| DATE: | Tuesday-Wednesday, February 8-9, 2005 |
|---|---|
| PLACE: | Lipman Room, Barrows Hall, UC Berkeley |
| FORMAT: | Conference |
| SPONSOR: | Center for Buddhist Studies and Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley With the support of Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai America |
On February 8-9, 2005, the Center for Buddhist Studies and Institute of East Asian Studies sponsored a conference titled "Speaking for the Buddha? Buddhism and the Media," on the UC Berkeley campus. The conference brought together over twenty scholars, journalists, filmmakers, writers, and professionals from the television, movie and publishing industries to discuss the media's role in the contemporary transformation of Buddhism. Over 120 people from the UC Berkeley community and the general public attended panels on print media, motion pictures, authority and transmission, and advertising. The conference took place in conjunction with the International Buddhist Film Festival, and was held with the support of Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai America.
The conference attracted attention from a large audience comprised of scholars, practitioners, media representatives and the general public.
The conference kicked off with introductory remarks by Robert Sharf, Chair of the Center for Buddhist Studies and Director of the Group in Buddhist Studies at Berkeley. Sharf asserted that the power of the contemporary media to determine what it means to be Buddhist is unprecedented in the history of Buddhism. He drew a parallel between the introduction of Buddhism to China and its introduction to America. Arguably, Buddhism became popular in both places because people saw what they wanted to see in it — a form of Daoism in China, a technology of self-fulfillment in America. However, in China the representation of Buddhism remained largely in the hands of monastics, while in America it has came under the control of media industries. Sharf positioned the conference as a middle ground where scholars, practitioners and members of the media could initiate dialogue on contemporary developments in Buddhism.
Professor Robert Sharf, Chair of the Center for Buddhist Studies at UC Berkeley welcomes conference participants.
The first panel, "Print Media," was moderated by Robert Sharf. The first presenter, Don Lattin, covers religion, spirituality, and cults for the San Francisco Chronicle and recently authored Following Our Bliss: How the Spiritual Ideals of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today (2003). His presentation highlighted the increasing popularity of Buddhism in print media. Lattin observed that references to Buddhism in Chronicle stories have doubled in the past five years. He then outlined four reasons why journalists are interested in covering Buddhism. It can be pitched as "exotic," with visually stunning imagery such as monks with shaven heads, and with charismatic leaders such as the Dalai Lama. It is also perceived as "experiential," a vague category that attracts people by appearing elusive and anti-authoritarian. Third, it seems "eclectic," that is, it blends well with other religions. Last but not least, it fits the "ethnic" bill, providing the opportunity to write about the Asian American experience. On this last point, Lattin noted surprisingly little overlap between Asian American and white Buddhist communities.
The first conference panel featured Richard Jaffe (Duke), Diane Winston (USC), Orville Schell (UCB), Don Lattin (SF Chronicle) and John Loudon (independent editor) (from left to right).
The next speaker was Orville Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and author of Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood (2001). His presentation analyzed travelogues of Tibet as evidence for the Western impulse toward the exotic. Without the travelogues of European and American explorers, Schell suggested, Buddhism would have been too remote to have spread easily to the West. Thus, Western fascination with Buddhism began with the printed word rather than with visual culture, through accounts that packaged the religious with the geographic. Tibet in particular was identified as an isolated site of otherness, a remarkable locus of natural beauty, spiritual dignity, magic and sorcery. The perception of Tibet as a transformative place was shared by Francis Younghusband, who wrote that he was freed from hatred and "infused with elation and goodwill" after taking Lhasa in a British military expedition. The writings of these authors have become part of our "collective DNA," Schell argued, informing current views and expectations about Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.
John Loudon, an independent editor who was the former executive editor of Harper San Francisco and the original editor of Parabola Magazine, followed with "What Makes a Buddhist Book Succeed?" Loudon observed that since people generally buy for selfish motives, bookstores can be likened to restaurants that promise to fulfill the varying needs and expectations of each customer. Successful books promise what many people want by way of skillful packaging, and then deliver through their content. Religious books take longer to succeed commercially, spreading gradually through word of mouth, book clubs and lecture circuits by charismatic authors. Loudon further remarked that most readers of books on Buddhism don't care about Buddhism at all, but are simply looking for advice on the "art of living". He cited several best-selling books on Buddhism — including Sogyal Rinpoche's The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Jack Kornfield's A Path with Heart, Jon Kabat-Zinn's Wherever You Go, There You Are, and Dalai Lama's The Art of Happiness — as examples that require a "very low point of entry for the reader to participate" because they are not strictly about Buddhist topics. Such books, Loudon concluded, succeed because they detach their content from the cultural contexts of Buddhism, and because they use experience rather than dogma as a source of appeal.
The Dalai Lama's Art of Happiness, cited by John Loudon as a popular advice book.
The fourth speaker was Diane Winston, a veteran journalist who now teaches at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and recently co-edited Faith in the City: Religion and Urban Commercial Culture (2002). Winston began with the question, "What would the Buddha do about the media?" She suggested that he would give up the idea of changing or improving it, but would accept it for what it is. The media, Winston argued, is an interconnected environment of ideas, opinion and entertainment from multiple sources such as iPods, television, billboards, and the Web. She identified consumerism, materialism and rationalism as three substructures determining the media environment, which are antithetical to most religions except Protestantism. In addition, other religions are made to fit into Protestant frameworks. For example, in the nineteenth century Buddhism was viewed as modeling the best values of Protestantism, such as tolerance and rationalism. Later Buddhism was recast as different from Protestantism, with its world-renouncing tendencies interpreted as a mark of passivity and a lack of value for life. The latter view influenced coverage of self-immolating monks during the Vietnam War, which overlooked the religio-political nexus in which these events occurred. Moving to recent coverage, Winston found much of it "pedestrian and pedantic," e.g. simply calling attention to the presence of an ethnic-religious group in one's community. More encouragingly, some examples have been surprisingly sophisticated in treating the complexities of Buddhism in America, such as a Los Angeles Times feature on a local Shin Buddhist community.
Richard Jaffe, a specialist in modern Japanese Buddhism at Duke University, rounded out the panel with observations on the reach of the media about Buddhism in Christian-dominated areas. Jaffe noted that the selection of Christian books in local bookstores "dwarfed" that of Eastern religions, highlighting the uneven access to Buddhist materials in contrast to other geographic locations such as the Bay area. He raised the possibility that the media fosters differing, even diverging understandings of Buddhism to different audiences, in a parallel development to the partisan segmentation of news coverage. Jaffe then turned to the media portrayal of Buddhism directed toward Christian audiences, remarking that books on Buddhism sold in North Carolina were generally focused on strategies to convert Buddhists to Christianity. Another source on Buddhism was Christian fiction, where Buddhism was lumped with Eastern religions in general. Jaffe cited Frank E. Peretti's This Present Darkness, in which a character states: "It's all a con game: Eastern meditation, witchcraft, divination, Science of Mind, psychic healing, holistic education..." A second example, Pat Robertson's The End of the Age, features a host of bad characters who scheme to take over the U.S. government, including a president possessed by Shiva, a Buddhist monk as Secretary of Education, a Shiite Muslim as Secretary of Energy, and so on. Jaffe reminded us that while these forms of media might seem "retrograde" to a Berkeley audience, they have a wide reach in America at large.
The panel on print media was followed up by a lively question and answer session. One audience member asked about media coverage of scandals in contemporary Buddhism. Loudon responded that publishers looked for spiritual teachers who have a following, but did not necessarily vet them for authenticity nor take responsibility for protecting the public from the actions of teachers. Lattin stood by the San Francisco Chronicle's coverage of scandals as honest and forthcoming. Another member of the audience asked why the media emphasized Euro-American Buddhists almost exclusively, given that the majority of Buddhists in America are immigrants and/or Asian-American. Winston responded that coverage depends on location, and that stories in the Los Angeles area often covered immigrant Buddhists. Lattin considered this a valid criticism, while reiterating that journalists were constrained by the interests of their audience. Another participant asked whether "bad" books on Buddhism, i.e. "art of living" books, were better than no books on Buddhism. Loudon found nothing wrong with selling popular books, but said that he would not accept books that might later embarrass his publisher if the author was widely perceived as a fraud. Winston reiterated that many voices speak for Buddhism, implying the futility of controlling them all.
Babeth VanLoo, Director of the Buddhist Broadcasting Foundation.
The second panel, "Motion Pictures," was moderated by Bernard Faure, a professor of East Asian Buddhism at Stanford University who recently published Double Exposure: Cutting Across Buddhist and Western Discourses (2003). Babeth VanLoo, a documentary filmmaker whose recent films include Bhutan: Women of the Dragon Kingdom, presented on her work as the director of the Buddhist Broadcasting Foundation in Holland. VanLoo expressed the wish to replace the vision of Buddhism as an exotic form of escapism with a vision of using interdependence and compassion to foster society. She stated that the touchstones of the foundation are derived from the six Buddhist perfections (pāramitā), stressing the efforts of the staff to cultivate these in their daily work. Couching television as a view on reality, VanLoo described the programs produced by the Buddhist Broadcasting Foundation as an alternative form of television based on filmmaking strategies such as selective slowness and narrow casting. Since 2001 their programs have included Four Noble Truths (1996), which films the Dalai Lama's teachings in London; Life Is An Illusion (2001), which considers similarities between modern scientific research and Buddhist theories that matter is created by the mind; The Next Step (2001), which interviews American and European Buddhists on applying Buddhism to the professional field and mainstream social institutions; Cave in the Snow (2002), which profiles an English woman who took retreat in the Himalayas for twelve years as a Tibetan Buddhist nun; and Come Dance with Me (2004), a documentary about second-generation Chinese youth in Holland and their efforts to incorporate Buddhism into their daily lives.
Tano Maeda, Executive Director of the International Buddhist Film Festival.
The next speaker was Gaetano Maeda, executive director of the International Buddhist Film Festival (IBFF) and a founding director of the Buddhist quarterly Tricycle whose films include Peace is Every Step (1998). Maeda spoke about his work with IBFF, affirming that the organization aims to "pitch a big tent" over the multiplicity of cultures, views and perspectives associated with Buddhism. The purpose of the International Buddhist Film Festival, according to Maeda, is to support films and bring them to broad audiences. He noted that people commonly ask what counts as a "Buddhist film," and discussed a range of films that have been screened at the Festival. While Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers and Tides (2001) may lack a single Buddhist technical term, the film conveys a central theme of Buddhism, namely decay. Jacob's Ladder (1990) was marketed as a thriller on first release, but screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin, who is a meditation practitioner, later revealed that it was adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Maeda also emphasized IBFF's efforts to show a diversity of films from around the world: this year's festival featured films from 15 nations. He concluded with a quote by Bhutanese filmmaker and Tibetan reincarnated teacher Khyentse Norbu, on his decision to make films despite resistance from certain quarters: "Dharma is the tea, and culture is the cup... If necessary, I am ready to change the cup."
Robert Buswell, Professor at UCLA.
Robert Buswell, a professor specializing in the Son (Zen) tradition of Korean Buddhism and author of The Zen Monastic Experience (1992), gave a critical assessment of how Buddhism has been represented in the film industry. After seven years as a Buddhist monk in Asia, Buswell was appalled by Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979), a dramatization of the travels of G. I. Gurdjieff, because it unrealistically portrayed Asian characters as "spiritual zombies" who responded to even innocuous questions with skyward gazes. Buswell argues that the situation has not improved much since then, naming Why Has Bodhidharma Left for the East? (1989) and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ...and Spring (2003) as two Korean films that also fail to authentically portray the range of monks' occupations and personalities, most of which are quite ordinary. Im Kwon-Taek's Mandala (1981) and Khyentse Norbu's The Cup (1999), in Buswell's opinion, were more successful in presenting an "authentic sense of what it's like to be in a monastery." Buswell concluded that he would also like to see films that "ask big questions" without talking explicitly about Buddhism, citing Peter Weir's Fearless as an example that tackles the issue of how to continue to live in the world after having given up the self.
Filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky.
The last speaker on this panel was Nathaniel Dorsky, a Bay area filmmaker and author of Devotional Cinema (2003). Dorsky observed that many in the Western world are interested in the "genius" of the Dharma teachings, not necessarily in Buddhism itself. He intends that his silent 16mm films "create a state of prayer," not by treating Buddhism as a subject but by expressing "the view that comes from Buddhism." Dorsky read passages from his book, speaking of the longstanding link between art and health as well as the transformative potential of watching film. He also spoke of the limitations of film when it is subservient to theme or dependent on "the ornament of language," which can describe a world but not see it. When images are not allowed to be as themselves, Dorsky argued, this makes for "subtle distortion" diluting the primordial strength that film can offer.
A number of questions were raised at the end of the panel. One audience member asked Buswell about his position on documentaries. Buswell was critical of documentaries that simply get it wrong, but also noted that even more accurate documentaries will give a particular representation of their subjects. For example, one documentarian arrived at an American Buddhist dharma center on the day a sex scandal erupted. The next question for the panel was: why does a film have to be accurate to be good? Maeda viewed the dualism of good and bad as a subjective issue dependent on form, content and audience response, which may not be congruent at the same moment. He considers Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ...and Spring (2003) to be a well-made film, but inappropriate for IBFF because of its "crypto-Christian" character. Another question was directed to VanLoo, asking how she established Buddhist television. VanLoo responded that although all major world religions may be represented on Dutch television, she encountered resistance for many years because Buddhism wasn't seen as being sufficiently grounded in Dutch society. Faure asked VanLoo if there was too much "enlightenment guaranteed" in film and television, i.e. works produced from a Protestant bias that make Buddhism appear easy and accessible to Western viewers. VanLoo countered that films they have received from Asia mostly consist of Buddhist ceremonies, which do not offer enough to their audiences in terms of insight or the practical application of Buddhism. Georges Dreyfus, a speaker from the third panel, commented that we are seeing a construction of Buddhism in Western culture, which eschews ritual in favor of our notion of the spiritual, i.e. the "experiential" and the "detachable."
In the evening, the conference co-sponsored a special screening of Martin Scorsese's Kundun (1997) with the International Buddhist Film Festival. The film dramatizes the life of Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, up until his 1959 exile to India. The screening was followed by a discussion with Tibet scholars Georges Dreyfus and Donald Lopez, moderated by Orville Schell. Schell recapped the film's release amidst a surge of expectation in the mid- to late 1990's that American activism and media exposure could have a salutary effect on China's Tibet policy. He cited the "sheer brute force" of Hollywood in catalyzing the discussion on Tibetan political rights, citing Seven Years in Tibet (1997) and Windhorse (1998) as two related films. Nevertheless, Schell judged Kundun as "out of line" compared to the quality of Scorsese's other work, and observed that nothing substantial came out of the hype surrounding these Hollywood productions.
Kundun scene depicting the young Dalai Lama.
Dreyfus affirmed that he considers Kundun a very complex, emotional and beautiful film. At the same time he emphasized that it mainly conveyed the point of view of a certain subset of the Tibetan exile community, i.e. those living in and around Dharamsala. Dreyfus cited two depictions of historical events as "overdetermined," the fate of Reting Rinpoche and the escape of the Dalai Lama. The film doesn't make it clear that Reting Rinpoche, the ex-regent credited with finding the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, was assassinated. To the film's merit, Dreyfus added, it does touch on this troubled period of Tibetan history, including scenes of dissent among high officials and indicating that Reting Rinpoche died in prison. As for orchestrating the Dalai Lama's escape to India, the film credits the Nechung oracle. Dreyfus noted two other explanations that credit the CIA and Khampa guerrillas from eastern Tibet. A nod is given to the Khampas who follow the Dalai Lama to the border, but "it is very emblematic that the film ends in Dharamsala."
Lopez responded in turn to the comments of the previous two speakers. Addressing Dreyfus' point about Dharamsala perspectives in the film, he remarked that many of the Tibetan actors were aristocrats or the children of aristocrats who had been present during the events depicted in the film. On the glossing over of deaths in the film, he added that many now believe the Dalai Lama's father was poisoned by the Tibetan government because he was abusing his privileged position by making excessive demands on them. Lopez was baffled at why Scorsese, "chronicler of the debased in the U.S.," chose to film this subject, with untrained actors and at a financial loss. Instead, Scorsese poured all his efforts into cinematography and drawing from his great knowledge of film history: Lopez detected homage to John Ford cavalry westerns in the horseback scenes and borrowing from Gone With the Wind (1939) for his memorable tableau of the Dalai Lama standing in the "mandala of the dead." Lopez further noted that the film was shot in Morocco, comparing Kundun's evocation of a desert world and the high attention to costume to Scorsese's previous film Casino (1995). As a parting thought, Lopez analyzed the film's portrayal of the Dalai Lama as an observer who constantly sees through a medium: his telescope, radio, dreams, and the Nechung oracle.
Schell then re-opened the question of what Scorsese, and Hollywood, had intended to do with media exposure of Tibet. Dreyfus agreed that Scorsese's motives were puzzling in comparison to the obvious "caricature" in Seven Years in Tibet. He speculated that Kundun was Scorsese's sincere attempt to let Tibetans speak for themselves, although his own vision creeps in. Dreyfus felt that the "pizza effect" was at work here, so that the Western mythologization of Tibet ended up being repeated and reinforced by Tibetans in exile. With this collectively formed vision of Tibet circulating, Dreyfus said, "I have trouble knowing whose vision it is." Schell asked the discussants to comment on Disney's attempt to constrain distribution of the film to maintain relations with China. Lopez stated that at the time, Beijing initially protested against the making of the film, but on the other hand was trying to get a Disneyland. Disney refused to pull the film completely but reduced distribution so much that it was a box-office flop. When Schell asked about good films on Tibet, Dreyfus recommended Eric Valli's Himalaya (1999), on the lives of yak caravaners in the Dolpo region of northwestern Nepal.
Day two of the conference began with the third panel, "Authority and Transmission," which was moderated by Carl W. Bielefeldt, a professor at Stanford University whose rsearch focuses on the intellectual history of the Zen tradition. The first speaker was Donald Lopez, a professor specializing in late Indian Mahāyāna and Tibetan Buddhism at the University of Michigan and recent editor of Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism (2005). Lopez began with two travel anecdotes, in which Marco Polo and Daniel Defoe each report on a popular local idol: these would not be recognized as one and the same "Buddha" until the late eighteenth century. The early study of Asian religions, Lopez remarked, was to separate out the idolaters and call them by different "-isms." However, a shift to sympathetic, humanistic portrayals of the Buddha occurred in the mid-nineteenth century with Eugene Burnouf's publication of his introduction to Buddhism. This tendency is exemplified in Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia and continues today, e.g. in Karen Armstrong's Buddha (2001). As an extreme example, Lopez cited Conrad Rooks' film Siddhartha (1972): the viewer sees the Buddha's hand but not his body, as if seeing from the Buddha's point of view. Another reading of this cinematographic strategy is that the Buddha transcends the picture. Lopez noted a precedent in the art historical debate on aniconism, which posits that early art never depicts the Buddha's image directly but signifies it through the throne, his footprints, or other attributes. The aniconic analysis is consistent with the nineteenth century desire to see original Buddhism as rational rather than idolatrous. However, Lopez concludes, something is lost when we try to "turn a stone idol into flesh and blood." Better to accept that Marco Polo was right: the Buddha is an idol, and Buddhists are idolaters.
Panel 3 featured Georges Dreyfus (Willliams College) , Gil Fronsdal (Insight Meditation Center), Zoketzu Norman Fisher (San Francisco Zen Center), Timothy McNeill (Wisdom Publications) and Donald Lopez (University of Michigan).
Gil Fronsdal, a primary teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City who received a Ph.D. at Stanford University, spoke on a range of issues relevant to the conference. As a Buddhist teacher, he addressed the tension he encounters between speaking for Buddhism and speaking for himself. If there are multiple Buddhist religions, Fronsdal stated, we have to be careful about our reference points and our tendencies to over-idealize Buddhist practice and teaching in Asia. The American media, he argued, perpetuates a polarization between over-idealized Buddhism and scandal-ridden Buddhism. Fronsdal observed that the Thai media also idealizes Buddhism, but spins the psychic powers of monks rather than the psychotherapeutic benefits stressed in the U.S. He then turned to media "overrepresentation" of the Insight Meditation movement, stating that its teachers were assured publication of their writings through association with an organization that has produced popular authors. Fronsdal was critical of the editing process that captures a "popular way of writing spiritual books in English" through formulaic strategies such as including a high frequency of personal stories or limiting discussion to oft-repeated teachings such as "interconnectedness." Such strategies, Fronsdal concluded, are based on currents of Western thought and serve to "flatten" Buddhism.
The third speaker on the panel was Georges Dreyfus, the first Westerner to obtain the Tibetan monastic title of Geshe Lharampa, now a professor of Religion at Williams College and author of The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk (2003). Dreyfus' presentation critiqued Bernardo Bertolucci's film Little Buddha (1993) as an exoticization of Buddhism. This theme is developed through the re-enchantment of the cold, rational West — shot in blue tones — with the wonderful, exotic Other shot in yellows and other warm colors. Dreyfus was also disturbed by the narrative of Siddhartha's life, which he views as an example of how commodification unhinges the Buddhist tradition from its communities of practitioners and its institutional lines of transmission. In the market, he objected, people pick and choose what they like, reinterpreting them in ways that are totally different from how they are understood historically. Although Dreyfus admitted that the process of commodification is not entirely negative, since it helps people fulfill certain needs, he asked that we consider the degree to which it is changing the narratives and practices of Buddhism. Echoing Sharf's earlier observation, Dreyfus contended that we are at an unprecedented chapter in the history of Buddhism, with a new challenge to the tradition not previously encountered in the transmission of Buddhism across cultures. He characterized scholars as concerned with problems of translation, versus Buddhist teachers as concerned with conveying meaning — implying that perhaps neither is invested in addressing the current challenge to Buddhist tradition.
Zoketsu Norman Fischer, former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center and founder of the Everyday Zen Foundation, began with a humorous anecdote about a newscast covering a blizzard. The reporter stood in the midst of it, saying, "There is really a lot of snow out here, Bob." Fischer paired this with a quote from Wittgenstein — "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" — commenting that the unspeakable is the most salient reality, but it's unspeakable. From this perspective, Fischer stated that he tries not mix up the world of media with the "quiet, intimate world" in which he lives. He doubted that Buddhism could actually have a spokesperson in the media, or that Buddhism is determined by learned monastics or the media. Fischer then turned to the panel topic of authority and transmission, affirming that in his tradition they are based on the faith and confidence of teacher and student. When his Soto Zen group began, the members only needed to trust that anyone who had gone through the recognized lineage transmission could belong. However, when it came to giving transmission, Fischer stated that he would do so only with the proper rituals, for individuals he knew well through practicing together. Even so, he warned that Buddhist teachers, certified or not, "have a history of doing damage" and that people need to stay attentive. Despite his view that the media by nature will always give incorrect depictions, Fischer expressed faith that the Buddhism he is familiar with will continue on quietly.
The final panel speaker was Timothy J. McNeill, the president, CEO and publisher of Wisdom Publications, a leading non-profit publishing house for books focusing on Buddhism. He discounted the existence of "Western Buddhism," instead seeing "people attempting to practice Buddhism, rooted in lineages from Asia." Offsetting the idealization of Buddhism in Asia, he drew from the life of the eminent Tibetan monk Jamgon Kongtrul (1813-99) as described in E. Gene Smith's Among Tibetan Texts (2001): the government spotted him as a rising star and moved him from the monastery where he was studying, but in a counter-move, the monastic authorities decided to name him somebody's reincarnation so they could reclaim him. McNeill went on to speak about the publishing activities at Wisdom, noting that among 175 active titles, 120 are authored by ordained clergy. The remaining works cover various topics, from meditation advice and psychology to short fiction and recent forays into pop culture such as The Dharma of Star Wars (2005). McNeill discounted the picture of publishing decisions being made by callous boardroom members, although he hoped a Wisdom author will appear on the Oprah Winfrey show someday, since "something has to pay for the other books we generate" such as the Nikāyas (Pāli scriptures).
The panel led to an animated discussion among several panel participants, pulling together issues raised during the conference thus far. Sharf pointed out a resemblance between caricatures of Buddhism in Christian evangelical novels on the one hand and popular literature by Western Buddhists on the other, in that both refuse to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate representations, and both tend to conflate Buddhism with other Eastern religions and New Age trends. He also took participants to task for disavowing responsibility for debating what is right and wrong with regard to Buddhism: journalists and commercial publishers don't bother to distinguish the real from the ersatz, Buddhist teachers are not interested in getting involved, and scholars wish to maintain critical distance. Drawing a historical contrast, Sharf asserted that previously, committed Buddhists have always cared about distinguishing good Buddhism from bad Buddhism, "because to get Buddhism right is to get life right." Steven Goodman, a speaker from the fourth panel, asked whether people who are illiterate or who have not taken vows could be part of the debate. Sharf responded that the historic model for participation emphasizes seniority, and that to his knowledge, no tradition has ever viewed Buddhist authority as something to be determined democratically. Fischer agreed that the type of practice matters, but felt that it was more effective to make arguments to fellow practitioners than to make them in the "media blizzard," where they will get subverted. Fronsdal stated he is trying to be discerning about Buddhism, but pointed out the difficulty of evaluating others' wisdom when addressing them. He agreed with Fischer that rich, often passionate conversations take place among Dharma teachers, but are unlikely to occur in the public sphere. Winston asserted that meaning could be conveyed without discussions of good and bad, offering the alternative approach of working to empower audiences by giving them tools. Padmanabh Jaini, emeritus professor of Buddhist Studies at Berkeley, weighed in with his understanding that the true spirit of Buddhism is examination.
With that the question and answer session opened to the audience. One person asked about the sale of scholarly books and the Nikāyas. McNeill estimated that 20,000 copies of the Majjhima-Nikāya (The Middle-Length Discourses) have been sold, but said that "breaking 1,000 is a bestseller" in terms of scholarly books. Another person raised the possibility of working conscientiously with pop culture as a skillful means, rather than viewing it as a necessary evil. Sharf responded that scholars have very little leverage in the popular world, and asked other scholars whether they feel involvement is appropriate. Dreyfus agreed that pop culture penetrates deeply into perceptions about Buddhism, but observed that scholars have not gotten far in establishing a good normative Buddhist discourse even amongst themselves. Jaffe pointed out that some scholarly books are entering the public forum, such as Lopez's Prisoners of Shangri-La (1998). Fronsdal conceded that he finds the issues raised by Sharf difficult to analyze, yet his colleagues are "much less interested" in this topic than he. At the same time he is "eagerly awaiting" the serious study of American Buddhism by scholars. Fischer addressed the question with the opinion that media is inherently neither good nor bad, and that for Buddhists to work conscientiously with pop culture is a worthwhile experiment.
The last panel, "Buddhism Sells – Buddhist Concepts and Images in American Advertising," was moderated by Patricia Berger, a Berkeley professor specializing in Chinese Buddhist art and Asian architecture and author of Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China (2003). The panel first screened a 20-minute compilation of TV commercials from the U.S. media, advertising products ranging from fast food and FedEx to a Butthole Surfers music album and the state of California.
The screening was followed by Gregory Levine, a Berkeley professor whose research interests include Japanese art and Buddhist visual cultures, and author of the forthcoming Daitokuji: Art History and the Visual Cultures of a Zen Monastery (2005). Levine raised the questions: "Does the Buddha that sells also teach"? and "Does religion get pop cultured or vice versa?" He raised several pertinent examples, beginning with an Optimum Zen cereal box featuring a quasi-calligraphic font style and a model meditating in Spandex clothing on the back. As a Zen-styled product its implied use is inner harmony through the concept of diet as spiritual journey — "Zen and the art of gastrointestinal maintenance" for aging baby boomers. Levine next analyzed a miniature robed figure holding a cell phone and espresso called "Happy Buddha," a product that does not invite us to be more like the Buddha, but rather makes the Buddha more like us in our high-stress life of modern interconnectivity. Addressing the Buddha as fashion trend, Levine discussed a 2004 international protest of Victoria's Secret swimwear that featured Buddha images on the left breast and torso. Levine noted that the swimwear design conflated South Asian tropical lushness with its spirituality. With Buddhist groups in the U.S. and Asia objecting to the impure use of iconic imagery, Victoria's Secret issued a statement of regret but denied any knowledge that the person depicted was in fact the Buddha, and also passed off responsibility to the maker. However, when Victoria's Secret eventually pulled the product, it was due to business concerns about the discontent of Sri Lankan makers of Victoria's Secret lingerie. Levine concluded that we should challenge the "anything-goes monoculture" of consumerism, or else risk the slippery slope of exploitation.
Still from King of the Hill episode: "Won't You Pimai Neighbor?" © Mike Judge/FOX
Alex von Rospatt, a Berkeley professor specializing in the doctrinal history of Indian Buddhism and in Newar Buddhism, provided an analysis of the commercial compilation from the perspective of a newcomer to American pop culture. He was impressed that Buddhism is often taken for granted as part of the culture here, citing the pro-California ad that included a woman meditating outdoors. However, advertisers were more interested in evoking vague allusions to Eastern spirituality than in authenticity: one ad had Tibetan monks speaking in Japanese, and another selected by the compilers actually showed Franciscan monks in a remote mountain location. A number of ads also associated Buddhism with mantras, martial arts, self-hypnotization and other interests of white Dharma seekers. Taken as a whole, Rospatt observed, the Buddhism in the ads was predominantly marked as Tibetan or vaguely East Asian, with several cases of Western teachers but only one Theravada example. Contrary to Rospatt's expectation that Buddhism would be portrayed as a hip and appealing lifestyle, he found it was usually juxtaposed against the product being marketed. A common message was that the product grants fulfillment, not Buddhism: a cable-station ad showed an Eastern master watching UPN at the expense of his student, a car ad pitched driving a Lincoln as more satisfying than meditating, and a supermarket ad divulged that the secret of wisdom is the low prices at Price Chopper. In addition to poking fun at sincere but misguided Western Dharma seekers, ads also denigrated Asian teachers, including an NBA ad where the teacher keeps losing at "snatch the pebble from my hand" and is eventually reduced to asking for it. Despite this, Rospatt did not detect hostility towards Buddhism so much as a lack of recognition that Buddhism is an established religion to be respected as Judaism and Islam are.
"Enlightened Smoothies" ad for Jamba Juice (2004)
The next speaker was Jacquelyn Baas, Director Emeritus of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and an independent scholar who recently published Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art (2004). Baas asserted there is a significant Buddhist presence in European and American art, although it has gone largely unrecognized by specialists in these areas. Referring to a January 2005 New York Times article on Buddhism in advertising, she argued that the "Life is random" ad campaign for the iPod Shuffle sells consumers the idea that they are potential artists of life. Baas found resonance in Marchel Duchamp's statement that "my art would be art of living… neither visual nor cerebral… a sort of constant euphoria." Considering Marchel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel (1913) not as an object of art but as an object of meditation, Baas cited the work of Taiwanese art historian Tosi Lee connecting it to the Buddhist wheel of the Dharma. During Duchamp's time, a stele fragment from the Indian Buddhist site Sanchi — depicting what appears to be a wheel on a pedestal with lions — was prominently displayed at the Musée Guimet in Paris. She interpreted his notes from this period as evidence of the direct influence of the stele on Bicycle Wheel, also documenting his later interest in a bodhisattva figure with his hand in the gesture dispelling fear (abhayamudrā). Baas then discussed Duchamp's photograph of his hand holding a cigar with smoke rising in the shape of a lotus, drawing a connection to tantric symbolism through Duchamp's comment that the smoke appeared similar to female genitalia. Duchamp's view that art resides in the mind of the viewer, Baas concluded, is linked to Buddhist thought. For Duchamp, ecstasy lay in the "aesthetically receptive" mind, an "awake" yet "humble state of mind" needed to become an artist of life.
Steven Goodman, a co-director of Asian and Comparative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco who researches Indo-Tibetan influenced forms of Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna Buddhism, was the last speaker on the panel. He commented on motifs of laughter and surprise in the commercial compilation, and proposed three rubrics for a successful ad: Buddhism in advertising, Buddhist advertising, and Buddhism as advertising. These forms are "exercising more cultural torque than we have thought," Goodman argued, citing a passive and decontextualized knowledge of Buddhism and Buddhist terms: Samsara is a perfume, Nirvana is a grunge band from Seattle, the message of the Bodhicaryāvatāra is embedded in the Beastie Boys song "Bodhisattva," and a recent campaign for iPod rival Zen Micro invoked "the power of Zen" and "the color of Zen." The use of Buddhism in American advertising dates back to early twentieth-century magazines of travel and exotica, with a National Geographic ad using an 11-headed Avalokiteśvara image to sell life insurance. Current travel brochures continue the tradition, selling places like Bhutan as "blissfully untouched," "sacred," and as "spiritual adventures." Goodman discussed how the fashion world also capitalizes on Buddhism, citing a French Vogue issue guest edited by the Dalai Lama and an art/design catalogue featuring "divine interiors from Nepal to Japan." Buddhist advertising, he argued, uses the same tropes and adjectives that are associated with Buddhism in secular media. Echoing the Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu in stating that "Buddhism is both the medium and the message," Goodman ended with the question: how do we market texts that say Buddhism never taught anything at all?
The final question and answer session invited a variety of comments about this panel and the conference in general. One audience member had witnessed people in Burma prostrating to televised images of the Buddha and asked about "the effect of our media on the tradition." Levine responded that context and perception inflect the shifts of viewing an image, and in turn asked about alternatives to commercialism. In response to another audience question about the lack of Asian American panelists, Sharf responded that they were unable to find someone willing to engage in this conversation, since most Asian Buddhist teachers don't even recognize the Buddhism discussed at the conference as "Buddhism." Baas took the opportunity to show some work of Korean-born New York artist Nam June Paik, such as "Zen for TV" (1963). In response to a comment that advertisers view "Buddhists are crackpots who won't fight back," Goodman pointed to the separation of markets between martial arts and Buddhism, and problematized the notion of Buddhists as essentially nonviolent. Berger was struck by the degree of intertextuality in the commercials, suggesting there is a "separate discourse of Buddhist language in advertising" that re-circulates ideas such as the "Grasshopper" reference from the television show Kung Fu (1972-5). An audience member observed that images of the wheel in Indian Buddhism are not objects of meditation but are used for worship or invoking the presence of a site, and asked whether Duchamp misunderstood. Baas responded that Duchamp was "turning a corner" at this stage in his life with his decision to stop painting, and that the wheel "stood for setting out on a new path."
Report by Nancy Lin, graduate student, Group in Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley.
