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by Carl Bielefeldt
RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY
Carl Bielefeldt is professor of
religious studies and co-director of the Center for Buddhist Studies at
Stanford University:
For more than a century, Buddhism
has been on a remarkable ride in America. It has gone from the marginal
religion of Chinese and Japanese immigrants on the West Coast (plus a few
eccentric Euro-Americans who dabbled in Theosophy and spiritualism) to a
religion practiced by millions of Americans throughout the country and
known, at some level at least, to millions more through books, magazines,
television, and movies.
American bookstores are filled
with volumes on "Zen and the art of" this or that; Hollywood makes movies
on the Dalai Lama and a Nazi's conversion to Tibetan Buddhism; and TIME
magazine runs cover stories on America's fascination with Buddhism.
Buddhist ideas appear in New Age religions, psychology, medicine, and even
sports and business. Buddhist values are cited in social movements for
feminism, peace, ecology, and animal rights. Buddhist temples pop up in
unlikely places, from Hacienda Heights, California to the cornfields of
Iowa. Buddhist studies flourish in colleges and universities from Smith to
Stanford. We even have a new facial lotion called "Hydra-Zen," advertised
as relieving skin stress, and a snack called "Zen Party Mix."
Clearly the "Zen" in the face
cream and snack food has nothing to do with religion as we ordinarily
understand it. We're dealing here with something else. An aura surrounds
words like "Buddhism" and "Zen." There is a set of associations with
familiar American values, such as simplicity, naturalness, peace, and
harmony. There are the favorite values of the health and food industries,
such as wholesomeness, well-being, and natural goodness; and there are the
aesthetic values of the young urban sushi culture, such as tasteful
understatement, sophisticated minimalism, and multicultural
cosmopolitanism.
We seem to be dealing not with a
religion, but with something that might be called American "secular
spirituality" -- a longing among many (especially the white middle and
upper classes) who are still not satisfied with what they have and who
want something more; who have all they can eat, but are still searching
for that special flavoring, some "psycho-spice" of self-acceptance,
perhaps, some rare "inner herb" of guilt-free self-satisfaction. This
longing for something more, though in most societies very often associated
with religion, seems in our society to be associated with a suspicion of
religion. We want something more than institutional religion -- something
more personal, more private, more narrowly focused on "me" and how I feel
about myself -- what might be called "I-dolatry."
Of all the religions in America
(and ironically enough for a religion famous for denying the self),
Buddhism seems to have been the one best able to tap into this desire for
spirituality -- to transcend its status as a religion and present itself
as a free-floating spiritual resource not tied to a particular
institution, community, dogma, or ritual. We can add a dash of Buddhism
whenever we need some spiritual flavor. We can market Buddhist cosmetics;
we can have bars called "Buddha" and rock bands called "Nirvana"; we can
have cartoons about Zen masters and jokes about how many it takes to
change a light bulb -- all without imagining that we're being sacrilegious
or insulting anyone's religion. We can even adopt Buddhist values or
practices without converting to the Buddhist religion.
Does this mean, then, that
Buddhism is not really a religion analogous to Christianity or Judaism --
that it's not an institution (or set of institutions) with members, but
simply an intellectual style, point of view, or set of tastes, like, say,
"feminism" or "postmodernism"? If so, what, then, are we supposed to think
when we read that there are millions of Buddhists living in America? What
about the hundreds of organizations that we find listed in directories of
American Buddhist groups? No one seems to know just how many millions of
Buddhists there are in America, in part because no one has figured out who
"counts" as a Buddhist. Thomas Tweed, a professor of religious studies at
the University of North Carolina, suggests that we need to take into
account a large number of people who fall into a category he calls
"nightstand Buddhists" -- people who read about Buddhism and are attracted
to what they read, some of whom may even describe themselves as Buddhist,
but who don't belong to any Buddhist organization. We might also call them
"Buddhist sympathizers," and we might describe their nightstand reading as
"public Buddhism" or "media Buddhism."
News coverage of Buddhism seems
extraordinary. Not only is there quite a bit of it relative to other
religions, but it tends to be highly positive. In international news,
Buddhism is almost never blamed for the foibles of Asian societies. No one
associates the state religion of Buddhism with the nasty politics in
Burma; no one implicates the Buddhists of Sri Lanka in the bloody campaign
against the Hindu Tamils. Rather, Buddhists tend to be [depicted as]
peaceful victims of Asian politics -- Vietnamese monks burning themselves
in protest against the government or Tibetan nuns tortured and jailed for
their demonstrations against Chinese rule.
Compare this with the media
images of fanatical Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus (not to mention Catholics
and Protestants in Northern Ireland). The domestic news almost never
treats Buddhist groups as "cults" or plays up the (not uncommon) sexual
misadventures of Buddhist leaders. Rather, it tends to focus on "human
interest" feature stories: the latest peace mission of the Dalai Lama or
interviews with Buddhist superstars like Richard Gere. Compare this with
dark media images of black Muslims and Hindu guru cults, or the evil
empire of the Korean Christian movement of Reverend Moon (not to mention
lurid stories of televangelists and their prostitutes or Catholic priests
and their choirboys).
To be sure, we still get
occasional hints of something suspicious (as in the campaign fund-raising
stories of Al Gore and the devious Taiwanese Buddhist nuns), but for the
most part, Buddhism seems to have slipped free from our old images of an
alien Oriental paganism, blending smoothly into the American scene as a
familiar, if still somewhat exotic, feature of our cosmopolitan new
multiculture. It is often said that we have adopted Asian Americans as our
"model minority," and the media seem to have adopted Buddhism as our model
minority religion.
The transformation of Buddhism
from an alien Asiatic paganism to a modern, international spiritual
resource capable of blending into the American scene owes much to the work
of western academics. In the 19th century, while newly arrived immigrant
Chinese were worshipping the Buddha in their temples in California,
Caucasian Americans were beginning to read about the Buddha in books
produced by scholars of classical Indian languages. The books often
depicted the Buddha's teachings as a rational system of philosophical and
moral thought -- nontheistic; free from myth and ritual, superstition and
magic; emphasizing ethical conduct and psychological understanding -- this
in marked contrast to Christian beliefs in a creator god, an immaculate
conception, a miraculous resurrection, and Christian emphases on church
ritual, piety and faith, hellfire and brimstone. To be sure, there were
bits of the teachings that were difficult to swallow: reincarnation, and
escape from reincarnation into what seemed the oblivion of nirvana. But
with these bits overlooked or explained away, for the most part Buddhism
seemed safely familiar and modern, surprisingly compatible with a
scientific worldview and western way of life -- in short, a religion ideal
for disaffected Christians and Jews looking for a spiritual alternative.
The academic study of Buddhism
has come a long way since the 19th century, and we now know enough to see
clearly how little that early western image of Buddhism corresponds to the
actual history, teachings, and practices of the religion in Asia -- how
many of the difficult bits were overlooked or explained away in the
projection of modern western ideals onto the religion. Still, the
projected image remains in our books and minds -- an image much more
attractive and influential than all the more sophisticated studies we now
produce, describing the often bizarre and alien views that Buddhists
actually held and detailing the history of a religion riddled with myth
and ritual, superstition and magic.
Recently, when Stanford's Center
for Buddhist Studies organized a one-day retreat on Buddhism for the
Continuing Studies Program, 100 people had signed up by noon on the first
day of registration, and the list had to be closed. Some were simply
curious about Buddhism; some were no doubt practicing Buddhists. But most
seem to have been "sympathizers": people drawn to something they see in
the religion who feel some "affinity," some spiritual possibility. Many of
them wanted to talk during the discussion sessions not about the scholarly
presentations on Buddhist history and culture, but about liberal American
interests such as ecology and social justice. More than a few wanted to
share their personal understanding of what Buddhism really is and what
Buddhist values are or ought to be. Such people are almost all educated,
affluent, and white. At the retreat, I did not see a single black or
Latino, and only one or two Asians, in the group. Terms like "nightstand
Buddhist" or "Buddhist sympathizer" don't really capture the full range of
these people's relationship to Buddhism. We also need a subcategory like
"freelance Buddhist" -- those who identify themselves as Buddhist without
belonging to any Buddhist organization, and perhaps another category
called "client Buddhist" -- those who make use of Buddhist organizations
without belonging to them.
This last category is perhaps the
most remarkable of all. At the Stanford retreat, about half the people
came one hour early to participate in an optional instruction session on
meditation taught by Buddhist monks. These people were, for that session
at least, operating as "client Buddhists." Because of Buddhism's odd
status as a "nonreligious" spiritual resource, Americans seem to feel
relatively free to drop in on Buddhist events and participate in Buddhist
practices. They would rarely think of dropping in at a synagogue for
prayer if they weren't Jewish or taking the Eucharist if they weren't
Catholic, but joining in a Buddhist meditation retreat seems to come quite
naturally. They often tend to think of such participation along the lines
of, say, going on a Sierra Club hike, doing massage therapy at a hot
spring resort, or attending a golf clinic or an investment seminar. Some
Buddhist groups, in fact, depend on such drop-in clients for income and
cater to them with specially prepared programs. One of the best-known
Buddhist monasteries in America, Tassajara, supports itself with a summer
guest season, when it turns itself into a spiritual resort.
In institutional terms, Buddhists
are a disorganized lot. There is no national Buddhist organization; there
is very little interest in anything like an ecumenical movement. Some
groups have ties to church organizations in Asia; some have networks of
affiliated communities in this country. But for the most part, American
Buddhism is splintered into many different groups and factions, each with
its own organizational structure, teachings, and practices. These can be
very different. Buddhist probably disagree on more than they agree on. No
one "speaks for" or "represents" Buddhism in this country.
Within this generally messy
situation, we can make some distinctions of type. First, all commentators
on the sociology of American Buddhism are quick to point out that we are
dealing here with two distinct kinds of communities. Some use the
unfortunate terms "American Buddhists" and "ethnic Buddhists," or the
fighting words "white" and "yellow" Buddhists. Let's call them "convert"
and "hereditary" Buddhists. Whatever we call them, the distinction between
the two types is striking.
"Hereditary Buddhists" are mostly
(so far) members of Asian immigrant groups or their Asian-American
offspring. Buddhists from China and Japan, of course, have been living in
America since the 19th century, but especially since the relaxation of
quotas on Asian immigration in the 1960s, the number and variety of Asian
Buddhists in America have grown dramatically. We now have representatives
from virtually all the Buddhist cultures of Asia -- Korea, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Thailand, Tibet, and Mongolia -- as well as newer Buddhist
groups continuing to enter from Japan and Taiwan. Of course, there is much
variation in the types of Buddhism found in these communities, but
sociologically speaking, they typically have deep roots in and reflect the
ways of the old country. They serve to provide not only religious
services, but also a sense of cultural continuity and a cultural center of
gravity. Membership in the Buddhist organizations of such groups is
typically not a matter of conscious choice or the result of a spiritual
quest but a more or less unconscious cultural practice. In this sense,
hereditary Buddhists are more like the majority of traditional, mainstream
Christians and Jews than white convert Buddhists. And in fact, the
functions of their religious organizations often look very familiar:
worship services, church holiday festivals, church youth groups,
fund-raisers, and maybe a scripture study class, as well as confirmation
of the kids, pastoral care for the troubled, and funerals for the dearly
departed.
The food may be sushi instead of
hot dogs, the games may be mahjong instead of bingo, but the functions are
more or less like that old-time religion that many nightstand Buddhists
and white Buddhist converts are looking to escape. For the most part,
laity in immigrant Buddhism, like laity in Asia, don't engage in
meditation -- a practice for the ascetic monks who are imitating the
Buddha's lifestyle of renunciation. They don't expect to become
enlightened beings like the Buddha; they just want the Buddha to help them
make it through this life and into better circumstances in the next. This
kind of old-time Buddhism doesn't often get into the American media and
doesn't attract many converts from outside the ethnic group.
There are, however, a few
interesting groups that have managed to bridge the ethnic divide. Most
notable is the Nichiren Shoshu of America (NSA) or Soka Gakkai, the
American offspring of a large Japanese Buddhist lay movement. The American
organization is very large, with centers throughout the country, and the
ethnic makeup is diverse, mixing together not only Japanese and
Euro-Americans but also many African-American converts. NSA is almost the
only form of Buddhism that has significantly penetrated into the America
that lies beyond the affluent, educated classes. Perhaps in part for this
reason, it is typically ignored or dismissed by other Buddhists. More
commonly, in those congregations where the clerical leadership has
attracted a convert following from outside the ethnic group, it is quite
usual for parallel programs to develop -- one for the ethnic community,
based on traditional Asian Buddhist lay beliefs and practices, another for
the mostly Euro-American converts that emphasizes their interest in the
philosophical doctrines and spiritual practices traditionally left to the
religious specialists or professionals.
The three basic forms of American
Buddhism -- Zen, Vajrayana, and Vipassana -- represent only a small
fraction of the various forms of Buddhism actually present in America. In
fact, they exclude most of the forms followed by the immigrant Buddhist
population that makes up the majority of Buddhists in this country. But
they are the forms that have most appealed to convert Buddhists and the
Buddhist sympathizers from whom most converts are drawn. Of these three
forms, Zen is undoubtedly the best known. Zen Buddhism developed in
medieval China and then spread throughout East Asia to Japan, Korea, and
Vietnam. It is by far the oldest and most successful form of Buddhism in
America, introduced around the turn of the 20th century, discussed in both
popular and academic books, and, at least since the Zen boom of the 1960s,
widely practiced in many centers throughout the country. In recent
decades, there have been popular Zen teachers from China, Korea, and
Vietnam, but American Zen is dominated by styles imported from Japan
(hence, the Japanese name "Zen"). The American versions are typically a
package of traditional forms of monastic practice wrapped in western
philosophy and psychology. This package was first developed by Japanese
intellectuals in early 20th-century Japan, in response to their study of
western ideas. Thus, the religion was already "prepackaged" for export to
the West -- a fact that does much to explain its popularity here.
Some of the Zen organizations are
very small -- just little meditation clubs meeting at someone's home. Some
are quite large and include a network of residential meditation centers,
monasteries, and businesses. Whether large or small, the focus is
typically on lay meditation practice. In its early years, Zen groups often
formed around Asian meditation teachers who were given almost complete
authority over the group. But as they have matured and leadership has
fallen to the converts themselves, the groups have increasingly taken on a
more Protestant style: egalitarian and antiauthoritarian, with relatively
little distinction between clerical and lay roles. In the process, women
have increasingly moved into leadership roles.
To the right of the Zen groups
are the organizations devoted to Vajrayana Buddhism. These represent a
more recent development, largely of the last two or three decades. They
are the result of the Tibetan diaspora, after the flight of the Dalai Lama
to India in 1959, that led to the appearance of Tibetan monks in the West.
Although this Tibetan Buddhism has attracted more or less the same segment
of American society looking for more or less the same spiritual results,
its religious style is rather different from Zen. Because it has arrived
quite suddenly and recently, brought by monks steeped in the old ways of
Tibetan culture and largely innocent of modern western values, it still
retains more of the "raw" flavor of Tibetan religion. It tends to have a
more "Catholic" feel, with a sharper division between monks and laymen; a
greater emphasis on ritual practices of worship, chanting, initiation
rites, healing, and empowerment ceremonies; and a less critical acceptance
of traditional Buddhist scholasticism and the mystical theologies and
cosmologies developed in medieval India and Tibet.
While modern Japanese Zen has the
advantage of looking familiar, Tibetan Vajrayana has the lure of the
exotic. Where Zen has appealed to Americans as a kind of this-worldly
asceticism, Tibetan Buddhism has the attraction of other worlds -- of a
distant pure land of Shangri-la beyond the Himalayas and the reach of
international capitalism, an ancient magical realm of the spirit that
preceded the modern disenchantment of the world. How this style of
Buddhism will adapt to America, after Americans have become bored with
Tibetan politics and leadership of the groups has passed to the American
converts, remains one of the more interesting questions in the future of
Buddhism in America.
If Tibetan Vajrayana is to [the]
right of Zen, Vipassana is to the left. This style is also quite recent
and growing rapidly. Its name comes from a Pali word meaning "observation"
or "discernment," and it refers to certain forms of Buddhist meditation.
The Vipassana movement represents a modern adaptation of traditional
meditation practice to lay life. The movement began in Burma around the
beginning of the 20th century. It is promulgated in America not by
Burmese, but by American converts to the movement -- especially by the
Insight Meditation Society.
Vipassana is the style of
American Buddhism that has gone the farthest in breaking its ties with the
Asian Buddhist tradition and adapting the religion to a secular American
context. Although there are some residential Vipassana centers, the
characteristic emphasis is on individual meditation practice in the home,
supplemented by short retreats at the centers -- very much a
"do-it-yourself" form of spirituality. Vipassana groups typically do not
have a clerical leadership. They lack most forms of traditional Buddhist
worship and depend little on the categories and vocabulary of traditional
Buddhist theology. Instead, they often draw heavily on the concepts and
techniques of American psychology -- especially the types known as
transpersonal psychology and the Human Potential Movement.
Of all the forms of Buddhism in
America, Vipassana comes closest to institutionalizing the notion of
Buddhism as a nonreligious spiritual resource. And in fact, Vipassana
teachings are now beginning to find their way into such best-selling books
as Daniel Goleman's EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE and Jon Kabat-Zinn's FULL
CATASTROPHE LIVING. In such books, Buddhism, even Vipassana itself, has
almost completely disappeared, submerged in a spiritual soup in which the
Asian religion of Buddhism has been so fully blended into American culture
that we may no longer be able to speak of it either as "Asian" or as
"religion." It will be interesting to watch what will happen to this
"nonreligious" Buddhist spirituality as the Vipassana movement grows into
national organizations.
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