Buddhism/Part 3

Buddhism – An Overview and Introduction

A recent cover story of Time magazine was titled “America’s Fascination with Buddhism.” It noted that Buddhism was now growing “ever stronger roots” in America and the West, pointing out that American entertainment had also “become fascinated with Buddhism.” Indeed celebrity Buddhists, or those interested include Steven Seagal who was declared the reincarnation of a 15th Century lama by the head of the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism; Richard Gere, the most famous disciple of the Dalai Lama; director Martin Scorsese of The Last Temptation of Christ fame; rocker Tina Turner, who follows Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism; Adam Yauch, the punk rock singer of the Beastie Boys; movie producer Oliver Stone; Phil Jackson, the Chicago Bulls coach who refers to himself as a “Zen-Christian” and is author of Sacred Hoops, and grunger Courtney Love.

Other indications of Buddhism’s increasing popularity include the Internet bookstore search engine, amazon.com, which lists over 1,200 titles on Buddhism. Living Buddha, Living Christ alone has sold over 150,000 hardcover copies. A supposedly non-religious Buddhist meditation is now taught to hundreds and probably thousands of business executives in such companies as at Monsanto, where the potentially dangerous Vipassana meditation is said to be offered. Finally since 1988–the number of English language Buddhist teaching centers in America has increased from 429 to over 1200–almost threefold.

(The same issue of Time further observed that Jewish, Protestant and Catholic Buddhists believe that “Buddhist practice can be maintained without leaving one’s faith of birth,” however insofar as Buddhist practice tends to support and/or inculcate a Buddhist worldview,^[1] we will see that such a view is incorrect.)

Introduction: Buddhism in America

The reason we have included the topic of Buddhism in an encyclopedia on cults and new religions is because there are so many new Buddhist religions in America. Although estimates of practicing Buddhists in America range from 1-6 million, it is safe to say that millions of Americans are either practicing Buddhists, syncretists who combine Buddhism with Christianity, or have been seriously impacted by Buddhism in their worldview (See e.g., est/The Forum). Hawaii and California have significant Buddhist influence and large Buddhist populations. (The Asian population and tourism are so large in Hawaii that a Buddhist “Bible” can be found next to every Gideon Bible in hotel rooms– The Teaching of Buddha, donated by the Buddhist Promoting Foundation of Tokyo.) The American Buddhist Directory published by The American Buddhist Movement in New York and other sources list over 1,000 Buddhist groups and organizations currently active in the United States. (Each major school is represented–Theravadin, Mahayana and Tibetan/Tantric.) Men like D.T. Suzuki, the late Chogyam Trungpa, Daisku Ikeda and the Dalai Lama are having considerable impact through their writings and translations and/or as founders/leaders of American Buddhist religions.

The 1960s – 1990s also saw an increase in academic studies of Buddhism and in the offering of numerous courses in Buddhism at American colleges and universities. A number of Buddhist schools were founded (e.g., the fully accredited Naropa Institute in Denver, Colorado, the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California, and the College of Oriental Studies in Los Angeles.) Publications promoting Buddhism are on the rise. One of the most influential of Buddhist publications is the quarterly Tricycle. Buddhist psychotherapy is prominent within the pages of The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, the most scholarly periodical of the so-called “fourth force” psychology (behind psychoanalysis, behaviorism and humanistic psychology). There are now publishers who have devoted themselves to expanding Buddhist literature and influence in the United States (e.g., Shambala of Boston). Buddhism also has many indirect influences, as in Werner Erhard’s est and The Forum^[2] In the official biography of Erhard by philosopher William Warren Bartley, III, Werner Erhard The Transformation of a Man: The Founding of Est, Erhard is quoted as saying, “…of all the disciplines I studied, practiced and learned, Zen was the essential one…. It is entirely appropriate for person’s interested in est to also be interested in Zen.”^[3] (For a thorough analysis of est/the Forum, see chapter.)

Perhaps all this explains why there are now so many Buddhists in the U.S. How did America come to smile on Buddha?

After the landmark meeting in Chicago of the “World Parliament of Religions” in 1893, Buddhist teachers and missionaries began to arrive, namely, D.T. Suzuki, Nyogen Senzaki and others who in turn helped originate a growing Buddhist subculture in America. The new faith was soon popularized by American devotees such as Christmas Humphreys and Alan Watts and “beat writers” Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder. (Like many others, Alan Watts had maintained that Buddhism enabled him to “get out from under the monstrously oppressive God the Father.”) The recent waves of Indochinese war refugees continued to bring Buddhist peoples to America. Between 1970 and 1980, the U.S. population increased by 11 percent; in that same period the Asian population increased by over 140 percent. In the year 2000 there are over 10 million Asians living in America, making them the third largest minority, behind blacks and Hispanics. These facts alone underscore the need for the Christian church to undertake an active encounter with Buddhism. Hundreds of thousands of mainline Christians have already converted to Buddhism or some form of hybridization.

Notes

1. ↑ See John Ankerberg/John Weldon, Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs, chapter on Meditation.
2. ↑ Werner Erhard acknowledges his indebtedness to many religious systems, however, “I don’t think that any one of them in particular was more important than any other with the possible exception of Zen being the most influential.” Werner Erhard Interview, New Age Journal No. 7, p. 20.
3. ↑ William Warren Bartley, III, Werner Erhard the Transformation of a Man: The Founding of Est (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1978) p. 121, italics in original.