You do not need to be of a skin color, creed, gender or class to take refuge in the Buddha's teachings. The dharma is for all.
As long as you don’t pretend you created Buddhism or are an infallible authority of Buddhism it’s not appropriation.
Personally I find the word not really appropriate with what we are trying to convey which I assume would be something along the lines of “disrespectful usage of other peoples cultures or practices.”
Cultural appreciation = wearing a chinese cheongsam in a culturally appropriate situation because you think it's beautiful and you love the dress.
Cultural appropriation = wearing grass skirts and coconut shell brassiers and getting wasted at a "tiki" frat party.
Tell that to every human on HN and see if they start wearing their nighties and undergarments, and bikinis to their silicon valley workplaces.
It's not a free-for-all, so don't pretend that cultural norms don't exist.
Jeez, this "I'll take what I want and fuck ya'll" American culture is sickening.
And there's no way to decide what's "permitted" use of a piece of apparel anyways. Cultural significance changes within cultures, and individuals within it are not uniformly sensitive to informal use. What would you do to iconoclasts? They're culturally appropriating too. Are they allowed to introduce lighthearted use?
The "cultural appropriation" idea is the worst form of ultra-conservative hand wringing dressed up in progressive language. No actual harm is done by "misusing" clothes. This is just an excuse made up by moral busy bodies to go on yet another obnoxious crusade.
This is where the problem is. You misunderstand what I'm saying. Nobody is stopping you from wearing whatever you want.
When people call out cultural appropriation, they aren't trying to ban something; merely point out a faux pas.
As a reminder, all of this is about a pretend problem that produces no damage and has no victims.
If someone said that to me (also a Buddhist) I would probably burst out laughing :)
She says that meditation is for some monastic elites, but that is far from the truth. Who even chose to publish her book?
Buddha himself said to Ananda that several thousand of his household desciples attained Nirvana. Not only did these "laymen" did meditation, they even attained Nirvana.
She did not quite say that. She said that it was only practiced by monastic elites up until the early 20th century:
"Meditation was not at all a mainstream lay practice in Buddhism. It only became popular in the early twentieth century, when Buddhist reformers such as the Burmese monk Mahasi Sayadaw, founder of modern Vipassana meditation, promoted it as a lay Buddhist practice. Mindfulness, as it was practiced for most of its history in Asia, was a very elite practice reserved only for advanced monastics."
Very wrong, too.
In Buddha's time itself, there were laypeople doing meditation.
I am wondering who even published her book?
Agreed on all points! The Buddha's teachings are foundational to my world view, and I too am "from the West."
I do want to push back a little bit though (gently). Your coworker's critique is not necessarily wrong (even if they were making it from a place of ignorance). When I was a practicing Zen Buddhist, I saw a lot of teachers appropriating the dharma to sell their own teachings. Buddhist teachers consulting on the side to corporations (selling the teachings is inappropriate in Buddhism), starting companies to sell services, etc. The teachings were so far removed from the original ideas that they are incomprehensible. Vague spiritual statements, go with your gut morality, confusing dialog, going through the motions (rituals) was all that mattered. How could it be any other way? The West's values are counter to the teachings in just about everyway possible. It could not possibly be transmitted to the West without this kind of modification.
Cultural appropriation has happened with every culture Buddhism has encountered from it's origins in North India, through China and Southeast Asia, Korea and Japan, and now the West. We all have changed it somewhat and now claim what we have is more original than the original.
However, none of these adaptations can compare with the basic insight of the original teachings in my opinion.
Until your get a call from HR, the twitter mobs decides to target you, or when that "woke" person gets promoted and starts dictating policies in the office.
Is this co-worker a peer, a superior, or are you their superior?
I'm far from an expert, but it seems like a reasonable argument to advance that the linkage of Buddhist practices with corporate and material advancement--and the removal of spiritual or ethical content--is "appropriation", and not merely respectful mixing.
In your view, is this appropriation or cultural mixing or exchange?
[1]: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/theres-no-alternative-t...
That said, since you asked, no, it's never occurred to me that jazz is appropriation.
[1] Amusingly, the folks who admit to not actually, you know, reading the thing they are debating, are the ones who claim to be defending the free exchange of ideas. I think. Or maybe they're just angry online.
This is how ideas work. And it’s not just religion. Think of left wing thought. The original communist ideology was revolutionary. Social democrats appropriated ideas from them but believe working within the system. Many hard left people despise social democrats and believe they do more harm than good.
It's clear hardly anyone commenting here has any idea what appropriation really is. It's not just disrespecting existing cultures.
It's destroying them by removing the meaning from them. And then repackaging the symbols - usually with a vague implication of profundity and exoticism - as a marketable commodity.
The purpose isn't to spread the original culture but to use the trappings to promote the usual Western corporate neoliberal value system.
Corporate Buddhism is a perfect example. It's clearly a lot more corporate than Buddhist. The goal isn't enlightenment, detachment, or compassion, it's cultural conformity with the aim of increased productivity and a higher share price.
This shouldn't be controversial. All you need to do is look at how people behave to see what motivates them.
Sort of like the monarchies of Europe have been turned into republics in all but name, the culture of “divine right of kings” destroyed but the trappings of monarchy are still used but devoid of meaning. And often used as marketing material.
But, surely you don’t yearn for the return of absolute monarchies ruled by gods appointed ruler, do you?
This is the path of humanity. Some things die off, some things survive and some are transformed beyond all recognition. There is nothing intrinsically good or bad in this. It simply is a phenomenon that happens.
In fact, in the example, I would think most people are in agreement destroying the cultural artefact of absolute monarchy and wearing it’s hollow trappings as marketing props to boost the tourism industry is a good thing.
I genuinely don’t understand this obsession with “preserving the original meaning”. As if it actually exists, it does not, everything is a perversion of everything else. Even assuming there was some “original meaning”, why would hollowing it out, or twisting it into the very opposite matter in any way? It’s just another mutated idea in the long line of mutated ideas that make up human thought.
This is peak HN.
Edit: I take it back. What's peak HN is that this is the top voted comment on the entire post.
If people from a traditionally Buddhist country like Nepal disrespected Buddhist ideas, it would presumably be just as disrespectful as if people from America did, so I don’t think “cultural appropriation” is the right way to analyze this.
By the way, practically every religion has been transformed and warped so much over time as to be almost unrecognizable. This again is normal human behavior.
Ironically all this talk of cultural appropriation is "contrary or even disrespectful of the original intent" of Buddhism. Buddhism never belonged to Magadha, India or Asia, so it is not possible for anybody to appropriate it. It is not anyone's property to begin with
Buddhism is not a monolithic entity. It took on vastly different forms in each of the places it landed. Chinese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism have different scriptures, different approaches to bodhisattvas, different paths to awakening.
Was it disrespectful of the Chinese to take Buddhist teachings when they arrived and transform them to fit their cultural context? Should we go eliminate Buddhism from China because it's not native there and they twisted it to fit their culture?
---
Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from minority cultures.
According to critics of the practice, cultural appropriation differs from acculturation, assimilation, or equal cultural exchange in that this appropriation is a form of colonialism. When cultural elements are copied from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, and these elements are used outside of their original cultural context ─ sometimes even against the expressly stated wishes of members of the originating culture – the practice is often received negatively.
---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation
EDIT: instead of more stupid downvotes people could bother reading the wikipedia page.
For example, famous BLM activist Blair Imani is convert to Islam. After her religious conversion she soon after came out as a proud queer woman and upon being questioned she claimed there is no conflict between homosexuality and Islam. She subsequently gave media tours proudly proclaiming to the world her marginal view of Islam. This idea obviously only exists in some marginal Muslim communities in the west and goes against the beliefs of 99% of Muslims in the global south. Is this not blatant cultural appropriation? She took Islam and warped it to fit her western morality much to the anger of its emotional adherents.
Obviously we will never see an article calling her or the Nation of Islam cultural appropriators.
"colonialism" refers to extracting whatever idea or artifact is seen as valuable from a culture or a land without consent and/or without respecting the moral rights of who invented or made it.
Additionally, you can read the wikipedia page.
(edited for clarity: different people use majority/minority differently depending on the context. In this context it's not about raw numbers.)
(edit: an example of power dynamic could be a large multinational food chain that takes a lesser-known dish from some culture and sells a butchered version worldwide without clearly indicating the origin and/or that it's not the real thing. By doing this it can easily distorts the idea of the dish in the minds of millions of people.)
Sure, I’m aware of this distinction. I’m asking what are the power dynamics between Asian Buddhists and random American businessmen hypocritically adopting Buddhism? They don’t even live in the same countries, and there is not any colonial relationship or other power relationship between them as far as I can tell, so what makes one “majority”?
Sure, in general, the West has exploited Asia many times throughout history; is this the only reason? If so, then wouldn’t any cultural exchange whatsoever between Asia and the West count as appropriation?
> "colonialism" refers to extracting
This is a really vague and ahistorical definition of colonialism that seems made up to justify your point, but anyway, nothing has been “extracted” — people in traditionally Buddhist cultures have the same access to the same Buddhism that they did before. Unlike actual historical colonialism in which physical resources are stolen, people are forced to work, traditional culture is banned or heavily distorted in the places where it’s practiced, and so on.
So culturally powerless people may extract from culturally powerful people until what point? If a Ukrainian appropriates a part of Russian culture to be their own, who is the victim here? Recently, being Ukrainian has become a much more respected cultural identity than being a Russian, does that mean the power dynamic has shifted?
The more you pick away at the idea of cultural appropriation, you realize that the rules people set out for it make very little sense outside of the egregious examples of something like headdresses at Coachella, etc. My personal rule is just not to disrespect people and parts of their culture they find important. The color of my skin or the actions of either of our ancestors shouldn’t play into it, IMO.
What even is named by the word “disrespect”?
Is disrespecting me just any behavior that I call “disrespectful”?
Seems like bullshit to me.
In the Simbari culture, it is considered important for young boys to be taken away from their families, be beaten and forced to fellate the older members of the tribe.
Does your personal rule of not disrespecting "people and parts of their culture" hold in their case?
If a Simbari person wanted to have an earnest discussion about whether the practice you're describing was acceptable, I'd of course tell them that I think it's barbaric and insane. But if you're asking whether I'd seek out Simbari people out to tell them I feel that way? No, I would not. So my heuristic holds true, but I do appreciate the gotcha :)
So the concept "minority rule" is a contradiction in terms, since if a group rules it's per definition the majority?
If you are talking about numbers, it is not.
In this context it's the first.
I think you jumped the gun. The extended interview with the book author showed that her position is aligned, or even the same as yours (your comment is naturally too brief to tell whether I should have used only “aligned” or “same”).
And indeed it’s Buddhism we’re talking about: a belief system appropriated by other cultures to the point where its origin in India was forgotten for centuries.
"What we see in American religion, even if it is practiced in a corporate setting, is often the question, “How can the group help the individual realize themselves?” Whereas in other cultures this question tends to be reversed: “How can the individual help realize the goals of the group?” Interestingly enough, I think that companies have been able to command great self-sacrifice from Americans in a way that no other institution can today. I would argue that companies or workplaces have become the new faith communities that are replacing organized religion."
I agree with that. I don’t see the problem though. Why is modifying an idea a bad thing?
> Carolyn Chen is arguing corporatized Buddhism is a new religion that celebrates 70+hour work weeks and the celebrity CEO.
I agree with this too. I am also left asking, why is this considered bad? To clarify, I don’t refer to the ethics of working 70 hours per week, I refer to the emergence of this new religion. Why is the emergence of a new religion bad?
Who is saying it's bad? I think you're arguing against a point nobody is making.
I find the most remarkable appropriation of Buddhism to have been the Tibetan, complete with the overthrow of the monarch through an alliance with the Qing and the institution of a theocratic-feudal state (Ganden Phodrang) more like revolutionary Iran than what it re-invented itself into in the 20th century. People seem fine with that; who can complain?
The language of appropiation implies a sort of 'property'-like dynamic for ideas.
If I learn, get to know, understand an idea from somebody else, I have not appropiated them in any way. I merely have adopted their idea.
This way of copying/adopting of other's ideas is what makes a cultural society thrive. On the other hand, a society where all idea transfers are in fact an exchange of something, is exactly what I consider the essence of a market.
The critical difference is that in a market, widgets are exchanged. And whenever somebody takes a widget from somebody else, only one widget remains.
However when somebody adopts another's idea, the idea is now it two places (and quite possibly, with a slight difference); that it, until "the idea" becomes a digital artifact, then it's the exact same "digital" copy which exists in more than the one original instance.
It's the dumbest action to try and enforce that digital artifacts (and later on, ideas themselves) behave like widgets in a market.
In that metaphor, maybe appropriation is when people go around selling dumbed-down or distorted copies that ignore the complexity and fullness of the original ideas. The original ideas are still out there, but for the people who only see the stupid copies, the majesty of the original idea is masked/overshadowed.
And my understanding is that part of the complaint around appropriation involves outsiders profiting from their use/misuse while the originators of the culture see none of the spoils.
https://apxhard.substack.com/p/every-complex-idea-has-a-mill...
I agree this is happening. Why is this an intrinsically bad thing? It seems to me to be just how cultural exchanges work. An idea comes, parts of it are kept, others removed, and others modified. Why is stripping an idea of it’s “original meaning” ( I don’t think that exists) and changing it, even beyond recognition an intrinsically bad this?
> I’m imagining how I would feel if my company hosted prayer sessions where you speak to your unconscious mind rather than God and the sign of the cross represents the intersection of personal and professional responsibilities
I’m going to assume the comment means “I imagine how I would feel experiencing a twisted version of christianity”. Under that assumption, the answer would be the same way a conservative christian feels when seeing a church displaying the gay flag. Just like you in the hypothetical scenario, they feel weird.
Are you as sympathetic to the conservative christian as you are to the traditional buddhist? After all, in both cases, “surface level of religious practice while tossing out all the parts that make it meaningful to the person” seems to apply.
But that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as appropriation, or that it doesn't occur in Silicon Valley.
I've participated in multiple work-place meditation trainings. In each case, the teacher was American, spoke English as a first language, and had done teacher-trainings at American institutions, and I think they were always white. Would my company have been equally willing to hire a Thai immigrant who spoke English but not with an American accent, whose credentials were years of monastic training? Or, is there an institutional preference for hearing Buddhist practices from someone who, as Chen says, looks just like the people they are teaching?
If one population is able to profit off of communicating the cultural practices of others who are not able to access the same opportunities, would you agree that could be called "appropriation"? If not, what should it be called?
No. Let me answer your second question first before formulating the answer.
> If not, what should it be called?
Getting lucky
—-
So, I don’t understand how “Buddhism isn't owned by any one people or place” can go together with “communicating the cultural practices of others”. Is buddhism “owned” by a people or not?
I am going to assume the answer is no. This transforms your statement into:
If one population is able to profit off of communicating an idea and another population is not able to access the same opportunity, would you agree that could be called "appropriation"
Certainly you can see now why no, it is not “appropriation”. Some people have an opportunity to do something, others do not. The conversation on access to opportunities is a separate topic.
Hence the answer to the second question. The first population got lucky.
For me, there is a distinction:
- Adapting, mixing, etc. is (as you said) the bedrock of humanity. It is learning from other cultures.
- Claiming that one is doing "real Buddhism" (when it is a version far from any tradition) or serving pepperoni pizza as "genuinely Italian", or being a "true Christian" for having Xmas with a Coca-Cola Santa Claus.
The latter is essentially a Cargo Cult of some other traditions and cultures.
I asked a few Italians about "pizza as an international dish". One opinion was that there is nothing wrong with baking "bread with other ingredients". What pissed her off was when people said such a dish was similar to one food prepared by her mother or in her town.
Most people overestimate how old traditional recipes are, anyway. Italians didn’t have tomatoes or potatoes before Columbus; nor did Indians, Thais or Chinese people have chile peppers… is all global cuisine just a huge cultural appropriation from the Mexicans and Peruvians?
For others that are curious about meditation and Buddhism, I would suggest reading the article and making up your own mind, rather than the comments here.
But then again I would not know how those of the religious tones of Buddhism might look upon my non-religious practice of the Buddhism teachings except that they might see it as neither wrong or right but hope for my future progress towards Nirvana
I was very curious about the article. I am wondering if it treats ideas such as “hire fast fire fast” - In a way a concept related to the Buddhist ideas of detachment, or the opposite, “bing your whole self to work” which in a way seems contradictory - you have attachments, continue to have them even at work.
But it is a genuinely off putting sensation to see someone referring to cultural exchanges and transformations as “appropriation”. Adopting and transforming ideas is the bedrock of humanity. Opposing or denigrating this seems like a fundamentally evil thing to do. It feels anti human.