Western Romanticizing of Eastern Spirituality

[hundreth]

I recently read Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and absolutely loved it. Amazing piece of literature, and a highly recommended read. 

With that said, Hermann Hesse is a German poet writing with a German romanticism flair about Eastern philosophies and Buddhism. Being from a Western background, I resonated deeply with the text and it's take on the spiritual journey. I wanted to take a closer look at this and do a deconstruction on the effect of our our Western filters being applied here. I came across this wonderful article and wanted to share it with you all:

https://tricycle.org/magazine/romancing-buddha/

A few excerpts:

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Many Americans, when new to Buddhism, are struck by the uncanny familiarity of what seem to be its central concepts: interconnectedness, wholeness, ego-transcendence. But what they may not realize is that the concepts sound familiar because they are familiar. To a large extent, they come not from the Buddha’s teachings but from the dharma gate of Western psychology, through which the Buddha’s words have been filtered. They draw less from the root sources of the dharma than from their own hidden roots in Western culture—the thought of the German Romantics.

 

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The basic spiritual illness. Romantic/humanistic psychology states that the root of suffering is a sense of divided self, which creates not only inner boundaries—between reason and emotion, body and mind, ego and shadow—but also outer ones, separating us from other people and from nature and the cosmos as a whole.

The dharma, however, teaches that the essence of suffering is clinging, and that the most basic form of clinging is self-identification, regardless of whether one’s sense of self is finite or infinite, fluid or static, unitary or not.

The successful spiritual cure. Romantic/humanistic psychology maintains that a total, final cure is unattainable. Instead, the cure is an ongoing process of personal integration. The enlightened person is marked by an enlarged, fluid sense of self, unencumbered by moral rigidity. Guided primarily by what feels right in the context of interconnectedness, one negotiates with ease—like a dancer—the roles and rhythms of life. Having learned the creative answer to the question “What is my true identity?” one is freed from the need for certainties about any of life’s other mysteries.

The dharma, however, teaches that full awakening achieves a total cure, opening to the unconditioned beyond time and space, at which point the task is done. The awakened person then follows a path “that can’t be traced,” but is incapable of transgressing the basic principles of morality. Such a person realizes that the question “What is my true identity?” was ill-conceived, and knows from direct experience the total release from time and space that will happen at death.

When these two traditions are compared point by point, it’s obvious that—from the perspective of early Buddhism—Romantic/humanistic psychology gives only a partial and limited view of the potentials of spiritual practice. This means that Buddhist Romanticism, in translating the dharma into Romantic principles, gives only a partial and limited view of what Buddhism has to offer.

 

Would love to hear your thoughts! 

[Joseph Maynor]

I just recently learned about the Buddha and Buddhism.  I didn't even realize Enlightenment comes from the Buddhist tradition too, which I assumed came more from the Hindu tradition, which I was more familiar with.  So, for me, I just recently came into contact with Buddhism, which I must say came as a pleasant surprise to me.  It's amazing. 

Edited February 27, 2018 by Joseph Maynor