AMERICAN BUDDHISM AS A WAY OF LIFE . Edited by Gary Storhoff and John Whalen-Bridge . SUNY Series in Buddhism and American Culture . Albany : State University of New York Press , 2010 . Pp. 217 . $24.95 .
摘要
In this collection, the editors aim to demonstrate how American Buddhism has become a way of life both spiritually and materially in twenty‐first‐century America. To this end, eleven articles, diverse in both content and style, are organized under three sections: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. One productive aspect of the collection is a call to move beyond evaluating American Buddhism against some static standard of traditional Buddhism. D. Smith, for instance, in an instructive reading of Alan Watts, argues that Watts should be appreciated as a creative Buddhist modernizer, rather than merely being dismissed as inauthentic. A similar perspective follows in C. Jackson's measured portrait of D. T. Suzuki, judging him less in terms of the “correctness” of his interpretation of Zen and more on his crucial role in transmitting it to the West. Also thought provoking are the chapters by R. Gross and M. Brannigan on how Buddhist thought might serve to resolve impasses in discussions of abortion and bioethics, respectively. The ability of American Buddhism to impact public health debates would indeed show it had achieved what the title somewhat ambitiously claims. Lacking in the book, unfortunately, is any substantial reflection on the contested category of “American Buddhism.” Furthermore, despite the clever “three jewels” structure, the collection as a whole lacks cohesion (though, taken individually, the chapters are well written and informative). The volume is consequently of value less for its own contribution than for those of its individual chapters.
