Buddhism and the American Character

By Bodhin Kjolhede

The American tradition is to use all traditions freely, and for several decades now American Buddhists have been doing just that. Here on American soil, we’re cultivating a mixture of dharma seeds sown by our various Asian forebears, and while the yield from this effort is only beginning to be seen, it surely embodies the native soil—us Americans—at least as much as the seeds. We might pause, then, to consider the American character as it relates to practice, focusing on those traits most likely to challenge us as practitioners.

Individual Self-Identity

The subject-object split is part of the human condition, but nowhere is the concept of a fixed, discrete self so entrenched—and so celebrated—as in this country. This obsession with “I,” “me,” and “my” creates a world of trouble in practice as we keep getting in our own way, tripping over all those opinions and preferences and comparisons with others that we count on to secure our selfhood.

One of the more pernicious threats posed by the American intoxication with the self is its potential to render practice just another self-enhancement technique. It could be mistaken for the ultimate makeover—“Reshape and buff up that self! New! Improved! Get yours!” This self-interested attitude, already second nature to most of us, absorbs steady nourishment from this culture of ours, which is so skilled at appealing to human acquisitiveness. Long-term, serious practice with a teacher can transmute this selfish motivation (Roshi Kapleau admitted that when he got to Japan he had just wanted to “grab kensho and run”), but beginners and others who are marginally involved in practice will find their efforts frustrated until their aspiration evolves into true bodhicitta.

Moralism

Ever since the Pilgrims splashed ashore in 1620, morality and religion have claimed the attention of Americans more, it seems, than of any other Western people. Public surveys consistently reflect this, as do book sales, TV programming, and clamorous public debates on abortion, euthanasia, sex, and crime. Those of us who grew up in the American milieu are conditioned to frame reality in terms of right and wrong, and more likely to interpret the dharma, too, through these constructs. Buddhist doctrine certainly has a well-developed system of ethics, but traditionally it has rested primarily on the law of causation. One really doesn’t need to divide the world into “good” and “bad”; it is enough to understand whether our actions cause harm or not, and go from there.

Absolutist notions of right and wrong, coupled with the delusion of a fixed self, can wreak havoc with practice, and it lays the ground for what may be the single biggest hindrance we American practitioners face: our inner critical voice—those old tapes that tell us we’re flawed or deficient in some basic way. This self-hatred, as some teachers call it, appears to be a uniquely Western affliction (reinforced for millions, it would seem, by the doctrine of original sin), and one that Americans may specialize in. At a 1993 Dharamsala meeting of Western Buddhist teachers with the Dalai Lama, one of the participants asked him about this phenomenon, which was so alien a concept to His Holiness that his translator spent five to ten minutes trying to explain it—with decidedly uncertain success.

BODHIN KJOLHEDE is abbot of the Rochester Zen Center and dharma successor to the late Roshi Philip Kapleau.