American Buddhism as Identity and Practice: Scholarly Classifications of Buddhists in the United States (original) (raw)
Related papers
2016
Over the last 20 years, scholars of Buddhism, including scholar-practitioners, have discussed the intersection of race, ethnicity, and religious identity in their scholarship on American Buddhism. The conversations on Buddhist identity also occur in popular magazines intended for public readership, in addition to scholarly discourse. But the presentation of Buddhist identity in both popular and scholarly publications is not typically the way Buddhists themselves talk about their identity. As a remedy to the gap in conversation between Buddhist and scholars of Buddhism in the United States, I propose using a set of terms that Buddhists themselves use, couched in the language of “traditions”. This shifts the conversation away from the historically racially-based categories, and uses identities that Buddhists themselves employ when they self-identify as Buddhists.
Identity in American Buddhism (syllabus, fall 2022), Poceski
2022
Course description How are religious identities constructed, and how they intersect with other key identities, fashioned by diverse individuals and communities, within the context of modern life? The course explores this essential question via the lenses of the historical growth and ongoing transformation of Buddhism in America. To that end, it analyses the ways in which Buddhists try (or fail) to reconcile their multiple identities with the central Buddhist doctrine of no-self. The focus of the course is on the key processes of identity formation as important factors in the making of American Buddhism, and the complex patterns of interaction among discrete identities. Students explore the historical events and central issues that continue to shape the growing presence of Buddhism as an integral part of America's remarkably diverse religious and cultural landscapes, in relation to the ways individuals and communities fashion overlapping identities based on religious
he front cover of Buddhism Beyond Borders: New Perspectives on Buddhism in the United States is decorated with a flag. Not an American flag, as one might assume given the subtitle of the edited collection, but rather the Buddhist flag designed in 1885 by the Colombo Committee, a group of Ceylonese Buddhists, and modified by Henry Steel Olcott, the first " White Buddhist. " Although Olcott and the Protestant Buddhism he produced has generally been dismissed if not reviled by Western Buddhist scholars as inauthentic and diluted, he is still revered by Sri Lankan Buddhists in the U.S. who not only decorate their temples with the flag, but sometimes even include a statue of Olcott himself. The choice to represent the collection with a universal rather than national flag and the contrast in how such a symbol has been received in scholarly and practice communities signifies much of what is explored in Buddhism Beyond Borders. The text aims to expand both the geographical boundaries of American Buddhism and the theoretical parameters that have often defined its academic study. Hence it shifts attention from the bounded category of nation to the cultural flows of the transnational and replaces the static binary framework of traditional (authentic) Asian Buddhism vs modern (inauthentic) American Buddhism with a dynamic model that reveals/revels in fluidity, hybridity and multiplicity. In doing so, the collection also makes a compelling case for bringing the subfield out from the margins into the mainstream of Buddhist Studies by showing its subject matter is not a deviant from the norm but, in fact, exemplifies what Buddhism as a living, moving tradition has always done: creatively adapt, absorb and assimilate. As Richard Payne advocates in his Afterword, the text suggests the need to replace a rhetoric of rupture that emphasizes difference and opposition with a narrative of similarity and continuity that is more faithful to the historical complexity of Buddhism's spatial and temporal movement. Before reflecting on the text's conclusions, however, let's look further into its conception and content. The immediate origin of Buddhism Beyond Borders lies in a four-day conference held in March 2010 at the Institute of Buddhist Studies at the Graduate T
Imagining Buddhist Modernism: The Shared Religious Categories of Scholars and American Buddhists
Imagining Buddhist modernism: the shared religious categories of scholars and American Buddhists, 2019
Scholarship on religion has often centered on the gaps between academic analysis and the self-understanding of religious people. In the study of Buddhism in America, however, many scholars and practitioners share cultural histories, material circumstances, and textual space. This article examines the nature of the relationship between particular academics and particular convert Buddhists to argue that they share a way of thinking about religion: perceiving a strong dichotomy between modernity and tradition, and a resulting willingness to take Buddhist modernist narratives at face value as descriptions of religious life. This normative modernism, along with reactions against it, leads to the collapse of descriptive and prescriptive discourse on American Buddhism. By contrast, scholarship that does not participate in the dichotomy between modern and traditional religion reveals a much richer, messier, and more accurate picture of Buddhism in America, and the Buddhists whose practices and self-representations exceed the boundaries of modernism.
The Oxford Handbook of American Buddhism
A Brief History of Buddhism in America, 2024
The history of Buddhism in the United States is one whose brevity belies its complexity. This chapter provides a survey of that history, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and leading up to the contemporary moment. It focuses on how Buddhists and Buddhist sympathizers have adapted and revised teachings and practices to create new cultural forms that can meet their spiritual needs. This tendency to adapt, revise, and collage Buddhist ideas and practices into new forms, this chapter argues, is not limited to the late twentieth century but is present in even the earliest American engagements with Buddhism. While the history of Buddhism in the United States coincides neatly with the transnational development of "Buddhist modernism," the chapter concludes with a short re ection on the prospects and limitations of the recent postmodern turn in American Buddhism.
Whose Dharma Is It Anyway? Identity and Belonging in American Buddhist (Post)Modernities
Genealogy, 2019
This study engages some aspects of the conversations, implicit and explicit, between American(ized) Buddhism in non-heritage/convert communities and religious nationalism in the U.S. Specifically, how does a Buddhist understanding of emptiness and interdependence call into question some of the fundamental assumptions behind conflations of divine and political order, as expressed through ideologies of "God and Country", or ideas about American providence or exceptionalism? What does belonging to a nation or transnational community mean when all individual and collective formations of identity are understood to be nonessential, contingent and impermanent? Finally, how can some of the discourses within American Buddhism contribute to a more inclusive national identity and a reconfigured understanding of the intersection of spiritual and national belonging? The focus here will be on exploring how an understanding of identity and lineage in Buddhist contexts offers a counter-narrative to the way national and spiritual belonging is expressed through tribalist formations of family genealogy, nationalism and transnational religious affiliation in the dominant Judeo-Christian context, and how this understanding has been, and is being, expressed in non-heritage American(ized) Buddhist communities.
The Penetration of Buddhism in America: Its Reality and Significance
2013
According to Professor Diana Eck, a specialist in contemporary American religions at Harvard University, “Buddhism is now an American religion.” That Buddhism is seen as an American religion reflects the status of Buddhism in the United States today. Buddhists currently make up 1 to 1. 3 percent of the American population, or 3. 5 million, making it the third-largest religion in the United States and constituting a seventeen fold increase from the 1960s. Of course, the largest by far is Christianity, with about 75 percent of the population being Christian, followed by Judaism with 2 percent who are Jewish. Other faiths such as Hinduism are each less than 1 percent. Beyond the three and a half million Buddhists, there are also those who do not claim to “be Buddhists” but are keenly interested in Buddhism, especially its meditation. These people are called sympathizers or, somewhat humorously, “Nightstand Buddhists.” They may not be members of any temples or centers but practice Buddh...
Buddhism Beyond Borders: New Perspectives on Buddhism in the United States
2015
Explores facets of North American Buddhism while taking into account the impact of globalization and increasing interconnectivity. Buddhism beyond Borders provides a fresh consideration of Buddhism in the American context. It includes both theoretical discussions and case studies to highlight the tension between studies that locate Buddhist communities in regionally specific areas and those that highlight the translocal nature of an increasingly interconnected world. Whereas previous examinations of Buddhism in North America have assumed a more or less essentialized and homogeneous “American” culture, the essays in this volume offer a corrective, situating American Buddhist groups within the framework of globalized cultural flows, while exploring the effects of local forces. Contributors examine regionalism within American Buddhisms, Buddhist identity and ethnicity as academic typologies, Buddhist modernities, the secularization and hybridization of Buddhism, Buddhist fiction, and Buddhist controversies involving the Internet, among other issues.