Dare We Update the Dharma?
WHEN I MENTIONED to my wife that I’d been asked to write a piece on “updating the dharma,” she commented, “It’s not the dharma that needs updating. It’s our minds.”
She was right, of course. The Buddha himself famously remarked that whether enlightened beings appear or not, the way things are and the way we ought to live remain constant. What’s more, the basic ideas and practices of Buddhism have provided deep personal and cultural meaning to countless people for 2,500 years. So, what’s to update?
Yet Buddhist teachings and doctrines have been updated right from the beginning. Responding to changing audiences and circumstances, the Buddha gave a wide variety of teachings over his forty-five-year career. His successors in Asia and beyond, both premodern and modern, followed
