In his book Orientalism, Edward Said argued of a long tradition of false and romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture.
dharmic religions and cultures have long been subject to various forms of Orientalism in the West, both objectifying the East in a negative or a positive way.
Heinrich Dumoulin who has published much work on Zen Buddhism and has served as a professor in Tokyo, argued that when Buddhism was introduced into the West during the 19th century, the rationalist thinkers of Europe thought that they have found their desired philosophy or rationality which was without God, without heaven and hell, without soul. but upon researching Buddhism, it was obvious that Buddhism also included the supernatural (and what they considered irrational) phenomena such as saints and miracles, veneration of images and relics, magic and other forms of what was considered superstition. he argued that in order to truly understand Buddhism one must understand it in the context of its native lands in Asia.
On the other hand Dr Judith Snodgrass argues in her book: Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition, confronts the widespread view that Asian societies are objectified and filtered through Western thought. in her book she claims that it was the Buddhists who have labored in transforming Buddhism into a modern philosophy.
Stephen Batchelor, an author, teacher and scholar of Buddhism who has practiced Buddhism in Dharamsala and South Korea said of the background to the emergence of Buddhology:
Throughout the course of the 18th century three interconnected factors were gestating that would help give birth to what we know as ‘Buddhism’. These were the emergence of the rationalist Enlightenment, the decline of religious authority and the consolidation of colonialism.
While the coloinial and missionary factor might have given Buddhism and Hinduism a negative image in Europe initially during the 19th century, as a naive philosophy, or in the form of corrupted priesthoods and wild and outlandish beliefs, the rationalism and emerging counter thought to religion in Europe also brought another form of Orientalism. Buddhism was introduced to Europe when the continent was experiencing dramatic social, political and technological changes. relations were conceived between Buddhism and modern science. dharmic ideas such as rebirth were seen as compatible with evolution and the biological vision that Darwin introduced into Europe in the 19th century. Buddhism was used as a force that together with the new biological views could tackle Christianity in Europe.
Buddhism was accommodated to European physics. a recent recycling of this phenomenon might be seen in the popular metaphysical use of quantum mechanics and Buddhism.
when it comes to the media, Holywood has been presenting a Utopian Himalayan existence for decades to Western viewers, and the lamas of Tibet have been presented to the American consumer while fitting a certain image.
while Tibet was once subject to the quest of the Aryan prototype by the Third Reich and Aryan traces were sought after in India’s treasure of Sanskrit, now Tibetan religion and Tibetans themselves became an embodiment of ideals in the face of a Chinese oppressor.
The mystification and idealization of the East in Western thought has taken on a consumerism approach on many levels, the challenges and social problems of societies who practice dhamric religions seem to be detached by the image religions such as Buddhism receive in the West, social problems such as the gender discrimination by Buddhist institutions in Asia, or persecution of minorities seem to be a world apart from the harmony of Shangri-La.
In many ways, popular culture has had different phases in depicting Buddhism and the east, at first in the spirit of European orientalism as primitive, then as intellectual, and later as mystical. these forms of objectifying are in fact draining the human factor out of Buddhists or Hindus and places them in a line of Western consumerism. Eastern religions and societies are having certain aspects of them exposed and moderated into pleasent movements and philosophies in the West, while the human capacity to engage in social or political strife seem to be filtered out. this leaves societies in Asia dehumanized and places eastern religions as a product to shop for in the grand bazaar of religions. this product is robbed of its indigenous elements, and the real life challenges and social dilemmas it experiences throughout Asia.
