How Christmas Humphreys Reinvented Buddhism in His Own Image
By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
‘The universe seems built on a hierarchy, whatever the politicians may from time to time proclaim. Men are not born equal, whatever Presidents may say; indeed, one of the most outstanding facts about them is that they are born astonishingly unequal, an argument in favour of the doctrine of rebirth.’
Christmas Humphreys – The Buddhist Way of Action (1989) - Page 76
‘Thus there is wrong action everywhere, from murder to an unkind word, from a lustful thought to rape, from failure to pay the correct bus fare to robbing the Bank of England. The doers are made unhappy, for this alone have criminals in common, that they are unhappy people until they have paid the price of the deed.’
Christmas Humphreys – The Buddhist Way of Action (1989) - Page 56
Christmas Humphreys – The Buddhist Way of Action (1989) - Page 76
‘Thus there is wrong action everywhere, from murder to an unkind word, from a lustful thought to rape, from failure to pay the correct bus fare to robbing the Bank of England. The doers are made unhappy, for this alone have criminals in common, that they are unhappy people until they have paid the price of the deed.’
Christmas Humphreys – The Buddhist Way of Action (1989) - Page 56
Editor’s Note: In theory the State decides, through its judicial system, the norms of behaviour in any given society. Even in the secular West this legal code has its historical roots deep within the theology of Judeo-Christianity, etc. . This process defines what is ‘good’ behaviour (I.e. ‘god-like’) and what is ‘bad’ (I.e. ‘devil-like’ or ‘evil’), ascribing awards and punishments considered appropriate to the historical epoch in question. In the past, ducking women into local ponds was considered the height of legal and scientific sophistication, whilst the Authorities scrutinized matters with regards to cases of alleged ‘witchcraft’ across Europe. If the woman ‘drowned’ she was innocent, if she ‘floated’ she was obviously ‘guilty’ and sentenced to ‘death’... This type of collective stupidity interpreted as the ‘best practice’ of a generation, led to the death of thousands of people throughout the ages, usually illiterate, sometimes ill and virtually always poor. Occasionally certain individuals would ‘question’ the validity of contemporary thinking, but most ordinary people simply sided with the State and its Authority, seeking a type of ‘self-defense’ through co-operation. Christmas Humphreys – the subject of this essay – was not an ‘ordinary person’ by any means – but was a product of the State and its Authority. He was ‘White’, ‘Middle-class’ and educated through the public-school education system (which in the UK is reserved for the middle and upper classes and paid for through parental subscription). As a manifestation of the bourgeois British State, Christmas Humphreys (named after a distinctly ‘Christian’ festival), accepted without question that the State was ‘right’ and that the ‘Death Penalty’ was just. For all his learning, he could not discern his own social and cultural conditioning, and sought to draw all systems of philosophical thought into the service of supporting his particular (rightwing) point of view. At heart, Christmas Humphreys remained a Christian who distorted the philosophy of Asian Buddhist thought (non-connected to Christianity), and encouraged a generation to mistake hyper-individualism for Buddhist enlightenment! Through the auspices of Christmas Humphreys, the Bourgeois State receives its greatest and most powerful statement of intellectual support, which the author makes clear is simultaneously ‘anti-intellectual’ when applied to Buddhist philosophy! This is how we arrive at the crux of the matter. Whereas Christmas Humphreys is treated (ironically) as something of a ‘sacred cow’ by his predominantly ‘White’ and ‘middle-class’ audiences, this essay dares to send an arrow straight into the heart-mind of this deception! In the final analysis, Christmas Humphreys was the willing mouthpiece in the West for Japanese fascism before and after WWII – that is all...
Sam King (15.4.2019)
Co-Ordinator
BMA (UK) - Oxford Collective
Author’s Note: It is a matter of conjecture as to how relevant Christmas Humphreys’ interpretation is to the understanding and practice of Buddhism in the contemporary West. Much has changed since he embraced and then abandoned theosophy before switching to supporting Buddhism. As is evident from his many books still in print, his understanding of Buddhism remained essentially that of the Eurocentric viewpoint dominating theosophical discourse. Obviously, Christmas Humphreys aligned himself with the authoritarian power implicit within the British State, and saw some type of counter-part in the Imperial State of (fascist) Japan, perhaps a direction within which he thought the UK should develop. Perhaps the most enduring (and dangerous) aspect of his work upon Buddhism is that it still serves as the foundational assumptions in the English-speaking world of what Buddhism is thought to be, even though this seldom has any relevance (or connection) to the living Buddhism found throughout Asia. Of course, Christmas Humphreys had to align himself with the Buddhism developed under the fascist Japanese regime, because this was the only type to be associated with a politically rightwing regime. This is how Christmas Humphreys managed to avoid (what must have been a thorny issue for him), the reality that Buddhism in general finds a natural ally within leftwing thinking and Socialistic political systems. To me, the horror of Christmas Humphreys and his way of thinking, is exemplified by thoughts of the condemned stood on the trap door as the hood is placed over their heads for the last time...
ACW (14.4.2019)
Sam King (15.4.2019)
Co-Ordinator
BMA (UK) - Oxford Collective
Author’s Note: It is a matter of conjecture as to how relevant Christmas Humphreys’ interpretation is to the understanding and practice of Buddhism in the contemporary West. Much has changed since he embraced and then abandoned theosophy before switching to supporting Buddhism. As is evident from his many books still in print, his understanding of Buddhism remained essentially that of the Eurocentric viewpoint dominating theosophical discourse. Obviously, Christmas Humphreys aligned himself with the authoritarian power implicit within the British State, and saw some type of counter-part in the Imperial State of (fascist) Japan, perhaps a direction within which he thought the UK should develop. Perhaps the most enduring (and dangerous) aspect of his work upon Buddhism is that it still serves as the foundational assumptions in the English-speaking world of what Buddhism is thought to be, even though this seldom has any relevance (or connection) to the living Buddhism found throughout Asia. Of course, Christmas Humphreys had to align himself with the Buddhism developed under the fascist Japanese regime, because this was the only type to be associated with a politically rightwing regime. This is how Christmas Humphreys managed to avoid (what must have been a thorny issue for him), the reality that Buddhism in general finds a natural ally within leftwing thinking and Socialistic political systems. To me, the horror of Christmas Humphreys and his way of thinking, is exemplified by thoughts of the condemned stood on the trap door as the hood is placed over their heads for the last time...
ACW (14.4.2019)
It is one of those curiosities that the British barrister known as Christmas Humphreys (1901-1983), who is viewed as a cornerstone in the transmission of Japanese Zen Buddhism to the West, has very little written about him in the Japanese language (Christmas Humphreys is written as ‘クリスマス・ハンフリーズの’). Why would someone who apparently occupied such an important position in the history of world Buddhism, be ‘absent’ in the indigenous historical literature of the non-Western culture he is supposed to have assisted to be imported (and understood) in the West? As a White, middle-class man, Christmas Humphreys spawned a whole generation of similar bourgeois authorities on Buddhism that all fed off of one another for inspiration and validation, with very little authentic contact with the Asian Buddhism they were assumed to be ‘masters’ of. The historical narratives and discourses of Japan ignore Christmas Humphreys because his Eurocentric interpretation about Buddhism was an admixture of theosophy, mystical Christianity, and a middle-class aloofness and sense of superiority. In 1935, the famous lay-Chinese Ch’an Buddhist practitioner – Charles Luk (1998-1978) - paid a visit to Christmas Humphreys at the headquarters of the Buddhist Society (situated in an exclusive area of London), to ask his assistance in the preserving of traditional Chinese Buddhism which had come under attack from the Nationalists (a pro-Western and pro-Christian movement) since 1911, and more devastatingly from the Imperial Japanese invasion of China (1931-1945). Christmas Humphreys refused to assist Charles Luk on the grounds that he thought that China might well benefit from a successful Japanese invasion. This attitude emerged from Christmas Humphreys’ association with DT Suzuki (1870-1966) - a pseudo-Zennist who prior to WWII propagated a ‘fascist’ distortion of Zen philosophy that encouraged and justified the murderous activity of the Imperial Japanese Army as it spread throughout Asia. After WWII, with the rapid US re-arming of a rightwing ‘capitalist’ Japan, DT Suzuki became famous in the West – as did the Japanese martial arts that were just previously used to kill millions in the world, including thousands of Westerners, etc. In any other situation, DT Suzuki would have been charged as a War Criminal, but instead he served as the only ‘Asian’ inspiration for people like Christmas Humphreys, Alan Watts, and John Blofeld amongst many others.
The short Japanese text that I found, points out that although Zen was viewed as a philosophy associated with the counter-cultures in the West of the 1950s and 1960s, Christmas Humphreys was very much a central figure of the British Establishment and the British State. His view of Buddhism was distinctly ‘rightwing’ and morally deterministic, as if the Buddha was a god and his theory of karma a manifestation of god’s will! As a prosecuting barrister, Christmas Humphreys reveled in securing the Death Penalty in the British Courts, justifying this judicial ‘killing’ as being the product of the accused’s ‘karma’, rather than the accumulation of material processes (causes and effects) generated by many colluding minds and social conventions. Derrick Bentley and Ruth Ellis – both assumed by many to be ‘innocent’, or at least not subjected to the ‘Death Penalty’ - were just two of the victims of Christmas Humphreys. His willingness to callously kill was reinforced by the corruption of DT Suzuki and the Japanese fascism he so admired. Although the Soto School of Japanese Zen Buddhism has formally apologized for its participation in justifying Japanese militarism, the Rinzai School has not. In the early 1960s Christmas Humphrys aligned the Buddhist Society with the CIA operation in Tibet during the 1950s – officially supporting the US-fabricated Pro-Tibetan Buddhist Movement. To this day the Buddhist Society in London has never apologized for Christmas Humphreys’ behavior, attitudes or distortion of Zen Buddhism, and still operates a policy of racially discriminating against Mainland Chinese people who do not agree with the Western interpretation regarding Tibet (or the Falun Gong Cult). This is because the natural anti-China attitudes held by Christmas Humphreys were validated and magnified through the auspices of Japanese fascism, attitudes that have not yet been fully eradicated from modern Japan – a country whose government has not yet acknowledged or apologized for its War Crimes committed prior to- and during WWII.
In 1960, Christmas Humphreys published his book entitled ‘The Buddhist Way of Action’ (since republished many times), which may be interpreted as a pristine example of British anti-intellectualism – even more so by the fact of its continuous reprinting and the assumption that it contains some type of perennial wisdom. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is the British middle-class at play. It is an exercise in religiosity, mythology, pomposity, ignorance, contrived mysticism, pseudo-science and Eurocentric imagination. As a consequence, much of its intended pontification is nothing but elongated expressions of absurdity – as hilarious as they are slightly disturbing in their inherent stupidity:
‘The relationship is no less than oneness, as one would expect of the Laws of Laws. As Alan Watts points out, ‘We do not sweat because it is hot; the sweating is the heat.’ Cause and effect are one; by reason of our infirmities of spiritual sight we see them separately. Yet of the two, the cause is paramount, for it is this aspect of the act that is under our immediate control. It is therefore better to concentrate on causes, for when the causing is right the right effect must follow.’
(‘The Buddhist Way of Action’, 1989, Page 102).
Thus, speaks the man who welded power over life and death in the British judicial system. A hotchpotch of superstitious nonsense that has very little to do with authentic Asian Buddhism, but more to do with the amoral mutterings of DT Suzuki and his loyalty to the Japanese emperor. Alan Watts, of course, made an ample living by peddling this ‘Suzuki-esque’ anti-science to a receptive US audience for many years. The horror is that this type of thinking killed millions across Asia, and justified the hangman’s noose in the mind of Humphreys. Part of DT Suzuki’s deception was that Japanese Zen has ‘nothing’ to do with Buddhism in general (as this separates ‘Zen’ from the well-known morality and discipline of orthodox Buddhism). Compare this with the much older Chinese school of Ch’an which views its tradition not as a deviation away from Buddhism, but rather as a fulfilment of the essence (or ‘heart’) of the Buddha’s teaching! Within the morality of authentic Buddhism, the Buddha teaches that ‘killing’, ‘causing to kill’, or ‘knowledge of killing’ are ALL moral faults that must be removed from the mind, body and environment (I.e. ‘society’). At no time does the Buddha state that ‘cause’ and 'effect’ are ‘one’, on the contrary, the entire edifice of the Buddha’s system of thought is premised upon the fact that they are most definitely ‘separate’ and ‘distinct’. Within Japanese (fascistic) Zen, if the sword can cut, and the bullet be fired by a soldier whose mind is ‘unbothered’ by moral consequences, then there is no karmic blame for the resulting death – this is exactly how Christmas Humphreys justified the reality of each person he sent to stand on the trap door of the gallows. Moreover, not only is the murdering soldier or convicting barrister ‘no guilty’ of any moral offense, but such a distorted system of thought shifts the blame away from the perpetrator and onto the victim – as it is the victim (who in reality most assuredly does not want to die) that is presented as being the architect of their own demise.
Ironically, Christmas Humphreys was right when he wrote:
‘This book is a record of my own experiences. As such it is deeply coloured with Buddhist thought, but it is not a Buddhist book, nor need it be added to any Buddhist library.’ (Page 11).
One is left thinking ‘how modest’ this man must be – until it is realized that he insisted that multiple copies of his books were to be kept in the library of the Buddhist society for both ‘lending’ and ‘selling’ - but never for ‘giving’. Again, the anti-intellectualism of Christmas Humphreys is hidden in plain view. A book sold and entitled ‘The Buddhist Way of Action’ is described by its author as being ‘not about Buddhism’. His work is littered with such throw-away tautology. None of it makes any sense from either a logical or scientific Western point of view, and certainly does not conform to the pristine logic of the Buddha as found in the Pali Suttas and most of the Sanskrit Sutras. Whilst weaving a new type of theology, Christmas Humphreys is acting in a highly illogical manner which appears to represent the internal logic of the Eurocentric legal system he represented during his professional life. This is intimately related to the often brutal and destructive British attitude that defined its imperialist and colonialist era. Whereas the thoughts and behaviour of Christmas Humphreys ‘broke necks’ on the scaffold, British colonial thinking ‘broke the bodies’ of those it sought to forcibly subjugate and control around the world! A recurring theme through this book (and the mind of Humphreys) is that everything bad we experience is a matter of our own volition, with no acknowledgement of the influence of outside forces beyond the control of the individual, or indeed the Buddhist philosophical teaching that certain experiences are ‘natural’ and lies outside of personal volition. Like his mentor – DT Suzuki – Christmas Humphreys was of the opinion that it is the ‘sword’ that ‘kills’, and not its ‘owner’ who delivers the lethal cut. Christmas Humphreys, in a very ‘unBuddhist’ way, is suggesting that it is the accused who arrests themselves, tries themselves, convicts themselves, sentences themselves to ‘death’, and then ‘hangs’ themselves... This lack of understanding of the chain of events from a Buddhist perspective reveals Christmas Humphreys true ignorance as to the authentic teachings contained within Buddhist thinking, which are as logically sophisticated as anything found in the ancient Greek world. This is why it can be said that whilst adhering to the strictures of theological thinking, Christmas Humphreys deviates from the premise of both established Western logic and Buddhist thought.
It is well-known in India, China and elsewhere, that the Buddhist thinking is ‘materialistic’ in nature, and that this is confirmed within the five aggregates teaching of the Four Noble Truths. In his analysis of existence, the Buddha always begins with an affirmation of ‘rupa’, or ‘material existence’. Everything proceeds from material existence. From the physical body (I.e. the brain’) all the attributes of mind emerge (I.e. sensation, perception, thought formations and consciousness). Christmas Humphreys rejects this Buddhist view, (or perhaps he never knew or understood it), and instead follows the distorted thinking of DT Suzuki. Suzuki translated a highly influential version of the Lankavatara Sutra into English but made the error of assuming that ‘Consciousness Only’ (citta mitra) was an ontological statement rather than an epistemological method. The founders of the Yogacara School understood that the Buddha taught the mind is impermanent – but emphasized that once the body is brought under control through discipline, in their opinion it is the mind that is developed through meditation as a means to realize enlightenment. At no time was the mind considered ‘eternal’ within Yogacara philosophy, and yet this false ‘idealism’ is exactly what DT Suzuki taught and it is the method Christmas Humphreys used to justify the breaking of necks, etc. Neither DT Suzuki nor Christmas Humphreys understood the genuine Yogacara School. This might have been a deliberate ploy on the part of Suzuki who was busy (like his teacher) distorting the teaching of Buddhism to fit-in with the fascist ideology of the Japanese State – a process that was under way many decades prior WWII. Whatever the case, Christmas Humphreys certainly never questioned the fascism of the Japanese State (although he was strategically ‘quiet’ during WWII), nor the unwarranted (and unBuddhist) idealism taught by Suzuki. Even after the atrocities carried-out by the Imperial Japanese Army became well-known after the end of WWII, Christmas Humphreys was unphased and simply went back to publically proclaiming the superiority of Japanese Zen Buddhism. Needless to say, there are not many former British POWs held as ‘guests of the emperor’ during WWII who became members of The Buddhist Society.
Unlike the Japanese fascism that Suzuki reinforced and Humphreys supported, the Buddha ‘rejected’ religious, political, social, economic and cultural inequalities. The uprooting of greed, hatred and delusion as taught by the Buddha are replaced by Suzuki and Humphreys as resolving everything into a theistic ‘oneness’, with this ‘oneness’ strictly under the control of a dominating State. Stripped of its outer religiosity, the ‘oneness’ advocated by Suzuki and Humphreys masquerades as a secular, Buddhistic-type of enlightenment. What we are left with is a mish-mash of disconnected ideas and theories forcibly integrated into an apparent single concept of morality, ethics, social action and spirituality. Buddha is made to sit next to Laozi, DH Lawrence, Epictetus, Dostoevsky, the authors of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, Jesus (obviously), New and Old Testament stories, Tennyson, Polonius, CG Jung, IC Beckett, Zhangzi, Warner Allen, Goethe, Richard Wilhelm, Loftus Hare, HP Blavatsky, Victor Gollancz, Marcus Aurelius, Talbot Mundy, Kenneth Walker, William James, Dr Hubert Benoit, Dr Edward Conze, John Blofeld, PG Bowen, Lily Abegg, Patanjali, Ernest Wood, Alan Watts, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Dr Radhakrishnan, LC Beckett and RH Blythe, etc. All these different approaches to interpreting reality hinge on the continuous anchoring of the work of ‘Dr Suzuki’ - ‘Epictetus’ being the only other name mentioned regularly throughout the book (alongside ‘Buddha’). It is through the misinterpretation of State-sanctioned Buddhism of DT Suzuki that Christmas Humphreys relies for his understanding of Buddhist thought – an understanding that is fatally flawed from the beginning and ‘holed’ beneath the waterline! This corruption provided by Suzuki in-turn allows for a plethora of unrelated opinions to be co-opted by Humphreys in an effort to explain Suzuki’s distorted Buddhist to a Western audience. This ‘new’ orthodoxy – generated by Japanese fascism and Western ignorance - runs parallel to that of authentic Asian Buddhism, has no relation to it, and in true imperialist fashion – seeks to ‘dominate’, ‘subjugate’ and ultimately ‘conquer’ that which it cannot understand or control. This is the real legacy of Christmas Humphreys and DT Suzuki.
‘The Japanese Samurai warrior ‘died’ before he went into battle, so that this illusion at least should not affect his arm in the service of his Lord.’
(‘The Buddhist Way of Action’, 1989, Page 177).
Much of the attention of Christmas Humphreys is taken-up with facing death with indifference. What he seems unable to understand is that to fear death and work toward preventing it, or coming emotionally and psychologically to terms with it are profound traits that define what it is to be truly ‘human’. The fascistic samurai that Humphreys admires are in every respect ‘inhuman’ in their attitudes and behaviours. It is this callous attitude which the Japanese State imbued into its citizens from 1868 onwards – and to a certain degree still does today. This is how the Imperial Japanese Army killed millions in China (1931-1945) and across Asia. It is the thinking of a brutal Japanese feudalism brought into the modern-age by the likes of DT Suzuki that has absolutely ‘nothing’ to do with the teachings of the Buddha, and Christmas Humphreys (and The Buddhist Society) is wrong to suggest that it does. It is China that possesses the essence of ‘Zen’ Buddhism know correctly as ‘Ch’an’ and not Japan. The rejection of Socialism by Suzuki and Humphreys led to genuine Buddhism being rejected and falsified as a means to make it popular in a capitalist West that was dominated by an aggressive US foreign policy after the end of WWII. This was a destructive double-act with political undertones that has only recently begun to be subjected to the scrutiny of modern scholarship. There is nothing ‘Buddhist’ about the murderous samurai attitude of ancient Japan or its modern, fascist equivalent, and yet in the West this stark indifference to human suffering permeates the martial arts dojos just as it infects the zendos. Ironically, within Japan this distorted Zen of Suzuki is now only preserved for curious Westerners with no deep understanding of Japanese culture. Behind the scenes, and despite the ‘official’ antagonism toward China, the Zen Schools of Japan have slowly re-orientated their methods with the genuine teachings of the Chinese Ch’an Schools. Suzuki’s corrupt Zen Buddhism is now referred to as ‘International Zen’ and considered easy to learn for beginners. As most foreigners ‘give-up’ with only superficial advancement, the teaching of authentic Zen is considered unnecessary.
The problem has its historical origins in Japan’s rejection of the rather strict psychological and physical morality of Buddhism as recorded in the body of work known as the Vinaya Discipline. This viewpoint was clearly rejected in the early 1950s, when the famous Chinese Chan Master Xu Yun (1840-1959) advised the ‘New’ Government of China that without its morality – genuine Buddhism does not exist. At this time in the West the US was busy fabricating the Cold War and demonizing Communist China. Japan not yet cleared of its fascism was quickly rearmed and allowed to keep much of its extreme (racist) nationalism on the grounds that it was naturally anti-Chinese and anti-Socialist. The US (which had already given certain Japanese War Criminals US Citizenship in return for the data gained from illegal human experimentation), embarked upon the spreading of Japanese martial arts and ‘Zen’ spirituality throughout the West as a means to obscure Chinese culture and turn Westerners against China. Dojos and Zendos opened all across the UK, Europe and the US, with dubious stories of returning US Servicemen learning Karate from the very Japanese people they had just been killing! This was one of the most successful attempts at brainwashing the US government ever conceived and deployed. Virtually no one questioned why it was that the martial culture and spirituality of a brutal fascist country like Japan (only recently an enemy that had killed tens of thousands of Westerners) being imported wholesale into the West. Young Americans were asked to embrace, practice and preserve the very martial techniques and thinking that had been used to kill and maim the older American generation with little resistance. The Japanese hegemony in the West was dented by the rise of the Chinese martial arts star – Bruce Lee – and the Hong Kong ‘kung fu’ film industry, but started to fall apart with the US establishing full diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1979. Today, this experimentation with unreformed post-WWII Japanese fascism has disintegrated and disappeared, or fallen into disconnected and distorted martial arts schools throughout the West – many bearing little resemblance to the styles of old that loyally served the emperor. This process designed by the US allowed Christmas Humphreys to continue in 1945 where he left-off in 1941 – and introduce DT Suzuki to a new generation in an unsuspecting Western world. Upon the subject of ‘morality’, Humphreys has this to say which directly contradicts the Buddha’s teachings whilst supporting the ramblings of DT Suzuki:
‘The same does not apply to morality, using the word in its largest sense to include conventional ethics and all right living between man and man. But the benefits of morality are limited. It is a cleaning of the instrument rather than its use, and though it helps to create right motive and to reduce the power of self it can never do more. It does not actually lead to Enlightenment. In developing the analogy of the raft the Buddha is reported to have told his hearers, ‘Ye must leave righteous ways behind, not to speak of unrighteous ways.’ As Dr Suzuki points out, ethics must grow from Enlightenment experience, and not vice versa. ‘In the moral man there is a certain feeling of constraint, of giving things up which he may think properly belong to him, whereas the spiritual man moves naturally, spontaneously as flowers bloom in the spring.; his mind is free from “traces” (defilements) of conflict or the choice of need.’ And again speaking of living by Zen as being far more than merely moral, he says, ‘Morality restrains, binds; Zen releases and brings us out into a wider and freer realm of life. Morality is not creative, and exhausts itself by trying to be other than itself, or rather to be itself.’’
(‘The Buddhist Way of Action’, 1989, Pages 129-131)
How many men and women did Humphreys send to the gallows for ‘immoral’ behaviour? How many millions died at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army because of the attitude that ‘morality does not matter’? The above statement by Humphreys and Suzuki may be compared with one of many quotes by the Buddha which contradict these statements of amorality favoured by the apologists of Japanese fascism:
‘And how is one an individual who practices for his own benefit and for that of others? There is the case where a certain individual himself abstains from the taking of life and encourages others in undertaking abstinence from the taking of life. He himself abstains from stealing and encourages others in undertaking abstinence from stealing. He himself abstains from sexual misconduct and encourages others in undertaking abstinence from sexual misconduct. He himself abstains from lying and encourages others in undertaking abstinence from lying. He himself abstains from intoxicants that cause heedlessness and encourages others in undertaking abstinence from intoxicants that cause heedlessness. Such is the individual who practices for his own benefit and for that of others.’
(AN 4.99, PTS: A ii 98 Sikkha Sutta: Trainings translated from the Pali by Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu)
For too long the work of Christmas Humphreys has been allowed to permeate through the Western world (often unseen and working behind the scenes) without question or critical examination. Someone like Christmas Humphreys – who possessed the power over life and death as a barrister working in the UK at a time when the Death Penalty was in operation – should be exposed to the greatest of scrutiny and not the least. His mentor – DT Suzuki – sent hundreds of thousands of young Japanese men to their deaths, and is in theory responsible for the deaths of millions throughout Asia because of the distorted ‘Zen’ philosophy he peddled, whilst Christmas Humphreys was responsible for the State execution of numerous men and women in the UK throughout his career (as a prosecutor he tried around 200 murder cases). Timothy Evans, Ruth Ellis and Derek Bently are just some of those who dropped through the trap door under Humphreys’ influence. Ironically, Humphreys was also briefly part of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial in 1947-1948 as part of a prosecuting international team, which makes it even more incredible that he did not cognize (or recognize) the link between the thought system of DT Suzuki and the motivations of the Japanese fascists he was asked to try. Furthermore, his connection with the 14th Dalai Lama and the developing US project of the ‘Pro-Tibetan Movement’ wedded the UK to that distortion of history, with Humphreys validating each and every piece of false anti-China propaganda emerging from Washington. At no time did Humphreys acknowledge that the CIA was operating in Tibet before the 14th Dalai Lama fled to India, or that during WWII the 14th Dalai Lama was very good friends with a number of Nazi Germans, etc. All this is common knowledge today, but was deliberately hidden from view by Christmas Humphreys and the following he had amassed.
The following (alleged) information was provided to the author some years ago by a knowledgeable third-party who frequented The Buddhist Society and knew Christmas Humphreys (due to the freemasonry connection, this person felt intimidated and unable to go public). In the 1960s there was a movement afoot in the UK to form a group entitled the ‘Western Friends of the Buddhist Order’ (WFBO). This was intended to be a demonstration of Western support for authentic Asian Buddhist lineages that had arrived in the UK (from Sri Lanka, Thailand, China, Vietnam and other places), and which needed guidance and assistance in the establishing temples and monastic orders in the West. This ‘internationalist’ initiative was brought to an end and completely reversed with the assistance of Christmas Humphreys. It was felt that this WFBO movement possessed the ability to usurp the dominance of Japanese Zen in the UK which Humphreys had established and preferred. This is how the author was made aware of the disturbing case of Denis Lingwood (aka ‘Sangharatshita’) who had been an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk in India during the 1960s. He was eventually expelled by the Indian Government for sexual crimes against children. Upon his return to the UK, instead of facing prosecution and imprisonment, Christmas Humphreys, concerned about the negative impact this story would have upon British Buddhism, used his influence to ‘cover’ the story up, and Lingwood was allowed to go free (essentially being placed in-charge of what he renamed the ‘Friends of the Western Buddhist Order’ now ‘Triratna’) where according to the testimony of Mark Dunlop and others – he continued his sexual offending. This is how the WFBO lost its ‘internationalist’ character and was converted by Lingwood into the insular, anti-Asian FWBO, where White Europeans donned Asian Buddhist robes (of different kinds), shaved their heads and gave themselves Sanskrit names – all whilst proclaiming the racist message that ‘Asian Buddhism’ and its associated ‘Asian culture’ had no relevance or place in the West! Records show that in 1975, Humphreys (who was a now an Old Bailey Judge) sentenced an 18-year-old youth to a 6-month suspended sentence for raping two women at knife-point. A few days later sentenced a man who had stolen £2000 from his employer, Humpherys handed-down an 18-month prison sentence. Not long after this Humphreys was asked to retire.
This essay is not attacking the man ‘Christmas Humphreys’, nor is it denying that like any person his viewpoints changed and developed overtime. It is clear that despite the circumstances of his privileged birth (with more than a hint of freemasonry), and the essentially unfair advantages his social background afforded him, he was sincere in his search for some type of ‘inner truth’. What concerns me is the narrative of fascistic Japanese Zen which he helped to establish in the West, and the consequential distortion of Asian Buddhism that followed. He chose to ignore the issue of class inequalities whilst benefitting from this very inequality, and equally chose to reduce all social inequality down to an individual choice. He contributed to the disempowerment of the working-class, (indeed, in all his writing and utterances he never used this term once), and assisted in the cementing of anti-Chinese racism in the UK. The Buddhist Society today still adheres uncritically to these ideas, and appears ever more out of place in modern Britain. A better testimony to the vision of Christmas Humphreys lies not in repeating and preserving the mistakes that he made (even if the local lodge demands it), but in rather admitting the errors of the past and moving forward by breaking-out of the outmoded and outdated thinking that once define Buddhist discourse in the UK. I do not expect The Buddhist Society to turn ‘Socialist’ overnight, but I would advise a more enlightened and less conservative attitude toward the past, present and future.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2019.
Japanese Language Reference:
http://terran108.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2009/07/zen-buddhism.html
English Language Reference:
https://vajratool.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/christmas-humphreys-the-most-eminent-of-20th-century-british-buddhists/
The short Japanese text that I found, points out that although Zen was viewed as a philosophy associated with the counter-cultures in the West of the 1950s and 1960s, Christmas Humphreys was very much a central figure of the British Establishment and the British State. His view of Buddhism was distinctly ‘rightwing’ and morally deterministic, as if the Buddha was a god and his theory of karma a manifestation of god’s will! As a prosecuting barrister, Christmas Humphreys reveled in securing the Death Penalty in the British Courts, justifying this judicial ‘killing’ as being the product of the accused’s ‘karma’, rather than the accumulation of material processes (causes and effects) generated by many colluding minds and social conventions. Derrick Bentley and Ruth Ellis – both assumed by many to be ‘innocent’, or at least not subjected to the ‘Death Penalty’ - were just two of the victims of Christmas Humphreys. His willingness to callously kill was reinforced by the corruption of DT Suzuki and the Japanese fascism he so admired. Although the Soto School of Japanese Zen Buddhism has formally apologized for its participation in justifying Japanese militarism, the Rinzai School has not. In the early 1960s Christmas Humphrys aligned the Buddhist Society with the CIA operation in Tibet during the 1950s – officially supporting the US-fabricated Pro-Tibetan Buddhist Movement. To this day the Buddhist Society in London has never apologized for Christmas Humphreys’ behavior, attitudes or distortion of Zen Buddhism, and still operates a policy of racially discriminating against Mainland Chinese people who do not agree with the Western interpretation regarding Tibet (or the Falun Gong Cult). This is because the natural anti-China attitudes held by Christmas Humphreys were validated and magnified through the auspices of Japanese fascism, attitudes that have not yet been fully eradicated from modern Japan – a country whose government has not yet acknowledged or apologized for its War Crimes committed prior to- and during WWII.
In 1960, Christmas Humphreys published his book entitled ‘The Buddhist Way of Action’ (since republished many times), which may be interpreted as a pristine example of British anti-intellectualism – even more so by the fact of its continuous reprinting and the assumption that it contains some type of perennial wisdom. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is the British middle-class at play. It is an exercise in religiosity, mythology, pomposity, ignorance, contrived mysticism, pseudo-science and Eurocentric imagination. As a consequence, much of its intended pontification is nothing but elongated expressions of absurdity – as hilarious as they are slightly disturbing in their inherent stupidity:
‘The relationship is no less than oneness, as one would expect of the Laws of Laws. As Alan Watts points out, ‘We do not sweat because it is hot; the sweating is the heat.’ Cause and effect are one; by reason of our infirmities of spiritual sight we see them separately. Yet of the two, the cause is paramount, for it is this aspect of the act that is under our immediate control. It is therefore better to concentrate on causes, for when the causing is right the right effect must follow.’
(‘The Buddhist Way of Action’, 1989, Page 102).
Thus, speaks the man who welded power over life and death in the British judicial system. A hotchpotch of superstitious nonsense that has very little to do with authentic Asian Buddhism, but more to do with the amoral mutterings of DT Suzuki and his loyalty to the Japanese emperor. Alan Watts, of course, made an ample living by peddling this ‘Suzuki-esque’ anti-science to a receptive US audience for many years. The horror is that this type of thinking killed millions across Asia, and justified the hangman’s noose in the mind of Humphreys. Part of DT Suzuki’s deception was that Japanese Zen has ‘nothing’ to do with Buddhism in general (as this separates ‘Zen’ from the well-known morality and discipline of orthodox Buddhism). Compare this with the much older Chinese school of Ch’an which views its tradition not as a deviation away from Buddhism, but rather as a fulfilment of the essence (or ‘heart’) of the Buddha’s teaching! Within the morality of authentic Buddhism, the Buddha teaches that ‘killing’, ‘causing to kill’, or ‘knowledge of killing’ are ALL moral faults that must be removed from the mind, body and environment (I.e. ‘society’). At no time does the Buddha state that ‘cause’ and 'effect’ are ‘one’, on the contrary, the entire edifice of the Buddha’s system of thought is premised upon the fact that they are most definitely ‘separate’ and ‘distinct’. Within Japanese (fascistic) Zen, if the sword can cut, and the bullet be fired by a soldier whose mind is ‘unbothered’ by moral consequences, then there is no karmic blame for the resulting death – this is exactly how Christmas Humphreys justified the reality of each person he sent to stand on the trap door of the gallows. Moreover, not only is the murdering soldier or convicting barrister ‘no guilty’ of any moral offense, but such a distorted system of thought shifts the blame away from the perpetrator and onto the victim – as it is the victim (who in reality most assuredly does not want to die) that is presented as being the architect of their own demise.
Ironically, Christmas Humphreys was right when he wrote:
‘This book is a record of my own experiences. As such it is deeply coloured with Buddhist thought, but it is not a Buddhist book, nor need it be added to any Buddhist library.’ (Page 11).
One is left thinking ‘how modest’ this man must be – until it is realized that he insisted that multiple copies of his books were to be kept in the library of the Buddhist society for both ‘lending’ and ‘selling’ - but never for ‘giving’. Again, the anti-intellectualism of Christmas Humphreys is hidden in plain view. A book sold and entitled ‘The Buddhist Way of Action’ is described by its author as being ‘not about Buddhism’. His work is littered with such throw-away tautology. None of it makes any sense from either a logical or scientific Western point of view, and certainly does not conform to the pristine logic of the Buddha as found in the Pali Suttas and most of the Sanskrit Sutras. Whilst weaving a new type of theology, Christmas Humphreys is acting in a highly illogical manner which appears to represent the internal logic of the Eurocentric legal system he represented during his professional life. This is intimately related to the often brutal and destructive British attitude that defined its imperialist and colonialist era. Whereas the thoughts and behaviour of Christmas Humphreys ‘broke necks’ on the scaffold, British colonial thinking ‘broke the bodies’ of those it sought to forcibly subjugate and control around the world! A recurring theme through this book (and the mind of Humphreys) is that everything bad we experience is a matter of our own volition, with no acknowledgement of the influence of outside forces beyond the control of the individual, or indeed the Buddhist philosophical teaching that certain experiences are ‘natural’ and lies outside of personal volition. Like his mentor – DT Suzuki – Christmas Humphreys was of the opinion that it is the ‘sword’ that ‘kills’, and not its ‘owner’ who delivers the lethal cut. Christmas Humphreys, in a very ‘unBuddhist’ way, is suggesting that it is the accused who arrests themselves, tries themselves, convicts themselves, sentences themselves to ‘death’, and then ‘hangs’ themselves... This lack of understanding of the chain of events from a Buddhist perspective reveals Christmas Humphreys true ignorance as to the authentic teachings contained within Buddhist thinking, which are as logically sophisticated as anything found in the ancient Greek world. This is why it can be said that whilst adhering to the strictures of theological thinking, Christmas Humphreys deviates from the premise of both established Western logic and Buddhist thought.
It is well-known in India, China and elsewhere, that the Buddhist thinking is ‘materialistic’ in nature, and that this is confirmed within the five aggregates teaching of the Four Noble Truths. In his analysis of existence, the Buddha always begins with an affirmation of ‘rupa’, or ‘material existence’. Everything proceeds from material existence. From the physical body (I.e. the brain’) all the attributes of mind emerge (I.e. sensation, perception, thought formations and consciousness). Christmas Humphreys rejects this Buddhist view, (or perhaps he never knew or understood it), and instead follows the distorted thinking of DT Suzuki. Suzuki translated a highly influential version of the Lankavatara Sutra into English but made the error of assuming that ‘Consciousness Only’ (citta mitra) was an ontological statement rather than an epistemological method. The founders of the Yogacara School understood that the Buddha taught the mind is impermanent – but emphasized that once the body is brought under control through discipline, in their opinion it is the mind that is developed through meditation as a means to realize enlightenment. At no time was the mind considered ‘eternal’ within Yogacara philosophy, and yet this false ‘idealism’ is exactly what DT Suzuki taught and it is the method Christmas Humphreys used to justify the breaking of necks, etc. Neither DT Suzuki nor Christmas Humphreys understood the genuine Yogacara School. This might have been a deliberate ploy on the part of Suzuki who was busy (like his teacher) distorting the teaching of Buddhism to fit-in with the fascist ideology of the Japanese State – a process that was under way many decades prior WWII. Whatever the case, Christmas Humphreys certainly never questioned the fascism of the Japanese State (although he was strategically ‘quiet’ during WWII), nor the unwarranted (and unBuddhist) idealism taught by Suzuki. Even after the atrocities carried-out by the Imperial Japanese Army became well-known after the end of WWII, Christmas Humphreys was unphased and simply went back to publically proclaiming the superiority of Japanese Zen Buddhism. Needless to say, there are not many former British POWs held as ‘guests of the emperor’ during WWII who became members of The Buddhist Society.
Unlike the Japanese fascism that Suzuki reinforced and Humphreys supported, the Buddha ‘rejected’ religious, political, social, economic and cultural inequalities. The uprooting of greed, hatred and delusion as taught by the Buddha are replaced by Suzuki and Humphreys as resolving everything into a theistic ‘oneness’, with this ‘oneness’ strictly under the control of a dominating State. Stripped of its outer religiosity, the ‘oneness’ advocated by Suzuki and Humphreys masquerades as a secular, Buddhistic-type of enlightenment. What we are left with is a mish-mash of disconnected ideas and theories forcibly integrated into an apparent single concept of morality, ethics, social action and spirituality. Buddha is made to sit next to Laozi, DH Lawrence, Epictetus, Dostoevsky, the authors of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, Jesus (obviously), New and Old Testament stories, Tennyson, Polonius, CG Jung, IC Beckett, Zhangzi, Warner Allen, Goethe, Richard Wilhelm, Loftus Hare, HP Blavatsky, Victor Gollancz, Marcus Aurelius, Talbot Mundy, Kenneth Walker, William James, Dr Hubert Benoit, Dr Edward Conze, John Blofeld, PG Bowen, Lily Abegg, Patanjali, Ernest Wood, Alan Watts, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Dr Radhakrishnan, LC Beckett and RH Blythe, etc. All these different approaches to interpreting reality hinge on the continuous anchoring of the work of ‘Dr Suzuki’ - ‘Epictetus’ being the only other name mentioned regularly throughout the book (alongside ‘Buddha’). It is through the misinterpretation of State-sanctioned Buddhism of DT Suzuki that Christmas Humphreys relies for his understanding of Buddhist thought – an understanding that is fatally flawed from the beginning and ‘holed’ beneath the waterline! This corruption provided by Suzuki in-turn allows for a plethora of unrelated opinions to be co-opted by Humphreys in an effort to explain Suzuki’s distorted Buddhist to a Western audience. This ‘new’ orthodoxy – generated by Japanese fascism and Western ignorance - runs parallel to that of authentic Asian Buddhism, has no relation to it, and in true imperialist fashion – seeks to ‘dominate’, ‘subjugate’ and ultimately ‘conquer’ that which it cannot understand or control. This is the real legacy of Christmas Humphreys and DT Suzuki.
‘The Japanese Samurai warrior ‘died’ before he went into battle, so that this illusion at least should not affect his arm in the service of his Lord.’
(‘The Buddhist Way of Action’, 1989, Page 177).
Much of the attention of Christmas Humphreys is taken-up with facing death with indifference. What he seems unable to understand is that to fear death and work toward preventing it, or coming emotionally and psychologically to terms with it are profound traits that define what it is to be truly ‘human’. The fascistic samurai that Humphreys admires are in every respect ‘inhuman’ in their attitudes and behaviours. It is this callous attitude which the Japanese State imbued into its citizens from 1868 onwards – and to a certain degree still does today. This is how the Imperial Japanese Army killed millions in China (1931-1945) and across Asia. It is the thinking of a brutal Japanese feudalism brought into the modern-age by the likes of DT Suzuki that has absolutely ‘nothing’ to do with the teachings of the Buddha, and Christmas Humphreys (and The Buddhist Society) is wrong to suggest that it does. It is China that possesses the essence of ‘Zen’ Buddhism know correctly as ‘Ch’an’ and not Japan. The rejection of Socialism by Suzuki and Humphreys led to genuine Buddhism being rejected and falsified as a means to make it popular in a capitalist West that was dominated by an aggressive US foreign policy after the end of WWII. This was a destructive double-act with political undertones that has only recently begun to be subjected to the scrutiny of modern scholarship. There is nothing ‘Buddhist’ about the murderous samurai attitude of ancient Japan or its modern, fascist equivalent, and yet in the West this stark indifference to human suffering permeates the martial arts dojos just as it infects the zendos. Ironically, within Japan this distorted Zen of Suzuki is now only preserved for curious Westerners with no deep understanding of Japanese culture. Behind the scenes, and despite the ‘official’ antagonism toward China, the Zen Schools of Japan have slowly re-orientated their methods with the genuine teachings of the Chinese Ch’an Schools. Suzuki’s corrupt Zen Buddhism is now referred to as ‘International Zen’ and considered easy to learn for beginners. As most foreigners ‘give-up’ with only superficial advancement, the teaching of authentic Zen is considered unnecessary.
The problem has its historical origins in Japan’s rejection of the rather strict psychological and physical morality of Buddhism as recorded in the body of work known as the Vinaya Discipline. This viewpoint was clearly rejected in the early 1950s, when the famous Chinese Chan Master Xu Yun (1840-1959) advised the ‘New’ Government of China that without its morality – genuine Buddhism does not exist. At this time in the West the US was busy fabricating the Cold War and demonizing Communist China. Japan not yet cleared of its fascism was quickly rearmed and allowed to keep much of its extreme (racist) nationalism on the grounds that it was naturally anti-Chinese and anti-Socialist. The US (which had already given certain Japanese War Criminals US Citizenship in return for the data gained from illegal human experimentation), embarked upon the spreading of Japanese martial arts and ‘Zen’ spirituality throughout the West as a means to obscure Chinese culture and turn Westerners against China. Dojos and Zendos opened all across the UK, Europe and the US, with dubious stories of returning US Servicemen learning Karate from the very Japanese people they had just been killing! This was one of the most successful attempts at brainwashing the US government ever conceived and deployed. Virtually no one questioned why it was that the martial culture and spirituality of a brutal fascist country like Japan (only recently an enemy that had killed tens of thousands of Westerners) being imported wholesale into the West. Young Americans were asked to embrace, practice and preserve the very martial techniques and thinking that had been used to kill and maim the older American generation with little resistance. The Japanese hegemony in the West was dented by the rise of the Chinese martial arts star – Bruce Lee – and the Hong Kong ‘kung fu’ film industry, but started to fall apart with the US establishing full diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1979. Today, this experimentation with unreformed post-WWII Japanese fascism has disintegrated and disappeared, or fallen into disconnected and distorted martial arts schools throughout the West – many bearing little resemblance to the styles of old that loyally served the emperor. This process designed by the US allowed Christmas Humphreys to continue in 1945 where he left-off in 1941 – and introduce DT Suzuki to a new generation in an unsuspecting Western world. Upon the subject of ‘morality’, Humphreys has this to say which directly contradicts the Buddha’s teachings whilst supporting the ramblings of DT Suzuki:
‘The same does not apply to morality, using the word in its largest sense to include conventional ethics and all right living between man and man. But the benefits of morality are limited. It is a cleaning of the instrument rather than its use, and though it helps to create right motive and to reduce the power of self it can never do more. It does not actually lead to Enlightenment. In developing the analogy of the raft the Buddha is reported to have told his hearers, ‘Ye must leave righteous ways behind, not to speak of unrighteous ways.’ As Dr Suzuki points out, ethics must grow from Enlightenment experience, and not vice versa. ‘In the moral man there is a certain feeling of constraint, of giving things up which he may think properly belong to him, whereas the spiritual man moves naturally, spontaneously as flowers bloom in the spring.; his mind is free from “traces” (defilements) of conflict or the choice of need.’ And again speaking of living by Zen as being far more than merely moral, he says, ‘Morality restrains, binds; Zen releases and brings us out into a wider and freer realm of life. Morality is not creative, and exhausts itself by trying to be other than itself, or rather to be itself.’’
(‘The Buddhist Way of Action’, 1989, Pages 129-131)
How many men and women did Humphreys send to the gallows for ‘immoral’ behaviour? How many millions died at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army because of the attitude that ‘morality does not matter’? The above statement by Humphreys and Suzuki may be compared with one of many quotes by the Buddha which contradict these statements of amorality favoured by the apologists of Japanese fascism:
‘And how is one an individual who practices for his own benefit and for that of others? There is the case where a certain individual himself abstains from the taking of life and encourages others in undertaking abstinence from the taking of life. He himself abstains from stealing and encourages others in undertaking abstinence from stealing. He himself abstains from sexual misconduct and encourages others in undertaking abstinence from sexual misconduct. He himself abstains from lying and encourages others in undertaking abstinence from lying. He himself abstains from intoxicants that cause heedlessness and encourages others in undertaking abstinence from intoxicants that cause heedlessness. Such is the individual who practices for his own benefit and for that of others.’
(AN 4.99, PTS: A ii 98 Sikkha Sutta: Trainings translated from the Pali by Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu)
For too long the work of Christmas Humphreys has been allowed to permeate through the Western world (often unseen and working behind the scenes) without question or critical examination. Someone like Christmas Humphreys – who possessed the power over life and death as a barrister working in the UK at a time when the Death Penalty was in operation – should be exposed to the greatest of scrutiny and not the least. His mentor – DT Suzuki – sent hundreds of thousands of young Japanese men to their deaths, and is in theory responsible for the deaths of millions throughout Asia because of the distorted ‘Zen’ philosophy he peddled, whilst Christmas Humphreys was responsible for the State execution of numerous men and women in the UK throughout his career (as a prosecutor he tried around 200 murder cases). Timothy Evans, Ruth Ellis and Derek Bently are just some of those who dropped through the trap door under Humphreys’ influence. Ironically, Humphreys was also briefly part of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial in 1947-1948 as part of a prosecuting international team, which makes it even more incredible that he did not cognize (or recognize) the link between the thought system of DT Suzuki and the motivations of the Japanese fascists he was asked to try. Furthermore, his connection with the 14th Dalai Lama and the developing US project of the ‘Pro-Tibetan Movement’ wedded the UK to that distortion of history, with Humphreys validating each and every piece of false anti-China propaganda emerging from Washington. At no time did Humphreys acknowledge that the CIA was operating in Tibet before the 14th Dalai Lama fled to India, or that during WWII the 14th Dalai Lama was very good friends with a number of Nazi Germans, etc. All this is common knowledge today, but was deliberately hidden from view by Christmas Humphreys and the following he had amassed.
The following (alleged) information was provided to the author some years ago by a knowledgeable third-party who frequented The Buddhist Society and knew Christmas Humphreys (due to the freemasonry connection, this person felt intimidated and unable to go public). In the 1960s there was a movement afoot in the UK to form a group entitled the ‘Western Friends of the Buddhist Order’ (WFBO). This was intended to be a demonstration of Western support for authentic Asian Buddhist lineages that had arrived in the UK (from Sri Lanka, Thailand, China, Vietnam and other places), and which needed guidance and assistance in the establishing temples and monastic orders in the West. This ‘internationalist’ initiative was brought to an end and completely reversed with the assistance of Christmas Humphreys. It was felt that this WFBO movement possessed the ability to usurp the dominance of Japanese Zen in the UK which Humphreys had established and preferred. This is how the author was made aware of the disturbing case of Denis Lingwood (aka ‘Sangharatshita’) who had been an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk in India during the 1960s. He was eventually expelled by the Indian Government for sexual crimes against children. Upon his return to the UK, instead of facing prosecution and imprisonment, Christmas Humphreys, concerned about the negative impact this story would have upon British Buddhism, used his influence to ‘cover’ the story up, and Lingwood was allowed to go free (essentially being placed in-charge of what he renamed the ‘Friends of the Western Buddhist Order’ now ‘Triratna’) where according to the testimony of Mark Dunlop and others – he continued his sexual offending. This is how the WFBO lost its ‘internationalist’ character and was converted by Lingwood into the insular, anti-Asian FWBO, where White Europeans donned Asian Buddhist robes (of different kinds), shaved their heads and gave themselves Sanskrit names – all whilst proclaiming the racist message that ‘Asian Buddhism’ and its associated ‘Asian culture’ had no relevance or place in the West! Records show that in 1975, Humphreys (who was a now an Old Bailey Judge) sentenced an 18-year-old youth to a 6-month suspended sentence for raping two women at knife-point. A few days later sentenced a man who had stolen £2000 from his employer, Humpherys handed-down an 18-month prison sentence. Not long after this Humphreys was asked to retire.
This essay is not attacking the man ‘Christmas Humphreys’, nor is it denying that like any person his viewpoints changed and developed overtime. It is clear that despite the circumstances of his privileged birth (with more than a hint of freemasonry), and the essentially unfair advantages his social background afforded him, he was sincere in his search for some type of ‘inner truth’. What concerns me is the narrative of fascistic Japanese Zen which he helped to establish in the West, and the consequential distortion of Asian Buddhism that followed. He chose to ignore the issue of class inequalities whilst benefitting from this very inequality, and equally chose to reduce all social inequality down to an individual choice. He contributed to the disempowerment of the working-class, (indeed, in all his writing and utterances he never used this term once), and assisted in the cementing of anti-Chinese racism in the UK. The Buddhist Society today still adheres uncritically to these ideas, and appears ever more out of place in modern Britain. A better testimony to the vision of Christmas Humphreys lies not in repeating and preserving the mistakes that he made (even if the local lodge demands it), but in rather admitting the errors of the past and moving forward by breaking-out of the outmoded and outdated thinking that once define Buddhist discourse in the UK. I do not expect The Buddhist Society to turn ‘Socialist’ overnight, but I would advise a more enlightened and less conservative attitude toward the past, present and future.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2019.
Japanese Language Reference:
http://terran108.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2009/07/zen-buddhism.html
English Language Reference:
https://vajratool.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/christmas-humphreys-the-most-eminent-of-20th-century-british-buddhists/