Coursehero >> Ohio >> Ohio State >> COMP STD 367

Course Hero has millions of student submitted documents similar to the one below including study guides, homework solutions, papers, exam answer keys and textbook solutions.

the Describing Elephant: Buddhism in America Peter N. Gregory Religion and American Culture, Vol. 11, No. 2. (Summer, 2001), pp. 233-263. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1052-1151%28200122%2911%3A2%3C233%3ADTEBIA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S Religion and American Culture is currently published by University of California Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/ucal.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. http://www.jstor.org Thu Jul 19 08:21:16 2007 Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America Peter N. Gregory The expanding volume of publications on Buddhism in America in the last two and a half decades bears witness to the emergence of an exciting new subfield within American religion, on the one hand, and within Buddhist studies, on the other. For Americanists, it reflects a growing recognition of the ways in which non-Western religions are altering the American religious landscape. As such, it is part of an emerging awareness of the increasingly pluralistic and multicultural nature of American society at the turn of the millennium. For Buddhologists, the spread of Buddhism in America opens a new chapter in the long history of the geographical and cultural diffusion of the religion since its founding in India some 2,500 years ago. This new subfield thus holds the prospect of studying what promises to be a momentous development in the history of Buddhism, and it affords an opportunity to study the acculturation ~f the tradition as it is actually occurring. Clearly this is a field where both Americanists and Buddhologists have much to contribute and much to learn from one another. For Americanists and Buddhologists alike (not to mention Buddhists), it also raises questions of what it means to be a "Buddhist" and what it means to be an "American." The overwhelming majority of the books on Buddhism in America is produced by and geared toward an American audience with a personal interest in Buddhism. Indeed, Buddhist publication has become a minor industry in the last two decades.' These works include translations of Buddhist texts authoritative for traditions being transplanted to the West and presentations of Buddhism by contemporary Asian and American Buddhist teachers, not to mention an array of journals and newsletters whose production ranges from slick and professional to homey and in-house. Although many of these publications speak to the concerns of an American audience and represent important primary documents for the study of Buddhism in America, most lack the kind of critical, analytical, and historical perspective that is the hallmark of more self-consciously academic Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation,Volume 11, No. 2, pages 233-263. O 2001 by The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. ISSN: 1052-1151; online ISSN 1533-8568 234 Religion and American Culture works. Happily, the volume of academic studies has also continued to grow, albeit on a much more modest scale. Within recent years, four books have appeared that, in different ways, address the phenomenon of American Buddhism as a whole, and together they offer a measure to gauge the state of the field broadly and assess its strengths and weaknesses. The first two are edited collections growing out of recent conferences, while the second two are single-authored works by scholars who have already made significant contributions to the field. The first of these, The Faces of Buddhism in America, edited by Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka and published by the University of California Press in 1998, grew out of a seminar series organized by Tanaka at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley over the course of the fall of 1994. The contributions to this volume cover both "American Buddhist Traditions in Transition" and "Issues in American Buddhism." Three of the chapters in particular stand out as representing the definitive treatment of their subject so far: "Chinese Buddhism in America" by Stuart Chandler, "Vietnamese Buddhism in North America" by Cuong Nguyen and A. W. Barber, and "Insight Meditation in the United States" by Gil Fronsdal. Although the quality and coverage of the volume is uneven, there are enough solid and interesting pieces in it to make it worth assigning for a course on Buddhism in America. The second volume, American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, edited by Duncan Ryiiken Williams and Christopher S. Queen and published by Curzon Press in 1999, is the fruit of a conference organized by the two editors and held at the Harvard Divinity School in May 1997. Much less work has gone into this volume in terms of editing, revision, and production, and it is more an assemblage of conference papers than it is a book. Much of the material has been published elsewhere, often in more expanded form.2 Other papers deal more with aspects of their topic than with providing an over vie^.^ Still there are some good pieces in this book that could be profitably used as part of a packet of supplementary readings for a course on Buddhism in A m e r i ~ aFor scholars, one of the .~ most useful things in this book is the list of dissertations on topics related to Buddhism compiled by Duncan Williams. The third of this recent batch of books, Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America (University of California Press, 1999), is by Charles S. Prebish, a Buddhologist whose earlier book, American Buddhism (Duxbury Press, 1979),helped to pioneer the field. The various chapters of Prebish's new work tend to stand as independent units and do not cohere together into a book with a unified Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America 235 focus, and their organization makes for some awkward disjunctions and redundancies5 Prebish devotes relatively little space to discussing the forms of Buddhism that are being transplanted to the United States by the new post-1965 groups of Asian immigrants, and his book thus does not succeed in presenting "a comprehensivepicture of American Buddhism at the turn of the century" (viii). It adds little in terms of new research or analy~is.~ does it present a synthesis of Nor the field. The book is also unreliable on a range of levels, whose cumulative effect undermines its overall credibility.' It would not be suitable in an introductory survey on Buddhism in America. The fourth volume, Buddhism in America (Columbia University Press, 1999), is by Richard Hughes Seager, an Americanist and the author of the excellent study, The World's Parliament of Religions: The EastlWest Encounter, Chicago, 1893 (Indiana University Press, 1995). Seager's recent volume appears in the new Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series, which is designed "to address a real or perceived 'crisis' in teaching American religion, which had resulted from a triumph of pluralistic sen~ibilities."~ Geared toward students and general readers, the series is dedicated to presenting "thoughtprovoking portraits of the country's major religious groups" (ii).Seager succeeds admirably in this task by providing a readable, well-balanced, reliable, and thoughtful road map of the terrain. Buddhism in America affords the best place to start for someone new to the field. Indeed, if one were to read only one book on American Buddhism or to assign only one book in a survey course on either American religion or Buddhism, this is clearly it. Collectively these four books represent the first attempt in two decades to address the whole spectrum of phenomena within American B ~ d d h i s mand their publication thus affords a prime oc,~ casion to reflect on the state of the field and some of the broader issues under which it is being shaped. The biggest story to emerge in that intervening period has to do with the influx of immigrant and refugee Buddhists from all over Asia brought about by the changes in the immigration law in 1965. As Paul Numrich notes, "the Asian American population of the U.S. doubled in the 1970s and again in the 1980~,"'~ and it continued to expand throughout the 1990s as well. Many of these new immigrants are from Theravada Buddhist countries in South and Southeast Asia. Indeed, this broad and diverse group constitutes the preponderance of Buddhists in America today, and they outnumber older Asian American Buddhist communities by far. These demographic changes are not only affecting the ethnic composition of the U.S. population as a whole, but they are also altering the shape of Buddhism in America in ways that we cannot yet fully discern. Religion and American Culture The importance of this group did not begin to become apparent until the mid or late 1980s (after the earlier surveys by Layman, Prebish, and Fields were written)," and scholars have only begun to turn their attention to it. Here the field owes a great debt to Paul Numrich's award-winning Old Wisdom in the New World:Americanization in Two Immigrant Thevavada Buddhist Temples, published by the University of Tennessee Press in 1996.12Based on solid field work and analytical clarity, this book has done much to redefine the agenda of scholars working in the field. Even though it marks a major step forward, it is still only a beginning, and much more work needs to be done in this area. In addition to sociological studies, we need ethnographies that illuminate the religious experience of Asian American and Asian immigrant Buddhist communities as it has been experienced by them, a project to which scholars in Asian American studies have much to contribute.13 In what follows I would like to use these most recent books to reflect broadly on the state of the field of Buddhism in America, focusing in particular on some of the many complex issues related to the new group of immigrant and refugee Buddhists. There are, of course, many interesting and important issues raised in and by these books that I will not be able to address within the scope of this essay. Who Is a Buddhist? The proliferation of books on Buddhism in America is, of course, related to the growth of the phenomenon. Although the history of Buddhism in America can be traced back to the middle of the nineteenth century,14 it was not until the post-World War I1 period that Buddhism began to attract attention as a significant presence in the American religious landscape. Beginning in the fifties with the socalled Zen boom associated with the Beats and popularizers like D. T. Suzuki and Alan Watts, gaining significant momentum with the counterculture movement in the second half of the sixties, and continuing to expand exponentially throughout the seventies, eighties, and nineties with the waves of new immigrants from Asia, Buddhism is sometimes hyped as the fastest growing religion in America today. Indeed, the number of Buddhists in the United States has grown by a multiple of fifteen to twenty in the past forty years. Recent estimates of the number of Buddhists in America run from one to five million.15While one million is almost certainly too low, five million is probably too high. The figure that seems to have gained the most widespread acceptance is that put forward by Martin Baumann, who recently estimated that there were three to four mil- Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America lion Buddhists in America in the mid nineties, of which some eight hundred thousand (or approximately one quarter) were supposedly Euro-Americans.16 For rough comparative purposes, it is probably safe to say that the number of Buddhists in America constitutes somewhere between 0.5 percent and 1.5percent of the total population. We should bear in mind, however, that such figures are, at best, little more than informed guesses and that, until the criteria for inclusion are specified, it is difficult to know what they mean or how far they can be used. Clearly more hard demographic research is needed. Yet, given the rapidly changing character of Buddhism in America, the continued influx of immigrants from Asia, and the volatility of many groups, all attempts at quantification run the risk of being out of date by the time they are published. For the time being at least, we should probably expect continually to have to revise the figures up every few years. Such attempts at quantification are fraught with methodological difficulties as well. Given the incredible diversity among the different types of Buddhism represented in America, and the tremendous sociological differences in the composition of various groups, there is unfortunately no easy or reliable way to determine who is a Buddhist. What it means to be a Buddhist varies from one group to another, and there is no single belief or practice that is common to all Buddhists. As Jan Nattier points out, "Criteria of belief or ritual practice quickly begin to resemble standards of orthodoxy."" Membership figures are also an unreliable index. Different groups use different criteria of membership, some employ different categories of membership, some keep more accurate or up-to-date figures than others, some tend to inflate membership, newer and smaller groups may not keep any records, and many Americans who may consider themselves "Buddhist" are not affiliated with any group. Some scholars (such as Tweed and Prebish) have therefore proposed self-identification as the most suitable criterion: that anyone who says that he or she is a Buddhist should be counted as a Buddhist.18But this criterion is also problematic, for it may include some people who have never been involved with any Buddhist group or who have never engaged in any form of Buddhist practice, while it may exclude others who have been deeply involved with Buddhism for many years and for whom Buddhism has had a profound impact on their life.19Some in this latter group may even self-identify as members of other religions, maintaining that their practice of Buddhism has made them better Catholics or Jews, for e~ample.~" "Religious identity," as Thomas Tweed reminds us, "can be multiple or ambi~alent."~' goes on to argue that we should not lose sight of He Religion and American Culture the amorphous but considerable group of sympathizers, whom he felicitously refers to as "night-stand B ~ d d h i s t s . "Even though they ~~ may not show up in our statistical counts as Buddhists, and their number is impossible to quantify, sympathizers are important in considering the broader impact that Buddhism has on American society at large. Indeed, Buddhism has already exerted an influence on a broad spectrum of American culture-including literature, art, psychology, popular entertainment, the media, and other religious traditions-that is far greater than the proportion of its adherents to the U.S. population as a whole. Such diffusion of Buddhist ideas and sentiments into the culture at large is important in fostering an environment in which Buddhism can be seen as a live option for many Americans. As criteria for inclusion, membership and self-identification both lump together as Buddhists people who may not only believe and do very different things, but whose degree of involvement with Buddhism may span a wide range of commitment. Our figures would be more useful and would tell us more if they were also able to distinguish degrees of intensity of participation and "to identify different styles of relating to the Buddhist tradition,'' as Nattier has sugg e ~ t e dClearly different criteria are appropriate for different kinds .~~ of studies, and the researcher needs to specify not only what criteria he or she is using but also why he or she has chosen to employ them. Here again we need more precisely honed and differentiated data balanced with more methodological precision. Nevertheless, the estimates that have been put forward so far do give us some general purchase on the relative size of the phenomenon within the broad comparative framework of religion in America. Small though their number may be, it has reached a magnitude where Buddhists have to be taken into account in the increasingly pluralistic landscape of American religion. Another gauge on the phenomenon is suggested by the number of Buddhist groups. Based in part on figures from the Pluralism Project under the direction of Diana Eck at Har~ a r dTweed estimates that there are 1,515 Buddhist centers in Amer,~~ i ~ aThese~ . ~ include temples and centers serving Asian American, immigrant, and American convert Buddhist communities. In The Complete Guide to Buddhist America (1998),Don Morreale lists 1062 Buddhist meditation centers in North America (as of 1997), of which 423 (42 percent) are "Mahayana" (a category comprised predominantly of Zen centers and groups), 352 (33 percent) are Vajrayana (that is, "Tibetan"), and 152 (14 percent) are Theravada (or Vipa~sang).~~ Morreale's figures are also noteworthy in suggesting the exponential growth of Buddhist meditation centers in the last three decades, thereby helping to document the growth of the American Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America 239 convert community. He notes that only about 2 percent of these centers were founded in the years 1900 to 1964. The number of centers increased fivefold in the late 1960s and early 1970s. "That number more than doubled in the years 1975 to 1984, and then doubled again in the twelve years from 1985 to 1997."27 Useful as Morreale's book may be a resource, its data must be treated with caution. Despite the title, it is neither "complete" nor a guide to "Buddhist A m e r i ~ a . " ~ ~ it was compiled as a compreRather, hensive, practical guide for Americans interested in Buddhist meditation practice, and, as Morreale admits, it does not pretend to offer a thorough register of the broader spectrum of Buddhism in America. All of the information contained in it was provided by the various centers as a response to a questionnaire. Moreover, the book "only lists centers and temples where meditation is taught" and does not include "the vast numbers of temples and centers where meditation is not the focus. . . . Also not included are many ethnic temples where English is not the principle language."29 To balance Morreale's data, which is heavily skewed toward what we could provisionally call the American convert community, we should note that, within the United States, there are some 125 Chinese Buddhist organization^,^^ 150 Theraviida temples (associated with the Thai, Kampuchean, Lao, Burmese, and Sinhalese immigrant cornrnunitie~),~' Vietnamese Buddhist temples and centers (this 160 figure is for all of North A m e r i ~ a )61 Buddhist Churches of America ,~~ (BCA)temples plus 7 smaller fellowship^,^^ nearly 70 S6ka Gakkai Inand ternational community centers and 6 Nichiren Sh6shu temples,34 fourteen Japanese American Sot6 Zen temples35 Aside from the BCA and Japanese American Sot6 Zen temples, almost all of these Asian American temples, centers, and organizations are a post-1965 phenomenon. Complexity The difficulties encountered in trying to determine who is a Buddhist are related to the fact that American Buddhism, and the broader global context with which it is connected, is dauntingly complex. Accordingly one of the central tasks facing researchers today is taxonomical: finding appropriate categories to describe the Buddhist elephant. The "elephant" in my title is taken from the famous parable of the blind men and the elephant. As the story goes, an elephant is brought before a group of blind men. Each of the blind men touches a different part of the elephant, and afterward they are asked to describe what the elephant is like. The one who touched its tusk said Religion and American Culture that the elephant was like a daikon (a long, hard white root), the one who touched its ear said that it was like a winnowing basket, the one who touched its head said that it was like a boulder, the one who touched its trunk said that it was like a staff, the one who touched its belly said that it was like a large urn, the one who touched its tail said that it was like a rope, and so on and so forth. As the parable is used in the Mahirparinirviina SGtra, from which I have taken it, the elephant stands for Buddha-nature, and the parable explains how it is that the Buddha-nature, which exists universally within all living beings, is grasped only partially and imperAs fectly by the ~nenlightened.)~ I am using it here, the elephant, of course, stands for both Buddhism in general and American Buddhism in particular. As a cautionary tale, its moral is addressed to both Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism alike. On the simplest level, it is a warning against the danger of mistaking the part for the whole. I have chosen this parable in part because it expresses my sense of frustration-one that I suspect many researchers in the field share-that the phenomenon of American Buddhism is far too large for any one person to grasp in its totality. In reflecting on the available literature, I certainly feel as if we have gotten a hand on some of the parts, but I am not sure we even know which parts they are, much less how they might be put together. Even if we were able to figure which part went where, I doubt they would a whole elephant make. The scholarship is still woefully incomplete, and the field at this point could be characterized more by what it has yet to do than by what it has done. We may even wonder whether the various parts described so far all belong to the same elephant, or if there might not be more than one beast involved, and maybe not all of them elephants. To our postmodern sensibilities, of course, the very basis on which this parable is predicated may seem suspect. After all, it presumes that there is an elephant, that this elephant is whole and unified, and that there is (in theory at least) a privileged position from which the elephant can be seen in its totality. The complexities involved in studying American Buddhism are such that it is hard to even know how to begin to describe them. For one thing, it is not at all clear that we are entitled to talk about Buddhism in the singular. Rather, it would probably be more honest to acknowledge that there are in fact many Buddhism (in the plural) both in America and in the world today, and that some of these Buddhism~ would not recognize themselves in one another. We cannot, however, even with a postmodern hand, wave away the problem of trying to say what Buddhism is, much as we might like. For, in an important sense, it is precisely Buddhism that is at issue as various tradi- Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America tions-with their particular histories, practices, beliefs, and cultural forms--confront one another on American shores. And the question of what this new "American" form is going to look like is one of the central issues preoccupying both Buddhists and researchers alike. Historically, we could say that all of the different forms of Buddhism in the world today belong to the same family. After all, in one way or another they can all trace themselves back to the historical Buddha, even though in some cases the linkages may be fairly tenuous and disputed by other members of the family. To extend the analogy, we could think of the process of the geographical diffusion of Buddhism as being akin to intermarriage, in which a new set of genes is introduced into the pool as Buddhism becomes assimilated into a new culture, the pool thereby being both diluted and enriched at the same time. Moreover, to make matters more complex, the new forms of Buddhism that emerge out of this process are not always produced by biological generation, as it were, but are sometimes also the product of adoption. Such a diachronic model accounts for what we might recognize as family resemblances among different traditions of Buddhism today. Despite the different faces that they present, we may be able to say that this and that Buddhism share the same nose, despite their different eye color, or that that and another Buddhism have the same jaw line, but different hair. Yet, when looked at synchronically, we are still confronted with such an array of different features that we would be hard pressed to reconstruct an original face--or at least a face in which all the family members could recognize themselves. Some of this variety can be seen in the gamut of different facial types in terms of which the Buddha is represented in Asian art. As Paul Carus noted over a century ago, "The Chinese, Mongols, Japanese, and the Siamese have given the Buddha ideal their own interpretation and con~eption.''~' The variety of Buddhisms found in America today differs in terms of the tradition represented, country of origin, institutional form, social organization, practices, beliefs, soteriologies, and class and ethnic constituencies-to name only a few of the possible variables that could be enumerated. Some of these categories overlap, some line up with one another in neat columns, and some cut across any such alignment. The Problem of the Two Buddhisms One of the points that often first strikes observers of the Buddhist scene in the United States is that there seem to be two distinct 242 Religion and American Culture Buddhist communities taking shape-various forms of Asian American and immigrant Buddhism, on the one hand, and various forms of American convert Buddhism, on the other. Although most would accept the general (if qualified) validity of this distinction, the terms used to characterize each side are often a matter of contention. The first type is often referred to as "ethnic" Buddhism, and the second has been variously characterized as "Euro-American" and "white" Buddhism. In opting for "Asian American" and "immigrant" Buddhism and "American convert" Buddhism, I have taken my cue from Paul Numrich and Richard Seager.38 Nevertheless, these terms also present difficulties of their own, especially "convert," which is here being pressed into service for lack of anything better. It refers to Americans (regardless of ethnicity) who are not Buddhist by birth but who take up various forms of Buddhist practice without necessarily undergoing a dramatic experience that could be characterized as a religious conversion. In other words, their Buddhism does not necessarily imply a radical shift in identity, and many in this category may not even self-identifyas Buddhists+specially in the case of practitioners of insight meditation. Indeed, many American Buddhist practitioners who would fit in this category would not recognize themselves in this label.39Rather, I suspect that they would be more comfortable with the term "pra~titioner."~~ such Americans, Buddhism is not so For much a set of beliefs whose truth is to be affirmed as a practice through which "truth is to be uncovered. For them, it is possible to be a Buddhist practitioner without being a Buddhist, although scholars would almost surely want to count them as "Buddhists" within the broad compass of American religions. Such terminological difficulties remind us that the category of American convert covers a wide gradient on which we need to locate a spot between sympathizers, those who would self-identify as Buddhists, and converts in the stricter sense of those who have officially joined a particular Buddhist group or tradition. They also bring up once again the difficulty of defining what it means to be Buddhist and underscore the importance of Nattier's point that we need to devise categories that distinguish among the different ways of being Buddhist. It is also important to note that some "American converts" happen to be Asian American (such as Bill Jakusho Kwong, a prominent Chinese American Zen Teacher in the lineage of Suzuki roshi). The problem is that no set of terms fully represents the complexity of the categories it designates, and the way in which the distinction is drawn is often freighted with politically charged overtones that touch on the sensitivities of different groups. I would add that the Describing the Elephant: Buddhism i n America meaningfulness of this distinction is likely to diminish with time as the boundaries separating the two "communities" inevitably change and blur. Nevertheless, "these categories reflect a real distinction of sorts," as Nattier admits,41and they do offer an initial foothold in sorting out a phenomenon that otherwise threatens to overwhelm us with its complexity. To begin with, each of the two Buddhisms has a markedly different history, although both trace back to the middle of the nineteenth century. As far as Asian American and immigrant Buddhism is concerned, we need to note the major divide that separates the first wave of Chinese and Japanese immigrants who came to the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth, when the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924 virtually stopped the flow, from the second much larger new wave of immigrants and refugees from all over Asia that have entered the United States in the last third of the past century as a result of the changes in immigration laws in 1965. The pre-1965 Chinese American community did not develop lasting Buddhist institutions that continue to exert a significant influence on the scene today4=whereas the Japanese did. The J6do Shinshii or Pure Land Buddhist Churches of America recently celebrated its centennial and is now in its fourth and fifth generation in America. The experience of both of these groups was defined by the politics of immigration, race, ethnicity, discrimination, prejudice, labor competition, international relations, and, in the case of the Japanese Americans, war and internment, as Ronald Takaki's classic study, Strangers from a Different Shore, has so eloquently documented.43It is also part of the larger American story of immigrants and immigration, with its broad themes of assimilation and preservation. Here, Americanists have much light to shed by comparing the experience of this group with that of other immigrant groups, whose experiences have been more thoroughly studied.44Given the vast changes that have taken place in the second half of the twentieth century, it would also be interesting to explore how the experience of the new, post-1965 wave of Asian immigrants differs from that of the first wave of Asian immigrants and their American de~cendants.4~ The history of non-Asian American involvement with Buddhism has followed a different trajectory. Although there was some interaction between the two groups in the first half of the twentieth century, and the lines separating them have always remained permeable, by and large the histories of the two have run along different tracks. Up until the postwar period, non-Asian Americans were primarily drawn to Buddhist ideas and texts, the actual practice of Bud- 244 Religion and American Culture dhism by Asians was often denigrated as a corruption of the pure ideals originally taught by the Buddha, and only a small few ever actually engaged in Buddhist practice. Fortunately, significant portions of this history have been illumined in three excellent books published by Americanists in the last decade: Thomas A. Tweed, The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent (Indiana University Press, 1992); Richard Hughes Seager, The World's Parliament of Religions: The EastlWest Encounter, Chicago, 1893 (referred to above); and Stephen Prothero, The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott (Indiana University Press, 1996). Although the contemporary historical situation is entirely different from the prewar period, the difference between the two Budd h i s m ~ seems to hold in a general way. Asian American and imstill migrant Buddhists tend to be Buddhist for different reasons than American convert Buddhists, and Buddhism plays a different role in their lives. For example, most Asian American and immigrant Buddhists are born Buddhist, whereas the overwhelming majority of American Buddhists of non-Asian descent are first-generation converts. For many Asian Americans and Asian immigrants, Buddhism reaffirms their sense of traditional identity by locating them within a particular community defined by family, ethnicity, culture, and national origin. For American converts, however, involvement with Buddhism often entails a break with the traditional values with which they have been raised, sometimes precipitating a radical shift in their identity. Whereas Asian American expressions of Buddhism tend to be more integrated into family life within a community, American converts more typically practice Buddhism as individuals, and their involvement is more apt to express a personal search for fulfillment. Asian American religious life tends to be multigenerational, and Buddhism is often practiced in a context in which the family, both living and dead, has a greater importance, and different meaning, than it typically has in the life of Americans of European ancestry. Asian American Buddhist practice is more apt to focus on ritual activities, especially merit making, in which transference of merit to ancestors is often paramount. These activities are connected with a set of cosmological and soteriological views centering around traditional doctrines of karma and rebirth, ideas that some Western converts have suggested may no longer be necessary.46 These ideas formed the cornerstone around which the Buddhist institution developed in Asia, and they thereby provided the ideological basis for the social and economic superstructure of Asian Buddhism. Emphasizing different Buddhist ideas and practices, American convert groups tend to be Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America built on different financial grounds, which affects their mode of social organization and the way in which practice is presented. Teachers and practitioners must support themselves, and in many of the larger and more established groups meditation and retreats function as a primary means of generating the income necessary to maintain their ~peration.~' As Morreale's figures demonstrate, this particular packaging of Buddhism has been successful. Since the mid sixties, American converts have been and continue to be preponderantly drawn to the practice of various forms of Buddhist meditation. Indeed, American converts, while typically maintaining their lay status, are enthusiastically taking up forms of Buddhist practice that were the traditional preserve of monastics in Asia, and which would not be associated with the traditional forms of practice typically engaged in by lay Buddhists in many Asian settings. As many commentators have pointed out, a new form of practitioner, corresponding to neither traditional lay nor monastic models, has emerged in various American Buddhist residential communities. Furthermore, American converts ovenvhelmingly tend to be well educated, white, and middle class,48and, as a group, they probably share more in common with one another than do Asian American and immigrant Buddhists. Although such a characterization of the two Buddhisms may be useful in providing an initial orientation to the landscape, once we actually begin to try to navigate on the ground we will soon discover that the situation is more complex and that we would only be misled if we were to apply it too rigidly to specific cases. Indeed, any such attempt to characterize these two types of Buddhism bristles with difficulties, and there are exceptions to almost every generalization we might want to make. Furthermore, the fact that there are no terms that fully characterize the two types of Buddhism may indicate that the categories themselves are problematic. They may also lead us to minimize or to overlook the profound differences among the various Buddhisms included under each category. Moreover, there are some Buddhist groups that do not seem to fit into either category. The most notable example is S6ka Gakkai International (SGI), which, with an active membership of some thirtysix thousand, cannot easily be d i s c o ~ n t e dIn~contrast to most Amer. ~ ican Buddhist convert groups, for whom the centrality of the practice of meditation seems to be the defining characteristic, its practice is based on the recitation of the title of the Lotus Siitra (referred to as the dairnoku). Whereas many American converts take up meditation in pursuit of "enlightenment," converts to S6ka Gakkai often take up the recitation of the daimoku as a means of attaining more mundane objectives. S6ka Gakkai also tends to draw on a wider segment of the pop- 246 Religion and American Culture ulation in terms of both class and ethnic background. In addition to a significant number of Asian American members, "it is the only Buddhist group in America," as Jane Hurst notes, "to attract African American and Hispanic members in any sizable numbers, between 25 and 30 percent of the overall member~hip."~~ Moreover, unlike other convert groups, it has relied heavily on recruitment and has an "evangelical" character not seen in other Buddhist It is also exclusivistic in a way that many other American groups are not. The example of SGI has led Jan Nattier to claim that "the notion of 'two Buddhisms'. . . fails to account for the full spectrum of racial and ethShe nic diversity in Buddhist A r n e r i ~ a . " ~ ~ goes on to propose a threefold typology based on modes of transmission: (1) "Elite Buddhism," which is imported largely by educated, middle-class Americans (represented by Zen, VipassanB, and Vajrayana); (2) "Evangelical Buddhism," which is exported by missionaries (exemplified by S6ka Gakkai); and (3) "Ethnic Buddhism," which is brought to this country as baggage by immigrants (represented by BCA, Theravgda, etc.). Not everyone accepts Nattier's threefold model. Other scholars (such as Numrich and Seager) view SGI as a variant of American convert Buddhism. Nevertheless, I would contend that it is sufficiently different in terms of its origin, practice, organization, composition, and soteriology from Zen, Vipassans, and Vajraysna groups that it cannot be meaningfully subsumed under the same category with them, and it is too large to be written off as an anomaly. If we are to keep it under the heading of American convert Buddhism, I would then urge that we retain Nattier's distinction by classifying it as a subcategory ("Evangelical" Buddhism) alongside the subcategory of "Elite" Buddhism. I would also urge that we make a similar division on the other side of the fence, with separate subcategories for "Asian American" Buddhism (referring to those forms of Japanese and Chinese American Buddhism now in the fourth and fifth generations) and "Immigrant" Buddhism (referring to those post-1965 forms of Buddhism now in the first and second generations). However we classify things, we should not lose sight of the fact that our categories are provisional, and, given the changes we can expect to see in the next half century, probably only apply for a limited time. In any event, it is unrealistic to expect consensus, and the disagreement may help nudge the field beyond its still primitive level of sophistication. There may be other reasons for wanting to move away from a model that divides American Buddhism into two groups. The discourse about the two Buddhisms has polarized some members of the two groups, and it has thus become a "problem" in that sense as well. The controversy was sparked by a comment by Helen Tworkov, who, Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America 247 in an editorial beginning the winter 1991 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, wrote that "Asian American Buddhists . . . have not figured very prominently in the development of something called American B~ddhism."~' remark evoked a sharp letter of protest from Ryo This Iwamura, a Japanese American Buddhist and eighteenth-generation J6do Shinshii priest, and brought the issue of "the two Buddhisms" to the forefront of scholarly d i s c u ~ s i o n As~Kenneth Tanaka notes, .~ "This viewpoint ignores the history of contributions made by groups of Asian American Buddhists, some entering their second century of roots in American soil. What is implied, according to Asian American critics, is that Buddhism becomes truly American only when white Americans become seriously involved. This form, then, is called 'American Buddhism,' distinguished from simply 'Buddhism in America,' i.e., Buddhism as a foreign religion practiced by Asian American B ~ d d h i s t s . " ~ ~ The details and circumstances of the unfolding of the controversy are discussed in various places in the books under conside r a t i ~ nand~there is, therefore, no need to go into them here. As ,~ Nattier comments: "What is striking about this debate is the vast difference in the issues that the two sides view as central. For Tworkov's critics, what matters is the transmission of Buddhism to North America, a process in which Asian Americans have clearly played a major role. For Tworkov herself, by contrast, mere transmission is not enough: the product must be repackaged to suit the domestic market. From one perspective, the basic issue is continuity; from the other, it is change."57 The controversy is important for us because it is related to the question of who represents or gets to define American Buddhism, and that question raises two other interrelated issues: Americanization and power. Americanization and Its Broader Context Not only is Americanization taking place in different ways among Asian Americanlimmigrant and convert communities, but it also has a very different meaning for each. The issue of preservation is felt more keenly by Asian American and immigrant Buddhist communities, which are more likely to regard the changes entailed by Americanization with ambivalence and misgivings. Less concerned with the issue of preserving the cultural forms in which Buddhism is embedded, and not connected as umbilically, it were, with specific forms of Buddhism, American converts are much more apt to give a positive valuation to Americanization. Among many American converts, Americanization is seen as a desideratum, something to be cele- 248 Religion and American Culture brated, and there is a feeling that Buddhism will not really have arrived in this country until it has become "fully American," by which they seem to mean having shed its ethnic and cultural trappings. It is on this basis that a distinction between "Buddhism in America" and "American Buddhism" is sometimes drawn. Indeed, there is often a triumphalist tone to many of the pronouncements being made about the shape of the emerging new American Buddhism. The enthusiasm of those championing this new American Buddhism often seems to preclude an awareness of the various ways in which the concept of "Americanization" might be problemati~.~~ Americanization is taking place in many ways and on many fronts. It is sometimes the result of deliberate choice and other times not. It is not only something about which there is much discussion, reflecting a wide spectrum of opinion and debate both within and among different Buddhist groups, but it is also happening on a much more mundane level as well. Zoning regulations, building codes, legal requirements of incorporation, adjusting the calendar of ritual events to a standard work week, reconfiguring the life of a village temple to fit a congregation now composed largely of commuters, for whom parking has to be provided-such realities of life in America have a profound effect on the ways in which traditional Buddhist communities are being reshaped. Americanization is something that takes place the moment Buddhism arrives in America, and the adjustments involved are often governed by forces over which those most affected have little or no control, or, in many cases, much understanding. Various Buddhists, journalists, scholars, and other observers have tried to define the characteristics of American Buddhism as it is taking shape. In his contribution to The Faces of Buddhism in America, for example, Rick Fields enumerates six traits. He notes that (1)it is primarily a lay movement, which (2) places a strong emphasis on meditation. It is (3) democratic, antiauthoritarian, and antihierarchical, and (4) it gives parity to women. It also (5) emphasizes social action and (6) welcomes Western psychology as helpful and useful.59 Others add that it is pragmatic, nonsectarian, experimental, experiential, and demy~tified.~~ Some of these characteristics apply exclusively to American convert Buddhism while others apply to both American converts and Asian Americanlimmigrant Buddhists alike, although in different ways and to varying degrees. Some also apply to broader global changes in Buddhism and cannot be understood simply as the product of Americanization. In The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka, for example, George Bond notes six motifs that characterize modern Theravda Buddhist reform: "(1) rationalism and individualism, (2) world Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America 249 affirmation, (3) universalism, minimization of hierarchy, (4) devaluing mediation and ritual, (5) an achievement-centered orientation, and (6) this-worldly a~ceticism."~' These traits look very much like those often attributed to "American Buddhism." "Americanization," of course, is only a contemporary and local manifestation of the broader phenomenon of acculturation, which is one of the dominant themes running through the history of Buddhism. It is thus something about which scholars of Buddhism may be able to provide an insightful perspective. What often gets overlooked in discussions of American Buddhism is that it is developing within a larger global context, and that that context is being defined by American hegemony in the areas of communication and information technology, mass media, the entertainment industry, science, international business, military power, and so forth-all trends, incidentally, that also contribute to the increasing adoption of English as an international language.62This means that the country into which Buddhism is being transplanted is in a culturally dominant position, and this fact has profound implications for understanding the kinds and extent of changes that we might expect to see as Buddhism becomes American. This situation is not totally unprecedented in the history of Buddhism, although the general pattern in the spread of Buddhism across Asia has been that Buddhism has typically been adopted as a bearer of higher civilization, bringing with it writing, new systems of political organization, and higher culture, as well as affording access to more potent forms of spiritual power and authority. The adoption of Buddhism by different countries in Asia was often related to the centralization of political control, whether to break the power of the local nobility or a federation of clans, and Buddhism frequently came to be closely identified with the institutions through which political authority was exercised in the country in which it was adopted. The one major exception to this general pattern is China, which makes the Chinese case particularly interesting for comparative purposes. Because the Chinese saw themselves as members of the superior culture, Buddhism had to be rationalized in terms of Chinese values in order to gain widespread acceptance, and Chinese Buddhists thus felt justified in taking greater liberties in adapting Buddhism. Buddhism could not simply override and displace indigenous values. Final authority always rested with Chinese culture, which was reinforced by the might of the Chinese imperium and the dominance of a scholar-official class whose ideological orientation was broadly Confucian. This situation helps to explain why the Chinese 250 Religion and American Culture case, of all the different cultures with which Buddhism came into contact in its spread across Asia, represents that of the greatest cultural transformation of the religion. Chinese culture, of course, was also profoundly transformed in the process.63 In the American case as well, especially for American convert Buddhists, Buddhism is often adopted because it seems to offer a more effective way of realizing values that are already held in the culture. Even though these values may have been influenced by the diffusion of Buddhism into popular culture, the point that bears emphasizing is that in such cases Buddhism is being adopted as a means to fulfill some higher value that is seen not so much as being Buddhist but as being universal. The final appeal, in other words, is not to Buddhism. In the popular discourse on Buddhism, Buddhism is often justified in terms of values that are thought of as "Americanu-such as self-realization, freedom, transforming relationships, getting in touch with one's experience, living more fully in the moment or the world, healing, and so forth. This is one of the reasons that many who would fall into the category of "American convert Buddhists" would be reluctant to call themselves "Buddhist." Their concern is not so much with being Buddhist per se as it is in using Buddhist practices and ideas as a means of realizing goals whose "truth is not necessarily seen to reside in their being Buddhist. This point highlights the different place that Buddhism occupies in the constellation of the identity of American converts in contrast to Asian American and immigrant Buddhists: whereas for the latter, Buddhism is more typically a central part of their identity; for the former, it is more often incidental or secondary. To make matters more complex, Buddhism both in America and in the world today is in a state of transformation. Indeed, Buddhism in America represents a situation that is unprecedented, not only within the history of American religion, but also within the history of Buddhism itself. As I have begun to acquaint myself with the phenomenon, and the literature about it, I have come to believe that what we see happening in America now is part of a much larger complex of changes in Buddhism, and that we just may be witnessing the beginning of a series of historical transformations that, in the course of several generations or more, may have an impact on the development of Buddhism on a scale equal to some of the greatest changes in the past, such as the emergence of Mahayha or Tantra, or the development of some of the most distinctive acculturated forms of Buddhism in different Asian countries, especially China and Japan. Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America 25 1 In terms of the history of Buddhism, Buddhism in America is the first time in the history of the religion that representatives of almost all of the major living forms of the tradition find themselves together in the same place at the same time. Even though this point has been sounded by various observers before, some of its ramifications are worth considering as a means of framing the significance of the phenomenon under study. As these different traditions of Buddhism take cognizance of and interact with one another, their understanding of themselves, and what it means to be Buddhist, is beginning to change. For immigrant Buddhists, this situation, together with the demands of negotiating their identity in a foreign culture, makes them aware of differences in their history, cultural expression, beliefs, and practices-that their Buddhism is particular, that they are not so much Buddhists as Thai Buddhists or Vietnamese Buddhists. That is, it brings into consciousness, often for the first time, the tension between "Buddhism" as a construct that claims to be universal and the particular cultural histories within which it is embedded in different communities. Traditions that developed in isolation from one another over long periods of time must now coexist in the same environment and, in many instances, cooperate to share facilities or stand up for common interests in the face of local ignorance, prejudice, and occasionally outright hostility. Even should they seek refuge in Buddhism as an ethnic haven, the very fact of being a minority religion in a foreign land confronts immigrant Buddhists with issues of identity never encountered in their country of birth, and what it means to be Buddhist takes on a new meaning in such a context. Many immigrant Buddhists, in fact, may never have self-consciously thought of themselves as Buddhists before, and it is only after arriving on this shore that they discover their Buddhism. Other Asian immigrants, such as the Chinese (especially those from the mainland), may not have been raised Buddhist or even been brought up in an environment where Buddhism was a living presence. Rather, they only convert to Buddhism after they have immigrated to the United States. As Stuart Chandler points out, some seem to be particularly attracted to Buddhism as offering a more universal umbrella under which they can maintain their dual identity of being both fully Chinese and fully American at the same time.64 In addition to the diversity of Asian Buddhist traditions being brought to the United States, immigrant Buddhists also confront a rapidly growing population of American Buddhist converts largely of European descent. The problem of pluralism as it confronts immigrant Buddhists is therefore multifaceted. Not only do 252 Religion and American Culture they find themselves as a religious minority in a foreign country, but they also find themselves in the midst of a wide array of different forms of Buddhism, both those of other immigrant and Asian American communities as well as a variety of vigorous new forms of Buddhism that are developing among the non-Asian American convert population. Many of the forms of Buddhism that have been most successful among the growing population of non-Asian converts in the United States are themselves products of various reform and modernization movements in Asia that, in turn, are responses to the impact of Western colonialism and imperiali~m.~~ thus arrive having alThey ready adapted forms of practice, modes of expression, and styles of thought that are suited to a Western audience-the products of a process that has sometimes been referred to as Protestant Buddhsm (Obeyesekere)'j6 Buddhist modernism (Bechert).'j7 is often these and It modernized forms that are being embraced by American enthusiasts as "traditional" Buddhism. The process of cultural interaction is a complex one that already has long history, and this is an important area where Buddhologists with their expertise in various forms of Asian Buddhism can contribute much. Tibetan Buddhism seems to stand out as an important exception in this context. Because of its long isolation, Tibetan Buddhism was relatively untouched by the modernizing forces that affected other Asian Buddhist countries. Nevertheless, some of the leaders most important in introducing Tibetan Buddhism to the United States have also been some of the most radical innovators, none more so than Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who has gone furthest in adapting Buddhism to a modern, Western, secular, and psychologically oriented idiom. What the long-term outcome of this complex net of interactions will be is impossible to foretell, but I think it is safe to say that the various forms of Buddhism that are establishing themselves in the United States will all undergo some degree of reconfiguration, in many cases profound, and that such reconfigurations will also have an impact on Buddhism around the world. Insofar as American Buddhism is developing within a larger context of globalization, developments in the United States will also affect Buddhism in Asian countries as well as Europe, just as international developments will affect what is happening in America. Some of the pressing issues confronting American Buddhists are thus not necessarily exclusively "American," even though they may be precipitated by the catalyst of being in America. It is important that scholars not lose sight of this broader, international perspective as an important context for understanding American Buddhism. Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America Notes I would like to thank my new colleagues at Smith-Floyd Cheung, Tom Derr, Dan Horowitz, Jamie Hubbard, and Peter Rose-for their helpful comments and suggestions. 1. There are now several thriving Buddhist publishers, the most productive of which are: Shambhala Publications, Wisdom Publications, Dharma Publications, and Snow Lion Publications-all of which are, in different ways, associated with various American Tibetan Buddhist groups. Mention should also be made of Parallax Press (focused on the work of Thich Nhat Hanh and "Engaged Buddhism"), Dharma Drum (connected with the Chinese Ch'an Master Sheng-yen), and Dharma Communications (connected with Zen Mountain Monastery). 2. Charles S. Prebish, "The Academic Study of Buddhism in America: A Silent Sangha," in American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, ed. Duncan Ryiiken Williams and Christopher S. Queen (Surrey, U.K.: Curzon Press, 1999), 183-214, appears in virtually identical form as chapter 4 in his Luminous Passages: The Practice and Study ofBuddhism in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 173-202; the chapter by Phillip Hammond and David Machacek ("Supply and Demand The Appeal of American Buddhism," 100-114) summarizes the preliminary findings of their study of Sdka Gakkai that is now available in book form, Soka Gakkai in America: Accommodation and Conversion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); the chapter by Richard Hughes Seager ("Buddhist Worlds in the U.S.A.: A Survey of the Territory," 238-61) is a preview of his book, Buddhism in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); the chapter by James William Coleman ("The New Buddhism: Some Empirical Findings," 91-99) presents preliminary findings of a study that has now been published in book form as The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); and the chapter by Penny Van Esterik ("Ritual and the Performance of Buddhist Identity among Lao Buddhsts in North America," 57-68) presents much material already published in her fine study, Taking Refuge: Lao Buddhists in North America (Tempe: Arizona State University, 1992). 3. For example, Stuart Chandler's "Placing Palms Together: Religious and Cultural Dimensions of the Hsi Lai Temple Political Donations Controversy," in American Buddhism, ed. Williams and Queen, 36-56. 4. Especially "Issues of Ethnicity in the Buddhist Churches of America" by Kenneth K. Tanaka, 3-19; "Japanese American Zen Temples: Cultural Identity and Economics" by Senryd Asai and Duncan Ryiken Williams, 2035; "Night-Stand Buddhists and Other Creatures: Sympathizers, Adherents, and the Study of Religion" by Thomas A. Tweed, 71-90; and "Local 254 Religion and American Culture Inter-Buddhist Associations in North America" by Paul David Numrich, 11742; all in American Buddhism, ed. Williams and Queen. 5. Material in chapter 3 ("Seeking American Buddhist Sanghas: North American Buddhist Communities," 94-172), for example, overlaps with some of the same material presented in chapter 1 ("American Buddhism: A Brief History," 1-50), and discussion of various issues in the field are treated in a fragmented way in unconnected sections of the book. 6. The material in chapter 1is almost wholly derivative; the discussion of the issues in chapter 2 is based on those raised by Tanaka in the epilogue to The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1998),287-98; the different groups profiled in chapter 3 are treated in other sources; and chapter 4 is an almost verbatim republication of Prebish's contribution to American Buddhism, ed. Williams and Queen. The one chapter that launches into an important new area, the fifth on the cybersangha, summarizes what can be found on the major Buddhist websites but offers little reflection on the medium itself. 7. It abounds in inconsistencies, errors of fact, mischaracterizations, and uncritical use of scholarship. It also distorts and misrepresents other scholars' positions, the most egregious example of which can be seen in Prebish's discussion of the issue of the two Buddhisms. Prebish misconstrues Jan Nattier's contribution to this issue and misrepresents the position of Rodney Stark and Williams Sims Bainbridge, on whose work Nattier draws. 8. Richard Hughes Seager, "Buddhist Worlds in the U.S.A.: A Survey of the Territory," in American Buddhism, ed. Williams and Queen, 238. 9. For an excellent review of the earlier literature, see Thomas Tweed, "Asian Religions in the United States: Reflections on an Emerging Subfield," in Religious Diversity and American Religious Histoy, ed. Walter H. Cosner Jr. and Sumner B. Twiss (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 189-217. 10. Numrich, "Local Inter-Buddhist Associations in North America," 123, based on figures from Richard T. Schaefer, Racial and Ethnic Groups, 5th ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1993),326. 11. Emma McCloy Layman, Buddhism in America (Chicago: NelsonHall, 1976); Charles S. Prebish, American Buddhism (North Scituate, Mass.: Duxbury Press, 1979); and Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America (Boston: Shambhala, 1981). 12. Paul Numrich, Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples (Knoxville:University of Tennessee Press, 1996); mention should also be made of Van Esterik's excellent ethnographic study of Lao refugee Buddhists in Toronto, Taking Refuge. Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America 255 13. As Irene Lin notes, "The religious experience of Chinese Americans must take into account the perspective of Chinese Americans themselves" ("Journey to the Far West: Chinese Buddhism in America," in New Spiritual Homes: Religion and Asian Americans, ed. David K. Yoo [Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 19991,136). 14. Thomas A. Tweed suggests 1844, when an English translation of a chapter of EugPne Bumouf's French translation of the Lotus Sfitra was published in Dial. In May of that year, Edward Elbridge Salisbury introduced Burnouf's work on Buddhism to a more academic audience in an address delivered at the first annual meeting of the American Oriental Society (The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 19921, xix). Another oftencited benchmark is the construction of the first Chinese temples in San Francisco in 1853, although as Stuart Chandler notes, they cannot be characterized "as strictly 'Buddhist,' since in most cases a variety of Chinese Taoist, folk, and Buddhist figures received shelter and homage together" (Stuart Chandler, "Chinese Buddhism in America: Identity and Practice," in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Prebish and Tanaka, 16). 15. In One Nation under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society (New York: Harmony Books, 1993),Barry A. Komin and Seymour P. Lachman estimate that there were between one and two million Buddhists in America in the beginning of the nineties (3).A 1994 feature on American Buddhism on the ABC Nightly News with Peter Jemings estimated that there were between four and six million Buddhists in the United States. 16. Martin Baumann, "The Dharma Has Come West: A Survey of Recent Studies and Sources," Journal of Buddhist Ethics 4 (1997): 198. Baumann's figures are cited as authoritative by Queen in his introduction to American Buddhism (xv), by Prebish in his Luminous Passage (57 and 241), and by Seager in his Buddhism in America (11).Unfortunately Baumann says nothing about how he arrived at them. See also Baumann's "Buddhism in the West: Phases, Orders and the Creation of an Integrative Buddhism," Internationales Asienforum 27, nos. 3 4 (1996):345-62. 17. See Jan Nattier, "Who Is a Buddhist? Charting the Landscape of Buddhist America," in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Prebish and Tanaka, 185. 18. See Tweed, "Night-Stand Buddhists," 79-80, and Prebish, Luminous Passage, 56. 19. For example, Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, recently stated: "There was a time that I considered myself to be a 256 Religion and American Culture Buddhist, but I actually don't consider myself to be one now, and although I teach Buddhist meditation, it's not with the aim of people becoming Buddhist. It's with the aim of people becoming buddhas" (see his "Toward the Mainstreaming of American Dharma Practice," in Buddhism in America: Proceedings of the First Buddhism in America Conference, ed. A1 Rapaport [Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 19981,479). 20. In his Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit: The Place ofZen in Christian Life, for example, Robert E. Kennedy, a Jesuit priest who received authorization to teach Zen from Bernard Tetsugen Glassman Roshi in 1991, wrote: "I never have thought of myself as anything but Catholic and I certainly have never thought of myself as Buddhist" (New York: Continuum, 1996), 13. 21. Tweed, "Night-Stand Buddhists," 72. 22. Tweed explains: Those "who read books on Buddhist teaching and practice at night before bed and in the morning practice meditation as they learned it from one of the many how-to manuals" (Tweed, "Asian Religions in the United States," 205). "Sympathizers are those who have some sympathy for a religion but do not embrace it exclusively or fully. When asked, they would not identify themselves as Buddhists" (Tweed, "NightStand Buddhists," 74). Tweed adds that sympathizers have played an important role in American Buddhism since the 1890s, one prominent example being the philosopher Paul Carus, who did so much to promote American understanding of Buddhism at the end of nineteenth century and in the early decades of the twentieth century. 23. Nattier, "Who Is a Buddhist?" 187. Adapting categories developed by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge in the second chapter of their The Future ofReligion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1985), Nattier suggests that Americans who are involved in Buddhsm could be classified in terms of their degree of participation as (1)audience (those who "attend an occasional lecture, read an occasional book, or perhaps subscribe to a periodical"), (2) client (those who engage "in direct interaction with a member of the group, but this relationship . ..is limited to the client's use of certain techniques received from the teacher"), and (3) members of a movement (involving "a genuine conversion to a new religious perspective and the renunciation of one's previous commitments") (ibid., 18586). "Members in residence at the San Francisco Zen Center, for example, might fit the definition of participants in a cult movement, but the many readers of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (written by the founder of that center) would bear a strong resemblance to members of an audience cult. In between we might find Zen practitioners who have learned the basic technique of meditation at the ~ e Center, but now prack tice meditation on their own without any continuing contact with the group (thus belonging to Stark and Bainbridge's category of client cult)" (187). Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America 24. See Diana L. Eck and the Harvard Pluralism Project, eds., On Common Ground: World Religions in America CD-ROM (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 25. Tweed, "Asian Religions in the United States," 189. 26. Morreale also lists a fourth category of meditation centers, "Buddhayiina," which refers to 135 nonsectarian groups (11 percent of his total) such as the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. Don Morreale, ed., The Complete Guide to Buddhist America (Boston: Shambala, 1998), xvii. 27. Ibid., xvi. 28. It is just such a presumption of elite, educated, middle-class, and mostly white American converts interested in Buddhst meditation practice to represent "American B u d h s m " that so rankles some Asian American Buddhists. The same arrogance (all the more offensive because it is unwitting) is reflected in the assumptions underlying the organization of the conference whose proceedings were published in Buddhism in America, ed. Rapaport. 29. Morreale, ed., The Complete Guide to Buddhist America, xviii. 30. Chandler, "Chinese Buddhism in America," 17. 31. Paul David Numrich, "Theraviida Buddhism in America: Prospects for the Sangha," in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Prebish and Tanaka, 148. Elsewhere Numrich estimates that conservatively there were between "one-half and three-quarters of a million immigrant Theraviida Buddhists in the U.S. in 1 9 9 0 (Old Wisdom in the New World, xix). In the appendix to his Old Wisdom in the New World, Numrich lists 142 immigrant Theraviida temples in the United States, only 21 of which are included in Morreale's "complete" guide. Morreale, however, includes 6 Theravada centers that are not listed by Numrich (some of which were founded after Numrich compiled his appendix). 32. Cuong Tu Nguyen and A. W. Barber, "Vietnamese Buddhism in North America: Tradition and Acculturation," in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Prebish and Tanaka, 131. 33. Alfred Bloom, "Shin Buddhism in America: A Social Perspective," in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Prebish and Tanaka, 36. According to Kenneth Tanaka, in 1996 the total membership was 16,902, "a figure that represents a gradual attrition from the 1988 figure of 20,021 and a 1977 count of 21,600" (see "Issues of Ethnicity in the Buddhist Churches of America," in American Buddhism, ed. Williams and Queen, 3). It is important to note that Japanese American J d o S h i n s h ~ Buddhists in Hawaii are not members of the BCA but have a direct relationship with Hongwanji in Japan. 258 Religion and American Culture 34. Jane Hurst, "Nichiren Sh6shti and Soka Gakkai in America: The Pioneer Spirit," in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Prebish and Tanaka, 80. Hurst claims that SGI had between 50,000 and 150,000 members in 1993 (80); she claims that SGI had 300,000 members in 1997 (88). The larger figure may well reflect the total number of Americans who have received the gohonzon, but it is certainly far too high as a measure of currently active members, for which the figure of 35,917, based on subscriptions to the organization's newspapers, is a more accurate index (see Hammond and Machacek, Soka Gakkai in America, 41). 35. Asai and Williams, "Japanese American Zen Temples," 21. The two largest of these temples, Sh6b6ji in Honolulu and Zenshiiji in Los Angeles, have a membership of 800 and 300 families respectively. Unfortunately, Mu Soeng's chapter on Korean Buddhism in America in The Faces of Buddhism in America, 177-28 gives no figures. Richard Seager cites the abbot of Kwan Um Sa in Los Angeles, who estimated that in the late 1980s "there were sixtyseven Korean Buddhist temples nationwide with an active membership of 25,000. Most of these temples conducted services in Korean and were devoted to addressing the needs of the first-generation Korean immigrants" (Buddhism in America, 168). Eui-Young Yu lists nineteen Korean Buddhist temples and two Zen centers in the Los Angeles area in 1988 ("The Growth of Korean Buddhism in the United States, with Special Reference to Southern California," Pacific World 4 [1988]:88). 36. Taishd daizdkyci, vol. 12, 556a (cf. Taishd daizdkyd, vol. 12, 802a). This parable is picked up again in the ninth century in China by the Hua-yen and Ch'an scholar Tsung-mi (780-841), who uses it to account for and reconcile the plurality of positions on "sudden" and "gradual" held by proponents of contending Ch'an schools and to show that their conflict can be resolved when all the positions are seen to be parts of a larger whole (see Ch'an-yuan chu-ch'iian-chi tu-hsii, Taishd daizdkyd, vol. 48, 402b4; cf., Kamata Shigeo, Zengen shosenshii tojo, Zen no goroku, vol. 9 [Tokyo: Chikuma shob6, 19751, 81). The earliest Buddhist reference (for which I would like to thank Thanissaro Bhikkhu) is probably Ud5na VI.6; see The Minor Anthologies of the Pali Canon Part 11, trans. F. L. Woodward (London: Oxford University Press, 1948), 81-83. 37. In a letter to Daniel Beard in 1899, as quoted in Martin Verhoeven, "Americanizing the Buddha: Paul Carus and the Transformation of Asian Thought," in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Prebish and Tanaka, 207. Cams thus made a plea for an artistic representation that would Americanize the Buddha ideal, "modernizing the figure, depriving it of its Asiatic peculiarities, and endowing it with those features, which according to our best knowledge of Oriental lore he ought to possess" (207). Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America 38. See Numrich, Old Wisdom in the New World, 64, and Seager, Buddhism in America, 10. Seager explains: "By convert I mean not so much a person who has embraced an entire religious system, but, in keeping with the original meaning of the term, someone who has turned their heart and mind toward a set of religious teachings, in this case the teachings of Buddhism." 39. As one perceptive teacher of insight meditation wrote to me: "I suppose I fit into the category 'first generation western Buddhist convert,' yet I don't find myself identified in the term 'Buddhist convert.' Good grief, I teach the stuff, I'm organizing a Dharma community, it's what I practice, and I can with sincerity take the [three] refuges. I love Buddha Dharma. I fit all the standards for being a Buddhist. So why do I not describe myself as a Buddhist convert? I am trying to figure out why, so I'll share my thoughts. "There is something perhaps archaic about the notion of conversion in America. I remember what it meant to convert when I was growing up Roman Catholic, leaving one religion and embracing another. The term implies for me that one has to belong or identify somewhere. More and more, however, people don't do that. Most of the people in my classes, and even most of those in the Dharma Community, do not think of themselves as 'Buddhist,' even though they may be dedicated to Buddhist practice and use Buddha Dharma to guide their lives. Some in the community still practice Judaism or Christianity. They have a dual allegiance, so to speak, or don't see a boundary where previous generations saw a boundary. . . . "Though I don't practice as a Roman Catholic, I don't really feel as though I've left it. It has contributed so much to who I am and what I understand. I don't feel a need to have a religious identity, to be Buddhist, and the word seems to create a sense of separateness unnecessarily. I think it's completely faithful to Buddha Dharma to not 'be a Buddhist.' It's just more craving for existence (bhava).(Ajahn Chah put it this way: 'Don't be a Buddhist. Don't be a Bodhisattva. Don't be anything at all. If you do, you will suffer.')" Mark Hart, personal correspondence, December 7,1999. 40. Unfortunately, "practitioner" is not a viable category for our purposes because it does not distinguish this group from Asian American and immigrant Buddhists who practice Buddhism. 41. Nattier, "Who Is a Buddhist?" 188. 42. Stuart Chandler notes that "while the Chinese have the longest history of any Asian Americans and were the first to build temples in the United States, the present Chinese Buddhist organizations are quite young; the vast majority have been established only within the past twenty-five years" ("Chinese Buddhism in America," 30). 43. Ronald Takaki, Strangersfrom a Difierent Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston:Little, Brown, 1989; updated and rev. ed., Boston: Back Bay 260 Religion and American Culture Books, 1998); see also Roger Daniels, Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988). 44. To what extent, for example, does the Asian American Buddhist experience conform to the three-generation model laid out by Will Herberg in his classic study in the sociology of American religion, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (1955; rev. ed., 1959; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983)? Such comparisons should also be instructive for highlighting what is unique about the experience of Asian Americans and clarifying what differentiates their experience from that of immigrant groups from Europe. Here both racial and ethnic factors loom large. As a scholar of religion, I would also emphasize the wide theological gulf between Buddhism and Christianity. All of these factors have made assimilation more difficult for Asian American Buddhists than for Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish European immigrants, who were white, Western, and shared the same Judeo-Christian heritage. 45. How, for example, have such phenomena as the breakdown of the Protestant mainstream, the shift away from an assimilationist model toward a more pluralistic and multicultural one, increasing globalization, multiple identities, etc. affected the context in which new Buddhism is developing? 46. See, for example, Stephen Batchelor; Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening (New York: Riverhead Books, 1997). See also the debate on reincarnation between Stephen Batchelor and Robert Thurman in Tricycle:The Buddhist Review 6, no. 4 (Summer 1997):24-27,10916. To cite another example, Richard P. Hayes argued in his 1989 essay, "Bodhisattvas in Blue Jeans," that karma and rebirth are "obstructive doctrines" that "serve more to impede Westerners than to help them acquire wisdom and become less self-centered" (in Land ofNo Buddha: Reflections ofa Skeptical Buddhist [Birmingham: Windhorse Publications, 19981, 60-61). In his "The Internet as Window onto American Buddhism," Hayes notes that "one of the most frequently debated issues in Western Buddhism has been the matter of whether it is necessary to believe in rebirth and what it means within the context of Buddhism" (in American Buddhism, ed. Williams and Queen, 172). 47. Asai and Williams, "Japanese American Zen Temples," is one of the few studies to call attention to the importance of the economic base on which Buddhist institutions in America are built. 48. See, for example, Coleman, "The New Buddhism," 91-99; see also Coleman's book, The New Buddhism, 192-94. 49. Again, relying on the estimate of Hammond and Machaceksee n. 28. This means that SGI membership is more than twice that of BCA (about 17,000). Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America 50. Hurst, " N i h r e n Shdshu and S6ka Gakkai in America," 89. Hammond and Machacek give the following racial profile: white 5 42 percent, black = 15 percent, Asian, Pacific Islander = 23 percent, Latino, hispanic = 6 percent, and other = 15 percent (Soka Gakkai in America, table 2/44). 51. Although this too is changing. The early policy of aggressive recruitment (shakubuku)was abandoned in 1978, thus beginning what is known as Phase I1 of the movement (see Hurst, "Nichiren Shooshu and Soka Gakkai in America," 89). 52. Nattier, "Who Is a Buddhist?" 189. 53. Helen Tworkov, "Many Is More," Tricycle: The Buddhist Review 1, no. 2 (1991):4. 54. Ryo Iwamura's letter was sent to Tricycle, which declined to publish it. It was subsequently circulated in The Sangha Newsletter, the Newsletter of the Wider Shin Buddhist Fellowship (Summer 1994). The term "the two Buddhisms" was coined by Charles Prebish, although he seems to have originally used it in a very different sense (see his American Buddhism, 51). 55. Tanaka, "Issues of Ethnicity in the Buddhist Churches of America," 4. 56. See, for example, Nattier, "Who Is a Buddhist?" 190-191, Tanaka, "Issues of Ethnicity in the Buddhist Churches of America," 3-4, and Prebish, Luminous Passage, 5743,128-29, and 2961117. 57. Nattier, "Who Is a Buddhist?" 191. 58. The idea that there is a cluster of characteristics or a singular norm that can be identified as "American" has given way to a more fluid and complex understanding of what it means to be American in our increasingly pluralistic and multicultural society. It would thus be a mistake to presume that there is a necessary set of traits that Buddhism will assume as it becomes "Americanized." Americanization does not necessarily mean a movement toward uniformity. Indeed, in the history of religion in America, the creation and continuation of e t h c churches is itself a distinctively "American" phenomenon. 59. Rick Fields, "Divided Dharma: White Buddhists, Ethnic Buddhists, and Racism," in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Prebish and Tanaka, 202 (note that I have rearranged the order). Fields goes on to comment: "All these trends, except for the second [i.e., its emphasis of meditation], are characteristically American components that seem to run counter to Asian norms." As already noted, the various Asian American and immigrant Buddhists groups do not, as a whole, place the same emphasis on meditation that American Buddhist convert practitioners do. 262 Religion and American Culture 60. See the enumeration by Surya Das, "Emergent Trends in Western Dharma," in Buddhism in America, ed. Rapaport, 550-52. See also Jack Komfield, "American Buddhism," in The Complete Guide to Buddhist America, ed. Morreale, xxii-xxiv. 61. George D. Bond, The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka: Religious Tradition, Reinterpretation and Response (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), 35. Another phenomenon associated with modern Theraviida reform movements in Southeast Asia is the growing popularity of Vipassani meditation among the laity. 62. As a corollary to this point, I would predict that English will emerge as a major canonical language. For many Buddhists around the world, English is or will be the second language of choice. For many Asian Buddhists as well, their own texts will be more accessible to them in English translation than, for example in the Pali or Chinese original. 63. The theme of "sinification," as the Chinese transformation of Buddhism is often referred to, has been the master narrative that has dominated the field for the past half century or longer. See, for example, Kenneth K. S. Ch'en, The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), whose title was chosen in response to that of Erik Ziircher's classic, The Buddhist Transformation of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1959).For a more recent assessment, see my Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). 64. Chandler, "Chinese Buddhism in America," 23-24. 65. See Robert H. Sharf's insightful article, "The Zen of Japanese Nationalism," History of Religions 33, no. 1 (1993): 1 4 3 , a revised version of which was included in Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism, ed. Donald S, Lopez, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 107-60. See also Robert H. Sharf, "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience," Numen 42 (1995): 228-83; Bond, The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka; Richard F. Gombrich, Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988), chap. 7, "Protestant Buddhism," 172-97; Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), chap. 6, "Protestant Buddhism, 20240; and Donald K. Swearer, The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), chap. 3, "Modernization," 107-61. 66. "The term 'Protestant Buddhism' in my usage has two meanings. (a). . . many of its norms and organizational forms are historical derivatives from Protestant Christianity. (b) . . . it is a protest against Christianity Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America and its associated Western political dominance prior to independence" (Gananath Obeyesekere, "Religious Symbolism and Political Change in Ceylon," in The Two Wheels of Dhavma: Essays on Thevavada Tradition in India and Ceylon, ed. Gananath Obeyesekere, Frank Reynolds, and Bardwell L. Smith [Chambersburg, Pa.: American Academy of Religion, 19721, 62). The appeal to the canonical tradition as a source of authority for the reinvention of the tradition is another feature that modern Buddhism shares with Protestantism. 67. "Buddhist modernism is characterized by the emphasis laid on rationalist elements in Buddhist teachings, by the belief that the teachings of Buddhism and those of modern science are not only in conformity but identical, by the tacit elimination of the traditional cosmology, and by a reinterpretation of the objective of the Buddhist religion in terms of social reform and the building of a better w o r l d (Heinz Bechert, "Sangha, State, Society, 'Nation': Persistence of Traditions in 'Post-Traditional' Buddhist Societies," Daedalus 102, no. 1 [1973]: 91).

Find millions of documents here - Study Guides, Homework Solutions, Papers, Exam Answer Keys and more. Course Hero has millions of course related materials that will enable you to learn better, faster and get an A in all your courses.
Below is a small sample set of documents: