Buddhist modernism

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As described by David L. McMahan in his "The Making of Buddhist Modernism"[1]

"Buddhism modernism is not just Buddhism that happens to exist in the modern world but a distinct form of Buddhism constituted by cross-fertilization with western ideas and practices. Using primarily examples that have shaped western articulations of Buddhism, the book shows how modern representations of Buddhism have not only changed the way the tradition is understood, but have also generated new forms of demythologized, detraditionalized, and deinstitutionalized Buddhism. The book creates a lineage of Buddhist modernism that includes liberal borrowing from scientific vocabulary in reformulations of Buddhist concepts of causality, interdependence, and meditation. It also draws upon Romantic and Transcendentalist conceptions of cosmology, creativity, spontaneity, and the interior depths of the human being. Additionally, Buddhist modernism reconfigures Buddhism as a kind of psychology or interior science, drawing both upon analytic psychology and current trends in neurobiology. In its novel approaches to meditation and mindfulness, as well as political activism, it draws heavily from western individualism, distinctively modern modes of world-affirmation, liberal political sensibilities, and modernist literary sources. "

  1. McMahan, David L., Buddhist Modernism, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/obo/9780195393521-0041