From the creation of Buddhist Studies in colonial India to mindfulness meditation in Liverpool, “Buddhism in Britain” is a series that brings the expertise of Dr. Caroline Starkey to a discussion about the encounter between Buddhism and British converts. Caroline is a sociologist of religion and associate professor of Religion and Society at the University of Leeds.
Having introduced Caroline’s ethnographic background and academic interests,* we now turn to a case study of an overlooked figure in the spiritualist movement, Julia May Shaw, who connects not only the imperial British encounter with India to the trauma of the First World War. The third entry will connect the Buddhist experience to the context of the decline and end of the British Empire. The final entry will discuss Britain’s place in contemporary Buddhist trends, from secular mindfulness to class-based issues that affect British Buddhists today.
Spiritualism in the shadow of the First World War
“The West can learn from the Buddhism of the East.” (Julia May Shaw, 1925)
Like so many things in the modern period, the experience of Buddhism in Britain is bound up in the experience of empire. This would seem self-evident, almost cliché, since all cultures that live with the legacy of a imperial claim to universalism—in this case, Pax Britannica—must grapple with the currents of mutual influence that transform colonized and colonizer.
“We often think of Buddhism in Britain though key figures, movers and shakers. Names like Ananda Metteya, T. W. Rhys Davids, Chris Humphreys, and so on have become familiar to Buddhist historians.” But as Starkey has demonstrated in her own research and in her conversations with us, it seems fair to say that she is sceptical, even critical, of the Napoleonic narrative tradition of the “great men of history” whose charisma fuels movements and passions shake continents. What of those “in the middle,” subjects that were not the imperial administrators or industrialists that guided empire, yet had some autonomy and material comfort of their own to learn and even teach about Buddhism?
In this second discussion with Starkey, we discussed a psychic medium, spiritual healer, and poet and writer—as well as local civil campaigner—who lived in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and was active from the 1920s to the 1970s. She has been looking at Shaw’s surviving journals, which provide a remarkable glimpse into the life of one of these Buddhist non-movers and shakers. “Her diaries are extensive, and expansive, and include philosophy, spirit drawings, reflections on current events, as well as on films she watched at the cinema and family life,” she notes.
“Julia May Shaw is one of those people that you will never hear of in the grand stories of powerful and influential spreaders of the Dharma,” Starkey continues. “Reading her reflections on the historical Buddha, we see an ordinary woman from Bradford in west Yorkshire, self-educated and interested in a wide variety of literature. But she keeps on coming back to the figure of the Buddha and how he should be a guide in the Britain of her time.”
Meeting the Buddha in Yorkshire
Caroline’s archival research reveals that Shaw was born in 1891 and passed in 1975. This Yorkshirewoman was a married homemaker. She had children and eventually grandchildren. She had many eclectic philosophical interests including Rosicrucian mysticism, the early writings of L. Ron Hubbard, poetry, European philosophy, and Buddhism. Buddhism made a particularly profound impact on her. In one of her journal entries, Shaw observed disapprovingly that colonial attitudes were so entrenched in Britain that people refused to look to outside sources of inspiration and spiritual guidance.
“I thought this passage was interesting because it hinted at a much more individual engagement with Buddhism, and also because it shows the significant changes in our attitudes toward Buddhism and foreign cultures and religious traditions as a whole from the 1920s until now,” says Starkey. “In a slightly Orientalist way, Buddhism has been valorized in modern Britain because it is seen as an outside force guiding people. Yet here we have a woman in the 1920s talking about the importance of the figure of the Buddha.”
Shaw was drawn to spiritualism following the “massive collective trauma” of the First World War. She experienced much death in her family, such as that of her uncle, and her husband’s loss of a leg. She describes in great depth the work she did for veterans, the extent of her suffering, and what she experienced as a nervous breakdown. Starkey notes:
the PTSD of the men that came back, the phenomenon of spiritualism and people contacting the deceased, all this was part of a broad interest in learning from other religious traditions that might help guide people amidst an increasingly complex society.
These considerations propelled Shaw into a lifelong journey to investigate spirituality, what it means to be human, and the mysteries of life. Shaw was a member of the Spiritualists National Union, as well as operating her own independent psychic healing centre—the Life After Death Association and Healing Centre. Her diary, Starkey discovered, recounts this personal journey, and is also peppered with quotes about the Buddha, reflections on the figure of the Buddha, and his example to the society of Britain of her time, particularly in the 1920s. She questioned conventional ecclesiastical structures in the Anglican church. “I don’t need a stout priest to which to confess. I feel God as omnipresent,” she wrote in a May 1925 entry.
By September of the same year, the York Telegraph reported that Shaw had become a “Lecturer on the Buddha” at Bankfoot Spiritualist Church. During this period, she was regularly talking about Buddhism to people who had little knowledge or experience in Buddhism. Exactly where she obtained her own knowledge, Starkey is not sure, although Shaw was regularly reading books and magazines and would have accumulated this knowledge before 1925.
A mind of curiosity and discovery
“We see Buddhism not only through the key men, but also through the key institutions like the Buddhist Society and the Buddhist Lodge. But here we have a woman who in no way, shape, or form was affiliated to Buddhism or the big groups, yet she is fascinated by the life of the Buddha and is giving talks about him,” observes Starkey.
You can see here the Victorian orientation, which was largely textually oriented, Theravada-leaning, drawing on the Buddha’s figure. What she’s imbibing and putting out there builds on that kind of trend, what colonial officers brought back from South Asia and based on translated Pali texts. Of course, Shaw is not engaged in the Pali texts. But she’s circulating, probably fairly effectively in her local area, information about the Buddha.
Shaw writes in her diary that the reception to her talks was generally positive, with many marvelling at how compelling the Buddha seemed as a person.
Julia May Shaw will never reach the heights of relative fame and scholarly praise as the movers and shakers I mentioned at the beginning. These middle class individuals were not perfect, and neither are we. Today, their attitudes might seem gauche, even racist. Yet their essentialism and prejudices co-existed with a remarkable openness to applying and spreading Buddhist teachings in their locality. They were prototype practitioners due to the globalizing effects of the British Empire. And more importantly, they were very normal people saying that we should take more inspiration from the example of the Buddha turning away from excess, advocating non-violence, and his other virtuous qualities.
Shaw’s era spanned the 1920s, when the empire was at its largest extent despite World War I, and she continued to be active until the 1970s, which witnessed indicators of Britain’s imperial decline relative to the United States, as well as the sunset of its formal empire in Asia with the impending handover of Hong Kong in 1997. There are many sociological trends that occur during this period, trends that influenced the propagation of Buddhism in the UK and form the subject of our next discussion with Starkey. These sociological contours are what Starkey is most interested in, and through examining them, we can better understand the mutual influence that Buddhist communities and British environments have exerted on one another.
* Buddhism in Britain, Part One: Encountering British Buddhists through sociology and ethnography (BDG)
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Nurturing the Roots of the Thai Forest Lineage in Britain: A Short Conversation with Ajahn Sucitto
The Man Who Brought Buddhism to Great Britain: Allan Bennett
