During the last forty years, Buddhism in the United States has been transformed from the religion of a relatively small number of Asian Americans and an esoteric preoccupation of a much smaller European American avant-garde into what amounts to a mass movement. Shaped by immigration, conversion, schism, and exile, Buddhism is now thriving to such a degree that it is impossible to exhaustively catalogue its variations and combinations in this country. Perhaps as many as three quarters of America’s Buddhists are in new immigrant communities, whose contributions to the long-term development of the dharma remain particularly difficult to assess and are often overlooked—and, I think, highly underrated. The American Buddhist community as a whole encompasses an extremely wide spectrum of opinions about the nature and practice of Buddhism. Within it, traditionalist and innovative impulses coexist, sometimes comfortably, sometimes not. Tolerance is generally valued highly and the idea that all expressions of the dharma are in essence one is widely accepted.
However, there are few pressures on Buddhists to foster unity. In my travels and many conversations, I have often been struck by the degree to which many communities are more or less out of communication with one another. Despite intra-Buddhist dialogue on national, regional, and local levels, and phenomena like shared and mixed practices, many groups continue to develop quite independently. Some, most notably SGI-USA and Jodo Shinshu, have taken on forms that resemble the sectarian model familiar in the West. Others are organized more as schools within traditions, like Tibetan Nyingmas and Kagyus or Theravada Mahanikayas and Dhammayuts, that resemble Catholic religious orders but without the larger institution of the Church and the centralizing office of the papacy. Theravada and Tibetan forms of Buddhism both emphasize the student-teacher lineage, a mode of organization that is also prominent and operates powerfully in the Zen community.
As a result, American Buddhism resembles an extensive web or network of monasteries, temples, and centers cross-cut by lines of affiliation that are often difficult to trace clearly. I was surprised to discover that people in the Kagyu community in Woodstock, New York were generally uninformed about developments among Gelugpas in Ithaca, a few hours’ drive away. My incorrect assumption was that the two groups would make communication between them a high priority because they were both in the Tibetan tradition. Instead, they were primarily preoccupied with far-flung developments related to their own communities. One informed observer of American Zen suggested that as many as 80 percent of the Zen teachers in this country are associated with the Soto school. This struck me as a reasonable if surprisingly high estimate. But the point is that when looking at the numerous Zen groups in this country from outside the community, one would not readily guess that this organizational principle was at work.
The lack of strong pan-Buddhist national organizations may simply reflect the current stage of development in American Buddhism. Judaism and Catholicism, both of which were present in the colonial period, only developed strong national institutions over the course of the nineteenth century. But Buddhists may forego the development of comparable national organizations; the current decentralization could become a permanent condition. This approach to the dharma may be a strength rather than a weakness. It has so far meant that American Buddhism is characterized by variety and complexity at a time when the nation’s ideals are increasingly being recast in terms of multiplicity and autonomy at the local and regional levels. Some observers have speculated that Buddhism in the United States may come to resemble Buddhism in China where, despite the eventual emergence of characteristic Chinese forms, the dharma remained fluid, eclectic, and regionally inflected over the course of many centuries.
The most prominent feature of American Buddhism for the last three or so decades has been the gulf between immigrants and converts, created by a range of deep cultural, linguistic, and social differences. A less obvious but extremely important dimension of this gulf is more strictly religious; here the contrast between tradition and innovation often appears in particularly high relief.
The transmission of the dharma from Asia to the United States is an epoch-making event, the full consequences of which will only become apparent in the next century. Here a group of Buddhists, both Asian and American-born and from several traditions, parade in the streets of Los Angeles in 1994 in an ecumenical celebration of the Buddha’s birthday.
DON FARBER
The Buddhism of immigrants tends to remain informed by the rich cosmological worldviews of Buddhist Asia. Rebirth and karma are often treated as existential facts, bodhisattvas as dynamic, personalized forces or cosmic entities. Liberation and awakening are essentially religious aspirations and rituals often retain an unambiguous sense of being efficacious. For many converts, however, the dharma is becoming integrated with a more secular outlook on life. Many have implicitly or explicitly abandoned the idea of rebirth. Cosmic bodhisattvas tend to be regarded as metaphors, rituals as personal and collective means of expression. Traditional doctrine and philosophy often take a back seat to inspiration and creativity. The transcendental goal of practice is itself often psychologized or reoriented to social transformation. Stephen Batchelor, a British Buddhist influential in convert circles in this country, has argued that the dharma in the West ought to become a “Buddhism without beliefs,” which he characterizes in his book by that title as an “existential, therapeutic, and liberating agnosticism,” a very different kind of Buddhism than that found within most immigrant communities.1
The numerous ways in which traditionalism and innovation are being worked out in American Buddhism, among both immigrants and converts, are not subject to easy generalization because they are related to complex processes of cross-cultural translation that need to be closely examined on a case-by-case basis. But the separation between the immigrant and convert communities does reflect a different orientation to the cultural and social uses of the dharma. “If you look at the history of the Asian groups coming here, especially the recent ones, religion is at the center of their lives,” Tricycle’s Helen Tworkov told an interviewer from the Harvard Pluralism Project.
It’s used as a way of conserving their history, of conserving their traditions, their rituals, what they want to pass on to their children. So the whole nature of it is to conserve. For the Euro-American, the impulse to convert was very, very different. We didn’t want to conserve, especially for my generation coming to Buddhism in the 60s. We didn’t want to conserve anything from our culture. We wanted to do exactly the opposite. We wanted everything that was new.2
During the 1980s, some observers began to use the phrase “American Buddhism” to denote expressions of the dharma that developed among converts in and around the 1960s counterculture and were shaped by subsequent events in the 1970s and ’80s. The phrase was meant to convey the idea that converts’ innovations were giving rise to uniquely American forms of Buddhism that could claim normative status and be understood as the wave of the future. At about the same time, others deliberately began to use the phrase “Buddhism in America” to convey the idea that there are many expressions of the dharma in this country, some associated with immigrants, others with converts, but none that can be characterized as normative. This difference in emphasis reflects a running debate over which group can legitimately claim to carry the standard for the dharma in the United States, a question that refers to the distinctly different claims of Americanness converts and immigrants can make. Converts often believe that their experience as native-born gives them a uniquely American perspective from which to interpret the dharma. Advocates for the immigrants tend to point to the centrality of the immigrant experience and its importance to the nation’s religious history as a different, but no less valid, claim to Americanness.
Given the extraordinary diversity in the worldwide Buddhist community and the amount of time needed for any religion to take root in a new culture, I think that it is premature to announce the establishment of a unique, authentic form of American Buddhism. Writing as a historian rather than a partisan in current debates, I am most interested in the long-term challenges involved in building viable forms of Buddhism, whether among converts or immigrants. Observing the current vitality of the American Buddhist landscape, I often wonder how it will change, even within the next thirty years or so, as some forms continue to thrive and others fall by the wayside. All the groups under consideration in this book have successfully negotiated the problems of becoming established. But they now face new challenges to their survival over the long haul, be these rooted in economic considerations, leadership and succession issues, or in keeping and replenishing their membership. The definition of American Buddhism will be determined by those forms that survive the winnowing process that can be expected during the early decades of the twenty-first century.
I am convinced, however, that for many years to come, Buddhists in a number of schools and traditions will look back on the years between 1960 and 2000 as an era in which the foundations were laid for their sanghas. But given the current situation, the challenges Buddhists face need to be assessed in terms of immigrants and converts and the kind of issues the two groups face at the opening of a new century.
Immigrant Buddhism
Barring unforeseen calamities like the Second World War or the conflict in Vietnam, most large immigrant Buddhist communities are likely to follow general patterns familiar from the histories of other immigrant groups in this country, but with variations unique to our rapidly globalizing society and to particular traditions. If the example of other immigrant groups holds true, it can be expected that there will be recurrent waves of innovation and traditionalism with each successive generation, in tandem with a deeply running and thorough adaptation to the values of mainstream America.
But most Buddhist immigrant groups are now roughly at the same stage as Japanese Americans in the Jodo Shinshu tradition in the 1920s or ’30s, although many, such as Thais, Sri Lankans, and Chinese, are substantially larger communities. They are also establishing themselves in America at a time when the country as a whole, despite some anti-Asian sentiments and persistent racism, is more multicultural in outlook and more racially and religiously pluralistic than it was in the early part of the twentieth century. Most Buddhist immigrant groups now have well-established networks of temples and other institutions and have begun the process of retaining, adjusting, and abandoning elements of their received traditions as part of the adaptation to this country. A second and in many cases a third generation is on the rise, whose attitude toward tradition will largely determine the shape of immigrant Buddhism in the twenty-first century.
Asian immigration remains open, however, which means that a “first generation” is being constantly replenished. At this writing, as a financial crisis deepens in Asia, a new, unanticipated wave of Asian Buddhist immigration may be in the making. Such continued immigration has had important consequences for religious traditions in the past. Among German Lutherans, for instance, ongoing migration in the nineteenth century contributed to institutional differentiation as newly arriving Germans, appalled at the Americanization of Lutheranism by an earlier generation of immigrants, formed their own networks of churches. Splits between some of these groups began to be healed only a century later, at a time when older theological and liturgical controversies ceased being divisive issues. At present, a similar kind of differentiation is likely to occur in Buddhist immigrant communities.
Paul Numrich has observed a few additional, familiar patterns among Thai and Sri Lankan Buddhist immigrants in the mid-1990s. Given the power of lay-based religious movements in the United States, modern trends toward the laicization of Buddhism in Asia seem especially important. Many temples were originally founded by laypeople, who continue to exert a good deal of influence, both financial and religious. This trend is likely to increase as immigrants become more experienced with administering democratic forms of religious polity. At the same time, Theravada monks play an essential role in the religious life of the temple. Their monastic orders remain important parts of many congregations’ religious identities, a factor that may lead to Theravada denominationalism.
Numrich has also observed what he calls “a double-barreled ‘gap’” between the older, immigrant generation and their children. One part of this is the generation gap, which in this country is virtually institutionalized as a rite of passage for American teens. But the other, more important, gap is cultural and linguistic. One informant told Numrich that Thai American teenagers in Chicago often “shift gears” when they leave their parents’ homes to be with their friends. Others reported that teens tend to disappear from temple life in response to peer pressure. But many of Numrich’s young informants suggest that the temple plays an important role in their social life, even if the religious aspect is often lost on them—a phenomenon hardly unique to Buddhist immigrants or, for that matter, teenagers. “I learned who I am and about the people in my country at this temple,” one wrote in response to Numrich’s survey. “I really like this Wat.” Another fifteen-year-old reported that “This place is very important for all of us kids for it lets us know and be proud of who we are and where we come from.” Still another noted: “We’re not trying to escape from Thai [culture]; we study Thai dancing, we learned Buddhism, we speak Thai.”3
I encountered a twenty-something Thai American woman at Wat Metta in southern California whose take on her relationship to Buddhism might be considered anomalous. I suspect, however, it may also be characteristic of the ways in which tradition will become important for many of America’s Buddhist immigrants. In response to my question about whether she was a practicing Buddhist, she said something to the effect that “as a kid I did the whole American thing.” But during a recent trip to Thailand, she had seen that Buddhists were gatekeepers to business in what at the time was one of Asia’s booming economies. Wanting to get into the action overseas, she had come to Wat Metta, while completing business school, to brush up on her Buddhist protocol and etiquette. There was nothing disingenuous in her remarks, but her sentiments did not seem particularly religious. A similar relation to tradition was common among Catholic and Jewish immigrants for whom strictly religious concerns were often less important than the pragmatic opportunities presented by networks established within and around ethnic communities.
It is likely that some of the finest expressions of American Buddhist philosophy and exemplars of practice and piety will emerge from these communities by virtue of the fact that people within them will quite naturally straddle Asian tradition and American innovation. But when considering the potential contribution of these immigrants to the United States, it is important not to focus exclusively on notions of religion as a quest for transcendence while discounting the political and social consequences of ethnic identity. Observers have long noted that in the deep but unstable relationship between culture and religion in immigrant communities, it is often not the church, synagogue, or temple that ultimately claims primacy. Religion, along with political, commercial, and other social concerns, becomes one element in a powerful, if somewhat amorphous, sense of ethnic identity. Much of American immigration history concentrates on shifting patterns of Americans’ ethnic self-understanding as they bear on a wide range of questions from intermarriage to urban, regional, national, and international political activity.
One can already pick up a sense of this Buddhist ethnoreligious identity formation at work in the 1990s. The Hsi Lai temple–Democratic National Committee funding controversy sent shock waves through the Chinese American community that reverberated back to Taiwan, the full consequences of which, in both religious and political terms, remain to be seen. A crackdown by Hanoi on a Buddhist revival in Vietnam spurred the formation of a political action coalition among religious, community, and business leaders in southern California’s Vietnamese American community. An integral part of the contribution Buddhist immigrants make to America in the long term will be the establishment of living links to many nations across the Pacific, which will have a range of consequences over the course of the twenty-first century.
It is also important to keep in mind that the distance between converts and immigrants does not imply that immigrant Buddhists from Tibet, Sri Lanka, China, Korea, Japan, and a number of other Asian countries are, or even care to be, a united force in this country. Alliances among ethnic coreligionists are remarkably unstable. It took Roman Catholicism several generations to forge an American institution uniting immigrants who, at the turn of the twentieth century, represented over twenty different linguistic communities. The formation of separate German, Polish, and other national Catholic churches was averted only by papal intervention. But no comparable central administration exists for immigrant Buddhists, so diversity is likely to remain a primary feature of the community. The idea of an Asian American or Asian Pacific American political coalition has been favored by many activists since the 1970s, but has been difficult to sustain as a viable ethnic-political force on the American scene. Prominent, highly respected Buddhist leaders like Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama are well known in a number of different immigrant groups, but they have had little effect in creating a sense of a common Buddhist identity. It is hard to imagine an external force, such as the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe that fostered the formation of an American Jewish identity, that could galvanize disparate Buddhist immigrant groups to forge a shared Asian American and Buddhist identity.
Nevertheless, it is safe to suggest that major Asian Buddhist groups will play a vital part in the creation of American forms of Buddhism in the twenty-first century. I disagree with those converts who see ethnicity-based sectarianism as an obstacle to the development of the dharma in this country. Most people who are religious are so in particular ways and in particular communities that often have an ethnic basis. The real issue is whether these communities will remain self-contained or, as leaders like Havanpola Ratanasara of the American Buddhist Congress hope, reach out to the broader Buddhist and American communities. As with so many issues in immigrant communities, a good deal rests on choices yet to be made by the second and third generations. A few observers have suggested that some children of immigrants are beginning to express an interest in convert Buddhism, where they can explore their own heritage in the American idiom that is their first cultural language, without the intervention of their parents. This may well be so. But it seems likely that the main line of immigrant Buddhism will be firmly tied to developments within, rather than outside, the immigrant communities.
American historians of religion have for a long time directed most of their attention to the Protestant churches and their immense impact on religious institutions and discourse in this country. As a result, they have been slow to give attention to current Buddhist immigration. On occasion, I have heard a number of the most prominent dismiss its importance, noting that Buddhist immigrants amount to less than two percent of the American population. This has always surprised me given that Jews, who have never numbered more than three percent of the population, have made an immense contribution to American religion and culture. It may well be the case that Asian Buddhists will make a comparable mark in the coming century.
At this juncture, however, it is worthwhile noting that the phenomenon of large-scale Buddhist immigration is a part of a new era in American immigration history in which Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and others are arriving in very substantial numbers. Fifty years ago, historians routinely referred to the “old immigration,” by which they meant Irish and German Catholics and western European Jews who arrived in the antebellum period, and the “new immigration,” Jews and Catholics arriving from southern and eastern Europe around the turn of the century. Many of the religious and political implications of this history helped form the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish “triple melting pot” in the post–World War II era, a form of American self-identity that was a long time in the making. The nation has since moved on to understand itself in more multiracial and multicultural terms. But seen in this historical perspective, the importance of the large-scale Buddhist immigration from points across Asia is far too early to call. It is part of a broad reorientation in American history that, barring a reactionary movement to cut off Asian immigration, is only beginning.
Convert Buddhism
Converts face new challenges unique to their status as native-born Americans, most of which are also related to a range of second-generation issues. To the extent that these Buddhists have raised their children in the dharma, the community is developing its own “birth-right” Buddhists, to borrow a Quaker term, who will surely influence the future of American Buddhism. But I have seen very little hard evidence of a substantial rising generation within these communities. Many members of Soka Gakkai have integrated chanting daimoku into their family life. Highly organized communities such as Shambhala International and the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association have formal school programs for their children. I have on occasion witnessed Buddhist “rites of passage” ceremonies for teens who spent their childhood in and around convert dharma communities.
But I also recall a conversation with a prominent figure in the Buddhist publishing world that made a lasting impression, although it provides only anecdotal information. In response to my question about how converts educate their children to be Buddhists, he replied that, as far as he could see, many were reluctant to “lay their Buddhism” on their children. At the very least, this provides a suggestive point of contrast with immigrants who, throughout American history, have deemed it a natural right, if not an absolute imperative, to pass on their religion to their offspring.
The second-generation issue, however, is important in the convert community in several additional ways. One key aspect has to do with the recruitment and retention of a new generation of practitioners. Although I have spoken with young SGI-USA members whose commitment is based on their parents’ involvement in the movement, I have no clear sense of whether and how new recruiting is proceeding since SGI abandoned the shakubuku campaigns that accounted for its rapid growth in the 1960s and ’70s. In regard to Zen and other forms of contemplative Buddhism, recent statistics indicate that sitting meditation continues to have a broad appeal for Americans. Don Morreale, in his Complete Guide to Buddhism, puts these statistics into a historical perspective that suggests this may be a long-term trend. Between 1900 and 1964 there were twenty-one meditation centers founded in this country. The number increased substantially between 1965 and 1974, with the establishment of 117 new centers. An additional 308 were founded between 1975 and 1984, and 616 between 1985 and 1997. Morreale lists more than 1,000 meditation centers in existence in this country as of 1997. A good number are Asian American Zen, Vajrayana, or Theravada groups that teach meditation, but most are associated with the convert community. It should be recalled, however, that estimates of the number of convert Buddhists range from 100,000 to 800,000, an extremely wide margin of error. This makes it very difficult to assess how the burgeoning of meditation centers might translate into new and committed membership.
Despite optimism about the future that can border on the visionary, there is concern about the “graying” of American Buddhism, a reminder that most developments in convert communities remain tied to the baby-boom generation that turned to the dharma in the 1960s. When the teachers in this generation began to come of age in the 1980s, commentators emphasized their innovations—family-centered lay practice, gender equity, the integration of Buddhism with psychology, and so forth. There is every reason to think that these kinds of innovations will have enduring effects on American Buddhism. But many prominent converts are only in their fifties; they have twenty or more years to be communities’ teachers and leaders, plenty of time for new situations and unexpected issues to arise. In Colorado, I saw advertisements offering Buddhists the opportunity to buy early into dharma-centered retirement communities. What old age might mean for convert Buddhism is impossible to predict, but such advertisements are a reminder that the fate of many adaptations made in the last few decades will ultimately be in the hands of another generation.
This aspect of the generational issue also directs attention to the importance of creating new leaders for the convert communities. SGI-USA, whose vitality in this country owes so much to the work and example of Daisaku Ikeda, will eventually face important leadership and succession issues that will undoubtedly have an impact on the entire organization. Within the community, however, SGI-USA has well-developed youth divisions that will presumably provide a new generation of leaders and administrators. In the Tibetan Buddhist community, a great deal depends on the formidable task of training new lamas who have a strong, in-depth sense of the practice traditions in a range of lineages, whether they are Tibetans in exile or Americans.
In the Zen community and the Insight Meditation movement, where a constant influx of Asian teachers is not taken for granted, the creation of new leaders is directly related to the maintenance of teaching lineages. A number of lineages are well positioned with a second, third, and sometimes a fourth generation of teachers likely to function as leaders. The continued development of all forms of convert Buddhism, however, will require the differentiation of roles and the ongoing development of members who function in more mundane capacities as fund-raisers, board members, and administrators.
One key issue for convert Buddhists is maintaining the authenticity of the dharma for future generations. On the one hand, most Buddhists celebrate the diversity of expression found among converts. It is generally considered all to the good that Buddhists undertake practice for a wide range of reasons—peace of mind, self-empowerment, the deepening of personal relations, building character, social transformation, and so on. On the other hand, some commentators have asked whether the premium placed on innovation will not, in the long term, distort the central teachings of the Buddha and rob the dharma of its depth and integrity, a question that is framed differently by different convert communities.
In Soka Gakkai International-USA, questions about the integrity of teachings, doctrinal orthodoxy, institutional continuity, and the like have tended to cluster around the growing tensions and eventual break with the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood. Since 1991, SGI has been free to plumb the depth of Nichiren’s teachings, draw upon the examples of Makiguchi, Toda, and Ikeda, and develop its practice and philosophy in line with the needs of its members. Within the movement, there seems to be a remarkable tolerance about the needs and aspirations members bring to their practice: One can chant the daimoku to cultivate enlightened consciousness, strengthen character, or better one’s position financially. SGI also emerged from the schism unambiguous in its lay orientation. Its main practice centers are found in people’s homes, and SGI members have taken up the sacramental roles once filled by the priesthood on a rotating, voluntary basis. Informed SGI members are quick to point out that this lay orientation is quite in keeping with the spirit of Nichiren’s revolt against the monastic establishment in thirteenth-century Japan and that in this regard it is the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood that is aberrant. This tolerant, lay-oriented practice does not itself ensure the survival of SGI-USA over the long term, but it does place the movement well within American norms, in tune with the demands of the secular workplace and the nuclear family.
The situation is somewhat different among converts whose main practice is sitting meditation, particularly in Zen and the Theravada-based Insight Meditation movement. The membership of both these groups is overwhelmingly comprised of laypeople who have taken up a rigorous form of practice formerly reserved for monastics, which they must balance with the demands of secular life. But both groups depend on dharma transmission from teacher to student and the formation of lineages to perpetuate the movement and to ensure the ongoing integrity of the teachings. This has led in-house observers to question the consequences of the ambiguous status of American meditators who are not quite monastics, yet more than typical laity. Can these practitioners preserve and transmit the dharma in its most authentic expression? Will contemplative Buddhism survive in the long term without a strong monastic sangha? Should the dharma be recast in order to reflect the needs, aspirations, and capacities of laypeople?
The debate over these questions is too complex to be reduced to a simple conflict between monastics and laity, conservatives and liberals, or even traditionalists and innovators. On the level of theory, it is being addressed in a growing body of literature exploring the relationship between Buddhist philosophy and practice and a range of humanistic psychologies. But at its most basic level, the debate amounts to differences in opinion about the current challenges and opportunities for Buddhism in America and the West and the strategic responses converts ought to make to them.
The unconflicted view expressed by Don Morreale in his Complete Guide might be taken as representative of those whose priority has been to adapt the dharma to fit the needs of the American middle class, the demands of work and family. “Everything has changed in Buddhist America. The wildness of the early days is over and meditation is no longer the province of a handful of visionaries and poets. Buddhism has gone mainstream,” he writes. “At retreats one is likely to find oneself sitting next to a stock broker or a therapist or a retired social worker who may or may not claim to be a Buddhist. It is an older crowd as well: fewer and fewer people in their twenties and more and more in their forties, fifties, and sixties.”
The teaching situation has changed.… The strict, almost martial, spirit that was once the norm in many Zen centers has given way to a lighter approach. Day care is frequently available, as well as flexible schedules to accommodate work and family.… Time at retreat alternates with work in the world, giving the participants an opportunity to earn money, to spend time with their families, to integrate what they’ve learned in seclusion.… The distinctly Asian flavor that once permeated Western dharma centers has given way to something that feels very familiarly North American.4
Important substantive shifts in emphasis have accompanied these Americanizing trends: the abandonment of hierarchical models in teacher-student relations, the autonomy of local sanghas, and the emergence of consensus-based decision making.
Other commentators, while supporting such adaptations, ask at what point innovation ceases to do justice to the spirit and substance of the Buddha’s teachings. For instance, Helen Tworkov, in a 1994 article, “Zen in Balance: Can It Survive America?” noted that “It is not simply an historical accident that Buddhism begins with a person walking away from a life of luxury, from a palace, a family, art, from security and every comfort. Nor is it an accident that Zen was nourished in a monastic setting, by students and teachers who chose to abandon worldly existence.” These observations led her to ask “whether what we have confidently called ‘Americanization’ has become a justification for the co-optation of Zen by secular materialism.”5
In a similar vein, John Daido Loori, a highly regarded roshi, noted that “Most of the lay practice that goes on among new converts in America is a slightly watered-down version of monastic practice, and most of the monastic practice is a slightly glorified version of lay practice.… To me, this hybrid path—halfway between monasticism and lay practice—reflects our cultural spirit of greediness and consumerism. With all the possibilities, why give up anything? ‘We want it all.’ Why not do it all?”6
The debate over the quality of American Buddhism in the long term is important, but in the absence of rigorous, universally held standards, is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. Not having taken up the devotionalism and ritualism of Asian laity, most Buddhists in these communities will no doubt continue to meditate as a form of lay practice, whether at a Zen center, on a vipassana retreat, or on a more explicitly therapeutic model like that of Jon Kabat-Zinn. Such a pluralistic approach to practice is in keeping with the overall tenor of American Buddhism, where the accent is on flexibility, pragmatism, individualism, and diversity.
The popularity of such approaches, however, is not in itself an answer to the question of whether something vital will be lost in the absence of a strong, convert monastic community. In colloquial terms, Pema Chodron contrasts the different social and emotional environments of monastics and laity and suggests their consequences. “In the monastic life, you can’t do your usual number of blaming others and justifying yourself. You can’t get away with that,” she is quoted as saying in Tricycle.
You can get away with it with your husband, or your wife, or your lover, or your children. Within the monastic community, the relationships are equally fraught with confusion and difficulty, but you can’t get away from the realization that your own neurosis plays a big part in the fact that you want to lay the blame on the situation or on somebody else. You’re brought back to yourself in a very profound and inescapable way.… Monastic life isn’t tough because you have to work hard all day long. It isn’t tough because you don’t have time to yourself. It isn’t tough because there is no time to practice, it’s tough because there are no exits and you come up so close to yourself. When I mentioned this to the abbot of Gampo Abbey, Thrangu Rinpoche, he said, “Well isn’t that the point, that you see yourself.”7
Thanissaro Bhikkhu, abbot of Metta Forest Monastery, expressed a similar view in more traditional language. When asked by an interviewer about the use of Buddhist meditation for therapeutic ends, he replied: “That’s fine. That’s called domesticated Buddhism and it’s always going to be there.”
Thais like ceremonies where they can make merit for their dead relatives. Americans like retreats where they can feel connected to the world. They’re coming from the same impulse. But please don’t present just that much as the whole of Buddhism. There are books that will tell you that the sign of successful spiritual practice is the ability to have meaningful relations—nothing about nirvana. But there will always be people who want more, and Buddhism should be there for them.8
There is at present no single answer to these questions, and it is important to underscore the fact that the Buddhist meditation movement has been substantial only since the 1960s. Current configurations were shaped by a rapid succession of events that unfolded over the course of the next three decades. It may be that in time clear distinctions will be made among different kinds of practitioners—“weekend sitters,” “high-performance householders,” “full-bore monastics,” and the like—in a way analogous to Buddhism in ancient India, which distinguished “stream-winners” from “once-returners.” Categories of this kind, based on practice styles and degrees of commitment rather than levels of attainment, seem to be the common intent behind the development of parallel practice paths in such different organizations as Shambhala International and Zen Mountain Monastery.
In light of these and other issues, I have reflected many times on the question of how much historical perspective is needed on current events in order to make some sense of Americanization. When Rick Fields first published How the Swans Came to the Lake, a book that played an important role in fostering self-conscious Americanization among converts, he was a part of a community still closely associated with the revolutionary idealism of the counterculture. At that time, few commentators, Buddhist or otherwise, paid much attention to trends that are now seen as helping to define the late twentieth century—the rising migration from Asia, cultural and economic globalization, and the increased power of Pacific Rim nations. In later editions of Swans, Fields directed his attention to the coming of age of American-born teachers in light of precedents from Thoreau and Emerson to the Beats, perpetuating a highly selective view of American Buddhist communities.
By the end of the century, however, there is distance enough from the 1960s to see that the American Buddhist landscape has become very complex—part converts, part old-line Chinese and Japanese Americans, part new immigrants who, as rough as the relevant statistics are, appear to have a significant demographic edge. There are, moreover, complicated relations among these groups in parallel congregations; international academic, political, and women’s groups; trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific practice communities; and intra-Buddhist dialogue networks. This more complex view suggests that American Buddhism is a massive, multifaceted, collaborative effort. I have attempted to suggest this by highlighting when possible some of the different, ongoing interactions between converts and immigrants. But to bring out this collaboration more clearly, the history of Buddhism in America must be revisioned at least since the early twentieth century when, as Fields so admirably describes, networks began to develop among Asian, Asian American, and European American seekers in ways that suggested this eventual complexity.
My own view is that most American Buddhists, immigrants and converts, are still in what might be thought of as the “heroic age” of the founding of their communities. Thus, questions about the emergence of mature expressions of Americanized Buddhism are less immediate than those about the ongoing process of community formation. In this context, immigration remains the single most important force at work. This is not meant to privilege the immigrant experience over that of converts, but to highlight the fact that even the most ardent Americanizing convert stands only a step, perhaps two, removed from an Asian teacher, who probably arrived here as an immigrant. In the theorizing about American Buddhism in the wake of the scandals of the 1980s, there may have been a version of the well-known second-generation phenomenon in immigrant communities, when a native-born generation attempts to radically differentiate itself from its elders by a zealous embrace of all things American. In the past, this has usually been corrected by a third generation’s return to tradition. It will be no great surprise if converts, having established their Americanness as Buddhists, return to Asian sources and teachers for many decades, even generations.
Given the continuing importance of immigration, I think that American Buddhists, both immigrants and converts, might do well to pay more attention to the progress of older groups like the Buddhist Churches of America, in which tensions between tradition and innovation, sectarianism and universalism, Anglicization and language maintenance, and ethnic identity and Americanization have played themselves out over many generations. Despite the challenges the BCA currently faces, it has the most substantial Buddhist track record of any large group in this country. In its history are embedded a good many lessons about the kinds of tolls that Buddhists can expect to be charged on the road to mainstream America.
