Is The New York Times’ mockery of lite religion lite journalism?

By Cleve Wiese

What business do white Westerners have dabbling in Eastern religions such as Buddhism, and why would legitimate, “hard-core” monks even bother with these white, Western dilettantes in the first place? These are the thinly-veiled rhetorical questions underlying Michael Luo’s recent New York Times article, “Calming the Mind Among the Bodies Laid Bare.” Like all rhetorical questions, they speak volumes about their framer’s intent.

It may seem irrational to attribute such polemic themes to a piece of writing that, no doubt, flew with impunity through many a highly tuned PC radar-zone last Saturday. But it must be borne in mind that this is a feature story: The ostensible news hook — a meditation session held in the “Bodies” exhibit at the South Street Seaport — does not justify the prominent play, with photo spread, on the front page of the metro section, that this article received. In such situations, the writer is expected to flex her journalistic muscles, to assert a specific perspective. This is done through turns of phrase, strategic quotes, expository rhetoric, and many other devices, all of which should be carefully noted by a reader wishing to understand the article’s actual purpose.

And none of this is bad. Unless, of course, the journalist is motivated by a priori assumptions. Any subjective judgment asserted in such an article should be the obvious result of transparent reporting; no journalist should approach a subject looking for evidence to bear out a forgone conclusion, especially when the subject is religion. Which makes Luo’s reporting particularly egregious.

“Calming the mind…” breaks down into two distinct sections: the first establishes the incongruence of Buddhism in a white, Western setting and the second establishes the superficiality of the white Westerners ostensibly practicing it.

The article opens with a description of the Buddhist practice of meditating “on charnel ground, among bodies decomposing and festering the in the open air.” This practice, the article points out, “has not made much headway among American Buddhists.”

“But months ago, visiting the cadaver exhibit, ‘Bodies… the Exhibition,’ upstairs from the Baby Gap [my emphasis] at South Street Seaport, [Rande Brown, executive director of the Tricycle Foundation], who once traveled to India to meditate among bodies awaiting cremation, had a brainstorm.”

Notice the cunning dependent clause. How can a “charnel ground” ritual transposed to a museum exhibition space “above the Baby Gap” claim any kind of authenticity?

Luo goes on to establish the unquestionable credentials of the guest of honor, an important, Sri Lankan Buddhist monk: “Among them was the Venerable Bhante Henepola Gunaratana… considered one of the most prominent Theravada Buddhist teachers in the West.”

But only so they’ll clash with an ensuing anecdote: “…[the monks] were worried about where they had parked.”

There’s nothing wrong with demystifying religious leaders by pointing out the mundane concerns they have to deal with on a daily basis. But Luo is less interested in demystifying the monks than in showing them to be grossly out of place: “Other than the Sri Lankan monks and the Rev. T. Kenjitsu Nakagaki, the spiritual leader of the New York Buddhist Church, the others in attendance were almost all white spiritual seekers [my emphasis].”

Which brings us to the second section of the article, which has its own nut in the fifteenth paragraph: “Over the last decade, Buddhism has experienced something of a boom in the West, among mostly white, middle-class, converts who have flocked to meditation classes and spiritual retreat centers. Their version of the religion, however, has in many cases taken on a different look from that practiced in Asia.”

To begin with, Luo should have included some hard data here to prove both that this “white, middle-class” trend exists and that it’s only a decade old (it does, but that’s not all American Buddhism is; and it’s a lot more than ten years old).

But more to the point, the tone with which Luo describes these “white spiritual seekers” drips with condescension: “Many said beforehand that they had come having no idea what to expect but with a vague [my emphasis] sense they were getting a rare and important opportunity.” He uses loaded verbs such as “dabbling” to describe their practice. And, of the 180 people in attendance, he only quotes four (not including monks or organizers), three of whom fit seamlessly into the white, middle-class dilettante stereotype he envisions. Whether this is, proportionately speaking, an accurate representation of the crowd is doubtful, but impossible to determine for sure.

Not that the people quoted are necessarily dilettantes; he just makes them sound that way. Consider the following partial quote: “Michael Hershfield, 48… said he was impressed by the robed monks, describing them as ‘hard-core.’”Hershfield is then quoted as asking, rhetorically, “Am I doing Buddhism lite?” Luo ends the article with the sneaky observation that, “By the end of the night, he had no answer.”

What does Luo expect of these people? Does he assume that, in their proper, Christian place they would any less prone to “lite” versions of their faith? And what does “lite” even mean in this context? And why is it necessarily bad?

But the real problem here isn’t that Luo has an axe to grind, or even that he finds much of the Buddhism practiced in the West to be of a distinctly “lite” variety. The problem is the fact that he manipulates his coverage of a real event, attended by real people, to express this preexisting conviction without so much as bothering to coherently define or explain it.

Cleve Wiese is a graduate student in New York University’s Department of Journalism.