gavesako wrote:Growing the Dharma: Buddhism’s Religious Spadework. Draft, July 2013.
“The individual or collective Western response has often much like that of the new landowner who discovers an overgrown but still potentially productive corn field on his property and with limited understanding of both corn and non-corn, dauntlessly hacks away with a machete only to destroy half of the corn and to leave half of the undergrowth, then plants one row of Monsanto super-corn and row of squash to make it look right. It looks pretty good, so we call it Western Buddhism and expect it to save Buddhism from centuries of Asian misunderstanding and cultural accretions. We have all the hubris and discernment-level of rowdy teenagers.”
http://bhikkhucintita.wordpress.com/boo ... u-cintita/
Why is a "western response" so hated? A fresh perspective is sometimes needed. I sometimes think there is a danger of going another way and rejecting every western view on Buddhism, because its western.