Buddhism in America

Buddhism, like Hinduism, arrived from Asia, evolved in America as a multifarious tradition, and assumed both “ethnic” forms practiced by Asian immigrants and their descendants and “export” forms adopted by non-Asian Americans seeking religious alternatives.

Buddhism promotes “right” living and spiritual enlightenment, often through meditation. It originated in India in the 6th century BCE, spread across Asia after the 1st century CE, and developed into variant forms. Theravada, a nontheistic system emphasizing the historical Buddha as a spiritual model for humanity, came to dominate in southern Asia. The larger Mahayana school became dominant in China and Japan, producing a polytheistic belief system by emphasizing the spiritual potential in everyone and divinizing those who realize it. A third school, Vajrayana, developed later and flourished in Tibet. Each school developed numerous variants.

White Americans became aware of Buddhism through the Asian trade in the late 18th century, and it was studied by 19th-century Transcendentalists and Theosophists, but it became a significant American presence only when about 300,000 Chinese immigrants became laborers in California during and after the gold rush. They established their first temple in San Francisco in 1853, some 400 shrines along the Pacific coast by 1900, and, adapting the term “Dios” (God) from the region’s Hispanic Catholics, countless “joss houses.” But Chinese Buddhism’s impact was limited by its frequent combination with Daoism and Confucianism, its practice largely in private (producing few formal institutions), and exclusionary legislation in 1882, which curtailed Chinese immigration and prompted the disappearance of the original temples.

The Japanese have been far more influential in American Buddhism. They began arriving in the late 19th century, first in the Pacific states, later and more gradually in the East. They brought with them two Mahayana forms dominant in Japan and destined to become the largest in the United States: Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land), which teaches that reverential chanting of Amida Buddha’s name facilitates rebirth into a Pure Land and a state of transcendence, and Nichiren Shoshu, which promotes enlightenment through meditative worship and chanting on a text called the Lotus Sutra. Jodo Shinshu missionaries arrived in Hawaii in 1889 (before U.S. annexation) and in San Francisco in 1898, opening temples in both places, followed by two priests who in 1899 founded the Buddhist Mission of North America (BMNA) in San Francisco. The BMNA spread rapidly among Japanese immigrants but, despite its Americanizing impulses, was stunted by the 1924 Japanese Exclusion Act. The incarceration of Japanese Americans in Western “relocation” centers during World War II stimulated the BMNA to seek greater acceptance by becoming the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) in 1944, and adopting Sunday services, Sunday schools, and various trappings of Protestant worship. The BCA became one of the nation’s largest Buddhist organizations after the war. Today it has about 100,000 members, mostly Japanese American, and about a hundred temples, three-quarters of them in the Pacific states.

Nichiren Shoshu, less church-oriented and more evangelistic, arrived much later, in 1960, when Japanese immigrants established the Nichiren Shoshu of America (later, Nichiren Shoshu Academy) in California. Initially confined to ethnic Japanese, it recruited young non-Asians during the spiritual experimentation of the 1960s, attracting blacks and Latinos as well as whites.

Zen, America’s best known and most strongly meditative Buddhist tradition, has been largely an export form throughout its American history, practiced by some Japanese immigrants but mostly by well-educated whites. It originated in China and developed in Japan into two forms: Rinzai, which wrenches the mind from ordinary consciousness through imponderable riddles, and Soto, which emphasizes gradual enlightenment and mental tranquility. Zen Buddhism was introduced to Americans at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 by Rinzai missionary SoyEn Shaku (1859–1919), who made two subsequent lecture tours. He then sent several disciples to publicize Zen, most notably Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870–1966), whose Columbia University lectures during the 1950s promoted a Westernized version and inspired its adoption by Beat generation writers and the 1960s counterculture. Philip Kapleau has likewise promoted an Americanized Zen at the Zen Meditation Center (est. 1966) in Rochester, New York, as has Jiyu Kennett (b.1924), who established the Zen Mission Society in San Francisco in 1969 and then developed a feministic Zen at the Shasta Abbey, founded in northern California in 1970. Shigemitsu Sasaki (1882–1945) promoted more traditional versions at Rinzai centers in California and New York and through the Buddhist Society in America (later renamed the First Zen Institute of America), established in New York in 1931.

Tibetan Buddhism, a ritualistic tradition centering on gurus and promoting meditative contemplation through mantra chanting and mandala diagrams, is an important recent arrival. Its American presence as an export religion has grown since the 1960s through the work of missionaries who fled Tibet after the 1959 Chinese takeover. Tarthang Tulku (b. 1932?) established the Nyingma Meditation Center in Berkeley, California, after arriving there in 1969, and Chogyam Trungpa (1939–87), who arrived in 1970, founded Tibetan centers in cities across the country. In 1973 he established Vajradhatu, now the nation’s largest Tibetan Buddhist organization. Tibetan centers of several varieties can now be found in most major American cities.

Buddhism is not the only major east Asian religious tradition in the United States. Many ethnic Chinese continue to combine it with Confucianism and Daoism, and Japanese Americans continue to practice Shinto. But Buddhism’s institutionalization, urban focus, and interethnic appeal have made it the most highly visible east Asian tradition on an increasingly pluralistic American religious scene.