Buddhism In America
Buddhism
is a religion with millions of followers in North America, including traditionally
Buddhist Asian Americans as well as non-Asian converts. America presents a strikingly
new and different environment for Buddhists, leading to a unique history and a
continuing process of development as Buddhism and America come to grips with each
other.
Early history
Occasional intersections between Western civilization
and the Buddhist world have been occurring for thousands of years. Perhaps the
most significant of these began in 334 BCE, early in the history of Buddhism,
when the Macedonian king Alexander the Great conquered most of Central Asia. The
Seleucids and successive kingdoms established an important Hellenistic influence
in the area, which interacted with the Buddhism that had been introduced from
India to produce Greco-Buddhism. While this trend was very significant in the
development of Mahayana Buddhism, it has yet to be established that it made a
corresponding impact on Western thought. In the Christian era, Buddhist ideas
would periodically filter into Europe via the Middle East. A notable example is
the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, folk heroes who were canonized by the Roman
Catholic Church and whose story is believed to be an altered account of the life
of Siddhartha Gautama, translated from Persian to Arabic to Greek. The first direct
encounter between European Christians and Buddhists to be recorded was in 1253
when the king of France sent William of Rubruck as an ambassador to the court
of the Mongols. Later, in the 17th century, a group of Mongols practicing Tibetan
Buddhism established Kalmykia, the only Buddhist nation in Europe, at the eastern
edge of the continent. Because the above examples produced very little real religious
interaction, the European settlers who would come to colonize the Americas had
virtually no exposure to Buddhism. This almost complete isolation would last largely
undisturbed until the 19th century, when significant numbers of immigrants from
East Asia began to arrive in the New World. In the United States, the first immigrants
from China entered around 1820, but they began to arrive in large numbers following
the California Gold Rush of 1849. The first Buddhist temple in America was built
in 1853 in San Francisco by the Sze Yap Company, a Chinese American fraternal
society. Another society, the Ning Yeong Company, built a second in 1854; by 1875,
there were eight such temples, and by 1900 there were approximately 400 Chinese
temples on the west coast of the United States, most of them containing at least
some Buddhist elements. These temples were often the subject of suspicion and
ignorance by the rest of the population, and were dismissively referred to as
joss houses. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 curtailed the growth of the Chinese-American
population, but large-scale immigration from Japan began in the late 1880s and
from Korea around 1903. In both cases, immigration was at first limited primarily
to Hawaii. Populations from other Asian Buddhist countries followed. In each case,
the new communities established Buddhist temples and organizations. For instance,
the first Japanese temple in the Hawaii was built in 1896 near Paauhau by the
Hompa Hongwanji branch of Jodo Shinshu. In 1898, Japanese missionaries and immigrants
established a Young Mens Buddhist Association. The first Japanese Buddhist temple
in the continental U.S. was built in San Francisco in 1899, and the first in Canada
was built at the Ishikawa Hotel in Vancouver in 1905http://www.faithandmedia.org/pdfdocs/guide-buddhism.pdf.
The first Buddhist clergy to take up residence in the U.S. were Shuye Sonoda and
Kakuryo Nishimjima, missionaries from Japan who arrived in 1899. At about the
same time that Asian immigrants were first starting to arrive in America, some
American intellectuals were beginning to come to terms with Buddhism, based primarily
on information reaching them from British colonial possessions in India and East
Asia. The Englishmen William Jones and Charles Wilkins had done pioneering work
translating Sanskrit texts into English. The American Transcendentalists and associated
persons, in particular Henry David Thoreau took an interest in Hindu and Buddhist
philosophy. In 1844, the Dial, a small literary publication edited by Thoreau
and Ralph Waldo Emerson, published the first English version of a portion of the
Lotus Sutra; it had been translated by Thoreau himself from a French version recently
completed by Eugne Burnouf. His Indian readings may have influenced his later
experiments in simple living: at one point in Walden he wrote: I realized what
the Orientals meant by contemplation and the forsaking of works. The poet Walt
Whitman also admitted to an influence of Indian religion on his writings. The
first prominent American to publically convert to Buddhism was Henry Steel Olcott.
Olcott, a former U.S. army colonel during the Civil War, had grown increasingly
interested in reports of supernatural phenomena that were popular in the late
19th century. In 1875, he, along with Helena Blavatsky and William Quan Judge
founded the Theosophical Society, which was dedicated to the study of the occult
and was partly influenced by Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. The groups leaders
believed or claimed to believe that they were in contact, via visions and messages,
with a secret order of adepts referred to as the Himalayan Brotherhood or the
Masters. In 1879, Olcott and Blavatsky travelled to India and then, in 1880, to
Sri Lanka, where they were met enthusiastically by local Buddhists, who saw them
as allies against an aggressive Christian missionary movement. On May 25 of that
year, Olcott and Blavatsky took the pancasila vows of a lay Buddhist before a
monk and a large crowd of onlookers. Although most of the Theosophists appear
to have counted themselves as Buddhists, they held idiosyncratic beliefs that
separated them from all known Buddhist traditions; only Olcott was enthusiastic
about following mainstream Buddhism. He would return to Sri Lanka on two further
occasions, where he worked to promote Buddhist education, and also visited Japan
and Burma. Olcott authored a Buddhist Catechism, stating his view of the basic
tenets of the religion. A series of new publications greatly increased public
knowledge of Buddhism in 19th century America. In 1879, Edwin Arnold, an English
aristocrat, published The Light of Asiahttp://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/books/lightasi/asia-hp.htm,
an epic poem he had written about the life and teachings of the Buddha, expounded
with much wealth of local color and not a little felicity of versification. The
book became immensely popular in the United States, going through eighty editions
and selling more than 500,000 copies. Dr. Paul Carus, a German-American philosopher
and theologian, was at work on a more scholarly prose treatment of the same subject.
Carus was the director of Open Court Publishing Company, an academic publishing
house specializing in philosophy, science, and religion, and editor of The Monist,
a journal with a similar focus, both based in Lasalle, Illinois. In 1894, Carus
published The Gospel of the Buddha, which was compiled from a variety of Asian
texts and, true to its name, presented the Buddhas story in a form resembling
the Christian Gospels. Perhaps the most significant event in the 19th century
history of Buddhism in America was the World Parliament of Religions, held in
Chicago in 1893. Although most of the delegates to the Parliament were Christians
of various denominations, the Buddhist nations of China, Japan, Thailand, and
Sri Lanka sent representatives. Buddhist delegates included Soyen Shaku, a Japanese
Zen abbott; Zenshiro Noguchi, a Japanese translator; Anagarika Dharmapala, a Sri
Lankan associate of H. S. Olcotts; and Chandradat Chudhadharn, a brother of King
Chulalongkorn of Thailand. Paul Carus also attended as an observer. The Parliament
provided the first major public forum from which Buddhists could address themselves
directly to the Western public; Dharmapala was particularly effective in this
role because he spoke fluent English. A few days after the end of the Parliament,
in a brief ceremony conducted by Anagarika Dharmapala, Charles T. Strauss, a New
York businessman of Jewish descent, became, it is believed, the first person to
formally convert to Buddhism on American soil. A few fledgling attempts at establishing
a Buddhism for Americans followed. One the most interesting, in fact, had initially
appeared prior to the Parliament, met with little fanfare, in 1887: The Buddhist
Ray, a Santa Cruz, California-based magazine published and edited by Phillangi
Dasa, born Herman Carl (or Carl Herman) Veetering (or Vettering), a recluse about
whom little is known. The Rays tone was, in the words of Rick Fields, ironic,
light, saucy, self-assured ... one-hundred-percent American Buddhist (Fields,
1981), which was by all means a novel development in that time and place. It ceased
publication in 1894. Elsewhere, six white San Franciscans, working with Japanese
Jodo Shinshu missionaries, established the Dharma Sangha of Buddha in 1900 and
began publishing a bimonthly magazine, The Light of Dharma. In Illinois, Paul
Carus wrote further books about Buddhism and attempted setting portions of Buddhist
scripture to Western classical music. In the first half of the 20th century, it
would prove to be Buddhist teachers from Japan who played the most active role
in disseminating Buddhism to the American public, perhaps because Japan was the
most developed and self-confident Buddhist country at the time. In 1905, Soyen
Shaku was invited to stay in the United States by a Mr. and Mrs. Russell, a wealthy
American couple. He lived for nine months in their home near San Francisco, where
he established a small zendo in their home and gave regular zazen lessons, making
him the first Zen Buddhist priest to teach in North America. This short sojourn
eventually produced an effect on American Buddhism that continues to the present.
Shortly after Shaku settled in to his erstwhile home, he was followed by Nyogen
Senzaki, a young monk from Shakus home temple in Japan. Senzaki briefly worked
for the Russell family and then, expressing his desire to stay in America, he
was reportedly advised by Shaku to spend seventeen years as an ordinary worker
before teaching Buddhism. Thus, it was in 1922 that Senzaki first rented a hall
and gave an English talk on a paper by Soyen Shaku; his periodic talks at different
locations became known as the floating zendo. In 1931, he established a permanent
sitting hall in Los Angeles, where he would teach until his death in 1958. Another
Zen teacher, Sokatsu Shaku, one of Soyen Shakus senior students, arrived in late
1906. Although he stayed only a few years and had limited contact with the English-speaking
public, one of his disciples, Shigetsu Sasaki, made a permanent home. Sasaki,
better known under his monastic name, Sokei-an, spent a few years wandering the
west coast of the United States, at one point living among American Indians near
Seattle, and reached New York City in 1916. After completing his training and
being ordained in 1928, he returned to New York to teach. In 1931, his small group
incorporated as the Buddhist Society of America, later renamed the First Zen Institute
of America. By the late 1930s, one of his most active supporters was Ruth Fuller
Everett, a British socialite and the mother-in-law of Alan Watts. Shortly before
Sokei-ans death in 1945, the two would wed, at which point she took the name Ruth
Fuller Sasaki. In 1914, under the leadership of Koyu Uchida, who succeeded Shuye
Sonoda as the head of Jodo Shinshu missionary effort in North America, several
Japanese Buddhist congregations formed the Buddhist Mission of North America (BMNA).
This organization would later form the basis of the Buddhist Churches of America,
currently the largest and most influential ethnic-based Buddhist organization
in the U.S. The BMNA focused primarily on social and cultural activities for and
ministering to Japanese American communities. In the late 1920s, it first began
to develop programs to train English-speaking priests, for the benefit of the
growing number of American-born parishoners. Also, in 1927, the Soto sect of Japanese
Zen opened its own mission with Zenshuji temple in Los Angeles, although it did
not make attempts at the time to attract non-Japanese members. One American who
made his own attempt to establish an American Buddhist movement was Dwight Goddard
(1861-1939) . Goddard had been a Christian missionary to China, when he first
came in contact with Buddhism. In 1928, he spent a year living at a Zen monastery
in Japan. In 1934, he founded the Followers of Buddha, an American Brotherhood,
with the goal of applying the traditional monastic structure of Buddhism more
strictly than Senzaki and Sokei-an. The group was largely unsuccessful: no Americans
were attracted to join as monks and attempts failed to attract a Chinese Chan
(Zen) master to come to the United States. However, Goddards efforts as an author
and publisher bore considerable fruit. In 1930, he began publishing . In 1932,
he collaborated with D. T. Suzuki (see below), on a translation of the Lankavatara
Sutra. That same year, he published the first edition of A Buddhist Bible, an
anthology of Buddhist scriptures focusing on those used in Chinese and Japanese
Zen, which was enormously influential.http://www.squareonepublishers.com/gen_authors.html
However, another Japanese person, also an associate of Soyen Shakus, had an even
greater literary impact. This was D. T. Suzuki. At the World Parliament of Religions
in 1893, Paul Carus befriended Soyen Shaku and requested his help in translating
and preparing Oriental spiritual literature for publication in the West. Shaku
instead recommended Suzuki, then a young scholar and former disciple of his. Starting
in 1897, Suzuki worked from Dr. Caruss home in Illinois; his first projects were
translations of the Tao Te Ching and Ashvagoshas Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana.
At the same time, Suzuki began writing his first major book, Outlines of Mahayana
Buddhism, which was published in 1907. Suzuki returned to Japan in 1909 and married
an American Theosophist and Radcliffe graduate in 1911. Through English-language
essays and books, such as Essays in Zen Buddhism (1927), he established himself
as the most visible literary expositor of Zen Buddhism, its unofficial goodwill
ambassador to Western readers, until his death in 1966. His 1949 book, An Introduction
to Zen Buddhism, featured a 30-page introduction by Carl Jung, an emblem of the
deepening relationship between Buddhism and major Western thinkers.
Modern
American Buddhism
Some scholars, such as Charles Prebish, have suggested that
the social phenonemon of Buddhism in America can be seen to compromise three broad
types. The oldest and largest of these is immigrant or ethnic Buddhism, those
Buddhist traditions that arrived in America along with immigrants who were already
believers and that largely remained with those immigrants and their descendants.
The next oldest and arguably the most visible and best heralded type is referred
to as import Buddhism, because it came to America largely in response to the demand
of interested American converts who sought it out, either by going abroad or by
supporting foreign teachers; this is sometimes also called elite Buddhism because
its practitioners, especially early in the process, tended to come from social
elites. The newest trend in Buddhism is export or "evangelical Buddhism,
groups which are based in another country and who are actively recruiting members
in America from various backgrounds; by far the most successful of these has been
Soka Gakkai, which will be discussed below.
Immigrant Buddhists
Immigrant
Buddhist congregations in North America come in an extremely wide variety, exactly
as wide a variety as exists in the different peoples of Asian Buddhist extraction
who have settled there. The New World is home to Chinese Buddhists, Japanese Buddhists,
Korean Buddhists, Vietnamese Buddhists, Thai Buddhists, Cambodian Buddhists, and
Buddhists with family backgrounds in nearly every Buddhist country and region
in the world. The passage of the 1965 Immigration Act in the United States greatly
increased the number of immigrants arriving from China, Vietnam, and the Theravada-practicing
countries of southeast Asia. It is common for Buddhist temples and societies to
serve as foci for the social life of an immigrant community, helping to maintain
a connection to Old World traditions in a foreign environment. However, as the
passing of time produces congregations increasingly dominated by persons born
in America, which is especially common among Japanese Buddhists, questions arise
about how their religious customs should adapt The largest and most influential
national immigrant Buddhist organization in the United States is the Buddhist
Churches of America. The BCA is an affiliate of Japans Nishi Hongwanji, a sect
of Jodo Shinshu, which is in turn a form of Pure Land Buddhism. Tracing its roots
to the Young Mens Buddhist Association founded in San Francisco at the end of
the 19th century and the Buddhist Mission of North America founded in 1914, it
took its current form in 1944. All of the Buddhist Missions leadership along with
almost the entire Japanese American population, had been interned during the Second
World War. The name Buddhist Churches of America was adopted at Topaz Relocation
Center in Utah; the use of the word church, which normally implies a Christian
house of worship, was significant. After internment ended, some members returned
to the West Coast and revitalized churches there, while a number of others moved
to the Midwest and built new churches. During the 1960s and 1970s, the BCA was
in a growth phase and was very successful at fund-raising. It also began to publish
two periodicals, one in Japanese and one in English. However, since 1980, BCA
membership has declined seriously. It is interesting to note that while a very
large majority of the Buddhist Churches of Americas membership are ethnically
Japanese, it does have some members from non-Asian backgrounds. Thus, it can be
seen as having some, currently very limited, aspects of an export Buddhist institution.
As declining involvement by its ethnic community creates questions about its future,
there has been internal discussion as to whether it should devote more attention
to attracting the broader public. Another institution with some appeal both to
a specific ethnic group as well as to Americans generally is Hsi Lai Temple in
Hacienda Heights, California. Hsi Lai is the American headquarters of Fo Guang
Shan, an enormously successful modern Buddhist group in Taiwan. Hsi Lai was built
in 1988 at a cost of $10 million and is is the largest Buddhist temple Western
hemisphere. It is the American headquarters of Fo Guang Shan, an enormously successful
modern Buddhist group in Taiwan. Although it continues to cater primarily to Chinese
Americans, it also has regular services and outreach programs in English. Hsi
Lai was at the center of a bizarre incident in the history of American Buddhism,
when a 1996 fund-raising event by Vice President Al Gore provoked a controversy;
at the time Hsi Lai was often referred to in the media as simply "the Buddhist
temple.
Import Buddhists
Since Henry Steele Olcott travelled to Sri Lanka
in 1880, interested Americans have sought out Buddhist teachers from a variety
of countries in Asia, many of which have now established their teachings in America.
The three most notable trends of this type are Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, and Vipassana,
which is an outgrowth of Theravada Buddhism. Because its membership tends strongly
to be among educated, white, native English speakers, import Buddhism has come
to enjoy a higher level of prominence and prestige than other types of Buddhism
in America.
Zen
Beginning with Soyen Shakus invitation to San Francisco
and then the ministries of Nyogen Senzaki and Sokei-an, Zen Buddhism was the first
import Buddhist trend to put down roots in North America. In the late 1940s and
1950s, writers associated with the Beat Movement, including Gary Snyder, Jack
Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Kenneth Rexroth, took a serious interest in Zen,
which helped increase its visibility. In 1951, an octagenarian D. T. Suzuki returned
to the United States to take a visiting proffessorship at Columbia University,
where he began a long series of public lectures on Zen; Kerouac and Ginsberg were
among the attendees. In 1956, the Zen Studies Society was formed to support his
work. After moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1957, Suzuki was also involved
in founding the Cambridge Buddhist Association, which was likely the first Buddhist
group in America which was dedicated primarily to practicing zazen meditation.
The Zen Studies Society, which had become completely dormant when D. T. Suzuki
left Columbia, would be revived in 1965 by Eido Tai Shimano, a New York-based
Rinzai Zen teacher. One of the most influential figures in 20th century American
Zen was Shunryu Suzuki. After serving as a temple priest in Japan, Suzuki requested
to be sent to America, and, in 1959, at the age of 54, he travelled to San Francisco
to manage Sokoji, the citys Soto Sect mission. When he arrived, his congregation
almost exclusively older Japanese people, although his predecessors had begun
to make some efforts at a broader outreach. Suzuki himself proved to be more comfortable
teaching Americans than Japanese. He quickly attracted a group which met for regular
zazen sittings and lectures in English. The group incorporated as the San Francisco
Zen Center and, in 1966, purchased a tract of land near Los Padres National Forest
to began building Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, described as the first Buddhist
training monastery located outside of Asia. In 1969, Suzuki left Sokoji when the
Zen Center started its own new temple in San Francisco, operating largely independently
of the Soto Sect in Japan. In 1970, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, an edited collection
of talks given by Suzuki, was published and became one of the most popular brief
introductions to Zen practice. The San Francisco Zen Center remains one of Americas
largest and most influential Buddhist groups and is now part of a network of related
centers. Sanbo Kyodan Zen is a contemporary Japanese Zen lineage which had an
impact in the West out of proportion to its size Japan. It is rooted in the reformist
teachings of Harada Daiun (1871-1961) and his disciple Yasutani Hakuun (1885-1971),
who argued that the existing Zen institutions of Japan, the Soto and Rinzai sects,
had become complacent and, with few exceptions, were unable to teach real Dharma.
Harada had studied with both Soto and Rinzai teachers and Yasutani founded Sanbo
Kyodan in 1954 to preserve what he saw as the vital core of teachings from both
schools. Sanboi Kyodans first American member was Philip Kapleau, who first travelled
to Japan in 1945 as a court reporter for the war crimes trials. In 1947, Kapleau
visited D. T. Suzuki at Engaku-ji in Japan and in the early 1950s, he was a frequent
attendee of Suzukis Columbia lectures. In 1953, he returned to Japan, where he
met with Nakagawa Soen, a protg of Nyogen Senzaki. At Nakagawas recommendation,
he began to study with Harada and later with Yasutani, whose disciple he became.
In 1965, he published a book, The Three Pillars of Zen, which recorded a set of
talks by Yasutani outlining his approach to practice, along with transcripts of
dokusan interviews and some additional texts. The book quickly became popular
in America and Europe, contributing to the prominence of the Sanbo Kyodan approach
to Zen. Later in 1965, Kapleau returned to America and, in 1966, established the
Rochester Zen Center in Rochester, New York, making him the first American-born
Zen priest to found a training temple. In 1967, Kapleau had a falling out with
Yasutani over some of Kapleaus moves to Americanize the style of his temple, after
which it became independent of Sanbo Kyodan. The Rochester Zen Center is now part
of a network of related centers in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico,
and New Zealand, referred to collectively as the Cloud Water Sangha. One of Kapleaus
most notable early disciples was Toni Packer, who herself left Rochester in 1981
to found a nonsectarian meditiation, not specifically Buddhist or Zen. Robert
Aitken is another important American member of Sanbo Kyodan. He was first introduced
to Zen as a prisoner in Japan during the Second World War. After returning to
the United States, he began studying with Nyogen Senzaki in Los Angeles in the
early 1950s. In 1959, while still a Zen student himself, he founded the Diamond
Sangha, a zendo in Honolulu, Hawaii. Three years later, the Diamond Sangha hosted
the first U.S. visit by Yasutani Hakuun, who would visit various locations in
the U.S. six more times before 1969. Aitken travelled frequently to Japan and
became a disciple of Yamada Koun, Yasutanis successor as head of the Sanbo Kyodan.
Aitken became a dharma heir of Yamadas, authored more than ten books, and developed
the Diamond Sangha into an international network with temples in the United States,
Argentina, Germany, and Australia. In 1995, he and his organization split with
Sanbo Kyodan in response to reorganization of the latter following Yamadas death.
Another influential Japanese Zen teacher was Taizan Maezumi, who arrived as a
young priest to serve at Zenshuji, the North American Soto sect headquarters in
Los Angeles, in 1956. Like Shunryu Suzuki, he showed considerable interest in
teaching Zen to Americans of various backgrounds and, by the mid-1960s, had formed
a regular zazen group. In 1967, he and his supporters founded the Zen Center of
Los Angeles. He was later instrumental in establishing the Kuroda Institute and
the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, the latter an organization of American teachers
with ties to the Soto tradition. In addition to his membership in Soto, Maezumi
was also recognized as an heir by a Rinzai teacher and by Yasutani Hakuun of the
Sanbo Kyodan. Maezumi, in turn, had several American dharma heirs who have become
prominent, such as Bernie Glassman, John Daido Loori, Charlotte Joko Beck, and
Dennis Genpo Merzel. His successors and their network of centers have organized
as the White Plum Asanga.http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVLPages/ZenPages/TaizanMaezumi.html
Not all the successful Zen teachers in the United States have been from Japanese
traditions. There have also been teachers of Chinese Zen (also known as Chan),
Korean Zen (or Seon), and Vietnamese Zen (or Thien). The first Chinese Buddhist
priest to teach Westerners in America was Hsuan Hua, a disciple of the preeminent
20th century Chan master, Hsu Yun. In 1962, Hsuan Hua moved to San Franciscos
Chinatown, where, in addition to Zen, he taught Chinese Pure Land, Tiantai, Vinaya,
and Vajrayana Buddhism. Initially, his students were mostly ethnic Chinese, but
he eventually attracted a range of followers. In 1970, Hsuan Hua founded Gold
Mountain Monastery in San Francisco and in 1976 he established a retreat center,
the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas on a 237-acre property near Ukiah, California.
These monasteries are noted for their close adherence to the vinaya, the austere
traditional Buddhist monastic code. Hsuan Hua also founded the Buddhist Text Translation
Society which works on the translation of scriptures into English. Another Chinese
Zen teacher with a Western following is Sheng-yen, a master trained in both the
Caodong and Linji schools (equivalent to the Japanese Soto and Rinzai, respectively).
He first visited the United States in 1978 under the sponsorship of the Buddhist
Association of the United States, an organization of Chinese American Buddhists.
In 1980, he founded the Chan Mediation Society in Queens, New York. In 1985, he
founded the Chung-hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies in Taiwan, which now sponsors
a variety of Chinese Zen activities in the United States.http://www.chan1.org/biography.html.
The most prominent Korean Zen teacher in America was Seung Sahn. Seung Sahn had
been the abbot of a temple in Seoul and had also lived in Hong Kong and Japan
when, in 1972, not speaking any English, he decided to move to America. On the
flight to Los Angeles, a Korean American passenger offered him a job at a laundry
in Providence, Rhode Island, which was to become the headquarters of Seung Sahns
Kwan Um School of Zen. Shortly after arriving in Providence, he attracted a group
of America students and founded the Providence Zen Center. The affiliated Kwan
Um School now has more than 100 Zen centers on six continents. Another notable
Korean Zen teacher in America is Samu Sunim, who moved to America in 1968 and
founded Torontos Zen Buddhist Temple in 1971. He is now the head of the Buddhist
Society for Compassionate Wisdom, which has temples in Ann Arbor, Chicago, and
Mexico City. Two notable Vietnamese Zen teachers have been influential in America:
Thich Thien-An and Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Thien-An came to America in 1966 as
a visiting professor at UCLA and taught traditional Thien meditation. Thich Nhat
Hanh, however, has established his own very distinctive approach to Buddhism,
to the extent that his following is sometimes not classified as a Zen group. Thich
Nhat Hanh was a monk in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, during which he was a
peace activist. In response to these activities, he was nominated for the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1967 by Martin Luther King, Jr. .In 1966, he left Vietnam in exile
and now resides at Plum Village, a monastery in France. He has written more than
one hundred books about Buddhism, which have made him one of the very few most
prominent Buddhist authors among the general readership in the West. In his books
and talks, Thich Nhat Hanh emphasizes mindfulness (sati) as the most important
virtue in daily life.
Tibetan Buddhism
Perhaps the most widely visible
Buddhist teacher in the world is Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama. As the
exiled political leader of Tibet, he has become a popular cause clbre. His early
life was depicted in glowing terms in Hollywood films such as Kundun and Seven
Years in Tibet. He has attracted celebrity religious followers such as Richard
Gere and Adam Yauch. The first Western-born Tibetan Buddhist monk was Robert A.
F. Thurman, now a noted academic supporter of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama maintains
a North American headquarters at Namgyal Monastery in Ithaca, New York. The best-known
Tibetan Buddhist lama to live in the United States was Chgyam Trungpa. Trungpa,
part of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, moved to England in 1963, founded
a temple in Scotland, and then relocated to Boulder, Colorado in 1970. He established
a series of what he named Dharmadhatu meditation centers, which were eventually
organized under a national umbrella group called Vajradhatu. The methods and techniques
he developed for teaching Westerners he termed Shambhala meditation. Following
Trungpas death, his followers built the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, a traditional
reliquary monument, near Red Feather Lakes, Colorado. Consecrated in 2001, it
is the largerst stupa in the Western world.http://www.shambhalamountain.org/stupa.html
There are four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism: the Gelug, the Kagyu, the Nyingma,
and the Sakya. Of these, the greatest impact in the West was made by the Gelug,
which is led by the Dalai Lama, and the Kagyu, specifically its Karma Kagyu branch,
which is led by the Karmapa. As of the early 1990s, there were four significant
strands of Kagyu practice in the United States: Chgyam Trungpas Shambhala movment;
the Karma Triyana Choling, a network of centers affiliated directly with the Karmapas
North American seat in Woodstock, New York; a network of centers founded by Kalu
Rinpoche; and a fledgling organization established by Ole Nydahl, a Danish-born
lama with many supporters in Europe.(Lehnert, 1997)
Vipassana
Vipassana,
also referred to by the rough translation insight meditation is an ancient meditative
practice described in the Pali Canon of the Theravada school of Buddhism, and
in similar scriptures of other schools. Vipassana also refers to a distinct movement
which was begun in the 20th century by reformers such as Mahasi Sayadaw, a Burmese
monk. Mahasi Sayadaw was a Theravada bhikkhu and Vipassana is rooted in the Theravada
teachings, but its goal is to simplify ritual and other peripheral activities
in order to make meditative practice more effective and available both to monks
and to laypeople. This openness to lay involvement is an important development
in Theravada, which has sometimes appeared to focus exclusively on monasticism.
In 1965, monks from Sri Lanka established the Washington Buddhist Vihara in Washington,
D.C., the first Theravada monastic community in the United States. The Vihara
was fairly accessible to English-speakers, and naturally vipassana meditation
was part of it activities. However, the direct influence of the Vipassana movement
would not reach the U.S. until a group of Americans returned there in the early
1970s after studying with Vipassana master in Asia. Joseph Goldstein, after journeying
to Southeast Asia with the Peace Corps, had lived in Bodhgaya where he was a student
of Anagarika Munindra, the head monk of Mahabodhi Temple and himself a student
of Mahasai Sayadaws. Jack Kornfield had also been in the Peace Corps in Southeast
Asia, after which he studied with Ajahn Chah, perhaps the most influential figure
in 20th century Thai Buddhism. Sharon Salzberg went to India in 1971 as a spiritual
seeker and studied with Dipa Ma, a former Calcutta housewife trained in vipassana
by Mahasai Sayadawhttp://www.purifymind.com/LoveAbundantly.htm. Goldstein and
Kornfield met in 1974 while teaching at the Naropa Institute in Colorado. The
next year, Goldstein, Kornfield, and Salzberg, who had very recently returned
from Calcutta, along with Jacqueline Schwarz, founded the Insight Meditation Society
on an 80-acre property near Barre, Massachusetts. IMS became the central Vipassana
instituation in America, hosting visits by Mahasi Sayadaw, Munindra, Ajahn Chah,
and Dipa Ma. In 1981, Kornfield moved to California, where he founded another
Vipassana center, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, near Marin County. In 1985, Larry
Rosenberg founded the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Another important Vipassana center is the Vipassana Metta Foundation, located
on Maui. In 1989, the Insight Meditation Center established the Barre Center for
Buddhist Studies near the IMS headquarters, with the goal of promoting scholarly
investigation of Buddhism from various perspectives. It director is Mu Seong,
a former Korean Zen monk. S. N. Goenka is an Indian-born meditation teacher who
can also be considered part of the vipassana movement. His teacher, Sayagyi U
Ba Khin of Burma, was a contemporary of Mahasi Sayadaws, and taught a style of
Buddhism with similar emphases on simplicity and accessibility to laypeople. Goenka
has established a method of instruction which has proven very popular in Asia
and throughout the world. In 1981, he established the Vipassana Research Institute
based in Igatpuri, India. He and his students have built several active centers
in North America. http://www.dhamma.org/goenka.htm
Export Buddhists
Although
ethnic-based institutions, such as Hsi Lai Temple and the Buddhist Churches of
America show some evangelical movements, there is only one Buddhist group in North
America which has focused on recruiting converts from among the general public
and been successful: Soka Gakkai, a Japan-based society which promotes Nichiren
Buddhism. Soka Gakkai, which literally means Establishing Value Education Society,
was founded in Japan in 1930 as a fraternal auxiliary to Nichiren Shoshu, the
largest sect of Nichiren Buddhism. It was perhaps the most successful of Japans
new religious movements that enjoyed tremendous growth after the end of the Second
World War. During the occupation of Japan, some American soldiers became aware
of it, and it was the Japanese wives of veterans who became the first active Soka
Gakkai members in the West. A U.S. branch was formally organized on October 13,
1960. Its Korean-Japanese leader took the name George M. Williams to emphasize
his commitment to reaching the English-speaking public. Soka Gakkai expanded rapidly
in the U.S. through an aggressive recruitment technique called shakubuku. One
of the results of this outreach is that Soka Gakkai has been much more effective
than any other group at attracting non-Asian minority converts, chiefly black
and Latino, to Buddhism. It has also been successful in attracting the support
of celebrities, such as Tina Turner, Herbie Hancock, and Orlando Bloom. Soka Gakkai
has no priests of its own and was originally part of Nichiren Shoshu, a formal
religious sect in Japan. In fact, its United States branch was originally named
Nichiren Shoshu America (NSA). However, in 1991 Soka Gakkai split from Nichiren
Shoshu and became a separate organization; at that time, the U.S. branch changed
its name to Soka Gakkai International - United States of America (SGI-USA). Nichiren
Shoshu proper maintains six temples of its own in the U.S. and another Nichiren
group exists which is primarily the domain of ethnic Japanese. The main religious
practice of Soka Gakkai members, like other Nichiren Buddhists, is chanting the
mantra Nam Myoho Renge Kyo and sections of the Lotus Sutra. Unlike import Buddhist
trends such as Zen, Vipassana, and Tibetan Buddhism, Soka Gakkai does not teach
meditative techniques other than chanting.
Demographics of Buddhism in the
United States
For various reasons, it is not easy to arrive at a accurate idea
of the number of Buddhists in the United States. The simplest reason is that it
is not at all clear how to define who is and who is not a Buddhist. The easiest
and most intuitive definition is based on self-description, but this has its pitfalls.
Because Buddhism exists as a cultural concept in American society, there may be
individuals who self-describe at Buddhists but have essentially no knowledge of
or commitment to Buddhism as a religion or practice; on the other hand, others
may be deeply involved in meditation and commited to the Buddhadharma, but may
refuse the label Buddhist. Despite these difficulties, several scholars have investigated
this question. Most studies have indicated a Buddhist population in the United
States of between 1 and 4 million. The U.S. State Department's International Religious
Freedom Report 2004 indicates that 1.0% of the U.S. population is Buddhist, which
would mean a total of 2,957,341 Buddhists. Other estimates, perhaps relying on
a greater degree of intuition, are larger: in the 1990s, Robert A. F. Thurman
stated his opinion that there were 5 to 6 million Buddhists in America, and others
might speculate there are more. Whatever the total number, it appears that roughly
75 to 80 percent of Buddhists in the U.S. are of Asian descent and inherited Buddhism
as a family tradition; the remaining 20 to 25 percent are American converts.
Ethnic
divide
Discussion about Buddhism in America has sometimes focused on the issue
of the visible ethnic divide separating ethnic Buddhist congregations from import
Buddhist groups.http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week445/cover.html Although
many Zen and Tibetan Buddhist temples were founded by Asians, they now tend to
attract very few Asian-American members. With the important exception of Soka
Gakkai, almost all active Buddhist groups in America can be readily classed as
either ethnic or import Buddhism based on the demographics of their membership.
There is often very limited contact between these Buddhists of different ethnic
groups. This divide can be disturbing in view of the historical necessity of relying
on Asian peoples to transmit Buddhism, and in light of ongoing and complex tensions
surrounding ethnicity and immigration in America. Some Asian-American Buddhists
feel that their non-Asian counterparts ignore the many contributions of their
ethnic communities toward the development of American Buddhism. However, the cultural
divide should not necessarily be seen as pernicious. It is often argued that the
differences between Buddhist groups arise benignly from the differing needs and
interests of those involved. Convert Buddhists tend to be interested in meditation
and philosophy, in some cases eschewing the trappings of religiosity altogether.
On the other hand, for immigrants and their descendants, preserving tradition
and maintaining a social framework assume a much greater relative importance,
making their approach to religion naturally more conservative. Further, Kenneth
K. Tanaka suggests, based on a survey of Asian-American Buddhists in San Francisco,
that many Asian-American Buddhists view non-Asian Buddhism as still in a formative,
experimental stage and yet they believe that it could eventually mature into a
religious expression of exceptional quality.http://www.beliefnet.com/story/7/story_732_1.html
Additional questions come from the demographics within import Buddhism. Researchers
and casual observers alike report that the vast majority of American converts
practicing at Buddhist centers are white people with Christian or Jewish backgrounds.
Only Soka Gakkai has attracted significant numbers of black or Latino members.
A variety of ideas have been broached regarding the nature, causes, and significance
of this racial uniformity. A key question is the degree of importance ascribed
to discrimination, which is suggested to be mostly unconscious, on the part of
white converts toward potential minority converts. To some extent, the racial
divide is indicative of a class divide, because convert Buddhists tend strongly
to be drawn from the more educated segments of society. Among the African American
Buddhists who have commented on the dynamics of the racial divide in convert Buddhism
are Jan Willis and Charles R. Johnson.http://www.shambhalasun.com/Archives/Features/2001/sept01/pintak.htm
Trends in American Buddhism
Engaged Buddhism
An important trend that
has developed in Buddhism in the West is socially engaged Buddhism. While it would
be a serious mistake to believe that Buddhism in the past has not affected and
been affected by the surrounding society, it is sometimes seen as too quietistic
and passive toward public life. This is particularly true in the West, where almost
all converts to Buddhism come to it outside of an existing family or community
tradition. Engaged Buddhism is an attempt to apply Buddhist values to larger social
problems, including war and environmental concerns. The term engaged Buddhism
was coined by Thich Nhat Hanh, who developed the idea during his years as a peace
activist in Vietnam. The most notable engaged Buddhist organization is the Buddhist
Peace Fellowship, which was founded in 1978 by Robert Aitken, Anne Aitken, Nelson
Foster, and others and received early assistance from Gary Snyder, Jack Kornfield,
and Joanna Macy.http://www.bpf.org/html/about_us/history/history_chapter_01.html
Another engaged Buddhist group is the Zen Peacemaker Order, which was founded
in 1996 by Bernie Glassman and Sandra Jishu Holmes.http://www.zpf-motherhouse.org/zpo/index.htm
Buddhist education in the United States
A variety of Buddhist groups have
established institutions of higher learning in America. The first four-year Buddhist
college in the U.S. was the Naropa Institute (now Naropa University), which was
founded in 1974 by Chgyam Trungpa. It has enjoyed consistent involvement both
from convert Buddhists and counterculture personalities, such as Allen Ginsberg,
who christened the Institutes poetry department the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied
Poetics. Naropa is currently fully accredited and offers degrees in some subjects
not directly related to Buddhism. Another Buddhist university is the University
of the West, which is affiliated with Hsi Lai Temple and was, until recently called
Hsi Lai University. Soka Gakkai also sponsors two branches of Soka University,
which is based in Japan. The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas is the site of Dharma
Realm Buddhist University, a four-year college teaching courses primarily related
to Buddhism but including some general-interest subjects. The Buddhist Churches
of America runs its Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California, which
offers a degree in Buddhist Studies but is primarily a seminary. The first Buddhist
high school in the United States, Pacific Buddhist Academy, opened in Honolulu
in 2003. It is affiliated with the Hompa Hongwanji Jodo Shinshu mission, which
had already run an elementary and middle school.http://www.pacificbuddhistacademy.org/history.html
See also
" Western Buddhism
" Buddhism in Canada
"
Buddhist regions
" Religion in the United States
" United States
religious history
" List of religious topics
References
" Fields,
Rick (1981, 1992). How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism
in America. London: Shambhala Publications. ISBN 0-87773-583-2.
" Lehnert,
Tomek (1997). Rogues in Robes. Nevada City, California: Blue Dolphin Publishing.
ISBN 1-57733-026-9.
" Prebish, Charles (2003). Buddhism - the American
Experience. Journal of Buddhist Ethics Online Books, Inc.. ISBN 0-9747055-0-0.
External
links
" Buddhism - The American Experience, Chapter 1 by Charles Prebish
(first chapter is available without charge, complete book must be ordered)
"
Surveying the Buddhist Landscape, article by Charles Prebish, from Shambhala Sun
"
Global Buddhism: Developmental Periods, Regional Histories, and a New Analytical
Perspective, article by Martin Baumann
" Buddhism Comes to Main Street,
article by Jan Nattier on UrbanDharma.org
" Buddhist Studies and its Impact
on Buddhism in Western Societies, article by Max Deeg
" Review of Tweed,
Thomas A. The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912. Reviewed by J. I. Bakker
"
Media guide to Buddhism, from the Centre for Faith and Media in Canada
"
Buddhism evolves as followers multiply, article from the Poughkeepsie Journal,
April 23, 2004
" Shin Buddhism in the American Context, article by Dr.
Alfred Bloom
" Chronology of the lives of important persons in the history
of Zen in America, from Terebess Online
" A chronology of Theravada Buddhism,
from accesstoinsight.org
" Timeline of Buddhist history and related events,
from awakening.to
" Timeline of Japanese Canadian history
America
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