My take on whether secular Buddhism is real Buddhism.

I think this is a battle of worldviews, culture and the battles inside us.

In modernism, a modern view of the world takes up Buddhism, westerners are skeptical, scientific, often refuges from a Christianity that insists of belief. Seems like Buddhism doesn't have orthodoxy, but orthopraxy, where it's what you do that counts: Meditate, study, reflect, commune, be kind. With the perfection of wisdom tradition there's even a sophisticated almost postmodern viewpoint. A leading spokesman is Stephen Batchelor who broke with Tibetans and went to Korean Soen. He articulated it beautifully, but when he got more into the Pali Canon faltered a bit.

Then you have credulous traditional eastern Buddhist who are rightly twitchy about colonialism and people thinking they know better. They run into the western modernist and don't recognize the Buddhism that is deeply embedded in the culture they hope to preserve. They might insist on a more literal polytheistic worldview, maybe haven't read the perfection of wisdom tradition, and they can behave like an orthodox Christian who focuses on believing questionable metaphysical things literally, in this day and age. They go hard on right view and say modernism just isn't even Buddhism, too much syncretism. Are they protecting the tradition or gatekeeping and confused?

You're allowed to make sense of the tradition and think for yourself. I interpret the story where the Buddha whisks a monk off to the realm of 33 gods as a lovely mythological story that isn't literally true. When I called them the 33 Hindu gods, I was corrected, Hinduism didn't really exist then and they wouldn't have gone away in Buddhism, if you believe in them. I think the mythology of Avalokita and archetypal Bodhisattvas is beautiful and a Jungian could go nuts. So it's not like we're really stripping away that kind of thinking, it's just we don't think you need to pay some kind of belief price to enter. This makes a traditionalist uncomfortable, and the different ways of using language clash in a kind of misunderstanding that seems like there are two different ways of being, and the traditionalist can be persuasive to the insecure who distrust their thinking and want to be obedient. To the modernist it looks a lot by all the harping on obedience in Christianity, regardless of your own thinking.

Buddhism is rooted more in your experience because meditation is about your experience. Christians who went on long meditation retreats have said this is what spirituality is really about. We can't talk about the transcendental because it's beyond words, but I see all the God talk as trying to connect to the transcendental and the mysterious.

On top of that the Pure Land tradition smacks of a trying to get to heaven thing. I don't believe mappo, that the world has degenerated so that nobody can get enlightened any more. That seems like a statement that you can't prove, and a self fulfilling prophecy. I get it that it takes the foot off the pedal and you can just try for enlightenment in the next life, and it brings in more Buddhists. Pure Land is the most popular form of Buddhism. I love the Pure Land sutras, but I take them as inspiration to get on the cushion. And since USA is a Christian nation, Thich Nhat Hanh used to use Christian language to communicate the Dharma in English. To the anti-Christian that's hard to swallow.

Then to accuse the person who rejects the Christian power games, to be called a colonialist is quite challenging. I'm not trying to influence anyone's practice and I'm not a teacher, I'm just discussing how it all makes sense to me. I'm not going to get upset if you call me not a Buddhist. But I also don't think it's a philosophy, I do think it's a religion. And most secular Buddhists are folded into a traditional sangha, and just don't talk about that stuff.

Buddhism has interacted with Confucianism and Taoism in China, and it must interact with the modern world. It must stand the buffeting of ideas the Buddha never commented on, forms of government, scientific advances like DNA, and the rapid change due to technology, and social media. We can see through the patriarchal systems of power. A Buddhist informed westerner with a highly educated and sophisticated worldview is welcome in Buddhism I hope.

Some of the newer forms of Buddhism are marginalized because they try harder to modernize, and they have good teachings, but NKT and Triratna have been marginalized on this subreddit because there have been very human growing pains and abuses of power. There are other traditions that maybe should die because of the level of abuse. The very public scandals that are well documented show the abuse of power and exploitation, and traditional forms seem to do better in fighting an anything goes abuse of power, so there might be some wisdom in being a traditionalist.

Even if Chinese immigrants brought Buddhism to North America 500 years ago, Buddhism is very new in North America, and there are many things to figure out. Add to that in the USA we are battling a political worldview that spits personalities in half, those who want a minimalist government and those who want to try to ameliorate some of the systems that hurt people, modify capitalism into a kinder form. There is a lot of confusing manipulation to try to get their way, information wars. And the leave-me-alone ideology has won a lot lately, it's almost an anti-awakening movement. There is great turmoil in the USA at the moment, growing pains for a young nation. And traditionalism versus progress is part of that. Traditionalism isn't bad, my relatives who stayed in the church don't have drug problems, they build stronger families. And yet I've lost 40% of my friends lately because of politics and culture wars. America is deeply troubled and I almost could see mappo. The pandemic has been very stressful. Then look at what is going on in Ukraine.

There are still monasteries and great teachers who haven't been disgraced or abused power, and many foreign teachers who are willing to try and seed Buddhism in North America. America has an intellectual meditation focused Buddhism, but is weak on community because our society is so fractured at the moment, our rugged individualism, and traditional sanghas are foreign, cling to foreign culture. There is no true American sangha, except maybe new movements in a lay Theravadan tradition in IMS, where you're also allowed to have a secular bent. I have no wonder that traditionalist eastern Buddhist are shaking their heads at the wooly headed Americans. Meanwhile after years of horrible Civil War, Sri Lanka is on the brink of financial collapse. If only the chaos in my head and the chaos in the world would go away. And yet, that is the very mud for the lotus.