On Cultural Bias and Ideology in Western Buddhism and Buddhist Modernism
When he was approximately fifteen years old, Tominaga Nakamoto 富永仲基 (1715–1746) was expelled from the merchant academy in Ōsaka, which his father had enrolled him in, for writing an essay that was critical of Confucianism. He may also have been forced to leave home, but little is known with certainty about Tominaga’s life. A few years later, he apparently found employment as a proofreader at Manpuku temple of the Ōbaku Zen sect in Uji. Buddhist monks traditionally copied sūtras by hand, and it was Tominaga’s job to check for copying errors. This allowed him to read very many sūtras, inspiring...
Buddhism, Marxism, and Negating Self-centeredness — Preliminary Remarks on the Philosophy of Neville Wijeyekoon
summary — In 1943, S.N.B. (Neville) Wijeyekoon published a book under the pseudonym Leuke aiming to compare Buddhism and Marxism. It starts out doing so indeed, but the second half of the book presents his own philosophy focused on achieving mental harmony by negating self-centeredness through “merging one’s self in social welfare”. Wijeyekoon’s wrote two more books, and in one of those he further developed aspects of this idea, while eliminating the overt Buddhist and Marxist influence. This long blog post summarizes and comments on two of Wijeyekoon’s books (namely, his first and third). I do not have access to...