Buddhism in the West

Main articles:

the birth of the Buddha was also known: a fragment of Archelaos of Carrha (278 AD) mentions the Buddha's virgin-birth, and Saint Jerome

(4th century) mentions the birth of the Buddha, who he says "was born from the side of a virgin".

The legend of Christian saints Barlaam and Josaphat draws on the life of the Buddha.^[17]

In the 13th century, international travelers, such as

Nestorian Christian communities.^[18] The famous travel writer Marco Polo

(1254–1324) wrote much about Buddhism, its rites and customs, in places such as Khotan, China and Sri Lanka.

Early modern and colonial encounters

When European Christians made more direct contact with Buddhism in the early 16th century,

Jesuit missionaries to Asia such as St. Francis Xavier and Ippolito Desideri sent back detailed accounts of Buddhist doctrine and practices.^[18] Ippolito Desideri spent a long time in Tibet, learning the Tibetan language and Tibetan Buddhist doctrine before writing an account of his travels and of Tibetan Buddhism.^[19] He also wrote several books in Tibetan which promoted Christianity and critiqued Buddhism. Other influential Jesuit writers on Buddhism Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606) and Matteo Ricci (1552–1610).^[20] The Portuguese colonial efforts in Sri Lanka during the 16th and 17th centuries saw some of the first large scale direct contact between Buddhists and Westerners. According to Stephen Berkwitz, by the late 17th century, "the existence of a religion across Asia that worshiped images of the Buddha, known and referred to by many different names, was a well-known fact among European scholars."^[20]

This recognition that Buddhism was indeed a distinct Asian religion with its own texts and not just a form of local paganism, led Catholic missionaries to see Buddhism as a serious rival to Christianity in Asia and to promote its further study so as to combat it.[20] They also sought to explain how such a religion could exist which appeared to deviate from those originating from divine revelation and yet also contained numerous similarities (monastic orders, virgin birth of its founder, belief in heaven and hell, etc.). Because of this, many Portuguese writers explained the Buddhist religion as a form of Christianity corrupted by the devil and some even said Buddhists were "in league with the devil".^[20] Catholic missionaries in Asia especially criticized the Buddhist view of rebirth, their "idol worship" and their denial of the immortality of the soul or a first cause.^[20]

With the arrival of Sanskrit and Oriental studies in European universities in the late 18th century, and the subsequent availability of Buddhist texts, Western Buddhist studies began to take shape.^[18] An important early figure is Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomaeo who first remarked on the connection between Sanskrit and Pali, and described an early Italian translation of the Kammavaca in his Systema brahmanicum.^[19]

19th century

During the 19th century, Buddhism (along with other non-European religions and philosophies) came to the attention of Western intellectuals through the work of Christian missionaries, scholars, and imperial civil servants who wrote about the countries in which they worked. Most accounts of Buddhism placed it in a negative light however, as a nihilistic, pessimistic, idolatrous and heathen faith.^[21][22] Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire for example, described Buddhism as the nihilistic nadir of Indian pessimism.^[22]

One early and influential sympathetic account was Sir Edwin Arnold's book-length poem The Light of Asia (1879), a life of the Buddha which became an influential best-seller. The book, coming at a time when Christianity was being challenged by critical Biblical scholarship and Darwinism, was seen by some Western intellectuals as promoting a more rational alternative to Christianity.^[21] This book eventually went through eighty editions and sold between half a million to a million copies.^[21]

The growth of

The writings of Lafcadio Hearn were also influential in introducing Japanese Buddhism to Western audiences.

In Europe

The 19th century also saw the growth of the first thorough academic studies, publications and translations of Buddhist texts. The work of the French orientalist Eugène Burnouf is some of the first academic work on Buddhism which includes a French translation of the Lotus sutra from Sanskrit. He laid the foundation for the study of Sanskrit Buddhist texts. He and Christian Lassen also published an early Pali grammar in 1826.^[19] Benjamin Clough, a Wesleyan missionary, also published an early grammar of the language in Colombo, 1924, A compendious Pali grammar with a copious vocabulary in the same language.^[19] The first Pali dictionary was published in 1875, Robert Caesar Childers' A Dictionary of the Pali language.^[19] The work of Emile Senart is also important, and includes a publication and study of the Sanskrit Mahavastu as well as his Essai sur la légende du Bouddha, which interpreted the Buddha as a solar deity figure.^[19]

1881 was a seminal year for the new field now known as

There are frequent mentions of Buddhism in the work of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who praised Buddhism in his 1895 work The Anti-Christ, calling it "a hundred times more realistic than Christianity" because it is atheistic, phenomenalistic, and anti-metaphysical.^[32] Nietzsche wrote that "Buddhism already has—and this distinguishes it profoundly from Christianity—the self-deception of moral concepts behind it—it stands, in my language, Beyond Good and Evil."^[33] However, he also saw Buddhism as a kind of life-denying nihilistic religion.^[34] Thus, even though Nietzsche saw himself as undertaking a similar project to the Buddha, writing in 1883 “I could become the Buddha of Europe,” he saw himself as consciously anti-Buddhist, further writing “though frankly I would be the antipode of the Indian Buddha.”^[35] Robert Morrison believes that there is "a deep resonance between them" as "both emphasise the centrality of humans in a godless cosmos and neither looks to any external being or power for their respective solutions to the problem of existence".^[36]

In North America

The first Buddhists to arrive in North America were

The works of the early important figures in Western Buddhism such as Henry Olcott, Paul Carus and Soyen Shaku promoted a kind of Buddhism that has been called by contemporary scholars "Buddhist modernism" and also "protestant Buddhism."^[22] This new Buddhist discourse included various elements, but especially important was the idea that Buddhism was compatible with modern science and enlightenment rationalism.^[22] Olcott's Buddhist catechism is one example, which has a section devoted to Buddhism and science, which promotes the theory of evolution and affirms that Buddhism is based on the consistent operations of causality. He also argues that Buddhists are "earnestly enjoined to accept nothing on faith" and are required to believe only that which is "corroborated by our own reason and consciousness."^[22] Paul Carus' encounter with Buddhism led him to believe that it was a great example of a "Religion of Science" and he became an enthusiastic supporter of it because he believed that it was the religion that "recognizes no other revelation except the truth that can be proved by science".^[22] His influential work, The Gospel of Buddhism, became quite popular and was translated in various languages. This kind of modernism was also promoted by Asian Buddhists in Asian countries, such as Anagarika Dharmapala.

The rational interpretation of Buddhism as the "religion of reason" was also promoted by early Buddhist societies in Europe, such as the Society for the Buddhist Mission in Leipzig, Germany, founded in 1903 by the Indologist Karl Seidenstücker (1876 –1936) and the British Buddhist Society, in their journal The Buddhist Review.^[48]

According to Heinz Bechert, Buddhist modernism includes the following elements: new interpretations of early Buddhist teachings, demythologisation and reinterpretation of Buddhism as "scientific religion", social philosophy or "philosophy of optimism", emphasis on equality and democracy, "activism" and social engagement, support of Buddhist nationalism, and the revival of meditation practice.^[49]

20th century

The 20th century also saw other influential Western converts such as the Irish ex-hobo

Some of the earliest European institutions were also founded in Germany. In 1921, Georg Grimm (1868 –1945) joined Karl Seidenstücker in founding the Buddhist Parish for Germany in Munich.^[48] In 1924, Das Buddhistische Haus, was founded by Paul Dahlke in Berlin. Dahlke had studied Buddhism in Sri Lanka prior to World War I.^[55] Meanwhile, in France, Grace Constant Lounsbery founded a Paris-based group called Les amis du Bouddhisme in 1929 who published a journal, La pensée bouddhique.^[56]

The first

Throughout the 20th century, the Pali text society continued to be an influential publisher of Buddhist texts, by 1930 all the five Pali Nikayas had been published by the society (and numerous translations were also published).^[19] Buddhist studies also made numerous strides during the 20th century, headed by European academies and seen as comprising three "schools" during this period. Important figures include the scholars of the "Franco-Belgian school", such as Louis de La Vallée-Poussin and his student Étienne Lamotte, the Pali-based Anglo-German school which included figures such as Wilhelm Geiger and Caroline Rhys Davids and the "Leningrad school" of Fyodor Shcherbatskoy and Sergey Oldenburg.^[58][59][60]

Various Western converts during this period became influential figures through their

In the United States, Japanese Americans founded the Bukkyo Seinen Kai, a Young Men's Buddhist Association (YMBA) inspired by Christian institutions. This community had to deal with intense anti-Japanese sentiment during WW2 despite formal statements of loyalty issued by the organization. Many Japanese American Buddhists had to hide their family altars. The Japanese internment during the war accelerated Anglicization, because they were required to use English in the camps. There is also a generation gap in this community between the older immigrant generation and the American born Anglicized generation.^[66]

Post-war developments

After the Second World War, mainstream Western Buddhisms began to take shape, influenced by new Western writers on Buddhist thought and a new wave of immigration from Asian Buddhist countries. There was a dramatic rate of growth during the late 20th century. The Complete Guide to Buddhist America for example, listed more than one thousand meditation centers as of 1997 in comparison to the twenty-one centers founded between 1900 and the early 1960s.^[67]

Those Westerners disaffected with the materialistic values of

Tarthang Tulku was another Tibetan to establish a center in the West in 1969.[88]

In response to the ever-increasing number of people interested in the "Tibet Message" Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, 16th Karmapa also established a study, retreat and meditation center in France “Dhagpo Kagyu Ling”, founded in 1975, as the European seat of the Karma Kagyü school. The Gyalwa Karmapa sent two particularly qualified teachers to Dhagpo: Lama Gendun Rinpoche, a great master of meditation, and Lama Jigme Rinpoche, an accomplished spiritual master.

Perhaps the most widely visible Buddhist teacher in the west is the much-travelled

In England, an influential figure is Sangharakshita, who founded a modernist and eclectic new tradition called Triratna (formerly the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) in 1967.^[89]

In 1982, the popular Vietnamese Buddhist teacher and peace activist

In the 80s and 90s, the Buddhist Churches of America became involved in the debates over public textbooks promoting creationism and the use of prayer in schools.^[66]

Latin America

As a result of similar patterns of Asian immigration, globalization and Western conversion, Buddhism also became an established minority religion in Latin America in the 20th century, with adherents mostly common from the educated middle classes.^[90] According to Frank Usarski, Buddhism remains a statistically small part of South America's religious field, "with around 500,000 practitioners and approximately 600 groups" of which around 27% are Tibetan Buddhists, 25% are Soka Gakkai and 22% are Zen.^[91]

Japanese immigrants arrived in Latin America at the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century.^[92] With the largest population in Latin America, Brazil is also home to the most Buddhists (around 230,000) in Latin America and thus plays a central administrative and spiritual role for Buddhism in the rest of South America.^[91] It was first introduced by Japanese immigrants in 1908.^[93] Rev. Tomojiro Ibaragi of the Honmon Butsuryū-shū founded the first official Buddhist institution in the country in 1936, the Taisseji Temple.^[91] In the 50s and 60s, non-Japanese Brazilians sought out Buddhism influenced partly by translations of the works of DT Suzuki.^[91] They went to centers such as the Busshinji Temple of the Soto Zen school in São Paulo and some of them later went on to become popular Zen teachers among Brazilians such as Rosen Takashina Roshi.^[94] In the 90s, there was a rise in interest in Tibetan Buddhism, and other forms of Asian Buddhism such as Thai, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese traditions are also present in the country.^[95] The first Brazilian Tibetan Buddhist center, the Tarthang Tulku Nyingma Center, was founded in 1988 in São Paulo.^[91]

In other Latin American countries such as Argentina and Peru, there was also the introduction of Buddhism through immigration and conversion, though populations remain small (20,000 in Argentina in 2012).^[95] Japanese Zen and Tibetan Buddhism has been especially influential in these countries in the post-war 20th century.^[96] In 2010, there were also around 6,200 Buddhists in Cuba, in various Zen groups, the Diamond Way tradition and also Soka Gakkai (the only Buddhist organization with legal status on the island).^[97]

Contemporary Western Buddhism

Today, Buddhism is practiced by increasing numbers of people in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. Buddhism has become the fastest growing religion in Australia^[98][99] and some other Western nations.^[100][101]

Some of the major reasons for this spread include globalization, immigration, improved literacy and education (most Westerners are first exposed to Buddhism through reading), and the breakdown of the hegemony of Christianity on Western culture.^[102]

There is a general distinction between Buddhism brought to the West by Asian immigrants, which may be

Demographically as a convert religion, Western Buddhism appeals more to whites and to the middle and upper-middle classes as well as to the politically left wing and to those who live in urban areas.^[105]

While retaining a more formalized organization, Western Buddhism has also influenced the New Age movement and is in some ways similar to it.^[106] Western Buddhism has also been influenced by the insights of western psychology and psychotherapy and many Buddhist teachers in the West are licensed therapists.^[107]

Major Western Buddhist publications include Lion's Roar (previously Shambhala Sun) and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Contemporary modernism

The regular practice of

The New Kadampa Tradition is a global Buddhist new religious movement founded by Kelsang Gyatso in England in 1991. It describes itself as "an entirely independent Buddhist tradition”. The NKT has expanded more rapidly than any other Buddhist tradition, and currently lists more than 200 centres and around 900 branch classes/study groups in forty countries.^[115] It has been described as a "controversial" cult,^{[116][117][118][119]} and has been officially rebuked by the Dalai Lama.^[120]

Branches

East Asian forms

There are numerous East Asian Mahayana Buddhist traditions and communities in the West, which includes ethnic Buddhists and convert Buddhists. The oldest is the Japanese American Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist community of the Buddhist Churches of America.^[121]

Another widespread form of East Asian Buddhism in the West is Soka Gakkai, a modernist lay form of Nichiren Buddhism. In the US, SGI also has a larger proportion of African American and Hispanic American members than other convert Buddhist groups.^[122]

There are also many ethnic Buddhist temples, founded by Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean Buddhist immigrants. Ethnic Buddhist practice tends to be conducted in Asian languages and to be more traditional. Western-based Chinese Buddhist organizations are some of the most numerous immigrant Buddhists (especially in the United States) and include the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, Fo Guang Shan and the Tzu Chi foundation.^[123]

The most prominent of the East Asian Mahayana traditions in the West is

These institutions tend to be more liberal than their Asian counterparts, more lay based and more likely to promote gender equality. According to Hughes Seager, Western Zen "is Anglicized. It is democratized. It is tailored to the middle-class American life-style, with its focus on the workplace and nuclear family."[126]

Tibetan Buddhism

Westerners such as Lama Surya Das and Robert Thurman have also emerged as influential voices in the Western Tibetan Buddhist community.^[112]

Theravada and Insight movement

There are different forms of Theravada Buddhism in the West. One of these forms is that taken by the Asian immigrant communities and their temples, which is the most traditional and conservative, but is still undergoing change and adaptation. Some of these adaptations include the development of institutions of higher learning for their monastics as well as the establishment of retreat centers, summer camps and schools for the lay community.^[130] According to Paul Numrich, in 1996 there were around 150 Theravada temples (wats or viharas) in more than 30 US states.^[131]

Some Westerners have also adopted and brought the traditional monastic forms to the West, especially those Western monastics associated with the Thai forest tradition. Representatives of this trend are the Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in Northern California, the Mettā Forest Monastery in Southern California, the Birken Forest Buddhist Monastery in Canada, the Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in the UK, and the Bodhinyana Monastery in Australia.

At the other end of the spectrum are the much more liberal lay convert Buddhists belonging to the Insight meditation or "Vipassana" movement.^[132] Many of the founders of this movement studied in retreat centers in Asia and then moved back to the West to establish their own meditation centers, which include the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock. They tend to keep ritual and ceremony to a minimum and focus on Buddhist meditation practice in lay life (and in retreats) instead of other activities such as making merit.^[132] This style of Buddhism is also influenced by western secular humanism and psychology and tends to be presented as a secular practice or technique rather than as a religion.^[132]

Issues with charismatic authority and sex scandals

A number of groups and individuals have been implicated in sex scandals. Sandra Bell has analysed the scandals at Chögyam Trungpa's Vajradhatu and the San Francisco Zen Center and concluded that these kinds of scandals are "... most likely to occur in organisations that are in transition between the pure forms of charismatic authority that brought them into being and more rational, corporate forms of organization".^[133]

Recently further

Robert Sharf also mentions charisma from which institutional power is derived, and the need to balance charismatic authority with institutional authority.[136] Elaborate analyses of these scandals are made by Stuart Lachs, who mentions the uncritical acceptance of religious narratives, such as lineages and dharma transmission, which aid in giving uncritical charismatic powers to teachers and leaders.^{[137][138][139][140][141]}

Popular culture

Buddhist imagery is increasingly appropriated by modern pop culture and also for commercial use. For example, the Dalai Lama's image was used in a campaign celebrating leadership by Apple Computer. Similarly, Tibetan monasteries have been used as backdrops to perfume advertisements in magazines.^[64] Hollywood movies such as Kundun, Little Buddha and Seven Years in Tibet have had considerable commercial success.^[142]

Buddhist practitioners in the West are catered for by a minor industry providing such items as charm boxes, meditation cushions, and ritual implements.

Temples and monasteries

The largest Buddhist temple in the Southern Hemisphere is the Nan Tien Temple (translated as "Southern Paradise Temple"), situated at Wollongong, Australia, while the largest Buddhist temple in the Western Hemisphere is the Hsi Lai Temple (translated as "Coming West Temple"), in Hacienda Heights, California, USA. Both are operated by the Fo Guang Shan Order, founded in Taiwan, and around 2003 the Grand Master, Venerable Hsing Yun, asked for Nan Tien Temple and Buddhist practice there to be operated by native Australian citizens within about thirty years.^[143] The City of 10,000 Buddhas near Ukiah, California disputes that Hsi Lai Temple is the largest in the western hemisphere and claims it is the largest.^[144] This monastery was founded by Ven. Hsuan Hua who purchased the property. "Dharma Realm Buddhist Association purchased the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in 1974 and established its headquarters there. The City currently comprises approximately 700 acres of land."^[145]

In 2006, a western ecumenical Buddhist temple called Dharma Bum Temple was founded in San Diego, California. The temple focuses on being an introductory center for westerners to learn more about Buddhism.^[146][147] It regularly hosts guest speakers from various traditions of Buddhism and is known for directing members to other Buddhist temples in the area after they start showing deeper interest in a particular form of the religion.^[148][149]

Benalmádena Enlightenment Stupa is in Málaga in the Andalusian region of southern Spain, overlooking Costa del Sol.

References

Sources

• App, Urs Arthur Schopenhauer and China. Sino-Platonic Papers Nr. 200 (April 2010) Archived 2010-07-04 at the Wayback Machine (PDF, 8.7 Mb PDF, 164 p.; case study of an early Western discovery of Buddhism with transcriptions and translations of primary sources)
• Baumann, Martin (2001). Global Buddhism: Developmental Periods, Regional Histories, and a New Analytical Perspective, Journal of Global Buddhism 2, 1-43
• Coleman, James William, The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition, Oxford University Press.
• Fields, Rick (1992), How the Swans came to the Lake - A Narrative History of Buddhism in America
• Loy, David R., "Review of Nietzsche and Buddhism: A Study in Nihilism and Ironic Affinities by R.G. Morrison Archived 2011-06-28 at the Wayback Machine", Asian Philosophy Vol. 8 No. 2 (July 1998), pp. 129–131.
• McMahan, David (2008), The Making of Buddhist Modernism, Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Hughes Seager, Richard, Buddhism in America, Columbia University Press, New York, 1999.
• Mullen, E.L., "Orientalist commercializations: Tibetan Buddhism in American popular film", Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 2 No. 2 (October 1998).
• Prebish, Charles S; Baumann, Martin (editors); Westward Dharma Buddhism beyond Asia, University of California Press, 2002.
• Rich, Annet C., Christ or Buddha? Archived 2017-12-10 at the Wayback Machine, 1914.
• Shakya, T., "Review of Prisoners of Shangri-la by Donald Lopez", Journal of Buddhist Ethics, Vol. 6 (1999), pp. 196–199.
• Tweed, Thomas A. (2005), "American Occultism and Japanese Buddhism. Albert J. Edmunds, D. T. Suzuki, and Translocative History" (PDF), Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 32 (2): 249–281, archived from the original (PDF) on 22 May 2012, retrieved 18 December 2011
• Tworkov, Helen, Zen in America: Profiles of Five Teachers, San Francisco: North Point Press, (1989).
• Webb, Russel (2005). "Heinz Bechert 26 June 1932–14 June 2005".
  S2CID 247875437. Archived
  from the original on 10 April 2022. Retrieved 6 October 2022.

Further reading

• Prebish, Charles S; Baumann, Martin, eds. (2002). Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia, Berkeley: University of California Press
• Clausen, Christopher, Victorian Buddhism and the Origins of Comparative Religion, Religion: Journal of Religion and Religions, V (Spring 1975), 1-15.
• Fields, Rick (1992), How the Swans came to the Lake - A Narrative History of Buddhism in America. Shambhala.
• Halkias, G. T. "The Self-immolation of Kalanos and other Luminous Encounters Among Greeks and Indian Buddhists in the Hellenistic World." JOCBS, 2015 (8), pp. 163–186.
• Halkias, Georgios. “When the Greeks Converted the Buddha: Asymmetrical Transfers of Knowledge in Indo-Greek Cultures.” In Religions and Trade: Religious Formation, Transformation and Cross-Cultural Exchange between East and West, ed. Volker Rabens. Leiden: Brill, 2013: 65-115.
• Learman, Linda (2005). Buddhist missionaries in the era of globalization, Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press
• Numrich, Paul (2003). Two Buddhisms further considered, Contemporary Buddhism 4 (1), 55-78
• Wallis, Glenn (2018). A Critique of Western Buddhism - Ruins of the Buddhist Real. Bloomsbury Collections.
  ISBN 9781474283557
  .

External links

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (November 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

• Buddhism in Europe Annotated Bibliography by Martin Baumann (retrieved 08/13/2013)
• Buddhism in the West by Jay Garfield
• Early Western Buddhists by Francis Story
• Tibetan Buddhism in the West: Is it working here?