Martin Palmer, the scholar of Eastern religions, summed up the problem of Western Buddhism in this interview, prompted by the Buddhist film festival coming up in London. He had three charges against the way Buddhism is being appropriated in the West.

1. It's deeply partial, a pic'n'mix religion. This is a Western projection based upon 'the religion we don't want, which is Judeo-Christian, and the religion we would love to have, which isn't quite religion - which doesn't have too many gods, and doesn't have too many rules, and the rules it does have, like the Tibetan ban on homosexuality, are conveniently forgotten.'

2. It focuses on the individual path, whereas most Buddhists do not pursue an individual path but rather swim in a Buddhist culture. Apart from the question of whether Buddhism was ever designed to be pursued in an individualistic way, the problem here is that 'it is playing Western existentialist games which derive primarily out of the protestant tradition of the Christian world.'

3. There is now also the phenomenon of reverse colonialization, in which Western Buddhists go to countries with indigenous Buddhist cultures and tell the locals how to do it - that they mustn't eat meat, say, or that their monks should not be married, or they must strip away 'religious accretions', such as making offerings to deities. Palmer continues: 'What worries me about the invasion of Western Buddhism is that it is importing Western angst rather than necessarily being humble enough to listen to... the Buddhism of that country.'