ABSTRACT
Dan Lusthaus says that Critical Buddhism 'was inevitable and necessary as the inevitable revisiting of a theme that has been central to Buddhism since its onset'. Dan Lusthaus, 'Critical Buddhism and Returning to the Sources', in Jamie Hubbard and Paul L. Swanson, Pruning the Bodhi Tree: The Storm over Critical Buddhism. According to such a reading, the tradition of self-conscious criticism in historical Buddhism finds full flower in this recent movement. Certainly, North American Buddhism has proven itself sustainable, even marketable; meanwhile in East and Southeast Asia many young people are turning not only to New Religious Movements but to Western religions like Christianity for answers to their spiritual questions. In twenty-first-century Japan, Buddhism has become, for all intents and purposes, a dead religion. According to Critical Buddhism, Suzuki, in bringing Zen to North America, spread the already rampant topical undercurrent to Buddhism in the West. Much of the problem lies in Suzuki's conflation of Zen and 'Japanese culture'.
