Episode 87 :: David Loy :: Why Buddhism Needs the West

By Ted Meissner | October 27, 2011

David Loy

David Loy joins us to talk about why Buddhism needs the West, studies in lack, and the selective evolutionary pressures on traditional practices.

What happens when Buddhism, or any other traditional practice, encounters a new culture? It changes, grows, and finds new forms that suit the new environment in which it finds itself. The older environment may still exist, and the traditions suited to them will remain and continue to flourish as long as those cultures continue to flourish.

Today, many religious practices are encountering a new culture, but unlike many such encounters in the past, contemporary culture is undergoing unprecedented rapid and constant change. For us as Buddhists, this is a good thing! Our practice is to see change, to understand that it is inevitable, and that there is no benefit to relying on the false permanence of… anything, let alone the manifestation of ever-changing minds. That’s what culture may be seen as, the product of the minds of those within that society.

There is a growing trend in modernity to secularism. There is a sincere and deep questioning of values and practices once held sacred. That does not, however, spell the end of Buddhism or any other religious tradition. It means, as Buddhism has done when it encountered any new time and place, adapting in form while keeping the essence of the practice strongly supporting its core objective: the extinguishing of suffering.

David Robert Loy is a professor, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Kyodan tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. He is a prolific author, and his books include The World Is Made of Stories, Awareness Bound and Unbound: Buddhist Essays, and the very popular Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution. His articles appear regularly in the pages of major journals such as Tikkun and Buddhist magazines including Tricycle, Turning Wheel, Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma, as well as in a variety of scholarly journals. He is on the editorial or advisory boards of the journals Cultural Dynamics, Worldviews, Contemporary Buddhism, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, and World Fellowship of Buddhists Review. He is also on the advisory boards of Buddhist Global Relief, the Clear View Project, and the Ernest Becker Foundation. David lectures nationally and internationally on various topics, focusing primarily on the encounter between Buddhism and modernity: what each can learn from the other. He is especially concerned about social and ecological issues.

So, sit back, relax, and have a nice Clouds and Mist green tea.