On Cultural Bias and Ideology in Western Buddhism and Buddhist Modernism

This article analyzes how Western culture and ideology fundamentally reshape and misinterpret traditional Buddhism. While the historical Buddha adapted existing Indian worldviews by uniquely linking karma to internal volition rather than external action, Western Buddhist Modernism systematically alters these foundations. Driven by unacknowledged cultural biases and hegemonic structures like secularization, Western interpretations privatize and psychologicalize core concepts to preserve the socioeconomic status quo. This shift is examined through four distortions: reducing cosmological rebirth (pretas) to personal addiction metaphors; narrowing universal suffering (dukkha) to private existential dread to strip religion of its public, political role; evaluating practice strictly through individual utility and practical benefits; and translating anatomical concepts like Buddha-nature into an essentialist, Westernized "true self". The author concludes that these combined biases do not represent authentic adaptations, but rather an ideological corruption that turns traditional Buddhist philosophy upside down.