Buddhism in the United States

Buddhism is one of the largest religions in the United States behind Christianity, Judaism and Nonreligious, and approximate with Islam and Hinduism. American Buddhists include many Asian Americans, as well as a large number of converts of other ethnicities, and now their children and even grandchildren.

Covering 15 acres (61,000 m²), California's Hsi Lai Temple is one of the largest Buddhist temples in the western hemisphere.

Early history

One of the oldest images of the Buddha, from the Greco-Buddhist period in Central Asia, 1st-2nd century CE.

Buddhism and the West

The Western and Buddhist worlds have occasionally intersected since the distant past. It was possible that the earliest encounter was in 334 BCE, early in the history of Buddhism, when Alexander the Great conquered most of Central Asia. The Seleucids and successive kingdoms established Hellenistic influence in the area, interacting with Buddhism introduced from India, producing Greco-Buddhism.

The Mauryan Emperor Aśoka (273–232 BCE) converted to Buddhism after his bloody conquest of the territory of Kalinga (modern Orissa) in eastern India during the Kalinga War. Regretting the horrors brought about by the conflict, the Emperor decided to renounce violence. He propagated the faith by building stupas and pillars urging, amongst other things, respect of all animal life and enjoining people to follow the Dharma.

Perhaps the finest example of these is the Great Stupa of Sanchi in India. This stupa was constructed in the 3rd century BCE and later enlarged. Its carved gates, called Tohans, are considered among the finest examples of Buddhist art in India. He also built roads, hospitals, universities and irrigation systems around the country. He treated his subjects as equals regardless of their religion, politics or caste.

The Maurya Empire under Emperor Aśoka was the world's first major Buddhist state. It established free hospitals and free education and promoted human rights.

This period marks the first spread of Buddhism beyond India to other countries. According to the plates and pillars left by Aśoka (the edicts of Aśoka), emissaries were sent to various countries in order to spread Buddhism, as far south as Sri Lanka and as far west as the Greek kingdoms, in particular the neighboring Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and possibly even farther to the Mediterranean.

In the Christian era, Buddhist ideas periodically filtered into Europe via the Middle East. Stories of Roman Catholic Church saints Barlaam and Josaphat, similar to the life of Siddhartha Gautama were translated from Persian to Arabic to Greek. The first direct recorded encounter between European Christians and Buddhists was in 1253 when the king of France sent William of Rubruck as an ambassador to the court of the Mongol Empire. Later, in the 17th century, Mongols practicing Tibetan Buddhism established Kalmykia, the only Buddhist nation in Europe, at the eastern edge of the continent.

Buddhism in the New World

Because these examples produced little real religious interaction, the European settlers who came to colonize the Americas had virtually no exposure to Buddhism. This almost complete isolation would last until the 19th century, when significant numbers of immigrants from East Asia began to arrive in the New World. In the United States, immigrants from China entered around 1820, but began to arrive in large numbers following the 1849 California Gold Rush.

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 temples, and by 1900 approximately 400 Chinese temples on the west coast of the United States, most of them containing some Buddhist elements. These temples were often the subject of suspicion and ignorance by the rest of the population, and were dismissively called joss houses.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 curtailed 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 primarily to Hawaii. Populations from other Asian Buddhist countries followed, and in each case, the new communities established Buddhist temples and organizations. For instance, the first Japanese temple in Hawaii was built in 1896 near Paauhau by the Honpa Hongwanji branch of Jodo Shinshu. In 1898, Japanese missionaries and immigrants established a Young Men's Buddhist Association, and the Rev. Sōryū Kagahi was dispatched from Japan to be the first Buddhist missionary in Hawaii. 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 1905. The first Buddhist clergy to take up residence in the continental U.S. were Shuye Sonoda and Kakuryo Nishimjima, missionaries from Japan who arrived in 1899.

Henry David Thoreau, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited The Dial, a magazine which published the first English translation of a portion of the Lotus Sutra into English from French.

While Asian immigrants were arriving, some American intellectuals examined Buddhism, based primarily on information from British colonies in India and East Asia. The Englishmen William Jones and Charles Wilkins translated 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 an English version of a portion of the Lotus Sutra; it had been translated by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody from a French version recently completed by Eugène 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.

An early American to publicly convert to Buddhism was Henry Steel Olcott. Olcott, a former U.S. army colonel during the Civil War, had grown interested in reports of supernatural phenomena that were popular in the late 19th century. In 1875, he, Helena Blavatsky, and William Quan Judge founded the Theosophical Society, dedicated to the study of the occult and influenced by Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. The leaders claimed to believe that they were in contact, via visions and messages, with a secret order of adepts called the "Himalayan Brotherhood" or "the Masters". In 1879, Olcott and Blavatsky travelled to India and 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, Olcott and Blavatsky took the pancasila vows of a lay Buddhist before a monk and a large crowd. Although most of the Theosophists appear to have counted themselves as Buddhists, they held idiosyncratic beliefs that separated them from known Buddhist traditions; only Olcott was enthusiastic about following mainstream Buddhism. He returned twice to Sri Lanka, where he promoted Buddhist education, and visited Japan and Burma. Olcott authored a Buddhist Catechism, stating his view of the basic tenets of the religion.

Edwin Arnold, author of The Light of Asia

Several publications increased knowledge of Buddhism in 19th century America. In 1879, Edwin Arnold, an English aristocrat, published The Light of Asia, 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. 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 publisher specializing in philosophy, science, and religion, and editor of The Monist, a journal with a similar focus, both based in La Salle, Illinois. In 1894, Carus published The Gospel of the Buddha, compiled from a variety of Asian texts which, true to its name, presented the Buddha's story in a form resembling the Christian Gospels.

A significant event of Buddhism in the US was the Parliament of the World's 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. Olcott; 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 the Western public; Dharmapala was particularly effective because he spoke fluent English.

A few days after the Parliament, in a brief ceremony conducted by Dharmapala, Charles T. Strauss, a New York businessman of Jewish descent, became, one of the first to formally convert to Buddhism on American soil. A few fledgling attempts at establishing a Buddhism for Americans followed. One appeared prior to the Parliament 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 Ray's tone was "ironic, light, saucy, self-assured ... one-hundred-percent American Buddhist". It ceased publication in 1894. In 1900 six white San Franciscans, working with Japanese Jodo Shinshu missionaries, established the Dharma Sangha of Buddha and published a bimonthly magazine, The Light of Dharma. In Illinois, Paul Carus wrote more books about Buddhism and set portions of Buddhist scripture to Western classical music.

Early 20th century

In the first half of the 20th century, Buddhist teachers from Japan actively disseminated Buddhism to the American public. In 1905, Soyen Shaku was invited to stay in the United States by a wealthy American couple. He lived for nine months 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 had a lasting effect on American Buddhism. Shaku was soon followed by Nyogen Senzaki, a young monk from Shaku's home temple in Japan. Senzaki briefly worked for his hosts and then, wanting to stay in America, was reportedly advised by Shaku to spend seventeen years as an ordinary worker before teaching Buddhism. In 1922 Senzaki 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 taught until his death in 1958.

Another Zen teacher, Sokatsu Shaku, one of Soyen Shaku's senior students, arrived in late 1906, founding a Zen meditation center called Ryomokyo-kai. 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 US, 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-an's death in 1945, he and Everett 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 mission in North America, several Japanese Buddhist congregations formed the Buddhist Mission of North America (BMNA). This would later form the basis of the Buddhist Churches of America, the largest ethnic-based Buddhist organization in the US. The BMNA focused on social and cultural activities and ministering to Japanese American communities. In the late 1920s, it began to train English-speaking priests, for the growing number of American-born parishioners. In 1927, the Sōtō sect of Japanese Zen opened its own mission with Zenshuji temple in Los Angeles, although it did not attempt at the time to attract non-Japanese members.

One American who attempted to establish an American Buddhist movement was Dwight Goddard (1861–1939). Goddard was 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 recruited to join as monks and attempts failed to attract a Chinese Chan (Zen) master to come to the United States. However, Goddard's efforts as an author and publisher bore considerable fruit. In 1930, he began publishing ZEN: A Buddhist Magazine. In 1932, he collaborated with D. T. Suzuki, 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.

D.T. Suzuki, another Japanese associate of Soyen Shaku's, had an even greater literary impact. At the World Parliament of Religions in 1893, Paul Carus befriended Soyen Shaku and requested his help in translating and publishing Oriental spiritual literature in the West. Shaku instead recommended Suzuki, then a young scholar and his former disciple. Starting in 1897, Suzuki worked from Carus' home in Illinois; his first projects were translations of the Tao Te Ching and Asvaghosa's Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana. At the same time, Suzuki began writing Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism, 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 became a visible expositor of Zen Buddhism and its unofficial 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

Buddhist American scholar Charles Prebish believes there are three broad types of American Buddhism. 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 group Prebish refers to as "import Buddhists", because they came to America largely in response to interested American converts who sought them out, either by going abroad or by supporting foreign teachers; this is sometimes also called "elite Buddhism" because its practitioners, especially early ones, tended to come from social elites. A trend in Buddhism is "export" or "evangelical Buddhist" groups based in another country who actively recruit members in the US from various backgrounds. Modern Buddhism is not just an American phenomenon.

Immigrant Buddhists

Chùa Quang Minh Buddhist Temple, a Vietnamese American temple in Chicago

Immigrant Buddhist congregations in North America are as diverse as the different peoples of Asian Buddhist extraction who settled there. The US is home to Chinese Buddhists, Textual Buddhists Japanese Buddhists, Korean Buddhists, Sri Lankan Buddhists, Vietnamese Buddhists, Thai Buddhists, and Buddhists with family backgrounds in most Buddhist countries and regions. The Immigration Act of 1965 increased the number of immigrants arriving from China, Vietnam, and the Theravada-practicing countries of southeast Asia.

Japanese Buddhism

The Buddhist Churches of America and the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii are immigrant Buddhist organizations in the United States. The BCA is an affiliate of Japan's Nishi Hongwanji, a sect of Jōdo Shinshū, which is in turn a form of Pure Land Buddhism. Tracing its roots to the Young Men's Buddhist Association founded in San Francisco at the end of the 19th century and the Buddhist Mission of North America founded in 1899, it took its current form in 1944. All of the Buddhist Mission's leadership, along with almost the entire Japanese American population, had been interned during World War II. The name Buddhist Churches of America was adopted at Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah; the word "church" was used similar to a Christian house of worship. 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 published two periodicals, one in Japanese and one in English. However, since 1980, BCA membership declined. The 36 temples in the state of Hawaii of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission have a similar history.

Koyasan Buddhist temple in Little Tokyo (L.A.)

While a majority of the Buddhist Churches of America's membership are ethnically Japanese, some members have non-Asian backgrounds. Thus, it has limited aspects of export Buddhism. As involvement by its ethnic community declined, internal discussions advocated attracting the broader public.

See also Soka Gakkai and Nichiren Buddhism.

Taiwanese Buddhism

Another US Buddhist institution is Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, California. Hsi Lai is the American headquarters of Fo Guang Shan, a modern Buddhist group in Taiwan. Hsi Lai was built in 1988 at a cost of $10 million and is often described as the largest Buddhist temple in the Western hemisphere. Although it caters primarily to Chinese Americans, it also has regular services and outreach programs in English. Hsi Lai was at the center of a campaign finance controversy by Vice President Al Gore.

Imported Asian Traditions

The Zen Buddhist Temple in Chicago, part of the Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom

In the last century, numbers of Asian Buddhist masters and teachers have imigrated to the U.S. in order to propagate their beliefs and practices. Most have belonged to three major Buddhist traditions or cultures: Zen, Tibetan, and Theravadin.

Zen

See also: Timeline of Zen Buddhism in the United States

Beginning with Soyen Shaku's invitation to San Francisco and 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, Philip Whalen, and Kenneth Rexroth took a serious interest in Zen, which increased its visibility. In 1951, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki returned to the United States to take a visiting professorship at Columbia University, where his open lectures attracted many members of the literary, artistic, and cultural elite.

Soyu Matsuoka-roshi established the Chicago Buddhist Temple in 1949 (now the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago) and provided Soto Zen training and lectures in both America and Japan. Matsuoka-roshi also served as superintendent and abbot of the Long Beach Zen Buddhist Temple and Zen Center. Matsuoka-Roshi was born in Japan into a family of Zen priests dating back six hundred years. In the 1930s he was sent to America by Sotoshu, the Soto Zen Buddhist authority in Japan to establish the Soto Zen tradition in the United States. He founded Soto Zen temples both in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He also furthered his graduate work at Columbia University with D.T. Suzuki. He relocated from Chicago to establish a temple at Long Beach in 1971 after leaving the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago to his dharma heir Kongo Richard Langlois, Roshi. He returned to Chicago in 1995, where he died in 1998.

Sanbo Kyodan is a contemporary Japanese Zen lineage which had an impact in the West disproportionate to its size in Japan. It is rooted in the reformist teachings of Harada Daiun Sogaku (1871–1961) and his disciple Yasutani Hakuun (1885–1971), who argued that the existing Zen institutions of Japan (Sōtō and Rinzai sects) had become complacent and were generally unable to convey 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. Sanbo Kyodan's first American member was Philip Kapleau, who first traveled 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 was a frequent attendee of Suzuki's Columbia lectures. In 1953, he returned to Japan, where he met with Nakagawa Soen, a protégé of Nyogen Senzaki. At Nakagawa's recommendation, he began to study with Harada and later with Yasutani. 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 and Sanbo Kyodan's approach became popular in America and Europe. 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 Kapleau's moves to Americanize his temple, after which it became independent of Sanbo Kyodan. This created questions regarding lineage since Kapleau never officially was granted transmission from Yasutani. 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 Kapleau's early disciples was Toni Packer, who left Rochester in 1981 to found a nonsectarian meditation center, not specifically Buddhist or Zen.

Robert Aitken is another American member of Sanbo Kyodan. He was introduced to Zen as a prisoner in Japan during World War II. After returning to the United States, he studied with Nyogen Senzaki in Los Angeles in the early 1950s. In 1959, while still a Zen student, he founded the Diamond Sangha, a zendo in Honolulu, Hawaii. Three years later the Diamond Sangha hosted the first US visit by Yasutani Hakuun, who visited the US six more times before 1969. Aitken traveled frequently to Japan and became a disciple of Yamada Koun, Yasutani's successor as head of the Sanbo Kyodan. Aitken and the Diamond Sangha first hosted Eido Tai Shimano's immigration to the U.S., encouraged by Soen Nakagawa. Aitken became a dharma heir of Yamada's, 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 Yamada's death. The Diamond Sangha network includes a number of practice centers in the U.S. and abroad. The Diamond Sangha Teachers' Circle, an international group of Aitken Roshi's successors (1st and 2nd generation), meets every 18 months. The Pacific Zen Institute led by John Tarrant, Aitken's first Dharma successor, continues as an independent Zen line.

Sōtō Zen Priest Shunryu Suzuki (no relation to D.T. Suzuki) arrived in San Francisco in 1959 to lead an established Japanese congregation. He soon attracted American students and "beatniks", who formed a core of students who would go on to create the San Francisco Zen Center and its eventual network of Zen centers across the country, including the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the first Buddhist monastery in the Western world. His low-key teaching style was described in the popular book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, a compilation of his talks.

Another Japanese Zen teacher was Taizan Maezumi, who arrived as a young priest to serve at Zenshuji, the North American Sōtō 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 recognized as an heir by a Rinzai teacher and by Yasutani Hakuun of the Sanbo Kyodan. Maezumi, in turn, had several American dharma heirs, such as Bernie Glassman, John Daido Loori, Charlotte Joko Beck, and Dennis Genpo Merzel. His successors and their network of centers became the White Plum Sangha.

Other Rinzai Zen teachers in United States include Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi, Eido Tai Shimano Roshi, and Omori Sogen Roshi. Sasaki founded the Mount Baldy Zen Center and its branches after coming to Los Angeles from Japan in 1962. One of his students is the Canadian poet and musician Leonard Cohen. Eido Roshi founded Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji, a training center in New York state. Omori Roshi founded Daihonzan Chozen-ji, the first Rinzai headquarters temple established outside of Japan, in Honolulu; under his students Tenshin Tanouye Roshi and Dogen Hosokawa Roshi, several other training centers were established including Daiyuzenji in Chicago.

Not all successful Zen teachers in the United States have been from Japanese traditions. Some were teachers of Chinese Zen (known as Chán), Korean Zen (or Seon), and Vietnamese Zen (or Thien).

Covering over 480 acres (1.9 km²) of land and located in Talmage, California, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas is geographically the largest Buddhist community in the western hemisphere.

The first Chinese Buddhist priest to teach Westerners in America was Hsuan Hua, a disciple of the 20th century Chan master, Hsu Yun. In 1962, Hsuan Hua moved to San Francisco's 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 (959,000 m²) property in Talmage, California. These monasteries closely adhere to the vinaya, the austere traditional Buddhist monastic code. Hsuan Hua also founded the Buddhist Text Translation Society, which translates scriptures into English.

Another Chinese Chán teacher with a Western following was Sheng-yen, 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 Chán Mediation Society in Queens, New York. In 1985, he founded the Chung-hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies in Taiwan, which sponsors Chinese Zen activities in the United States.

In 1992, Shi Yan Ming, a 34th Generation Shaolin monk of the Caodong lineage, came to America and founded the USA Shaolin Temple in New York City. Construction has recently begun on a full-size Shaolin temple in Fleischmanns, New York.

Seung Sahn was an influential Korean Zen teacher in America. He was a temple abbot in Seoul and after living in Hong Kong and Japan, he moved to the US in 1972, not speaking any English. On the flight to Los Angeles, a Korean American passenger offered him a job at a laundry in Providence, Rhode Island, which became headquarters of Seung Sahn's Kwan Um School of Zen. Shortly after arriving in Providence, he attracted students and founded the Providence Zen Center. The Kwan Um School has more than 100 Zen centers on six continents.

Another Korean Zen teacher, Samu Sunim, founded Toronto's Zen Buddhist Temple in 1971. He is head of the Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom, which has temples in Ann Arbor, Chicago, Mexico City, and New York City.

In the early 20th century, Master Kyong Ho (1849–1912), renergized Korean Seon. At the end of World War II, his disciple, Master Mann Gong (1871–1946), proclaimed that lineage Dharma should be transmitted worldwide to encourage peace through enlightenment. Consequently, his Dharma successor, Hye Am (1884–1985) brought lineage Dharma to the United States. Hye Am's Dharma successor, Myo Vong founded the Western Son Academy (1976), and his Korean disciple, Pohwa Sunim, founded World Zen Fellowship (1994) which includes various Zen centers in the United States, such as the Potomac Zen Sangha, the Patriarchal Zen Society and the Baltimore Zen Center.

Vietnamese Zen teachers in America include 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 was a monk in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He was a peace activist nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967 by Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1966, he left Vietnam in exile for Plum Village, a monastery in France. He has written more than one hundred books about Buddhism, which have made him a popular Buddhist author in the West. In his books and talks, Thich Nhat Hanh emphasizes mindfulness (sati) as the most important practice in daily life. His monastic students live and practice at three centers in the United States: Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, California, Blue Cliff Monastery in Pine Bush, New York, and Magnolia Grove Monastery in Batesville, Mississippi.

Tibetan Buddhism

The Dalai Lama with US President Barack Obama at the White House

Perhaps the most widely visible Buddhist leader in the world is Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama, who first visited the United States in 1979. As the exiled political leader of Tibet, he has become a popular cause célèbre. His early life was depicted 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 an academic supporter of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama maintains a North American headquarters at Namgyal Monastery in Ithaca, New York.

The first Tibetan Buddhist lama to come to the United States was Geshe Ngawang Wangyal, a Kalmyk-Mongolian of the Gelug lineage, who came to the United States in 1955 and founded the "Lamaist Buddhist Monastery of America" in New Jersey in 1958. Among his students were the future western scholars Robert Thurman, Jeffrey Hopkins, Alexander Berzin and Anne C. Klein. Other early arrivals included Deshung Rinpoche, a Sakya lama who settled in Seattle, in 1960, and Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche, the first Nyingma teacher in America, who arrived in the US in 1968 and established the "Tibetan Nyingma Meditation Center" in Berkeley, California in 1969.

The best-known Tibetan Buddhist lama to live in the United States was Chögyam Trungpa. Trungpa, part of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, moved to England in 1963, founded a temple in Scotland, and then relocated to Barnet, Vermont, and then Boulder, Colorado by 1970. He established what he named Dharmadhatu meditation centers, eventually organized under a national umbrella group called Vajradhatu (later to become Shambhala International). He developed a series of secular techniques he called Shambhala Training. Following Trungpa's death, his followers at the Shambhala Mountain Center built the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, a traditional reliquary monument, near Red Feather Lakes, Colorado consecrated in 2001.

The consecration of the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya in Colorado

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, led by the Dalai Lama, and the Kagyu, specifically its Karma Kagyu branch, led by the Karmapa. As of the early 1990s, there were several significant strands of Kagyu practice in the United States: Chögyam Trungpa's Shambhala movement; Karma Triyana Dharmachakra, a network of centers affiliated directly with the Karmapa's North American seat in Woodstock, New York; a network of centers founded by Kalu Rinpoche.

In the 21st century, the Nyingma lineage is increasingly represented in the West by both Western and Tibetan teachers. Lama Surya Das is a Western-born teacher carrying on the "great rimé", a non-sectarian form of Tibetan Buddhism. The late Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche founded centers in Seattle and Brazil. Khandro Rinpoche is a female Tibetan teacher who has a presence in America. Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo is the first Western woman to be enthroned as a Tulku, and established Nyingma Kunzang Palyul Choling centers in Sedona, Arizona and Poolesville, Maryland.

The Gelug tradition is represented in America by the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), founded by Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa. Gelugpa teacher Geshe Michael Roach, the first American to be awarded a Geshe degree, established centers in New York and at Diamond Mountain University in Arizona.

New Kadampa Tradition (NKT) was established by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. An offshoot of the Gelug school founded in the 1990s in the UK, the NKT has over 50 Kadampa (NKT) Buddhist Centers and branches in the United States. Most members of the organization are Westerners or in the far east, principally in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Diamond Way Buddhism founded by Ole Nydahl is also active in the US.

Vipassana

Vipassana, roughly translated as "insight meditation", is an ancient meditative practice described in the Pali Canon of the Theravada school of Buddhism and similar scriptures. Vipassana also refers to a distinct movement which was begun in the 20th century by reformers such as Mahāsi Sayādaw, a Burmese monk. Mahāsi Sayādaw 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 unusual in Theravada, which normally focused on monasticism.

In 1965, monks from Sri Lanka established the Washington Buddhist Vihara in Washington, DC, the first Theravada monastic community in the United States. The Vihara was accessible to English-speakers with Vipassana meditation 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 masters in Asia. Joseph Goldstein, after journeying to Southeast Asia with the Peace Corps, lived in Bodhgaya as a student of Anagarika Munindra, the head monk of Mahabodhi Temple and himself a student of Māhāsai Sayādaw. Jack Kornfield also worked for the Peace Corps in Southeast Asia, and then studied and ordained in the Thai Forest Tradition under Ajahn Chah, a major figure in 20th century Thai Buddhism. Sharon Salzberg went to India in 1971 and studied with Dipa Ma, a former Calcutta housewife trained in vipassana by Māhāsai Sayādaw.

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 (324,000 m²) property near Barre, Massachusetts. IMS hosted visits by Māhāsi Sayādaw, Munindra, Ajahn Chah, and Dipa Ma. In 1981, Kornfield moved to California, where he founded another Vipassana center, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, in Marin County. In 1985, Larry Rosenberg founded the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Another 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, to promote scholarly investigation of Buddhism. Its director is Mu Seong, a former Korean Zen monk.

S. N. Goenka is a Burmese-born meditation teacher of the Vipassana movement. His teacher, Sayagyi U Ba Khin of Burma, was a contemporary of Māhāsi Sayādaw's, and taught a style of Buddhism with similar emphasis on simplicity and accessibility to laypeople. Goenka established a method of instruction popular in Asia and throughout the world. In 1981, he established the Vipassana Research Institute in Igatpuri, India and his students built several centers in North America.

Sōka Gakkai

Sōka Gakkai, which means "Value Creation Society", was founded in Japan in 1930 as a fraternal auxiliary to Nichiren Shoshu, a minor sect of Nichiren Buddhism. It was perhaps the most successful of Japan's new religious movements, which grew after the end of the World War II. During the occupation of Japan, some American soldiers became aware of it, and Japanese wives of veterans became the first active Sōka Gakkai members in the West. A US branch was formally organized on October 13, 1960. Its Korean-Japanese leader took the name George M. Williams to emphasize reaching the English-speaking public. Sōka Gakkai expanded rapidly in the US, attracting non-Asian minority converts, chiefly African American and Latino, to Buddhism. It also attracted the support of celebrities, such as Tina Turner, Herbie Hancock, and Orlando Bloom.

Sōka Gakkai has no priests of its own. The United States branch was originally named Nichiren Shoshu America (NSA). In 1991, Sōka Gakkai split from Nichiren Shoshu and became a separate organization; at that time, the U.S. branch changed its name to Sōka 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 Sōka Gakkai, like other Nichiren Buddhists, is chanting the mantra Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō and sections of the Lotus Sutra. Unlike import Buddhist trends such as Zen, Vipassana, and Tibetan Buddhism, Sōka Gakkai does not teach meditative techniques other than chanting.

Demographics of Buddhism in the United States

Accurate counts of Buddhists in the United States are difficult. Self-description has pitfalls. Because Buddhism is a cultural concept, individuals who self-describe as Buddhists may have little knowledge nor commitment to Buddhism as a religion or practice; on the other hand, others may be deeply involved in meditation and committed to the Dharma, but may refuse the label "Buddhist". Studies have indicated a Buddhist population in the United States of between 2 and 10 million. In the 1990s, Robert A. F. Thurman estimated there were 5 to 6 million Buddhists in America.

In a 2007 Pew Research Center survey, at 0.7% Buddhism was the fourth largest religion in the US after Christianity (78.4%), no religion (10.3%) and Judaism (1.7%).

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. Although many Zen and Tibetan Buddhist temples were founded by Asians, they now attract fewer Asian-Americans. With the exception of Sōka Gakkai, almost all active Buddhist groups in America are either ethnic or import Buddhism based on the demographics of their membership. There is often limited contact between Buddhists of different ethnic groups.

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, based on a survey of Asian-American Buddhists in San Francisco, "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".

Additional questions come from the demographics within import Buddhism. The majority of American converts practicing at Buddhist centers are white, often from Christian or Jewish backgrounds. Only Sōka Gakkai has attracted significant numbers of African-American or Latino members. A variety of ideas have been broached regarding the nature, causes, and significance of this racial uniformity. Journalist Clark Strand noted

…that it has tried to recruit [African-Americans] at all makes Sōka Gakkai International utterly unique in American Buddhism.

Strand, writing for Tricycle (an American Buddhist journal) in 2004, notes that SGI has specifically targeted African-Americans, Latinos and Asians, and other writers have noted that this approach has begun to spread, with Vipassana and Theravada retreats aimed at non-white practitioners led by a handful of specific teachers.

A 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 indicates a class divide, because convert Buddhists tend to be more educated. Among African American Buddhists who commented on the dynamics of the racial divide in convert Buddhism are Jan Willis and Charles R. Johnson.

Trends in American Buddhism

Engaged Buddhism

Socially engaged Buddhism has developed in Buddhism in the West. While some critics assert the term is redundant, as it is mistaken to believe that Buddhism in the past has not affected and been affected by the surrounding society, others have suggested that Buddhism is sometimes seen as too 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 was coined by Thich Nhat Hanh, during his years as a peace activist in Vietnam. The Buddhist Peace Fellowship 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. Another engaged Buddhist group is the Zen Peacemaker Order, founded in 1996 by Bernie Glassman and Sandra Jishu Holmes.

Buddhist Education in the United States

Chögyam Trungpa founded Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, a four-year Buddhist college in the US (now Naropa University) in 1974. Allen Ginsberg was an initial faculty member, christening the Institute's poetry department the "Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics". Now Naropa University, the school offers accredited degrees in a number of subjects, many not directly related to Buddhism.

The University of the West is affiliated with Hsi Lai Temple and was previously Hsi Lai University. Soka University of America, in Aliso Viejo California, was founded by the Sōka Gakkai as a secular school committed to philosophic Buddhism. 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 Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California, in addition to offering a Masters Degree in Buddhist Studies acts as the ministerial training arm of the Buddhist Churches of America and is affiliated with the Graduate Theological Union. The school moved into the Jodo Shinshu Center in Berkeley.

The first Buddhist high school in the United States, Developing Virtue Secondary School, was founded in 1981 by the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association at their branch monastery in the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Ukiah, California. In 1997, the Purple Lotus Buddhist School offered elementary-level classes in Union City, California, affiliated with the True Buddha School; it added a middle school in 1999 and a high school in 2001. Another Buddhist high school, Tinicum Art and Science, which combines Zen practice and traditional liberal arts, opened in Ottsville, Pennsylvania in 1998. It is associated informally with the World Shim Gum Do Association in Boston. The Pacific Buddhist Academy opened in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2003. It shares a campus with the Hongwanji Mission School, an elementary and middle school; both schools affiliated with the Honpa Hongwanji Jodo Shinshu mission.

Juniper Foundation, founded in 2003, holds that Buddhist methods must become integrated into modern culture just as they were in other cultures. Juniper Foundation calls its approach "Buddhist training for modern life" and it emphasizes meditation, balancing emotions, cultivating compassion and developing insight as four building blocks of Buddhist training.

See also

• Western Buddhism
• Buddhism in Canada
• American Zen Teachers Association
• Religion in the United States
• United States religious history
• List of religious topics

Further reading

• Tomek Lehnert (1997). Rogues in Robes. Nevada City, California: Blue Dolphin Publishing. ISBN 1-57733-026-9.
• Charles Prebish (2003). Buddhism — the American Experience. Journal of Buddhist Ethics Online Books, Inc. ISBN 0-9747055-0-0.

External links

• American Buddhist Net: Buddhist News & Forums
• "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
• Archives of American Tibetan Buddhist scholar Alexander Berzin
• "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
• Building Buddha Maitreya Church of Shambhala Monastery in Northern California, video
• Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, an independent voice of dharma in the West
• The New Georgia Encyclopedia: Buddhism in the U.S.
• American Buddhism Survey - American Buddhism Research Project