecause of the Democratic
situation. And it's fascinating,right? Any, he's aware that what
he's doing is sort of radical.
But I think as a student ofDewey, there's interesting kind

(46:48):
of takes, or arguments beingmade about how, how, just how
influenced he was by Americanpragmatism. And you can see it
in this regeneration of the ofthe Buddha's life, how he's,
he's sort of doing this otherproject where he's sort of like,
look, I don't have access to anyof that early stuff. And part of
the reason I don't have accessis that Brahmins have been
writing these, these powerfulkind of dominant castes have

(47:10):
been writing it writing history.
So you know, they've left out awhole bunch of stuff. I'm gonna
be driven by these basicprinciples. So like compassion,
love, justice. And I'm gonnabuild a story of the Buddha
around these principles, andbasically use this kind of
hermeneutic that says, if the ifthe early texts endorse or

(47:34):
support these principles, thenwe keep it and if it doesn't,
then we cut it out. And weacknowledge we're creating this
new thing, he calls it aNavayana, a new vehicle. But at
the same time, he makes hisargument that like, this was the
original kind of teaching of theBuddha, right. But he doesn't
point to the literary tradition,necessarily. I mean, in some
ways he does to point to, like,you know, this is all in the
sutra material. But he's alsounapologetic to say that, like,

(47:56):
well, I'm cutting all this otherstuff out, you know, that stuff
that was written by Brahmins orit's not in accord with what we
know of, like an enlightenedperson would be like. So it's
this kind of like, interesting,interesting move, he kind of, on
the one hand, you could say,like, he's an opportunist, you
know, he's taking what he wantsand throwing out what he
doesn't. But on another fromthis kind of pragmatic point of

(48:17):
view, he's saying, like, look,I'm interested in action. You
know, I'm, I'm pragmatist. I'mtrying, I'm trying to create
this sort of, like, just worldright now. I'm not interested
in, in museums, you know, I'mnot interested in like accuracy,
or like, whatever, for like,history sake. In fact, when
people do that, you know, that'swhat the Brahmins do, they look
to, and he's using thatpejoratively. He's saying, like,

(48:39):
they looked at these mantrasand, and the Vedas as like
written in stone, and it's veryimportant that we we pronounce
each seed syllable properly, andeach syllable of each mantra
properly, and only these peoplecan do it. And it's kind of this
religion of rules and ritual.
But it provides no kind ofground for like a just world. So
yeah, yeah, it's an it's aninteresting approach to this.

(49:00):
Yeah.

Chip Gruen (49:03):
So I have one more question for you. But before we
get there, I just want to glossone more thing you said in that
you were you refer to that asJeffersonian, for those of
again, for those who we have inpodcast land who don't know it,
Jefferson wrote his own versionof the life of Jesus, in which
he stripped out all miracles andthe resurrection, right, kind of
Yeah, cut, cut them out andsaid, Yeah, that's just

(49:24):
superstition. What's reallyimportant are the ethical
teachings. And so he made hisown. So that was the
Jeffersonian reference. But Ithink, you know, particularly in
the narrative we tell about sortof colonial America now or the
late 18th century United States.
That kind of thing getsforgotten is sort of written out
of the narrative. Alright, sothe last. The last thing I
always like to ask is, you know,one of the interests of

(49:47):
ReligionWise is thinking aboutthe public discourse on
religion, right? Like, how do wetalk about religion as a
category? How do we talk aboutindividual traditions within
that Um, you know, if I'mwanting to be an informed, you
know, informed citizen that hasa well grounded discourse on
Buddhism and the contemporaryworld is, I mean, is there

(50:11):
anything that I should be payingattention to anything particular
I should be not to make thisoverly academic, but I should be
reading or somebody I should belistening to, to really sort of
get my hands around, you know,what, how Buddhism is being
shaped in our world?

Tim Loftus (50:29):
Yeah, I mean, maybe there's a couple of maybe
there's like two prongs to that.
I think when we look around theworld of Buddhism right now,
there's, it's almost, it's alittle bit dark, actually, you
know, there's there the civilwar in Sri Lanka, which abruptly
ended with cameras turned offand Sinhalese kind of
nationalist Buddhist sentimentfinally, I think, ended that
situation violently. Myanmar,you know, there's been a lot of,

(50:54):
of ethnic violence. And Rohingyapeople being pushed back into
Bangladesh with a lot ofviolence. There's, I think, a
complicated narrative, if we'repaying attention, that disrupts
some of the kind of simplisticreadings of Buddhism as just
like, you know, a religion ofpeace or something, or
contemplation or whatever, like,it's a religion like any other,

(51:15):
right? So we can kind of maybecomplicate our understanding in
that way. But um, maybesomething that would be good to
read for Buddhism would be, um,Ambedkar, so Ambedkar person,
right, wrote this text called"The Buddha and his Dhamma". He

(51:37):
wrote it in English. It's reallyaccessible. And his intention in
writing it was to create like agospel, if you will, like a
really kind of handy, containseverything portable kind of
thing he calls it like a couldbe a Buddhist gospel, isn't it?
Those are his words. But it's afascinating read, because it
turns a lot of what we I thinkassociate with Buddhism, not on

(51:58):
its head, but but adds anotherdimension to what how we could
think about Buddhism acting inthe world. So these basic kind
of maybe theological or dharmalogical principles that are
underneath the Buddhisttradition, like basic stuff,
like interdependent origination,or how Buddhists understand
compassion, like self without aself, like how compassion can

(52:20):
like, inform action. It's kindof baked into that, that work.
But you know, he kind of framesthe Buddha as this person who
kind of gets his hands dirty.
And I think, I think that isneeded right now. And it seems
to be happening I just gave itwas a speaker, April 14 is the

(52:46):
National Day of Recognition forDr. Ambedkar in India. And
there's been a debate gradeshave been agitating for that to
be kind of accepted, more widelyaround the world for a long
time. And in this past year,Canada, as a nation has
recognized it, I think, thestate of Michigan, state of New
Jersey, it's been happening,kind of different municipalities

(53:07):
and stuff. So I gave a talk inNew Jersey and in Jersey City in
the city of City Hall, councilchambers. It was really well
attended. And it was really kindof fantastic to see this sort of
like, maybe a tensioncomplication of the narrative of
like Buddhism being just thissort of like, more self help
individualistic project to likehow those principles which are

(53:28):
valid, can also inform like,community engagement, ethics,
justice. Yeah, so So I guess"The Buddha and his Dhamma" I
would recommend it is a reallyawesome, interesting, fantastic
read

Chip Gruen (53:43):
As maybe a corrective to the way that
Buddhism has been ingested inthe West.

Tim Loftus (53:48):
Yeah, definitely.

Chip Gruen (53:49):
Yeah. Okay. Well, great. Well, thank you, Tim
Loftus very much for joining uson ReligionWise This has been a
lot of fun.

Tim Loftus (53:55):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Chip.

Chip Gruen (54:00):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
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(54:23):
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