By Peter D. Hershock
Ultimately, Buddhism has no self-nature. “Buddhism” refers to a family of traditions that have evolved over the past 2,600 years to become as distinctive as the landscapes and cuisines of the places where they’ve taken root. So it should be expected that distinctively European traditions of Buddhism would emerge over time — through compassionately wise adaptation, working with the tensions among traditional and contemporary institutions, ideals, and realities. Just as the body of a guitar only comes to musical life when the tensions of its strings have been gotten right, European Buddhism will only come to life through getting the tensions right between Buddhist thought and practice and European worldviews.
Session I — Should European Buddhism embrace the modern worldview?
Here, I would focus on the tension between Buddhist cosmology and metaphysics and modern science. Buddhism and science are both rooted in seeking explanations for how things come to be the way they do. The “holy grail” of modern Western science has been discovering the immutable laws of nature, so as to predict the outcome of everything that follows from any given set of initial conditions. But for Buddhists, the point of this search is to open prospects for becoming otherwise — for freeing ourselves from all forms of compelled or compulsive presence.
As the Buddha made clear in describing himself as a kammavadin, that means becoming “skilled in karma”: skilled in seeing and working with the truth that consistently enacted patterns of values and intentions result in consonant patterns of experienced relational outcomes. It is our nondeterministic, karmic capacity for changing our values and intentions — and how we enact them — that makes liberation possible. Every moment is not only the result of our past intentions and actions, but also an improvisational opportunity.
Modern science has afforded humanity incredible powers to predict and shape the observable universe. But for all its explanatory power, it has yet to offer any convincing account of consciousness, or of the presence of an observing universe. The presumption of most scientists is that the mind will prove to be a product of the body. As the philosopher Daniel Dennett scathingly summarizes, it will turn out that “an impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.” This comes as close as any statement could to counting as Buddhist heresy. Western science has been very good at exploring the causal dynamics of matter; Buddhism has excelled at discerning what matters causally for realizing more liberating relational dynamics. One defining characteristic of a 21st-century European Buddhism should be revealing the liabilities of reductive materialism and helping to theorize consciousness and evolution in pragmatically effective and ethically responsible ways.
Session II — Should European Buddhism be “engaged”?
If we take the teaching of interdependence seriously, disengagement is not a Buddhist option. All of us are ultimately implicated, to some non-trivial degree, in the suffering of any of us. Yet if the aim of Buddhism is to understand, alleviate, and eventually eliminate the causes and conditions of conflict and suffering — and if those causes are impermanent and both historically and culturally conditioned — then there can’t be a single answer to what Buddhist engagement means.
Our birth at this point in history is proof of our shared karma to be present at an evolutionary juncture when humanity is confronted with a wide range of anthropogenic existential risks: climate change, bioengineered pandemics, artificial general intelligence, and a digital attention economy that already places at risk our freedom of attention — without which there can be no freedom of intention.
In the face of these risks, many believe that what matters most is ensuring human survival. Buddhism suggests otherwise: what matters most is not mere survival, but realizing more liberating relational dynamics and patterns of interdependence — perfecting our sentient presence. That is not something anyone can do alone. As Soto Zen Master Dōgen put it: “That which is not studying together is self; that which is studying together is all Buddhas.” Gender inequality, racism, institutionalized injustice, poverty, and the many forms of structural violence that spur mass migration are all causes of suffering, and compassion insists on doing something about them. Perhaps gathering that knowledge and generating that wisdom could be the collaborative labor that brings European Buddhism into clear relational focus.
Session III — Is a European Sangha possible?
One of the ideals of Buddhist practice — presented in the very early Sutta Nipāta — has been that of the solitary recluse who leaves family and friends to “live alone like a rhinoceros.” Yet this valorization of solitary practice is significantly tempered by other texts in which the Buddha declares that traveling with “admirable friends” (kalyāṇa-mittatā) is crucial to faring well on the Eightfold Path. A European sangha, or community of Dharmic friends, is not only possible; it may be necessary.
Contemporary neuroscience helps explain the entanglement of solitary and communal practice. While interacting socially, our neural dynamics can become closely entrained; meditation, meanwhile, destabilizes the dynamics associated with habit formation (samskāra) and with maintaining a fixed sense of identity. Continued immersion in familial and societal roles tends to reinforce our “householder” habits, while meditating with others — especially those more adept than we are — can foster the conditions needed to dissolve them.
The early Buddhists were right. Solitary and communal practice are complementary, not contradictory.
These same insights also shed light on the mechanisms of indoctrination, groupthink, and the blindness to internal contradictions that can develop in isolated, tightly knit communities. How might they inform a truly European Sangha? Europe is already home to many practitioner communities based on distinct lineages. What might happen if this variety were transformed into true diversity — so that the differences among these lineages become the basis of mutual contribution to shared flourishing?
Nalanda, the great Buddhist university that flourished from the 5th to 11th centuries, was home to as many as 10,000 students and 2,000 faculty from across Asia, serving as a crucible for both doctrinal refinement and interpretative creativity. Might Nalanda inspire a difference-enriching European Sangha — a collaborative, creative Buddhist community in which lineages and teachings from throughout the Buddhist world come together to articulate the meanings of, and means to, truly human-and-planetary flourishing? A worthy ideal into which real effort might be directed.
About the author
Peter D. Hershock is Director of the Asian Studies Development Program and Coordinator of the Humane AI Initiative at the East-West Center in Honolulu. His philosophical work makes use of Buddhist conceptual resources to address contemporary issues of global concern, and he has authored or edited more than a dozen books on Buddhism, Asian philosophy and contemporary issues.
This article first appeared in EBU Magazine #14 – Celebrating 50 Years of the European Buddhist Union (Winter 2025). Download the full issue as PDF or browse all issues.