Good point! Must be close to the modern equivalent of “lay people clothed in white”. I’ve heard of at least two different small communities like this in my own country (small ad hoc groups of people living together in such a fashion). They definitely exist and must exist in most places in the West. I don’t think either would be really patently “early Buddhist” (but would be certainly dedicated anyway! 
).
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Hi!
Wow, I feel very honoured that you guys thought my article was worth discussing here.
Regarding the thread’s title, in my mind my piece wasn’t very provocative for SC people but rather my true target audience, neo-early Buddhists, who I think will easily identify themselves when reading it. I admit, though, that the term is ambiguous, because anyone today practising on the basis of the EBTs can feel addressed by it.
Who are these neo-early Buddhists? My original draft avoided to name individual names but identified two institutions: the Insight Meditation Society in the US (which recently started calling itself Early Buddhist) and the Bodhi College in Europe (whose motto is ‘Early Buddhist Teaching for Today’), implicitly pointing at some, at least, of the people who teach there. Tricycle took this bit out. I see why they’d do this but then it begs all the questions you’ve been raising, and not helping my point.
(It was also Tricycle’s choice to call you ‘Ajahn’ @sujato . No idea why they did this. Apologies.)
The cultivation of wholesome qualities is not in question, I just focused on the renunciation part to target what I see as a neo-early Buddhist incongruence. Brahmavihāra practice, for example, is still subordinated to the salvific goal. I personally don’t think the early Buddhist path is bleak, and I point this out in the idea that no other-world-oriented path can be fully other-worldly: it still brings benefit to this life and infuses it with meaning.
@Benjamin ’s post is useful to respond to.
Because the neo-early Buddhists I address think in terms of one lifetime, they do not and cannot make sense of ‘how long we’ve been in samsara’. They do not and cannot understand saṇkhāra dukkhatā and aim to transcend it. So if they don’t really want to transcend it, why keep saying that everything is dukkha? It’s contradictory to affirming life, that is, to affirming the impermanent and conditioned.
Exactly. I’m not denying one should work with the conditioned, though I think the Vipassanā movement has sometimes forgotten, and through Buddhist modernism, that gets to neo-early Buddhism. I’m just pointing out that those neo-early Buddhists don’t want to break free into the condition-less.
My background, quickly, is this. I’ve been and continue to be in neo-early Buddhist circles—so my piece is a reflection from the inside. The more I learnt about the EBTs the more I noticed inconsistencies between what those texts said and what I was being told they said, and the more I noticed differences between that modern self-identified ‘early Buddhism’ and actual early Buddhism as is in the texts. Without taking sides, my point was to flag these inconsistencies and say that neo-early Buddhists are either unaware or in denial about them and their consequences. And hopefully add some of that ‘reflexivity’ in the mix that @sujato mentioned.
Or to say this briefly: if you’re going to disagree with the EBTs, own it and say it.
(Sorry that I can’t respond to everything that was said, but I do appreciate all the reflections shared here.)
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Ah! I thought so! This really deserves to have some letters to the editor written. It really cut the article off at the knees. I had no idea that IMS has started to call themselves Early Buddhists. Now it all makes perfect sense. Did they previously call themselves Theravada?
I had run across Bodhi College when I saw they had put TFFW on their summer reading list. Yes, that’s the Batcehlors, Peacock and others. Now I know exactly who you are talking about.
And I think you really ought to ask Tricycle to restore your original piece.
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Hi Bernat, Thanks for the article, and the clarifications. I think what you say here about the possibility of being inconsistent, unaware, or in denial is important for anyone to reflect on. Certainly important for me…
For me it also resonated with what Bhante Sujato said at the Friday Night Meditation, which for me had the message (what I took from it, not expressed in exactly these words): What are you scared of that is actually holding you back from letting go?
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Thank you for taking the time to clarify the popular points @Bernat. With this, the importance and intention of the article can be fully appreciated. It is unfortunate that the “reality check factor” was muddled by the editors cut.
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No, I think we’re just chuffed to see one of our friends in a proper publication, which can afford to pay real editors!
Oh.
Oh. Well then.
Obviously it’s a trivial point, but I use bhante or bhikkhu precisely because they are Pali, international, “early Buddhist” terms. And I have done for nearly twenty years? People still keep calling me “Ajahn” and describing me as “Theravadin”. Not that I mind, really, it’s just interesting how persistent these ideas are.
Anyhow, points were made, hopefully it will make a difference to some.
It’s an interesting development in branding. Formerly such groups would have used the “insight” label. But since certain people have been raising awareness of the importance of jhanas, that seems a little old-fashioned, not to say sectarian.
Jayatilleke and K. Ñāṇananda both used the term “early Buddhism”, and arguably they defined a lot of the philosophy of what we call “early Buddhism” today. The main change since then is methodology, with the greater reference to non-Pali texts.
Anything as nebulous as “early Buddhism” can and should be a broad tent, and there is lots of room for difference. To me, the essential factor is that there is a historically critical attempt to ground knowledge in the EBTs.
Which would exclude, not just the neo-early Buddhists spoken of in the article, but also traditional Theravadins, the vipassana movement, and the Thai forest tradition. All of these, like any form of Buddhism, draw inspiration in many different ways from early Buddhism, but they lack a genuinely critical historical perspective.
Rather, they find means to project their own special ideas into the past. Goenka told a fantasy of life in the time of the Buddha where everyone was practicing Goenka technique. Thai forest masters see visions of the Buddha in his lifetime, wearing robes the same color as them. Traditional Theravada insists on the ahistorical notion that Theravada remains unchanged since the time of the Buddha.
The Weingast incident revealed that some contemporary Buddhists are equally invested in having their own ideas and voices being regarded as authentic expressions of the Buddhas teachings. And the credulous acceptance of the hoax by so many in white American Buddhist circles does not speak well to the level of critical acumen at play. It seems that the label “early Buddhism” has acquired a certain prestige that has value beyond the study and practice of early Buddhism per se.
Interesting how this compares with the color of robes in Thailand. Traditionally the standard color was saffron-orange. The forest monks dyed their robes with locally-source jackfruit wood, which came out a tawny golden brown. As the prestige of the forest tradition grew, more monks started wearing that color, although with chemical dyes that often had a distinctly greenish hue absent from real jack dye. Of course they didn’t adopt the practices of the forest monks, just the robe color. Now the “forest” color is so popular it’s meaningless as a signifier of the forest tradition, and most forest monks just use the chemical dye. c’est la vie.
My life in a nutshell.
I believe “upper middle way” is the traditional term.
That was the point?
We’ve discussed this before, but to me, we’re all modernist Buddhists.
Okay, but that’s also quite broad. There are plenty of “non-traditional” Buddhist movements that are not based on the EBTs. For example, there are a variety of what you might call “evangelical” or even “millenialist” movements based on charismatic individuals and heterodox teachings. Dhammakaya is the best known in Theravada context, but there are plenty throughout Asia.
I think I speak for many on the forum when I say, “hey, that sounds great. Tell us more!”
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Yeah, and well, we can just look at what happened with ‘mindfulness’…
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@sujato I don’t want to digress too far from the op, but it really is a fortuitous circumstance, I say this because the cost of admission is not religious by nature. Although not perfect, in my wider experience the individuals that dedicate themselves to long term service roles of these centres, are indeed very committed to the full breadth of the Buddhas teaching. And with this commitment provides terrific conditions for practice. Often, the next course of action with these committed individuals is to dedicate themselves and their practice to the four fold sangha. It’s a garden for Buddhism, those that are ripe flourish, some take seeds to sprout later, others never germinate.
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Hmm, I handn’t noticed that:
The Barre Center for Buddhist Studies offers the integration of study and practice in exploring the many streams of teaching and expression that flow from the sources of early Buddhism.
About
Having Ven Analayo there helps with that branding, just as Sayadaws Mahasi and U Pandita helped with their branding back in the late 70s and early 80s.
Terminology is tricky, isn’t it? The Barre Centre introduction I quoted above talks about:
“… the many streams of teaching and expression that flow from the sources of early Buddhism.”
The Burmese vipassana approach that was a key part of establishing their brand obviously doesn’t fit the “EBT” definition used on Sutta Central. But whether the Theravada commentaries that inform it are classified as “early” or “late” is a matter of where historical lines are drawn.
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Given your examples I concede that even "nontraditional Buddhisms is too broad. I think I actually say “modern western Buddhism” in casual conversation, but were I writing I would seek to identify the group or thinker I was referring to more specifically, exactly because one name can’t fit all.
Hmm, Mike, are you implying a cynical attitude here? It’s hard to tell. 
To clarify: you mean that the Burmese tradition regards the Visuddhimagga not only as important but also as “early”?
I agree with you on this. @sujato the lay community that existed for a time at Wat Buddha Dhamma is another example, tho not at all connected with IMS. Such small “gardens” are bound to pop up here and there, and to nurture, wonderful flowers, wholesome veggies and weeds as well.
*. *. *. *
Congratulations on this usefully thought-provoking article. It made me reach for the search button on several counts.
Firstly I found that like the BCBS website that Mike quotes from, IMS also updated its mission statement – during mid 2020 according to the WayBackMachine – from
Our mission
IMS is a spiritual refuge for all who seek freedom of mind and heart. We offer meditation retreats rooted in the Theravada Buddhist [my italics] teachings of ethics, concentration and wisdom. These practices help develop awareness and compassion in ourselves, giving rise to greater peace and happiness in the world.’
to
Our mission
IMS is a spiritual refuge for all who seek freedom of mind and heart. We offer meditation retreats and online programs rooted in the Early Buddhist teachings of ethics, concentration and wisdom. These practices help develop awareness and compassion in ourselves, giving rise to greater peace and happiness in the world.
The new link leads to
“Theravada” or “Early Buddhism”? Why “Early Buddhism” More Accurately Reflects IMS’s Roots
… Until recently the tradition of Early Buddhism was more commonly known as Theravada, … In fact IMS originally considered itself to be a Theravadan center. However, modern scholarship has revealed that Theravada is just one of some eighteen schools of Early Buddhism, … The Theravadan school also considers the Pali Abhidhamma and commentaries such as the Visuddhimagga to be authoritative, while other Early Buddhists may not. Hence Early Buddhism and Theravada are not synonymous, although there is much overlap. (full text here)
This shift from a Theravadan label to an Early Buddhist label is not surprising, given the death of Sayadaw U Pandita (somewhere I saw a photo of the post-cremation relics said to prove him to be an arahant) and the current longterm residence of Bhikkhu Anālayo. Also, the original founders have had time to research and inquire more widely than when they returned from Burma and originally set up the Society.
Continuing below …
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I think I remember you indicating in previous threads that you’re at a Goenka centre?
Hi Gillian,
Sorry, it wasn’t supposed to be cynical. More reflecting on the developments. I’ve heard from some people that in the late 70s IMS became concerned that they couldn’t point to a “lineage” (unlike the Zen groups), so they did something about it. As you probably know, IMS had U Pandita visit (resulting in a couple of books) and a number of IMS people spent time in Myanmar in the 1980s under the guidance of U Pandita, some as monastics. Closer to you, Patrick Kearney also followed that path.
As I said, it’s a matter of definition. It is “early” compared to Dogen, for example. And it appears to drawn from commentaries that are considerably older than the Visuddhimagga itself. However, it is “late” compared to the (early) suttas.
In any case, the issues raised in the article do not appear to have anything to do with differences between EBTs and the Theravada. These “world-affirming” ideas do not appear to be a product of the Theravada commentaries.
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Indeed, certain aspects of traditional Theravada are often regarded as more “world-denying” than the Suttas (although I think this is overstated).
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Hi @Akaliko. Yes, that’s right. My profile mentions Dhamma Medini.
What I meant by this… “it really is a fortuitous circumstance … because the cost of admission is not religious by nature” …is that despite the secular claim at the front door, serious students (those that live here) tend to be non-secular and take a very strong refuge in the Buddha Dhamma Sangha.
Although my personal practice has grown beyond the ten day Goenka model, my tradition has served as a gateway to Buddhism better reflected by monks and nuns in groups like this. In my experience, if I mention Goenka, saññas arise, if I mention community, people tend to listen with more objectivity. I understand that there are abhidhamma influenced claims within this tradition, and I certainly don’t agree with everything here, nor do I promote it as being a perfect interpretation of Buddhist texts. Bhikkhu Anālayo unpacks that subject here. Please feel free to share your assessments https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/pdf/5-personen/analayo/development-insight.pdf
I simply speak for the community, or rather my personal experience of the community. I find the older and more serious students are sincere and ardent when it come to practicing in-line with what the Buddha said. Your mileage may vary. My practice is a continuous work in progress, but the monastic community has helped tremendously in that regard.
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Your sketch is as I would have indicated it. (Visu Teoh was in robes with U Pandita at the same time as Kearney, I recall, tho I would describe neither of them as still within that lineage in the way Sayadaw Vivekananda is, for eg.) I was afraid you were using the word branding, to imply that you perceived a marketing strategy at work. For a centre to adjust its focus as the result of sincere enquiry is rather different than doing so for the sake of promotion. Sorry!!
True, but somehow the comparison only feels useful within the Theravada. Would Dogen have read the Visuddhimagga? I doubt it.
Thank you for pointing out this article. I think if one becomes “disenchanted” with the worldly realm, a certain fascination simply falls away. This phenomena is on a spectrum for any card carrying Buddhist practitioner however the seeds of their kamma are ripening.
The other elegant phrase that came to mind was Ajahn Sumedho’s …it all belongs.
Enjoying these discussions. With mudita. MC
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Why is this considered an issue? It is not the place of ‘Buddhism’ (who speaks on behalf of Buddhism?) to be either life affirming or life denying. Rather, we do our practice, hopefully gain clarity and insight, and allow whatever to manifest that may manifest, including attitudes about life. The suttas clearly speak of dispassion and disenchantment, but that is the suttas, and someone else’s experience. Let’s have a look and see for ourselves.
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Wisdom is not that one gets from reading texts or listening to what others say. Wisdom is experiential. The illuminations of moonlight, electric light, sunlight fire light are all external.
But the illumination of wisdom is internal and it enables yogi to eliminate the illustrations of Nama & Rupa-Sanna from consciousness. As Buddha stated, "the wise will eradicate the defiling gradually little by little moment by moment just as a silversmith remove the dross from silver ore to get pure silver. It is as I see senseless to write on things one has only read but not realised.
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Hi respected elders & friends,
I’ll offer a few thoughts from someone very much in the “neo-Early Buddhist” community, as I understand @Bernat’s neologism. I have practiced for 20+ years, and teach at, and work at, Spirit Rock, the big California branch of the Insight Meditation (IM) school, which spun out of Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, MA. As discussed already, IMS/BCBS (and other Insight centers) have changed their description of their lineage’s roots to “Early Buddhist” rather than “Theravāda.” We may do so as well soon. This is partly due to the influence of scholars like Bhikkhu Anālayo, and partly as I understand it the influence of deepening study around the sources of contemporary convert Buddhist movements.
Seems like I wrote an essay, so… TL;DR = Font-Clos is right, but it’s not necessarily a problem. Most practitioners aren’t philosophers, and don’t engage with the implications of the root texts of their tradition, so the cognitive dissonance is not troubling to them, and neo-EB is demonstrably helpful in a different way than either traditional Theravāda or Mahāyāna. Life-affirming Dharma is then a “skillful means,” and at its best a psychologically-attuned lay-oriented new form of Buddhist practice. Philosophically and historically it’s still a rupture.
One of the things I think is helpful about the shift in terminology is that it situates Insight Meditation more clearly in the global Buddhist world. IM was never really a Theravāda school, even though its primary roots were Theravāda. The founders of IMS specifically chose an ecumenical teaching style over belonging to a specific school, partly because even teaching together the practices of their Theravāda teachers—S.N. Goenka, Mahasi Sayadaw and Anagarika Munindra, Ajahn Chah, and Ajahn Buddhadāsa—was too heterodox for many in the Asian Theravāda world, not to mention the Advaita, Zen, Vajrayāna and other influences that were also present.
So using the term “Early Buddhist” to describe our roots is imperfect, since IM is such an ecumenical tradition, but because the Pāli suttas are by far our most-referenced sources (over commentarial material and later Theravāda material), I think it’s marginally better than Theravāda. I also think it marks a shift away from direct influence by Burmese, Thai, and Sri Lankan forms of Theravāda to a more postmodern global Buddhist school that uses the Pāli Canon more than any other scriptural source but no longer has as many direct ties to those three South and Southeast Asian cultural forms.
(Btw, “convert [Buddhist]” is my prefered imperfect umbrella term, over “Western,” “white,” “modern,” “protestant,” or “x-Buddhist,” though they all have their strengths.)
I largely agree with Font-Clos’s argument and the direction of the challenging questions he poses around the cognitive dissonance around view in many contemporary convert Buddhisms—particularly those descended from modern Theravāda that oriented primarily toward lay people, such as Insight Meditation. As others in this thread have noted, life-affirming interpretations of the Dharma are not a problem in and of themselves, when understood in the context of the schools of thought in which they arose. Part of the appeal of the Mahayana, especially the schools with a strong nondual emphasis like the Prajñāpāramitā, much Vajrāyāna, and Zen/Ch’an/Sôn, is exactly this.
Insight Meditation has had strong Mahāyāna influences from the beginning, including aspects of Ajahn Buddhadāsa’s and Ajahn Chah’s teaching as well as the Zen and Vajrayāna that many IM teachers also study. Scholars like Ann Gleig have even used the word “tantric” to describe aspects of Insight Meditation as taught at Spirit Rock and IMS specifically. Gleig quotes Tricycle editor Helen Tworkov as decrying the same currents as Font-Clos is analyzing:
Tworkov laments that the pursuit of enlightenment, traditionally the pinnacle of the Buddhist quest, has been replaced by an emphasis on awareness in everyday householder life. From this perspective, therefore, contemporary attempts to integrate enlightenment with everyday life have merely resulted in a mediocre approach to practice that co-opts Buddhism in service of American materialism. (“From Theravada to tantra: the making of an American tantric Buddhism?” Gleig 2013)
The cognitive dissonance Font-Clos describes is evident to me throughout the Insight Meditation community as I know it. My own teaching, like most of my peers who studied with the founders of IM, has evolved to include aspects of this “life-affirming” approach to the Dharma. I now always expect a response to teachings about enlightenment, liberation, renunciation, dispassion, dissolution, or disengagement that challenges the very premise that these qualities are wholesome and desirable as the fruits of the path. I hear these questions so often that I answer them preemptively every time my teaching approaches this event horizon.
For the audiences I commonly find in contemporary IM, these dhammas suggest that the goal of the EBT path is a kind of transcendence (though I would never use the word in teaching), which I think is basically correct. Transcendence is a dirty word now, implying the evils of Cartesian dualism, patriarchal dissociation from the earth, and those aspects of Christianity and the scientific revolution that led to resource extraction, colonialism, systemic oppression, the climate crisis, and many other pathologies of the current world. I agree with this to the extent that a historical line can be easily traced between European philosophical dualisms and many contemporary horrors, but to equate Buddhist transcendence with European is philosophically sloppy and too easily overstates the parallel. It’s difficult to teach on dispassion and saṃsāra without stumbling into this, however, and the difference between the systems is too complex to easily bring into an ordinary Dharma talk.
So I think the problem is partly the fault of teachers who have shied away from trying to explain the transcendent dhammas in a way that doesn’t perpetuate the conflation of Buddhist ideas about transcendence with Christian and Humanistic ones. But it’s largely the conditions into which Early Buddhist teachings have arrived on the global stage, namely a deeply ingrained humanistic view that has spread from its European roots to every culture touched by colonial ideas—in other words almost everywhere. In the US, it’s really strong, leading me to ask why people here aren’t just dismissing the Pāli Canon in favor of more convivial Mahāyāna teachings.
I think one of the reasons the Early Buddhist teachings remain compelling even through the cognitive dissonance is their broadly phenomenological approach, which feels more psychologically-grounded and modernity-friendly than the imagistic, cosmological, and devotional style of the Mahāyāna literature. (I’d say there’s also a bit of “earlier must be more authentic and therefore better” delusion.) Within Insight Meditation (as neo-EB), the EB teachings that are emphasized are the meditative techniques, the brahmavihāras, and teachings with clear psychological value from the perspective of healing and stress reduction. The overall view these are held within tends to include an emphasis on interdependence and the Two Truths, in other words, Mahāyāna. There’s a thicket of views! But it also clearly helps people in relation to suffering and the very relative painful conditions of postmodernity.
I share Font-Clos’s implied concern (and Tworkov’s) that the Dharma coming through this new transmission is not a robust response to saṃsāra, and loses the radical thread of liberation that animates the Pāli texts. But I remain hopeful that because the Insight Meditation community still regularly studies these texts that teachers and serious practitioners in each new generation will rediscover the skillful transcendent dhammas that are spelled out there and continue to press against the stream of contemporary humanistic discourse to grow a Buddhism that can be life-affirming enough to remain relevant and still hew to the Buddha’s vision of full liberation.
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While appreciating all the thoughtful and heartful concerns in the article and this thread, I doubt the idea that such new tradition is especially new. For me, it is not that different from what so-called “traditional Buddhists” in Asia have been forced to do since the 19th century. They had their own image of the Buddha, which could not withstand historical and textual analysis, nor satisfy the needs of modern lay-followers. It is well-known that they had to invent the new modern or protestant Buddha to meet the goals, which is not so different from the “neo-early Buddhist” movement described.
Roughly speaking, the “neo-early Buddhists” are replacing a rough term, “the Buddha”, with the more rigorous one, “the Early Buddhism”. And this is similar to the way modern Zen reformers replaced the Lord Buddha who transmitted the dharma to Mahākāśyapa during the Flower Sermon, with the Gautama Buddha whose teaching preserved in the Early text is still parallel to the modern Zen doctrine.
Perhaps, what one is facing are piles of hard-to-answer criteria for the movement or replacement: Are they inclined to the fundamentalist extreme? Aren’t they cherry-picking (too much) some sentences in the EBT to justify the modern needs? Do they fulfill spiritual purposes in accordance with both the text and the ethics of contemporary society? And so on, and so on.
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