The Buddha had an open hand. Nothing was to be hidden from those prepared to make the effort to learn it; there was no esoteric teaching. Equally, to become receptive to the full message, a person had to make a total, existential commitment. Not everyone was prepared to do that. The Buddha left people that choice; and, even if they were not ready to go the whole way, he still had a teaching for them. So, effectively, there were two complementary, interlocking teachings. Lay people got one, professional practitioners another.

The later Mahaayaana blurred the distinction between professional and lay. One key text here, the Vimalakiirtinirde’sa, was long the most popular Buddhist work in China. Nonetheless, the distinction continued to hold. That lay at the root of the neo-Confucian animus against Buddhism.

Now, those barriers are breaking down in a new way. Educated lay people are no longer content with a purely passive role. They tend to form ‘meditation groups’ independent of monastic structures.

This may have negative and positive consequences:

• Lay meditators may look for a quicker, intellectualised route to spiritual progress that they can combine with busy, modern lives. Some monks may offer innovations in doctrine and practice that accommodate these demands.
  Once established among the urban middle classes, this trend may seep out to the rest of the population. Among the rural population, it may fuse with an established ‘service economy’ in which monks provide magical assistance (astrology, talismans, et cetera) in return for cash or cash-equivalent benefits.
• Equally, in the tradition of Vimalakiirti, lay people may manage to establish a strong practice even while remaining economically active. Groups of such people can become committed agents of social change.

Such phenomena are multiplying across Asia. They form a continuum with developments across the western world. An international circuit of meditation teachers is forming.

In Europe and America, numbers of meditation groups are growing steadily; to judge from attendances on retreats and trainings, the number of individuals involved in similar activity outside any organised group is expanding still faster. The rapid development of psychological therapies that apply the resources of the Buddhist tradition is also notable. These have an impact across sectors from the clinical treatment of depression to the self-help publishing and media business.
The results of this broad-based trend are as yet submerged. The only clearly recognisable political impact appears in the Tibetan lobby, particularly in the US; this has made no discernible difference to date, yet its strength is remarkable given the limited number of Tibetan-speakers. There have also been diffuse effects via ‘new-age’ thinking in diverse fields from ecological activism to management consultancy.

As Buddhist-derived discourse gains weight in western culture, the connection with developments in Asia can only strengthen. Thresholds may in time be crossed.

The Chinese state is now promoting Buddhism (within limits). This is a response to Falung Gong and Christianity, a recognition of the economic potential of sites like Wu-Tai Shan, a cultural-diplomatic initiative, an accommodation to the public’s rediscovery of its Buddhist heritage and much else besides. Both officially and privately, the new Chinese Buddhism is exploiting links via the Chinese diaspora to create an opening towards South East Asian Buddhism. Equally, there is a notable growth of support for the one indubitably thriving ‘indigenous Chinese’ form of Buddhism, which is the Tibetan; given the strength of Tibetan-linked Buddhist activity in the west, this development has fascinating potential.