North American Buddhists in Social Context

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NUMRICH_f1_i-x.indd i 4/4/2008 4:20:15 PM Religion and the Social Order

An Ofﬁ cial Publication of the Association for the Sociology of Religion

General Editor William H. Swatos, Jr.

VOLUME 15

NUMRICH_f1_i-x.indd ii 4/4/2008 4:20:16 PM North American Buddhists in Social Context

Edited by Paul David Numrich

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008

NUMRICH_f1_i-x.indd iii 4/4/2008 4:20:16 PM This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data North American Buddhists in social context / edited by Paul David Numrich. p. cm. — (Religion and the social order ; v. 15) Includes index. ISBN 978-90-04-16826-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Buddhism—Social aspects—North America. I. Numrich, Paul David, 1952– BQ736.N67 2008 294.3’097—dc22 2008009735

ISSN 1061-5210 ISBN 978 90 04 16826 8

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NUMRICH_f1_i-x.indd iv 4/4/2008 4:20:16 PM CONTENTS

Preface: On the Being of Not Being ...... vii William H. Swatos, Jr.

1. North American Buddhists: A Field of Study? ...... 1 Paul David Numrich

2. Themes and Issues in the Study of North American Buddhists and Buddhism ...... 19 Janet McLellan

3. Temple and Society in the New World: Theravada Buddhism and Social Order in North America ...... 51 Carl L. Bankston III and Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo

4. The Buddhist Mission of North America 1898–1942: Religion and Its Social Functions in an Ethnic Community 87 Arthur Nishimura

5. Japanese American Religiosity: A Contemporary Perspective Tetsuden Kashima ...... 107

6. “True Buddhism is Not Chinese”: Taiwanese Immigrants Deﬁ ning Buddhist Identity in the United States ...... 145 Carolyn Chen

7. A Religious Minority within an Ethnic Minority: Korean American Buddhists ...... 163 Karen Chai Kim

8. The Emergence of a New Buddhism: Continuity and Change ...... 185 James William Coleman

9. Soka Gakkai: Engaged Buddhism in North America ...... 203 Constance Lynn Geekie

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Afterword: Modernization, Globalization, and Buddhism ...... 225 Joseph B. Tamney

Contributors ...... 243

NUMRICH_f1_i-x.indd vi 4/4/2008 4:20:17 PM PREFACE: ON THE BEING OF NOT BEING

William H. Swatos, Jr.

How does Buddhism fare in North America as we come to the end of the fi rst decade of the third Christian millennium? Perhaps I am entirely wrong, but it seems to me that Buddhism—and the study of Buddhism—in North America fared better a decade ago than it does now. I think this has relatively little to do with Buddhism itself, but rather with the impact that the events of 11 September 2001 had on the United States and drew the attention of America and most of its western allies to the impact of Islam in the age of globalization—negatively. That is, American colleges and universities seem particularly bent at this time on instituting a variety of programs of study and faculty appointments that focus on aspects of Islam. In some instances this may be in the context of “know thine enemy.” In others, the concern may be to integrate existing Muslim citizens and resident aliens into the American melting pot of the Abrahamic traditions that established the “religion of civility” that characterized the broad expanse of the “Judeo-Christian ethic” as the dominant articulation of “one nation under God” in the 1950s. The multidirectional, multifocused expansion of Islamic studies particularly with reference to American security concerns appears to have had as an unintended consequence a relative deemphasis on the study of contemporary Buddhists and their place in our society. There are, after all, only so many new faculty hires or endowed chairs an institution can reasonably create. As something of a via negativa, Buddhism may also in certain respects lend itself to a process of relative neglect: it’s easier to overlook a monastic self-immolation in Cambodia than a hijacked plane fl own into the World Trade Center. Although scholars like Thomas Tweed (1992) and Joseph Tamney (1992) have both explored the historic roots of Buddhism in America, it is likely the case that, except for residents of the west coast and Hawaii, contemporary North Americans’ awareness of Buddhism can be traced to two almost diametrically opposed events: military incur- sions into Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia, on the one hand, and the fl ight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet on the other. These international events have exposed North Americans to a variety of forms of Buddhist

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expression, some of which have become more domesticated than others. Immigrant Buddhisms have operated on a largely separate trajectory, and as chapters in this book show, have quite different characteristics depending upon the group involved, including both distinctive forms of Buddhist practice within the various cultures of origin from which people immigrate, on the one hand, and whether the immigration results from a conscious motivation to pursue “the American dream” (relocation) or refugee fl ight from a desperate situation (dislocation). North American Buddhism has also developed a domestic version, which has had limited direct effect in its numbers of formal conversions to Buddhism, but has created an intellectual environment among both Americans either reared in or practicing within the Judeo-Christian tradition that could have potential for cross-fertilization between the two traditions. One strand of this can be traced to the Episcopalian- priest-turned-Buddhist Alan Watts (e.g., 1957, 1959, 1973), whose work particularly interfaced with the growth of the anti-Viet Nam War movement. This strand also saw the late-in-life revival of works by D. T. Suzuki (e.g., 1961). There was an infl uence from within Christianity itself, leading both to Buddhist-Christian dialogue and to a movement in the religious and liturgical life, especially among some Roman Catholics and Anglicans, in particular those infl uenced by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who ironically died of accidental electrocu- tion while attending a Buddhist conference in Thailand in 1968. The introduction for the 1971 edition of Merton’s Contemplative Prayer, for example, is written by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen monk who innovated the phrase “engaged Buddhism,” and whose Living Buddha, Living Christ was marked with a tenth anniversary edition in 2007. Other evidences occur in the academic journal Buddhist-Christian Studies, now in publication for over a quarter of a century, but also at the local level in dialogues between Buddhist and Christian religious (see Bender and Cadge 2006). I am grateful to Paul Numrich for bringing these chapters together in a single volume to encourage us to engage Buddhism as a North American religious tradition of sociological signifi cance at many different levels.

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References

Bender, Courtney and Wendy Cadge. 2006. “Constructing Buddhism(s): Interreligious Dialogue and Religious Hybridity.” Sociology of Religion 67: 229–47. Hanh, Thich Nhat. 2007. Living Buddha, Living Christ. New York: Penguin. Merton, Thomas. 1971. Contemplative Prayer. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Suzuki, D. T. 1961. Essays in Zen Buddhism. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. Tamney, Joseph B. 1992. American Society in the Buddhist Mirror. New York: Garland. Tweed, Thomas A. 1992. The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844–1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Watts, Alan. 1957. The Way of Zen. New York: Pantheon. ——— . 1959. Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen. San Francisco: City Lights. ———. 1973. In My Own Way: An Autobiography. New York: Pantheon.

NUMRICH_f1_i-x.indd ix 4/4/2008 4:20:17 PM NUMRICH_f1_i-x.indd x 4/4/2008 4:20:17 PM CHAPTER ONE

NORTH AMERICAN BUDDHISTS: A FIELD OF STUDY?

Paul David Numrich

The present volume grew out of a joint thematic session, “Dharma Crossing Boundaries: Buddhist Culture in the New World,” at the 2006 annual meetings of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and the American Sociological Association. As the session’s discussant, I wondered aloud whether current scholarly research on North American Buddhists constitutes a “ﬁ eld of study.” The question remains, and in this chapter I will present evidence for why this is so and indicate what it would take in the way of outcomes for it to be answered positively.

Disciplines and Fields of Study

The literatures of academia (e.g., Klein 1990: 104–07; Geiger 2004: 20–30) and Buddhist studies (discussed below) sometimes elide the concepts of “fi eld of study” and “discipline.” I consider a discipline to be the broader entity within which fi elds of study can be distinguished. For instance, religion is a fi eld of study within the discipline of sociology.1 A topic becomes an interdisciplinary fi eld of study when the scholarship reaches a high level of cross-disciplinary productivity, sophistication, and integration. The criteria establishing either a discipline or a fi eld of study are the same (which may help to explain the conceptual elision), and can be arranged under three broad, overlapping categories: (1) specialization—through scholarly training, theoretical assumptions, technical terminology, and research questions and methods; (2) organization—through professional associations, regular meetings and conferences, and academic departments and programs;

1 Others may wish to call sociology of religion a subdiscipline of sociology. Geiger (2004: 24) identiﬁ es three “major disciplinary groups” in academia: humanities, social sciences, and “hard” sciences. In this scheme, sociology would be a branch or division of the social sciences, sociology of religion a sub-branch or subdivision.

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and (3) publication—through Ph.D. dissertations, articles in specialized and other journals, books and edited volumes on the specifi c topic, and contributions to volumes not solely on the topic—with quality controlled through scholarly peer review. One indicator of a discipline’s or a fi eld of study’s maturity is critical self-refl ection and internal debate about the very coherence that distinguishes it from other disciplines or fi elds of study. By the end of the 1990s, several scholars heralded the arrival of a new fi eld of study focused on North American Buddhists, seeing it as a subfi eld of Buddhist studies (also known as Buddhology), North American religious history, or both (Eck 1999; Queen 1999; Seager 1999a, 1999b, 2007; Williams 1999; Gregory 2001; Tweed 2000; Prebish 2002; Numrich 2003).2 How well does this claim hold up in light of the three criteria for fi eld-of-study status?

Specialization The evidence regarding specialization in the topic of North American Buddhists is ambiguous. There is no doubt that more scholars today than ever before consider this topic “a primary or secondary research interest” (Tweed 2000: xv) and that academic hirings pay more attention to this interest than in the past (Prebish 2002: 74–78). However, a residual snobbery that this topic does not constitute “real Buddhist Studies” still exists among Buddhologists (Prebish 2002: 75), while this research interest can easily get crowded out in a social scientist’s career. As an example of the latter, one of the brightest young sociologists of religion publishing on this topic is Wendy Cadge. Her book, Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America (2004), has received well-deserved critical acclaim, while her essays on North American Bud- dhists are consistently informative and insightful (Wuthnow and Cadge 2004; Cadge and Sangdhanoo 2005; Cadge 2007). Yet Cadge’s faculty Web page at Brandeis University (retrieved 7 October 2007) lists Bud- dhism as one of eight areas of expertise, while only one-third (8 of 24) of her impressive list of publications focuses primarily or signiﬁ cantly on Buddhists in North America. Does this qualify as specialization in

2 Note that every author cited here is a humanities-based scholar. In an earlier essay, Thomas Tweed (1997: 190) subsumed Buddhists under the “new subﬁ eld of Asian religions in America,” which he located within the larger ﬁ elds of Asian religions and American religious history.

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the topic? What is the minimum percentage of one’s scholarship necessary for specialization? Are the disincentives to concentration on this topic too strong, for instance inadequate organizational infrastructure (discussed below), lack of research funds available for this topic, or professional necessity to diversify (meaning, following whatever research leads come one’s way)? This last has certainly guided many of my own research decisions. The theoretical assumptions, technical terminology, and research questions and methods necessary to a specialization are at an early stage of formation in this topic. At the end of the 1990s, Richard Sea- ger (1999a: xii) found the published works in what he considered the emerging fi eld of American Buddhism “often running at cross-purposes because they come out of different disciplines and lack a set of clearly defi ned, common questions.” My own assessment is that the topic of North American Buddhists draws primarily bi-disciplinary interest from scholars in the humanities and the social sciences, and that these scholars have yet to achieve signifi cant interdisciplinarity in their combined body of work. The social scientists researching this topic tend to come from sociology, anthropology, and ethnic studies; the humanities-based scholars from Buddhist studies (Buddhology), comparative religion, and North American religious history. Few can claim bi-disciplinary expertise, and thus we are often bemused by simplistic “Buddhism 101” descriptions by social scientists on the one hand and dilettantish social science by Buddhologists on the other. There has been considerable critical debate among researchers of North American Buddhists about at least one issue—namely, constructing a satisfactory typology of Buddhist identities. This manifests particularly in the debate over the “two Buddhisms” categorization.3 I see this as evidence of early conceptual negotiation of a research topic rather than an indicator of a fi eld of study’s mature critical self-refl ection and internal debate about what distinguishes it from other fi elds.

Organization The second category of criteria for a ﬁ eld of study includes professional associations, regular meetings and conferences, and academic departments

3 For a summary of the debate, and my own advocacy of the two Buddhisms paradigm, see Numrich 2003.

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and programs. Here, too, we see evidence of growing interest in the topic of North American Buddhists, but that interest has not yet achieved organizational coherence and independence. Writing at the end of the 1990s, Frank E. Reynolds (1999) heralded the “coming of age” of Buddhist studies or Buddhology in the United States. Around that same time, Charles S. Prebish (1999, 2002) and Bruce Matthews (2000) shared similar sentiments about Buddhist studies in North America generally. There is an important distinction, not always clearly articulated in the literature, between Buddhological studies conducted by North American scholars and the study of North American Buddhists, the latter not a necessary aspect of the former. Moreover, the literature sometimes groups North American Buddhists with Buddhists in other parts of the world outside of Asia, often under the rubric of “Western Buddhism,” thus making it diffi cult to determine whether North American Buddhists are a distinct research focus. The question at issue in this chapter is whether there is a fi eld (or subfi eld) of the study of Buddhists living in North America. There is no doubt that the number of faculty and courses in Bud- dhology has greatly increased in recent years, but these are still generally subsumed under existing departments in the humanities. Jose Cabezon (1995: 255) has written of “the diversifi cation of the [ North American] buddhologist” in pursuing topics outside of Buddhist studies proper, while Prebish (1999: 195), referencing Cabezon, concludes that “it is no longer completely clear what constitutes a full-time Buddhologist” in North American universities. Once beyond the few programs with multiple specialists in Buddhism, such as the University of Chicago and McMaster University, Buddhologists are stretched thin across North American academia. And although attention to the study of North American Buddhists may be more prominent in the North American branch of Buddhist studies than elsewhere (Reynolds 1999; Matthews 2000), its extent and infl uence have yet to be demonstrated. The residual snobbery that studying North American Buddhists does not constitute “real Buddhist Studies” is still a factor in many university programs. Whether or not it is a factor at the University of Chicago and McMaster University, the topic of North American Buddhists nowhere appears among the research and teaching interests listed on the Web pages of their Buddhologists (retrieved 7 September 2007). In lieu of a specialized professional association, most North Ameri- can Buddhologists have found a home in the American Academy of Religion (AAR), particularly in the Buddhism Section established in

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1986 (Cabezon 1995: 255; Prebish 1999: 183–96, 2002). Although the Section professes that it is “increasingly” interested in Buddhism in “the West,” its offerings at AAR annual meetings do not refl ect this interest. Of 144 papers offered at the Buddhism Section since 2000, only one has focused on North American Buddhists.4 Perhaps in reaction to this lack of follow through, an AAR program unit entitled “Buddhism in the West Consultation” was initiated in 2007. According to its self-description, The Buddhism in the West Consultation seeks to a) provide a venue for new studies on Buddhism in non-Asian locales, b) further communication and exchange between scholars working on Buddhism outside of Asia, and c) offer a forum within which to collectively clarify the intellectual and methodological underpinnings of research on Buddhism in the West, and consider new possibilities in methods and approaches. . . . The Consultation hopes not only to nurture a rapidly growing subfi eld but to stimulate interest in this area in related disciplines, such as Buddhist Studies and American Religious History.5 Interestingly, this group makes a case for a “rapidly growing subfi eld” of study on Buddhists in the West even as they pledge to “collectively clarify the intellectual and methodological underpinnings of research” in that subfi eld. This implies that the purported subfi eld has not yet attained signifi cant conceptual coherence. Moreover, it is not clear from the wording at the end of the statement in what fi eld(s) the group wishes to locate this subfi eld. Since consultation status is the lowest in the hierarchy of AAR program units (with a three-year lifespan to make a case for some kind of continuation), and since only one of the four scheduled papers for the 2007 meeting appears to have a substantive connection to Buddhists in North America, I cannot consider this strong evidence for a shift in interest among AAR Buddhologists. Reynolds (1999: 460–61) identifi es the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) as another professional home for Buddhologists. He reported approximately 200 such scholars in the AAS in 1997, an unknown number of whom, he suggested, probably also belonged to the AAR. As with the AAR, the offerings on North American Buddhists at AAS

4 This information derives from the Buddhism Section Newsletter listings for 2000– 2003 (available at http://www.h-net.org/~buddhism/aar-bs/index.html) and the AAR annual meeting program for 2007 (available at http://www.aarweb.org); information for 2004–2006 is not posted. A second paper may have touched on North American Buddhists, but this is not clear from the title. 5 Available at http://www.aarweb.org (retrieved 7 September 2007).

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annual meetings are meager. In the annual meetings from 2000 to 2007, only one paper (on religion in Toronto’s Chinatowns) and one panel (on Buddhist Arts in Diaspora) appear even to have touched briefl y upon this specifi c topic. The program unit under which these were listed (Border-Crossing), plus another unit called Interarea, have featured papers about specifi c Asian groups in diaspora, so the topic of Asian Buddhists in North America is pertinent to the AAS. It is simply vastly underrepresented. Facilitation of papers and presentations on North American Bud- dhists at the annual meetings of other scholarly associations or at stand-alone conferences appears to be ad hoc rather than deliberate. Prebish (2002: 73–74) gives just four examples from the 1990s: two “genuinely scholarly” conferences which produced the edited volumes The Faces of Buddhism in America (Prebish and Tanaka 1998) and American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship (Williams and Queen 1999), and two annual conference panels, one at an International Asso- ciation of Buddhist Studies (IABS) meeting, the other at a Society for the Scientifi c Study of Religion (SSSR)/Religious Research Association (RRA) meeting. Ongoing interest in North American Buddhists in these organizations has been minimal, however. SSSR/RRA annual meetings have featured approximately twenty papers on this topic since 2000, representing less than one percent of the total number of papers at these meetings. The percentage of papers on North American Buddhists at the annual meetings of a similar organization, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, has been approximately the same.6 There is some promise for continuing coverage in the meetings of the IABS,7 but as we shall see, that association’s journal has featured North American Buddhists only minimally.

Publication The argument for ﬁ eld-of-study status for North American Buddhists can best be made in the category of publication. Tweed (2000: xv)

6 SSSR/RRA annual meeting information for the years 2000–2006 is available at http://rra.hartsem.edu, ASR annual meeting information for the years 2001–2007 (2000 is not listed) is available at http://www.sociologyofreligion.com. 7 I was unable to secure past programs for IABS conferences. The preliminary program for the 15th Congress (2008) lists a total of 57 panels and sections, a handful of which could schedule papers on North American Buddhists (http://www.religion. emory.edu/iabs2008/panelsandsections.htm, retrieved 16 September 2007).

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wrote of a “boom in scholarship about American Buddhism” in the 1990s. This was certainly true relative to the dearth in previous decades (cf. Numrich 1996), but has the publication “boom” continued to reverberate? The number of Ph.D. dissertations refl ects the importance of a research topic in academia. Although dissertations on North Ameri- can Buddhists grew steadily in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, they still comprised a meager six percent of the total number of dissertations on all Buddhist topics granted by American and Canadian universities in those decades. The claim that this indicated a fi eld of study was premature (see Williams 1999: 262). The percentage jumped considerably in the years 2000–2006 to nearly 16 percent of the total, but it remains to be seen whether such healthy interest can be maintained for the remainder of this decade.8 The number of articles in specialized and other scholarly journals also refl ects the status of a research topic. There currently is no specialized journal on North American Buddhists. Of the journals on Buddhism likely to run articles on this topic, the online Journal of Global Buddhism has given the most coverage: seven of twenty-fi ve total articles (28 percent) since the journal’s inception in 2000. Even so, the trend at JGB has been diminished coverage over the years: six of those seven articles appeared in the fi rst three years. Moreover, since JGB is non-refereed, the quality of articles on this topic may be uneven. Other journals on Buddhism that might be amenable to articles about North American Buddhists include Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Contemporary Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Pacifi c World (third series), Buddhist-Christian Studies, and the online Journal of Buddhist Ethics. Coverage here is sparse, with less than eight percent of the combined articles in these journals since 2000 devoted to this topic (approximately twenty-fi ve articles). Pacifi c World ran a special section on “Japanese Buddhism in America” in 2003, but there has been nothing

8 The ﬁ gures in this paragraph derive from my analysis of the lists compiled by Williams (1999) for the years 1970–1997 and the dissertations archived in the Pro- Quest Dissertations and Theses database for the years 1998–2006 (http://proquest. umi.com). Williams’s lists show 44 dissertations on North American Buddhists over 28 years, an average of only about 1.5 per year. Moreover, Williams also listed Master’s and undergraduate senior theses, thus creating the appearance of more sophisticated scholarship than there was in fact. Only three of the 26 pre-Ph.D. authors in Williams’ lists eventually wrote a doctoral dissertation on Buddhism, all three about Buddhists outside of North America.

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comparable on the comprehensive topic of North American Buddhists in any of these journals since 2000.9 The record is abysmal in scholarly journals that do not specialize in Buddhism yet might be amenable to articles about North American Buddhists. Since 2000, less than twenty articles have appeared in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Journal for the Scientifi c Study of Religion, Sociology of Religion, Review of Religious Research, Amerasia Journal, Journal of Asian American Studies, and Canadian Ethnic Studies, a mere one percent of the combined number of articles. Again, the topic is pertinent to the interests of these journals—Sociology of Religion, for example, ran a special issue on American Jews in 2006, so a special issue on North American Buddhists is not out of the question. Given this dearth of journal coverage of the topic, I must conclude that submissions are lacking in number and/or quality. This does not argue for robust, cutting- edge scholarly research on this topic. The chapters in the present volume cite a combined total of less than twenty journal articles on North American Buddhists since 2000. These are spread out across a dozen journals (fi ve more than those mentioned here), indicating a willingness to publish worthy articles when available. The most compelling evidence for fi eld-of-study status for North American Buddhists is the increase over the past two decades in the number of books and edited volumes specifi cally on this topic, along with contributions to volumes not solely on the topic (see Tweed 1997, 2000; Gregory 2001). The chapters in the present volume cite a combined total of 29 such sources on North American Buddhists published since 2000, even as this volume itself extends this body of work. Considering all the evidence in the categories of specialization, organization, and publication, I would grant the topic of Buddhists in North America the status of a “proto-fi eld” at present. In other words, it has not progressed beyond the earliest stages of development. We might consider it a fi eld-in-the-making that may or may not mature. Some years ago, Peter Gregory wrote of the “still primitive level of sophistication” of what he called “an exciting new subfi eld within American religion, on the one hand, and within Buddhist studies, on the other”

9 There are a few years or issues missing in the information available for some of these journals. Nevertheless, the aggregate number of issues since 2000 that I was able to review (47) is large enough to indicate a pattern.

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(2001: 246, 233). Development has been uneven since then, particularly in the interdisciplinarity of the scholarship on this topic. But before considering that issue further, I should mention in passing the large body of non-scholarly literature by and about North American Buddhists, to which some notable scholars of Buddhism and Buddhist “scholar-practitioners” (Prebish 1999, 2002) contribute. This includes media coverage of the topic (e.g., the Religion and Ethics Newsweekly cover story, “Tensions in American Buddhism”),10 plus what I would call “adherent literature” like Tricycle: The Buddhist Review (e.g., Nattier 1995), Turning Wheel: The Journal of Socially Engaged Buddhism (e.g., Tanaka 2000), and the volume of proceedings of a 1997 conference in Boston, entitled Buddhism in America (Rapaport and Hotchkiss 1998), that makes a point of being experiential rather than academic (e.g., Thurman 1998). Scholars who participate in these ventures certainly help to raise the general proﬁ le of Buddhists in North America, but the non-refereed status of such work does little to advance the scholarly corpus on this topic.

The Question of Interdisciplinarity

I noted earlier that a topic becomes an interdisciplinary fi eld of study when the scholarship reaches a high level of cross-disciplinary productivity, sophistication, and integration. I also argued that, at present, the topic of North American Buddhists draws primarily bi-disciplinary interest from scholars in the humanities and the social sciences, and that these scholars have yet to achieve signifi cant interdisciplinarity in their combined body of work. Of course, in an important sense, this topic necessarily crosses disciplinary lines in that it concerns a contemporary lived religious tradition. But that does not guarantee interdisciplinarity in its study. For instance, in the years 2000–2006, eighteen Ph.D. dissertations on North American Buddhists granted by non-social science departments or programs listed social science keywords in their descriptors. By my assessment of their abstracts, less than half of the 18 employ a sophisticated social scientifi c analysis.

10 6 July 2007; http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week445/buddhismhtml (retrieved 16 September 2007).

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We do well to consider further the two disciplinary approaches to our topic, and to speculate on the prospects for true interdisciplinarity.

Humanities-Based Scholarship on North American Buddhists Humanities-based scholars have taken the lead in producing comprehensive surveys of North American Buddhists (e.g., Prebish 1979, 1999; Seager 1999a, 1999b). Of 54 different contributors writing on North American Buddhists in four recent edited volumes, the great majority (41, or 76 percent) are trained in the humanities, only eight (15 percent) in the social sciences. The dominance of the humanities-based perspective in these volumes is even greater than these percentages indicate, given that nearly one-fourth (10 of 41) of the humanities scholars are multiple contributors (Prebish and Tanaka 1998; Williams and Queen 1999; Prebish and Baumann 2002; Matthews 2006a). Many of the humanities-based scholars writing on North American Buddhists were trained in Buddhist studies or Buddhology, a scholarly fi eld of study dating back (in its modern form) to the late 19th century and today evidencing mature critical self-refl ection and internal debate about its coherence (Conze 1968; Ruegg 1992; Cabezon 1995; Gomez 1995; Nattier 1997; Scott 1997; Swearer and Promta 2000; Powers 2002). As we have seen, Buddhist studies has its own professional societies, most notably the International Association of Buddhist Studies (http://www.iabsinfo.net), and specialized journals. It has developed a robust North American presence with a signifi cant number of university programs, faculty, graduate students, and research activities (Webb 1985; De Jong 1997; Reynolds 1999; Matthews 2000; Prebish 1999, 2002). Buddhology’s residual snobbery regarding the study of North Ameri- can Buddhists stems largely from its preference for historical texts, which it adopted from its parent fi eld, comparative religion. Traditionally, Buddhist studies has “focus[ed] on the written, doctrinal text as the principal object of investigation,” explains Jose Cabezon (1995: 261–62) in an important critical review of the fi eld. He continues: This emphasis on the conceptual, chirographic and doctrinal seems to be in large part inherited from monastic Buddhism itself, where we often fi nd a rhetoric that emphasizes the study of texts and the doctrines found in them over the study of other semiotic forms. Be that as it may, it is indisputable that written texts and the doctrines they teach have received a disproportionate amount of attention in the scholarly literature of the fi eld.

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Cabezon and others report a recent trend within the fi eld of Buddhist studies, especially in its North American branch, to “set out in new directions” and take a “more expansive approach” than the classical humanities-based paradigms (Reynolds 1999: 462; also, see Nattier 1997; Matthews 2000). This includes incorporating insights from the social sciences and researching Buddhism on-the-ground as well as in- the-texts. Wishful thinking aside, true interdisciplinarity with the social sciences has not yet been achieved in Buddhist studies. Although the International Association of Buddhist Studies claims to be an interdisciplinary society, articles over the 30-year run of its journal betray minimal representation of social scientifi c studies. The same can be said about the most recent journal in the fi eld, Contemporary Buddhism, despite its subtitle, An Interdisciplinary Journal (in fact, this journal is self-consciously practice-oriented). And although Cabezon (1995: 255) considers the American Academy of Religion, the primary professional home for Buddhologists, to be “an institution that stresses broad and interdisciplinary research,” its disciplinary breadth is largely confi ned to the humanities.11 Several humanities-based scholars have identifi ed key themes and issues in the scholarly study of North American Buddhists (Prebish 1998, 1999; Tanaka 1998; Queen 1999; Seager 1999a, 1999b, 2007; Gregory 2001; Numrich 2003; Bramadat 2006; Matthews 2006b: xvii–xxi). These include group identities, leadership patterns, organizational life, inter-group relations (among Buddhists as well as between Buddhists and non-Buddhists), adaptation to larger social contexts, race and ethnicity, class, gender, generational dynamics, migration, and transnationalism. Such themes and issues have been the special purview of the social sciences.

Social Scientifi c Scholarship on North American Buddhists Rather than comprehensive overviews, social scientifi c scholars writing on this topic tend to focus on specifi c Buddhist populations or group- ings in North America, sometimes drawing comparisons to Christian

11 Prebish’s (1999: 183–96, 2002) surveys reveal the preponderance of humanities- based training, afﬁ liations, and research interests among the scholars of Buddhism in the AAR. I recall convincing one of the premier sociologists of religion to attend a couple of AAR annual meetings. He did not continue after that, citing the emphasis on texts and doctrines.

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co-ethnics. Their works include: (1) books, such as Tetsuden Kashima’s (1977) classic study of Japanese Buddhists, Janet McLellan’s (1999) analysis of fi ve Asian Buddhist populations in Toronto, Penny Van Esterik’s (1992) depiction of Lao refugees, and discussions of non- Asian “converts” to Buddhism by Joseph B. Tamney (1992) and James William Coleman (2001); (2) chapters in edited volumes on immigrant and ethnic groups, such as Karen J. Chai’s (2001) contribution to Korean Americans and Their Religions and Fenggang Yang’s (2000) essay on a Chinese Buddhist temple in Religion and the New Immigrants; and (3) journal articles, such as Carl L. Bankston’s (1997) piece on Theravada Buddhists in Sociological Spectrum and Carolyn Chen’s (2002) comparison of Taiwanese Buddhists and Christians in Sociology of Religion. A few social scientists have offered more comprehensive analyses of Buddhists in North America (e.g., McLellan 1998, 1999: 11–34; Wuthnow and Cadge 2004; Smith 2006, 2007). The present volume marks an important milestone. This is the fi rst multi-author collection of social scientifi c scholarship on the comprehensive topic of North American Buddhists. At the 2006 joint ASR/ASA session, I expressed my wish to see more integrated scholarship between social scientists and humanities-based scholars, which could begin to move this topic toward becoming an interdisciplinary fi eld of study. It is doubtful that such interdisciplinarity will arise out of either the American Academy of Religion, with its heavy emphasis on classical Buddhology, or the International Association of Buddhist Studies and the Association for Asian Studies, with their emphasis on Asia rather than Asian diasporas. If an interdisciplinary fi eld of study does emerge, it will more likely coalesce through the initiative of scholars researching North American Buddhists in disparate academic homes across both the humanities and the social sciences. I offer the present volume as a catalyst for realizing this wish. I take pleasure in the irony that a humanities-trained scholar has brought together this collection of social scientifi c scholarship. My appreciation for the social sciences began when my doctoral research in comparative religion took an ethnographic turn (Numrich 1992, cf. 1996).12 For humanities-based readers, this volume illustrates how social scientifi c

12 My initial dissertation topic was a Bultmannian demythologization of the Pali Buddhist scriptures, consistent with the canons of comparative religion and classical Buddhology.

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perspectives and approaches can helpfully inform the study of North American Buddhists in social context. That includes a heavy reliance on empirical research in order to generate data rather than accumulate strings of anecdotes. The well-known quip in social scientifi c circles, “the plural of anecdote is not data,” should caution non-social scientists against generalizing about North American Buddhists based on minimal, unsystematic, or no actual fi eld work.13 In my mind, insistence on empirical grounding would be the most signifi cant social scientifi c contribution to an interdisciplinary fi eld of study on this topic, especially when dealing with questions about Buddhist identity and organizational dynamics. For social scientists, the present volume provides a convenient overview of important social scientifi c research by your peers heretofore available only piecemeal. In another place, sociologist Fred Kniss and I argue that sociologists can learn a great deal about religion qua religion from humanities-based scholarship. Ironically, for instance, sociological studies often under-appreciate and under-analyze the very aspects that distinguish immigrant religious associations from other kinds of immigrant associations. Comparative religion, the parent fi eld of Buddhist studies, brings a “close, empathetic attention to religious phenomena” (Kniss and Numrich 2007: 8) that can helpfully inform empirical research and avoid simplistic “Religion 101” portrayals. This is particularly important in understanding religious practices and religious factors underlying adaptive processes. I trust that all readers will fi nd something of value in this volume, which I hope spurs further discussion of a possible interdisciplinary fi eld of study of North American Buddhists.

About the Chapters in This Volume

The chapters in this volume examine the current state of research on North American Buddhists and key aspects of Buddhist life and experience in social context, including group identity and status, religious practices, organizational structures, generational dynamics, relations with

13 For a discussion of this quip, see the March 2007 Social Science Statistics Blog of Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, available at http:// www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/sss/archives/2007/03/the_singular_of.shtml, retrieved 5 April 2007.

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non-Buddhist groups and the larger society, and migratory and adaptive processes. Case studies feature Southeast Asian, Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, meditation-oriented, and socially engaged Buddhists. This list not only covers the major demographics of North American Buddhists but also roughly approximates the distribution between Asian Ameri- cans (the majority) and non-Asian Americans. The scholarly literature has not always sought such representative demographic coverage (see Numrich 1996), while popular media continue to privilege non-Asian meditators in presenting the North American Buddhist “face.” The contributors to this volume, a mix of sociologists and anthropologists, come from the United States and Canada. Chapters 2 and 3 “locate” Buddhists in North America in different ways. Janet McLellan (Chapter 2) provides a comprehensive overview of the themes and issues dominating current scholarship on North American Buddhists. Carl L. Bankston III and Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo (Chapter 3) offer an extended theoretical discussion of two forms of maintenance in a social order—regular patterns of interaction and cooperative relations—and then illustrate these forms with the case of North American Theravada Buddhists. Subsequent chapters focus on other North American Buddhist cases. Two authors explore the long-term presence of Japanese American Buddhists. Arthur Nishimura (Chapter 4) traces the institutional story of the Buddhist Mission of North America (now the Buddhist Churches of America) down to World War II, while Tetsuden Kashima (Chapter 5) presents a comparative analysis of contemporary Japanese Ameri- can religiosity. The rest of the volume covers Buddhist groups with a primarily post-1960s presence.14 Carolyn Chen (Chapter 6) and Karen Chai Kim (Chapter 7) discuss Chinese American Buddhists and Korean American Buddhists, respectively, both authors comparing co-ethnic Christians. James William Coleman’s chapter (8) on meditation-oriented Buddhists and Constance Lynn Geekie’s chapter (9) on Soka Gakkai deal with predominantly non-Asian Buddhist groups. The variety of North American Buddhist experiences comes through in this volume, as do the commonalities that tie all Buddhists together as minorities

14 Dividing North American immigration history into pre- and post-1960s eras is common in the scholarly literature due to the signiﬁ cant policy changes enacted in both Canada and the United States in that decade.

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in North American society—for most, a double minority by religion and race.15

References

Bankston, Carl L. III. 1997. “Bayou Lotus: Theravada Buddhism in Southwestern Louisiana.” Sociological Spectrum 17: 453–72. Bramadat, Paul. 2006. “Foreword.” Pp. xii–xv in Buddhism in Canada, edited by Bruce Matthews. New York: Routledge. Cabezon, Jose Ignacio. 1995. “Buddhist Studies as a Discipline and the Role of Theory.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 18: 231–68. Cadge, Wendy. 2005. Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2007. “Reﬂ ections on Habits, Buddhism in America, and Religious Individual- ism.” Sociology of Religion 68: 201–05. ——— and Sidhorn Sangdhanoo. 2005. “Thai Buddhism in America: An Historical and Contemporary Overview.” Contemporary Buddhism 6: 7–35. Chai, Karen J. 2001. “Intra-Ethnic Religious Diversity: Korean Buddhists and Protes- tants in Greater Boston.” Pp. 273–94 in Korean Americans and Their Religions: Pilgrims and Missionaries from a Different Shore, edited by Ho-Youn Kwon, Kwang Chung Kim and R. Stephen Warner. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Chen, Carolyn. 2002. “The Religious Varieties of Ethnic Presence: A Comparison between a Taiwanese Immigrant Buddhist Temple and an Evangelical Christian Church.” Sociology of Religion 63: 215–38. Coleman, James William. 2001. The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press. Conze, Edward. 1968. “Recent Progress in Buddhist Studies.” Pp. 1–32 in Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies: Selected Essays by Edward Conze. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. De Jong, J. W. 1997. A Brief History of Buddhist Studies in Europe and America. Tokyo: Kosei Publishing. Eck, Diana L. 1999. “Foreword.” Pp. ix–xi in American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, edited by Duncan Ryuken Williams and Christopher S. Queen. London: Curzon Press. Geiger, Roger L. 2004. To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900–1940. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Gomez, Luis O. 1995. “Unspoken Paradigms: Meanderings through the Metaphors of a Field.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 18: 183–230. Gregory, Peter N. 2001. “Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America.” Religion and American Culture 11: 233–63.

15 I wish to thank Kevin J. Christiano who, as ASR President, helped to organize the joint thematic session at the 2006 ASR/ASA meetings, and William H. Swatos, Jr., ASR Executive Ofﬁ cer and general editor of the Religion and the Social Order series, who ﬁ rst suggested the possibility of this volume. I owe special gratitude to Fred Kniss, director of the McNamara Center for the Social Study of Religion at Loyola University Chicago, my congenial research home for most of the past decade, for his astute comments on a previous draft of this chapter.

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Kashima, Tetsuden. 1977. Buddhism in America: The Social Organization of an Ethnic Religious Institution. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Klein, Julie Thompson. 1990. Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Kniss, Fred and Paul D. Numrich. 2007. Sacred Assemblies and Civic Engagement: How Religion Matters for America’s Newest Immigrants. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Uni- versity Press. Matthews, Bruce. 2000. “Buddhist Studies in Canada.” Pp. 144–66 in The State of Bud- dhist Studies in the World, 1972–1997, edited by Donald K. Swearer and Somparn Promta. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Center for Buddhist Studies. ———, ed. 2006a. Buddhism in Canada. New York: Routledge. ———. 2006b. “Preface.” Pp. xvi–xxii in Buddhism in Canada, edited by Bruce Mat- thews. New York: Routledge. McLellan, Janet. 1998. “Buddhist Identities in Toronto: The Interplay of Local, National, and Global Contexts.” Social Compass 45: 227–45. ———. 1999. Many Petals of the Lotus: Five Asian Buddhist Communities in Toronto. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nattier, Jan. 1995. “Visible and Invisible: Jan Nattier on the Politics of Representation in Buddhist America.” Tricycle 5: 42–49. ———. 1997. “Review Essay: Buddhist Studies in the Post-Colonial Age.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65: 469–85. Numrich, Paul David. 1992. “Americanization in Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples.” Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University. ———. 1996. Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. ———. 2003. “Two Buddhisms further Considered.” Contemporary Buddhism 4: 55–78. Powers, John. 2002. Review of The State of Buddhist Studies in the World, 1972–1997, edited by Donald K. Swearer and Somparn Promta. Journal of Global Buddhism 3: 36–45. Prebish, Charles S. 1979. American Buddhism. North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press. ———. 1998. “Introduction.” Pp. 1–10 in The Faces of Buddhism in America, edited by Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1999. Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2002. “Studying the Spread and Histories of Buddhism in the West: The Emergence of Western Buddhism as a New Subdiscipline within Buddhist Studies.” Pp. 66–81 in Westward Dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia, edited by Charles S. Prebish and Martin Baumann. Berkeley: University of California Press. Prebish, Charles S. and Martin Baumann, eds. 2002. Westward Dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Prebish, Charles S. and Kenneth K. Tanaka, eds. 1998. The Faces of Buddhism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Queen, Christopher S. 1999. “Introduction.” Pp. xiv–xxxvii in American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, edited by Duncan Ryuken Williams and Christopher S. Queen. London: Curzon Press. Rapaport, Al and Brian D. Hotchkiss, eds. 1998. Buddhism in America. Rutland, VT: Tuttle. Reynolds, Frank E. 1999. “Coming of Age: Buddhist Studies in the United States from 1972–1997. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 22: 457–83. Ruegg, D. Seyfort. 1992. “Some Observations on the Present and Future of Buddhist Studies.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 15: 104–17.

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Scott, David. 1997. “The Study of Buddhism: Issues and Challenges.” Buddhist Studies Review 14: 141–68. Seager, Richard Hughes. 1999a. Buddhism in America. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1999b. “Buddhist Worlds in the USA: A Survey of the Territory.” Pp. 238–61 in American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, edited by Duncan Ryuken Williams and Christopher S. Queen. London: Curzon Press. ———. 2007. Review of Wendy Cadge, Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75: 481–84. Smith, Buster G. 2006. “Buddhism in America: An Analysis of Social Receptivity.” Contemporary Buddhism 7: 149–64. ———. 2007. “Variety in the Sangha: A Survey of Buddhist Organizations in America.” Review of Religious Research 48: 308–17. Swearer, Donald K. and Somparn Promta, eds. 2000. The State of Buddhist Studies in the World, 1972–1997. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Center for Buddhist Studies. Tamney, Joseph B. 1992. American Society in the Buddhist Mirror. New York: Garland Publishing. Tanaka, Kenneth K. 1998. “Epilogue: The Colors and Contours of American Bud- dhism.” Pp. 287–98 in The Faces of Buddhism in America, edited by Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2000. “Asian American Buddhists Look at Buddhism in America.” Turning Wheel Fall: 16. Thurman, Robert A. F. 1998. “Toward an American Buddhism.” Pp. 450–68 in Buddhism in America, edited by Al Rapaport and Brian D. Hotchkiss. Rutland, VT: Tuttle. Tweed, Thomas A. 1997. “Asian Religions in the United States: Refl ections on an Emerging Subfi eld.” Pp. 189–217 in Religious Diversity and American Religious History: Studies in Traditions and Cultures, edited by Walter H. Conser, Jr. and Sumner B. Twiss. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. ———. 2000. The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844–1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Van Esterik, Penny. 1992. Taking Refuge: Lao Buddhists in North America. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State Univeristy. Webb, Russell. 1985. “Buddhist Scholarship in Canada.” Buddhist Studies Review 2: 47–65. Williams, Duncan Ryuken. 1999. Appendices A and B. Pp. 262–311 in American Bud- dhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, edited by Duncan Ryuken Williams and Christopher S. Queen. London: Curzon Press. ——— and Christopher S. Queen, eds. 1999. American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship. London: Curzon Press. Wuthnow, Robert and Wendy Cadge. 2004. “Buddhists and Buddhism in the United States: The Scope of Infl uence.” Journal for the Scientifi c Study of Religion 43: 363–80. Yang, Fenggang. 2000. “The Hsi-Nan Chinese Buddhist Temple: Seeking to Ameri- canize.” Pp. 67–87 in Religion and the New Immigrants: Continuities and Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations, by Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Saltzman Chafetz. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

NUMRICH_f2_1-18.indd 17 4/4/2008 4:21:02 PM NUMRICH_f2_1-18.indd 18 4/4/2008 4:21:02 PM CHAPTER TWO

THEMES AND ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF NORTH AMERICAN BUDDHISTS AND BUDDHISM

Janet McLellan

Since the mid-1960s, social and immigration changes in North America have rapidly expanded the presence and practices of non-Christian religious minorities from numerous ethnic, racial, linguistic, and national backgrounds. Many North American cities are now home to a diverse array of ashrams, temples, mosques, and gurdwaras, representing Asian religions and Islam from East and Southeast Asia, Africa, the West Indies, the Middle East, India and Pakistan (Warner and Wittner 1998; McLellan 1999; Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000; Eck 2001; Smith 2002; Bramadat and Seljak 2005). As an integral part of modern global population movements to multiple nation-states, these religions in diaspora manifest new social forms, types of consciousness, and innovative modes of cultural production (Vertovec 1997, 2003; Chandler 2002; Leonard et al. 2005). Generational complexities and the involvement of individuals who have developed relatively new associations with these religions signifi cantly contribute to their diverse and shifting confi gurations within the North American context. The rapid growth of Buddhism within the last 40 years highlights this extensive multi-religious phenomenon, particularly in regard to its nuanced social intersections and sometimes contradictory dynamics. Much of the literature concerned with Buddhism and Buddhists in North America refl ects a humanities-based religious studies approach that emphasizes American encounters with Buddhism (texts and religious representatives), the transmission and modifi cation of teachings and lineages, gender dynamics, interfaith dialogue, social engagement, and the Buddhist impact on popular and elite cultures (Fields 1986; Kraft 1988; Boucher 1993; Tsomo 1995; Prebish and Tanaka 1998; Seager 1999; Tweed and Prothero 1999; Queen 2000; Coleman 2001; Mullen 2001; Prebish and Baumann 2002). Although smaller numbers of ethnographic studies have provided signifi cant data on Buddhist immigrants and refugees, as well as those who have different kinds of

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affi liations or commitments with Buddhist beliefs and practices (Kashima 1977; Kawamura 1977; Preston 1988; Dorais 1989; Van Esterik 1992; Numrich 1996, 2000; McLellan 1987, 1999; Smith-Hefner 1998; Mach- acek 2001; Chen 2003; Suh 2004), conceptual frameworks informed by broader social scientifi c perspectives are less common (Preston 1982; Gussner and Berkowitz 1988; Huynh 2000; Numrich 2003; Wuthnow and Cadge 2004; McLellan and White 2005; McLellan 2006). The thematic explorations presented in this chapter rely to some extent on descriptive and ethnographic research involving Buddhists in Toronto, a major part of my research into Canadian Buddhism and related topics in which I have been engaged since 1985. The city of Toronto has changed dramatically within the last 40 years and now represents one of the most diverse Buddhist presences in North America. Toronto’s immigrant Buddhist diversity is detailed both through class and status distinctions arising from pre-migration characteristics and experiences and through the impact that migration processes have had on a group or community’s ability to re-establish or redefi ne Buddhist identities and traditions. Buddhists who utilize religious beliefs, practices, and institutions to enhance ethnic, national, and linguistic identities are differentiated from those, who in the literature, are commonly identifi ed as converts, although the validity of the criteria supporting conversion is questioned. This chapter examines the extent to which different groups or communities work toward public presence and social inclusion that, in turn, refl ects the role that social capital plays in enabling them to engage in the politics of recognition and representation (ranging from local social service involvement to that of transnational networks and linkages). The concluding analysis of generational continuities and confl icts highlights ongoing changes and challenges to Buddhism within the larger North American context, complicating existing conceptual frameworks for the analysis and identifi cation of Buddhists.

Census Numbers and Identiﬁ cation of Buddhists in North America

Although thousands of Buddhist temples, meditation centers, and Buddhist associations can be identiﬁ ed in North America (Numrich 1996, 1999; Morreale 1998; Prebish and Tanaka 1998; McLellan 1999; Matthews 2006), there is no adequate means to determine an accurate count of Buddhists. Wuthnow and Cadge (2004: 364) note that “cred- ible estimates of the number of Buddhists in the United States at the

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start of the 21st century range from 1.4–4 million,” refl ecting all those identifi ed as Buddhist and/or affi liated with Buddhism. Smith (2002) argues that the higher proportions of Buddhists among American student samples make any overall consensus more diffi cult, especially when compared to Hindu and Muslim populations who do not have the same range and type of adherents, or social infl uence. Canadian census data are chronically under-representative and do not refl ect overlapping categories of religious identity. The federal census lists a nationwide total of just over 300,000 Buddhists, with almost half residing in the province of Ontario, and 97,165 of those residing in Toronto (Statistics Canada 2001). I have suggested (1999: 13) that a more realistic estimate of Buddhists in the Greater Toronto Area might well total more than 250,000, refl ecting community fi gures that correlate Buddhism with cultural, ethnic, and homeland identities. Asian Buddhist temples in Toronto commonly determine membership by counting households, not individuals; one household may include three generations, as well as extended family members who frequently are involved with several religious affi liations or syncretic combinations. Unless there is extensive fi eldwork familiarity with particular groups, using membership fi gures for quantifi cation is an unreliable index since “different groups use different criteria of membership, some employ different categories of membership, some keep more accurate or up-to-date fi gures than others, some tend to infl ate membership, and newer and smaller groups may not keep any records” (Gregory 2001: 237). Many individuals consider themselves “Buddhist” but have no group or temple affi liation, and conversely, some may attend group or temple events but do not consider themselves exclusively “Buddhist,” maintaining multiple religious affi liations. The 2001 Statistics Canada census identifi ed Chinese as the largest ethnic and visible minority presence in the Greater Toronto Area, representing almost one quarter of the total four million population. Although a large number of Chinese immigrants in Toronto are associated with some form of Christianity, this often entails the simultaneous maintenance of other religious loyalties. Depending on situational contingencies, Toronto-based Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Southeast Asia may identify themselves as Confucian, Christian, and/or Buddhist. Some individuals may concurrently attend Chinese Christian business breakfast meetings or belong to a Chinese Chris- tian church, volunteer at a Buddhist temple in the evenings by serving on the board of directors or a committee, send their children to an

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after-school Confucian-modelled education program, and participate in Buddhist ceremonies honoring deceased family members (McLellan 1999: 164; Yang 2002). Similar religious blendings are found among Cambodians and Vietnamese who converted to Christianity in refugee camps or through their relocation sponsorship process; the observance of Buddhist and other traditional rituals is not considered inappropriate, particularly those related to ancestors (Rutledge 1992; Douglas 2005). Asian individuals in Toronto who do not overtly identify themselves as Buddhist continue to go to the temples for religious participation during special holidays such as New Year or Buddha’s birthday (similar to the Christian practice of going to church only at Christmas and Easter); during life crises, accidents, or illness; for death and memorial services; and for celebratory occasions such as weddings, family reunions, and graduations. Gans (1994) identifi es this kind of behavior as “symbolic religiosity.” Toronto Buddhist temples refl ect a variety of participants, from occasional visitors and cultural or educational program attendees, to lay devotees who routinely seek petitionary prayers, blessings, or opportunities to make merit, to the highly committed core members (often identifi ed by Buddhist names, robes worn during services, particular initiations, and an intensity of service or involvement), who perform the bulk of administrative and organizational roles. Non-Buddhist, non-Asian spouses at Asian-oriented temples present another kind of participants, who are strong supporters but not necessarily adherents of Buddhist beliefs and practices (Padgett 2002; Perreira 2004). The complexity of Buddhist affi liation observed among Buddhist immigrants and refugees complements Tweed’s (2002) range of non- Asian Buddhist adherents and sympathizers who also exhibit multiple sources and sites of religious identifi cation. Classifying North American Buddhists into broad categories such as convert and ethnic (the latter also referred to in the literature as heritage, cradle, culture, or baggage) is too simplistic and reductionistic to refl ect the diverse range of associational contexts, beliefs, syncretic practices, and types of participation. Numrich (2003, 2006) provides an excellent overview of the historical development of various typologies utilized by scholars to distinguish the long-established Chinese and Japanese communities in North America from newer Asian immigrants and refugees, and both from so-called converts who comprise a vast range of racial, ethnic, class, and national backgrounds, identifi ed by Seager (1999) as Euro American/Caucasian, Black, and Hispanic. Rather than reiterate Numrich’s comprehensive coverage of the ongoing discourse, attention is given here to the largely

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uncontested use of the term “convert” in the literature (Coleman 2001: 196; Gregory 2001: 242).1 While certain Buddhist groups such as Soka Gakkai have developed clear criteria for conversion (Hammond and Machacek 2004; Numrich 2006: 216), material on the missionizing dimension for most other forms of Buddhism in the West is lacking (Obadia 2001: 95). Learman’s (2005: 3–10) analysis of modern “Buddhist missionaries” is one of the few that express a range of analogies and models to depict how changes in religious affi liation are understood, particularly as they refl ect the specifi cs of the Buddhist mission (i.e., as foreign, diaspora, or domestic) in which conversion arises. Without analysis of the underlying motivations of those involved in the missionizing process, it is diffi cult to contextualize the “convert” or conversion dynamics. Chandler (2005: 178) notes that non-Chinese attracted to Foguang temples because of their interest in Buddhist teachings often clash with prevalent organizational values, especially the emphasis on Chinese identity and its cultural accretions. When Buddhism is closely confl ated with a particular Asian ethno-cultural worldview, individuals from other cultures and worldviews may adhere to generalized religious ideals or practices but reject the notion that they have converted. For many non-Asians attracted to Buddhism, becoming a convert to an ethnically identifi ed temple or tradition may require an extensive adjustments that could cause confl icts or confusion between social and religious identities. The lack of kinship ties or shared historical heritage exacerbates language, ethnic, and cultural differences, frequently leading to the development of “parallel congregations” wherein non-Asians prefer to gather at separate times and learn about Buddhism under the guidance of an English-speaking teacher (Numrich 1996, 2000: 196; McLellan 1999: 207). As Baumann (2002: 56) and Numrich (2003: 67) point out, while Asians participate in more “traditional” forms, non-Asians are taught a modernist type of Buddhism that emphasizes rational and scriptural elements with the practice of meditation, and excludes ethno-cultural rites and ceremonies. Tweed’s (2002) discussion of night-stand Buddhists, sympathizers, and adherents is supported by Wallace (2002: 34) who draws on Stark and Bainbridge (1985) to type non-Asian Buddhists as occasional “audience”

1 Numrich (2000, 2003, 2006) advocates the value of the “two Buddhisms” typology of “culture” and “convert” Buddhists in North America.

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participants, those with student/teacher relationships, and those who have a self-conscious sense of conversion, referring to themselves as “being Buddhist.” This range of involvement refl ects the gradations of commitment that Kanter (1968) identifi ed in other religious communities, beginning with an initial investment and sacrifi ce (of time, money, resources), developing increasing cohesive and community bonds with others in the group, to full organizational and ideological adherence. Danyluk (2003), however, details the hesitation many highly committed practitioners have in labeling or categorizing themselves as Buddhist, let alone as converts, depicting what Queen (1999: xvii) refers to as a “composite persona” of “multi-layered religious identities in transition.” From this perspective, the multiple and overlapping aspects of religious identity and affi liation among non-Asian Buddhist “converts” is similar to that observed among Asians in North America who “convert” to Christianity or “rediscover” Buddhism, refl ecting both migratory and generational contingencies (Kendis 1989; Rutledge 1992; Kamenetz 1994; Boorstein 1997; Chandler 1998: 23; McLellan 1999: 58; Ng 2002; Numrich 2003: 66; Douglas 2005). Rather than utilizing the ambiguous, and in many ways inappropriate term “convert,” closer attention to Marler and Hadaway’s (2002: 289) distinction between religion and “spirituality” or “spiritual seeking” may represent a more “functional and intrinsic dimension” better suited to identify those who undertake Buddhist practices and commitments. In his analysis of the religious motivations of the Buddha’s original disciples, Brekke (2002: 47–55) also rejects the Christian-based Pauline paradigm of conversion (and subsequently the term “convert”) as being suitable to examine religious changes of individuals already on a path of religious seekership. Preston’s (1981, 1982) “practitioner’s” approach that cor- relates the physiological and consciousness experiences of meditative practices with behavioral and attitudinal consequences, both shaped and sustained by interaction with and the support of others within a shared group context, has more applicability than either a Judeo- Christian or stage model of conversion (Rambo and Farhadian 1999) to depict non-Asian involvements and commitments with Buddhism. As Numrich (2006: 224) points out, the variables that predispose individuals to pursue one kind of Buddhist practice over others have not yet been substantiated through empirical analysis, leaving a signifi cant gap in the scholarship and too much reliance on “anecdotal reports and philosophical dispositions.”

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The traditionalist/modernist dichotomy that Baumann (2002) suggests between “converts” and “ethnic” Buddhists implies a rigid essentialism that inhibits dynamic and fl exible religious responses to social pressures or new needs. Not all “converts” are attracted to or adhere to modernist depictions of Buddhism, and many “ethnic” Buddhists had already critically rejected what they perceive as the ritualism of traditional practices, as well as traditional gender or authority patterns, long before they migrated (Bechert 1984; Gombrich and Obeyesekere 1988). The distinct differences that do remain between Asian and non- Asian Buddhists are more in terms of cultural precedents, religious histories, majority/minority ethnic dynamics, and types of privileged status in racially stratifi ed North American social contexts (Fields 1998; Gregory 2001; Numrich 2003, 2006: 219). Everyday realities of racism and discrimination, combined with marginalization as immigrant minorities, continue to affect Asian Buddhists, even those who trace their North American heritage back to the late 19th century. A complex interplay between traditional continuities and modernist transformations (innovations, invented traditions) has always been present within most Asian Buddhist groups and communities in North America. Increasingly, this continuum is exacerbated by growing educational and generational differences, the degree to which specifi c religious practices and beliefs are retained as representations of homeland-based ethno- cultural identity, the new kinds of transnational networks and linkages developed to inform and infl uence particularized Buddhist identities in diaspora, and the willingness (or necessity) to transform from an ethnic to a multi-ethnic organization (Mullins 1987). Religious, ethnic, and civic identities are all extensively transformed by migration and resettlement, as are the organizational structures and practices that frame religious traditions, systems of monastic support, leadership, and authority patterns (Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000; Yang and Ebaugh 2001; Leonard et al. 2005). North American Asian Buddhist groups within a similar ethno-specifi c tradition can be situated in radically different positions regarding the traditionalist/modernist continuum. Among ethnic Vietnamese Buddhists, for example, those who follow Thich Nhat Hanh’s Tiep Hien Order are closely aligned with modernism, whereas those who adhere to Amida (A-Di-Da) temples would be considered traditionalists. Similarly, Kampuchea Krom (ethnic Khmer from Vietnam) follow the modernist Thommayuth approach to Buddhism, compared to the

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majority of Khmer Buddhists from Cambodia who retain the more traditional Mohanikay practice. The Canadian-born and/or Canadian- raised children of Khmer Buddhists from Cambodia, however, are attracted to the modernist teachings of the Kampuchea Krom monks, identifying more with a rational approach to Buddhism than with their parents’ ritualism and spirit beliefs. Among the larger Chinese Buddhist temples in Toronto, “modernist” and innovative forms of Buddhism are presented (e.g., sutra study classes, meditation instruction, graduated Buddhist education programs) alongside traditional ethno-cultural forms, enabling people simultaneously to retain historical continuity while meeting contemporary needs. Numrich (2006: 221–22) identiﬁ es similar combinations among Southeast Asian Buddhist temples in Chicago. Rather than being reduced to a single form characterized as “ethnic” or “traditional,” Asian Buddhist identities and practices depict a mix of hybrid combinations of homeland and localized North American loyalties, wherein different components of modernism and traditionalism shift and are expressed according to context and situation (Stepick 2005: 15). Using examples from Toronto, some of these complexities are examined in greater detail in the next section.

Diversity of Buddhists and Buddhist Communities in Toronto

The Buddhist population in the Greater Toronto Area today is largely comprised of Asian immigrants and refugees. Half of the more than 65 Buddhist temples and associations are Chinese-identiﬁ ed, most established within the last 10 to 15 years. The various groups of non- Asian Buddhists are primarily Canadian-born, but a signiﬁ cant number who participate in various temples and centers are recent immigrants from Eastern Europe, South America, and Israel. Vipassana, Zen, and Vajrayana are the types of Buddhist meditation most non-Asians practice. In 1951, individuals with Asian origins totalled 0.9 percent of Toronto’s population, rising to 2.5 percent before 1981 (Breton et al. 1990: 19), and by the 2001 census, comprising over 25 percent. In Canada, the 1971 Multiculturalism Act stated that cultural diversity was an integral part of Canadian society and although religious minorities were expected to accommodate to Canadian laws and municipal codes, the Act actively encouraged them to retain strong ethnic and linguistic identities. This resulted in fewer overt pressures of assimilation, particularly regarding Christian conversion tactics as the means to become fully Canadian.

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Until 1966, the only Buddhist presence in Toronto was that of the Japanese Canadians at the Toronto Buddhist Church. The Toronto Buddhist Church was founded in the late 1940s when the immigrant and Canadian-born Japanese, all forced to relocate from British Colum- bia following their wartime internment and then dispersed throughout Ontario, were fi nally allowed into Toronto for employment and living opportunities. In contrast to the overt racism and discrimination facing Japanese Canadian Buddhists at Toronto Buddhist Church during the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, all other Asian Buddhist groups in Toronto have resettled within an increasingly multi-cultural, multi- racial, and multi-religious context. The formation of The Dharma Centre of Canada in 1966, a non-Asian group under the instruction of a Toronto-born Caucasian man ordained as a Theravadan monk in Burma, began a new phase of Buddhism that refl ected the overseas travels and interests of North Americans born in the late 1940s and 1950s who oriented themselves to Eastern religious traditions (Preston 1982; Richardson 1985; Kent 2001). In 1967, changes to Canadian immigration law removed specifi c country restrictions and enabled Asian individuals and their families from Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Tibet, Nepal, India, and Thailand to settle in the Toronto area. A year later, two Chinese monks visiting from Hong Kong, the Rev. Sing Hung and the Rev. Shing Cheung, established the fi rst Chinese Buddhist organizations in Toronto, the Buddhist Association of Canada and Nam Shan Temple. Over three decades, these two monks developed an extensive Cham Shan temple complex that now includes two separate residences for nuns (Nam Shan Temple and Ching Fa Temple), several affi liated temples and associations in Toronto (such as the Youth Buddhist Activity center, Hong Fa Temple, the Toronto Buddhist Society, and a Buddhist art gallery), a 24-acre retreat property in Whitby, the Fah Hoy Temple in Hamilton, the World Peace Ten Thousand Buddhas Saira Stupa Temple in Niagara Falls, and the International Buddhist Zen Temple (a former hotel), also in Niagara Falls. In 1971, 228 Tibetans became the fi rst Asian refugees admitted into Canada and resettled in several provinces. Three groups of fi ve to seven families were placed in small Ontario cities within a one- to two-hour drive of Toronto. Within a few years, a small community of ethnic Tibetan Buddhists was established in Toronto, and small groups of Caucasians were founding the fi rst Vajrayana practice centers under ethnic Tibetan teachers (McLellan 1987). During the 1970s, several ethno-specifi c temples and Buddhist associations were founded

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(representing the Sinhalese, Burmese, Ambedkar [Indian], and Korean communities), as were Toronto-based branches of different North American Zen traditions ( Japanese and Korean), and Zen centers under the guidance of an Asian teacher. The fi rst intra-religious Bud- dhist celebration of Wesak in North America was held in Toronto in 1979, with participation from 15 distinct Toronto-based Buddhist groups (McLellan 1999: 31). Beginning in l979, the large infl ux of Indochinese refugees contributed signifi cantly to the growth of Bud- dhism. Within a decade, over 70,000 Vietnamese, 5,000 Cambodians, and several thousand Lao resided in the Greater Metropolitan Region. By 1987, Toronto’s Buddhist diversity included more than 21 distinct Buddhist temples and practice groups, most of them participating in that year’s co-religious celebration of Wesak. The steady immigration fl ow from Hong Kong and Taiwan, which began in the early l980s and peaked by the late 1990s, coupled with ongoing family sponsorship and reunifi cation programs from all Asian communities, steadily increased the number and diversity of Buddhists. During the 1990s, immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan represented the largest single source of newcomers to Toronto (as well as Canada as a whole), comprising two-thirds of the then 350,000 total Chinese in Toronto. By 2001, the total number of Chinese in Toronto increased another 14 percent (2001 Census Data) primarily through immigration from China, which became the largest annual source of immigrants to Canada. Except for the elderly, however, the Chinese pre-migration experiences under the communist political system do not usually include a Buddhist affi liation. It remains to be seen whether the younger mainland Chinese will assume religious identifi cation or activities, as other ethnic Chinese immigrants have done. The most recent increase in the number of Toronto Buddhists is due to almost 3,000 Tibetan refugee claimants from Nepal and India who arrived via the United States throughout 2001 and 2002. Most of these Tibetans, including several monks and nuns, have been given offi cial “landed status” as refugees to stay in Canada. They are generally young with high levels of education and their active participation in Tibetan nationalism is correlated with their Buddhist identities, similar to what Mullen (2001) noted in New York. Both the Tibetan community (which was slightly less than 150 individuals in 1999) and local Vajrayana temples have been revitalized by their presence. To date, ethnic Tibetans still do not have their own temple but tend to use a primarily non-Asian one led by an ethnic Tibetan Lama or Rinpoche

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(types of teacher), particularly for cultural celebrations (Losar or the Dalai Lama’s birthday), family rituals (naming, weddings, funerals), and personal needs (blessings, advice). Several of the temples under the leadership of a Tibetan teacher now have various “parallel congregations” (Numrich 1996): non-Asian practitioners, ethnic Tibetans, Chi- nese Buddhists who combine Vajrayana practice with more traditional Chinese forms, and ethnic Vietnamese. Special events from a visiting Rinpoche may also draw individuals and small groups who identify with the teacher or particular Vajrayana teachings fi rst encountered in their homeland (West Indies, Southeast Asia, Israel, United States, Europe, South America) through transnational organizations. Buddhist temples and centers in Toronto refl ect a variety of teachings, approaches, styles of practice, and traditions representative of traditional Asian Buddhist distinctions: Theravada from Burma/Myanmar, Cam- bodia, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Thailand; Mahayana from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam; Vajrayana from India, Tibet, Nepal, and Mongolia; and Ambedkar from India (McLel- lan 1999). New adaptations and innovative traditions are seen in the Zen Vietnamese-founded Tiep Hien Order; the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Caucasian followers of Tibetan Vajrayana teachers; or those temples and group branches of transnational organizations such as the Buddhist Progress Society of Toronto (part of the Taiwanese-based Buddhist Light International Association or BLIA). Variations of this Buddhist diversity are found in major cities throughout North America (Prebish and Tanaka 1999; Numrich 2000; Eck 2001; Matthews 2006). Buddhists in Toronto can be divided into two broad categories. The fi rst category involves smaller communities of less than 5,000, many of whom are identifi ed with a single ethnically homogeneous temple or group (such as the Lao, Sinhalese, Cambodian, Burmese, Ambedkar, or Japanese Canadians). Ethno-specifi c temples and groups tend to retain a particular tradition shared with others from similar Buddhist backgrounds and experiences. Tibetans, Koreans, and small groups of non-Asian practitioners are also included in this category although they tend to associate with a variety of temples, meditation centers, and transnational organizations that refl ect multiple traditions and Buddhist teachings. The second category in Toronto involves the larger numbers of Vietnamese (70,000) and Chinese (500,000 plus). Chinese Buddhists incorporate numerous divisions and “sub-ethnicities” (arising from different ethnic or national origins) associated with multiple types of Bud- dhist temples, traditions, and practice groups. Among the Vietnamese,

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there are at least eight temples (each with its own style of management, type of monastic leadership, and degree of lay involvement in temple affairs) and several meditation groups. One temple may be ethnically Vietnamese whereas another will incorporate both Sino-Vietnamese and ethnic Vietnamese. The Sino-Vietnamese who affi liate with ethnic Vietnamese temples are distinct from Cantonese-speaking Chinese who resided in Chinese-specifi c areas of Saigon (Vietnam), did not integrate (or intermarry with Vietnamese) to the same extent, and have their own Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese temples in Toronto. Vietnamese temples also refl ect pre-migration divisions along economic, regional, political, and class lines. Chinese Buddhists in Toronto are predominantly from Hong Kong and Taiwan, followed by Vietnam and mainland China, then Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and the West Indies. They speak a variety of languages and dialects (such as Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka, Teochew, and Taiwanese) in over 30 temples and associations. Larger pan-Chinese temples may have a membership of over 10,000 (comprising a majority of Hong Kong or Taiwanese, with smaller numbers of Hakka-speaking Chinese from Calcutta, as well as ethnic Chinese from Southeast Asia and the Carib- bean), while some of the smaller groups are geared toward particular kinds of Buddhist practices, associations, and backgrounds. Similar to Numrich’s (2000) analysis of Buddhist sites in Chicago, the locations of Toronto temples refl ect class and status distinctions. Southeast Asian Chinese who arrived as refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia tend to live within Toronto’s city core, and their temples are located in renovated buildings. Immigrants from Hong Kong or Taiwan live in the more affl uent suburbs of the city and their temples are frequently newly built, located on large properties with ample parking. The newly built temples display a distinct Chinese architectural style and provide highly visible markers of both Chinese and Buddhist presence. Most of the Vietnamese and smaller Buddhist community temples are scattered throughout the city in residential areas, former churches, or renovated businesses, and not easily identifi able, except for the newly built Sinhalese and Thai temples. Some of the city-based Tibetan and Zen temples with a majority non-Asian membership also have a distinctive Buddhist presence, although the majority of non-Asian groups do not. In some suburban areas, Asians have faced signifi cant neighborhood hostility with their Buddhist presence, and are unable to utilize their newly established temples beyond housing monastics and holding small gatherings (McLellan 2006). A new Lao

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temple, recently built on 72 acres just north of Toronto, has also faced discriminatory attitudes from non-Asian neighbors. Lao Buddhists have had to counter idealized cultural stereotypes and constructions of what constitutes “real” Buddhism, particularly “authentic” Buddhist activities and practices. Some of the more blatant discrimination has included racist commentary in local papers, and the temple being forced to abide by 31 conditions that restrict them from engaging in activities common to nearby Christian churches (such as fund-raising through festivals, bazaars, and bake-sales, limited parking, and no school bus storage), and having to hide their presence/visibility behind fencing or a row of trees (McLellan and White 2005). The particularities and commonalities concerning the range and quality of Toronto Buddhist localities are also illustrated throughout North America. Buddhist temples, groups, and associations in Toronto refl ect distinct organizational structures infl uenced by ethnic, cultural, and linguistic characteristics, conditions of group cohesiveness, and the particular kinds of beliefs and practices to which they adhere. There is enormous variation in the standards and types of religious authority and administrative legitimacy. Buddhism remains, however, the central focus of ethnic identity within many Asian communities. For the majority of Tibetans, Burmese, Cambodians, Lao, Thai, Sinhalese, and Vietnam- ese, Buddhist temples and associations help them develop and sustain a “collective memory” (Halbwachs 1980) of who they are and where they have come from. Buddhist services, ritual commemorations, cultural ceremonies, perceptions of the past, and an understanding of the present are selected, reinterpreted, or even invented (if necessary) to express redefi ned facets of ethnic or religious identity. Among groups with distinct generational and group unit activities, the membership base may refl ect a complex diversity. Toronto Buddhist Church, part of the large North American Jodo Shinshu tradition, is comprised of older Japanese immigrants and their Canadian-born children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, recent immigrants from Japan, non-Japanese spouses, mixed-race children, and individuals from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds. This profi le provides an excellent example of both generational perpetuation within an ethno-religious community and the ability of a Buddhist tradition to respond to changing religious needs and social climates. Since the majority of Buddhists in Toronto, however, are recent immigrants and refugees who have come to Canada only within the last 25 years, living in such a multicultural city has enabled them, often for the fi rst time,

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to be in contact with Buddhists from other backgrounds. Whereas this kind of multiple ethnic, racial, and linguistic context is the norm for most Buddhist immigrants and refugees in Canada, the United States has a broader pattern of resettlement that includes relatively isolated Buddhist communities in rural and smaller urban locations (Bankston 1997; Eck 2001; Padgett 2002; Matthews 2006). For Asian Buddhist newcomers, it is especially diffi cult to separate their re-creation of beliefs, practices, and identities from their experiences of migration, resettlement, and subsequent categorization as “visible minorities.” Even prior to this kind of racial labeling, characteristic of resettlement in western contexts, many have viewed themselves as belonging to distinct Buddhist sub-cultures. The religious commitment of many Tibetan refugees now resettled in North America has intensifi ed as a crucial element in their active political allegiance and nationalist advocacy, becoming synonymous with their sense of ethnic identity (McLellan 1987; Mullen 2001). In various localities, certain groups of Vietnamese Buddhists maintain distinct identities refl ecting their adherence to particular transnational religious organizations, leadership, ideologies, and political discourses arising from the Vietnam War (Dorais 1989; Nguyen and Barber 1998; McLellan 1999: 104). The multifaceted and ethnically diverse Chinese Buddhists are continually working through what Robertson (1992: 100) identifi ed as the “dilemma of the simultaneity of particularism and universalism” (cf. Chandler 1998; Ma and Cartier 2003). Certain Bud- dhist communities have had greater diffi culties in re-creating Buddhist practices and traditions than others. Penny Van Esterik (1992, 1999) documents the struggles of Lao Buddhists in North America. The Cambodian refugees’ pre-migration experiences of genocidal trauma and inhumane living conditions under the communist Khmer Rouge, followed by years of languishing in under-serviced and inhospitable refugee camps, has negatively impacted their long-term resettlement and set them apart from other Asian Buddhists (Smith-Hefner 1998; Ong 2003; McLellan 2004; Douglas 2005). The Khmer Rouge regime severely damaged the social infrastructure from which cultural and religious bonds could be reaffi rmed and reestablished. Monks and lay individuals who had provided traditional leadership, educational, and organizational skills were especially targeted for execution. Until recently, there were no Cambodian Buddhist monks in Toronto to facilitate religious observances, ritual services, merit-making activities, or to recognize, mediate, and treat the vast array of mental health concerns

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(spirit possession, bereavement, guilt, atonement needs) arising among the more than 5,000 Khmer resettled there. Social and class distinctions among Asian Buddhists can refl ect different historical waves of arrival and, especially, their migration identity status. In Canada, the category in which immigrants are accepted is a general indicator of economic and social wealth. The migration process for Buddhist refugees is signifi cantly different from that for immigrants. Most Asian Buddhist refugees (Tibetans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians) did not choose to move to another country but were forced out of their homeland, often with inadequate preparation. They left for the nearest country of asylum, seeking protection from violent and harmful communist regimes whose ideology and programs of action were geared toward religious and/or cultural repression, and in extreme cases, genocide (Fagen 1990). For many refugees, the terror and social chaos in the homeland, and in seeking asylum, are exacerbated through horrifi c personal experiences (the death or abandonment of loved ones, targeted persecution, torture, starvation, landmine dismem- berment, sexual assault, robbery). In addition to losing their families (nuclear and extended), homes, possessions and country, refugees also lose social identity and status, trust in one another, and what Giddens (1990: 140) refers to as “ontological security.” Refugees in resettlement face long-term psychological stresses, diffi culties in regaining trust, and extensive isolation since they may not be able to establish direct communication with the homeland or be allowed to visit for many years (Beiser 1990; McLellan 1999: 22). Unlike immigrants, all classes and ages of a given society may be present in a refugee fl ow. When refugees are generally accepted for resettlement in western countries, particular social characteristics are favored, especially professional or business backgrounds, high education, and literacy (Cravens and Bornemann 1990). In Canada, certain refugee groups such as the Cambodians and Lao were initially denied resettlement because their rural backgrounds, low levels of education, and extensive illiteracy were deemed unsuit- able for urban locales (McLellan 1995). Cambodian refugees also had a signifi cant number of unaccompanied children, widowed women, and extensively traumatized individuals. Refugees with little education or poor English competency face enormous diffi culties in sponsoring family members or monastics, the process exacerbated by fi nancial constraints, bureaucratic complexities, the lack of a functioning central government in the homeland, or restrictions on those remaining in refugee camps. The necessity to provide fi nancial

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support to family members in refugee camps or the homeland, and to contribute to religious or cultural reconstruction, may further delay the refugee’s economic, educational, and community recovery. The tendency to place refugees in poorly paid and labor-intensive employment further inhibits their ability and time to re-create Buddhist institutions and ritual practices or to develop effective leadership. Buddhist immigrants, however, have built an impressive array of temples that provide both religious and community services (skills training, language and cultural programs, vegetarian restaurants, medical clinics, leadership opportunities), many in less than ten years after arrival. These temples provide an outward display of religious identity that confi rms their sense of place in new social contexts (Gupta 2003). The presence of a Buddhist temple also facilitates and refl ects the development of a community’s “social capital,” those social structures which make it possible to achieve particular goals and replicate familiar structural relations between people to generate networks of obligations, expectations, and trustworthiness (Coleman 1988). Social networks and interactions based on trust and reciprocity have been linked to social status, educational achievement, good health, the prevention of crime, enhanced economic development, career mobility and “walkable” neighborhoods (Zhou and Bankston 1994; Friedman and Krackhard 1997; Sanders et al. 2002; Wuthnow 2002; Leyden 2003: 1550). Coleman (1990: 316) argues that the “dense set of associations” within a community with high social capital offers a variety of supports and constraints that enhance and support a range of advantageous aspiration and action. Putnam (2000) distinguishes two forms of social capital: bonding/ cohesive capital (within groups and communities) and bridging capital (which functions to enhance success beyond a particular group or specifi c community setting). Among refugees and immigrants, religious organizations are frequently identifi ed as “key locations for mobilizing the social capital necessary for survival” (Guest 2003: 121; cf. Zhou and Bankston 1994; McLellan and White 2005). Within Buddhist temples, social capital enables people to reactivate previously existing social networks, exchange information and fi nancial resources, support sponsorship or other processes of legalization, reinforce social hierar- chies, construct transnational religious networks, provide alternatives to dominant hegemonic structures and discourses, and engender new meanings within migration (Guest 2003: 195–96; Kunz 2003). Another type of social capital, referred to as “linking” capital, enables “relations between different social strata in a hierarchy where different groups

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access power, social status and wealth” (Voyer 2003: 31). Bridging and linking forms of social capital can be seen in the way Buddhist temples, groups, and associations advertise their identities and programs in ethnic magazines, on radio and television, and on English Internet sites; participate in inter-Buddhist councils; undertake humanitarian relief programs; host local educational forums to encourage participation of potential adherents; send personal invitations to municipal, provincial, and federal politicians encouraging them to observe and/or participate in traditional rituals, ceremonies, commemorations, and New Year celebrations; support and participate in local charity walks (sponsored by larger mainstream organizations), food drives, blood banks, or interfaith projects concerned with the homeless; develop various forms of literature (in English) to explain and present Buddhist traditions; and provide monetary donations to establish presence and infl uence in educational, medical, or political spheres. Leadership and community networks are especially crucial for the organization of social capital, particularly in maintaining social relations and negotiating effective politics of identity and representation through political advocacy and recognition. Different forms of Bud- dhist social recognition arise through festivals, parades, or processions in public spaces; local, national, and transnational media (magazines, newspapers, television, radio); electronic consumerism (music CDs, fi lms, videos, DVDs); and marketing household and personal items to help people establish or maintain boundaries and expressions of ethnic and religious identity. Each identity referent can be given a variety of secular or sacred meanings and interpretations, according to the social context, structures of power and inequality, and relevance of or ability to articulate individual and collective self-defi nition and action (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992; Padgett 2000). The dynamic interplay of culture contact, hybridization, cosmopolitanism, consumerism, transnationalism, diaspora, and hyphenated identities provides various mechanisms for political and social representation. For immigrant newcomers, the ability to ensure positive representation helps their particular groups and communities to articulate demands for greater access to jobs and services, counter negative stereotypes, and support the development of a sense of place and belonging (Chan 2002; Hiebert 2002). The representational consequences of early Chinese immigrants to North America who were frequently identifi ed with Native Americans and blacks (Caldwell 1971) is sharply contrasted to the current recognition and affl uence of recent Chinese immigrants whose “fl exible citizenship”

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facilitates their strategies for positive representation (Ong 1993: 746). Makio suggests that affl uent and well-educated Chinese in Toronto exhibit such effective power relations that they have the capacity to transform ethnic relationships in their favor, whereas Caucasian locals, “willingly or reluctantly,” have to change to meet the emerging situation (1997: 219). New Chinese communities in Vancouver, New York, and Los Angeles exhibit similar socioeconomic characteristics and leadership capacities, indicating an equally strong capacity for social infl uence and participation in the politics of identity, recognition, and representation (Waldinger and Tseng 1992; Zhou 1992; Smith 1995). Despite the strong recognition and representation associated with Chinese communities, however, Chinese Buddhists still strive for “acceptance” as a religious minority, and feel that their non-Christian identity not only hampers this process, but also fuels anti-Asian prejudice (Chandler 1999: 48; Chen 2003). Werbner (1998) suggests that gestures of philanthropy and political lobbying become one way of engaging in “real” politics. Similar to other minorities, Asian Buddhist groups and communities in North America must both advocate for their right to be recognized and accepted as equal participants in public and political spheres (particularly those concerned with religious diversity) and also diligently challenge inappropriate representation and images that arise through the media or in popular culture (Bloom 1990: 158–61; Fields 1998: 199–200; Chandler 2002: 65). Yet, the extent and degree to which Buddhists are able to participate in the politics of identity, presentation, and representation depends upon the levels of social capital within their particular group and/or with individuals associated with, or acting on behalf of, an identifi - able group. The presence of social capital “created by trust, solidarity and social cohesion embedded in the individuals of a community” is, however, most absent among those who have experienced mistrust, fear, and broken relationships (Mehmet et al. 2002: 336). The lack of social capital and limited social networks within a community not only impacts economic and institutional development, but also results in low levels of defense when their collective interest is threatened, such as local opposition to the establishment of a Buddhist temple (Woolcock and Narayan 2000; McLellan and White 2005). Buddhist refugee groups with extensive psychological trauma and/or physiological weakness, whose social and community bonds have been severely undermined or who lack effective leaders familiar with North American circumstances, have particularly low social capital. When ethnic and linguistic identi-

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ties are insulated by negative pre-migration experiences and cultural aversions to expressing weakness or need, certain Buddhists groups are frequently perceived as being “closed.” Low social capital exacerbates this ethno-linguistic enclosure, resulting in minimal recognition and a lack of support or respect from other Buddhist communities, interfaith groups, scholars, and mainstream society. An intolerant climate of negative actions and attitudes of exclusion toward newcomer religious minorities can further shift vulnerable groups to a more isolationist orientation, encouraging them to seek protection and solace within their own immigrant community and limit contacts with segregationist or exclusionist members of the host majority (Bourhis and Montreuil 2003: 41; Ong 2003). Rather than participate in the politics of recognition and representation, these groups become further marginalized and excluded, often rendered invisible in academic discussions on Buddhism in North America, or missing from the public awareness of North American Buddhists. Although Buddhism has had a great impact on North American society, a closer analysis (in terms of social capital, class, race, and power dynamics) is needed to detail which Buddhists have the strongest impact, and why particular forms of Buddhism continue to have more exposure and/or infl uence in relation to cultural production than others (Gallagher 2004: 102; Wuthnow and Cadge 2004; Clarke 2006: 127). Within the North American context of structured inequalities, crucial questions arise about Buddhist representations, particularly who speaks on behalf of others, and how those others are being presented, represented, or ignored (Bottomley 1991: 309). Essentialized images, meanings, values, traditions, and practices associated with “ethnic” Buddhists vis-à-vis “convert” Buddhists constitute a limited range of social relations, giving rise to simplifi ed categories (Theravada/Mahayana, traditionalist/modernist, achieved/ascribed) that overlook obvious complexities and social differences. Unitary categories will also become increasingly ineffective as the North American born and/or reared children of Bud- dhist immigrants and refugees accept, redefi ne, reject, and hybridize traditional as well as new religious identities. Leonard (2000: 29) notes that “although the religious formulations and practices of second generation immigrants and refugees are just beginning to be studied,” their centrality and future dominance is already being predicted, particularly in political, aesthetic, and communication sites.

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Generational Continuities and Challenges

First-generation Asian Buddhist immigrants and refugees continue to express strong interrelationships between ethnic/nationalistic identity retention and traditional religious beliefs and practices. Buddhism plays a signifi cant role in their lifelong adjustment process, contributing positively to ongoing adaptation to and integration within North American life, psychological health, social affi liations (local, national, and global), culturally familiar authority patterns and gender roles, and overall community social cohesion (Kashima 1977; Dorais 1989; Kendis 1989; Canda and Phaobtong 1992; Rutledge 1992; Van Esterik 1992, 1999; Numrich 1996; Lin 1999; McLellan 1987, 1999, 2000; Zhou et al. 2002; Suh 2004). Involving their North American born and/or reared children in Buddhist rituals and cultural practices has helped to maintain a continuity of both ethnic and religious identities. Like religion, the persistence of ethnicity through generations of Asian Buddhists is not a static process. The content of ethnicity transforms in response to changing social reality (locally, nationally and globally) and on the basis of individual and group needs. Buddhist temples and associations simultaneously maintain tradition and provide a context for innovation. Traditional ritual services and celebrations provide North American born and/or reared children with opportunities to identify with and wear the clothing of their parents’ homeland, to participate in the communal preparation and consumption of food that represents cultural familiarity, to retain some degree of family language(s), to learn and perform their cultural forms of literature, music, and dance, and to share social and psychological well-being with others from a similar background. Temple services and celebrations also provide opportunities for youth and their parents to express particular facets of life in North America. In the Lao Buddhist ritual of Soukhuan, for example, traditional food offerings of rice balls or mangos may be replaced by cans of Coca-Cola, Twinkies, or store-bought cookies (Van Esterik 1992: 69). “New constructions of ethnicity are themselves potential evidence of continuing acculturation,” especially among generations born and reared in North America, for whom symbolic ethnicity covers a wide range of ethnic identifi cations (Gans 1994: 580). For Asian Buddhists, the primordial attributes of blood and descent are strengthened by retention of the identifi able values, attitudes, ethos, and customary practices found within temples (Kendis 1989; McLellan 1999). It is these attributes

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which people attempt to retain for themselves and their children, even if their religiosity is symbolic rather than participatory. In redefi ning their sense of ethnic belonging they will abstract rites of passage, texts, religious symbols, or individual celebrations out of the larger tradition; and for some, coming to the religious institutions only on major religious holidays may be closer to the “symbolic religiosity” of spectator than participant (Gans 1994: 585). In several Toronto Asian Buddhist temples, traditional practices are encouraged alongside more modernist ones (such as scriptural study groups, meditation practice, and social service activities) that involve both generations. The extent to which specifi c groups foster innovative changes depends upon their amount of social capital. Larger Asian temples in Toronto (Sinhalese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese Canadian) actively encourage youth participation, advertising their programs through ethnic magazines, radio, television, and English-language Web sites. When qualifi ed volunteers are available, fl exible educational programs can be developed to transmit and/or modify traditional Buddhist doctrines and scriptures. Utilizing western styles of teaching and current events from North American and global examples, Buddhist beliefs become more meaningful to the second generation. Since youth face an enormous pressure/appeal of materialism and secularism, participation in religiously-based activities and programs helps to increase their religious and ethnic ties (Zhou and Bankston 1994; Bankston 1996; McLellan 1999; Stepick 2005). Many of the programs offered in Buddhist temples (family choir, study sessions, after-school programs, summer youth camps, regular children’s outings and weekly [usually Sunday] Dharma school) are based on Christian models and demonstrate the benefi t of familiarity with other religious traditions. In the smaller temples and Buddhist groups where social capital is not as developed, the involvement of the second generation can considerably boost existing programs and activities. Older youth can assist in the administration of annual traditional rituals and ceremonies (arranging monastic presence, hiring a hall, organizing invitations/advertisements, preparing music and sound systems), and other kinds of special celebrations, thereby forging and solidifying their own community ties across several localities. Although Cambodian Buddhists have lived in Windsor, Ontario since the early 1980s, it was not until 2006 that those of the second generation were able to organize themselves and their parents to participate in the Windsor annual multicultural festival. For the fi rst time, Cambodians were publicly represented through their performance of traditional

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and modern Khmer dance, music and cuisine, and received strong encouragement from others outside their own community. While the Buddhist temple may help to reinforce and maintain kinship and friendship networks, North American born and/or reared generations do not consider it the prime milieu to satisfy social needs or to gain status recognition. Instead, the younger generations want the temple to refl ect contemporary needs and issues. They encourage their temples to implement a process of democratic or egalitarian ideals through new models of leadership, requesting that decision making be shared between monks and an elected executive board which represents a cross-section of membership. Asian Canadian Buddhist youth want more input concerning temple administration and religious programing, identifying participation in Canadian events (Canada Day celebrations, charity fund-raising walks for the United Way, operating food bank collections), and the development of non-traditional mechanisms for social control and confl ict resolution in the families. Another new and inevitable direction that concerns Asian Buddhist youth is that they be allowed more opportunities to share their opinions, attitudes, and identities, not as “Asian youth” or “ethno-specifi c youth” but as Cana- dians or Americans with Asian and/or ethno-specifi c ancestry. With the emergence of North American-born generations, the need arises for bilingual clergy (trilingual in Canada) and innovative religious education programs that refl ect North American rather than homeland interests. As the oldest Buddhist community in Toronto, Toronto Buddhist Church recognized this need in the 1960s and initiated the Financial Aid for Ministerial Aspirants in Canada (FAMAC) program to sponsor and train Canadian-born individuals. The current head minister at Toronto Buddhist Church, a third-generation male in his late 30s, was trained through the FAMAC program. Most Asian Buddhist communities, however, still remain totally dependent on the homeland for religious leaders, spiritual authority, and doctrinal legitimacy. Finding and sponsoring monastic sangha who are at least bilingual (homeland language and English or French), well-educated, and fl exible in their approach to Buddhism is diffi cult. Many monastics are not trained to deal with the range of expectations or issues in resettled communities, and if they themselves are refugees, must still struggle to cope with their own memories and experiences. Some alternatives to an ethno- specifi c “foreign orientation” are arising within specifi c traditions. In 2001, a group of Lao Buddhists at the Phommaviharm Buddhist temple in Kitchener, Ontario sponsored an English-speaking, Sri Lankan

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trained, Bangledeshi-born monk to provide dharma instruction to their Canadian-born youth. To enhance this monk’s educational profi le and status in the eyes of the youth, the temple supports his graduate studies in a local university where he is completing a Ph.D. in Religion and Culture. Older Asian Buddhists have been accused by the younger, generally higher educated, Asian Buddhists as being too ritualistic and superstitious in their religious belief and practice, particularly those who focus on ceremonial sutra chanting, merit-making, appeals to the power and infi nite compassion of Bodhisattvas, healing or protection rituals, and the use of various divination techniques. Younger Asian Buddhists are scientifi cally sophisticated and consider themselves to be “modern” North Americans who seek a religious guidance that is relevant to their everyday lives. Whereas many of the older generation have few expectations on the monastic leadership other than the continuity of a homeland tradition familiar and comforting to them, the younger generation is more demanding. Differences in language and socio-cultural backgrounds make youth relationships with immigrant monastics problematic. Second-generation youth may speak enough of their ethnic language to understand or communicate with older family members for basic conversation, but they are functionally illiterate regarding sutra or philosophical study. Youth may require English translations of Buddhist concepts or terms, which monastics may not be prepared to provide. Youth also question the current relevance of homeland rituals, and without adequate explanation they remain unaware of the important symbolic nuances for ethnic and religious identity within the rituals. North American born and/or raised Buddhist youth are particularly hostile to the hierarchal and unapproachable attitudes of the monastic sangha, preferring teachers with whom they can ask questions, share ideas, argue, and even joke or play sports. Unfortunately, monastics who tend to adopt easy-going or playful behaviors with the youth are often severely censured by the older generation. Innovative or youth-oriented monastics tend not to be retained in temples where the leadership is dominated by what Baumann (2002: 58) identifi es as “traditionalists.” Interestingly, the issues second-generation Asian youth have with Buddhist leaders, hierarchy, organizational structures, and homeland orientation are similar to what has been observed among non-Asian groups as they attempt to “Americanize” Buddhist teachings and traditions (Kraft 1988; Preston 1988; Kornfi eld 1998; McMahan 2002; Kay 2004).

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Despite their reservations, many second-generation youth do retain a connection to Buddhism within the boundaries of their ethnic communities, sometimes as a buffer against prejudice and hostility from the larger society. During New Year celebrations youth and young adults particularly attend ethnic-speciﬁ c Buddhist temples. They come to make offerings of food, incense, and money, to ensure good luck or protection for the next year, to cleanse their unwholesome activities of the past year, to eat specially prepared foods, and to be reminded of their roots. No restrictions appear to be made regarding clothing, and youth dress in casual as well as traditional attire, depending on their interest or level of involvement. Some participate with bare midriffs and shoulders, in shorts or other western styles, and many are accompanied by non-Asian friends. As the second generation ages, gets married, have children of their own, and face the death of older family members, their frustration with the slow pace of temple or monastic change eventually lessens. Through the ritual processes entailed in different life passages, their sense of place within the community is revitalized and they develop more traditional types of religious commitment and involvement. Since most Buddhist communities in North America are less than 30 years old, it remains uncertain what will arise in the third and fourth generations. At Toronto Buddhist Church, a 90 percent rate of intermarriage among the Sansei (third generation) has resulted in an ethnically and racially mixed fourth generation who speak only English. Most Asian temples in Toronto are concerned that unless they actively address generational concerns and develop the kinds of successful programs that exist elsewhere (either locally or in diaspora), multiple linguistic and social identities may result in future generations who never fully understand or identify with Buddhist teachings and practices, precipitating an eventual loss of support for the religious institution. Mullins (1987) predicted that the diminishing participation of Sansei would force the Jodo Shinshu Japanese Canadian Buddhist institutions to undergo what he described as the process of “de-ethnicization.” At Toronto Buddhist Church, however, this process has not occurred, and despite several accommodations made to non-Japanese members and spouses of Sansei mixed marriages, there has been no transition from an “ethnic” to an interethnic or multi-ethnic organization. Extensive generational transformations and adaptations do not necessarily mean that particularized ethnic and religious identities at Asian Buddhist temples will eventually disappear. Since the late 1990s, there has been signiﬁ cant return to Buddhism among Christian Cambodians

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in Ontario, especially if a Cambodian Buddhist temple opens in their city (as in Hamilton, London, and Windsor). Several former Christian Cambodians felt that their initial resettlement obligations to Christian sponsors had been fulfi lled after approximately ten to fi fteen years, and they no longer needed to behave as a “client” or show respect by attending the church of their sponsors (McLellan 2004). Others felt the need to return to Buddhism when a family member died and they wished to participate in traditional memorial services, when they needed extensive social and community support (due to illness or social tragedy), or when one of their children married a spouse who is Buddhist, particularly if the spouse had recently arrived from Cambodia. The pattern of lapsed members returning to Buddhist temples, including the younger generation when they marry and begin families of their own, may retain the viability of particular Buddhist traditions, even if much of the participation is symbolic or limited to extended family involvements and special festivals or ceremonies. This refl ects the general trend in mainstream Christianity. As Stepick (2005: 19–20) notes, while second-generation youth have become a central focus of recent studies on North American immigrants, little is known about their shifts in religious affi liation, or the kinds of hybridity and multiplicity entailed in their ethnic and religious identities or religious affi liations. This lack is especially evident among second-generation Buddhists in North America, whatever their tradition, background, race, social status, or ethnic identity. With the continuing rise in North American intermarriage rates, increasing numbers of Buddhists will have mixed ethnic, racial, and religious identities, rendering previous classifi cation categories even more tenuous. Further studies are needed to identify the degree to which cultural/religious heritages are retained at Asian Buddhist temples and associations, and if they remain an important element in shaping individual and collective identities across generations. Future research can provide scholars with a range of Buddhist participation and affi liations (including symbolic) among those youth who consider themselves to be fully identifi ed with and integrated into North American society.

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Suh, Sharon A. 2004. Being Buddhist in a Christian World: Gender and Community in a Korean American Temple. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Tsomo, Karma Lekshe. 1995. Buddhism through American Women’s Eyes. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion. Tweed, Thomas A. 2002. “Who Is a Buddhist? Night-stand Buddhists and Other Creatures.” Pp. 17–33 in Westward Dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia, edited by Charles S. Prebish and Martin Baumann. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——— and Stephen Prothero. 1999. Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History. New York: Oxford University Press. Van Esterik, Penny. 1992. Taking Refuge: Lao Buddhists in North America. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University Press. ———. 1999. “Ritual and the Performance of Buddhist Identity among Lao Bud- dhists in North America.” Pp. 57–65 in American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, edited by Duncan Ryuken Williams and Christopher S. Queen. London: Curzon Press. Vertovec, Stephen. 1997. “Three Meanings of Diaspora, Exemplifi ed among South Asian Religions.” Diaspora 6: 277–99. ———. 2003. “Migration and Other Modes of Transnationalism: Toward Conceptual Cross-Fertilization.” International Migration Review 37: 641–65. Voyer, Jean-Pierre. 2003. “Diversity without Divisiveness: A Role for Social Capital?” Canadien Diversité 2: 31–32. Waldinger, R. and Y. Tseng. 1992. “Divergent Diasporas: The Chinese Communities of New York and Los Angeles Compared.” Revue Européene des Migrations Interna- tionales 8(3): 91–116. Wallace, Alan B. 2002. “The Spectrum of Buddhist Practice in the West.” Pp. 34–50 in Westward Dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia, edited by Charles S. Prebish and Martin Baumann. Berkeley: University of California Press. Warner, R. Stephen and Judith G. Wittner, eds. 1998. Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Werbner, Pnina. 1998. “Diasporic Political Imaginaries: A Sphere of Freedom or a Sphere of Illusions?” Communal/Plural 6: 11–31. Woolcock, M. and D. Narayan. 2002. “Social Capital: Implications for Development of Theory, Research and Policy.” World Bank Observer 15: 220–38. Wuthnow, Robert. 2002. “Religious Involvement and Status-Bridging Social Capital.” Journal for the Scientifi c Study of Religion 41: 669–84. —— and Wendy Cadge. 2004. “Buddhists and Buddhism in the United States: The Scope of Infl uence.” Journal for the Scientifi c Study of Religion 43: 363–80. Yang, Fenggang. 2002. “Religious Diversity among the Chinese in America.” Pp. 71–98 in Religions in Asian America: Building Faith Communities, edited by Pyong Gap Min and Jung Ha Kim. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. ——— and Helen Rose Ebaugh. 2001. “Transformations in New Immigrant Religions and Their Global Implications.” American Sociological Review 66: 269–88. Zhou, Min. 1992. Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ——— and Carl L. Bankston III. 1994. “Social Capital and the Adaptation of the Second Generation: The Case of Vietnamese Youth in New Orleans.” International Migration Review 28: 821–45. Zhou, Min, Carl L. Bankston III and Rebecca Y. Kim. 2002. “Rebuilding Spiritual Lives in the New Land: Religious Practices among Southeast Asian Refugees in the United States.” Pp. 37–70 in Religions in Asian America: Building Faith Communi- ties, edited by Pyong Gap Min and Jung Ha Kim. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

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TEMPLE AND SOCIETY IN THE NEW WORLD: THERAVADA BUDDHISM AND SOCIAL ORDER IN NORTH AMERICA

Carl L. Bankston III and Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo

In this chapter we examine the question of social order as it relates to Theravada Buddhists in North America. We maintain that this is a central question in the study of social life. Social order has two forms: the maintenance of regular patterns of interaction and the maintenance of cooperative relations. These two forms operate at the level of relations between individuals; at the level of solidarity, or relations between individuals and the groups to which they belong; and at the level of relations among groups. Historically, social scientists, particularly sociologists, have tended to downgrade religion as a source of social order or to believe that religion is disappearing as a source of order. This tendency has come into question in recent years. The study of immigrant religions has played a notable part in the growing appreciation of the role of religion in maintaining relations among individuals, creating solidarity, and shaping relations among groups. We look at the growth of Theravada Buddhism in North America as the development of new forms of social order. After addressing theoretical questions on religion and social order, we look at the type of normative structure that Theravada Buddhism provides to its adherents. We then look brieﬂ y at the history of this religious presence in Ameri- can life. Next, we look at the forms of the Theravada social order in North America. We consider common characteristics of interactions among adherents, of group solidarity, and of group relations to others in American society. Finally, we look at how variations among the major Asian immigrant Theravada groups have resulted form their differing histories. This chapter concentrates on the three largest immigrant Theravada groups: Thai, Lao, and Cambodians. The concepts have been produced by observations and discussions by both authors, either singly or together, with members of these groups in Southeast Asia and at

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speciﬁ c temples in the United States, over a period of twenty-ﬁ ve years.1 However, in order to apply these concepts on a national and continental scale, we rely on archived news articles and on the ethnographic work of other authors to substantiate and illustrate our ideas.

Theoretical Background

The question of social order has attracted less attention from social scientists, especially sociologists, in recent decades than it did in earlier years. When structural-functionalism was the dominant perspective, Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils (1951: 180) described the problem of social order as “one of the very fi rst functional imperatives of social systems.” To decide whether this problem is one that can be legitimately pushed into the background or one that should continue to concern us, we may want to ask just what this term “social order” means. Is it just a mask for the unequal distribution of power and resources, or does it have a broader signifi cance for all social groups and individuals in groups? More specifi cally within the terms of the present chapter, if it does have some broader signifi cance for all groups, how can thinking about this signifi cance help us to understand the general role of religion in American society and the specifi c role of contemporary Theravada Buddhism? In The Problem of Order (1994), Dennis Wrong points out that the term “social order” has two closely related but distinct meanings. It can refer to regularity or rule in human social interactions and it can refer to patterns of cooperation among actors. He argues that people develop regularities as norms, roles, and institutions in the course of recurrent interactions. These interactions may differ greatly in character, since they can be products of a wide variety of individual motivations. They may differ in the ways that people cooperate and also in the degrees to which cooperation or confl ict characterizes human relations. Across these two broad divisions of order as pattern and order as cooperation, one can identify three levels at which human behavior can be ordered. First, we can say that social order involves establishing and

1 For general background see Bankston 1995, 1996, 1997, 2003; Bankston and Hidalgo 2007.

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maintaining relations among individuals. Predictability is an essential quality of interpersonal relations. Many of the fi nest ethnographies, such as Elijah Anderson’s (1990, 1991) descriptions of contemporary urban street life, are largely concerned with describing the shared expectations about behavior that create the patterns for interactions within a given cultural setting. While regularity does emerge from all interactions, one can readily see that there are varying degrees of predictability across settings. Cooperation and confl ict among individuals, similarly, may exist in degrees. The moral order of the urban neighborhoods that Anderson describes involves a higher level of confl ict than that of many other communities. The second level concerns not just individuals, but relationships between individuals and the groups to which they belong. Human societies are made up of groups as well as individuals, and solidarity is often considered as how individuals fi t into groups and affect groups. Much of Émile Durkheim’s work can be understood as understanding how individual-group connections come into existence. It is not simply individuals who maintain regularity, but groups that contain individuals, and many social groups tend to continue fairly stable patterns as specifi c individuals enter and leave. Individuals may respond to their groups with eager cooperation, rebellion, or submission. The third level of social order involves contact and interaction among different groups. Modern American society is highly pluralistic, in the sense that it contains many groups in continual contact, and virtually every society shares this pluralism to some extent. Order exists in both of Wrong’s senses to varying degrees among and across groups. The structure of interactions among people exists by virtue of their memberships in formal and informal collectivities, as well as by virtue of their personal shared histories. From friendship cliques to nation-states, the sets that contain individuals may live in a range of stages of cooperation, competition, or confl ict. The three levels of social order involve the complicated operations of identity and mobilization. At a high level of cohesion, groups promote intense identifi cation on the part of individual members and can readily mobilize members. These operations are complicated because regular interaction and cooperation at one level frequently does not translate into similar interaction and cooperation at another. The tendency of confl ict or competition among groups to intensify cooperation within groups is so widely recognized as to be virtually a truism. The role of group membership in competition among individuals and groups is

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less widely recognized. In the social capital literature (Bourdieu 1984; Coleman 1990; Putnam 2001), social capital is frequently presented as relations among individuals or connections between individuals and their social sets that provide a competitive advantage; i.e., that give some people social assets that others do not possess or possess to a lesser extent. Moreover, group cohesion can affect how individuals within the group interact with each other, leading to structured cooperation but also to rejection and opposition toward members who fail to conform. In the sociological literature on social order, religion has occupied a central but problematic place. According to the most common telling of the history of sociology, the discipline begins with the idea that religion as a source of order is about to be displaced from human life and continues as an agent of displacement. Auguste Comte, generally credited with coining the Greco-Latin name of the fi eld, argued in The Positive Philosophy (1830–1842) not only that the time of religion was passing but that this time should pass for the sake of the human race. Durkheim, the second pivotal French fi gure in sociology, showed an appreciation for the integrative power of religion but generally shared Comte’s belief in the replacement of this power, even if Durkheim took a somewhat less prophetic approach to advocacy of this replacement. While he advanced the study of religion as a binding social force, particularly in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1965 [1912]), Durkheim believed that the kind of bond found in religion was giving way to other bonds. His well-known contrast between mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity posited common belief and functional interdependence as the two ways in which the social ties among human beings could be maintained. What we might today call the “faith based” community of the former was destined to give way to the economic rationality of the latter: “it is an historical law that mechanical solidarity which fi rst stands alone, or nearly so, progressively loses ground, and that organic solidarity becomes, little by little, preponderant” (Durkheim 1933: 174). The secularization perspective that began with Comte and was long a dominant view in sociology can be characterized in Durkheimian terms as the claim that the social order of belief was gradually being replaced by that of interdependence. The concept of rationalization, present in Comte and developed by Max Weber (1958, 1968), was essentially an elaboration of the idea of interdependence. Impersonal arrangements such as bureaucracy, based on the patterned interchangeability

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of human units in systems of cooperation, were the specifi c forms of an order of interdependence. As societies modernize, according to what became known as the secularization thesis, they tend to become less religious as they become more urban and pluralistic in their composition (Dobbelaere 1987). According to former secularization theorist Peter Berger (1968, 1969), cultural and economic multiplicity undermines religions as sources of meaning by challenging institutional claims to monopolistic certainty. Even many of those opposed to secularization have in the past generally accepted the claim of the secularization thesis that there is an opposition between order based on interdependence and order based on belief. These critics of the secular have, however, pointed out the importance of the latter and questioned the ultimate integrative strength of the former. In the nineteenth century, the archconservative and proponent of political and social order Joseph de Maistre (1857) saw rational interdependence as an illusory basis for order, arguing that the worldly human arrangements that followed the French Revolution would lead to chaos that would resurrect a divinely ordained regime. More recently, the Philip Rieff (2006, 2007) maintained, in the work of his last years, that the sacred provides the ultimate underpinning of a social order that is necessarily unitary, hierarchical, and authoritative, and that the disappearance of the sacred leaves a society spinning out of control. The secularization thesis is certainly not dead, however much some would like to bury it. But there has been a growing body of scholarship that has accepted the continuing power of religion in shaping human lives, while rejecting the argument that religious order is contrary to the order of rationality and interdependence. Notably, Robert Bellah (1970) took this line of thought, arguing that religion is a central source of group identity and motivation for individuals even in a putatively secular society. In a series of compelling works, Rodney Stark and Roger Finke (Finke and Stark 1992; Stark 1996; Stark and Finke 2000) created a “new paradigm” in the sociology of religion, recognized and discussed in an infl uential article by R. Stephen Warner (1993). This new approach broke with the secularization perspective by treating religious environments as economies, in which religions and religious groups are fi rms competing for customers who make choices among available products. Responding to the received wisdom in sociology that religious pluralism undermines faith, Stark and Finke argued persua- sively that multiple and competing religions produce greater intensity of belief and commitment than monopolistic faiths do.

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Social Order and Immigrant Religions

The Stark and Finke approach has clear implications for the study of “new” religions associated with the post-1965 waves of immigration to the United States. As the United States has undergone the late twentieth and early twenty-fi rst century wave of immigration, have members of immigrant groups themselves assimilated into a secular society or has the multiplicity of religions encouraged the intensifi cation of religious activity? Warner (1998: 193) has argued that often immigrants are even more religious than they were at home “because religion is one of the important identity markers that helps them preserve individual self-awareness and cohesion in a group.” Other researchers have found that the solidarity produced by religious participation can be critical in shaping how immigrants respond to the surrounding host society. A number of studies have considered the importance of religious institutions for promoting the psychological well-being of immigrants or for affecting the normative adaptation of immigrants to the host country (Hurh and Kim 1990; Min 1992; Bankston and Zhou 1995, 1996). Others have found that religiously based solidarity among members of immigrant groups can lead to material benefi ts. Zhou and Bankston (1998), for example, found that the social networks of a Vietnamese American Catholic community helped to promote academic achievement on the part of the second generation. Kwon, Ebaugh and Hagan (1997) examined how Korean cell group ministries facilitate entrepreneurship among Korean immigrants. Responding to the pluralistic setting of the larger society can often intensify the religious practices and ethnic solidarity of immigrant religious institutions. The resulting solidarity may provide individuals with competitive benefi ts in their host country. At the same time, though, the surrounding society also frequently reshapes those institutions. Immigrant religious institutions, since they are such key identity markers, function to preserve and symbolize the cultural practices and self-images of their adherents. Therefore, immigrant ethnic group members will often found a church or temple as a conscious expression of their cultural solidarity and of continuity with the homeland. The founding of such an institution, however, may often be linked to socioeconomic mobility: acquiring land and erecting a building requires funding. Ironically, then, creating a symbol of the homeland demands a certain amount of economic adaptation to the new country. In a further irony, the symbol of the homeland will generally be transformed by

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the effort at transplanting. However other-worldly their philosophical or theological principles, institutions cannot be isolated from the physical and social world around them. The very fact that the adherents have established an institution in the context of the new homeland means that the adherents have become part of a society that is quite different in economic and social structure from the society the institution is meant to reﬂ ect. One of the key traits of immigrant religious institutions in the United States may be the feature that Warner calls “de facto congregationalism.” “In the United States today,” Warner writes, “we are seeing a convergence toward de facto congregationalism, more or less on the model of the reformed Protestant tradition of the congregation as a voluntary gathered community” (1994: 54). We may identify three major characteristics of the type of gathering Warner describes as a congregation. First, since members choose to form this gathering, membership is an achieved rather than an ascribed status. Second, a congregation is a group characterized by localism. Although it is institutionalized and stable, unlike more informal groups such as prayer meetings, it is the location of immediate religious activities and members have a high probability of face-to-face contact. Third, much of the stafﬁ ng and work of the congregation is the responsibility of the laity, the non- professionals in the religious community. In the market metaphor introduced by Stark and Finke, religious establishments need to shape their products and means of distribution to the surrounding marketplace. This overview of the current study of immigrant religions suggests that the study is closely concerned with the issue of social order. Order, understood as regularity and cooperation in social interaction, is a fundamental quality of human societies and groups, and both the patterns of regularity and the levels of cooperation vary from one setting to another. A religious institution can be seen as a locus of order, an arrangement of psychological and behavioral orientations that shapes the ways in which people interact and the extent to which they cooperate. One can see a religious institution as a form of order in terms of the kinds of interconnections among individuals it promotes, in terms of the extent of integration of individuals into a religious assembly or group with the religion, and in terms of how it affects inter-group relations. In studying religions with adherents who are mostly newcomers to a location, this means also that one should study how relations among the adherents are affected by their surroundings and affect the responses of

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individuals to those surroundings, at how integration into the religious assembly infl uences and is infl uenced by adaptation to a new homeland, and at how the religious institution itself fi ts among other groups and institutions and changes in response to its environment. This is the general and abstract theoretical view that we propose to take in examining Theravada Buddhism as a source and type of social order in contemporary North America. In the pages that follow, we will attempt to make this more specifi c and concrete by looking, fi rst, at how the southern school of Buddhism came to the United States and, second, at the ways in which Theravada Buddhism answers the questions of order posed by this country, sometimes in different ways for different groups. In this way, we hope to draw some conclusions about the origin, nature, and function of American Theravada Bud- dhist social orders.

The Origins and Development of Theravada Buddhism in North America

In order to understand the ways in which the southern school of Buddhism provides order for lives of people in North America, it is important to consider its history. During the lifetime of the Buddha (most commonly accepted as c. 563–483 BCE), the authority for his religious movement resided in his oral teachings. After his death, however, Buddhists began to interpret these teachings in various ways. Therefore, the Buddhists called a council about a year after the death of the Buddha to organize and interpret his sermons and to compile a code of monastic discipline. Roughly a century later, a second council, known as the Council of Vesali after its location, continued the work of trying to deﬁ ne and maintain Buddhist orthodoxy. However, different approaches to Buddhism continued, and by the time of a third council that according to tradition was held under the sponsorship of King Aśoka at Pataliputra in the mid-third century BCE, these began to develop into the split that would gradually lead to the develop of the two major sects or schools of Buddhism, Theravada (also deroga- torily called Hinayana by the other group) and Mahayana. The former became the version of the religion that would predominate in the areas of Ceylon and most of mainland Southeast Asia, while Mahayana Buddhism became the version most widely practiced throughout the region of China, Korea, and Japan.

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The distinctions between Mahayana and Theravada are complex, but it may be said that the latter gives greater emphasis to the development of individual insight as a path to the liberation taught by the Buddha. The pursuit of this attainment falls primarily to monks. The individualism of Theravada practice and the emphasis on monasticism tend to have paradoxical consequences for community. Rather than separate those in monasteries from lay people, these characteristics actually bring monastic activities closer to their lay supporters. While there are individuals who spend their lives in temples, a temporary period of ordination is the ideal for all men in most Theravada countries (with the exception of Sri Lanka), usually before marriage or late in life for widowers. In addition, boys considered too young for entering the monastic state often live at the temple and serve as novices. Thus, the boundaries between the sacred and secular communities are permeable and the two are continually woven together. Monks are dependent on lay people for their support. The lay people, in turn, derive spiritual benefi ts from their ties to the sangha, or monastic community. While developing spiritual insight is primarily the domain of the monks in traditional Theravada, lay people can improve their destinies, in this life or future lives, by building up merit. Any type of meritorious action may “make merit,” but the primary source of merit is the temple. Traditionally, residents of villages in Theravada countries make merit by feeding monks, by donating robes, and by contributing labor. Temples are, sociologically as well as geographically, the centers of most villages. Theravada Buddhism put down roots in the countries of Southeast Asia in two senses. It became an offi cial religion in most of them with strong state support, at least until revolutionary governments took power in Cambodia and Laos in the mid-1970s (and, in the case of Laos, state connections to religion continued even under a government dedicated to socialism). In addition, Theravada beliefs and practices adopted many local, pre-existing religious elements, especially beliefs in spirits. In this way, the religion became highly localized over the centuries. Offi cial support for Buddhism and localization of tradition sometimes exerted different pressures. Some Buddhist leaders criticize the “folk Buddhism” of spirit cults as departing from orthodox Buddhist teachings. In Thailand in the early nineteenth century, the king attempted to reform Buddhism by establishing a new order, leading to the development of two sects within Thai Theravada Buddhism, known as

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Mahanikaya and Dhammayuttika. Although both sects have support of the Thai government and differ only in minor regards, they do maintain separate temples. The Buddhism of Southeast Asia began to arise in North America only in the late twentieth century. We can divide its establishment into two historical trends in immigration that have been signifi cant for the kinds of sacred order provided by Theravada Buddhism. One trend was the appearance of South and Southeast Asian immigrants, most notably from Thailand and, to a much lesser extent, from Burma (now Myanmar) and Sri Lanka. Massive refugee movements from Laos and Cambodia from about 1980 onward made up the second trend. Although Theravada Buddhist infl uences reached America as early as the nineteenth century, frequently through the medium of theoso- phy (Cadge 2005; Tweed 2000), the establishment of Southeast Asian Buddhism dates only from the late twentieth century. The fi rst signs of an interest by Thai authorities in bringing the Southern school to the United States appeared in 1961, when the Supreme Patriarch of Thai Buddhism visited the US and received a report of an available site for a temple on Staten Island. Five years later, referring to efforts to found the Staten Island temple, the Director General of the Thai Religious Department in Bangkok, Colonel Pin Muthukanta, stated that “a temple has been built in India, another in London, and we are interested in building one in the United States” (Friendly 1966: 88). However, the Thai learned that the land was not available to them and gave up plans to send two Buddhist monks. In 1964 and 1965, monks from Ceylon (renamed Sri Lanka in the 1970s) arrived in the United States to set up a Buddhist cultural center in Washington, DC (Cadge 2004; Kirschen 1965; Prebish 2003). Again, the Thai government played a part. The association that grew out of the efforts of the Sri Lankan monks founded the fi rst permanent temple on land in Washington purchased from the Thai government (Cadge 2005; Prebish 2003). A few years later, the fi rst specifi cally Thai temple was founded in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, with close cooperation from the Religious Department in Thailand and the ceremonial participation of the Thai monarchy in the casting of a Buddha image for the temple (Cadge and Sangdhanoo 2005). Whether founded by Thai, Sri Lankans, or Burmese, the early Thera- vada temples depended on support from the Thai American population and from the Thai government more than on any other source through the 1970s. This was chiefl y a result of the rapid growth in the numbers

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of people of Thai origin in North America and from their continued links to the home country. By 1980, the Thai population of the United States had grown to over 45,000 people, nearly all of them immigrants. By contrast, there were only about 3,000 Sri Lankans and about 3,000 Burmese in the United States in 1980 (authors’ estimates from historical census data; cf. Ruggles et al. 2004). As a result of their demographic predominance among early Southeast Asians and some support from Thai offi cialdom, Thai immigrants were the chief founders of temples in Washington, DC and California during the early 1970s. By the early twenty-fi rst century, the number of Thai temples around the United States had grown to about 87 establishments in 29 states (cf. Cadge 2005; Cadge and Sangdhanoo 2005). A signal historic event in Theravada American Buddhism occurred in Southern California in 1979, home of the largest Thai population in the United States. The Thai American Buddhist Association had founded Wat Thai (Thai Temple) eight years earlier. Although it was an initiative of people in the United States, monks arrived from Thai- land. In 1979, the Supreme Patriarch of Thailand arrived to dedicate Wat Thai, and an estimated 40,000 Southeast Asians from around the United States attended the event (Markel 1983). While Thai temples had close and even offi cial connections to Thai- land, they continued to have multiethnic dimensions. Part of this was due to the fact that these temples needed to serve people from other Theravada nations. From the earliest years, Sri Lankans frequently attended Thai temples, and as the Lao and Cambodian populations grew, many of them attended Thai temples. Another part was due to the multiethnic connections of Thai Americans themselves. Most were women and most Thai American women were married to non-Thai men (US Census Bureau, 2000). This meant that Thai temples not only included adherents from other Southeast Asian groups, they also frequently included non-Asian spouses and children of mixed heritage (Perreira 2004). According to the US census, by the year 2000, over 35 percent of people with some Thai racial or ethnic identifi cation in the United States were of mixed ancestry. Over two-thirds of people with Thai ancestry born in the United States were of mixed race or ethnicity, so that Thai Buddhism had a pool of potential native-born adherents that was not only culturally assimilated to the United States, but also of only partial Thai ethnic background. Contacts between Thai temples and the temples or meditation centers of non-Asian “convert” Buddhists have generally remained limited.

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Even in Thailand, language abilities and interests frequently lead to the segregation of visiting American and European convert Buddhists in temples heavily dedicated to the teaching of meditation. In America, as Numrich (1996, 2000) has shown, non-Asian Buddhists by conversion and Asian Buddhists by culture tend to move along lines that are generally parallel and touch only on occasions. As Thai temples proliferated with the growth of the Thai American population over the late twentieth century, new groups of people from traditionally Theravada nations suddenly appeared on the scene. In 1975, socialist governments came to power in both Laos and Cambodia, in the former by relatively peaceful electoral means and in the latter as a consequence of violent civil war. The previous governments of both countries had been allied with American military efforts in Southeast Asia during the period of the Vietnam War. In the spring of 1975, the US Congress passed the Indochina Migra- tion and Refugee Assistance Act, intended to admit Southeast Asians who had been connected to American military activities. Although most of those who arrived in the US under the act were Vietnamese, it also allowed 4,600 people from Cambodia and 800 people from Laos into the country. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw much larger numbers of refugees from these two countries. Cambodians, in particular, began to be accepted into the United States in increasing tides as they ﬂ ed from their own country following the Khmer Rouge years and their plight received international attention. Most members of both of these groups came after the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. During the late twentieth century, the Lao and Cambodians surpassed the Thai as the largest immigrant Asian Theravada groups in North America. By 2000, there were about 111,000 Thai, 178,000 Cambodi- ans, and 169,000 Lao in the United States (US Census Bureau 2000). By contrast, there were fewer than 20,000 Sri Lankans and the Burmese were not even listed as a separate category in the census (US Census Bureau 2000). According to the 2001 Canadian census, Canada was home to 14,840 Cambodians and 12,845 Lao. The Canadian census counted 2,810 people of Thai ethnic origin and 1,070 Burmese. The main distinction between the United States and Canada with regard to these groups was the relatively large Sri Lankan population in the northern country, a reﬂ ection of the comparatively large migration from South Asia to Canada, estimated at 45,845 in 2001 (Statistics Canada, 2007). It should also be noted that Janet McLellan (1999a: 233) has indicated that the Cambodian population of Canada has been vastly

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undercounted historically and should have been well over 20,000 at the end of the twentieth century. Relations among the Thai, Lao, and Cambodians are not always perfect. Some Thai people regard the Cambodians with disdain and ethnic prejudice and treat the Lao with condescension. Native inhabitants of Thailand sometimes exploited refugees into their country. Nevertheless, the three countries have centuries of shared tradition, and the practice of Buddhism is virtually identical in the three. Moreover, the Lao and Thai languages are mutually intelligible and, political considerations aside, may be properly viewed as two dialects of a single language. As a result, many Lao and Cambodian Buddhists have participated in activities at Thai temples. Wendy Cadge has noted that “Most Thai temples [in the United States] . . . include at least a few people born in Laos or Cambodia” (2005: 45). Despite the connections to Thai Buddhism, from the late 1970s onward, members of the refugee groups began to establish their own temples and Theravada associations in the United States. These temples often had some connection to Thai Buddhism, with its access to economic support from Thailand and its earlier establishment, however small, in the United States. For example, a monk in Thailand provided the image of the Buddha for the fi rst New York Cambodian temple (Howe 1985), and the Cambodian temple in Ottawa was headed by a Khmer-speaking Thai monk (McLellan 1999a). Cambodian Theravada Buddhism became evident as the Cambodian American population grew from 16,044 in 1980 to 149,047 in 1990 and then to 178,043 in 2000. In 1979, the Washington Post described the Venerable Uang Mean, who arrived in the United States in 1977, as “until recently the only Cambodian Buddhist monk in this country.” By mid-1979, the Washington, DC area Cambodian Buddhist Society, the organization that sponsored Uang Mean, had purchased a house in New Carrollton, Maryland, which they turned into Wat Buddhikarama, reportedly the fi rst Cambodian Buddhist temple in the United States (Norman 1979: A1). Three years later, in 1982, the expanding Cam- bodian population of Long Beach, California led Cambodian refugees in Southern California to establish Wat Kemara Buddhikaram in Long Beach (Zhou, Bankston and Kim 2002). In mid-1985, the Khmer Bud- dhist Society opened the fi rst Cambodian Buddhist temple in New York City in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx (Howe 1985). Throughout the mid to late 1980s, Cambodian Buddhist temples proliferated around the United States and southern Canada.

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Lao temples proliferated during the same period of time. Where Thai temples existed, the Lao were often included more readily than the Cambodians, because of the close similarity between Thai and Lao language and culture, as well as between their religious practices. Nev- ertheless, as we discuss below, the refugee situation of the Lao and the existence of identifi able Lao communities often led to the establishment of their own temples. Frequently, Thai religious establishments served as an initial base for creating separate Lao establishments. In 1980, the fi rst Lao Buddhist monk in the New York metropolitan area, Satu Khamphoui Sinnolai, found housing with four Thai monks in the Bronx. At that time, he was reportedly one of only fi ve Lao Buddhist monks in the United States, with two others in Washington, DC, one in Oregon, and another in Illinois. Lao families in the New York area pledged to raise money to create their own temple around Satu Khampoui (Evans 1980). Over the course of the 1980s, the Lao American population both grew and spread out from initial points of entry into North America. From 47,683 in 1980, numbers of Lao in the United States grew to 147,375 in 1990 and then to 167,792 in 2000. A little over one-third of Lao in the US could be found in California in 2000, but they had become the most geographically distributed of the major groups within the Theravada tradition. They often formed small communities in various parts of their new homeland. In Texas, for example, communities of 500 to 1,000 Lao could be found in Amarillo, Dallas, Euless, Houston, and Irving. To the north, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 ethnic Lao lived in St. Paul and Minneapolis, along with the larger number of Hmong from the highlands of Laos. By the time of the 1991 Canadian census, Canada was home to about 14,500 Lao, with about half of them settled in either Toronto or Montreal. As these smaller Lao communities formed, they were motivated to establish temples by the absence of existing Thai temples, as well as by their own specifi c group needs. In Iberia Parish, Louisiana, for example, Lao residents who had been drawn to the area by the availability of jobs in oil-related construction during the early 1980s began plans to create a temple with a surrounding residential neighborhood in 1986, completing the temple in 1987 (cf. Bankston 1997). Other temples serving Lao communities were established during the 1980s in places as widespread as Tucson, Denver, St. Petersburg, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City. In 1989, the US Offi ce of Refugee Services published a document entitled “Profi les of Some Good Places for Lao People to

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Live in the United States” (North and Ditthavong 1989); the presence or accessibility of a Lao temple was one of the chief characteristics of a “good place for Lao people to live.” In the quarter of a century from the middle of the 1960s to the beginning of the 1990s, Theravada Buddhism had gone from having virtually no presence in North America to being an established religion in towns and cities around the continent. Although a small part of this growth had been due to the creation of meditation centers for convert Buddhists (Numrich 1996; Cadge 2005), most of it was the consequence of immigration. At the end of the twentieth century, Numrich (1998) estimated the total number of Asian or immigrant Theravada Bud- dhist temples to be about 150, housing between 450 to 600 monks. According to an earlier estimate by Numrich (1996: 149–53), the Thai had the greatest number of temples (55), followed by Cambodians and Lao (34 temples each), then the Burmese (11), and the Sri Lankans (8). All but the Washington, DC Sri Lankan temple were built in the years following 1970. The ﬁ rst stage in this remarkable growth was the work of the Thai, Sri Lankan, and Burmese populations in the United States, with the Thai as the largest and most important contributors. The second stage emerged from the arrival of Theravada Buddhist refugees from Laos and Cambodia. The Thai played an essential part in the second stage as well, because they provided the initial base of support for Lao and Cambodian Buddhism. From this brief history of the origins and development of North American Theravada Buddhism, we turn now to an interpretive discussion of the forms of social order provided by American Theravada religious institutions. Following our earlier discussion, we will be concerned with investigating how the religion provides its adherents with patterns of social relations and manages conﬂ ict among individuals and groups. We will consider the ways in which it creates connections between individuals and larger groups and how it affects relationships among groups.

Theravada Buddhism and Social Order

If the Southeast Asians who comprise most of the Theravada Bud- dhists in North America have varied national backgrounds, they also share a great deal in common. In religious belief, this essential unity

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is expressed by a fundamental phrase repeatedly chanted at religious activities: Buddham saranam gacchami. Dhammam saranam gacchami. Sangham saranam gacchami. This traditional Pali language statement is usually translated, “I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dhamma [Dharma], I take refuge in the Sangha.” The three refuges are profoundly interrelated and discussing them each separately involves some artifi cial distinction. Still, the fi rst is a statement of commitment to the teachings of Gautama Buddha, the inspired but mortal individual who achieved enlightenment about the ultimate nature of existence by his own efforts. According to the Bud- dha, the goal of religious activities is to seek release from suffering in the ultimate state of nibbana (nirvana, in the Sanskrit version). Implicit in this teaching is the concept of samsara, of a round of re-births in which the individual is caught. The round of re-births is governed by kamma (karma). This can be defi ned as the process by which an individual’s actions affect future lives or the present life. While following the Buddha’s teachings is essentially a matter of individual salvation, then this also guides behavior toward other people since destructive or anti-social behavior rebounds on an individual’s own self. Melford Spiro, in his classic study of Theravada Buddhism in Burma and elsewhere has argued that the application of Buddhism to the peas- ant societies of Asia led to an emphasis on the process of right behavior in the world (“Kammatic Buddhism”), rather than on the liberation at the end of the process (“Nibbanic Buddhism,” in Spiro’s terms). Within Kammatic Buddhism, as Spiro identifi es it, the idea of earning merit takes on a central role. The Buddha, as the fi rst of the three refuges, is both the promulgator and also the exemplar of merit. Given the emphasis on right behavior in existing Theravada Buddhism, though, merit frequently concerns how an individual deals with actions toward other individuals, particularly through charity and morality, although the less socially oriented activity of meditation is also considered a means of merit-making (see Spiro 1982: 94). The primary source of merit in a Theravada Buddhist society is the temple. Throughout most of the southern Buddhist countries, each village will have a temple at its geographic and cultural center. Villagers make merit by feeding monks, by donating robes, and by contributing labor. This emphasis on external activity contrasts with the emphasis of textual Buddhism on meditation and internal states (Conze 1972; Spiro 1982; Tambiah 1984). In a Durkheimian sense, we can see the temples and the monks in them as expressions of communal existence.

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Making merit through temples can be interpreted as expressing commitment to the sacralized collectivity of the village. The idea of dhamma or dharma is closely linked to that of karma, and is that which was revealed by the Buddha. Dhamma may be translated as “law,” but it refers more broadly to the order of the universe and the Buddha’s teachings on right order and belief and can be analogized as similar in meaning to the ancient Greek nomos as adopted by sociologists (Bankston 1997). The dhamma can be seen as the ultimate normative structure of the universe that lies behind worldly social norms. Repeatedly, during his years living in Thailand and among Lao refugees in camps, people would ask Bankston about the religious beliefs or practices of Americans. On hearing that many Americans adhere to no religion, the responses followed a similar pattern: “So what makes them behave?” or even “Aah, that’s why there’s so much crime in America.” These Buddhists were basically conservative social theorists along the lines of Maistre or Rieff, who see behavior within a community as directed by norms, and binding norms as rooted in the nature of the universe. At this point, it may be relevant to observe that Orru and Wang’s (1992) claim that the sacred is not a relevant concept for Buddhism appears to be based on an excessively narrow and artifi cial understanding of the sacred. If by sacred we mean that which is the ultimate and fi nal source of value, then there is a sacred in Theravada Buddhism, and it is rooted in the dhamma which within the thoughts and practices of adherents is not a nirvanic emptiness, but the moral wheel of existence. Although there is not a strict sacred/profane dichotomy in Buddhism, in the sense of separate realms for the fi nal and the immediate, it nevertheless does make sense to think of a continuum from the sacred to the worldly. The sangha consists of the community of monks living in accordance with the dhamma, according to the most common use of the word most in Theravada Buddhism. As a Theravada service proclaims, “the Blessed One [the Buddha] is an arahant, self-enlightened; the Dharma is that which the Blessed One rightly proclaimed; the Sangha consists of the disciples of the Blessed One who keep the precepts” (Wells 1960: 46). Strictly speaking, the sangha is the community of monks. Numrich (1998: 149) has observed that “clearly . . . the establishment of traditional Thera- vada Buddhism in any country depends on the establishment of the order of monks there.” However, the monastic sangha can also be considered as the core of the larger, surrounding lay community, providing

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lay people with their own means of keeping the precepts through supporting the monks. Moreover, consistent with the thesis that there is a continuum rather than a dichotomy between the sacred and the profane in Theravada Buddhism, in most Theravada societies men are typically expected to spend some time as monks, either in youth before marriage or in old age. For all Theravada Buddhists, then, religion is a source of a speciﬁ c form of social order. It provides sets of people with a common teleol- ogy by orienting them toward shared goals of behavior. It provides a practical ethical theory through grounding the practice of merit- making in dhamma, a universal and fundamental normative structure. Finally, it provides a recognizable and accepted social-psychological geometry to communities by centering them on temples and on monks in temples. Social life is further ordered by rituals centered on the monastic sangha. Temples are gathering places, and virtually all ceremonies, which are timed according to the agricultural cycle of seasons, are held at temples. Traditionally, in Cambodia, the Chol Chnam, or New Year Festival, is held annually about the month of April. In the spring, Vissakh Bochea marks the anniversary of the birth, death, and enlightenment of the Buddha. The following June or July, Chol Vossa is a ritual recognition of a season of retreat, during which monks must remain in the temple or on temple grounds. At the end of the vossa season, around September, Cambodian Buddhist communities have traditionally celebrated the kathen. One of the signal activities of the kathen is the provision of offerings to the monks by the laity, with the offering of new robes playing a particularly important part (Steinberg 1957; Harris 2005). Each of these occasions has its equivalent in Thailand and Laos. The New Year festival, called Songkran in Thai and Songkan or Pimai in Lao, has become a popular tourist event because of the energetic splashing of water, in addition to other festivities. The popularity of these events frequently overshadows their essentially religious nature, though. The throwing of water is a puriﬁ cation rite, and monks conduct religious services in memory of the dead to begin the lunar new year. The Cambodian Vissakh Bochea is known in Thailand and Laos as Visakha Bucha, when adherents listen to sermons by monks and in the evening walk in circles around major temples holding candles. The retreat season is known as Phansa, marked by the day of Khao Phansa. This is also followed by the kathin ceremony, in which adherents make offerings of robes and other useful gifts to monks. These holidays can

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be seen as bringing individuals in communities into a shared pattern of life by marking out cycles of time according to ritual recognitions of a normative order centered on the temples and the monks in the temples. Formal or canonical Buddhism has mingled with elements from outside of Buddhist orthodoxy in popular religious practices.2 The most evident of these elements can be found in the spirit cults, which are notably similar across Theravada Southeast Asia. Known as nat in Burma, phi in Thailand and Laos, and as khmoc, neak ta, and other names in Cambodia, the spirits, whether benevolent or malevolent, are enti- ties that lie outside the realm of human relations. These spirits inhabit the jungles and forests, outside the village pales. The spirits may also be spirits of the dead, or ghosts. The dead are those who have passed beyond the known, social, collectively-represented universe. The social order maintained and expressed by Southeast Asian Bud- dhist practices, whether formal or popular, is historically that of the village based on wet-rice farming. This is a labor-intensive economy that requires signifi cant cooperation. Typically, the villages that radi- ate from temples are themselves surrounded by rice fi elds. Individual families own these fi elds, but farmers require continual help from friends and neighbors in the cultivation of this labor-intensive crop. While each person is expected to take responsibility for his or her own sustenance, this is only possible through shared contributions to a collective existence. The contributions people make to shared efforts result in obligations from others so that, in the worldly as in the sacred sphere, individual benefi ts fl ow from donations of time and energy to a central collective.

The Theravada Social Order in North America

Migrants to a new land face the task of constructing a meaningful social order, as well as the challenges of getting jobs, ﬁ nding housing, and managing transportation. Religion can be a prime source of the former, but it can also help with the latter. However, the kinds of meanings

2 Spiro (1982) tends to portray Nibbanic Buddhism as canonical and to see Kam- matic Buddhism as a revision or even corruption, but few Theravada Buddhists would accept this portrayal.

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and social relations created by shared beliefs change according to historical experience and current circumstance. The history of Theravada Buddhism that we sketched above suggested that all of the major Southeast Asian groups in North America reconstructed their religious institutions, generally as soon as they arrived in signifi cant numbers. All served the function of providing moral and social order to adherents that enabled them to conceptual- ize their relations to other individual adherents and to their national groups. Wat Thai in the Los Angeles area was described as a “spiritual hub for much of Southern California’s Thai-American community” (Nielsen 1985: A6). The holidays that framed the shared experience of time in a socially signifi cant pattern all centered around temples, as in the country of origin. In the Washington, DC area, for example, Thai people have come together around the Silver Spring temple to celebrate the festival of Khao Phansa with traditional dances and foods (Wynter 1983). For the refugee groups, also, the temples became key sources of building social identity around a coherent temporal order. One of the earliest group activities of Cambodian Buddhists in Washington, DC in 1979 was a kathen ceremony for some of the fi rst Cambodian monks. Religious beliefs and rituals established normatively rich patterns that enabled adherents to comprehend themselves and their places in the world. The Venerable Uang Mean explained to a reporter in 1979, “without Buddhism our people cannot live. Like without food, they cannot live. Buddhism is a part of life. It is an important part of life. For a Cambodian, even the sight of a monk is a remedy and they feel refreshed” (Norman 1979: A1, A4). When the fi rst Lao monk arrived in the New York area in 1980, local Lao people greeted him with fl owers, incense, candles, and fruit, and they immediately began the search for a place to use as a temple (Evans 1980). When the Lao community of Iberia, Louisiana set out to build an ethnically based neighborhood, the fi rst step was to build a temple and to staff it with a monk (Bankston 1997). On the level of maintaining a culture, or a patterned set of relations among individuals, the religious institution provides a means of intergenerational transmission. Not only does it draw an immigrant generation into structured interactions, it also serves as a place where American-born young people can learn to participate in these interactions. Describing the value for his community of the fi rst Cambodian temple in New York City, Chhan Mey, president of New York’s Khmer

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Buddhist Society, expressed concern about the community’s youth and opined that the temple was “an important way to hold them” (Howe 1985: B3). At Wat Khemara Buddhikaram in Long Beach, California, for example, Buddhist monks and nuns teach Khmer language and culture to young Cambodians along with the teachings of their faith tradition (Zhou, Bankston and Kim 2002). Similarly, in the mid-1980s, the abbot at the Thai temple in Los Angeles started the Rak Muang Thai (Love the Thai Nation or People) project, a camp for American-born Thai young people that was intended to convey to the children of Thai immigrants a sense of Thai culture and of kwam pen thai, or “Thainess.” Speaking of the New Year festival held at and around the temple in the Lao community of Iberia, Louisiana, one man explained to an interviewer, “It is a chance for my children to learn how we do things in my country, and to bring something of my country to America” (in Bankston 1997: 469). For all of the major groups of culture Theravada Buddhists, then, temples and the activities centered on temples provide ways of ordering relationships among individuals, maintaining the identiﬁ cation of individuals with national origin groups, and passing on ethnic identi- ﬁ cation and patterns of interaction to members of a new generation. The new arrivals in North America have drawn on traditions, beliefs, and institutions from their previous homelands to make a way of living in the current homeland. But they have also all had to adapt their Southeast Asian religious heritage to the North American environment. We can see the “de facto congregationalism” mentioned above as part of this adaptation. Theravada temporal order has been recreated in the new land, but it has changed in notable ways. The Thai in Chicago, for example, rear- ranged their celebrations to have them fall on Saturdays and Sundays. Osoth Jamjun, vice president of the Northern Thai Society, explained that “we have adapted to Saturday and Sunday because those are the days that people have off.” Offering a complementary explanation, Jamjun remarked that “when my daughter goes to school, the other children ask her what she does on Sunday, if she goes to church. With the temple, she can tell them she has somewhere to go” (in Harms 1983: SD1). Conforming to the temporal pattern of American society, Wat Thai in Los Angeles scheduled bazaars and other events for weekends (Nielsen 1985). At a Lao temple in Louisiana, most of the temple participation occurs on weekends, as a result of the work week. In addition, the New Year festival has been set to coincide with Easter

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holidays each year, since Easter is the time when people can most easily take time off from their jobs (Bankston 1997). The ways that monks interact with the laity have also changed, affecting the situations in which the latter can make merit. A report on the Thai temple in the Los Angeles area in 1984 observed that monks could no longer walk with a bowl around the neighborhood, as they had done in Thailand. Instead, they had to eat together in the basement each morning (Nielsen 1984). At the early Washington, DC area Cam- bodian Buddhist temple, the monk did not walk with his bowl; instead, adherents regularly brought his food to him at the temple (Norman 1979). Even the bringing of food to temples sometimes changed. At the time of entering the retreat period, lay people in Theravada countries generally bring food to share with the monks and with other celebrants at the festival of khao phansa. At the Thai temple in the Washington area, though, with the Thai community geographically dispersed and arriving from other locations, temple supporters developed a strategy of selling food at the temple and using the proceeds to support the temple (Wynter 1983). Changing relations between the sangha and the laity can also be seen in professionalization of monasticism, an aspect of the tendency toward de facto congregationalism. From early times, Theravada monasticism in North America moved toward becoming a specialized, professional clergy serving the needs of a “congregation.” The Cambodian Bud- dhist Society brought the ﬁ rst monk into the Washington, DC area as Buddhist clergy for local Cambodians (Norman 1979), in somewhat the same way that a Presbyterian congregation might recruit a new minister. Even in the original homelands, there were some men who were lifelong monks. The relation between the sangha and the laity was porous, though, because of the ideal that men would be ordained temporarily at some point in their lives. Along with the hiring of monks, there has also been an increase in the expectation that monasticism is a career, rather than a stage in life, inasmuch as the demands of the American work week and school mean that temporary monasticism has become less an option for Southeast Asian Buddhists. As one Lao respondent reported, “we have jobs that we have to go to every day. Everybody has to work to get by. So we can’t take time out to go into the temple” (Bankston 1997: 465). Although Buddhists follow a set of universal doctrines, the sangha also serves the purpose of preserving speciﬁ c ethno-national traditions

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and identities. This has been true already in the home countries, but the preservationist role of Theravada Buddhism has become much greater in North America than it was in Southeast Asia. In Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia (at least before the upheavals of the 1970s in the last), Theravada Buddhism had a near monopoly in religion. Moreover, most people lived in settings in which their own ethnic group was the majority. While being Buddhist might have been thought of as closely connected to a national identity, both Buddhism and national identity were assumed and accepted, at least nominally, by most people. Accord- ingly, cultural and religious preservation were much less pressing issues in the older homelands before emigration from Thailand and before dramatic social change and ﬂ ight from Laos and Cambodia. In terms of the social order scheme that we sketched out above, Buddhism provided patterns for relationships among individuals in Southeast Asia. It also provided a way in which individuals were linked to their villages and, in a more abstract way, to larger national enti- ties. In North America, though, Buddhism has become much more important as a way of ordering relations of individuals to groups and, especially, as a way of deﬁ ning how the Southeast Asians relate to outsiders, in their immediate neighborhoods and in the society at large. In a manner consistent with the religious economy argument, non-Buddhist religions such as Christianity and the possibility of conversion from Buddhism intensify the connection between Buddhism and ethnic identity. One of the adherents of the Lao temple in Iberia explained: “In Laos, my religion was Buddhism. My religion taught me to be a good person, but I never thought my religion made me Lao. In America, Buddhism is a Lao religion, and that makes me Lao. The ones who become Christian—they are still Lao, but it isn’t the same” (Bankston 1997: 466). Rachel Simon (2002), a student in Minnesota who interviewed both Buddhist Cambodians and Cambodian converts to Christianity, found that the Buddhists had a heightened sense of the cultural role of religion as they considered the converts. One of her Buddhist interviewees told her that “religion is part of the culture tree, if someone tells me they’re Cambodian I think they are Buddhist.” She described the same interviewee as highly critical of Christian missionaries and as seeming “to believe that denying Buddhism as a religious practice is like denying your Cambodian heritage.” In an ethnography of a Cambodian Buddhist temple in Long Beach, Zhou, Bankston and Kim (2002: 67) found that “through the temple,

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fellow countrymen can preserve their cultural heritage, revive a sense of community, and share experiences of adaptation to their new home. The temple is used as a ‘Treasure-House’ of Cambodian tradition where Cambodian arts, architecture, civilization, education, physical, mental and spiritual health can be stored and preserved.” The word “preserved” here is important. The role of the religious institution in preserving a cultural tradition and an ethnic identity becomes primary when the institution interacts with other groups that do not share the identity. It defi nes who is Thai or Cambodian against all those who are not Thai or Cambodian. Being Buddhist becomes a much more marked boundary line of being Lao or Thai when there are large numbers of non-Buddhists, whether co-ethnic converts to another faith or members of the larger society. At the same time that Buddhist temples preserve some of the normative patterns of their home countries and maintain specifi c forms of social interaction among adherents, they also shape the ways in which adherents interact with the society around them. They may be psycho- logically adaptive or they may actually help Southeast Asians organize themselves for material purposes, as we will discuss more below. At the same time, though, temples can also be points of confl ict between Southeast Asian groups and the quite different groups of the society surrounding them. The Thai temple complex in Sun Valley, California, for example, came into confl ict with local homeowners who objected to the noise and crowds attracted by festivals (Nielsen 1985). The monks of the temple, on the other hand, complained of being confused with “Hare Krishnas” and of being the subject of shouts and taunts on the street (Nielsen 1984). An attempt to establish a Lao settlement with a temple and culture center in Wilmington, Connecticut resulted in opposition from other residents (Associated Press 1989; Ravo 1989). These kinds of pressures from the outside frequently intensify the need to establish connections inside of the Southeast Asian groups centered on Buddhism, strengthening the tendency of individuals to identify with their ethnic groups and the tendency to identify the groups with Buddhism. While there are similarities in the kinds of social order Theravada Buddhism has provided to the Southeast Asians of North America, there are also variations. Some of these, of course, are geographical. Where there is a substantial community of culture Buddhists located near a temple, they can participate in religious life in a much more regular and intensive way than when adherents are scattered around

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a region. Most of the variations, though, are due to the different histories and current social contexts of the three major Southeast Asian Theravada groups. The Thai are distinct from the other two groups in several respects. First, foreign-born Thai Americans did not arrive in the United States as refugees. This is important because it means that the Thai have maintained connections with their homeland and that transnationalism has been, consequently, a central characteristic of Thai Buddhism in North America. Second, the government of Thailand has been active in supporting overseas Buddhist institutions. Third, on average, the Thai in North America have enjoyed much higher incomes and socioeconomic status than members of the two refugee groups. Finally, a high level of exogamy has meant that Thai relations to those who are not Thai have been different from relations of other Southeast Asians to members of out-groups. A trickle of immigration from Thailand to North America began in the late 1960s, promoted by the US liberalization of its immigration laws in 1965 and by the American military presence in Thailand created by American involvement in the wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Movement back and forth between Thailand and America has meant that Thai Buddhism, in addition to being preservationist, also helps maintain an existing link between Thai people in the two lands. Thus, Thai monks, such as those at Sun Valley in California, are often in the United States on temporary visas, do not learn English, and plan on returning to Thailand (Nielsen 1984). When the temple was dedicated in 1979, the Supreme Patriarch of Thailand appeared at the dedication (Nielsen 1985). In spite of adaptation to the American environment, to some degree the Thai Theravada moral order in America is an exten- sion of the moral order in Thailand. It is less a means of reproducing and remembering the normative patterns of a lost homeland than it is a way of keeping transnational lines of communication active. The transnationalism of Thai Buddhism is closely associated with the second characteristic, offi cial Thai support for Buddhism in America. As we point out above, the fi rst effort to establish Theravada Buddhism in North America came from an initiative of the Thai government, which supports Buddhism in Thailand through the Religious Depart- ment (Friendly 1966). This offi cial connection has continued. In Octo- ber 1984, the supreme commander of the Royal Armed Forces of Thailand laid the cornerstone for a proposed new culture center at the Sun Valley temple (Nielsen 1985). When the Rak Muang Thai project to

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pass on Thai culture began under the direction of a Thai abbot in the mid-1980s, the Thai American initiative drew on offi cial support from Thailand, since the chair of the project was the wife of Thai military commander Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, and Thai American children met with Thailand’s Prime Minister during the latter’s visit to the United States (Crossette 1987). In 1993, Thailand’s Queen Sirikit visited Wat Thai in Silicon Valley and made donations to the temple. The Thai king has reportedly donated more than twenty “royal robes” to temples in the United States up to the present time (Bao 2005). As a social order, Thai Buddhism frequently incorporates people who interact with the larger North American society in specifi c ways. Whereas median per capita income of the Cambodian and Lao populations in the United States, for example, was only $10,366 and $11,830 in 2000, Thai median per capita income in that year was $19,966, or 96 percent the general US median per capita income of $21,587. Among the two refugee groups, the Cambodians in the United States had a poverty rate of 29 percent and the Lao of 19 percent, compared to 14 percent for the Thai and 9 percent for the US as a whole. While 22 percent of the Cambodians and 14 percent of the Lao in the United States had public assistance income in 2000, this was the case for only 2 percent of the Thai, in part refl ecting the much greater availability of public assistance fund programs to refugees than to immigrants. According to Van Esterik (1999a, 1999b) and McLellan (1999b), the Thai in Canada tend to hold professional occupations, while both the Lao and Cambodians are concentrated in low-income jobs. Although there was substantial inequality among Thai people, in general they tended to be in much better economic situations than members of the two refugee groups. The Thai, then, have often been in a comparatively strong position for creating their own social systems around their religious organizations. Dr. Prasarn Niprabhasorn, a Howard County radiologist, for example, served as president of the Thai Buddhist Association of Washington (Wynter 1983). Most Thai people in America are not in a similarly privileged position, although we have elsewhere found that 10 percent of adult Thai in the United States had socioeconomic-status scale scores above 75 in 2000, while only 6 percent of all Americans had scores in this range (Bankston and Hidalgo 2007). Nevertheless, there are substantial numbers of potential leaders of Thai American Buddhist organizations who are well-educated, prosperous, and fl uent in English. Together with the support from offi cial sources, this means

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that Thai temples frequently enjoy good resources from both local adherents and abroad. The extremely high level of exogamy among Thai Americans has also affected how Thai Buddhists interact with each other and how they interact with the larger society. As we noted earlier, the majority of Thai people in North America are women, and the majority of Thai American women are married to non-Asian men. In 2000, women were 60.4 percent of people identifi ed by the US Census as Thai, and 60.6 percent of married Thai women had non-Thai husbands, with 54 percent of Thai American women married to non-Asian husbands. Although there is relatively limited contact between the culture Bud- dhists of Thai heritage and the convert Buddhists of the larger Ameri- can society (Numrich 1996, 2000; Cadge 2005), non-Thai spouses have frequently been drawn into Buddhist social circles as a result of this extraordinarily high rate of out-group marriage. The best investigation of this phenomenon can be found in the work of Todd L. Perreira’s study of intermarriage and identity at a Thai Buddhist temple in Silicon Valley (2004). Interracial and interreligious families made up nearly one-third of those at this temple, a high percentage when one considers that this meant that many of the temple participants were spouses from non-Buddhist backgrounds. Perreira found that the Thai American wives frequently drew their non-Asian husbands into temple participation and into Theravada Buddhist social circles. The mixed heritage children of these couples frequently derived all of their experience of kwam pen Thai (“Thainess”) from temple participation. The incorporation of non-Thai elements within the Thai religious community posed special problems of how Thai social order should interact with non-Thai social order. All of the Buddhist communities had to adapt and change in response to the larger society, in part through means such as de facto congregationalism, but the Thai temples had the larger society inside of them, as well as around them. One area that has been particularly complicated has been the role of women. Although women have always been active participants in religious activities, in Thailand and in North America, Theravada Buddhism has assumptions about gender roles built into its normative order, and many of these assumptions confl ict with contemporary American ideas about gender roles. Women, for example, may not become monks. Theravada “nuns” have largely the secondary and auxiliary function of servants of the temple and the sangha (Cadge 2004) and are offi cially simply lay women. The Thai temple studied by Perreira showed defi nite

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differences of opinion on what the role of nuns ought to be, with about one-third of the Thai and a much larger percentage of the non-Thai holding that nuns should be fully ordained. Thai Buddhism, then, frequently became a way of importing Thai ethnic normative patterns as a private structure among people who moved relatively smoothly through the public structures of the surrounding American society. At the same time, the participation of Thai Americans in the structures of the larger society often meant complicated interaction between Thai social order and mainstream American social order within the temples. Ironically, the monks brought from Thailand, often speaking little English and feeling like aliens in American society (Nielsen 1984), frequently served adherents who were better adapted to American life. It appears that the interaction between Thai social order and the order of the larger American society may have affected the non-canonical or “folk Buddhist” aspects of religion more for the Thai than for other groups. While one should be cautious in arguing from a lack of evidence, neither among the Thai American Buddhists with whom we have spoken nor in the literature are references to the spirit cults frequent or prominent. It is plausible that living in the new land is tend- ing to strip away the unofﬁ cial aspects of the religion, although this is a question that requires greater investigation. On this point, Numrich (2005) has found that many monks in the US often help to maintain “folk” practices even while denigrating those practices as superstitious and keeping them out of sight of non-ethnics. One can distinguish further between the ways in which Lao Bud- dhism and Cambodian Buddhism shaped relations among their group members, connections of their group members to ethnic communities, and interactions between ethnic communities and others. Both the Lao and the Cambodians come from nations in which the link between government and religion was broken by the rise of revolutionary regimes. These regimes were quite different in character, though, and this had consequences for the lives of refugees from those countries. In Laos, the socialist government came to power in 1975 through elections. The new regime attempted to turn Buddhism toward its own ideological purposes, and it frequently sent monks to work outside the temples or forced the monks to enter re-education camps known as “seminars.” While it tried to control Buddhism and often suppress many practices, the revolutionary Lao government nevertheless allowed the religion to continue in existence. When refugees ﬂ ed to Thailand, they brought

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their religion with them, and they entered a country with a faith that was identical in most respects to their own. Upon arrival in America, the Lao faced many challenges. Their work experiences were generally in farming or the military and they often had limited educations in their own language. By the time of the 2000 US Census, the Lao continued to have a somewhat higher unemployment rate ( just under 8 percent of those in the work force) than the US public in general ( just under 6 percent of those in the work force). The Lao also had a slightly higher rate of non-participation in the work force than other people in the United States (39 percent of Lao aged 16 and over, compared to 36 percent of the total population in this age group). Van Esterik (1999b) noted that the Lao in Canada have generally been concentrated in jobs as laborers and semi-skilled occupations. Nevertheless, the Lao have shown a tendency from the beginning to move into blue collar types of occupations in their new homelands. Zhou, Bankston and Kim (2002) found that maintaining cultural identity was a notable manifest function of the Lao temple they studied in Louisiana. However, they also found that it had latent economic functions. The fi nancial manager of the Buddhist temple was also a foreman at a large local construction company, and he helped to place Lao men in jobs. An adult daughter of one of the temple’s lay leaders helped people in the Lao community obtain mortgage loans to build or purchase homes. The solidarity produced by faith in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha translated into a cooperative pattern of interdependence. This type of social order enabled the Lao, as a group, to obtain competitive advantages in the quest for resources such as jobs and homes. The social assets provided by solidarity in the Louisiana instance fi t into what is generally called a “confl ict” perspective in the sociological literature because they enable a group of people to obtain benefi ts in competition with others. Nevertheless, there has been little open confl ict between the Lao of Louisiana and their neighbors of other ethnic groups, although there have been clashes between young Lao and young people in other minority groups of the region. Elsewhere, however, similar displays of ethnic solidarity by the Lao have resulted in explicit confl ict. In Willington, Connecticut at the end of the 1980s, for example, ten Lao families pooled their resources to purchase land, which they had blessed by Buddhist monks. After this, they planned to build homes and a temple. Opposition to the plans from locals led

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to a petition to prevent the building and to the use of zoning regulations to halt the small community’s creation (Associated Press 1989; Ravo 1989). For the Lao in America, the spirit cults seemed to have declined, but this is diffi cult to establish defi nitively and we suspect that this has not occurred to the same extent as for the Thai. In an ethnography of the Lao in Louisiana, Bankston (1997) found that respondents reported that they still believed in the spirits, but that the sense of the presence of the spirits had grown weaker. It was suggested that this might have been because the spirits were closely connected to rural settings and the sense of place in Southeast Asia. Cambodians in North America shared the refugee status of the Lao and, like the Lao, they were largely cut off from their homeland, so that the cultural function of religious ritual served more to preserve a memory and a heritage than to maintain a continuing link with the homeland. Maintaining an effective social order had become a much greater problem for Cambodians, then, as a result of the tragic events in their homeland. Rapid infl ation and increasing social inequality during the 1960s increased confl ict within the country. The nation’s problems grew worse as the war in neighboring Vietnam extended into Cambodia in that decade, bringing American military involvement. The US began bombing the Cambodian countryside in the late 1960s in order to drive out Vietnamese Communist forces. After the overthrow of Cambodian leader Prince Sihanouk in a coup in 1970, Sihanouk’s successor, Lon Nol, allowed the United States to engage in unlimited bombing, dropping about three-and-half times the total amount of bombs that had been unloaded on Japan during all of World War II. The resulting social disruption fed the growth of the Khmer Rouge, the extremist guerrillas of the Cambodian countryside, who took power in April 1975. They began to execute all offi cials of the former government and forced the citizens of the capital, Phnom Penh, to evacuate the city, on the grounds that there was insuffi cient food to support city dwellers. They also intended to destroy the old society and create an egalitarian nation of peasants. Estimates of the number of people who died from execution, starvation, or disease during the Khmer Rouge period usually range from one to three million (Bankston 2003). In one refugee camp in the Philippines where Bankston worked from 1985 to 1990, almost every adult Cambodian he met had lost family members at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. During the 1980s, Cambodian refugees in North America were sometimes found to have functional

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blindness, an inability to see among people with no discernible physical visual impairment. All reported beginning to go blind after viewing some horriﬁ c sight, such as seeing family members slaughtered, in their homeland (Smith 1989). These historical experiences had consequences for the social order the Cambodians were able to establish in North America and for the role that Cambodian Buddhism played in this social order. In their study of the temple in Long Beach, Zhou, Bankston and Kim (2002) found that the temple was even more important as an identity marker for the Cambodians than for other Southeast Asian groups because the former had suffered such utter destruction in their homeland and had arrived in America estranged, isolated, and dispersed. The temples were places where they could draw on their memories to create a moral order. However, they were less able to form effective bases of social cooperation in their temples, precisely because of the horrors they had experienced. There is some indication that the Cambodians may have held on to beliefs in the spirits to a greater extent than either the Thai or the Lao. A news report on Cambodian refugees in New York in the mid-1980s, for example, stressed the refugees’ belief in spirits and spirit healers in illness (Howe 1985). In 1989, after a gunman in Stockton, California who was apparently targeting Asians killed ﬁ ve children, a prominent Cambodian monk appeared at the school to rid the place of the spirit of the killer and to bring peace to the spirits of the children (Stewart 1999). If the spirits do continue to play a greater role in Cambodian Buddhism than in the Buddhism of the Thai or Lao, this may be due both to the relation of Cambodians to the surrounding society and to the function of religion in maintaining their particular form of social order. The Cambodians, as a group, are the least integrated into the larger American society. At the same time, Cambodian Buddhism tends to be heavily preservative and therapeutic in character. It serves less in the material adaptation to the new homeland than it does for the other two groups, and more for reconstructing and reestablishing the moral order of the homeland.

Conclusion

Religion continues to be one of the most important means by which people ﬁ nd a meaningful pattern in their relations with each other

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and seek to identify themselves as members of groups. It serves as a basis for cooperation within religious communities and shapes the ways in which the members of those communities interact with outsiders. Theravada Buddhism is one of the non-mainstream religions that have spread in North America since the 1960s. Most of its Asian immigrant adherents are Thai, Lao, or Cambodian. There are a number of common characteristics in the types of social order that these groups have established in America, in the traits that they preserve and in the ways they adapt to the new society. At the same time, there are also signiﬁ cant variations, resulting mainly from differing historical experiences and social contexts. One can expect that the beliefs and practices associated with Theravada Buddhism will become increasingly localized, but that the strong association with the older homelands, in memory or in actuality, will perpetuate a basic continuity in the Theravada Buddhist communities of America.

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Stewart, Barbara. 1999. “Bellong Mahathera Is Dead: Cambodian Monk Was 110.” New York Times, 18 July: 33. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1984. The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets: A Study in Charisma, Hagiography, and Millennial Buddhism. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tweed, Thomas A. 2000. The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844–1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. US Census Bureau. 2000. Census 2000, Summary File 4—Sample Data. http://factﬁ nder. census.gov, retrieved 15 April 2007. Van Esterik, Penny. 1999a. “Thai.” Pp. 975–79 in Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples, edited by Paul R. Magocsi. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ———. 1999b. “Lao.” Pp. 903–07 in Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples, edited by Paul R. Magocsi. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Warner, R. Stephen. 1993. “Work in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Socio- logical Study of Religion in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology 98: 1044–93. ———. 1994. “The Place of the Congregation in the American Religious Conﬁ guration.” Pp. 54–99 in American Congregations, vol. 2, edited by James P. Wind and James W. Lewis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1998. “Approaching Religious Diversity: Barriers, Byways, and Beginnings.” Sociology of Religion 59: 193–215. Weber, Max. 1958 [1904/5]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribners. ———. 1968 [1921/2]. Economy and Society. New York: Bedminster Press. Wells, Kenneth E. 1960. Thai Buddhism: Its Rites and Activities. Bangkok: Police Printing Press. Wrong, Dennis H. 1994. The Problem of Order: What Unites and Divides Society. New York: Free Press. Wynter, Leon. 1983. “Thai of Area Celebrate with Traditional Festival.” Washington Post, 25 July: B7. Zhou, Min and Carl L. Bankston III. 1998. Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Zhou, Min, Carl L. Bankston III and Rebecca Y. Kim. 2002. “Rebuilding Spiritual Lives in the New Land: Religious Practices among Southeast Asian Refugees in the United States.” Pp. 37–70 in Religions in Asian America: Building Faith Communi- ties, edited by Pyong Gap Min and Jung Ha Kim. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

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THE BUDDHIST MISSION OF NORTH AMERICA 1898–1942: RELIGION AND ITS SOCIAL FUNCTIONS IN AN ETHNIC COMMUNITY

Arthur Nishimura

The role of religious organizations in the lives of immigrants groups is a topic that has a considerable body of scholarship. What the analysis shows is that these organizations have played a vital role for virtually all immigrants groups in the adjustment to the new society.1 In addition to the spiritual services, these organizations fulﬁ ll a host of social and economic functions. Immigrant groups in particular may be drawn to churches and other local religious associations because they not only represent something familiar of their country of origin but also provide a recognized social form within American society. Put simply, religious organizations provide for both continuity and transition within immigrant communities. This motivation is also logical from the point of view of the religious organization. Although on its face, the expansion of activities to include social and economic programs may seem to detract from the basic religious motivations, the relationship is mutually dependent. As both the organization and the members are essentially “strangers in a strange land,” meeting these ostensibly non-religious needs helps to ensure the continued support of the ethnic membership for the organization. These services in turn help to maintain continuity and familiarity for the membership as they adjust to life in a new society. For the Japanese Americans prior to World War II, one of the important religious organizations was the Buddhist Mission of North America (BMNA).2 Legally formalized in 1914, the BMNA’s functional

1 Perhaps the two most notable classical studies in this body are Handlin (1951) and Herberg (1960); recent examples include Warner and Wittner (1988) and Ebaugh and Chafetz (2000). 2 The BMNA changed its name to the Buddhist Churches of America during World War II. The organization is still headquartered in San Francisco and currently

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formation dates to 1898. That a Buddhist organization would play a vital role in this community is consistent with available statistics on the religious affi liation of its population. A 1930 survey estimated that 78 percent of all Japanese immigrants claimed Buddhist identity as compared to 18 percent claiming Christianity (Strong 1930: 352). In 1942, a survey of the population that entered the relocation camps found that 68 percent of all internees claimed to be Buddhists. The BMNA was, like its membership, a transplanted group. It was offi cially an overseas branch of the Nishi Hongwanji (Western school) branch of Jodo Shinshu or True Pure Land sect from Kyoto (Andreasen 1998). The “Western” appellation does not refer to a signifi cant geographical orientation as in the Western Hemisphere but rather a division of the sect between “Western” and “Eastern” schools—or, more exactly, western and eastern temple complexes in Kyoto. This division was ordered by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1602 to divide the potential power of the sect.3 Although other sects and schools of Buddhism made some inroads to the United States, this one sect and organization came to establish a signifi cant presence in the Japanese American community. By the beginning of World War II, the BMNA had expanded from the one church in San Francisco to 46 across six states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. In terms of membership, it had grown from 30 members in 1898 to over 12,000 (Munekata 1974: 53).

The Religious Foundation

As part of a Buddhist sect from Japan, the BMNA had religious and organizational origins dating back to the 13th century. Jodo Shinshu was founded by a Zen Buddhist monk, Shinran Shonin, based on the teachings of his teacher, Honen Shonin. One of the key distinguish- ing features of Jodo Shinshu is that it was the ﬁ rst popular form of

holds the position of being both the oldest and the largest Buddhist organization in the United States. 3 The term “shogunate” refers to the type of governmental system in which a samurai warlord is granted the title of shogun, or “barbarian-conquering general,” ostensibly by the Emperor of Japan. With this title, the shogun has effective suzerainty over the country. The Tokugawa shogunate, named after the Tokugawa family, was in power from 1600 to 1868.

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Buddhism in Japan. Prior to Jodo Shinshu, Buddhism had largely been confined to the aristocracy and the monks and nuns in the various religious sects and orders. Doctrinally, Jodo Shinshu is part of the Amida or “other power” schools within the larger tradition of Mahayana Buddhism. Mahayana literally means “large vessel,” a self- designation deriving from the fact that the various schools within this tradition developed philosophies applicable to a general population. In other words, Mahayana Buddhist groups espouse patterns of living and pursuing the Buddhist ideal of enlightenment through practices and rituals that any person can use. This differs from the Theravada tradition (literally, “the way of the elders”) in which individuals are tasked with attaining enlightenment through close adherence to the life of Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha ( Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha 2002: 20–21). Within the Mahayana tradition, the Amida schools take an additional step through speciﬁ c interpretations of the sutras or scriptures in which Shakyamuni Buddha refers to the existence of an “Amida.” This term refers to the concept of the wisdom and compassion attained by all of the Buddhas throughout time. Amida is, therefore, the amalgamated personiﬁ cation of the “good will,” so to speak, of all Buddhas who have come before in time. This concentrated power allows those who cannot attain enlightenment on their own to utilize this reservoir after death as a means of salvation from the constant cycle of birth, death, and suffering. To prepare people who were unable to attain enlightenment on their own in life, the Amida schools created the concept of the Pure Land. This was an other-worldly environment where people went after death in one life to prepare them to gain enlightenment in the next reincarnation ( Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha 2002: 22–23). The critical aspect of this school is that the reliance on the “other power” allowed Buddhism to become accessible to the masses. A person could now attain enlightenment without removing him or herself from the world. This school, in effect, brought the religion out of the monastery to the lives of everyday people. In keeping with this worldly outlook, organizationally, the religious specialists or priests adopted a lay lifestyle, following the real life example of Shinran. Rather than removing themselves from society, the priests became ministers who lived and worked within the lay community. This participation in lay matters extended to their private lives as well. Jodo Shinshu ministers, beginning with Shinran, married, raised families, and engaged in everyday community activities. Perhaps ironically, although he lived to

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age 90 and continued to spread the sect’s teachings, Shinran did not create a formal organization. The institutionalization of Jodo Shinshu was accomplished by several of his descendants, most notably Rennyo Shonin, the eighth “Abbot” of the sect in the 15th century. The English term “abbot” approximates the Japanese title of the inherited leadership position within the Jodo Shinshu organization, monshu. Rennyo spread Jodo Shinshu through extensive personal missions in which he traveled the country talking with the common people and establishing temples in cities and villages throughout Japan. This story of the founding of Jodo Shinshu and its early development is part of the regular BCA Sunday school curriculum. My own memories originate from my sixth grade Sunday school classes at the Parlier Buddhist Church in Parlier, California.

The Immigration Background

Although Jodo Shinshu Buddhism has a long history that would lend itself to transplantation due to its common appeal and history among the commoner population, its prevalence in the Japanese American community can be explained by more practical factors as well. Specifi - cally, various dynamics of Japanese immigration to the US, more so than the general popularity of the religion, help to explain why this particular Buddhist organization came to play such a signifi cant role in the community. The initial Japanese immigration to the US stemmed from a combi- nation of factors: the restriction of Chinese immigration in 1882, the departure of Chinese from the agricultural workforce, the continuing need for labor on the part of Hawaiian plantation owners and mainland occupations, and the restoration of the Meiji Emperor in 1868. Signifi cant Japanese immigration to Hawaii and the US mainland began in 1885 with the departure of contract laborers who were recruited by emigration companies to work in the Hawaiian sugar cane plantations.4 Hawaii was facing a labor crisis arising from shifts in the Chinese immigrant population that had been the mainstay of the plantation

4 The ﬁ rst recorded ship of contract laborers sailed in 1868. However, because the ship left without government permission, the Japanese government closed labor emigration until 1885 (Wakukawa 1938: 24).

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labor force. As the Chinese population in Hawaii grew, most moved away from agricultural work to become part of the service industry or start small businesses. It has been estimated that of the 13,500 Chinese in Hawaii in 1882, only 5,000 worked on the plantations, a signifi cant decline from previous decades (Conroy 1949: 82). This trend, combined with the passage of the Hawaiian Chinese Exclusion Act in 1886, meant that sugar cane plantations needed an entirely new source of agricultural labor (Tsai 1986: 30). In response, the Hawaiian government, on behalf of sugar cane companies, negotiated an agreement with the Japanese government to allow for the recruitment and immigration of workers. This agreement began a period of what amounts to government sponsored immigration in which the numbers and the provenance of the immigrants in particular prefectures were stipulated in the agreement between Japan and Hawaii. As part of an offi cial program, the plantations were allowed to send recruiters to these prefectures, not simply due to their agricultural base, as most of Japan was agricultural in the middle of the 19th century. The choice of these prefectures was based on the fact that the leaders of the Meiji Restoration, which ostensibly returned the emperor of Japan to be the head of the nation after 268 years of shogunate rule, came from these prefectures (Wakatsuki 1984). The choice of initial prefectures open to recruitment was important because it set the pattern for immigration once government sponsorship ended. After the end of the original contract, government agencies left the process of labor recruitment and migration up to a group of Immingaisha or immigration companies who acted as middle-men and facilitators between the Japanese labor pool and the Hawaiian and US companies in need of workers. This development effectively institutionalized the pattern of labor recruitment in Japan as the Immingaisha continued the initial practice of recruiting in only a few prefectures. Thus, one of the interesting patterns of Japanese emigration to the United States during this period is that four prefectures from Southwest Japan—Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Kumamoto, and Fukoka—account for nearly 80 percent of the sojourners (Wakatsuki 1994). This concentrated place of origin was a primary factor behind the transplantation of this specifi c school of Japanese Buddhism. Because Jodo Shinshu Buddhism was a form of Buddhism that allowed individuals to lead everyday lives, it was a populist, yet traditional, religion. As a result, its appeal and strongest support came from rural Japan and from the above four prefectures in particular.

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Another key element in the initial Japanese American population was the demographics. Overwhelmingly male, they had emigrated as part of a migrant seasonal labor pattern called dekasegi in Japanese (Ichioka 1988: 44–45). This pattern was a result of the practice of stem family inheritance in Japan. Under the stem family inheritance system, land ownership was passed to a single heir, usually the fi rst-born son. In an agricultural economy, this situation left the other children in the family in something of a precarious position. The lack of land ownership reduced these other children into the role of agricultural laborers. Although non-mechanized agriculture required signifi cant amounts of labor, the demand was seasonal. During the non-harvest months, these younger siblings were available to pursue other lines of work. In another sense, this situation deprived younger sons of strong social ties to bind them to the village or prefecture. As such, the migrant labor typically involved the second and subsequent sons of families leaving the home to fi nd work with the initial idea of returning to help the family and eventually taking up permanent residence back in their place of origin. However, with the lower social status of not being the family heir, and without the economic ties of family land ownership, these sons had clearly less waiting for them in their ancestral homes. The change in this population demographic was sparked by larger scale historical events. In 1906, the San Francisco Board of Educa- tion voted to segregate “all Chinese, Japanese and Korean children to the Oriental School” (quoted in Takaki 1989: 201). This resulted in a controversy that became an international issue when the Japanese government fi led an offi cial protest with the US government. The subsequent negotiations resulted in the 1907 Gentlemen’s Agreement. As a result of this agreement, the immigration of Japanese as laborers in the growing economies of the Western US came to an end in 1908. A loophole, however, existed for wives and children of those already residing in America that allowed them to emigrate as part of family reunifi cation. This allowance began the period of shashin-kekkon or “picture brides.” The term “picture brides” refers to the practice of exchanging photos as the means by which prospective husbands and wives made their marriage choices. Once a couple agreed to marry, a proxy groom would stand in for the husband at the marriage ceremony in Japan. Upon offi cial record of the marriage, the new bride became eligible for entry into the United States under the terms of the 1907 Gentlemen’s Agree- ment. From 1907 to 1924, over 20,000 Japanese women entered US

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ports (Takaki 1989: 46–47). The picture bride era ended with the nearly complete closure of Asian immigration as a result of the Immigration Act of 1924. Socially, however, the impact was much more signiﬁ cant. The “reuniﬁ cation” of husbands and wives transformed the Japanese American community from a bachelor society to a family community. Soon thereafter, these families included children and the emergence of an American-born generation.

Establishment and Development of the Buddhist Mission of North America

Given the dynamics of immigration and the characteristics of the early Japanese American population, the initial formation of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism did not stem from a missionary effort in which priests set out to spread the Buddhist religion, but from requests for Japanese laborers in Hawaii and California (Muramoto 1972: 15). In keeping with the historical sequence of the immigration, the fi rst organized Jodo Shinshu presence in American-infl uenced territory was in Hawaii. In 1889, the Rev. Soryu Kagai arrived in Honolulu and began to establish Buddhist groups among the Japanese workers on the plantations (Takeda 1996: 127). As the recruitment of Japanese laborers to the islands continued, the population of Buddhists continued to grow through the 1890s, cul- minating in the construction of the fi rst Japanese Buddhist temple in Hawaii in 1897. The founding of this temple marks the establishment of an independent Jodo Shinshu organization in Hawaii. This initial separation from the parent Jodo Shinshu body in Japan remains to this day, and by the same token, even after Hawaii became a US state in 1959, the Hawaiian organization retained only informal affi liation with the mainland organization and maintained its own leadership and clergy. As with Hawaii, Jodo Shinshu Buddhism’s arrival on the mainland coincided with the increase in Japanese immigration. Beginning with the fi rst count of some 55 residents in the 1870 census and 148 in the 1880 census, the Japanese population grew rapidly to 2,039 by 1890 and 24,327 by 1900 (Kashima 1975: 22). According to the anecdotal history passed down in the BMNA, the reason the Nishi Hongwanji organization established temples on the mainland stems from a visit by a Japanese immigrant to the Jodo Shinshu headquarters in Kyoto. In 1897, Nisaburo Hirano, who had immigrated to the United States some six years earlier, made a return visit to Japan. During his stay,

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he petitioned the national organization to consider sending missionaries to the continental United States. Prior to this, the organization’s efforts on the mainland consisted of sending six representatives to the World’s Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893 (Munekata 1975: 43–44). Hirano’s motivation for this request is reputed to have been due to his experiences of learning English in the United States. Having attended language classes held at Christian churches, Hirano was apparently disturbed at the efforts made by these organizations to convert Japanese immigrants to Christianity. He thus appealed to the Nishi Hongwangi to take steps in face of this conversion effort. This verbal request is credited with providing the impetus for serious discussion on the part of the Jodo Shinshu leadership regarding the potential establishment of a mission in the United States. These discussions culminated in the dispatch of two ministers, the Rev. Eryu Honda and the Rev. Ejun Miyamoto, on something of a fact-ﬁ nding mission in July of 1898. This mission included visits to the San Francisco and Sacramento areas in California as well as Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Colum- bia, Canada. On July 14, the two ministers met with 30 men in San Francisco and agreed to establish a Young Men’s Buddhist Association, patterned after the Young Men’s Christian Association or YMCA. Two months later, this group then sent a petition to the headquarters in Japan formally requesting that a branch of the organization be established on the North American continent. The organization responded by sending two other ministers, Dr. Shuye Sonoda and the Rev. Kakuryo Nishijima, to San Francisco in August of 1898 (Munekata 1975: 45). A year later, the Young Men’s group formally organized as the Bukkyo Seinen Kai or Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA) and designated San Francisco, Califor- nia as its headquarters. After helping to organize the San Francisco organization, the missionaries began to visit other areas of the West Coast. These visits led to the formation of other Buddhist associations in a number of communities. In 1899, Sacramento became the second Jodo Shinshu association to organize. Fresno, California in 1900, Seattle, Washington in 1901, San Jose, California in 1902, and Oakland, Cali- fornia and Portland, Oregon in 1903 followed in the immediate years thereafter (Munekata 1975). Each organization in these West Coast cities followed a pattern similar to that of the San Francisco organization. First, a Young Men’s Buddhist Association formed from the predominantly bachelor Japanese American population in the community.

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With continued growth in membership and fi nancial resources, the next step was to acquire a permanent facility and then formally petition the San Francisco organization for recognition as an independent general association. In 1905, the San Francisco association changed its name to the Buddhist Church of San Francisco. This name change was adopted over time by every association in the organization.5 The director of the San Francisco association, the Rev. Koyu Uchida, made the initial decision to adopt the “Church” title. Although it may be reasonable to postulate that he and the local organizations that followed made this change in an attempt to fi t in with the American religious sensibili- ties and public sentiment of the time, there is no documentation of the rationale for making this shift at either the national or local levels (Kashima 1975: 29–31). By the 10-year anniversary celebration in 1909, the organization had grown to a total of 20 churches in three states. With this size and the increasing distance between locations, the Rev. Uchida, appointed a committee to develop a national organization capable of coordinating the activities of the churches. Five years and an additional fi ve branches later, the 25 Buddhist churches organized their fi rst general meeting. Held over three days in July 1914, this meeting saw the drafting of the fi rst national constitution and with it the formal creation of the Bud- dhist Mission of North America (Munekata 1975: 50).6 The national organization retained its headquarters in San Francisco and adopted the role of coordinator of activities of all the churches. The leader of the national organization was the kantoku (director) of the San Francisco organization, and the person fi lling this position was assigned by the mother organization in Kyoto. As a coordinating body, the national organization’s offi cial role was therefore limited at the level of individual churches. Although it had the ability to assign and reassign ministers, it did not have any other formal legal or religious authority over the local churches. At the inde- pendently organized churches, the local leadership was embodied in a board of trustees or directors who held legal power (Horinouchi 1972:

5 In the post-World War II era, there has been a second shift in the title from church to temple. Unlike the pre-war name change, however, this shift has not been universal throughout the organization. 6 The scholarly literature sometimes uses the name “North American Buddhist Mis- sion,” a literal rendering of the Japanese, Hokubei Bukkyo Dan. In its own documents, however, the organization refers to itself as “Buddhist Mission of North America.”

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118–19). Their membership in the national organizational was voluntary and they provided the fi nancial support to the national organization by means of dues. Another decision reached at this fi rst general meeting was that the organization would host a world Buddhist conference the following year in conjunction with the opening of the Panama Canal Exposition in San Francisco. This World Buddhist Conference, held August 2–8, 1915, served as something of a “coming out party” for the organization as it culminated in a resolution sent to President Woodrow Wilson promoting the propagation of Buddhism to the US (Buddhist Churches of America 1999: v). As the organization continued to develop, the mother organization in Japan recognized the growing role of the BMNA by elevating the position of kantoku to socho (bishop) in 1918. As with the translation for monshu (abbot), the Christian term “bishop” is a rough approximation of the status of the organizational position, though is does not imply similarities in terms of religious meaning or duties between the two religions. The Rev. Uchida, the fi fth director, became the fi rst bishop to serve the BMNA. This position of bishop indicated an upward move in the position of the BMNA within the transnational Jodo Shinshu organizational structure. The change in status to bishop indicated that the BMNA had now moved from simply being a group of overseas branches to that of a recognized district of the Jodo Shinshu Hong- wanj-ha ( Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha 2002: 106–7). While the North American Buddhist Mission was gaining in importance within the Jodo Shinshu community, the position of Japanese Americans in the larger American society was deteriorating. As evident in the San Francisco School Board decision of 1907, the fi rst decade of the 20th century saw a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment in general, and anti-Japanese American sentiment in particular, throughout the western states. This hostility culminated in the passing of a series of “alien land laws” in all the western states which denied specifi c immigrant groups the right to own land and, fi nally with the federal Immi- gration Act of 1924, effectively ended all signifi cant immigration from Japan (Takaki 1989: 203–10). Racial and ethnic antagonism directed against the Japanese American community stemmed from a number of factors, including the labor union movement, the rise of Japan as a world power, and simple racial hatred. Japanese Americans joined the ranks of groups in US history that met with social, economic, and political hostility from the majority population. By the 1920s, “While agricultural and railroad employers of Japanese laborers were willing

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to include Japanese in subordinate economic and social roles, whites generally scorned their very presence and white workers waged hostile and sometimes even violent campaigns to keep the Japanese out of the labor market” (Takaki 1989: 180). These events and conditions, in the short term, were ostensibly detrimental to the BMNA. As the fl ow of immigrants represented the original source for the membership in the organization, the end of labor immigration meant the end of a steady supply of potential new members. Moreover, the efforts to marginalize and exclude the Japanese from mainstream economic life could mean that its membership was not likely to have the type of fi nancial resources to assist the maintenance, let alone growth, of the organization. In the long term, however, this situation enhanced the role of the organization within the community. The end of contract labor immigration from Japan was replaced by the picture bride era in which the “reunifi cation” of families further developed permanent Japanese American communities in the United States. This, in turn, led to the emergence and growth of the Bud- dhist churches as a whole new generation of members began to join and clearly focus the direction of the organizations. Moreover, in the face of a hostile general population, the Japanese American community experienced an enhanced sense of ethnic solidarity. Much in the manner of most immigrant groups to the US, the Japanese Americans developed their own ethnic enclaves in which the group recreated the social services unavailable elsewhere. As part of this ethnic enclave, the Buddhist Mission of North America was one of those organizations to which the community turned.

The BMNA in the Japanese American Community

Based on the history and demographics of the BMNA, and its Japanese American constituency, there are two threads in the pre-World War II era for the BMNA as a community organization. The ﬁ rst reﬂ ects the role of the organization in providing both religious and social services for the immigrant generation of Japanese Americans, the Issei. The second thread represents the roles occupied by the BMNA in regard to the children of the immigrants, the Nisei.

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The Issei The fi rst issue for the Issei was that as new immigrants, they found themselves in a foreign, and largely hostile society. Interestingly, the BMNA appears to have been quite cognizant of its social position as an ethnic religious organization. According to the offi cial record of the bishop in the early 1900s, the Rev. Eryu Honda, there was regular communication between the organization and the Japanese government. The record speaks of visitations to the Japanese consulate in San Francisco and regular reports to keep them apprised of the activities of the BMNA. Moreover, there is even a notation or reminder from the Rev. Honda (1902) to send fl owers to the wife of the Consul to wish her a speedy recovery from an illness. The concern on the part of the Japanese government regarding the BMNA is evident from a conversation between the Rev. Honda and the Japanese Consul in Seattle during a fact-fi nding trip in 1898: When I discussed about the proposed Buddhist Missionary work in the United States, Consul Saito asked whether the United States government would allow the entrance of a “foreign religion.” He also expressed his feelings about the numerous problems that might arise from the entrance of a “foreign religion when the Japanese and Americans are presently coexisting peacefully” (Kashima 1975: 24). These concerns were not only valid, but also wise counsel in light of the attitude of the majority population in the western states. Perhaps based on this concern, the BMNA became, like many other Japanese organizations, partly a settlement and assimilation organization. As such, by 1900, two years after its founding, the San Francisco organization offered general assistance, employment, medical, housing, and language services for newly arrived Japanese (Buddhist Churches of America 1999: iv). Since part of the original motivations for the BMNA stemmed from a reaction to the missionary efforts of Chris- tian organizations among the Japanese American immigrants, it is no surprise that these social services largely mimicked those of Christian aid organizations. Once initial assimilation and adjustment to American society was accomplished, the other key characteristic of the early Japanese Ameri- can community was that it was largely a bachelor laborer society. As a population of predominantly single male laborers, the role of religion was, in many ways, limited. Chronicled in a variety of histories, the

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life of the bachelor laborer was primitive and rough (Ichioka 1988: 82–90; Takaki 1989: 182–85). One description of the conditions for workers in California’s Central Valley reads as follows: “During those days around Fresno, laborers did not even carry blankets. They slept in the fi elds with what they had on. They drank river water brought in by irrigation ditches. . . . If they ate supper, it consisted of fl our dumplings in a soup seasoned with salt. . . . Slaving away from 4:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., this unhealthy life was intolerable” (Ichioka 1988: 83). Given these conditions, the Japanese American population often simply had little time to devote to activities outside of work. These conditions did, however, link with the Buddhist organization in a much more somber manner—namely through high rates of mortality. As the statistics from the Sacramento California branch of the BMNA indicate, during its fi rst three years of operation from 1900 to 1902, 99 people, mostly young men in their 20s and 30s, had died (Ichioka 1988: 82). Annualized over the time span, this fi gure amounts to one death every eleven days, which would make conducting funerals perhaps the central activity for the church. This focus for the Buddhist organization is another element of continuity for the community inasmuch as Buddhism in Japan is often similarly associated with the end of life and funeral arrangements. As macabre as it may appear, funerals were clearly organizationally valuable and gave the BMNA a unique social role in the Japanese American community. It is also the case that at this time the BMNA did not initially restrict its activities to the Japanese American community. As with any religious organization with a desire to attract members, the BMNA began propagation efforts in the general American population. As early as January 1900, the Rev. Eryu Honda’s records show the formation of a weekly Buddhist study class for Caucasians. In April, the service schedule lists a Caucasian service at 2:00 and a Japanese service at 8:00 that evening. A month later, the February 12 log entry marks the formation of the “Caucasian Dharma Sangha” led by the Rev. Sonoda and attended by a Dr. Norman, Messers. McIntyre, Hayes, C. F. Jones, E. R. Stoddard, and a Mrs. Agnes White (BMNA 1900). These efforts to propagate the religion outside of the Japanese American community, however, lapsed with key deaths among the non-Japanese membership as a result of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The minister’s log, which resumed on April 26, indicates that Mrs. White died as a result of the disaster (Uchida 1906). Whether this individual’s loss was the catalytic event

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cannot be ascertained from the available historical sources, but after the earthquake, no further Caucasian study classes, services, or group resumed operation. For the Japanese American community in San Francisco, the earthquake and subsequent ﬁ re resulted in the destruction of the church building and BMNA national headquarters. The members of the church also suffered loss of life and property from this natural disaster. In response, the church took on relief roles for the Japanese American community through a temporary location a few blocks away from its ruined building. Although this event directly impacted the population in the city and surrounding areas, it is emblematic of the overall shift in both the Japanese American society and the BMNA.

The Nisei The causal relationship between the natural disaster, the larger social climate, and the functions of the organization, however, should not be overstated. The basic fact remains that this time period also marks the transformation of the Japanese American population from a bachelor sojourner group to a permanent familial ethnic enclave society. The most signifi cant element of this change was the birth of the second generation of Japanese Americans, for whom the BMNA’s services were more general. As native born and reared Americans, the Nisei did not need the assimilation and settlement services utilized by their parents. Rather, the organization provided more of the community and social services that were unavailable to them from the general society. More specifi cally, the BMNA began to develop programs and activities to meet the demands of member families with American-born and socialized children. Perhaps the fi rst indication of this shift was the formation of Japa- nese language schools sponsored by the Buddhist churches. The fi rst was established in 1903 in Sacramento with 56 students (Horinouchi 1972: 120). Given that only those who were not reared and educated in Japan would most likely need Japanese language instruction, this school represents either a response to a second-generation population or an opening to members of the general population who desired to learn Japanese. Although no class rosters are available, old photographic evidence showing only Asian children clearly indicates that the former was the most likely the situation. Subsequently, in addition to language classes, the churches began to provide a whole host of what can be

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described as cultural activities. The church offered martial arts training the form of judo, kendo and karate. This was so pervasive that it was one of the fi rst activities restricted by the federal authorities with the onset of World War II (Buddhist Churches of America 1999: 21). In addition, BMNA member temples offered classes on ikebana ( Japanese fl ower arranging), calligraphy, and even singing. In 1913, the fi rst Sunday school for Japanese children in America was formed at the San Francisco church, an idea that quickly spread to the rest of the member organizations. By the following year, ath- letic leagues for basketball and baseball had formed (Munekata 1975: 144–45). The growing presence and importance of women in Japanese American society and in the organization was formally recognized in 1927 with the formation of the North American Federation of Young Women’s Buddhist Associations (YWBAs) (Buddhist Churches of America 1999: 17). While the YMBA was originally comprised of the young Issei founders, by the 1920s–1930s, it had become a largely Nisei organization. The social function of these affi liated organizations revolved around conferences that were fi rst held at the national level in 1925 (Yoo 2000: 42). These conferences, in addition to offering religious meetings and discussions enabled Nisei from different parts of the state to meet, develop friendships, and discuss not only their religious faith but also a host of other issues. Some went in search of romance and found it. Others anticipated programs and activities that provided relief from the routine of school and work. The meetings also enabled Nisei from varied backgrounds to socialize. For some residing in rural areas, the meetings represented a chance to see the larger world (Yoo 2000: 47–48). In effect, the Nisei utilized these conferences to extend their social networks in the Japanese American community. As these gatherings drew thousands at their largest, they allowed the Nisei to see and engage with their peer group fi rsthand. More importantly, through this interaction this generation could begin to come to terms with their dual Japanese American identities as well as the marginalized position of their community in American society. Another youth-oriented role taken by the BMNA was to become part of the Scouting movement in the United States. Ten years after the formation of the Boy Scouts of America in 1910, the fi rst Buddhist scout troop, Troop 4, formed at the Fresno Buddhist Church in 1920 (Boys Scouts of America 2007). By the beginning of World War II, seven BMNA churches had formed their own troops.

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There is one ﬁ nal social service that the BMNA temples and churches provided for the community at the beginning of World War II. Faced with the short amount of time between the signing of Executive Order 9066 in February of 1942 and the mandatory relocation of the Japa- nese American population then living on the west coast, the churches and temples of the BMNA opened their buildings as storage space for individuals and families as they left for the internment camps. Thus, in poignant manner, just as the community that it served disbanded and metaphorically “went into storage,” so also did the Buddhist churches. Effectively shuttered and disbanded, the role of the Buddhist churches would see fundamental shifts during the war years and would emerge in many ways as a wholly new organization with a different structure and leadership.

The BMNA as a Religious Social Organization

The portrait that emerges is that the BMNA and its member temples and churches were clearly an integral part of the Japanese American community in the United States at both the religious and social levels. Through its ethnic connection with the Japanese American community, the organization clearly owes much to the particular and perhaps unique elements of Japanese immigration to the US as well as its own organizational and religious history. In terms of the religion, the key factor was clearly its popular orientation. The relative openness of the religion in terms of its practices and beliefs made it accessible to a larger body of the population, particularly for the peasantry of Japan. This popularity obviously increased the odds of its transplantation in the event of a migratory event. In addition, the particular course of Japanese history contributed to reinforce the role of the Jodo Shinshu, the sect to which the BMNA belongs, within the speciﬁ c areas of the country from which the immigrants originated. First was the fact that the impetus for emigration involved agricultural labor. This meant that agricultural areas of Japan would experience the highest levels of migration. Secondly, because of the prefectural origins of the Japanese governmental leadership, the targeted areas of recruitment were not only agricultural but also those with the highest concentration of Jodo Shinshu followers. The other key element in this alignment of religion, organization, and ethnicity was the particular course of Japanese settlement in the

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United States. The ﬁ rst issue in this process of settlement was the fact that it began as a labor sojourner population of young men looking for economic opportunities. This population demographic and the conditions they encountered, most notably high mortality, created an immediate impetus for the Jodo Shinshu sect to begin establishing a presence in the US. The second factor affecting the course of the Japa- nese American community was the anti-immigrant and anti-Japanese movements that not only resulted in an end of Japanese immigration to the US, but also institutionalized a hostile economic and social environment. One offshoot of this was the transition in immigration from male sojourners to female settlers. This demographic shift not only added a new membership group to the BMNA but also begat a whole new generation of members in the form of the second generation of Japanese Americans. For the BMNA organization, these shifts translated into both an expansion of social functions as well as a basic shift in activities. In terms of activities, rather than providing newcomer settlement and assimilation services, the organization began to meet the needs of a resident population. In terms of the expansion, the membership now included not only women but also children. In effect, the organization was now serving a multigenerational membership. Moreover, this expansion occurred in the face of a hostile general society and so the BMNA provided many more overtly social functions. Given the particular history and characteristics of the organization, what is of note in reviewing and summarizing the discussion is precisely that the communal role of a religious organization is deﬁ ned more by its social activities than the religion itself. Beginning with the Issei and continuing with the Nisei, the Buddhist churches and temples appear to have been largely structured by the activities originating from and addressing the needs of the process of immigration and settlement. As with the experience of many other ethnic groups and ethnic religious organizations, the North American Buddhist Mission and the Japanese American community were in alignment. The organization proved to be at once traditional and progressive. On one hand, the distinctly Japanese religion provided ethnically oriented services, most notably funerals, which provided continuity with the country of origin for the community. Within a new and often hostile society, the BMNA offered something of a safe and familiar haven for the immigrant community. On the other hand, as an extant organization with a long history in Japan, the Jodo Shinshu organization had the resources, will, and

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ability to address the needs of the immigrant population. Moreover, as the composition and the needs of the membership changed, the organization was there once again to be a social resource. As an immigrant organization itself, the BMNA proved to be ﬂ exible in extending its role in the community to meet the very speciﬁ c needs of the Japanese Americans beyond that of the religion itself. Given this dual nature, the role of the Japanese American Buddhist organization, the Buddhist Mission of North America, in the pre-World War II period is a clear example of the power of the social elements of religious organizations. This is further reinforced by the fact that the BMNA not only survived the forced dissolution and internment of the Japanese American community during the war, but it emerged with an even more socially oriented organizational structure and function. This organization, established in 1944 under a new name, the Buddhist Churches of America, was to share in the prosperity of post-World War II America and the economic resurgence of the Japanese American community. Perhaps more important, the organization continues to be the largest Buddhist and Japanese American organization in the United States and, in some rural communities, the only active Japanese American ethnic organization.

References

Andreasen, Esben. 1998. Popular Buddhism in Japan: Shin Buddhist Religion and Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Boy Scouts of America. 2007. “Scouting in the Buddhist Community.” http://www.scouting.org, retrieved 28 August. Buddhist Churches of America. 1999. Buddhist Churches of America: A Legacy of the First 100 Years. San Francisco: Buddhist Churches of America. Conroy, Francis Hilary. 1949. “The Japanese Expansion into Hawaii, 1868–1898.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Ebaugh, Helen Rose and Janet Saltzman Chafetz. 2000. Religion and the New Immigrants: Continuities and Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Handlin, Oscar. 1951. The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Herberg, Will. 1960. Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Honda, Eryu. 1900. Head Minister’s Log. Manuscript. San Francisco: Buddhist Mission of North America. ———. 1902. Head Minister’s Log. Manuscript. San Francisco: Buddhist Mission of North America. Horinouchi, Isao. 1972. “Americanized Buddhism: A Sociological Analysis of a Protes- tantized Japanese Religion.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Davis.

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Ichioka, Yuji. 1988. The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants 1885– 1924. New York: Free Press. Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha. 2002. Jodo Shinshu: A Guide. Kyoto: Hongwanji Interna- tional Center. Kashima, Tetsuden. 1975. “The Social Organization of the Buddhist Churches of America: Continuity and Social Change.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cali- fornia, San Diego. Munekata, Ryo, ed. 1974. Buddhist Churches of America: 75 Year History 1899 –1974, vol. 1. Chicago: Nobart. Muramoto, Masaji. 1972. “First Year Immigrants to Hawaii and Eugene Van Reed.” Pp. 5–39 in East across the Paciﬁ c, edited by Francis Hilary Conroy. Santa Barbara, CA: Clio. Strong, Edward. 1930. Japanese in California. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Takaki, Ronald. 1989. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. New York: Penguin. Takeda, Ryusei, ed. 1996. Shinran and America: Problems and Future of Propagation in America. Kyoto: Ryukoku University. Tsai, Shih-shan Henry. 1986. The Chinese Experience in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Uchida, Koyu. 1906. Head Minister’s Log. Manuscript. San Francsico: Buddhist Mission of North America. Wakatsuki, Yasuo. 1984. “Emigration of Japanese to the United States.” Paciﬁ c Citizen, 6–13 January: B1. Wakukawa, Ernest K. 1938. A History of the Japanese People in Hawaii. Honolulu: Toyo Shoin. Warner, R. Stephen and Judith G. Wittner, eds. 1998. Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Yoo, David K. 2000. Growing up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1924–49. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

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JAPANESE AMERICAN RELIGIOSITY: A CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE

Tetsuden Kashima

For Japanese Americans, religion and religiosity—the latter defi ned here as the beliefs, moral or devotional practices and ritual observances, and/or attendance at churches or temples—have received relatively scant attention. This has occurred despite a plethora of historical and social science writings on other signifi cant aspects of this group starting almost from the time of the earliest Japanese immigrants to the United States. Although numerous texts on Japanese Americans’ religious activities mention this topic, few have centered their attention on it. Those that have done so have been either church histories originating often from the relevant organizations themselves (Shiraishi 1964; Munekata 1974; Centennial Celebration Coordinating Council 1977) or others focused on a social change and historical perspective (Freed and Luomala 1944; Matsumoto 1946; Hunter 1971; Horinouchi 1973; Layman 1976; Kashima 1977; Suzuki 1979; Hayashi 1995; Okada 1998; Prebish and Tanaka 1998; Seager 1999; Yoo 2000). Moreover, with the exceptions of some works that include questions on religiosity, such as Fugita and Fernandez (2004), few works are empirically based studies of a random-sampled subject pool. The purpose of this chapter is three-fold: to compare the religiosity of Japanese Americans: (1) across generations, (2) across geographic locations, and (3) with Japanese in Japan and with the majority (non- Japanese) population of the United States. The fi rst two data sets are based on responses from a random-sampled, in-person representative sample to a questionnaire given in Hawaii and two counties in California and Washington states. The third data set originates from responses to questions asked in other random-sample interviews in Japan and the United States. For the generation and location variables, the questions on religiosity constituted a small portion of a study that co-researchers and I initially presented in 2002 (Kashima et al. 2002). That article asserted

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as a basic premise that Japanese Americans acquired through the early immigrant Japanese (Issei) some basic religious attitudes and behavioral tendencies derived from their Japanese heritage that have persisted to the present, yet at the same time certain prominent features of those religious attitudes and practices were abandoned almost from the start of their immigration. Specifi cally, the persistence of a high degree of Buddhism among Japanese Americans continues today, but differences do occur with Japan on having a personal faith and with an equally large percentage of Japanese Americans where Christianity is a notable part of their religious lives. The fi rst data set will examine the issue of geographical differences, focusing on two signifi cant localities where Japanese Americans have lived and faced differing historical and sociocultural experiences— Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States. The next data set will examine the infl uence of generational distance away from the original immigrants from Japan on the group’s religiosity. The initial hypotheses posit that between the two major locales, even with major social historical differences encountered by this group, and within the generational subgroups on relevant religiosity questions, no signifi cant differences will arise in their religiosity. The rationale for these two analytic perspectives will be offered later. Finally, the chapter will examine the responses to the matching religiosity questions given by respondents in Japan, United States citizens as a whole, and Japanese Americans specifi cally to present a comparative picture of this topic. The hypothesis here is that the Japanese Americans evidence a position that is relatively different from both the Japanese in Japan and from other Americans in the US.

Sampling: The 1998–2000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast and the 1999–2000 Japanese Americans in Hawaii Surveys

The data derive from a small portion of two surveys: the 1998–2000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast Survey ( JAWCS) and the 1999–2000 Cultural Survey of Japanese Americans and non-Japanese Americans in Hawaii (CSJAH). Both studies were conducted under the auspices of the Institute for Statistical Mathematics, Tokyo, Japan, and under the leadership of the late Professor Chikio Hayashi and his colleagues who for a half-century have conducted longitudinal surveys of Japanese attitudes and beliefs (see Yoshino et al., 2000, 2001). The

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translated Japanese questionnaire served as the core of several ques- tionnaires given in other countries—for example, Germany, France, and Italy—including countries and areas with a sizeable population of persons of Japanese ancestry—Brazil, the West Coast of the United States, and Hawaii. The JAWCS was conducted in Santa Clara County, California, and King County, Washington under the direction of Professors S. Frank Miyamoto, Stephen S. Fugita, and myself. Both counties are major urban centers, with sizable populations of Japanese Americans—the former containing San Jose and the latter, Seattle. Names and addresses of potential respondents came from the counties’ voter registration list of 11,700 Japanese American identiﬁ ed names in King County and 10,652 names in Santa Clara County, with a random sample resulting in 425 potential interviewees in King and 492 in Santa Clara. Personal interviews using a 90-item survey instrument containing closed and open-ended question resulted in 344 completed surveys by Japanese Americans (Fugita, Kashima and Miyamoto 2002). The 1999–2000 Hawaii Survey (CSJAH), under the direction of Professor Yasumasa Kuroda, is the latest in a series of ﬁ ve studies with the same core set of questions used in 1972, 1978, 1983, 1988, and 1999–2000. A random-sample selection of respondents came from Hawaii’s voter registration list centering on Representative Districts 15 to 30, an urban area in the southern part of Oahu. A sample list of 2,101 names, augmented by another list of 3,000, resulted in face- to-face interviews with 206 Japanese American respondents (Yoshino et al. 2001).1

Generations: From Nisei to Gosei

Before presenting the data, a few words must be said about the relevance of geography and generation to the Japanese American group. It appears that only two immigrant groups in the United States differentiate themselves by linguistic terms and group characteristics as a unique personality of generational descendents from the original

1 The census areas lie between Kokohead to the east and the Diamond Head side of Middle Street to the west. Although 206 Japanese American interviews were conducted, the usable sample was 196. Out of the 196, four respondents did not indicate their generation.

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immigrants.2 The term “Japanese American” refers to the immigrants from Japan and the succeeding generations. The immigrants themselves are the Issei—the fi rst generation, who were formally ineligible for naturalization as United States citizens from 1922 to 1952.3 Their children are the Nisei and are by birthright United States citizens. Sub- sequent generations have their specifi c appellations. The third is the Sansei, the fourth, Yonsei, and the fi fth generation, Gosei. Reports exist today of sixth- and even seventh-generation infant Japanese Americans in Hawaii. The Nisei and Sansei constitute the majority of the present Japanese American population. Most Issei today are deceased. The Nisei are mostly in their retirement years, while the Yonsei and Gosei are still in their teen years. The uniqueness of each generation’s character stems from its social history. The Issei arrived in the United States from Japan, in the main, from the early 1900s until their immigration was essentially stopped with the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act. Most Issei originated from four prefectures in southern Japan (Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Kumamoto, and Fukuoka) and their socialization occurred during the Meiji (1868–1912) and Taisho (1912–1926) eras. Moreover, their arrival from the late 1800s to the 1920s coincided with extreme prejudicial and discriminatory practices in the western United States, initially against the Chinese, but which were then shifted, with some additions, toward the Issei. The Nisei were born in the US from the early 1910s through the 1930s, with a median age of 17 in 1942 (Thomas 1952: 19). Socialized initially in a Japanese value- and culture-orientated family, they were soon subjected to differing acculturation pressures as they interacted with others in an American educational system and an English-speaking society. This situation created a unique Nisei interpersonal style that they inherited from their parents but was modifi ed within the American social context. Examples of the Japanese interpersonal style include

2 The other group is the Korean Americans; see, for example, Hurh 1990 and Min 1996, 2006. Numerous studies are available that show signiﬁ cant differences in attitudes and beliefs among Japanese Americans according to generational distance from the Issei, for example: Caudill and DeVos 1966; Lyman 1970; Petersen 1974; Miyamoto 1972, 1981; Conner 1977; Yanagisako 1985; Glenn 1986; Daniels 1988; Nakano 1990; Fugita and O’Brien 1991; Kitano 1993; Kitano and Daniels 2001. 3 There were few Japanese immigrants to the United States from 1924 to 1945. Post-World War II Japanese immigrants are frequently referred to as “Shin [new] Issei” to differentiate them from the earlier Issei.

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“delayed response tendency in interactions, low individuality, exceptional attentiveness to the attitudes of others, emphasis on consensus forming, and strong preference for group decision making and group actions” (Miyamoto et al. 2002: 149), which originate from the Japanese emphasis on maintaining harmony, peace, and especially the avoidance of interpersonal confl ict or confrontation. The Japanese place emphasis, more than is typical among Americans, on being perceptually aware of the other person, that is, placing emphasis on “taking the attitude of others,” on understanding the other’s subjective feelings and motives, and trying to ascertain “the other’s point of view.” Likewise, as a group, the Japanese place less awareness on one’s personal ego-oriented area of self-defi nition. That is, they are sensitive to an unusual degree to the intersubjective aspects of the interaction between self and other (Miyamoto 1986; Miyamoto et al. 2002). Important elements of this interpersonal style are transmitted to the subsequent Japanese American generations as well and, as we will see later, assist in understanding the differences in religious behavior and attitudes between Japanese and US respondents. The social histories of the Issei, Nisei, and Sansei are different (e.g., Lyman 1970: 95–97; Conner 1977). Of importance here are the dev- astating effects of the World War II expulsion and incarceration of nearly 120,000 mainly West Coast Japanese Americans into the War Relocation Authority camps (cf. CWRIC 1997). Nearly two-thirds of those removed were Nisei, with the Issei as the remaining third, that the government kept in primitive prison-like enclosures complete with armed guards stationed around the perimeter barb-wired fence, most for three years. In addition, a signifi cant group of Issei pre-War community leaders and spokespersons were arrested earlier and placed in separate internment camps run by the Department of Justice and the War Department, where they were isolated from their wives and children for years due to the new Alien Enemy status imposed on them after December 7, 1941. The re-entry of the entire Japanese American group back into the larger society after the conclusion of World War II was diffi cult. Many Issei and some Nisei had lost their means of livelihood along with their pre-War community and social network. Upon their return from the incarceration camps or from their wartime military service in Europe and the Pacifi c, numerous Nisei adjusted to the post-War period by suppressing their earlier painful memories of mistreatment and unwarranted exclusion (cf. CWRIC 1997: 295–301;

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Kashima 2003: 216–20). The Nisei married, had children (the San- sei), worked hard, and many achieved their version of the American Dream—middle-class socioeconomic status. The Sansei generation, born mainly after 1950, has not had to face the overt racial discrimination borne by their parents and grandparents. Yet, the Japanese values and interpersonal style were passed onto this generation by the Nisei. I will later offer empirical data that examine certain religiosity values passed on from the Nisei and Sansei to the Yonsei and Gosei generations. It is expected, of course, that there would be changes to and a diminution of the power of those initial Japanese values, attitudes, and beliefs. Nevertheless, it is also expected that the Sansei will continue to exhibit the behaviors attendant on these values, albeit without in most cases being able to identify the Japanese language terms for these values. The hypothesis concerning the transmission of cultural values and beliefs continues with the Yonsei and the Gosei. Within the Japanese American community, generational terms continue, but these later generations are still relatively young and the sampling process identiﬁ ed and included too few Yonsei and Gosei to make persuasive generaliza- tions about them possible. Yet, it is important to examine whether their religiosity is similar to or signiﬁ cantly different from the Nisei and Sansei. Besides the generational phenomenon, then, a second area of interest is with the geographical differences between Japanese Americans on the West Coast and those in the state of Hawaii.

Geographical Locations: Hawaii and the West Coast

Two areas with quite different social histories represent the geographical factor. The 2000 census reports that California, Hawaii, and Washing- ton are areas where nearly 61 percent of the total Japanese Americans reside (Akiba 2006: 160). One could reason that Japanese Americans in Hawaii, when compared with their West Coast counterparts, might evidence differences to various questions on religiosity due to the differences in their social histories. Hawaii’s history, for example, includes a large number of Japanese Americans from the late 1800s, and compared to the mainland states, Japanese Americans constitute a much larger proportion of the population. In 1940, they represented 37.3 percent of the Territory of Hawaii population. In addition, Hawaiian Japanese Americans, overall, were better integrated within the larger society and

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had considerably more social power than the West Coast Japanese Americans. There were arguably better interpersonal relationships between individuals of different racial and ethnic groups in Hawaii— making it possible to forestall proactively and successfully, for example, the later draconian measure of mass incarceration that occurred in the West Coast states. Finally, Hawaii had a heterogeneous group of individuals who were knowledgeable about Japanese Americans and who played important roles in the differential treatment of Hawaiian Japanese Americans compared with their West Coast counterparts during World War II (Coffman 2006; Kashima 2003: 67–87). Hawaii never evidenced the extreme and continual discrimination and racially prejudicial attitudes toward the Japanese Americans as occurred in the Pacifi c Coast states. Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) gives a poignant example of the effect of this difference during World War II. When the segregated and later famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team was undergoing their initial infantry training in Mississippi, many personal fi ghts erupted between the Nisei soldiers from Hawaii and the West Coast. Their white offi cers were at wits end as they unsuccess- fully tried to form a cohesive combat group from seemingly disparate individuals. Then, an invitation was issued to selected Hawaii Nisei to visit with other Japanese Americans in the Arkansas area. Believing that this was a great chance for the Hawaii Nisei to dance with mainland Nisei girls, they cheerfully prepared to enjoy their leave. However, as the buses and trucks carrying the Hawaiians entered Rohwer and Jerome, two barb-wired enclosed War Relocation Authority camps in Arkan- sas, they suddenly realized and understood that the life of their fellow mainland Nisei comrades was vastly different from theirs in Hawaii. The leave turned out to be less fun-fi lled than they had anticipated. On their return and after talking with their fellow Hawaiian Nisei, the internal fi ghts between the two groups ceased; as Inouye stated, it was only then that “the Regiment was formed and we became brothers. And the rest is history” (Kawamoto 2006: 7). The absence of a mass incarceration in Hawaii is but one example of the different social history experienced by the Japanese Americans born and reared in Hawaii compared with those in the contiguous United States. Moreover, the mainland World War II incarceration encapsulates an action that is so important that one writer has called it “the defi ning event in the history of Japanese Americans” (Yamaoka 2006: 280). With all these important differences in their lives, one might expect signifi cant differences in the attitudes and beliefs—and, of special

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interest here, the religiosity factor—between Japanese Americans hailing from Hawaii and the West Coast. However, I posit similarity rather than signiﬁ cant differences on this factor between the two groups.

Religious Attitudes and Beliefs

Incorporated into the cultural surveys conducted under the auspices of the Institute for Statistical Mathematics were some questions dealing with religious attitudes and beliefs. The 1998–2000 Japanese Ameri- can West Coast Survey ( JAWCS) incorporated six such questions, of which four were identical to, or essentially the same as, those in the surveys conducted with the Japanese Americans in Hawaii (CSJAH), the Japanese in Japan, and the United States.4 The four relevant religiosity questions are: a) “I would like to ask you a few questions about religion. Do you have any personal religious faith? No ___, Yes ___, Other (Specify) ___” [hereafter abbreviated as “Religious faith”]. b) “If yes, what religion is this? Buddhism ___, Protestantism ___, Catholicism___, Judaism ___, Other (Specify)___” [hereafter abbreviated as “Religions”]. c) The JAWC Survey asked: “Some people say that although there are many different religions in the world, each with their own beliefs, their teachings really amount to the same thing. Would you agree with this or disagree? Agree ___, Disagree ___, Other (Specify) ___, Don’t know ___.” The CSJAH survey asked: “There are some people who say about religion that there are many sects all with their own different positions, but that really their teachings all amount to the same thing. Would you agree with this or not? Yes ___, No ___, Other (Specify) ___, Don’t Know/NA ___” [hereafter abbreviated as “Religious teachings amount to the same thing”]. d) “Without reference to any of the established religions, do you think that a religious attitude is important or not?” Important ___, Not Important ___, Other (Specify) ___, Don’t know ___” [hereafter abbreviated as “Importance of religious attitude”].

4 The two questions not asked in Hawaii, Japan, or the United States were for those who answered positively to “Do you have a religious faith?” a) “Are you a member of any particular Church or temple?” and b) “Does this church or temple have a predominately Japanese American membership?” A discussion on these two questions can be found in Kashima et al. 2002: 206–7, 222.

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I will start with an analysis of the location factor between the Hawaii and West Coast data.

Location: Hawaii vs West Coast Overall, the location differences between Hawaii and West Coast Japanese Americans on the religiosity questions do not appear to be statistically signiﬁ cant. First, I examined whether there was a difference between the location and the four generations. As shown in Table 1, with a small cell size number in the Gosei generation category, a Fisher’s exact test was conducted with a value <= p of .779. Second, was there a difference in having or not having a “Religious faith” (“Do you have a religious faith”) between Hawaii and the West Coast? Table 2 offers the Pearson Chi-Square test for independence for these two variables with a value <= p of .208. Third, was there a difference between having a particular “Religion” category (Buddhist, Protestant, Catholic, Other, and None) and location? Table 3 offers the results of a Pearson Chi-Square test that yielded a value <= p of .089.

Table 1. Generation by Location Location Generation NISEI SANSEI YONSEI GOSEI TOTAL HAWAII Count 70 96 21 5 192 % Location 36.5% 50.0% 10.9% 2.6% 100.0% % Generation 36.8% 34.2% 41.2% 35.7% 35.8% WESTCOAST Count 120 185 30 9 344 % Location 34.9% 53.8% 8.7% 2.6% 100.0% % Generation 63.2% 65.8% 58.8% 64.3% 64.2% TOTAL Count 190 281 51 14 536 % Location 35.4% 52.4% 9.5% 2.6% 100.0% % Generation 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Probability Fisher’s Exact Test .779

Source: Hawaii data derived from the Institute of Statistical Mathematics [ISM], Tokyo, Japan, “HW(500)01” [1999–200 Hawaii Resident Survey, Ryozo Yoshino, Director]. The West Coast survey data derived from “JAWCS98TOTAL” [1998–2000 JAWC Survey, S. Frank Miyamoto, Director]. Data sets in the possession of the author and the ISM.

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Table 2. Location and Have Religious Faith Religious Faith Location of the Study HAWAII WEST COAST TOTAL NO RELIGION Count 60 88 148 % No Religion 40.5% 59.5% 100.0% % Location 30.6% 25.6% 27.4% HAVE RELIGION Count 136 256 392 % Have Religion 34.7% 65.30% 100.0% % Location 69.4% 74.4% 72.6% TOTAL Count 196 344 540 % No/Have Religion 36.3% 63.7% 100.0% % Location 100.00% 100.00% 100.0%

Value Probability Pearson Chi-Square 1.588 (a) .208

(a) 0 cells (.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 53.72. Source: See Table 1.

Table 3. Location and Religion Category Religion Location of the Study HAWAII WEST COAST TOTAL BUDDHIST Count 51 115 % Buddhist 30.72% 69.28% 166 % Location 26.02% 33.43% 100.00% 29.73% PROTESTANT Count 58 94 152 % Protestant 38.16% 61.84% 100.00% % Location 29.59% 27.33% 28.46% CATHOLIC Count 11 8 19 % Catholic 57.89% 42.11% 100.00% % Location 5.61% 2.33% 3.96% OTHER Count 17 39 56 % Other 30.36% 69.64% 100.00% % Location 8.67% 11.34% 10.01%

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Table 3 (cont.) Religion Location of the Study HAWAII WEST COAST TOTAL

NONE Count 59 88 147 % None 40.14% 59.86% 100.00% % Location 30.10% 25.58% 27.84% TOTAL Count 196 344 540 % Religion 36.30% 63.70% 100.00% % Location 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%

Value Probability Pearson Chi-Square 8.0828 (a) 0.089

(a) 0 cells (.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 6.90. Source: See Table 1.

Fourth, for the “Religious teachings amount to the same thing” (Agree, Disagree, Other/Don’t Know) and location question, the Pearson Chi- Square test yielded a value <= p of .130 in Table 4. Fifth, was there a difference between the “Important” and “Not important” response of a religious attitude and location? The issue focused on the “Importance” issue with the few “Other” and “Don’t Know” responses folded into the “Non-important” responses. Table 5 offers the Pearson Chi-Square value <= p of .647. Some differences might have been expected between the random sampled Japanese American groups in the two locations on our religiosity questions, but none occurred to indicate a signifi cant difference at the pre-determined probability value of <= .05. This fi nding allows us with some confi dence to assert an empirical level of comparability on the religiosity questions for the Japanese Americans in Hawaii and West Coast. Given the results of this fi rst level of analysis, we move to the next level by combining the location data to conduct the generational categorical analysis.

Generational Differences The lack of signiﬁ cant differences between the Hawaii and West Coast Japanese American responses allows us to compare the combined

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Table 4. Location and Religious Teachings Amount to the Same Thing Religious Teachings Location of the Study Amount to Same HAWAII WEST COAST TOTAL AGREE Count 126 248 374 % Agree 33.69% 66.31% 100.00% % Location 62.60% 72.09% 69.26% DISAGREE Count 57 82 139 % Disagree 41.01% 58.99% 100.00% % Location 30.60% 23.84% 25.74% OTHER/NOT KNOW Count 13 14 27 % Other/DK 48.15% 51.85% 100.00% % Location 6.80% 4.07% 5.00% TOTAL Count 196 344 540 % Agree/Dis/O/DK 36.30% 63.70% 100.00% % Location 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%

Value Probability Pearson Chi-Square 4.0732(a) 0.130 (a) 0 cells (.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 9.80. Source: See Table 1.

responses of the four generations—Nisei, Sansei, Yonsei, and Gosei—on the four religiosity questions. The combined sample size here is 536 rather than 540 because four Hawaii respondents did not indicate their generational status. With respect to generations then, fi rst, is there a difference between them on “having a religious faith”? Table 6 displays the results of the Fisher’s exact test with a value <= p of .318. Next, Table 7 examines the differences between generation and “Religious Categories.” Although the Pearson Chi-Square value <= p of .163 does not indicate a statistically signifi cant level of differences between the cells, this p-value statistic is not reliable. Six cells, or 30 percent, contained less than the expected count of fi ve, with smaller numbers of cell counts found in the Yonsei and Gosei categories. An attempt to perform the Fisher’s exact test failed since the 4 × 5 table required more computer memory than available to complete the

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Table 5. Location and Importance of Religion Attitude Importance of Religious Location of the Study Attitude HAWAII WEST COAST TOTAL NOT IMPO/OT/DK* Count 40 76 116 % No Religion 34.48% 65.52% 100.00% % Location 20.14% 22.09% 21.48% IMPORTANT Count 156 268 424 % Have Religion 36.79% 63.21% 100.00% % Location 79.59% 77.91% 78.52% TOTAL Count 196 344 540 % No/Have Religion 36.30% 63.70% 100.00% % Location 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%

* Category = Not Important/Other/Don’t Know

Value Probability Pearson Chi-Square .210 (a) 0.647 (a) 0 cells (.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 42.10. Source: See Table 1.

Table 6. Generation and Have Religious Faith Religious Faith Generation NISEI SANSEI YONSEI GOSEI TOTAL HAVE RELIGION Count 147 200 34 10 391 % Location 37.6% 51.2% 8.7% 2.6% 100.0% % Generation 77.4% 71.2% 66.7% 71.4% 72.9% NO RELIGION Count 43 81 17 4 145 % Location 29.7% 55.9% 11.7% 2.8% 100.0% % Generation 22.6% 28.8% 33.3% 28.6% 27.1% TOTAL Count 190 281 51 14 536 % Location 35.4% 52.4% 9.5% 2.6% 100.0% % Generation 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Probability Fisher’s Exact Test .318

Source: See Table 1.

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Table 7. Religious Categories by Generation Religion Generation NISEI SANSEI YONSEI GOSEI TOTAL BUDDHIST Count 72 82 10 2 166 % Religion 43.4% 49.4% 6.0% 1.2% 100.0% % Generation 37.9% 29.2% 19.6% 14.3% 31.0% PROTESTANT Count 55 72 17 7 151 % Religion 36.4% 47.7% 11.3% 4.6% 100.0% % Generation 28.9% 25.6% 33.3% 50.0% 28.2% CATHOLIC Count 5 12 1 1 19 % Religion 26.3% 63.2% 5.3% 5.3% 100.0% % Generation 2.6% 4.3% 2.0% 7.1% 3.5% OTHER Count 15 34 6 1 56 % Religion 26.8% 60.7% 10.7% 1.8% 100.0% % Generation 7.9% 12.1% 11.8% 7.1% 10.4% NONE Count 43 81 17 3 144 % Religion 29.9% 56.3% 11.8% 2.1% 100.0% % Generation 22.6% 28.8% 33.3% 21.4% 26.9% TOTAL Count 190 281 51 14 536 % Religion 35.4% 52.4% 9.5% 2.6% 100.0% % Generation 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

VALUE df Probability Pearson Chi-Square 16.660(a) 12 .163 (a) 6 cells (30%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is .50. Source: See Table 1.

analysis. Additional studies with larger Yonsei and Gosei generational data are necessary. Table 8 examines the differences between generations to “Religious teachings amount to the same thing.” A Fisher’s exact test was run with a derived value <= p of .079. Then, is there a generational difference on the “Importance of a religious attitude?” Table 9 presents Fisher’s exact test value <= p of .046.

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Table 8. Generation by Religious Teachings Amount to the Same Thing Religious Generation teaching same NISEI SANSEI YONSEI GOSEI TOTAL AGREE Count 141 189 31 11 372 % Agree 37.9% 50.8% 8.3% 3.0% 100.0% % Generation 74.2% 67.3% 60.8% 78.6% 69.4% DISAGREE Count 36 80 19 3 138 % Disagree 26.1% 58.0% 13.8% 2.2% 100.0% % Generation 18.9% 28.5% 37.3% 21.4% 25.7% OTHER/D.K.* Count 13 12 1 0 26 % Other/D.K. 50.0% 46.2% 3.8% 0 % 100.0% % Generation 6.8% 4.3% 2.0% 0% 4.9% TOTAL Count 190 281 51 14 536 % Agr/Da/O/ 35.4% 52.4% 9.5% 2.6% 100.0% % Generation 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Probability Fisher’s Exact Test .079 Source: See Table 1.

Of all the statistical analyses conducted, Table 9 is the single exception indicating a statistically signifi cant value <= at the .05 level. However, this fi nding possibly includes a more pervasive infl uence with one’s life experiences affecting the response. That is, historically, concern for religion and spiritual issues become more salient as one gets older. Here, more for the Nisei generation and less for the Gosei, death, illness, and concern for personal and for others’ welfare often enter center stage in individual and family life. The necessity to deal with the vicissitudes of life would naturally impinge on one’s values and beliefs, perhaps, as well, taking the form of a heightened interest in religiosity. However, the response of the Gosei generation is higher than the Sansei and Yonsei. Whether this question, with only eleven Gosei respondents out of 536 subjects, is a statistical artifact or not deserves further empirical study. When the geographical variable

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Table 9. Generation by Importance of Religious Attitude Importance Generation Relig. Attitude NISEI SANSEI YONSEI GOSEI TOTAL IMPORTANT Count 163 213 35 11 422 % Important 38.6% 50.5% 8.3% 2.6% 100.0% % Generation 85.8% 75.8% 68.6% 78.6% 78.7% NOT IMPORT Count 17 50 9 2 78 % Not Import 21.8% 64.1% 11.5% 2.6% 100.0% % Generation 8.9% 17.8% 17.6% 14.3% 14.6% OTHER/D.K.* Count 10 18 7 1 36 % Other/D.K. 27.8% 50.0% 19.4% 2.8% 100.0% % Generation 5.3% 6.4% 13.7% 7.1% 6.7% TOTAL Count 190 281 51 14 536 % Impt/NImp 35.4% 52.4% 9.5% 2.6% 100.0% % Generation 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Probability Fisher’s Exact Test .046 Source: See Table 1.

itself was examined, rather than the generational, the age factor was apparent.5 The overall generational data indicate a trend in line with the hypothesis that the Japanese religiosity values and beliefs brought by the Issei and transferred to the later generations continue to have merit. There were no signiﬁ cant differences between them, excluding the “Impor-

5 That is, on this question in the 1988 Hawaii survey, those over 60 years of age reported 86.1 percent “Important” and 12.7 percent “Not important.” The 1999 Hawaii group reported 88.7 percent “Important” and 6.2 percent “Not important,” while the 1988 JAWCS reported 86.1 percent and 9.6 percent. Conversely, those under 29 years of age in the 1988 Hawaii study said 60 percent “Important” and 40 percent “Not Important.” The JAWCS reported 57.1 percent and 28.6 percent. The 1999 Hawaii survey reported data for those between 20–39 years of age as 46.2 percent “Important” and 28.2 percent “Not important.” (Research Committee 1988: 225; Yoshino et al. 2000: 200; Yoshino et al. 2001: 166.)

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tance” of religions that was discussed above, allowing us to combine the location and generational data for a comparability analysis with responses from Japan and the United States.

A Comparative Analysis of Japan, Japanese Americans, and the US on the Religiosity Questions

We focus attention next on the responses of the Japan, the US, and Japanese American subjects to the religiosity questions. Table 10 displays the responses from the two areas with the Japanese Americans along with the error margin and confi dence intervals at the 95 percent level. Error margins for three of the religiosity questions for each area were derived using the independent Z-test for proportions.6 Criteria for the applicability of the Z-test include a randomly sampled population with a sample size suffi ciently large for asymptotic (large sample size) statistical procedures to be valid. In order to obtain a suffi ciently large sample size for the Japanese American group, the analysis with regard to the location factor (Hawaii and the West Coast) on identical religiosity questions was important. Because the location factor analysis earlier for the Japanese American sample did not indicate signifi cant differences with respect to the religiosity questions, they may be merged together for comparative purposes with the Japan and US samples. The results offered in Table 10 indicate a relatively complex religiosity picture with regard to the two areas and the Japanese Americans.7 Of the three derived Japanese American confi dence intervals one intersected with Japan’s and none with any of the US responses. Moreover, as expected, none of the Japanese derived confi dence intervals intersected with the US intervals and as such represent statistically independent populations. Let us take each of these questions in turn. Question 1: “Do you have any personal religious faith?” To the fi rst question in Table 10, “Do you have any personal religious faith,” 63.6 percent of the Japanese subjects said, “No.” The error margin at the 95 percent level is 1.98 percent resulting in a confi dence interval of 65.6 to 61.6 percent. The 95 percent error margin for the Japanese American “No”

6 The Z-test formula used for a large size, random-sampled pool, at the .05 probability level = 1.96 × square root of [P(percentage) × (1–P)]/n. 7 A Z-test to derive an error margin was tried for the “Religions” question (3 × 4 table) resulting in an insufﬁ cient memory response from the computer.

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Table 10. Percentage Responses to Four Religious Questions by Area: Japanese Americans in Hawaii and West Coast plus Japan and USA

AREAS ITEM CATEGORY JAPAN JPN AM- USA [1988] [ HI+WC] * [1988] n = 2265 n = 550 n = 1563 RELIGIOUS 1. YES 36.5% 72.4 85.9% FAITH 2. NO 63.6 27.6 14.0 n = 2265 540 1551 0 0 12 Missing +/– 1.98% +/– 3.77% +/–1.72% Error margin 65.6–61.6% 31.4–23.8% 15.7–12.3% Confi dence interval-“No faith” RELIGIONS 1. BUDDHIST 28.5% 29.7% 0.0% 2. PROTESTANT** 1.2 32.4 79.2 3. OTHER 5.3 10.0 3.7 4. NO RELIGI/ 65.0 27.8 17.2 D.K.** n = 2265 540 1563 IMPORTANCE 1. IMPORTANT 75.5% 78.7% 87.3% OF 2. NOT IMPORT 11.1 14.6 10.4 RELIGIOUS 3. OTHER/ D.K 13.5 6.7 2.3 ATTITUDE n = 2265 540 1563 Error margin +/– 1.77% +/– 3.46% +/– 1.65% Confi dence 77.3–73.7% 82.2–75.2% 89.0–85.7% interval- “Important” RELIGIOUS 1. AGREE 63.3% 69.3% 56.5% TEACHINGS 2. DISAGREE 16.4 25.7 39.9 ARE THE SAME 3. OTHER /D.K. 20.4 5.0 3.7 n = 2265 540 1563 Error margin +/–1.99% +/–3.89% +/–2.46% Confi dence 65.3–61.3% 73.2–65.4% 59.0–54.0% interval-“Agree”

* JPN AM—[Hawaii and West Coast] survey, 1999–2000 and 1998–2000 respectively. ** Data for Catholic combined with Protestant; D.K. = Don’t Know Data for the USA (1988) and Japan (1988) derived from Yoshino et al. 2001: 76. Hawaii data derived from the Institute of Statistical Mathematics [ISM], Tokyo, Japan, “HW(500)01” [1999–200 Hawaii Resident Survey, Ryuzo Yoshino, Director]. West Coast data derived from “JAWCS98TOTAL” [1998–2000 JAWC Survey, S. Frank Miyamoto, Director]. Data sets in the possession of the author and the ISM.

response is 3.77 percent with a confi dence interval of 31.4 to 23.8 percent. Fourteen percent of the US sample responded with a “No” and the error margin at the 95 percent level is 1.72 percent, resulting in a confi dence interval of 15.7 to 12.3 percent. Since none of the three derived confi dence intervals intersected with each other, we can

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conclude, with a 95 percent probability level, that these population areas are statistically independent from each other. Question 2: “What is your personal religious faith?” For the “Religion” question (“What is your religion?”), a simple descriptive perusal of the data reveals interesting results. The majority of the 2,265 responses from Japan are “No Religion” or “Don’t Know” (65.0 percent), with the next most frequently chosen category being Buddhist (28.5 percent). In contrast, among the 540 Japanese American respondents, the responses are spread more evenly between Christian (here including Catholics) at 32.4 percent, Buddhist with 29.7 percent, and “No Religion”/“Don’t Know” at 27.8 percent. Among the 1,563 US respondents, the vast majority chose Protestant (79.2 percent), followed by “No Religion”/“Don’t Know” (17.2 percent), and as expected, 0 percent Buddhist. A discussion of Japan’s large “No religion” response rate will follow later. Question 3: “Do you think a religious attitude is important?” For the “Impor- tance of religious attitude” question, the error margin at the 95 percent level for the Japanese subjects is 1.77 percent with a confi dence interval between 77.3 and 73.7 percent. The Japanese American respondents’ error margin is 3.46 percent with a confi dence interval of 82.2 to 75.2 percent. The US respondents’ error margin is 1.65 percent with a confi dence interval of 89.0 to 85.7 percent. Here, the Japan and Japanese American confi dence levels do intersect while both groups differ statistically at the p < .05 level from the US group. Thus, the Japan and Japanese American respondents are more complementary and closer with each other than either is with the US respondents on this question. Question 4: “Do you think that all religious teachings amount to the same thing?” The “agree” response to the last question, “All religious teachings amount to the same thing,” is similar to this question but without the intersections. The Japan respondents’ 95 percent error margin is 1.99 percent with a confi dence interval between 65.3 and 61.3 percent. Japanese Americans’ error margin is 3.89 percent with a confi dence interval of 73.2 to 65.4 percent, and the US respondents’ error margin is 2.46 percent with a confi dence interval of 59.0 to 54.0 percent. The three confi dence intervals do not intersect here although the lowest value of the Japanese American (65.4 percent) is very close to that of the Japanese (65.3 percent).

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Discussion

Our initial hypothesis was that the religious attitudes and beliefs of Japanese Americans originated from the values brought to the United States by the Issei and transmitted to the subsequent generations. As stated earlier, we would also expect differences from those of Japan with some diminution of the earlier held values and beliefs. After all, the major educational experiences of the American-born Nisei through Gosei generations are American. Their native language is English, and each succeeding generation is situated further from the infl uences of the original immigrants. Not to expect some infl uences from this “Americanization” process would be an untenable assumption. The question, rather, is the degree of this change. Five major issues arise from the data and tables in this chapter with respect to Japanese American religiosity. First, despite seemingly disparate social histories encountered by the Japanese Americans in Hawaii and the West Coast, they do not appreciably differ in their response to questions concerning certain attitudes toward religiosity and even with respect to their choices of personal religious faiths. My colleagues and I noted and commented in an earlier article on the persistence factor of Buddhism, Protestantism, and “No religion” among the West Coast Japanese Americans (Kashima et al. 2002). In the present chapter, the new comparisons with the Hawaii and West Coast data and the statistical analysis offer additional evidence of the similarity of the two groups. Second, the strength and persistence of both the Buddhist and Protestant faiths within the Japanese American group are noteworthy. Although the majority of the Japanese immigrants had ties to Buddhism and were from Japanese prefectures with strong affi liation to the Jodo Shinshu (Pure Land Amida) school of Buddhism even from the earliest immigrant days (cf. Kashima 1977), there were signifi cant numbers of Issei Protestants within the Japanese community, served by white Christian missionaries and Japanese Protestant clergy. The persistence factor of Buddhism, Protestantism, and other religious faiths to the later generations, becomes quite evident in this study. Third, because there were no statistically signifi cant differences with respect to the two geographical areas, we were able to combine the two sample groups to explore the differences and similarities within the generation variable. Although the data are robust with the number of Nisei and Sansei subjects, because of the fewer numbers of Yonsei

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and Gosei, we must be more tentative in our conclusions. However, the availability of small-sample statistical tests offers an empirically based analysis not found in virtually any other Japanese American religiosity studies. The results demonstrate that of the religiosity questions on which a statistical computation could be conducted, only one resulted in a fi nding of signifi cant difference. That one question, “Importance of a religious attitude,” as previously discussed, is plausibly intertwined with the respondent’s life experiences, not only for the Japanese Americans but for other groups as well. Fourth, although most tables contained suffi cient sample sizes for an analysis using Chi-square or Fisher’s exact tests, on the question of “Religious categories” (Table 7), again because of the many cells with smaller sample sizes in the Gosei respondents, a defi nitive statistical analysis could not be performed with the equipment at hand. Still, the results in this table are informative. Here, the Nisei and Sansei generations show large percentages in the Buddhist, Protestant, and “No religion” categories. For the Yonsei and Gosei, the largest percentage is in the Protestant, “No religion,” and Buddhist categories. Future studies will ascertain the reliability of these percentages, but given the fact that these generations are inherently non-regenerative, the number of available Nisei subjects will inevitably decrease with a corresponding increase in the presence of the Yonsei and Gosei generations. The fi fth major issue of this chapter gives us an even broader perspective concerning the religiosity of the Japanese Americans. Here we compared their responses on corresponding religious questions with those from their ancestral homeland, Japan, and with those of the same nativity, the United States (see Table 10). Methodological considerations of comparability worked to our benefi t. While data for the United States and Japan had a large sample size, issues of time, personnel, and cost made collecting a similarly large Japanese American sample impossible. It is the comparability aspect of the Hawaii and West Coast data and the similarity across generational lines that allow for a defensible comparison between these three groups on the religiosity issue. The remainder of this section focuses upon the responses to the religiosity questions from the two areas with the Japanese Americans.

“Do you have a religious faith?” We start this discussion on the compatibility between the Japanese Americans, Japan, and the US with the question, “Do you have a

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religious faith?” The Japanese respondents exhibited a very high negative response (63.6 percent), the Japanese American negative response was 27.6 percent and the US response was 14.0 percent. What might account for these differences? An important reason rests upon the Christian religious principle that enjoins one to establish an individual identity with his or her particular faith and to assemble for religious worship. The emphasis on faith and the individual “virtually necessitates a congregational form of religious activity and the resulting interpersonal associations within congregations establishes a strong sense of identity with a particular faith” (Kashima et al. 2002: 215). In Japan, however, the religious activities are mani- fested through the family rather than the individual. As an example, extreme importance is placed on observances of yearly memorial services for deceased family members during the Obon service season (similar to the Christian All Souls Day observance). The Japanese may travel for long distances to return to their family home to participate in this ritual observance. For concerns centering on this-worldly issues, the Japanese may request a Shinto priest to conduct a service to insure the good fortune of a new business, a newly married couple might seek a blessing for the conception of a child, or a teenager may request a benevolence for an upcoming college entrance examination. The Japanese then may call upon different religious traditions resulting in different bases for their religious identity. However, there appears also to be a sizeable number of Japanese American Buddhists who likewise tend to agree that they have a personal religious faith. The reason for this rests with the different purposes and organizational structure of the Buddhist temples in Japan and those for the Japanese Americans. In the United States, the Japanese immigrants were often young, unmarried men who came to make money and return home. Years might pass without their achieving this economic dream, and the calling for wives from Japan alleviated their loneliness and resulted in the birth of the Nisei generation. Yet, the group support of family, friends, and neighborhood prevalent in Japan was missing in the American society where they found an emphasis on individualism, and it was the immigrant Christian and Buddhist religious institutions that served to ﬁ ll the need for social support and solidarity. More will be offered later on this point. The transplantation of Japanese immigrant Buddhism to the United States resulted in major changes to its social structure from Japan. There the position of the temple priest and the property customarily

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pass down through the priest’s family, while in the United States, the Japanese American Buddhist temples and churches are tax-exempt religious institutions by virtue of their fulfi lling state and local legal requirements. Foremost among these requirements is the need to be a publicly incorporated organization with a constitution, by-laws, and governing body. It is the governing board in America, rather than the priests as in Japan, where the decision-making power resides over secular activities. In America, the Buddhist resident priest or minister is usually a salaried employee of the temple or church and serves at the behest of the governing board. Another change was with respect to the membership base. In Japan, the Buddhist temples organize around a family-membership centered system where their ties to a particular temple may date back for generations. While the Issei Buddhists’ membership still centered on the family, it was in America the nuclear rather than the extended family system that one fi nds in Japan. From the Nisei to the Gosei generation, the nuclear family emphasis is still operative, but with a growing number of non-Japanese ancestry adherents and the continual movement of Japanese Americans to different localities for education, occupation, or personal reasons, the emphasis is decidedly toward an individual membership basis. Given these conditions, the most effi cacious organizational religious model for this is the congregational one. However, these changes from the Japanese model are reactions and adaptations to perceived needs faced by this ethnic religious institution from the immigrant Japanese to the more recent generations. These changes are mainly in the presentation form rather than the content of its religious core. Other changes of a more signifi cant nature have occurred in the presentation of the Buddhist tenets, but they are in another realm of discourse and beyond the scope of this chapter. For example, these are in the areas of religious translations and the changing nature of the ethnic make-up of the membership and of even the Buddhist priesthood in the United States (Kashima 1977). Thus, the Japanese religious attitude played a signifi cant role in shaping Japanese American religious behavior, but in an American environment, those infl uences produced unexpected outcomes. For example, the Chris- tian teachings that emphasize showing concern for the needs of others had little impact in Japan where the attitude is a part of everyday life, but in the highly individualistic American environment the teaching suddenly took on a signifi cance it did not have before. Similarly, religious

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congregationalism tends to arouse minimum interest in Japan because group support is so much a way of life in everyday Japan. In America, however, the Japanese immigrants found themselves stripped of this support, and congregationalism suddenly acquired a signifi cance it did not have before. (Kashima et al. 2002: 216) These infl uences then affected the Japanese American responses to the question of “Do you have a religious faith?” The Japanese American responses, as indicated by the lack of intersections between the three confi dence intervals, are signifi cantly independent from both the Japa- nese and the US respondents.

“What is your religious faith?” Table 10 showed that 29.7 percent of the Japanese Americans responded as Buddhists, similar to the 28.5 percent Buddhist response rate of the Japanese. These Japanese American Buddhists, then, I assume to be inﬂ uenced by the Japanese pattern of religiosity brought by the Issei. However, the 32.4 percent Japanese American respondent rate as Christians (including both Protestants and Catholics) is in stark contrast with the 1.2 percent response from the Japanese. An explanation for Christianity’s lack of appeal returns to the Japanese themselves, as my colleagues and I stated earlier: [ T ]he Japanese ideational tendency is characterized by a multiple perspectives orientation, that is, a tendency to see objects as interpretable in multiple ways, and a tendency therefore to be skeptical of unidimensio- nal interpretations. In contrast, the West views the world from a logical, rational and explicit perspective where the individual is given primary emphasis. The world from this perspective is also separated conceptually into more or less dichotomous categories and they assert that the monotheism of Christianity, and its strong tendency to interpret the world in dialectical terms, as for example in the dichotomy between “good and evil,” is basically unappealing to the Japanese. The Japanese, however, see more ambiguity in the world and rather than taking a linear perspective see the world in nonlinear terms. They recognize a world shaded in varying degrees of grayness within a black-white spectrum. The self is also somewhat structurally dissimilar from the conception held of it in the West. The Japanese self contains within it a sense of the collective as an integral and important part of its constitution (Kashima et al. 2002: 209). The Japanese, because of a long cultural history about their religiosity, are able to practice a nonhierarchical, “multi-layered” religiosity in

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their lives.8 For example, in a Japanese house, it is not unusual to ﬁ nd a small Shinto shrine tucked away on a shelf near the kitchen doorway, in the living room a Buddhist family altar holding pictures of deceased relatives, and a wedding ceremony may be performed occasionally by a Catholic priest with the bride wearing a white Western wedding gown. In the latter case, she might also change into a traditional kimono for the reception and banquet. Thus, to the Japanese, for centuries, Buddhism, Shinto, and Confucian doctrines co-existed with equanimity caring for different areas of their lives: Shinto for the living and present concerns and needs, Buddhism took care of the concern of the ancestors and those who have passed on, and Confucian traditions to guide the ways of home and state behavior. Catholicism has a long history in Japan but it has been a more recent phenomenon where priests are occasionally asked to perform in the wedding ceremonies, with the important point here, that the ceremony may be conducted without the participants obliged necessarily to profess their faith in the religion. To explain further this point, Hayashi and Kuroda (1997: 47) assert that: The Japanese polytheistic religious views are totally alien to Westerners. The Japanese attitudes toward religion are also different from those of their neighboring Chinese and Koreans, who are more willing to accept mono- theistic religions as well as absolutist ideologies, including Marxism. . . . Ever since Prince Shotoku during his reign (593 A.D.–622 A.D.) . . . issued the seventeen-article Constitution in the seventh century exalting the virtue of “wa” or harmony with Buddhism in particular and Chinese and Korean civilization in general, the Japanese have upheld the principle of social harmony as the highest norm of the Japanese society. This multi-layered religious orientation of the Japanese helps to explain the large percentage of “No religion” and “Don’t know” responses among the Japanese. As in the “Do you have a religious faith” question, the necessity to have a particular religious faith has not been part of the religiosity tradition in Japan. It also helps to explain, in part, why, even with a long history of missionary effort, there has never been a signiﬁ cant portion of the Japanese population converted to Protes- tantism. Mark Mullins (1998: 34, 36) asserts that certain elements of Christianity brought by the early Christian missionaries in the modern era were acceptable to the Japanese but not all aspects. The Protestant

8 I am indebted to Stephen S. Fugita for the concept of “multi-layered” Japanese religiosity.

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missionaries brought with them a missionary theology and practice that emphasized a discontinuity between the Christian faith and the previously mentioned multi-layered Japanese religious tradition and practices. The traditional evangelical missionaries proclaimed the necessity to “displace” or remove the indigenous traditions before the Japanese could accept the true Gospel and manifest an authentic Christian faith. The missionaries’ orientation was that they had the “truth of the Gospel and the Japanese were seen to be ‘totally lost in sin’.” This missionary perspective resulted in the view that the “transmission of all mission cultures—without corruption or addition—was the primary concern,” leading to the imposition of a rigid and Western theological doctrine and denominational form of worship. Imposing this dichotomous religious perspective of “saved” or “sin” onto a more multi-layered religious perspective was highly unsuccessful, resulting in only around one percent of the Japanese becoming Christians. In America, the social history of the Japanese American Protestant movement indicates a strong emphasis for the Christian denominations to seek Issei converts (Centennial Celebration Coordinating Committee 1977). The initial white Christian missionaries helped the Issei meet the challenges they faced as they adjusted to their new American environment. The Japanese Christian missionary churches were highly cognizant of their ability to fi ll the social need that other Issei organizations could not meet. For example, the kenjinkai, or prefectural associations that designated areas in Japan from which the Issei came, were important social organizations providing social support for the Issei, but by defi nition with a exclusionary territorial component to their membership base. Another important organization within the Issei community was the Japanese Association, or the Nihonjinkai. The members were mostly Issei men concerned with bettering social relationships with the surrounding white community or fi ghting for equal treatment in the face of “anti-Oriental” prejudices and discrimination. The Japanese Association also worked to maintain relationships with Japan through the Japanese consulate personnel found in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Other Japanese immigrant organizations centered, as well, on an exclusive membership based on particular interest areas such as the [Seattle] Japanese Restaurant Association or the Portland Japanese Hotel and Apartments Association. The Christian and Buddhist religious institutions were, by contrast, inclusive organizations, able to and desirous of serving the entire Japanese American community regardless of social status, educational

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background, or occupation. Furthermore, they also emphasized important values brought from Japan that in a particularly important way coincided with the major tenet held by both religions. A major principle of Christianity maintains a consideration of others, particularly toward those in need. There is also a positive attribute placed on putting the interest of the group or society over one’s self-interest. These values resonated positively with the Issei since they are two important considerations practiced in the everyday life of the Japanese (Yamaoka 2006). Fulfi lling this need for the consideration of others, not readily found in the larger American society, was an important positive religious attribute that motivated the early Issei to come to the Christian church. The Christian missionary churches also provided important secular services. In many Issei communities, for example, they offered English language programs, introduced American culture to the new Issei brides, and helped to fi nd employment opportunities. The single largest Japanese American Buddhist religious institution, today known as the Buddhist Churches of America, arrived soon after the Christian Japanese missionary movement started. They also offered spiritual and secular oriented services, inaugurated ceremonies such as weddings, Japanese language instruction, and social programs for the young Nisei, which are not usually part of their regular activities in Japan. Moreover, whether in Japan or Japanese American Buddhism, an important core value is an emphasis on compassion and consideration for others. Except for some occasional differences, the Christian clergy and Buddhist priests were able to assist their members without troublesome inter-religious confl icts arising between them. Certainly, after the post-World War II period, religious interfaith meetings, combined Memorial Day services, interfaith wedding ceremonies, attendance at each other’s fund-raising and food-festival programs, and active cooperation in creating elderly care facilities were not rare within the Japanese American communities. Examples exist about the harmonious relationships existing between Japanese Americans where religious diversity was apparent. For instance, David Matsumoto cites a Nisei who reported that, “The rest of my family were Buddhist but religion didn’t make much of a difference. I don’t remember any time when it did. Two of our oldest children were married in a Christian ceremony and other two married Buddhists and were married in a Buddhist way” (quoted in Fugita and O’Brien 1991: 89). Umeko Kawamura of San Diego offers another example where her Sansei son David

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belongs to the Buddhist Church, and [his Sansei wife] Carol belongs to the Ocean View Church [United Church of Christ]. But like [my husband] Harry says, it really doesn’t make any difference. The idea is to go to church. That’s why he says go help with the Ocean View Church. It doesn’t make any difference if you’re Buddhist. It has nothing to do with it. If you’re a good Buddhist, you have to [go] any place . . . . I’m a Buddhist. I’m the only Buddhist in the [Ocean View Church] kitchen but it doesn’t bother me. We’re all the same. ( Japanese American National Museum 2000: 158) Within the Japanese American community, then, individuals can be Buddhist, Christian, or “No religion,” with little or no negative social consequences in their friendship or associational networks. As brieﬂ y introduced earlier, alongside the value for the consideration of others is the Japanese concept of wa, or harmony, brought by the Issei and transmitted to the Nisei. Both of these values assist in understanding the ability for persons with differing religious orientations to interact together without rancor or inter-religious conﬂ ict.

“Importance of religious attitudes” This question asked, “Without reference to any of the established religions, do you think that a religious attitude is important or not?” Visitors to Japan interested in its culture and history quickly encounter the ubiquitous presence of shrines, temples, and roadside or niche religious statuary. In the major cities where tourists trek to see historic sites or major architectural edifi ces, quite often— and especially during specifi c days of the year, such as at New Year’s—one sees many Japanese engaged in religious centered practices. They may be paying respects to those who have died, praying for a desired outcome in their lives, and/or participating in other ritual activities stemming from a religious core. It is not surprising, then, that the Japanese response was a 75.5 percent “Important” while at the same time, the majority of the Japanese also respond as not having a religious faith. The multi-layered religiosity perspective allows the Japanese to affi rm that a religious attitude is important while not having to or unwilling to link this belief to a particular faith as occurs in the Western religious world. The confi dence intervals with a high percentage of “Important” responses by the Japanese and Japanese American (78.7 percent) do intersect (see Table 10). Yet, the 87.4 percent US “Important” response is even higher and it does not intersect with either of the other two.

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This is because, ﬁ rst, religious attitudes are important for all three groups. Second, for the US group, as quoted earlier, “the monotheism of Christianity and its strong tendency to interpret the world in dialectical terms, as for example in the dichotomy between ‘good and evil’ is basically unappealing to the Japanese” (Kashima et al. 2002: 209), while in the US the presence of Christian religious and civil-religious orientation encourages Americans to proclaim the importance of a single religious faith. In contrast, the Japanese “Other or Don’t know” response is quite high (13.5 percent); here it represents the availability of a multi-layered perspective to the question about the “importance of a religious attitude.” While the Japanese 13.5 percent response is almost twice that for the Japanese Americans, the latter’s 6.7 percent stands between the Japanese and the US (2.3 percent).

“Religious teachings amount to the same thing” This question states, “Some people say that although there are many different religions in the world, each with their own beliefs, their teachings really amount to the same thing. Would you agree with it or disagree?” The conﬁ dence intervals reported for Japan, Japanese Americans, and the US do not intersect on this question. The Japanese American respondents indicate the highest percentage of “Agree” (69.3 percent) followed closely by the Japanese (63.3 percent) and least by the US (56.5 percent). Yet, within the two areas and with the Japanese American, interesting response percentages occur that are worth noting. For the Japanese American-West Coast sample, the “Agree” is highest with 72.1 percent, while the Japanese American-Hawaii sample is nearer the Japanese with 62.6 percent. How do these percentages fare with respect to other sampled countries? Fortunately, response data from seven countries and the Japanese Americans are available on this question. The following offers the “Agree” and “Disagree” (hereafter A and D) percentages: the US (1988: A 56.5 percent, D 39.9 percent); France (1987: A 57.8 percent, D 33.0 percent); Italy (1992: A 60.9 percent, D 27.7 percent); Federal Republic of Germany (1987: A 61.8 percent, D 20.7 percent); Japan (1988: A 63.3 percent, D 16.4 percent); Japanese American (A 69.3 percent, D 25.7 percent); Netherlands (1993: A 70.4 percent, D 22.3 percent); and the United Kingdom (1987: A 71.2 percent, D 24.5 percent). The “Agree” response rate for all eight areas—including the Japanese Americans—is greater than 50 percent (Yoshino et al. 2000: 177).

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Of the two relevant areas and the Japanese American group, the United States shows the lowest percentage of “Agree” of all the nations and the highest percentage of “Disagree” and they do not intersect with the other two. Between the Japanese American’s and Japan’s “Agree” response, the confi dence intervals are also non-intersecting; however, the difference between the Japanese top confi dence interval percent and the Japanese American lowest, is but 0.1 percent. Hence, there is more similarity among the Japanese and Japanese Americans on this question than among the Japanese Americans and the remaining US respondents. Does this high agreement level between the seven countries and the Japanese Americans necessarily indicate that each area holds the same view on this question? Their agreement might represent very differing views as indicated by the non-intersection of the confi dence interval between those countries representing the East and West: [ I ]n the West, differences between religions such as Protestantism, Catholic- ism, Judaism, and Islam have a universal core and all four religions trace their theology back to an original God with Abraham as an important patriarch. For Japanese Americans, however, Buddhism and Christianity, the two major religious divisions, represent different religious traditions and the gap between them is arguably conceptually larger than that separating Catholicism from, say, Protestantism. In addition, even with a universal core religious foundation, the fi erce struggles in various countries between Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Catholics are of long standing and the confl icts represent signifi cant events in each country’s history (Kashima et al. 2002: 224). We should then differentiate between those areas with a religious orientation stemming from the West—the US, France, Italy, Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom—and those from the East—in this case, Japan. Our hypothesis would then place the Japanese American into the latter category with Japan but with some differences as expressed in the non-intersecting confi dence intervals, albeit with a close confi dence interval on the responses to this question. The religions and gradations of Japan, as stated earlier, include Buddhism, Shinto, and Confucianism that are noticeable in the multi- layered religiosity attitude brought to the United States by the Issei. As Roger Daniels (1988: 171) points out, “Many Japanese immigrants took an attitude toward religion similar to that attributed to President Eisenhower: it is a good thing and it didn’t make too much difference

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in what size and shape it came.” Miyamoto (1981: 48) offers the following as expressing a feeling held by many Issei parents: “I told my children that it didn’t matter whether they went to a Christian church or a Buddhist church, but that they should go to some kind of a church. Since their friends were going to the Methodist Church, they went there, but after I joined the Congregational Church, I transferred them to the latter.” The absence of intra-ethnic religious struggles, as reﬂ ected in the tolerance for differing religiosity among the Japanese Americans, suggests a salient contrasting feature of the community religiosity picture with the West. How is it possible that the Japanese American Buddhists and Christians are able to respond so positively to the question that religious teachings “amount to the same thing?” Karen Armstrong (2006: xix) points out the basic communalities in the origins and the teachings of the present day historical religions: “Each tradition developed its own formulation of the Golden Rule: do not do to others what you would not have done to you . . . [and] respect for the sacred rights of all beings—not orthodox beliefs—was religion. If people behaved with kindness and generosity to other fellows, they would save the world.” Thus, it can be asserted, all the major world religions have a common foundation based on compassion and empathy. Within the pre-World War II Japanese American Christian churches, their tenet emphasized “training in honesty, kindness, humility, and brotherly and ﬁ lial love . . . offered within the context of Christian instruction” (Miyamoto 1972: 233). For the Japanese American Buddhists, the traditions and major themes in their services revolved around compassion, wisdom, empathy, benevolence, and charity. At the religious institutional level then, there are important similarities that are apparent as individual Japanese Americans embodied precepts taught there and ostensibly carried them out in their daily lives. But are there no differences between the American and the Japanese American churches? One striking difference is in the ethnic membership make-up of the Protestant churches. As the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963: 2) said: “We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation.” The Christian Issei generation attended houses of worship with services conducted in Japanese and with few societal pressures on the white Christian leadership to integrate this minority population into their

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larger congregational fold. Even before World War II, however, there were ample opportunities for individual Japanese Americans to join a white Protestant church. Yet, “as one Christian Nisei observed, ‘I can’t remember anyone who did’ ” (Kashima et al. 2002: 222). By 1998, however, 36.8 percent of the Japanese American Protestant respondents reported attending a church where the predominant members were non- Japanese American, while 63.2 percent continued to attend a Japanese American membership church. Although a detailed exposition of this self-segregating membership phenomenon is beyond the scope of this chapter, of relevance here is the infl uence of the previously mentioned Japanese value of confl ict-avoidance in the interpersonal orientation. A consequence of this orientation would be the preference by the Japanese American to interact with and belong to Japanese American groups that exhibit this and other relevant norms found in the Japanese American community.9 An instance of this preference arose in the early 1960s when the Southern California Methodist Conference attempted to desegregate certain Japanese American Protestant churches by melding them into larger Christian fellowships. In response to this appeal to its membership, a Southern California agricultural community white Methodist church approached the town’s only Japanese American Methodist church to merge the two congregations, combine their boards of directors, and sell the Japanese American church building with the proceeds used as an initial down payment on a new church structure. An informal understanding was agreed upon that, in the words of Harry Kajihara, a participant in the discussion, “. . . a Japanese minister would be employed at the merger church. The assumption was [for] forever, I think. Noth- ing was written on paper. Being a church, I think things were done in ‘good faith.’ . . . I think the Japanese never raised this issue [of who would be head minister] but accepted whatever the Caucasians said.” The new church building was completed in 1963. Kajihara refl ected on the subsequent social interactions in this way: I didn’t feel that there was any harmonious or disharmonious social relationship after the merger. You just went to church. You didn’t have in-depth socialization that is common in [an] all-Buddhist or all-Japanese

9 For a discussion of wa and other Japanese American norms and values, cf. Hayashi and Kuroda 1997, Miyamoto et al. 2002, and Fugita, Miyamoto and Kashima 2002.

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[Christian] membership church. In fact, the Japanese Americans formed the Nisei Fellowship. To some Caucasians and Japanese Americans this was strange, because the purpose of the merger was to integrate, so why have a segregated organization? (Kashima 1977: 133) The situation soon changed. Although the composition of the initial board of directors had both Japanese Americans and Caucasians, most decisions were made by the white Christian directors. The Nisei informant said that this was probably because the Japanese American board members were reticent in making their opinions or positions known. Soon, for example, church meeting times previously reserved for the use by the Japanese Americans were taken by the white Boy Scouts or for other such activities. The Japanese American directors then began to skip the board meetings, and the service attendance by the general Japanese American membership also started to decline, “although they generally never resisted openly, nor did they bring the disagreement into the open. Instead, person-by-person, they began to drop out of the church. The [initial Japanese minister left, and the] replacement minister was a Caucasian, and in time the Board of Directors also became a Caucasian-dominated group.” Subsequent events further aggravated the situation and many of the Japanese American congregants left the church and either did not attend any other religious institution or started to participate in the activities of the nearby Buddhist temple. As one former member stated, “I started to attend the Buddhist temple for the sake of my children. There, they could meet other Japanese Americans and meet other boys and girls with whom they could play and eventually date. And then I started to learn about Buddhism. It has really been a great help to me and my family” (Kashima 1977: 134–35). The actions of the white Christian members are less pertinent here than understanding the actions and reactions of the Japanese Ameri- cans. That they “generally never resisted openly, nor did they bring the disagreement into the open,” are characteristics of the Japanese American interpersonal style based on maintaining group harmony and eschewing a confrontational situation. The Japanese American reaction rested on their perception that the other (in this instance, the other group) was either unwilling or unable to comprehend the fact that the Japanese American group perceived the ongoing events as a troublesome issue. Thus, individually, the Japanese Americans opted out of the situation. Some or many of the white Christians might have wondered why there was a decided change in the attendance and participation of

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their Japanese American brethren, but since the latter never made an issue of whatever was causing the change in their behavior, they might not have been aware that a social “problem” existed. Although it may be argued that the possibility exists that the absence of conﬂ ict over religious difference reﬂ ects the view that religion or a religious attitude is unimportant for the Japanese Americans and not worthy of disagreement between relatives or friends, the fact that 78.7 percent of the Japanese American responded with an “Important” choice to this question is evidence that this possibility is not a tenable one. We see in the responses to this question from the Japanese Ameri- cans and the Japanese respondents the clearest example of understanding the importance of the multi-layered religious orientation found in Japan and transmitted to the Japanese American. This, coupled with a Japanese American interpersonal style with wa as an important component, aids us in understanding the co-existence of individuals holding differing religious traditions while maintaining amicable relationships with each other.

Conclusion

The Japanese Americans, then, are infl uenced by the practices, attitudes, and beliefs derived from two sources—Japan and America. The current evidence argues that the original and most infl uential reservoir for these attitudes and beliefs, and those that continue to affect the present-day religiosity of both Christian and Buddhist Japanese Americans, can be traced back to its Japanese roots. Subsequent events in the United States, both in Hawaii and the West Coast, along with their differing social histories through the succeeding generations have not resulted in signifi cant differences between them in their religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices. The changes through the subsequent American-born generations from Nisei to Gosei require additional study before a defensible conclusion can be offered due to the small sample size of the Yonsei and Gosei generations. The indications, however, as evidenced by the Nisei and Sansei responses and between the US, Japan, and Japanese American data, is that at this time it appears to be neither a Japanese nor an American but a Japanese American religiosity. Karen Armstrong’s observation about the common core of the world’s major religious traditions in something akin to what many in

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the West interpret as the “Golden Rule” accentuates the possibility of a more constructive dialogue between all religions, especially with the concept of compassion as a central theme. The tradition of Japanese religiosity, with wa, or interpersonal harmony, as an important element in their normative religious tradition, appears to have crossed the Paciﬁ c Ocean and has been incorporated in various ways within the Japanese American religious attitudes and beliefs. To what extent the future Japa- nese American generations will continue to express this perspective is an empirical question. At least for the present, there appears to be an absence of virulent intolerance and visible manifestation of compassion to accept the differing religious beliefs of other Japanese Americans and Americans in the area of religious beliefs.10

References

Armstrong, Karen. 2006. The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Tradi- tions. New York: Anchor Books. Akiba, Daisuke. 2006. “Japanese Americans.” Pp. 148–77 in Asian Americans: Contem- porary Trends and Issues, 2nd ed., edited by Pyong G. Min. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Caudill, William and George DeVos. 1956. “Achievement, Culture, and Personality: The Case of the Japanese Americans.” American Anthropologist 58: 1102–26. Centennial Celebration Coordinating Council. 1977. A Centennial Legacy: History of the Japanese Christian Missions in North America, 1877–1977, vol. 1. Chicago: Nobart. Coffman, Tom. 2006. The First Battle: The Battle for Equality in War-Time Hawaii. Video- recording. San Francisco: Center for Asian American Media. Connor, John W. 1977. Tradition and Change in Three Generations of Japanese Americans. Chicago: Nelson-Hall. CWRIC [Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians]. 1997. Personal Justice Denied. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Daniels, Roger. 1988. Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

10 Portions of this chapter were presented at the 2007 International Meeting of the Psychometric Society in Funabori, Tokyo, Japan, July, 2007. Grants for this research originated from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture, Grant-in-Aid for Scientiﬁ c Research A2, No. 10308007 (West Coast study) and A2, No. 11691111 (Hawaii study) under the sponsorship of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics (ISM) in Tokyo. I am indebted to the members of the ISM for their invaluable support and assistance: Professors Chikio Hayashi, Ryozo Yoshino, Kazue Yamaoka, Fumi Hayashi, Tadahiko Maeda, and Tatsuzo Suzuki. In Hawaii I am indebted to Professor Emeritus Yasumasa Kuroda; on the West Coast study to Profes- sor Emeritus S. Frank Miyamoto, Professor Stephen S. Fugita, Dr. Tsukasa Namekata, and the research assistants who helped gather the original data.

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Freed, Anne O. and Katherine Luomala. 1944. “Buddhism in the United States.” Community Analysis Section: Community Analysis Report No. 9, Document Department. Washington, DC: War Relocation Authority. Fugita, Stephen S. and Marilyn Fernandez. 2004. Altered Lives, Enduring Community: Japanese Americans Remember their World War II Incarceration. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ———, Tetsuden Kashima and S. Frank Miyamoto. 2002. “Methodology of Com- parative Studies of National Character: West Coast Survey.” Behaviormetrika 29: 143–48. ———, S. Frank Miyamoto and Tetsuden Kashima. 2002. “Interpersonal Style and Japanese American Organizational Involvement.” Behaviormetrika 29: 185–202. ———, and David J. O’Brien. 1991. Japanese American Ethnicity: Persistence of Community. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Glenn, Evelyn N. 1986. Issei, Nisei, War Brides: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Hayashi, Brian M. 1995. “For the sake of our Japanese Brethren”: Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895–1942. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hayashi, Chikio and Yasumasa Kuroda. 1997. Japanese Culture in Comparative Perspective. Westport, CT: Praeger. Horinouchi, Isao. 1973. “Americanized Buddhism: A Sociological Analysis of a Protes- tantized Japanese Religion.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Davis. Hunter, Louise M. 1971. Buddhism in Hawaii: Its Impact on a Yankee Community. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Hurh, Won Moo. 1990. “ ‘The 1.5 Generation’: A Paragon of Korean-American Pluralism.” Korean Culture 11: 21–31. Japanese American National Museum. 2000. Re-Generations Oral History Project: Rebuilding Japanese American Families, Communities and Civil Rights in the Resettlement Era, Volume III: San Diego, CA. Los Angeles: Japanese American National Museum. Kashima, Tetsuden. 1977. Buddhism in America: The Social Organization of an Ethnic Religious Institution. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ———. 2003. Judgment without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ———, S. Frank Miyamoto and Stephen S. Fugita. 2002. “Religious Attitudes and Beliefs among Japanese Americans: King County, Washington and Santa Clara, California.” Behaviormetrika 29: 103–229. Kawamoto, Kevin. 2006. “Judged without Trial: Why Hawai’i AJAs were World War II’s ‘Fortunate Exception’,” Hawaii Herald 27(13): 1, 6–8. King, Martin L. Jr. 1963. “Questions and Answers: Social Justice and the Emerg- ing New Age.” http://www.wmich.edu/library/archives/mlk.html, retrieved 20 August 2007. Kitano, Harry H. L. 1993. Generation and Identity: The Japanese American. Needham Heights, MA: Ginn Press. ——— and Roger Daniels. 2001. Asian Americans: Emerging Minorities. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Layman, Emma M. 1976. Buddhism in America. Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers. Lyman, Stanford M. 1970. “Generation and Character: The Case of the Japanese Americans.” Pp. 81–98 in Asians in the West, edited by Stanford M. Lyman. Reno, NV: Desert Research Institute. Matsumoto, Toru. 1946. Beyond Prejudice: A Story of the Church and Japanese Americans. New York: Friendship Press. Min, Pyong Gap. 1996. Caught in the Middle: Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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———. 2006. “Korean Americans.” Pp. 1230–59 in Asian Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issues, 2nd ed., edited by Pyong G. Min. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Miyamoto, S. Frank. 1972. “An Immigrant Community in America.” Pp. 217–43 in East across the Paciﬁ c: Historical and Sociological Studies of Japanese Immigration and Assimilation, edited by Hilary Conroy and T. Scott Miyakawa. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio. ———. 1981 [1939]. Social Solidarity among the Japanese in Seattle. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ———. 1986. “Interpersonal Style among the Nisei.” Amerasia Journal 13(2): 29–45. ———, Stephen S. Fugita and Tetsuden Kashima. 2002. “A Theory of Interpersonal Relations for Cross-Cultural Studies.” Behaviormetrika 29: 149–83. Mullins, Mark R. 1998. Christianity Made in Japan: A Study of Indigenous Movements. Hono- lulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Munekata, Ryo, ed. 1974. Buddhist Churches of America: 75 Year History. Chicago: Nobart. Nakano, Mei. 1990. Japanese American Women: Three Generations, 1890–1990. Berkeley, CA: Mina Press. Okada, Victor N., ed. 1998. Triumphs of Faith: Stories of Japanese-American Christians during World War II. Los Angeles: Japanese-American Internment Project. Petersen, William. 1971. Japanese Americans: Oppression and Success. New York: Random House. Prebish, Charles S. and Kenneth K. Tanaka, eds. 1998. The Faces of Buddhism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Research Committee on the Study of Honolulu Residents. 1988. The Fourth Attitudinal Survey of Honolulu Residents. Research Report No. 70. Tokyo: Institute of Statisti- cal Mathematics. Seager, Richard Hughes. 1999. Buddhism in America. New York: Columbia University Press. Shiraishi, Kiyoshi T., ed. 1964. The Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of Protestant Work among Japanese in North America, 1877–1962. Los Angeles: Kirisuto Shimbu Sha. Suzuki, Lester. 1979. Ministry in the Assembly and Relocation Centers of World War II. Berkeley, CA: Yardbird Publishing. Thomas, Dorothy S. 1952. The Salvage. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Yamaoka, Kazue. 2006. “Japanese Americans.” Pp. 275–81 in Encyclopedia of Multicultural Psychology, edited by Yo Jackson. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Yanagisako, Silvia J. 1985. Transforming the Past: Tradition and Kinship among Japanese Americans. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Yoo, David K. 2000. Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1924–1949. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Yoshino, Ryozo, Chikio Hayashi, Kazue Yamaoka, Fumi Hayashi, Tatsuzo Suzuki, Yasu- masa Baba, Masakatu Murakami and Masamichi Sasaki. 2000. A Study of Statistical Science on Cultural Transmission: Japanese Americans on the West Coast Survey. Research Report, General Series 84. Tokyo: Institute of Statistical Mathematics. ———, Tatsuzo Suzuki, Fumi Hayashi, Kazue Yamaoka, Masamichi Sasaki, Keiko Nakao, Yuejun Zheng, Yasumasa Kuroda, S. Frank Miyamoto, Tetsuden Kashima and Stephen S. Fugita. 2001. Hawaii Resident Survey 1999–2000, by the Research Committee of Cross-National Comparative Survey. A2, No. 11691111. Tokyo: Institute of Statistical Mathematics, submitted to the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture.

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“TRUE BUDDHISM IS NOT CHINESE”: TAIWANESE IMMIGRANTS DEFINING BUDDHIST IDENTITY IN THE UNITED STATES

Carolyn Chen

Based on ethnographic fi eldwork and in-depth interviews, this chapter examines how Taiwanese immigrant Buddhists defi ne Buddhism in the United States. Contrary to theories that immigrant religion preserves ethnic traditions in the new world, Taiwanese American Buddhists actively disavow any cultural connection with Asian Buddhism. Rather, they defi ne their religion as modern, western, and American. Rhetori- cally, this is a reaction against Taiwanese American Christians, and an attempt to package the dharma (Buddhist teachings) in a way that is attractive to Americans. This chapter complicates possible understandings of religion’s “ethnic function” by demonstrating that individuals may use religion to create ethnic boundaries among multiple cleavages and identities. It further emphasizes that Buddhism cannot be reduced to ethnicity, particularly when its practitioners’ mission is to propagate the dharma. To immigrants, religion often serves the critical function of reproducing and preserving ethnic traditions in a foreign land. For this reason, scholars have noted how immigrants may become more religious after migrating to the United States (Smith 1978; Warner 1998, 2000). The majority of Buddhist Taiwanese immigrants become practicing or “true” Buddhists after migrating to the United States.1 In contrast to other Asian immigrants such as Thai (Cadge 2005; Numrich 1996) or Vietnamese (Zhou et al. 2002), most Taiwanese immigrants arrive in the United States non-religiously affi liated and discover Buddhism here rather than in their homeland.

1 The “true Buddhism” identity described in this chapter should not be confused with the group that calls itself True Buddha School, led by the Taiwanese teacher, Grand Master Sheng-yen Lu.

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The example of Mrs. Lee’s Buddhist awakening offers a glimpse into a Buddhist conversion narrative that that is common among Taiwanese Americans. In Taiwan she grew up thinking that Buddhism was old- fashioned and backward, “the religion of my grandparents,” as she put it. She associated Buddhism with uneducated elderly women chanting “meaningless mantras.” It was only after migrating to the United States that she encountered what she calls “true Buddhism.”2 This true Bud- dhism is not Chinese, she tells me. It is a “pure Buddhism” that she claims is untainted by the superstitions of Chinese traditions. It is a religion that she fi nds compatible and resonant with her reality as an educated, modern, and scientifi c person. Like Mrs. Lee, the majority of Taiwanese Buddhists distinguish their current practice of Buddhism from their religion in Taiwan, claiming that they have become seriously practicing Buddhists only after coming to the United States. For example, at Dharma Light Temple, a Taiwan- ese Buddhist temple where I conducted my fi eldwork, an estimated 70 percent of the devotees participated in the practice of “taking refuge” ( guiyi san bao), the Buddhist counterpart of Christian baptism or confi r- mation, after migrating to the United States. What is most remarkable is that Taiwanese immigrants become Buddhist in the United States, despite a popular revival of Buddhism in Taiwan for the past 30 years. Buddhist Taiwanese immigrants claim that their Buddhism is a pure and true Buddhism that is distinct from their religion in Taiwan. Taiwanese American Buddhists tell me that the Buddhism they practice is not a Chinese tradition, but a pure or true form of Buddhism that transcends culture. They adamantly deny any link between their ethnic traditions and the “true” Buddhism they now practice. They emphasize that they have chosen this new religion, and that it was not an ethnic tradition that they inherited. Finally, they legitimize their decisions to become Buddhists by appealing to science and western values. Despite their objections, the Buddhism that Taiwanese immigrants practice is very Chinese. They participate in Chinese Buddhist temples and organizations that are, for the most part, headquartered in Taiwan. These are transnational Buddhist organizations that explicitly identify with a Chinese Buddhist lineage. Most temple devotees are other Tai- wanese or Chinese-speaking immigrants in the United States, although

2 By conversion I mean a self-identiﬁ ed transformation in religious identity, practice, and belief.

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there is a small contingent of white devotees as well. Mandarin and Taiwanese are the predominant languages spoken in these temples. These Taiwanese Buddhist temples are constructed or remodeled (often from Protestant churches) in an unmistakably Chinese architectural style. Furthermore, the temples do the work of ethnic preservation by sponsoring Chinese cultural celebrations and offering Chinese language and culture classes. By all appearances, the Buddhism that they practice is very Chinese. That Taiwanese American Buddhists so adamantly dissociate their Buddhism from Chinese tradition is indeed puzzling. According to theories of immigration, religion, and ethnicity, these Taiwanese immigrants should be drawn to Buddhism as a source of cultural constancy against the threatening tide of American culture. Instead, many Taiwanese immigrants are converting to evangelical Christianity, a foreign and western religion. And those that become “more Buddhist” actively disavow the cultural inheritance of Buddhism. How do we make sense of this seeming paradox? I argue that scholars must pay attention to the context in which religious discourses are produced. In particular, the rhetoric that Tai- wanese American Buddhists use to defi ne their religion is heavily shaped by whom they defi ne themselves against. I fi rst discuss the context in which modern Chinese Buddhism emerged in Taiwan. Reformers of Chinese Buddhism deliberately crafted a new Buddhism that would be relevant in modern society. Second, I discuss how the distinctive class and religious context of the Taiwanese American ethnic enclave shapes Buddhist discourses. Specifi cally, I show that the signifi cant presence of evangelical Christians and highly-educated co-ethnics leads Taiwanese American Buddhists to rearticulate Buddhism in modern, scientifi c, and western terms. Third, I discuss how the desire to propagate the Buddhist dharma, a foreign faith, in the United States, shapes Buddhist rhetoric among Taiwanese Americans.

Methods and Sample

My fi ndings are based on data that I collected in the process of studying religious conversion among Taiwanese immigrants in Southern Califor- nia, an area that had a wave of Taiwanese migration in the 1980s and 1990s. A signifi cant number of those Taiwanese immigrants converted to Buddhism and Christianity after migrating to the United States. I conducted ethnographic fi eldwork at a Taiwanese evangelical Christian

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church and a Taiwanese Buddhist temple in Southern California from January 1999 through March 2000. The bulk of my fi ndings in this chapter are based on the participant observation at a Chinese Buddhist temple that I call “Dharma Light Temple.” I conducted 55 in-depth interviews with Buddhist and Christian men and women from their respective communities. These interviews were conducted in Taiwanese and English. Interviews conducted in English are quoted verbatim, while those conducted in Taiwanese are translated. Most of my fi ndings in this chapter are based on interviews with 25 Buddhists between the ages of 33 and 55. I recruited respondents through snowball sampling. Many of the respondents, although not all, are members of Dharma Light Temple. I also conducted interviews with religious and lay leaders from the Taiwanese immigrant community. Most Taiwanese came to the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s, although some of the immigrants migrated as early as 1969 and others as late as 1997. Many came to pursue advanced degrees and then decided to settle here. The majority of the men in my sample hold bachelor degrees, and nearly half hold advanced degrees. A signifi cant minority of the men are skilled professionals who are concentrated in the science, technology, and medical industries and work predominantly outside of the ethnic community. For some, however, the process of immigration has meant professional downward mobility, and some have opted to run small businesses in the ethnic community. Over half of the Taiwanese women respondents are college-educated, and more than one-quarter have advanced degrees earned in the United States. At the time of the interviews, a little more than half of the women worked outside of the home. Of these, approximately half worked in non-Chinese businesses, while the other half worked within the larger Chinese American community.

Religion and Modernization in Taiwan

Taiwanese popular religion is a mixture of Buddhist, Taoist, and folk religious practices. To the masses, Buddhism was largely indistinguishable from Taiwanese popular religion until a modern Chinese Buddhism movement became widespread in Taiwan in the 1980s. Prior to these modern reforms, popular Buddhist practices consisted primarily of funerary rituals to secure favorable rebirth in the next life. Buddhism operated on a two-tiered system where monastics renounced the domes-

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tic life and took life-long vows of spiritual cultivation and discipline to attain enlightenment, while the masses relied upon the rituals and services that monastics performed (Ch’en 1973; Jones 2003; Welch 1968). Following World War II, Taiwan experienced rapid modernization, affl uence, and exposure to the western worldview as it benefi ted economically, politically, and militarily from American Cold War fears of a growing Communist China. The United States poured military, economic, and social aid into countries like Taiwan and Korea, hoping to secure a stronghold for the free democratic and capitalist world against the rising threat of Communism. As a result, a new Taiwanese middle class emerged in the post-war years. Many who were educated with a western scientifi c worldview lumped Buddhism with popular religion and regarded it as backward and superstitious. In short, Bud- dhism was the vestige of an “enchanted” world irrelevant to modernity. The majority of Taiwanese immigrants to the United States belonged to this new, educated middle class. Taiwanese immigrants are correct when they claim that the Buddhism they practice now is distinctive from Taiwanese popular religion. A movement to reform Chinese Buddhism started in Taiwan in the 1960s, but gained mass appeal in the 1980s and especially the 1990s (Huang and Weller 1998; Laliberte 2003; Weller 2000), when most Taiwanese were emigrating to the United States.3 This may be appropriately distinguished as modern Chinese Buddhism in Taiwan. Since the 1990s, popular Buddhist organizations like Tzu Chi and Fo Guang Shan have built powerful media empires and have become household names in Taiwan and the Taiwanese diaspora. A reformed Chinese Buddhism responded to the criticisms of being superstitious, backward, and un- modern. This new, purportedly “orthodox” Buddhism is decidedly (and aggressively) modern, emphasizing democratic and individual access to enlightenment rather than reliance on monastics. It is explicitly this- worldly. It focuses on lay spiritual cultivation in this life rather than on rebirth in the next life. Modern Chinese Buddhist reformers call this new form of Buddhism “Humanistic Buddhism” because it focuses on this life in contrast to earlier Chinese Buddhist practice. Modern Chinese Buddhist organizations are also transnational. In response to Taiwanese mass emigration to countries like the United

3 This can be seen as part of a larger Buddhist modernism movement throughout Asia that began in the colonial period (Dumoulin and Maraldo 1976; Bechert 1984).

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States, Canada, and Australia, forward-thinking Taiwanese Buddhist leaders have expanded their religious organizations to these countries as well (Chandler 2004). Chinese Buddhist organizations have propa- gated the dharma not only through their temples and meditation centers around the globe, but also through transnational media. Some Chinese Buddhist organizations have their own television and radio stations that broadcast to Chinese all over the world.

Modern Chinese American Buddhism: The Context of the Ethnic Community

When Taiwanese American Buddhists defi ne Buddhism in scientifi c and modern terms, they are in part refl ecting the legacy of modern Chinese Buddhism’s original impulse to craft a modern religion in Asia. In the United States, however, Taiwanese Buddhists face slightly different pressures in reconciling Buddhism with their self-understandings as modern persons. Taiwanese immigrants negotiate their new Buddhist identities in the context of a Taiwanese American ethnic community whose composition is quite different from the population of Taiwan. Several scholars attribute immigrant religious change to interactions with a religiously plural America (Warner 1998; Kurien 1998, 2002). Instead, I emphasize how the contexts of ethnic communities shape Taiwanese American Buddhist religious experience. Taiwanese immigrants discover and defi ne Chinese Buddhism in the context of a highly educated and visibly Christian Taiwanese immigrant community in Southern California. Taiwanese who immigrate to the United States are overwhelmingly well-educated and professional. As a result, their social interactions with co-ethnics tend to be more homogeneous and with educated people like themselves in contrast to more class-diverse interactions in Taiwan. According to the 2000 census, 71 percent of Taiwanese Americans in Southern California have a college degree. In my own sample, over 50 percent of men and over 25 percent of women had post-graduate degrees. The overwhelming majority of these degrees are concentrated in scientifi c and technological disciplines. The Taiwanese immigrant community in the United States is a more homogeneous and hermetic ideological world of scientifi c rationalism than in Taiwan. Hence, I argue, Taiwanese Buddhists face more intense pressure to defend the modernity of Buddhism among their scientifi cally trained co-ethnics in the US versus in Taiwan, where they are surrounded by family mem-

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bers and neighbors who continue to practice “superstitious” popular Taiwanese religion. Like Korean American Buddhists (Suh 2004), Taiwanese American Buddhists negotiate their religious identities within an ethnic community that is vocally and visibly largely evangelical Christian. A signiﬁ cant number of Taiwanese immigrants convert to evangelical Christian- ity after migrating to the United States (Chen 2008). In Taiwan, Christians are a mere 3.7 percent of the population; however, among Taiwanese Americans, Christians are approximately 25 percent of the population. Buddhists report frequent and personal interactions with Christian co-ethnics. Not only do Buddhists have Taiwanese Christian co-workers, employees/employers, and friends, but the vast majority also have Christian family members who have converted in the United States. Furthermore, most Taiwanese American Christians, like most Chinese American Christians, are evangelical and theologically conservative (Yang 1999, 2002). Buddhists tend to resent their Christian co-ethnics’ persistent attempts to invite them to church and convert them to Christianity. Taiwanese American Buddhists must explain to their educated and scientiﬁ cally trained Christian co-ethnics why they follow a “false” religion full of “idolatrous” and “superstitious” practices. Some are reluctant to let Christians know they are Buddhists, fearing the questions and ridicule about their “superstitious” religion. Many Buddhists feel excluded from Taiwanese American Christian social circles because they are not Christians. For example, Mrs. Cheng, whose brother-in-law is a Christian minister, said the following: For some reason Christians are very exclusive. They don’t accept other religions, and that’s something that they have to change. I have a lot of Christian friends who look at me and say, “I feel sorry for you.” And I say, “You can say you feel sorry for me because I’m not a Christian because you can’t share with me, but you can’t criticize me for being a Buddhist because you don’t know Buddhism.” Sharon Suh’s (2004) study reveals that Korean American Buddhists also feel stigmatized and discriminated again by the predominantly Christian Korean American community. Taiwanese Buddhists feel a far greater urgency to defend the truth and modern integrity of Buddhism in the United States versus Taiwan because of their frequent and personal interactions with Christians who challenge them. In response to Christian characterizations of Buddhism as superstitious and backward, Taiwanese Buddhists have rearticulated

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Buddhism as modern, scientiﬁ c, and rational. Rhetorically, they have done this through two arguments: Buddhism is not Chinese, and Bud- dhism is not a religion but an education.

Buddhism Is Not Chinese Taiwanese Buddhists in the United States argue that Chinese Buddhism and Chinese culture are two separate things. The superstitious and un-modern elements of the old Buddhism were not “true Buddhism,” they claim, but a Buddhism that was tainted by thousands of years of Chinese culture, making it nearly indistinguishable from Chinese popular religion. The two, however, should not be confused, they say. Buddhist Taiwanese immigrants, who are predominantly educated in science-related fi elds, feel a particularly urgent need to correct this misperception. They take extra care to distinguish “true Buddhism” from the superstitious and irrational practices of Chinese tradition. For example, consider the comments of Mrs. Chu, a 45-year-old computer scientist: A lot of people have the wrong knowledge about Buddhism, and it is very diffi cult to change it because the image is too deep. They think that Buddhism is just going to the temple and doing things for the ancestors so that they’ll come back as humans or go onto a better life. But actually this is not Buddhism. Buddha never had this ceremony 2,000 years ago. It developed only when it came to China. This is a Chinese ceremony and wasn’t even included in Buddhism. Now it’s diffi cult to teach people that this isn’t exactly the way you’re supposed to do it. People do it because if descendents feel guilty and want to repay their ancestors they can do something. Right now we are trying to correct this behavior. But this is not the right way. Mrs. Wu, a 45-year-old Buddhist convert, makes the following observation about Taiwanese mistaking their traditional practices for true Buddhism: A lot of people believe in Buddhism, but they are not really Buddhists. A lot of people from Taiwan worship Ma-tsu [a goddess in Taiwanese popular religion], and they think that’s Buddhism. But actually that’s not Buddhism, but on the surface it looks like it. A lot of people say, “I’m a Buddhist,” but they don’t really know what a Buddhist is. You see a lot of people, they bow everyday, but they don’t know why they bow. They just do a lot of ceremonies, but what’s really important aren’t the ceremonies but your practice on the inside. . . . A lot of people come to donate some money and to burn incense to get some kind of blessing. They think that by doing that they’ll be closer to Buddha, but that’s not Buddhism.

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When modern Buddhists redeﬁ ne themselves, they must respond to the misconceptions that Christians have about Buddhism. Buddhists differentiate true Buddhism from Taiwanese popular religion. As the previous quote illustrates, the superstitious practices of Taiwanese popular religion are misattributed to Buddhism. It is Chinese culture, not Buddhism, that contains these superstitious and un-modern elements. Buddhism in Taiwan was tainted by Chinese cultural practices. Taiwan- ese Buddhists now practice true Buddhism that is puriﬁ ed of Chinese tradition. According to this line of logic, ethnicity, or Chinese culture, has tainted Buddhist practice. Ostensibly contrary to the argument of most scholars of ethnicity and religion, these Taiwanese immigrant Buddhists do not regard their religion as a vehicle to preserve ethnic traditions but to purge ethnic traditions. Yet it is obvious that Dharma Light Temple deliberately reproduces and preserves Chinese culture in the United States. Buddhist Taiwanese immigrants, consciously or unconsciously, erase the ethnic function of Buddhism in their religious narratives. The rhetorical move separating culture and religion serves to differentiate Buddhism from the “backward” and “un-modern” popular Taiwanese religion.

Buddhism Is a Form of Education but Christianity Is a Religion Buddhism, respondents told me, is not a religion but a form of education. Buddhism is a practice to change and improve the self, not a way to manipulate the gods. To the Buddhists I interviewed, “religion” is superstitious and unscientiﬁ c because it involves external forces to change situations to which there is no empirical causal relationship. Rather than coercing supernatural forces to change reality, Buddhism is about changing oneself to deal with the unexpected and often inhospitable experiences of life. Buddhism, therefore, is not a religion but a form of education. Through this line of reasoning, Buddhists turn the Christian criticism of Buddhism on its head and lump “modern” Christianity into the same superstitious category as outmoded traditional Taiwanese religion. Christianity and traditional religion are similarly “superstitious” because they appeal to supernatural and external forces to change situations. Buddhists, instead rely on themselves. For example, Mr. Tang comments: People go to the temple and light incense and want to make a tradeoff with god by buying a plate for $7 or $14 and make an offering. They demand for their wishes to come true and the Buddha to give them what

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they want. They are no different from Christians. Christians pray the same thing—for their kids to be well and so forth. They don’t know the true meaning of Buddhism. They are different from those Buddhists who try to understand Buddhism. I’m changing into this type of person. Many respondents describe Christianity as “simple” and “unsophisti- cated” compared to Buddhism. For example, one respondent explains that Christ had to use simple concepts because his disciples were mostly uneducated fi shermen. Although critical, Buddhists never claim Chris- tianity is false or wrong. Buddhists told me that Christianity is one of the “84,000 paths to enlightenment,” albeit a less sophisticated one. One respondent compared the two religions in the following manner: “Christianity is like kindergarten and Buddhism is like graduate school.” Indeed, respondents typically described Buddhism as scientifi c and fact-based. This is particularly true for men, most of whom have graduate degrees in science-related fi elds. Dr. Lee illustrates this popular sentiment: I fi nd that Buddhism is the most scientifi c religion compared with others. In other religions they want you to believe fi rst. Believing is the only way for you to have emancipation. But in Buddhism they want you to question. They want you to think for yourself and through meditation and practice fi nd out the truth for yourself. Dr. Lee suggests that other religions are not scientifi c because they require faith without adequate proof or testing. Dr. Lee and many others told me that Buddhism escapes the “religion versus science” dilemma because it does not require a leap of faith like Christianity. Furthermore, Buddhism encourages the same systematic, critical, and analytical thinking required in science. To describe their religious practice, these Buddhists frequently use the word “investigation.” Buddhists should not passively accept truths handed down from authority, but use their critical faculties to investigate the truth for themselves. For example, Mrs. Kuo suggests that Buddhism can be tested and proven by the scientifi c method: I think Buddhism is going to be a great religion for Americans because Americans are scientifi c. They don’t just take things for granted. I know that there are a lot of great scientists who are here in this country and if they can eventually adopt the theory and experiences and put it through an experiment they are going to realize what a great religion it is. Importantly, Buddhists frame their Buddhism as not merely scientifi c, but more scientifi c than Christianity, and therefore even more suitable to

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American society than Christianity. Taiwanese Buddhists like to point out that several prominent scientists are Buddhist. For example, several told me that Einstein once claimed that if he were religious he would be Buddhist. Others referred to Stephen Hawking, another prominent scientist they claimed as a Buddhist. Although Buddhist respondents use scientiﬁ c language to describe Buddhism, few can coherently explain why Buddhism is scientiﬁ c. Rhetorically, linking Buddhism with science suggests that Buddhism is modern and not, as Taiwanese Christians suggest, backwards and superstitious.

Buddhism as a Modern Western Alternative to Christianity As religious and racial minorities, Taiwanese American Buddhists face an added burden of proving that Buddhism is compatible with American society. Like other minority religious groups (Chandler 2004; Chen 2002; Singh 2003), Taiwanese Buddhists experienced resistance from local ofﬁ cials and residents in constructing Dharma Light Temple. Residents protested that the temple would bring congestion and noise into their quiet neighborhoods and decrease their home values. But with the construction of non-Christian religious sites, neighborhood arguments about seemingly reasonable concerns often veil racist fears of the foreign and unfamiliar (Singh 2003). For example, it became known that town residents feared that Chinese Buddhism was a “cult” that would entrap their children. As a result, Dharma Light Temple has taken great measures to be civil, neighborly, and above all, Ameri- can (Chen 2002). For example, it sponsors multiple charity programs beneﬁ ting the local community and takes great care to be a positive civic presence. These conspicuous acts of cultural citizenship are notice- ably absent among their Christian co-ethnics who are not suspected of being a “cult.” Taiwanese American Buddhists, however, want more than acceptance by mainstream America. They also see themselves as propagators of the dharma in this new country. Unlike Taiwanese American Christians who reach out to only co-ethnics, Chinese American Buddhist temples attract the participation of non-Chinese members, particularly white devotees. Similar to other Asian American Buddhist temples (Numrich 1996; Yang 2002; Yang and Ebaugh 2001), Dharma Light Temple has a separate English-language or “parallel” congregation that includes the non-Chinese. Forward thinking Buddhist leaders realize that if Buddhism is going to have a future in the United States, it must reach

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beyond the ethnic enclave. Both the need to prove Buddhism’s legitimacy and the desire to spread Buddhism to other Americans shapes how Taiwanese American Buddhists defi ne their religion. Buddhists frequently point to the growing popularity of Buddhism among Americans. Many refer to famous Americans who are Bud- dhist, such as the actors Richard Gere and Steven Segall, as well as the professional basketball coach Phil Jackson. Buddhists also take great pride in the growing number of white Americans attending the Dharma Light Temple. Many point out that the temple’s English- speaking dharma teacher not only holds a doctorate from a prestigious American university but was a former Christian minister. For many, that an American so highly educated and once Christian became Buddhist testifi es to the compatibility between Buddhism and western culture. Indeed, Taiwanese American Buddhists describe themselves as embracing American qualities of individuality and independence even more than Christians. This is a similar observation that Suh (2004) made in her study of Korean American Buddhists. Respondents associated independence and individuality with Americans, and interdependence and collectivism with Asians. Buddhists consider Christianity to be a fashionable trend in the immigrant community. Taiwanese Christian converts, they argue, lack individuality and just want to fi t in. Christians, they argue, are not different from worshippers of Taiwanese religions who blindly follow “tradition.” As one respondent said, “All those Christians are just like those people who bai bai [worship, in traditional Taiwanese religion]. They go to church and perform their rituals.” Some Buddhists describe themselves as individuals who have the will to resist the crowd. Respondents often refer to obstacles they face from both Christian and nonreligious immigrants. One respondent told me how her old non-Buddhist friends alienated themselves from her after she became Buddhist: “My friends thought that I was crazy that I went to Dharma Light Temple so often. Some of my friends talked to my sister and said, ‘Talk to your sister, tell her not to go to Dharma Light Temple!’ They think I’m crazy.” One woman says that when she goes to the temple her mother-in-law yells, “What? Go to the temple? My God, you are so superstitious!” Because they are ridiculed and persecuted for their religion, Buddhists feel that their religious choices are more authentic than those of their co-ethnic Christians. Buddhists often claim that Christians are more worldly and that their religious commitments are less rigorous, merely involving attending their

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“social club” on Sundays. Buddhism, they claim, is not about dressing nicely to pass out one’s business card at church. It is a far more serious commitment that requires sacrifi ce and dedication to disciplining and changing oneself. Mrs. Kuo, a wealthy and fashionable woman, offers the following comments: “A lot of my friends here are Christian. They do it because they go with the fl ow, because that’s where all their friends are. They like the Christian way instead of the Buddhist way. They don’t have to wear robes. They can wear anything they want when they go to church.” Respondents also claim that Buddhism is more compatible with American values of equality and democracy than Christianity. In Bud- dhism everyone has the potential of becoming a Buddha, whereas, as they often hear tell, in Christianity only Christians can go to heaven. The following is a typical response: Christians say that everybody who becomes Christian will go to heaven when they pass away and those who aren’t Christian will go to hell. I don’t think that this is fair because I believe that everybody can go to heaven if they are good. I don’t think that religion makes a difference, that if you go to my church you will go to heaven and if you don’t go to my church you will go to hell. Buddhism is more fair because everybody can go to heaven if you are a good person. That’s fair and equal. Another respondent uses the phrase “equal opportunity” to describe Buddhism in comparison to Christianity. She claims, “Buddhists are more about equal opportunity than Christians. They only have one god, and in Buddhism we can all become Buddhas.” Similarly, another respondent characterizes Buddhism as being more “tolerant” and “liberal” because of the belief that everyone can potentially become a Buddha. These Taiwanese American Buddhists legitimize their relevance to Americans by emphasizing their scientifi c and western values. As religious minorities they bear the burden of proving that they can conform to American society. Because Buddhism values independence and equality, these Taiwanese argue that Buddhists are even more American than Christians.

Buddhism as a Choice and Not a Tradition

Very few respondents describe Buddhism as being authentically Chi- nese, although this is implied in many of their remarks. Similarly, no

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respondents defend their religious choice on the grounds that they want to maintain Chinese tradition or family tradition, although their responses may suggest this. For example, Buddhists say that they would never become Christian because it is not their family tradition, implying that in comparison Buddhism is. Others claim that Christianity is a foreigner’s religion, forgetting that Buddhism itself was imported to China from India centuries ago. For many, Buddhism evokes an emo- tive connection to their family. Many tell me that Buddhism makes them feel close to their parents or grandparents, who are in Taiwan or have died. However, when explaining why they are Buddhists, they appeal to modern, western values rather than to family duty or Chinese tradition. Certainly family tradition and duty still infl uence Taiwanese immigrants once they move to the United States. However rhetorically, Buddhists describe their religion as individual choices and not inherited traditions. Even those who were reared in devout Buddhist families do not claim that they are “keeping tradition.” Buddhists could easily criticize Christians for betraying their cultural traditions by converting to a western religion, yet few express this. By associating Buddhism with scientifi c and western values, Buddhists distance themselves from an old Buddhism that was perceived as backward and un-modern. Instead, they cast themselves as rational individuals who are guided by scientifi c principles compatible with modern western society. Appealing to cultural inheritance to defend their religion would only demonstrate that Buddhism is not an authentic choice, but merely a case of “following tradition.” For these educated, middle-class immigrants hoping to propagate the dharma to the West, the rhetoric of science and rationality is more powerful than tradition.

Conclusion

To conclude, I would like to return to an earlier point I raised about ethnicity and religion. Although Buddhists deny that their Buddhism is “ethnic,” but instead modern and western, I want to suggest that even this redeﬁ nition of Buddhism in the United States plays an ethnic function. It is not ethnic in the sense that it draws from a real or imagined motherland culture. But it engages in the “ethnic work” of drawing group identity boundaries against others. Often, scholars of religion and immigration subsume religion under the category of “ethnicity”

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because religion celebrates and preserves motherland cultural traditions that differentiate immigrants from mainstream American society. This case, however, complicates the picture by suggesting that immigrants use religion to draw boundaries around multiple cleavages and identities. In other words, immigrants do not use religion only to preserve ethnic traditions against American assimilation. This case also highlights the importance of the “Christian other” in the context of the ethnic community. Taiwanese American Buddhists want to defi ne themselves against Taiwanese Christians, and not mainstream Americans. Ironi- cally, by redefi ning Buddhism in the apparently “a-cultural” language of western science and ideals rather than as “Chinese tradition,” Tai- wanese American Buddhists are actually doing the “ethnic” work of differentiating themselves from Taiwanese American Christians, whom Buddhists believe to be less modern and less scientifi c than they. Preserving ethnic traditions may be only one of many goals of minority immigrant religions like Chinese Buddhism. Another competing and potentially clashing goal is propagating the dharma to westerners, who may fi nd the ethnic aspects of Chinese Buddhism alienating. Taiwanese Buddhists know that Buddhism is foreign and unfamiliar to Americans. Thus, Chinese Buddhists, who are eager to spread the dharma in the West, defi ne themselves as a more modern and western religion than Christianity. They use the modern rhetoric of Buddhism, originally crafted in Taiwan to convince Taiwanese of the relevance of Buddhism to modernity, in their new American context both to defi ne themselves against Taiwanese American Christians and to convince other Americans that Buddhism is compatible with American culture. They therefore dissociate any cultural essentialism with Buddhismfor example, “to be Taiwanese is to be Buddhist.” Given their particular context in the United States, the more important message is “to be Buddhist is to be modern.”4

4 Portions of this chapter have been adapted from Carolyn Chen, Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.

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References

Bechert, Heinz. 1984. “Buddhist Revival in East and West.” Pp. 273–85 in The World of Buddhism: Buddhist Monks and Nuns in Society and Culture, edited by Heinz Bechert and Richard Gombrich. New York: Facts on File. Cadge, Wendy. 2005. Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chandler, Stuart. 2004. Establishing a Pure Land on Earth: The Foguang Buddhist Perspective on Modernization and Globalization. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Chen, Carolyn E. 2002. “The Religious Varieties of Ethnic Presence: A Comparison between a Taiwanese Immigrant Buddhist Temple and an Evangelical Christian Church.” Sociology of Religion 63: 215–38. ———. 2008. Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigrants Converting to Evangelical Chris- tianity and Buddhism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ch’en, Kenneth K. S. 1973. The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dumoulin, Heinrich and John C. Maraldo, eds. 1976. Buddhism in the Modern World. New York: Collier Books. Huang, Chien-Yu Julia and Robert P. Weller. 1998. “Merit and Mothering: Women and Social Welfare in Taiwanese Buddhism.” Journal of Asian Studies 57: 379–96. Jones, Charles Brewer. 2003. “Transitions in the Practice and Defense of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism.” Pp. 125–42 in Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition, edited by S. Heine and C. S. Prebish. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kurien, Prema. 1998. “Becoming American by Becoming Hindu: Indian Americans Take Their Place at the Multicultural Table.” Pp. 37–70 in Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration, edited by R. Stephen Warner and Judith G. Wittner. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 2002. “‘We are Better Hindus Here’: Religion and Ethnicity among Indian Americans.” Pp. 99–120 in Religions in Asian America: Building Faith Communities, edited by Pyong Gap Min and Jung Ha Kim. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Laliberté, André. 2003. “Religious Change and Democratization in Taiwan: Mainstream Buddhist Organizations and the Kuomingtang.” Pp. 158–85 in Religion in Modern Taiwan: Tradition and Innovation in a Changing Society, edited by P. Clart and C. B. Jones. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Numrich, Paul David. 1996. Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Singh, Jaideep. 2003. “The Racialization of Minoritized Religious Identities: Con- structing Sacred Sites at the Intersection of White and Christian Supremacy.” Pp. 87–106 in Revealing the Sacred in Asian and Paciﬁ c America, edited by Jane N. Iwamura and Paul Spickard. New York: Routledge. Smith, Timothy L. 1978. “Religion and Ethnicity in America.” American Historical Review 83: 1155–85. Suh, Sharon A. 2004. Being Buddhist in a Christian World: Gender and Community in a Korean American Temple. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Warner, R. Stephen. 1998. “Immigration and Religious Communities in the United States.” Pp. 3–34 in Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigra- tion, edited by R. Stephen Warner and Judith G. Wittner. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 2000. “Religion and New (Post-1965) Immigrants: Some Principles Drawn from Field Research.” American Studies 41: 267–86. Welch, Holmes. 1968. The Buddhist Revival in China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Weller, Robert P. 2000. “Living at the Edge: Religion, Capitalism, and the End of the Nation-State in Taiwan.” Public Culture 12: 477–98. Yang, Fenggang. 1999. Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ———. 2002. “Chinese Christian Transnationalism: Diverse Networks of a Houston Church.” Pp. 129–48 in Religion across Borders: Transnational Immigrant Networks, edited by Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet S. Chafetz. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. ——— and Helen Rose Ebaugh. 2001. “Religion and Ethnicity among New Immi- grants: The Impact of Majority/Minority Status in Home and Host Countries.” Journal for the Scientiﬁ c Study of Religion 40: 367–78. Zhou, Min, Carl L. Bankston III and Rebecca Y. Kim. 2002. “Rebuilding Spiritual Lives in the New Land: Religious Practices among Southeast Asian Refugees in the United States.” Pp. 37–70 in Religions in Asian America: Building Faith Communi- ties, edited by Pyong Gap Min and Jung Ha Kim. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

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A RELIGIOUS MINORITY WITHIN AN ETHNIC MINORITY: KOREAN AMERICAN BUDDHISTS

Karen Chai Kim

Beginning with the ﬁ rst wave of Koreans who went to Hawaii to work on its sugar plantations in 1903, religion has been an integral part of the Korean American experience. By 1905, plantation owners, Protestant denominations, and the migrants themselves had funded seven plantation-based Korean Christian chapels catering to the 7,226 Koreans in Hawaii (Houchins and Houchins 1974: 553). While the early immigrants were predominantly Christian, successive waves of Korean immigrants have included those who practice other religions. Current estimates are that there are approximately one hundred Korean Buddhist temples in the United States (Kwon 2003: 7; cf. Kim 1996: 95). Koreans are among many immigrant groups in the US to center themselves around religious activities. Williams (1988: 3) asserts that religion in the United States “is an accepted mode both of establishing distinct identity and of intercommunal negotiation.” This is a manifestation of a characteristic of American society: while racial and ethnic separation is discouraged, religious distinctiveness is encouraged. Ethnic religious organizations are convenient vehicles for preserving ethnic culture and identity with the support of most Americans. Because of the dominance of Christianity among Korean Americans, most of the research done on Korean American religion has focused on Protestant ethnic churches. Recently there have been more studies of Korean Buddhist temples (Suh 2004; Kwon 2003; Chai 2000). This chapter is based on a case study of a Korean ethnic Buddhist temple in metropolitan Boston, supplemented by visits to temples in California and Texas.1

1 Names of the temple and clergy have been changed. Interviews were conducted in Korean or English. Statements made in English are rendered verbatim. Korean interviews are translated by the author.

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The Buddhists in my study are keenly aware of their minority status within the Korean immigrant community. Virtually every dharma talk (“sermon”) at the temple includes a comparison of Christians and Bud- dhists, whereas Christians rarely compare themselves to other religious groups, except when they talk of a need to evangelize non-Christians. The Buddhists have adopted the attitude that they are interested in peace and in the consistency of Buddhist doctrine and lifestyle, while quietly noting that Christians throughout history have persecuted and killed in the name of religion. They are proud of having resisted the easy and popular path of conversion to Christianity. Buddhist temples are oriented around monks, who perform all of the ceremonies, not around laypersons. Moreover, Buddhism is more individually oriented than congregational, so it is not imperative for Buddhists to attend temple rituals regularly. Members know that the monks will always faithfully carry out all of the rituals and temple activities. The temples are not built in such a way as to mobilize or increase the membership with evangelical zeal. They are much more loosely organized, with a doctrine that does not compel members to proselytize.

Chogye Order Korean Buddhism

Korean Buddhism tends to follow the Mahayana school of Buddhism.2 Mahayana can be further divided into different forms of East Asian Buddhism, such as the historically related Zen ( Japan), Ch’an (China), and Son (Korea) traditions. The Chogye order is a conservative monastic order of Son practitioners. The largest and most mainstream order, encompassing approximately 60 percent of the over 20 Buddhist orders in Korea, the Chogye order requires its monks to take vows of celibacy. The Chogye order’s administrative headquarters in Seoul, established in 1955, oversees the 25 head monasteries in Korea as well as a number of affi liated temples in the United States (Suh 2004). Within the order, several organizations maintain power over specifi c domains. These organizations include the Chongmuwon (Executive Committee of the Chogye Order), the Jungang Jonghoe (Central Order Temple Associa- tion), and the Wonroe Hoe (Elder Association). Each Chogye-affi liated

2 As used in this chapter, “Korea” refers only to South Korea.

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temple in Korea supports its own candidates for leadership positions within these organizations. The conﬂ icts that frequently arise within the Chogye order are usually due to competition and disagreements about the candidates for these positions (Kwon 2003). While there is much political wrangling at the top tier of Chogye order leadership, the relationship between the order itself and its member temples is rather loose. For example, it is entirely up to individual temples whether or not they become a Chogye member temple. There is an informally recognized rank order among temples in Korea, but individual Chogye-afﬁ liated temples enjoy an enormous degree of independence (Kwon 2003). Thus, the organizational structure within Chogye order Buddhism is quite decentralized and liberal in terms of its membership and the maintenance of individual temples. This decentralization is even greater when it comes to the Chogye order’s relationship with temples that exist outside of Korea.

Korean Buddhist Temples in the United States 3

Yu (1988) identifi es three paths through which Korean Buddhism is taking root in the US: (1) through the work of individual Zen teachers, whose efforts are mainly directed toward Westerners, (2) through research and teaching by scholars specializing in Korean Buddhism, and (3) through the activities of temples attended by Korean immigrants. Although the Korean Buddhist temples tend to be overshadowed by the more than 3,000 Korean Christian churches in the US (Kwon 2003: 7), they have nonetheless become a signifi cant presence in the Korean American community. There are two main models of Korean Chogye Buddhist temples in the United States. The fi rst model is that of a “branch” temple founded as a foreign outpost of a larger temple in Korea. The temple receives resources from the mother temple, and it is subject to higher authorities in Korea. These temples primarily serve the Korean immigrant community. Koryo Sa in Los Angeles is an example of this branch temple model. This temple was established in 1980 and relies on a transnational rotation system for its supply of clergy. The Chogye order headquarters

3 For information on Buddhism in Canada, see Matthews 2006.

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in Korea sends monks to the Los Angeles branch to preside over the temple for a number of years at a time (Suh 2004). The second model is that of a “private practice” temple led by a Chogye-trained Korean monk. As independent and self-supported organizations, private practice temples are not subject to direct control by the Chogye order. Because of the lack of a centralized structure among these temples, there is enormous variation among them in their operating styles and membership. Some of these temples are American Zen centers founded by a Korean monk serving a non- Asian membership. These Zen centers have little connection to the Korean immigrant population. Zen center networks exist according to the individual Zen masters, but the networks largely remain parallel to the ethnic Korean temples. In contrast, the temples in my study are the monks’ private practices oriented primarily toward the Korean immigrant population. The main difference between Zen centers that serve “Westerners” and temples that serve ethnic Korean immigrants is that the Zen centers tend to focus on sitting meditation, while ethnic temples are “largely centered around Sunday pophoe [worship service], scripture studies, ceremonies, chanting, cultural, social and fellowship activities,” not on sitting meditation (Yu 1988: 89; cf. Suh 2004). The immigrant Buddhists are serious about practicing Buddhism, but they also require more social functions geared toward immigrants. Seager (1999: 236, 241) refers to these two types of Buddhist communities as “immigrant Buddhism” and “convert Buddhism.” Despite organizational decentralization, Kwon (2003) claims that there is a strong sense of psychological attachment to the Chogye order headquarters. The common doctrines, rituals, and regulations that are passed down from Korea give Korean Buddhists in the US a sense of solidarity with one another as well as with Korean Buddhism. In this way, Buddhism offers a form of religious afﬁ liation that is considered to be more true to Korean culture. This Korean Buddhist solidarity, however, is only reinforced through the group interaction of those who attend regularly. Because Buddhism does not require regular attendance at temple worship services or events, the majority of registered members do not attend services regularly. Thus, the lack of regular participation means that members have fewer opportunities to network or to work collectively to instill this Buddhist consciousness in their children. Korean Buddhist temples in the US have some organizational disadvantages with respect to Christian churches because of the nature of their doc-

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trine and their institutional decentralization. While this decentralization allows for greater innovation and local autonomy, it does not compel members to spend much time on temple activities.

Boh Won Sa Korean Buddhist Temple

Boh Won Sa Korean Buddhist Temple is located in a quiet suburb of Boston. The temple, established in 1992, is a complex of three buildings in a residential neighborhood. Despite the non-descript American exterior, the temple’s interior is reminiscent of Korea, because of the Buddha fi gures, Buddhist texts, paper lanterns, and religious artifacts— all imported from Korea. The temple facilities serve as a reminder of Korea—a place to meet other Koreans and a place to honor one’s cultural and ancestral heritage. Because the monks reside at the temple complex and do not marry, the temple is both a private home and a public community center. Whenever members gather at the temple, they share a meal, often preparing it together in the residential kitchen. The temple is open at all times for visitors, who even sleep over when participating in special events or if they simply would like to take time to meditate or to pray. The temple is at once a literal and fi gurative home and community center.4 The temple is run by an abbot, the Venerable Chong Woo, who is in his sixties. He is aided by Ki Mu Sunim and Ji Wol Sunim, both in their late thirties. Temple members address the monks by the title Sunim, which literally means “monk” in Korean (though without the gender differentiation implied by the English word, as it is also used to address nuns). They press their hands fl at together in front of their chests and bow politely in greeting the monks. The monks reciprocate in the same devotional manner (hap chang). Lay members also greet one another in this way. The abbot, Chong Woo Sunim, was the prior at Korea’s largest temple before coming to the US. He is a well-respected meditation specialist, and he is popular for his warm personality and his

4 Most ethnic Korean temples are converted homes or ofﬁ ces in residential areas. Some are single-family homes that have been remodeled to accommodate a large dharma hall (religious ritual space). Others are multi-building complexes in suburban settings; still others are built on several acres of land in a more rural setting. The elements that all have in common are a large dharma hall, kitchen, group dining area, and living quarters for the clergy.

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extensive experience. All three monks were trained in Korea and are affi liated with the Chogye order. With an annual budget of just more than $125,000, Boh Won Sa was established with funds from private donors and currently operates on donations from members.5 Boh Won Sa’s affi liation with the order in Korea is rather loose, with complete fi nancial autonomy and its own board of trustees. The Chogye order headquarters in Korea has little say in the operation of Boh Won Sa because it was privately established. The only times when the order would exert its infl uence would be if one of the monks were accused of misconduct or corruption, or if the temple were seeking an additional monk or nun to staff the temple. The order would then send an individual to fi ll the position, but it does not mandate where and how long clerics in the United States can serve.

Membership There are 131 Korean families listed in Boh Won Sa’s membership directory; in seven of these families, the wife is Korean and the husband is non-Korean.6 Boh Won Sa’s average weekly attendance for Sunday religious services is about 50 adults, but the number of attendees can vary widely from only ten to more than a hundred adults on special holidays. There are approximately ten children at the temple on an average Sunday. Adult attendance varies considerably from week to week, and children’s attendance varies even more. Most of these children are elementary school age, although there are a few older children whose families immigrated to the US within the past year. Depending on their age and the length of their residence in the US, the children vary in language ability, with some children able to speak both Korean and English comfortably, while other children speak only English or only Korean.

5 There are some cases in which temples have been founded by large donations from wealthy benefactors in Korea. The monks themselves have personal connections with wealthy families who have maintained their Buddhist devotion for generations. The benefactors give a large donation so that the monk can start his private practice in the US. In other cases, monks themselves may have personal assets due to inheritance or business ventures that they use to purchase a home. The home is then remodeled to function as a temple. In this case, the temple is literally the home of the monk, who opens it up to worshippers. 6 Because the Saturday group of non-Koreans discussed below is small and not part of the activities of the Korean group, I will limit my discussion of member characteristics here to those of the Korean Sunday attendees.

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Members of the Chong Nyon Hweh, or Young Adults Group (college- aged and above), speak Korean exclusively. This is because most of these young adults are foreign students or relatively recent arrivals from Korea. A handful immigrated to the US at an older age and are therefore able to communicate with the rest of the group in Korean. The young adult members of Boh Won Sa are very Korean in cultural orientation, making it difﬁ cult for a Korean American who cannot speak Korean well to become part of the group. This issue will be discussed further later in this chapter.

Programs Sunday morning services begin at 11:00 in the temple’s second-fl oor dharma hall with forty minutes of chanting followed by meditation, a dharma talk, announcements, and closing chants. The large golden Bud- dha at the altar is the focal point of the room. On an elevated platform between the altar and the attendees sits a dark brown wooden desk and chair from which the presiding monk delivers the dharma talk. The other monks sit alongside the desk, facing the altar with their backs to the congregants. An upright piano is pushed up against the left wall of the dharma hall; behind it sits a large bronze Korean bell that is struck by the abbot during the service. Overhead, rows and rows of colorful paper lotus lanterns adorn the ceiling, each lantern affi xed with a white slip of paper that bears family names, addresses, and dates of birth.7 The Sunday service lasts until 1:00 pm and is followed by a Korean vegetarian lunch buffet in the basement dining hall. Donations are collected through an offering box to the right of the Buddha altar, in which members periodically place money. The fact that an offering is not collected in a public manner means that there is a good deal of room for free-riding at Boh Won Sa. This is not necessarily deliberate, but members sometimes fi nd it diffi cult to donate money discreetly. Members will often simply locate a need in the temple—for

7 Each year, Boh Won Sa volunteers assemble these lanterns over the two months leading up to the Buddha’s Birthday celebration on the eighth day of the fourth month by the lunar calendar, which usually falls in May according to the Western calendar. During the celebration, Buddhists wishing to “make merit” for their families buy the lanterns at a booth at the front of the temple (cf. Buswell 1992: 43). Some temples have a set price for the lanterns, but Boh Won Sa does not. As one member put it, they pay “according to the amount of faith they have in the Buddha.”

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a piano or new equipment of some sort—and then make an in-kind donation of the actual item rather than money.8 In addition to the offering box, there are times of the year and special occasions during which contributions are customarily made to the temple. For instance, members contribute money in order to have a family lotus lantern hanging along the dharma hall ceiling. There is also a small set of shelves at the front of the dharma hall that contain small ceramic bowls, each with a miniature light bulb inside. Individu- als pay $20 per month to have one of the bowls continuously lit for their well-being.9 Furthermore, when monks are called upon to perform funeral rites or ancestral rites, those requesting the services will make a monetary donation. In Korean Buddhist temples, as well as in Korean churches, it is also not unusual for a congregant to purchase an auto- mobile or other big-ticket item for clergy members. In addition to the Sunday Korean attendees, a group of six non- Koreans holds a meditation session on Saturday afternoons. Although the temple monks occasionally lead or join them, they are usually led by one of their peers—a white man who holds a degree in Buddhism from an American university. According to the abbot, these Saturday group members meet at Boh Won Sa because they feel that it is somehow more “genuine,” with its native Korean monks and its subsequent closer ties to Korean Buddhism, compared to the Zen centers that cater to “American” Buddhists. Yet, this non-Korean group is essentially self-sufﬁ cient and remains separate from the Korean group, forming what Numrich (1996) would call a “parallel congregation” of convert Buddhists within the same temple.10 Ironically, they come to Boh Won Sa for its closer ties to Korean Buddhism, but they have little direct contact with the immigrant group that distinguishes the temple from the Zen centers. Although some attend the Korean-language Sunday services on special holidays, the Saturday group members do not par-

8 At some temples, I have observed a certain lull in the service during which some of the members place envelopes in the offering box. Although it is not speciﬁ ed as an offering time, the lull can serve as a reminder to members and offer a more public means of donating money. 9 The lights inside the bowls, which must be on at all times, are traditionally fueled by oil. For ﬁ re safety, however, the temple uses the miniature light bulbs. 10 Numrich’s (1996: 63) study of Theravada Buddhism in the US uncovered an ethnic parallelism at the local level, where “ethnic-Asians and non-Asian converts follow separate forms of Theravada Buddhism under a single temple roof and at the direction of a shared monastic leadership.”

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ticipate in the social life of the temple. They generally do not interact with the Korean members and are not included in the Boh Won Sa membership directory. Because of the historically non-congregational nature of Buddhism, Boh Won Sa is regarded by members as a spiritual “home” that is available when needed and does not require weekly visits. In contrast to Christian churches and American Zen centers, Buddhist identity is presupposed for all ethnic Koreans, and there is no required process of initiation or educational development at Boh Won Sa. The role of the temple in the Buddhist community is gradually becoming more similar to that of the Christian churches, but regular attendance at temple services is still not a prerequisite of being considered a “good” Buddhist. In the face of constrained resources, the programming at Boh Won Sa is quite limited and unstructured. Beyond the 11:00 am Sunday services, Boh Won Sa currently does not hold regular meetings or instructional classes for its Korean-speaking members. In past years, one of the monks led a Sunday study group for the young adults, but the group disbanded due to busy schedules. Because there is no extensive programming or lay member involvement at Boh Won Sa, members for the most part do not get involved in subgroups beyond friendship circles. The friendship circles, nevertheless, are important for the social lives of regular members, with frequent dinner gatherings and social outings. Membership and participation are casual, enabling people to come and go at their leisure. Although they recognize their common afﬁ liation with the temple, the purpose of these gatherings is social, and there is no expectation to talk about spiritual matters. Because regular attendance at temple services is not critical, Ameri- can holiday weekends are marked by particularly low attendance. In fact, Fourth of July weekend and Columbus Day weekend services have been canceled for the past few years. The week before the holidays, the abbot announces that since attendance had been so low the previous years, he will cancel services so that all members can enjoy a holiday weekend. Sometimes members will plan an activity together on those Sundays, such as a trip to view the fall foliage. This points to a signiﬁ cant difference between Buddhism and Christianity in the way in which they view Sunday services. Protestant or Catholic attendance over a holiday weekend is also often lower than for regular Sundays, but the priest or pastor would not cancel services altogether. Because Buddhism is not inherently congregational, the Sunday services are not

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considered essential to the practice of their religion. Weekly attendance at Sunday services is neither expected nor required of its members; instead, the focus of Boh Won Sa’s programming is on annual Korean or Buddhist holidays. For example, Korean holidays such as Chusok are celebrated at Boh Won Sa, with members and their extended families packing the temple on those days. In Korea, Chusok is a time when people traditionally return to their hometowns in order to pay homage to their deceased ancestors. The same Confucian ancestor worship rituals that had been banned in Asia by the Catholic Church centuries earlier have been adopted by Buddhist temples, and monks often facilitate the rituals for families. As an adaptation to the rhythm of American life, if the holiday does not fall on a Sunday, the rituals are performed on the Sunday prior to the actual day of Chusok. On that Sunday, those who would like to pay homage to their ancestors stay behind in the dharma hall after the regular service. A special banquet table is prepared in the dharma hall with rice wine and a variety of foods to be offered to the deceased ancestors. Members then line up and wait with their extended families for their turn to pour wine into cups and prostrate themselves toward the banquet table in honor of their deceased. Behind the table, a large folding screen displays the names of all of the deceased who are to be honored.11

Youth Programs At the present time, there is no youth programming due to a stated “lack of students.” When children accompany their parents to temple, they play freely in the temple annex during the service. In the past, there have been informal programs for children in Buddhist arts and Korean language in the temple library. The lesson plans were at the discretion of the designated teacher that day and often included Bud- dhist songs from the teacher’s childhood. Because of the limited availability and training of teachers, the inconsistent attendance of the children, and the lack of Buddhist educational

11 This ritual is also held throughout the year when families wish to honor a deceased ancestor on the day of his or her death. In some cases, the deceased to be honored is a person of non-Korean descent, usually the late spouse of a temple member. In those instances, the food prepared at the banquet table can include distinctly Western items such as Coca Cola and chocolate chip cookies along with traditional Korean dishes.

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materials available in the US, the youth program at Boh Won Sa has been inconsistent. Furthermore, there are no joint retreats with other temples or youth events to build a critical mass of Buddhist youth. This decentralization may become quite problematic for Boh Won Sa in the future, as local Buddhist children are likely to have minimal understanding of their identity as Buddhists. They will no doubt be confronted in adulthood with questions from their Korean American counterparts who grew up in evangelical Christian churches, as several Korean American interviewees have noted to me. Boh Won Sa’s programming requires neither high commitment nor adherence to a particular code of behavior. The development of extensive programming at Boh Won Sa is further hampered by the fact that members often do not attend for weeks or months at a time, so it is more difﬁ cult for the whole group to develop a strong solidarity as temple members. Nevertheless, Boh Won Sa is serving important functions in the lives of its members and also reaching out to non- Koreans as well.

Food, Dress, and Community After the Sunday service, temple members gather together in the dining hall for lunch. Lunch at Boh Won Sa is a leisurely affair that offers members ample time to catch up with one another. Because the monks do not marry and live far from their own relatives, temple members function as their surrogate extended families. Children run about the dining hall and often sit on the monks’ laps, whereupon the monks play with them or give them candy. At special temple events, the Karaoke machine is brought into the dining hall, and members take turns enter- taining the group with their songs. Even the monks actively participate, singing Korean pop songs and classics. This lively and casual family atmosphere at Boh Won Sa also means that temple activities and services are a bit chaotic. Even during services, young children are continually running in and out of the dharma hall to visit their parents. Children can also be heard playing downstairs or outside in the temple parking lot. While the mood during religious services is very quiet and reﬂ ective, no one seems bothered by noise or the frequent entry and exit of the children. Dress at Boh Won Sa is markedly casual, most likely due to practical considerations. Because of the need to sit on the ﬂ oor for two hours and do multiple bows that require full prostration, it would be impractical

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to wear formal constrictive clothing. In contrast to their Christian counterparts, men do not wear suits. Instead, they wear casual shirts and pants. While Korean immigrant women typically wear skirt suits and dresses to Christian church, the women at Boh Won Sa wear casual pants or loose-ﬁ tting long skirts. Because of the relatively small number of attendees, a high proportion must pitch in—cooking, serving, clean- ing—so it would be impractical to dress in fancy clothing.

Organizational Affi liation Boh Won Sa’s loose affi liation with the Chogye order and its informal administration is echoed in its loose association with other Korean Buddhist temples in the United States. Because many Korean Bud- dhist monks come to America to train non-Korean students, there is a distinction between temples and Zen centers that cater toward Korean immigrants and those that primarily serve non-Korean memberships. For example, the late Zen Master Seung Sahn came to the US in 1972 and established the Providence Zen Center in Rhode Island, initially drawing students from Brown University. In 1983, he founded the Kwan Um School of Zen, which now has over 60 practice centers worldwide that are loosely overseen from the Rhode Island headquarters (Seager 1999: 171). The centers’ membership and leadership, however, are mostly white,12 the leaders having received teaching transmission from Master Seung Sahn. Although Boh Won Sa monks know of the Providence Zen Center and the Kwan Um School of Zen, they do not consider Boh Won Sa to be a comparable institution. The “home-grown” convert Buddhists—the many white Americans drawn to Buddhism—practice what is considered a “distinctively ‘American’ Buddhism,” quite independent of practices at Korean ethnic Buddhist temples (Eck and Pierce 1998: 12). This distinction refl ects a larger parallelism in American Buddhism—in both the Mahayana tradition, which the Koreans follow, and the Theravada tradition that Numrich (1996) documents. Further evidence of the decentralized and clergy-centered nature of Buddhism is offered by Mu Soeng (1998: 123), who describes the particular type of Buddhism taught the Providence

12 See http://www.kwanumzen.org/teachers/teachers-body.html.

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Zen Center as “hardly anything more than an expression of Seung Sahn’s personality as it has been shaped by the Confucian-Buddhism amalgam in Korea during the last thousand years.” The Korean temple monks also make a further distinction within the group of Korean monks who establish American Buddhist centers catering to non-Koreans. Among those American Buddhist center leaders are those who had been well-known in Korea and subsequently decided to bring their teachings to the US, and there are those who had been virtually unknown in Korea and gained prominence only among American Buddhists. The Korean temple monks may sometimes question the genuineness of the teaching transmissions to the many white leaders. In one case, the fact that a Zen master started ordain- ing lay American students as monks and nuns “has roused the ire of many of his compatriots in Korea” (Soeng 1998: 124). Boh Won Sa monks have little contact with the American Buddhist centers, so they remain largely unconcerned. Sometimes, American Buddhists leave their Zen centers and establish a “parallel congregation” at places like Boh Won Sa, which they perceive to be a more authentic place of Buddhist practice. The division of Buddhist temples and leaders into those that cater to Korean immigrants and those that cater to American Buddhists is clearly indicated in Boh Won Sa’s membership directory. After the requisite listing of member contact information, there is a listing of “Korean Buddhist Temples in the Eastern Region of the United States.” The directory lists 33 temples as far away as Virginia, Georgia, Illi- nois, and Canada, but it does not include the Kwan Um Zen centers founded by Master Seung Sahn. The listed temples are not formally afﬁ liated with one another through an administrative headquarters; they are associated to the extent that they all serve predominantly Korean immigrant memberships and their monks were trained in the Chogye order. Occasionally, the monks from the Eastern region will gather in New York for causes such as North Korean famine relief. Prominent monks from Korea and the US also stay at the temples in the course of their travels, giving dharma talks and socializing with their fellow Buddhists along the way. Afﬁ liation is voluntary and is often limited by geographical distance. Because Korean Buddhist temples in the US are highly decentralized, practices, power relations, teachings, and other characteristics are

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somewhat “congregation”-specifi c.13 Each temple has its own format and style of communal worship. For instance, Kwan Eum Sa temple in Los Angeles has adopted features common to Christian churches such as the singing of Buddhist hymns with organ accompaniment. The temple even has a choir that sings with Christian-style choir robes, and the abbot delivers his sermons from a Christian-style pulpit. Unlike most Buddhist temples, an offering plate is also passed during the service (Kim 1996). These adaptations are reminiscent of those made by Japanese Ameri- can Buddhists decades ago, using words derived from Christianity such as “Buddhist churches,” “Sunday schools,” and “Young Men’s Bud- dhist Association” (Kashima 1977).14 Similarly, Kurien (1998: 56) notes that Hindu revivalist groups “emerged to reformulate the message of Hinduism in reaction to the activities of Christian missionaries” and ironically “ended up developing ‘Christianized’ models of Hinduism” in the process. Although Boh Won Sa clergy and lay members are well aware of their minority status vis-à-vis the Protestant Korean American community, they have yet to make a concerted effort to compete with the Christian churches or to incorporate Christian elements explicitly into their temple activities. As they continue in their minority status, however, there is a possibility that they will follow the lead of other temples and implement adaptations in the future. Although the Chogye order in Korea does have a certain degree of transnational authority over the Boh Won Sa monks, it functions more like a professional licensing board. It certifi es members who have completed the requisite training but has no control over the way in which the professionals subsequently run their private practices. Thus, abbots have a tremendous amount of fl exibility in the way they run their temples, the principles they teach, and the populations to which their temples cater. This decentralization and lack of strong organizational ties to larger bodies with access to a greater amount of programming,

13 Although Buddhism is not a traditionally congregation-based religion, Warner (1993: 1067) observes that “Congregational patterns seem to be emerging among non-Christian religious groups.” I use the term “congregation” loosely in order to emphasize the fact that the temples are very much locally controlled. 14 I do not claim that these types of activities and subgroups are exclusively “Chris- tian.” In fact, there is evidence of a historical precedence for Sunday schools, choirs, and youth groups among Buddhists in Korea and in Japan. Here I focus not on the origin of these activities, but on the motivations for establishing and adopting them in the US.

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ﬁ nancial, and networking resources can limit the temples’ ability to react to environmental changes such as a decrease in migration from Korea.

Double Minority Consciousness

Although the focus of this chapter is Korean American Buddhism, it is impossible to discuss Korean American religion without discussing Christianity. In Korean society, as well as in Korean American society, Christianity (particularly Protestant Christianity) has become so dominant that practitioners of other religions have come to deﬁ ne themselves in contrast to their co-ethnic Protestants. There is a strong minority consciousness vis-à-vis Korean American Christians. The Buddhists exhibit a sense of pride at retaining individualism and going against the stream of people who readily convert to Christianity, but they acknowledge their underdog status. The Buddhists have a double minority consciousness, knowing that they are a racial and ethnic minority in America, but within their own minority community, they are a religious minority. Virtually every temple member has a story of how she or he was hurt, offended, or annoyed by the overzealous recruiting efforts of Korean Christians. Some acknowledge that they are being judged for being backward and stubborn in holding on to the Buddhist faith and resisting conversion to Christianity, when conversion is so prevalent and brings with it membership in a larger extended network of Korean Americans. Some Buddhist temple members adopt a cynical view of the conversion of some of their co-ethnics to Christianity. One interviewee noted, “The Korean Americans who run small businesses really have to attend a church. They need to establish business ties with other Korean Americans.” She acknowledged that if she had been a business owner, she might have felt the need to attend a church and meet more people with whom she might be able to conduct business. She does not see this as true conversion but rather a calculated move for the purpose of establishing business networks. There is, nevertheless, a degree of fatalism at Boh Won Sa, recognizing that many single members will eventually marry a Christian and consequently convert to Christianity. Quite a few single members expressed an openness to marrying Christians, recognizing that the majority of Koreans their age in the US practice Christianity. Yet,

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they also told me that they have found that most Christians tend to resist marriage with someone who is a practicing Buddhist. Lin (1996: 126) fi nds a similar dilemma for Chinese American Buddhists, who are “characterized by the superposition of two culturally differentiating factors: non-European heritage and non-Judeo-Christian beliefs.” Korean American Buddhists regularly mention things about the Korean Christian community and see themselves in comparison to the Christians. One week, a monk at another Korean Buddhist temple made an announcement after his dharma talk about an article featuring his temple in a Korean-language newspaper. Temple members had expected it to be a front-page feature, with numerous photos. Instead, the monk reported, the article was relegated to a small bottom corner of the front page, illustrated with only one small picture. He expressed surprise and disappointment that the chosen photo did not show the temple in its best light. He ended the announcement with, “Well, the people who run this paper are Christians”—implying that the Korean Christians at the paper deliberately downplayed the article in order to prevent generating interest in the temple. The monk’s tone was matter-of-fact, expressing resignation rather than indignation. Temple attendees nodded their heads in agreement. A more recent example came in the aftermath of the April 2007 tragedy at Virginia Tech University. When it was revealed that the gunman who had taken the lives of 33 people (including himself ) was an ethnic Korean, Koreans in the United States and abroad were especially horrifi ed. Journalists from all over the world traveled to Virginia and also sought out statements from Korean church leaders in particular. A group of Korean Protestant churches in northern Virginia organized a special service that took place the night that the announcement of the gunman’s identity was made. The Korean American Christian community strongly felt the impact of the event and discussed it and preached about it. In fact, Korean American pastors throughout the country immediately met together to determine ways in which they should respond to their local politicians and community leaders. They felt the responsibility to represent Korean Americans and act on their behalf. In contrast, the Korean American Buddhist community seemed more removed from the events, acting more as observers. When I attended a Buddhist temple the Sunday immediately following the massacre, the abbot mentioned the tragedy indirectly and briefl y at the end of his dharma talk, saying, “I know you must have been upset by the recent

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event, but don’t concern yourselves with it.” He urged congregants not to ﬁ xate on this negative event but instead to keep on doing good in their lives. Perhaps he did not spend more time addressing the tragedy because there were no youth at the temple who may have been able to relate to the gunman. Perhaps it was because the killer’s family was known to have attended a Christian church. Whatever the case, the Buddhist monk did not feel the need to speak out, whereas the Christian pastors saw themselves as the representatives of the Korean American community. In a sense, Buddhism is a default identity for many of these temple members. They are united in the fact that they are not Christians, and they feel that they are being more authentically Korean by maintaining their ties to Buddhism. The members take pride in knowing that they did not acquiesce to the trend of Christian Westernization like so many of their peers. One member remarked, “The Christians have learned a lot of good things from Buddhism,” with respect to practices like prayer and meditation. Some are striving to be faithful to their ancestral religious heritage by resisting the all-too-easy trend of conversion to Christianity, and others are disaffected former churchgoers who are rediscovering the wisdom of Buddhist thought. Still others see the temple as a Korean community center, the only place where they can socialize regularly with other Koreans without being subjected to Christianity.

The 1.5 and Second Generations

Boh Won Sa lacks a second-generation Korean American membership and a second-generation emergent clergy. Boh Won Sa has no young adults who are second-generation Korean Americans. The only second-generation members are the elementary school-aged children who occasionally accompany their parents to the temple. Even at larger Korean temples in New York and Los Angeles, there may be a group of high school and college-aged attendees, but very few of them are second-generation Korean Americans. One week a Korean American man in his twenties visited Boh Won Sa by himself. He had been urged to visit the temple by his aunt, who thought he should try to meet more fellow Koreans. Members saw that he was young, so he was quickly ushered to the table where the young adults typically sit together for lunch. As he sat down, he looked quite

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disoriented and uncomfortable. When members tried to speak with him, they realized that he could not speak Korean well. One member said, “Hey, who can speak to this person in English?” I was quick to raise my hand and asked him about his background. After about 15 minutes of conversation about where he lived, worked, and how he learned of Boh Won Sa, he got up and excused himself to go home, never to return. Although this visitor’s quick departure could merely be the result of his having been coerced into visiting the temple, it also illustrates just how foreign the temple environment can feel to second-generation Korean Americans with no prior involvement. As friendly as the members try to be, the temple is still inaccessible because of the dominance of Korean language and culture within it. Furthermore, members do not have the evangelical zeal that motivates Christians to reach out to newcomers more aggressively. There are no programs or orientation sessions that would help initiate such a newcomer into the temple. A more common scenario is one in which a 1.5 or second-generation Korean American accompanies his or her parents or relatives to the temple for a special event.15 This can be the annual Chusok holiday or a special family celebration. For example, a prominent temple member decided to celebrate his 60th birthday (an important milestone in Korean society) at the temple on a Sunday. In lieu of the typical homemade temple fare, the member had a variety of dishes catered by a local Korean restaurant. He was also invited by the abbot to deliver the dharma talk that week. Although this man and his wife have been longtime members of Boh Won Sa, they attend services only a few times a year. Moreover, their grown children had never visited the temple before. However, on this day of his birthday celebration, this prominent member of the temple and the larger Korean American community gave the dharma talk to a large group that included his children and their spouses. Despite the fact that he had no special Buddhist training nor attended services regularly, this man was able to give the talk because the abbot can choose the format of the services freely. The temple is the abbot’s private practice, so the abbot’s choices are neither restricted by denominational guidelines nor a rigid orthodoxy. Rather,

15 “1.5 generation” is a term commonly used to refer to those who immigrate to a new country during their formative years, usually before they are teenagers. Although they can also exhibit characteristics typical of immigrants, those who immigrated at a very young age tend to be quite similar to the second generation.

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he was able to bestow an honor upon a prominent member of the temple. Although this man gave the talk and was the center of the large birthday celebration, his children sat quietly at the back of the dharma hall, observing from the margins. Seemingly uncomfortable in the temple environment, these adult children kept to themselves and did not interact with temple members. Because they have limited Korean language abilities, such second- generation visitors neither participate fully in the services nor interact with other attendees. Furthermore, these second-generation young adult visitors represent only a fraction of all of the second-generation Korean American young adults whose parents are listed as members. The second generation is unlikely to attend temple regularly beyond their childhood years because of two main reasons: the temples lack English-language programming, and regular temple attendance is neither required nor strongly urged. In some ways, the second generation issue is not yet a concern for the Buddhists because of the relative newness of the temple. Young children attend the temple services with their parents, but the informal Sunday instruction is limited in scope and effectiveness. This limited programming means that most of the Boh Won Sa children will stop attending temple services before they go away to college. At college, they will most certainly come into contact with Korean American Christian groups that have a strong presence on many campuses. For example, Julie, a college student in Boston, grew up attending a Korean Buddhist temple in California. Because Boh Won Sa does not actively advertise or recruit members and because she had not made an effort to locate a temple, Julie had not known that there was a Korean Buddhist temple in the Boston area. She told me that her Christian friends in the evangelical Asian American Christian Fellowship (AACF) are always trying to convert her. For example, one of Julie’s friends gave her a book about Christianity for her birthday. Julie views the recruiting activities of the AACF with cynicism: “herding the freshmen together, . . . baking them cookies, taking them to retreats.” Julie has in fact attended Bible studies and church services with her friends and has subsequently been placed on the email list for AACF. She is turned off by the “overzealous proselytizing aspect” of the group, especially as she reads email messages celebrating the number of converts and visitors they have on any given week. Julie has a sympathizer and commiserator in an Episcopalian friend, and they both agree that religion to them is more of a “family tradition, not a conversion experience.”

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Whereas Protestant and even Catholic Korean American college students may go to college having had a memorable church-based youth group or instructional program, Buddhist Korean Americans arrive on campus as a notable minority, with little instructional background and little contact with other Buddhist students. Some may seek to learn more about Buddhist teachings. Others may convert to Christianity, and many, like Julie, will maintain an open mind about all religions but not actively practice a faith. As long as the clergy members are trained in Korea and maintain a Korean cultural orientation, Boh Won Sa will likely be more oriented toward Korean immigrants and foreign students than toward American-born Korean Americans. This means that individuals like the young man described above probably will not be part of Boh Won Sa. This also means that the second-generation children whose parents are temple members are not likely to stay at the temple beyond their childhood years, either because of a lack of English-language temple programming or because of a lack of a sense that temple attendance is required or desirable. One monk at a temple in another city told me that he believes second- and third-generation Korean Americans will rediscover Buddhism, much in the same way that many white Ameri- cans are fascinated with Buddhism at this time: “They will realize that it [Buddhism] is a sound philosophy and a good way of life. They will return on the basis of reason.” Such a rediscovery may even occur as a reaction against racism or a major shift in American society. Although alliances among ethnic coreligionists are “remarkably unstable” (Seager 1999: 239), there is even the possibility that a pan-Asian American and Buddhist identity may emerge in response to some external force. If second-generation Korean Americans are interested in Buddhism, however, they may be more likely to attend one of the American Zen centers in the area, which have instructional programming in English. To some extent, this has happened in the case of Jim, a 23-year-old professional in New York City. He was introduced to Buddhist meditation as an undergraduate in Boston by a white Zen teacher from a local Zen center. He has since taken the ﬁ ve precepts and considers himself a practicing Buddhist. He did not grow up attending church or any kind of religious organization with his family. Although Jim is indeed a second-generation Korean American who practices Buddhism, he is involved in American Buddhism, not immigrant Korean Buddhism as practiced by members of ethnic temples.

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One way in which immigrant Buddhist temples can work to ensure future survival is to link up with the American Buddhist centers, thereby drawing from the resources offered by American Buddhism. Just as ethnic Christian churches draw from the resources offered by the American evangelical movement, mainline Protestant denominations, and the Catholic Church, Boh Won Sa could draw from local Zen centers and hire English-speaking Zen teachers who have access to a wide network of American Buddhist resources. These resources would then help foster an environment in which second-generation Korean Americans could comfortably explore Buddhism on their own terms. Much of Boh Won Sa’s future trajectory will be determined by the dispensation of the abbot and other monks in terms of how much of an effort they will make to cater to English speakers and those beyond the Korean-speaking immigrant population. Recently, Boh Won Sa has been reaching out to more English speakers by offering free yoga and dharma instruction classes at the temple. The Los Angeles temple in Suh’s (2004) study built a Buddhist preschool to instill Buddhist teachings and values to children in the community with the hope of raising up a steady supply of members to maintain the congregation for future generations.

Conclusion

This chapter has highlighted some important features of ethnic Korean Buddhist temples in the United States. Some of the common features that I have found in my research include: (1) the decentralized structure of Korean Buddhism and the temple as a “private practice”; (2) a less congregational nature and low attendance rates; (3) limited programming due to small size and limited resources; (4) a strong double minority consciousness; and (5) exclusive focus on ﬁ rst-generation Korean speakers. Korean American Buddhists have a strong sense of minority consciousness—both with respect to American society, and even more so with respect to the predominantly Christian Korean immigrant community. With respect to American society, the Buddhists are keenly aware of the different orientation they have by virtue of their Korean heritage, language, culture, and race. They also know that they are different in their adherence to a religion largely unknown to most Americans. At

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the same time, they recognize the growing popularity of American Buddhism and are used to having the occasional white visitor at the temple services. With respect to the Korean immigrant community, they know that they are overwhelmingly outnumbered by their Protestant counterparts and often note differences between themselves and the Protestants. Boh Won Sa members and clergy respond to needs as they arise, not seeking large growth or a high proﬁ le. They are content with their quiet piety and their unobtrusive manner.

References

Buswell, Robert. 1992. The Zen Monastic Experience: Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chai, Karen. 2000. Protestant-Catholic-Buddhist: Korean Americans and Religious Adaptation in Greater Boston. Ph.D. dissertation. Harvard University. Eck, Diana L. and Elinor J. Pierce. 1998. World Religions in Boston: A Guide to Communities and Resources. Cambridge, MA: Pluralism Project, Harvard University. Houchins, Lee and Chang-Su Houchins. 1974. “The Korean Experience in America, 1903–1924.” Paciﬁ c Historical Review 43: 548–75. Kashima, Tetsuden. 1977. Buddhism in America: The Social Organization of an Ethnic Religious Institution. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Kim, Doh-An. 1996. “Causal Connection.” Pp. 90–96 in East to America: Korean Ameri- can Life Stories, edited by Elaine H. Kim and Eui-Young Yu. New York: The New Press. Kurien, Prema. 1998. “Becoming American by Becoming Hindu: Indian Americans Take Their Place at the Multicultural Table.” Pp. 37–70 in Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration, edited by R. Stephen Warner and Judith G. Wittner. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Kwon, Okyun. 2003. Buddhist and Protestant Korean Immigrants: Religious Beliefs and Socio- economic Aspects of Life. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing. Lin, Irene. 1996. “Journey to the Far West: Chinese Buddhism in America.” Amerasia Journal 22: 107–32. Matthews, Bruce, ed. 2006. Buddhism in Canada. New York: Routledge. Numrich, Paul David. 1996. Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Seager, Richard Hughes. 1999. Buddhism in America. New York: Columbia University Press. Soeng, Mu. 1998. “Korean Buddhism in America.” Pp. 118–28 in The Faces of Bud- dhism in America, edited by Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka. Berkeley: University of California Press. Suh, Sharon A. 2004. Being Buddhist in a Christian World: Gender and Community in a Korean American Temple. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Warner, R. Stephen. 1993. “Work in Progress toward a New Paradigm for the Socio- logical Study of Religion in the U.S.” American Journal of Sociology 98: 1044–93. Williams, Raymond Brady. 1988. Religions of Immigrants from India and Pakistan: New Threads in the American Tapestry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yu, Eui-Young. 1988. “The Growth of Korean Buddhism in the United States, with Special Reference to Southern California.” Paciﬁ c World 4: 82–93.

NUMRICH_f8_163-184.indd 184 4/4/2008 1:46:57 PM CHAPTER EIGHT

THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW BUDDHISM: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

James William Coleman

Buddhism took centuries to adapt to each new country and each new culture as it spread beyond its ancestral home in India. Many see the same kind of slow evolutionary development occurring in the West. It is said that we will not know what shape Western Buddhism will take for generations to come. But whether we like it or not, the frenetic pace of postmodern society has rewritten the equations of change. The story of Western Buddhism may be told in decades, not centuries, but Bud- dhism has already made some of the most radical changes in its history. It would certainly be wrong to say that Buddhism has entered its ﬁ nal form in the West, but what living religion has a ﬁ nal form? The goal of this chapter, then, is to chart the trajectory of change along which this new Buddhism is moving, not to divine its ultimate destination. When scholars and researchers look at Western Buddhism they often divide it into two camps. The “ethnic Buddhism” practiced by immigrants from Buddhist countries and their descendents make up one group, and the “convert Buddhism” of the Westerners who have taken it up are the other (Prebish 1999). The focus of this chapter is on the latter, even though the term itself is likely to become increasingly problematic as time goes by and as an increasing number of the children of Western converts grow up in the Buddhist tradition. In other works, I have referred to the meditation-oriented Buddhism group whose membership is primarily of Western origins as the “new Buddhism,” and I will argue here that it represents a distinctively different form of Buddhism that has adapted to the social realities of postmodern society. Somewhere between the ethnic Buddhism of the Asian immigrants and the meditation-oriented “new Buddhists” there is another stream of Buddhism—the Soka Gakkai—that follows its own distinctive path. This unique Japanese import, a case study from which is the subject of the following chapter, has attracted large numbers of Western converts,

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yet unlike all the other forms of convert Buddhism it does not emphasize meditation, but focuses on a chant in praise of the Lotus Sutra. Also, while most of the other groups have a decidedly anti-materialist bent, the Soka Gakkai feels that diligent chanting produces wealth as well as personal happiness. Most of the discussion that follows focuses on the new meditation-oriented Buddhism, but it is important to note at the outset that the Soka Gakkai plays an important part in the Western Buddhist scene as well. It has been more successful than other groups in winning converts among minorities and in recent years has been building stronger bridges to the other Buddhist traditions in the West (Hammond and Machacek 1999).

The New Buddhism and the Old

It seems fair to say that the new Western Buddhism is no longer in its infancy, but neither has it reached mature adulthood. Fresh, innovative, and diverse, it still maintains a good deal of its adolescent awkward- ness. And like most adolescents, it is easy to see the seeds from which it is growing, and its differences from the parents that give it birth. Buddhism as refracted through the prism of late Western modernity certainly bears a family resemblance in one degree or another to its diverse Asian ancestors. It has some striking likenesses to the original “Buddhism” Siddhartha Gautama ﬁ rst taught in India over two millennia ago (Robinson and Johnson 1982; Skilton 1994; Smith and Novak 2003), but some of the most pronounced differences as well. One obvious similarity is that Siddhartha’s followers were not born into the faith but had to make their own decision to join. Thus, the term “convert Buddhism” would seem to apply equally well to the original Buddhists as to the members of Buddhist groups in the West today. As converts, it is logical to assume that most of the early Buddhists must have had the same kind of spiritual hunger that draws Westerners into Buddhism today, in contrast to most contemporary Asian Buddhists who are simply born into the faith. Siddhartha himself never placed much emphasis on rites, rituals, and ceremonies, and neither do many of the new Buddhist groups. Even the most formal groups almost always have fewer such practices than the Asian traditions that gave them birth. Another striking similarity between the oldest and the newest Buddhism is in their egalitarianism. While it is easy to be misled by the stories about the Buddha’s hesita-

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tion to let women join the monastic sangha, in the context of its time original Buddhism was radically egalitarian, and such an orientation is certainly consonant with values of the highly educated left-leaning membership attracted by the new Buddhism (Cabezon 1992; Gross 1993; Tsomo 1988). Finally and probably most signiﬁ cantly, like most of the new Bud- dhists, Siddartha’s unwavering focus was always on the struggle for liberation. In both the newest and the oldest Buddhism, the highest goal is not faith and belief, proper behavior, or ritual devotion, but the direct experience of enlightenment. Both attach great importance to the practice of meditation, and both feel that liberation must spring from each individual’s own life and practice, not the intercession of the supernormal beings who have assumed such great importance in some forms of Asian Buddhism. Yet despite these similarities, this new Western Buddhism is not some sort of fundamentalist movement seeking to return to the “true Bud- dhism” of the past. Eons of social evolution have had their impact, and they are reﬂ ected in countless ways. The social context of postmodern Western society differs in many ways from the agrarian world of ancient India; even beliefs and practices that appear similar may have a radically different meaning. Particularly striking is the strong contrast between the monastic world rejection of the original Buddhism, with its demand for celibacy and renunciation, and the decidedly this-worldly orientation of the new Western Buddhism.

Contemporary Buddhism: East and West

All the major streams of contemporary Asian Buddhism have been inﬂ uential in the West in one way or another. The Pure Land school of East Asia is a major force among ethnic Buddhists, while Japan’s Nichi- ren tradition provide the foundation for the Soka Gakkai movement. The new Western Buddhism takes its primary inspiration from three major branches of Asian Buddhism: the Southern Theravadin tradition (which is also prominent among many ethnic Buddhists), Tibetan Vajrayana lineages, and the Ch’an/Zen school of East Asia. But unlike the ethnic Buddhists who imported more or less the full range of their original traditions, the new Buddhists tend to pick and choose from what these traditions have to offer. While most (although certainly not all) of these new Buddhist groups maintain an allegiance to one of those three

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Asian branches, there are also sharp differences in style and content between the parents and their Western offspring. The contrast between the ascetic world rejection of the Asian Theravada and the Vipassana movement with its secular tone and strong ties to Western psychology are particularly pronounced. While Western Zen maintains something of the formal group orientation of its Japanese progenitor, it is decidedly watered down, as are many of the distinctive esoteric elements of the Western groups that follow the Tibetan tradition. Moreover, all the new Buddhist groups place a heavy emphasis on the “technology of liberation” (meditation and other spiritual practices) offered by their parent traditions—a trend paralleled by the Buddhist modernist movement that has developed in Asia since the colonial period. Of course, all forms of Buddhism—whether it is the new Western Buddhism, the ethnic Buddhism of the migrant enclaves, or traditional Asian Buddhism—share a common quest: liberation from greed, hate, and delusion, and the suffering they cause. And there are common differences between traditional Asian Buddhism taken as a whole and the new Buddhist groups. For one thing, there is sharp distinction between the monks, nuns, and priests, and the lay people in most forms of traditional Buddhism. At least in theory, the members of those elite groups devote their lives to the quest for liberation; sometimes through the kind of meditation the Buddha recommend for his followers, sometimes through strict moral discipline, sometimes through academic studies, and sometimes through the single-minded performance of elaborate rituals. For the vast majority of traditional Buddhists, however, the quest for liberation takes a back seat to the demands of everyday life. The most those average Buddhists can hope for is to accumulate merit by good works or the grace of a powerful Buddha or Bodhisattva, and someday win a better rebirth either in a paradise or to a life that offers them the chance to devote themselves to the Dharma (Truth) and win enlightenment. This fundamental distinction between religious specialist and layperson is, however, much less clear in the new Buddhism. Although some people live a more monastic lifestyle while others live as householders, the pursuit of liberation is common to them all. The new Buddhism takes the techniques of liberation that were preserved and reﬁ ned by countless generations of Asian monks and other specialists, and offers them up to anyone who is interested. When Asian Buddhists visit the West they are often confused by the Western practitioners they meet. Not really monks, but far more

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involved and dedicated than most lay people, Western practitioners are hard to classify with categories their teachers imported from Asia. Many Western Buddhist centers have full time residents who devote most of their time and energy to their Buddhist pursuits, and some of the larger groups have isolated retreat facilities for more intensive practice. A few Westerners even shave their heads and take monastic vows, but they remain a distinct minority, and these Western monks are never seen with the kind of awe and respect that separates the Asian monks from the laity. To most Asians, being a monk means being celibate, but celibacy is a very hard sell in the midst of Western consumer culture. What was traditionally seen as the highest moral virtue in Asia often becomes a kind of pointless repression in Western eyes. Moreover, the rarity of isolated monasteries means that the monks are often in much closer contact with the outside world than their Asian counterparts. Thus, in the new Buddhism, the distinction between the monk and the layperson is a fuzzy one. Monks are not set off by an aura of holiness and reverence as they are in Asia, and while their practice is usually more highly focused, they are not really doing anything that is not common among the laity as well. In order to get a more quantitative picture of this new Buddhism, I conducted a survey of the members of seven different Buddhist groups in the late 1990s. Two of the groups were from the Zen tradition (the Berkeley and Rochester Zen Centers), two from the Tibetan tradition (Karma Dzong in Boulder, Colorado and the Dzogchen Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts), two Vipassana groups from the San Francisco Bay Area (one headed by Gil Fronsdal and the other by James Baraz), and one nonaffi liated group in San Luis Obispo, California (the White Heron Sangha). All told, 359 people fi lled out the questionnaire, which covered a wide range of social, religious, and demographic issues. One thing the survey shows most clearly is that if there is a single characteristic that defi nes the new Buddhism for most of its members, it is the practice of meditation—something that is often reserved for monastics in the Asian traditions. When asked to rank the relative importance of meditation, traditional rituals and ceremonies, and social relationships with other members, an overwhelming 92 percent of the respondents to the survey I conducted ranked meditation number one (Coleman 2001: 119–20). Despite their enormous cultural gulf, the style of meditation practiced by the new Buddhists is directly derived from the practices and traditions of Asian monastics. Some respondents reported practicing

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complex visualizations or working on koans, but most of their meditation focuses on their breath—either counting breaths one by one or simply following them with close attention. The members of new Buddhist groups report that they usually meditate at home, but they also attend the group meetings that occur at Buddhist centers or in an ad hoc variety of rented halls and private homes. Although the focus is usually on meditation, members frequently chant together and perform other ceremonial rituals and listen to talks from their teachers. Not only do these gatherings help the members to encourage each other in their religious practice, they provide the opportunity for social bonding and community building. Over 90 percent of my respondents had also attended one or more intensive meditation retreats in addition to their daily meditation practice. In fact, they averaged a little more than one retreat a year. Although my sampling techniques were biased toward respondents who were more committed and involved than the average member of these groups, these results leave little doubt about the importance of retreat practice. These retreats, which usually range from half a day to a couple of weeks in length, offer participants the opportunity to expand and deepen their meditation practice. Each group and each lineage runs its retreats a little differently. Some are rigorous, tightly structured, and highly demanding, while others are more relaxed and easy going. Nonetheless, a common pattern is emerging among all the new Buddhist groups. For one thing, the retreatants are usually expected to maintain silence whenever possible. Retreatants usually rise early and devote long days to alternating periods of sitting and walking meditation. The retreats also provide the opportunity for closer contact with their teachers, who give talks and private interviews to help the retreatants with their practice and with the powerful experiences that often occur during these periods of intense meditation. Many retreats also have work periods where the participants pitch in to help with all the physical demands created where any large group of people gather together. No other change is more important to Western Buddhism than the way it is redeﬁ ning gender. In the Asian traditions, the world of the monastic elite is largely a male world. Although a few female orders have existed over the centuries, they have always been separate and subject to male authority. Some traditional Buddhist beliefs even ques-

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tion the ability of women to reach enlightenment at all. In this view, the best a woman can do is to gain merit through good works and by supporting the male monastics, so that she can win rebirth as a man in her next life. Such extreme sexism is by no means universal and the Buddha himself clearly recognized the ability of women to attain enlightenment, but women have always nonetheless played a subordinate role in institutionalized Asian Buddhism. How different are things in the West? Western Buddhist groups have often imported the prejudices of their Asian teachers or assimilated the gender biases of their own culture, but at the same time there is clearly a powerful tide pushing the new Buddhism toward gender equality. While Eastern Buddhism picked up its cultural baggage from the ancient patriarchal traditions of Asia, the new Buddhism is taking shape in an age of feminism and a radical rethinking of gender that is rocking even the most staid Western denominations. Of course, our society remains rife with sexism and patriarchal stereotypes, but the kind of women and men (women slightly outnumber men in most Buddhist groups) who are attracted to Western Buddhism are the same kind of highly educated left-leaning people who are most likely to believe in gender equality. In virtually all the centers in which control has passed from the hands of Asian teachers to their Western students, women and men practice together as equals, sharing the same roles and the same responsibilities in ways that would be unheard of in most of Asia. Although virtually all the Asian and a majority of the Western teachers are male, there are a growing number of women in those top positions of respect and authority. Today, no one is surprised to see a woman leading retreats, giving Dharma talks, or running a major Buddhist center. On a more theoretical level, no matter who occupies those positions of power, nearly all the Western Buddhist groups recognize the full equality of the sexes and the ability of anyone of either gender to realize his or her true nature and attain enlightenment. Of course, we all know that our actual practice often fails to live up to our ideals, and Western Buddhism is no exception. Many women continue to feel a sense of psychological alienation and at times social exclusion as well. The Asian teachers are male, the images of the Bud- dha are male, the leaders of most of the groups are male, and some women complain that the practice itself is still male-oriented. On the other hand, less then a third of my respondents felt that discrimination

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against women was a serious problem in Buddhist groups, and over 80 percent felt that women had an equal chance with men to gain leadership positions in their own group (Coleman 2001: 139–54). The transformation of gender that is evolving in the new Buddhism is not, however, simply a matter of ending discrimination or of women joining into the world that used to be reserved for the male Buddhist elite. As more and more women are becoming full and equal participants in Western Buddhism, their presence is transforming the tradition itself. Numerous changes in attitudes and approaches refl ect the experience of women’s culture as it mingles with that of their male counterparts, and a new generation of women teachers is bringing a fresh perspective and attracting male and female students alike (cf. Boucher 1993). Another characteristic of the new Buddhism seldom seen in Asia appears to be broad ranging eclecticism. In many of the countries of southern Asia, the Theravadin tradition is so dominant that little thought or attention is given to other forms of Buddhism. The Tibetan Vajrayana encompasses a much broader variety of traditions, but they are all seen from a particular Vajrayana perspective, and there is little knowledge of Zen or the other Buddhist developments of East Asia. Japan probably has more separate and distinct Buddhist sects than anywhere else on earth, but they tend, in typical Japanese style, to stick pretty much to themselves. In Asia, teachers usually follow their own traditions and their own way of doing things. It is the West, then, that has proved to be the real meeting place for Buddhist traditions from throughout Asia. Although most of teachers in the new Buddhist groups try to follow a single tradition, there is a broad willingness to utilize the insights from other perspectives as well. It is not at all uncommon for teachers from two different traditions to lead a retreat together or to hear a teacher give a Dharma talk that not only quotes from those in other Buddhist traditions but from Chris- tians, Muslims, and contemporary psychologists as well. Moreover, the important fi gures who have been active in the West are known to the Buddhist teachers from all lineages, and they are coming to form a distinct Western tradition all its own. The “beginners mind” described by Suzuki Roshi, the “crazy wisdom” of Trungpa Rinpoche, or Jack Kornfi eld’s stories blending ancient wisdom and Western psychology are grist for the lectures and books of Western Buddhists from all lineages and traditions. While the problems facing Asian Buddhism are those of a traditional established religion trying to maintain its vigor in rapidly modernizing

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societies, the most perplexing problems faced by Western Buddhism revolve around those ubiquitous issues of sex and power (Brown 1995; Butler 1990; Butterfi eld 1994; Caplan 1999; Downing 2001; Fields 1986; Kornfi eld 1995; Shukman 1999). Time and again, emerging Buddhist groups have struggled with the contradiction between the authority, power, and prestige the Asian teachers enjoy in their own traditions, and the Western notions of democracy and equality. When the Asians fi rst arrived in the West, they were given an exalted status among their followers, and all the power and authority that accompanies it. But when those teachers abused their power or were succeeded by their Western students, the ideals of egalitarianism quickly reemerged. Today, most Western Buddhist groups remain deeply ambivalent about the role and authority of their teachers. On one level, it is a clash between the Asian traditions of collectivism and the Western values of democracy and equality. But the diffi culties go deeper than a clash of cultures, and they are unlikely to be resolved simply by shedding the cultural baggage inherited from Asia. The tremendous respect and admiration Western Buddhists have for their teachers is not just the result of Eastern cultural infl uence. The members of these groups want to see their teachers as truly enlightened beings whose depth of understanding and wisdom sets them far apart from ordinary people. And if those teachers are indeed enlightened, it follows that they may make administrative decisions or carry on their personal relationships in ways that other people simply do not understand. The relationship between a group and its teacher varies. But in general it seems that Western teachers still have much of the authority and prestige of their Asian predecessors, but it is a provisional authority. Teachers whose personal or professional lives violate the expectations of their students often run into serious trouble. Most of the major Bud- dhist centers in the West have been rocked by some kind of scandal or schism. In some cases, the teacher has been removed and replaced with someone else. Other cases have resulted in the creation of new administrative structures and new restraints on the power of the teacher, or a mass exodus of the disaffected who go on to form their own group. But however these problems work themselves out, structures and traditions are evolving that defi ne the limits of the teachers’ power and what to do when those limits are exceeded. Western Buddhism is often something of a puzzle to Asians who grew up in established Buddhist traditions. To some, Western Bud- dhism just seems too different to be “real” Buddhism. Other Asians

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take considerable pride in the acceptance their faith is gaining in the West, and a few even see it as a source of revitalization for Buddhism in general. There is little doubt that the onslaught of modern consumer culture has taken it toll on religious vitality of many Buddhist countries just as it has in the West, and Buddhists in places like China, Vietnam, and Tibet have also had to face ﬁ erce political repression. As Asia continues its relentless drive for economic development, Western Buddhism may well provide a model for a new style of Buddhism that better meets the demands of the postmodern culture taking root in their countries.

Into the Future

Never before in the long history of Buddhism have all of its major traditions entered a new area at the same time, and never before has there been so much contact and exchange among those different traditions. These unique events have led some observers to predict that Western Buddhism will eventually turn into an eclectic new amalgam of all the previous Buddhist traditions. We know, for example, that Western Buddhist teachers already borrow freely from each other’s traditions and perspectives. As the number of communities with many different Buddhist groups grows, the competition may indeed force them all to adopt whichever characteristics and approaches are most popular with their potential members—as the rational choice/market approach to the sociology of religion would predict (Stark and Bainbridge 1987; Young 1997). The history of East Asia provides us with some interesting precedents, although they point in two different directions. Over the years, the different schools of Buddhism in China, Vietnam, and Korea have tended to blend together in an eclectic mix in the same kind of process that many expect to occur here. There is on the other hand, however, the case of Japan, where many Buddhist traditions continued to have a more distinct sectarian expression. At present there is still remendous diversity among the Zen, Vipas- sana, and Tibetan groups active in the West, just as there is in the desires and preferences of their members. In the short run, the most likely scenario is that there will continue to be four distinctive streams of Western Buddhism—the three just mentioned and a more eclectic, non-sectarian fourth stream where the other Buddhist traditions are syn-

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thesized with various other infl uences into new blends and approaches. In the longer run, the likelihood of divergent lexicons, styles, and forms blending together is much greater. It also seems likely that these groups will continue to build some kind of overarching sense of community as part of an emerging Western Buddhism. But while terminology and rituals may tend to merge, there are some fundamental differences in approach that will be far more diffi cult to reconcile. Unlike adherents of some religious traditions, it is not unusual for Westerners to take a very secular approach to the practice of Bud- dhism. Following the model of Western psychotherapy, some Buddhist groups employ very little in the way of ritual, sacred imagery, or even say much about metaphysical issues such issues as rebirth. On the other hand, robes, rituals, and ceremonies are a central part of the practice of many other groups. This certainty does not mean that two antagonistic camps are likely to emerge, but neither do these approaches seem to be very compatible companions within the same group. Another pivotal axis is between what Andrew Rawlison (1997: 96–142) has termed the “hot” and the “cool” approaches.1 The hot approach is emotional, passionate, and visionary— bright images and complex symbolism abound. The cool approach is more quiet and still. Colors are muted, and practitioners tend to see visionary experiences as a distraction from their realization of the vast emptiness within themselves. Once again, it is hard to see how the hot approach favored by most Tibetan groups can easily co-exist in the same group with the cool traditions more typical of Zen or Vipassana. Over the last three decades, Buddhist groups throughout the West have been wrestling with the vexing conundrum of power and its potential for abuse. Until now, most of the scandals that have rocked Western Buddhism have centered around allegations of some kind of sexual misconduct. But there is good reason to believe that as time goes on, the other eternal source of scandal—money—will take on more importance. Most Buddhist groups in the West are still relatively new and have only limited fi nancial assets. But the history of Asian Buddhism leads us to expect that at least some groups will eventually become wealthy and infl uential social institutions. As time goes by, it seems inevitable that some affl uent members will bequeath their estates

1 I have modifi ed Rawlison’s typology to fi t better an analysis that is confi ned solely to the Buddhist experience.

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to Buddhist causes and that their assets will continue to grow. Although many Buddhist groups now feel frustrated by their fi nancial restraints, wealth can be expected to bring its own problems. Today, there is little reason to join a Buddhist group other than a sincere personal quest, but during many periods of Asian history the Buddhist elite lived lives of comfort and ease that were far removed from the deprivation of the average people. As Buddhist groups in the West become more wealthy and infl uential, they will inevitably attract more people looking for something aside from spiritual development. Although the years of disciplined training required for top leadership positions will certainly provide some signifi cant measure of protection, even the most sincere teachers will still be faced with a whole host of new temptations for various kinds of fi nancial misconduct. One common approach to this problem of accountability has been to create a code of ethics governing the behavior of the teachers. But while such documents may have considerable symbolic value, they have not proved markedly successful in other kinds of social organizations, and they seem unlikely to be any more fruitful in Buddhist groups. There has, for example, been a growing trend among major corporations to adopt such codes in recent years, but researchers have not found any measurable effect on actual behavior—even when the code contains explicit sanctions (Coleman 2006: 239–41). A more promising development lies in the changing structure of power. The growing recognition of a need for a separation between the spiritual authority of the teachers and the administrative authority of the board of directors is one positive step, but more important is the increasing popularity of various styles of group leadership shared among several different teachers. Since it seems likely that the teachers will continue to have enormous prestige and authority within their groups no matter what the offi cial bylaws may say, the active presence of several different teachers of equal authority would seem to provide a natural way to diversify power and discourage abusive behavior. Some of the most interesting questions surround the Tibetan groups whose Asian leadership, elaborate hierarchy, and tradition of guru devotion have slowed such reforms. Although their future is unclear, three directions seem possible. On the one hand, new generations of Western teachers may eventually take over leadership positions in the Tibetan groups and institute more sweeping structural reforms. But unlike Zen or Vipassana, the large community of Tibetan refugees living in often diffi cult conditions in India and Nepal has created a pool of tradition-

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ally oriented Asian teachers with a strong motivation to be active in the West. Hence, a second possibility is that the Tibetan groups in the West will continue largely as they are with close ties to Asian traditions and a more centralized power structure. But the most likely scenario is probably that both will occur. Some of the growing number of fully qualifi ed Western teachers are likely to continue to start their own groups with a more open style, while other groups continue under traditional Asian leadership with a more traditional Asian approach. The position of Buddhism in Western society is also likely to change over time. While Buddhism still seems something rather exotic to most Westerners, this is bound to change over the years. It may still ultimately be marginalized and appear to some as just one more “cult” that has somehow failed to see the importance of worshipping one God. But there is good evidence that Buddhism is moving toward accepted into the religious mainstream. In a survey conducted in 2002 and 2003, Wuthnow and Cadge (2004) found that the American public’s attitudes toward Buddhism were generally quite favorable. For example, 59 percent of their respondents said that they would welcome “Buddhists becoming a stronger presence in the Untied States,” while only 32 percent said they would not welcome such a development. While the total number of Westerners who identify themselves as Buddhists is fairly small (usually put somewhere between one and four million Ameri- cans), the survey found that a surprising one in every eight Americans reported that Buddhist teachings had had an important infl uence on their religion or spirituality. The demographics of its membership certainly work in Buddhism’s favor. A religion that attracts so many high-status professionals is harder to dismiss than a faith of the poor and minorities, and Buddhism’s infl uence among artists, musicians, and writers may be even more critical. Numerous books, movies, and musical pieces already show a strong Buddhist infl uence, and there is little doubt about the media’s power to infl uence public opinion. Buddhism’s status as a major world religion is another key asset that is slowly allowing it to leverage itself into the interfaith dialogue of the West. A real acceptance of Buddhism into Western culture would, however, be no small matter. Most of the generic, nonsectarian treatment of religious issues that has become so common in Western public discourse is, for example, still predicated upon theistic assumptions. In a truly pluralistic society, advocates of religious tolerance would have to go far beyond merely tolerating the civic right for “everyone to worship God in their own way.”

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My guess is that what I have labeled “new Buddhism” will continue its vigorous growth for many years to come. As it has become more familiar to Westerners, its appeal has expanded beyond the intellectuals, artists, and bohemians who were willing to experiment with the exotic. But rather than a mass religion, it seems most likely that it will continue to draw most of its following from its existing demographic base among well-educated members of the middle and upper classes. It is true that many Buddhist leaders are expressing concern about the lack of diversity in the new Buddhism, and some groups are making a serious effort to reach out to the poor and minority populations. But the fact remains that the new Western Buddhism is an intellectu- ally challenging religion that often demands a high level of education and cultural sophistication—and, of course, lots of time to devote to spiritual pursuits. Meditation-oriented Buddhist groups have, however, been effective in reaching out to a broader spectrum of people in one area—the prisons. A number of groups now have various kinds of prison Dharma projects, and though there are no reliable statistics, the interest in Bud- dhism seems to be growing among prison inmates. In one sense, the prison environment is ideally suited for Buddhist practice since inmates must somehow cope with social stigma and what is often an extremely threatening environment. Yet regardless of their class background, they also have lots of time for reading and meditation. Over the years, the growth of “prison Dharma” may well serve to broaden the demographic horizons of the new Buddhism, although it may ultimately prove to be more of a vehicle for upward mobility for former inmates than anything else.2 Buddhism’s expanding dialogue with the more liberal elements in Judaism and Christianity may produce other important changes both in Western Buddhism and in those other faiths as well. There are already many followers of Western religions who practice Buddhist meditation techniques, and a new synthesis of these religious traditions may well emerge. The history of Buddhism shows that it has often absorbed many elements from the indigenous traditions of the cultures to which it spread or combined with them into syncretistic new faiths. It would not be at all surprising to see the emergence of some kind of new faith

2 Cf Loori-Sensei (1988) for a description of Buddhist prison work by a well-known American Zen teacher.

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rooted in the Buddhist path of liberation with its highly developed “spiritual technology” which also embraced the more theistic language and cosmology of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Buddhist perspective is clearly gaining increasing favor among physical scientists and, perhaps more important, among therapists and psychologists. Although some traditionalists fear that Western science may somehow corrupt Buddhism, many Buddhist leaders from the Dalai Lama on down have not only encouraged a dialogue with Western science, but have been downright enthusiastic about it (Hayward and Varela 1992; Dalai Lama 1997; Goleman and Thurman 1991). The Dalai Lama has gone so far as to say that Buddhist doctrines that are contradicted by scientifi c evidence must be changed—a position that few of the leaders of the world’s other major religions are willing to take. This is, however, unlikely to be a one-way relationship. On the one hand, just as Buddhism was fi rst translated into Chinese using traditional Taoist terminology, it is often presented in the concepts of contemporary science in the West. But more than just a matter of terminology, the new Buddhism has absorbed a great deal of the Western understanding of personal psychology. On the other hand, Buddhism certainly has much to offer Western social scientists and especially those Western psychotherapists who are struggling to deal with the deepest existential suffering of their patients. While Western psychology has developed considerable knowledge of the workings of the self, it has never taken the leap to question the fundamental reality of the self or its existence as some kind of real substantial entity. The Buddhist assertion that the self has no independent existence, and that our endless efforts to support, protect, and enhance it are in fact the fundamental source of human suffering, provides a challenge to rethink the most basic understandings of Western psychology.3 Not surprisingly, therapists themselves are probably more likely to participate in Buddhist groups than those in just about any other profession—with the possible exception of college professors (Prebish 1999). Indeed, Buddhist practice has already had a powerful infl uence on the way many therapists treat their patients. John Kabat-Zinn (1990) has, for example, been extremely successful in promoting a secularized

3 Ryo Imamura (1998), a psychology professor and Jodo Shinshu Buddhist, offers a brief reﬂ ection on the interaction between Western psychotherapy and Buddhism since 1949 (cf. Metcalf 2002).

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version of Buddhism as part of a medically oriented stress-reduction program, and other such innovations seem likely to follow. Indeed, some people think that Buddhism actually has more in common with Western psychotherapy than Western religion. Many Buddhist teachers in the West are licensed therapists, and a few have actually begun offering Buddhist teachings and guidance very much like therapists offers their services. Rather than the traditional group setting, students schedule individual appointments at their teacher’s offi ce and pay by the hour just as they would a therapist. How great a social impact will the new Buddhism ultimately have in the West? Some may dismiss Western Buddhism as a small religious movement of little social import, but size and importance are not necessarily the same. For one thing, although Buddhism may be unlikely ever to have the dominant position in the West that Christianity now holds, it is gaining a rapidly increasing number of adherents among those in key positions to infl uence the direction our culture will take in the years ahead. As the Wuthnow and Cadge survey shows, Buddhism has already had an infl uence far beyond those who come to identify themselves as Buddhists, and that infl uence only seems likely to grow in the future. But to understand the real potential impact of the new Buddhism we must take a more global view. There is little doubt that we are in a unique new era in human history in which the world’s fi rst truly global culture is taking shape. So far the infl uence has been fl owing primarily from West to East, but it is naive to think that the rest of the world will passively adopt the Western worldview. As one of Asia’s greatest cultural developments, Buddhism is likely to play a major role in this process. Indeed, in the long run Buddhism’s greatest impact in the West and in Africa, Latin America, and even in some parts of Asia, may well be from its infl uence on the new synthesis that comes out of this historic cultural encounter.

References

Boucher, Sandy. 1993. Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism. Boston: Beacon Press. Brown, Mick. 1995. “Scandal and the Living Buddha.” Telegraph Magazine (25 Febru- ary): 20–29. Butler, Katy. 1990. “Encountering the Shadow in Buddhist America.” Common Bound- ary 8(3): 14–22.

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Butterfi eld, Stephen T. 1994. The Double Mirror: A Skeptical Journey into Buddhist Tantra. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books. Cabezon, Jose Ignacio. 1992. Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender. Albany: State University of New York Press. Caplan, Mariana. 1999. Halfway Up the Mountain. Prescott, AZ: Hohm Press. Coleman, James William. 2001. The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2006. The Criminal Elite: Understanding White Collar Crime, 6th ed. New York: Worth. Dalai Lama. 1997. Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Downing, Michael. 2001. The Shoes by the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center. Washington, DC: Counterpoint. Fields, Rick. 1986. How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America, rev. ed. Boston: Shambhala. Goleman, Daniel and Robert A. F. Thurman, eds. 1991. Mind Science: An East-West Dialogue. Boston: Wisdom Publications. Gross, Rita M. 1993. Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hammond, Phillip E. and David W. Machacek. 1999. Soka Gakkai in America: Accom- modation and Conversion. New York: Oxford University Press. Hayward, Jeremy W. and Francisco J. Varela. 1992. Gentle Bridges: Conversation with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind. Boston: Shambhala. Imamura, Ryo. 1998. “Buddhist and Western Psychotherapies: An Asian American Perspective.” Pp. 228–37 in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kabat-Zinn, Jon. 1990. Full Catastrophe Living. New York: Dell. Kornfi eld, Jack. 1985. “Sex Lives of the Gurus.” Yoga Journal July/August: 26–28, 66. Loori-Sensei, John Daido. 1988. “Lotus in the Fire: Prison, Practice, and Freedom.” Pp. 304–14 in Buddhist America: Centers, Retreats, Practices, ed. Don Morreale. Santa Fe, NM: John Muir. Metcalf, Franz Aubrey. 2002. “The Encounter of Buddhism and Psychology.” Pp. 348–64 in Westward Dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia, ed. Charles S. Prebish and Martin Baumann. Berkeley: University of California Press. Prebish, Charles S. 1999. Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rawlison, Andrew. 1997. The Book of Enlightened Masters: Western Teachers in Eastern Tradi- tions. Chicago: Open Court. Robinson, Richard H. and Willard L. Johnson. 1982. The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction, 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Shukman, Henry. 1999. “Friends of the Western Buddhist Order: Friends, Foes, and Files.” Tricycle (Summer): 66–68, 112–18. Skilton, Andrew. 1994. A Concise History of Buddhism. New York: Barnes & Noble. Smith, Huston and Philip Novak. 2003. Buddhism: A Concise Introduction. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco. Stark, Rodney and William Bainbridge. 1987. A Theory of Religion. New York: Peter Lang. Tsomo, Karma Lekshe, ed. 1988. Sakyadhita: Daughters of the Buddha. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion. Wuthnow, Robert and Wendy Cadge. 2004. “Buddhists and Buddhism in the United States: The Scope of Infl uence.” Journal for the Scientifi c Study of Religion 43: 363–80. Young, Lawrence, ed. 1997. Rational Choice Theory and Religion: Summary and Assessment. New York: Routledge.

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SOKA GAKKAI: ENGAGED BUDDHISM IN NORTH AMERICA

Constance Lynn Geekie

A great revolution of character in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society, and further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind. Daisaku Ikeda President of Soka Gakkai International

Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist lay organization, draws its inspiration from the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin, a monk who lived in 13th-century Japan. Established in the 1930s, the organization has grown from a small number of educators in Japan to more than 10 million members within Japan and an international following of 1.5 million in 186 countries worldwide (Ikeda 2003). Ideology has changed from local educational concerns and individual self-realization through faith in Nichiren Buddhism, to a focus on global environmental issues, human rights, and world peace through social and political action. Translated as Value Creation Society, Soka Gakkai offers its members the means to achieve spiritual, social, and material beneﬁ ts through faith, study, and practice. Individual effort and collective activism stand out as Soka Gakkai enterprise; practitioners believe that personal transformation provides the basis for collective social transformation, and that enlightened individuals are best able to help others and to create the conditions for peace and harmony on earth. The most important aspect of Soka Gakkai religious practice is the chanting of the phrase Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō. Chanted repeatedly, this phrase expresses faith in the Lotus Sutra, a sacred text that Soka Gakkai members believe contains the most important teaching passed down from the historical Buddha. Chanting is directed to the gohonzon, a copy of the mandala created by Nichiren to represent the universe and reﬂ ect the possibilities within each of us. The gohonzon, in the form of a scroll composed in Chinese ideograms, sits within an altar found

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in temples, meeting halls, and personal homes. Individually, members are expected to perform gongyo, the practice of chanting Nam-myōhō- renge-kyō and selected sections of the Lotus Sutra, twice daily in front of the gohonzon. A second aspect of practice is shakubuku, or spreading the message of Soka Gakkai to all of humanity. The goal of this practice is to create kōsen-rufu, a state in which Buddhism will have infl uence throughout the world and the values of Nichiren’s teachings will be available to all. This refl ects the belief that we live in mappō, a time prophesied in the Lotus Sutra when Buddhism will be far removed from the people and must be returned to prominence through particular effort on the part of believers. Missionary zeal has been a trademark of Soka Gak- kai practice and is somewhat contentious in that its practice has in the past led to accusations of force and cult-like control of members. In the 1960s and 1970s, rumors of violent retribution against members who left or even criticized the organization were reported in the media. Shakubuku, or recruitment, was sometimes violent or coercive in nature, leading to speculation that the organization was really a violent cult and should be suppressed. Over time, it appears that this side of Soka Gakkai has softened under the rhetoric of global community, a theme frequently used by Ikeda in speeches and publications. The old premise that all religious practice other than that of Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism must be challenged has softened, paving the way for Soka Gakkai to take an inclusive approach to diversity and to integrate the organization successfully into new cultures and geographies. A third important aspect of practice is study. Originally created in the 1930s under the leadership of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, the organization started out as an alternative vision for education in Japan and continues to stress self-improvement through education and culture. Local meetings serve as occasions to chant together, to support each other through encouragement and shared experience, and to study about Buddhism and its benefi ts for individuals as well as humankind. Local, regional, and international conferences, exhibitions, and cultural and educational programs offer opportunities for members to learn about Buddhist doctrine and the collective goals of the organization. Further, the organization directly controls many educational facilities and is associated with a number of universities throughout the world. Members are encouraged not only to revolutionize their personal lives, but also to see themselves as able and effective activists within

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a global community. Practitioners believe that individual practice can change one’s life, and because everything in the cosmos is intercon- nected, that collective practice has the power to change the universe. This is grounded in the Buddhist understanding of karma, which can be described as action creating reaction through time and space. Based on the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, members believe that they can change their karma, that everyone has Buddha nature within, and that anyone can achieve either the Bodhisattva ideal or Buddhahood, the highest states of existence in Nichiren cosmology. Further, Soka Gakkai has taken the Buddhist doctrine of samsara, the cycle of birth and rebirth, and redefi ned it in such a way that enlightenment can be achieved within this lifetime. The goal is not to escape samsara and enter into nirvana, but rather to engage with the issues of this world and, through faith and practice, attain personal transformation that will, in turn, lead to solutions for global problems. Nichiren Daishonin (1222–1282) studied within the Tendai tradition of Mahayana Buddhism, and although he lost faith in the esoteric aspects of Tendai, he believed that the Lotus Sutra held the key to enlightenment. From Tendai he also accepted the idea of Ten Worlds, in which ten states coexist in the mind. Through devotion and correct practice, one can change the state of one’s mind and achieve Buddha- hood within this lifetime. He became interested in the Pure Land sect and, although never adopting the practice of nembutsu (chanting honor to the Buddha’s name), he did incorporate the idea of devotional chanting into his ideology and practice (Metraux 1988). The 13th century was a diffi cult time in Japan: political instability with samurai families warring for supremacy, a number of unusual natural disasters, and the menace of foreign invasions by the Mongols (in 1274 and 1281) all threatened Japan. These circumstances shaped Nichiren’s belief in mappō. Believing himself to be the Buddha who would show people the way to enlightenment through teachings appropriate to the time, he spent his life preaching to the people of Japan. Nichiren was a prolifi c writer and near the end of his life he produced his gohonzon, which is used by Soka Gakkai members as an object of worship and focus for meditation. While Nichiren’s message aimed at saving Japan, Soka Gakkai teaches that through chanting, studying the Lotus Sutra, and spreading this message to all people, the entire world can be saved.

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Soka Gakkai in North America

Soka Gakkai stands out as different from other Buddhist traditions in North America in two ways. First, it is a lay organization that, while maintaining adherence to the practices of Nichiren Buddhism, has severed ties with the monastic tradition of Nichiren Shoshu, the monastic sect with which the organization associated itself for the fi rst eight decades of its existence. Members of Soka Gakkai reject the idea that enlightenment is negotiated through the merit of monks or priests, and believe that all members have the capacity to change their own lives through practice and study. Second, Soka Gakkai members do not understand enlightenment as an escape from samsara or as a reward to be realized in future lives; rather than valuing detachment, they seek engagement with this world, believing that sincere practice and belief will bring secular rewards within their own lives, and that through individual and collective practice they can infl uence more diffuse goals of global peace and environmental integrity. The organization fi rst moved into North America with the Japa- nese wives of American servicemen. When Daisaku Ikeda, president of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), visited the United States in 1960, he advised these young women, who were faced with cultural and fi nancial problems, to engage with their challenges and triumph by developing their own self-reliance through learning English, getting their driver’s licenses, and becoming American citizens (Kimura 1999). It is this sense of engagement with the challenges of life that marks the organization throughout its development. David Chappell (2000: 299) claims there are 45,000 active Soka Gakkai members in the United States, and further asserts that “Soka Gakkai has become the largest and most racially diverse Buddhist organization in North America.” Since the 1960s, while other Buddhist sects remain predominantly of Asian descent, Soka Gakkai has drawn heavily from other segments of the population and has been particularly successful in attracting African American and Hispanic members. Most centers are located in large urban settings, and different cities tend to refl ect their own demographic composition in membership. Crediting this success to the organization’s emphasis on social development through cultural activities, a global vision, and social responsibility, Chappell contrasts this engagement with social issues to the solitary rituals of other Buddhist sects such as Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, or Vipassana.

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American Buddhist activist and author Clark Strand (2003) supports this position and argues that Soka Gakkai’s propagation success lies in the organization’s commitment to diversity and social reform. Strand suggests that this explains why Soka Gakkai has attracted large numbers of African Americans and members of gay communities. He claims that these demographic categories are not necessarily economically, educa- tionally, or politically marginalized but that they sense an acceptance of diversity not found in other Buddhist organizations. They also see Soka Gakkai as a platform of social reform that values and facilitates their capacity for activism. Canada’s membership of around 5,000 is concentrated mainly in urban areas, with the largest chapters located in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. Smaller chapters are scattered across the country and reﬂ ect the diverse populations of their varied communities. This chapter draws on my previous study of Soka Gakkai (2004). I am particularly interested in the processes through which the organization has developed from humble beginnings to a position where it appears to be a successful and still-growing global vehicle for social action. Along with reliance on the many textual resources available, this chapter is based on interviews and participant observation with the Edmonton, Alberta chapter of Soka Gakkai International-Canada.

The Edmonton Community Centre

There are approximately 75 members in the Edmonton chapter, ranging in age from a few very elderly women to a number of families with young children. Women outnumber men, and approximately half of the membership could be described as Asian, with members originally from Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, and Malaysia. English is the lingua franca of the group, but conversations range through several languages. People dress conservatively, are generally well groomed, and no one stands out as either ﬂ amboyant or tattered. People are friendly and respectful, gathering into small groups and chatting when they arrive, cooperating throughout the meeting, and departing with warmth and good wishes. The group draws from the city of Edmonton and surrounding suburbs, and this would be considered a fairly small chapter by comparison to one in a larger city like Toronto, Vancouver, or Montreal. Some

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members are relatively new to the practice, while others have been members for 25 years or more. Socioeconomic status within the group is likewise varied, as is educational background. Many are post-secondary students, some reside in Canada only to pursue their education, and many plan to return home when they fi nish their studies. The Edmonton Centre is located on the second fl oor of a commercial building near the downtown area; it consists of a foyer, a small offi ce space, and a large room set up for meetings and chanting. The most striking difference between this center and Buddhist temples I have visited is its simplicity. There are no statues of the Buddha and none of the intricate tapestries, paintings, or other iconography one might ordinarily associate with a Buddhist temple; only a large wooden altar at the front of the room indicates that this is a sacred space. Chairs, arranged in rows, face toward the altar where, set into a recessed case, is the gohonzon. The center’s membership is subdivided into districts, generally refl ecting geography (one is based on language), that hold monthly meetings in convenient locations. Further, the organization has interest groups, including the youth, young women’s, and student groups that tend to overlap with the districts. The monthly calendar is fi lled with chapter and district meetings, and I suspect that, with preparation for meetings, events, planning, and personal time spent supporting other members, a member could be involved most days of the week. Soka Gakkai does not ask members to do all of this, but it is available, so, one can be involved to the level that suits one’s lifestyle. There are no set dues to pay, and the material requirements for practice are minimal. Members are encouraged to donate a small amount of money toward upkeep of the center, but again, this is minimal and optional. They are expected to buy Soka Gakkai publications, especially New Century, a monthly magazine from Soka Gakkai-Canada, which features inspirational stories, mostly about members of the organization, updates on issues and programs at the national and international levels, and is used to structure the monthly study meetings throughout the country. The international organization controls substantial fi nancial resources, and uses these to support chapters throughout the world. Funding for projects and operational costs are fi ltered through national and regional levels to support local activities. Many chapters own their own buildings. For example, the Calgary and Vancouver centers both own their facilities, which were bought with funds from the larger organization.

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The Edmonton chapter rents its center, but both rent and upkeep are managed by Soka Gakkai-Canada. Expenses are tallied, paid locally, and then reimbursed for receipts. This is all carefully accounted for and these practices are meant to stave off criticism of the organization’s fi nancial position and association with political power, particularly within Japan (Aruga 2000; Magee 1995). Gifts or donations are accepted, but all of these are documented, and anonymous donations are fi rmly discouraged. Why do people join the organization? According to members with whom I have spoken, the answer varies. Many are introduced by friends and become involved because they like the people they meet in the group and also because the Buddhist philosophy attracts them. Some join because of a spouse who practices, while others relate that they joined during a diffi cult period of their lives and found support within the group. Still others were introduced by family members, and one young woman told me, with great pleasure, that she is “third generation Soka Gakkai.” Some said that they were exposed to the organization as children but remained uninvolved until they were in university or even older. In other words, the stories about why people join are as diverse as the members themselves.

Practice

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo [is the] ultimate Law or true essence of life permeating everything in the universe. Nam is the act of summoning Myoho-renge-kyo from within us and putting it into action in our lives and environment by chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Myoho is the power of revitalization, the emergence of the highest state of life—the Bud- dha state—from within us. Renge means lotus fl ower, and indicates the law of simultaneous cause and effect which consistently operates within all aspects of life. Kyo is the thread or link of life, connecting everything through sound and vibration throughout the three existences of past, present and future: specifi cally, the sound of the Buddha state, which is Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. (SGI-Canada 2001: 41) The Edmonton chapter holds meetings on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. Sunday meetings usually last about two hours and are more formal than Wednesday evening meeting. Meetings always begin with collective chanting for approximately one hour. The fi rst morning meeting of the month is called World Peace gongyo, the third is a Study meeting, and the fourth focuses on the children and planning.

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Wednesday meetings consist of one hour of chanting followed by a short discussion. At World Peace gongyo, someone is assigned to lead the meeting after chanting. Usually, members are called upon to give an “experience” or personal story that refl ects on how Soka Gakkai has created positive change within their lives. People are consistently encouraged to take advantage of the opportunity to make “determina- tions” or goals for themselves. This format allows people to share their problems and successes within a supportive structure, and also allows the group to encourage others and share in the processes of solving problems. Sometimes members will ask the group for help; for example, if someone is sick or in need of special prayers, the membership will be asked to direct their chanting toward a particular problem. Chanting can be directed in many ways, towards health, material success, good marks, a new car; again, the goals are as diverse as the membership itself. Belief in the effi cacy of chanting comes from the idea that Nam- myōhō-renge-kyō can impact karma, infl uence outcomes, and be directed at personal and specifi c goals, such as success on an exam, or diffuse universal goals like world peace and environmental integrity. During the meeting, the person leading the chanting sits in the front chair, facing the altar. Beside this chair is a large bell, inverted and settled into a padded cushion. The wooden butsudan or altar at the front of the room is both elegant and simple. The most important symbolic element in Soka Gakkai practice is the gohonzon, which sits above the altar. This scroll depicts Ten Worlds of existence throughout the cosmos and within each of us. Nam-myōhō-renge-kyo, written in the ancient Japanese script, is central and represents the ultimate law and “true entity of life that allows people to directly tap their enlightened nature” (SGI 2002). Directly below this is the character for Nichiren’s name, followed by the characters for zai gohan, or Nichiren’s personal seal, which would stand for his signature. Surrounding characters represent events from the Lotus Sutra. The four noble worlds of Buddhahood, Bodhisattva, Realization, and Learning are followed by the six lower paths of Heaven, Humanity, Anger, Animality, Hunger, and Hell. Soka Gakkai members believe that each of these states can be found within a person at all times, and this visual representation of the universe allows the practitioner to focus on emphasizing and encouraging the higher states to take precedence in one’s life. As members chant, they focus on this gohonzon as a means of changing their karma and achieving a better level of existence for themselves.

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As noted above, there are no images of the Buddha or of any of the founders of Nichiren Buddhism or Soka Gakkai. On each side of the altar are vases with green plants, and a large candle. On special occasions baskets of fruit are added to this display. At the front of the altar is an incense burner, although it is not used. I asked about that and was told that it was not used because some members were sensitive to the scent. This triad of evergreens, candles, and incense represents the three truths, the three properties, and the three inherent potentials of the Buddha nature: the Law, wisdom, and action (SGI 2002). The Vancouver Centre, which is much larger than the Edmonton one, is similar, but the latter’s altar is made of black lacquered wood and decorated with gold-colored designs, and its ornamentation are far more elaborate. Evergreens represent the property of action, the physicality of the Buddha, and the ability to interact appropriately with the environment. This allows humans to exhibit Buddha nature. Greens from the shishimi tree are used because the greenery is constant throughout the year and its wood is aromatic, creating a pleasant ambience for the altar. Shishimi leaves are a dark rich green, standing for the “unchanging steadfastness of believers’ faith” (SGI 2002). Sometimes, in lieu of the evergreens, fl owers are used as an offering, and I have seen this done at a personal altar in someone’s home. Candles represent the impermanence of life and also the property of wisdom as found in the Buddha’s enlightenment and in the potential for Buddhahood within all humans. The custom of candles is found in the Lotus Sutra, in which there are many examples where candles are used to offer light to the Buddha. In one parable, an old woman offers the Buddha light from her candle, which burns long after the lights of others have gone out. This is interpreted as fi nding the Bud- dhahood within each of us if the gift is given with love and sincerity. It also signifi es the defeat of darkness and ignorance, allowing humans to fi nd light or wisdom in Buddhism. Finally, burning candles “signifi es incinerating earthly desires and sparking of the fl ame of wisdom in the Buddha nature” (SGI 2002). The third offering is incense, representing the “truth of the Middle Way, the essential property of the Buddha’s life or the property of the Law, and the potential of our innate Buddha nature” (SGI 2002). Sticks of incense are laid fl at in a container at the center-front of the altar. In this position they represent the serenity of the space in which

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the gohonzon is located. The sticks are burned from left to right, creating a fragrant space for worship. At home, lighting candles and burning incense would accompany morning and evening gongyo. Burning incense spreading through the room also signifi es the universality of the Buddha’s Law. Stick incense is most commonly used, but for funerals and memorials, powdered incense is usually used (SGI 2002). In addition to these three offerings, fresh water may be placed on the altar each morning, then removed before evening gongyo. Food, often fruit, is offered on special occasions. This offering may be accompanied by ringing a “bell three times, plac[ing] one’s palms together, and chanting daimoku three times as a gesture of deep gratitude and appreciation” (SGI 2002). Each of these offerings gives tangible form to unseen meaning, providing a link to the intellectual understanding of ritual and belief, and possibly inspiring people to action due to the emotional element of the symbolism employed. Ritual in itself is symbolic, and shared understanding of ritual helps to create community and collective identity for the organization. While I have described a specifi c setting, this confi guration for the altar is fairly uniform in Soka Gakkai settings throughout the world. The chanting starts as a soft buzz that spreads through the room, and as members join in, the strong rhythmic chant gradually fi lls the room with concentrated energy. People hold their hands together in prayer, palm-to-palm in front of them. Most hold a circle of juzu beads, looped over the middle fi ngers of each hand and crossed over in the center. These 108 beads represent earthly desires and the human body; two strands at one end represent legs, and three at the other are arms and a head. In Nichiren Buddhism, the object is not to eliminate desires but to transform or purify these desires to create positive action and the desire to help others. These juzu beads aid in concentration, and “keep the benefi ts of practicing and chanting Daimoku [from] fall[ing] through.” Four small beads stand for the Four Leaders of the Bodhi- sattvas of the Earth, or the four virtues of the Buddha’s life: his true self, his purity, his boundless eternity, and his happiness. On four of the strands are jar-shaped beads, representing the “essential nature of all life, which is 3,000 worlds in a momentary existence, each one of which is a perfect manifestation of cause and effect.” These beads store the benefi ts accumulated through practice. The fi fth string of beads is for counting the number of daimoku chanted within a session (Nichiren n.d.).

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The Soka Gakkai Web site (SGI 2002) explains the use of a bell as a means “to offer a pleasing sound to the Gohonzon.” Bells are common ritual implements in Buddhist traditions and also in other Japanese religious traditions such as Shinto, in which the bell rings to catch the attention of the spirit world. In Buddhism, the bell is often understood to signify Wisdom, or the feminine aspect of the law. The Edmonton Centre’s bell is held in a cushion shaped like petals that hold the bell in place. Although it was not confi rmed, I expect that this bell, held by petals, symbolizes the lotus fl ower often represented in Buddhist temples. In fact, it looks like a lotus rising up out of its stand, with the petals of the cushion rising to hold the inverted bell like a fl ower. In this setting the symbolism points to the Lotus Sutra as well as to the lotus fl ower that rises from the murky depths to appear with great purity on the surface of a pond. While much cognitive information can be found in the symbol, the emotional effect of the bell ringing is not inconsiderable. As well, meaning attached to the bell is not confi ned to only one possibility; it is connected to the position of the interpreter, to the context in which it is used, and to the wider interpretation within Buddhism generally. Chanting of Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō continues until the leader, using the bell to mark changes in the sequence, signals for a stop; then, using the Gongyo book, which has Chinese characters as well as a Romanized script, as a guide, members chant from the Lotus Sutra and direct personal prayers to the gohonzon. At the end of chanting, the meeting turns to short pieces of entertainment, inspirational speeches, and general information shared within the group. Everything is done in a semi-formal way, with some participants taking on leadership roles and others supporting the proceedings. Special achievements are celebrated at this time, such as acknowledgement of an accomplishment or change of status within the group. This can include receiving a personal gohonzon, a rite of passage marking acceptance of Nichiren Buddhism and Soka Gakkai into one’s life. Study sessions comprise an important element of practice for all members. Not all members are equally interested in this aspect, but all are encouraged to participate and learn. On the third Sunday of the month, gongyo is followed by a Study Meeting, prepared and presented by members of the group. In Edmonton, members get together and discuss the presentation, but in larger centers, the preparation would be guided by more experienced members. The topic comes from New Century, and discussion is coordinated all across Canada, ensuring that

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all members have access to similar teachings and encouraging a sense of solidarity that is deliberate, not random, within the organization. Plans originate at SGI headquarters in Japan, from which they are dis- seminated to various countries and coordinated through the regions, down to individual centers and members. In this way, centers throughout the world are linked to the parent organization in Japan, creating a sense of connectedness that extends beyond political boundaries and encourages members to understand themselves as belonging to the stated ideal of a global community. At a national level, Edmonton chapter members can visit Caledon, a retreat and conference center in Ontario, to meet with other Canadian members, study, and take part in cultural events. From the accounts of several members, this is a very inspirational experience that takes participants out of the ordinary world and into a community of practitioners. It is, in that sense, a form of pilgrimage aimed at strengthening ties to the organization. Similarly, at the international level, members can attend conferences and share experiences with members from other countries. These conferences also offer opportunity for members to return and share their experiences with others. Again, like pilgrimage, it is not only the shared experience of the trip that is important and builds solidarity; it is also the stories that are brought back to those who stayed at home.

Growth of the Organization

Globalization is a multivalent word that elicits both positive and negative reactions; on the one hand it offers opportunity, while on the darker side we ﬁ nd ideas about homogenization of culture coupled with exploitation and western hegemony. Ulf Hannerz (1992) takes a positive view of globalization, arguing that it allows for ideas from the periphery to gain a voice that can inﬂ uence the centres of power. While Japan would never see itself as peripheral to world politics, Soka Gakkai is an example of how globalization has allowed a small social movement, rooted in a uniquely Japanese religious tradition, to gain access to a world audience. The organization uses technology to create a structure within which members see themselves as citizens of the world. Soka Gakkai has always understood the power of communication, and the capacity to

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communicate effectively has contributed signifi cantly to the organization’s spread throughout the world. Complex and sophisticated Web sites in many languages offer information on the various chapters and provide links to help people connect with other members and projects throughout the world. Soka Gakkai International (SGI) communicates through the written word. In Japan the organization publishes Seikyō Shimbun a daily newspaper with a circulation of 800,000 (Dobbelaere 2000; Komeito 2000). SGI magazines come out monthly and quarterly, while World Tribune is published weekly in the United States. SGI’s primary Web site (http://www.sgi.org) includes information on Buddhism in general, and a biography of Nichiren with as an outline of his teachings. The history of the organization is briefl y documented, information on current issues is available, and SGI’s monthly publication is featured. Articles are polished and articulate, revealing a level of sophistication in keeping with a successful, high-profi le, and contemporary global movement. In 1970, James White observed that the “tension between adaptation and integration [was] the primary potential problem facing the Society” (291). Over the nearly 40 years since his book, we can see how Soka Gakkai has drawn on cultural models that allow the organization to blend into the countries where it has established centers. For example, in Canada and the United States, large rallies that draw attention to the group are discouraged. Practice is private, in homes or in centers where people gather for collective chanting and encouragement. David Machacek (2000: 282) asserts that Soka Gakkai’s “compli- ance with American social institutions and a history of reforms [are] designed to make this Japanese religion look as American as possible” and has allowed the organization to grow without much controversy. By “adopting the conventions of everyday culture, Soka Gakkai was implicitly expressing its intent to comply with the widely accepted rules of behavior that govern American social life,” thereby avoiding “direct challenges to its legitimacy.” Machacek goes on to argue that this non-confrontational attitude has allowed Soka Gakkai to attract not only more members, but also members who have close ties to the existing establishment. The organization’s gift for communication is best seen in its network of publications, Web sites, video-recordings, and educational programs. Alberto Mellucci (1996: 109) argues that

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[s]ocial movements of modern and pre-modern historical periods were deeply rooted in the material conditions of their environment, and their capacity for a symbolic elaboration of this speciﬁ c context was comparatively lower than it can be today. The capacity for symbolization and for cultural representation of social action evolves directly in proportion to the social capacity to produce symbolic resources. A society which is highly dependent on its material environment consequently possesses a lower capacity to produce an autonomous cultural sphere. If this is true, then Soka Gakkai’s choice to downplay the importance of material culture and sacred geography may be as important to its success as its choice to inﬂ uence the world through education and its sophisticated communications network. Machacek and Wilson (2000) argue that studying Soka Gakkai helps us understand the changing position of religion in the world. Religion is increasingly involved in issues of social change, and the focus of this activism is increasingly global. Marx and McAdam (1994) echo this sentiment and cite religious organizations as frequent sources for both the ideology and structure for new social movements. Along with this is the increasing emphasis on lay involvement rather than monastic tradition and authority. As Christopher Queen and Sally King (1996) point out, engaged Buddhism, emphasizing activism and social change, is increasing throughout Asia, and Soka Gakkai is only one example of this phenomenon. This position sets Soka Gakkai into an existing context of social reform based in the non-violent and inclusive tenets of Buddhist tradition. Marx and McAdam (1994: 122) argue that the “globalization of protest” is ideologically driven, increasingly international in character, enhanced by the available structures of global political institutions such as the United Nations, and supported by overwhelming advances in communication technology. They see ideology as an increasingly relevant motivation for collective activism, and assert that social change is possible, especially if the goals are diffuse and encompass broad objectives based in a strong ideological framework. It appears that Soka Gakkai agrees with that assessment. Members believe that kōsen-rufu, or the spread of Buddhism throughout the world, can effect positive change in our world, and that if enough people are personally transformed to a higher level of existence, then a global community based in happiness and respect can be achieved. The organization does not look at globalization as a homogenization of culture, but as an opportunity for humankind to recognize collective potential for harmony.

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Social Action

Soka Gakkai has always promoted social change through education. The organization has a network of schools, ranging from kindergarten programs to universities. Some address special interests, such as a Women’s College in Japan and the Soka University Center for Envi- ronmental Research in Brazil. Soka University, near Tokyo, founded in 1971, hosts many international events that bring members together. It is a fully accredited university with a strong reputation in Japan. Its undergraduate program has about 8,000 students and a focus on international experience underlines the stated goals of creating global citizens. Attached to the campus are the Institute for Comparative Study of Cultures, the Institute for Peace Studies, and the Center for African Studies (Metraux 1996). In 1987, Soka University of America opened in Calabasas, just outside of Los Angeles. At present, this campus features programs at the graduate level and is associated with a second campus at Aliso Viejo, which opened for undergraduate liberal arts students in 2001. These centers claim to embody the concept of soka, or value- creation, by emphasizing humanism within a Buddhist context. In 1993, Ikeda established the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century to promote dialogue between scholars, activists, economists, and politicians in order to prevent wars and promote “respect for life and the earth” (Dobbelaere 2000: 249). This institute aims to foster “dialogue among scholars and activists on common values across cultures and religions [and] to support an evolving global ethic for a peaceful twenty-ﬁ rst century” (BRC 2001). The center works with universities and citizen groups to sponsor symposia, conferences, lectures, and other educational programs aimed at promoting global peace, human rights, and environmental ethics. The center provides curriculum resources for educational programs, many of which are aimed at promoting these core values in children. One example is the Center for Ecoliteracy, a program of “science education with an emphasis on the web of life and the natural habitat” emphasizing direct experiences as a means of helping children to understand the concept of environmental sus- tainability. It offers Internet support through publications, outlines for projects, teacher-training opportunities, and access to ﬁ nancial grants. The center involves itself not only in small grassroots projects, but also participates in large symposia and conferences to address issues of the environment, human rights, and world peace (BRC 2001).

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The international SGI organization supports cultural activities and is known for its generous support of music, literature, and art. The organization sponsors the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum in addition to conferences, symposia, and performances worldwide (Dobbelaere 2000). The Min-On Concert Association, founded by Soka Gakkai in 1963, also sponsors concerts, exhibitions, and cultural programs throughout the world (Metraux 1996). This focus on cultural development refl ects the idea that if one improves oneself, one improves the world. In 2004 the Edmonton chapter, in partnership with the local United Nations Association, brought Seeds of Change to Edmonton and organized its display at Grant McEwan Community College. This exhibition, which includes a poster presentation, photographs by Ikeda, and the video A Quiet Revolution, documents grassroots projects from Kenya, India, and Eastern Europe. Along with this, they co-hosted a conference on peace at the University of Alberta, and cooperated with the local Mahatma Gandhi Foundation in setting up the Gandhi, King, Ikeda exhibition for peace. In 2005, they brought Tell Me a Story, an exhibition aimed at literacy, to the city of Edmonton. Because the Edmonton group is fairly small, they limit their projects, but when they do host an exhibit or conference, the quality of the presentation and the commitment to community involvement are consistently high. Each of these programs was set up by the local organization, partnered by other local groups, and supported fi nancially by the national and international levels of the SGI organization. It is diffi cult to understand why a large and successful social movement, with well over 10 million members in countries throughout the world, can seem to be invisible, even when it has created relationships with powerful allies, established universities in Japan and North America, and collaborated in educational programs and cultural events that address some of the most important issues of our time. The organization’s stated goals seem exemplary, and Ikeda is hailed by many as one of the most infl uential and important peacemakers of our time—yet many seem wary of the motives of this infl uence. Scholars in the 1960s and 1970s (White 1970; McFarland 1970) were much more cautious in their evaluation of the merits of Soka Gakkai than are more recent scholars (Hurst 2000; Wilson and Machacek 2000; Metraux 1996, 2000). If the literature refl ects change in the organization, it suggests that coercive and sometimes violent practices of the past have been successfully transformed into a movement that sees personal revolution

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through the practice of Nichiren Buddhism as a means to achieving, not only personal social and material success, but also the larger goals of world peace and environmental integrity. In Japan, the organization is clearly involved in direct political action, but in other countries, grassroots activism, educational activities, and cultural displays are emphasized as a means to develop both personal and community strength. Soka Gakkai has committed itself to creating educational materials and settings that foster these goals, and its membership continues to grow steadily throughout the world. It has integrated itself subtly into communities in ways that do not threaten the integrity of existing institutions, making it possible to create part- nerships and work together for common goals. Marx and McAdam (1996) argue that people do not join social movements because they feel helpless or alienated from society, but that social movements are founded in places where ideas are discussed, frequently making universities and religious organizations the locus for ideology and activism. They cite idealism as the source of increasing numbers of nationalist movements, as well as the globalization of protest for human rights, environmental integrity, and world peace. Tony Meers, Soka Gakkai-Canada’s Director General (personal communication 2003), agrees with this assessment of ideology as a force for action. He believes that many people, young people in particular, are drawn to Soka Gakkai for ideological reasons, and that many young members are attracted by the ideals of world peace and environmental integrity, seeing the organization as a structure from which to express their concerns and to actively work toward these goals. This sentiment is consistent with the stated goals of members within the Edmonton group, and when I visited the Vancouver chapter, it was hard not to be impressed by the many young people who were actively involved with the meeting and its presentation, as well as the many others I observed participating in chanting and discussion groups. Soka Gakkai sees these young people as the future of the organization and this is clearly stated in local chapters, national directives, and messages that President Ikeda constantly presents to the far-ﬂ ung membership through written and visual media. This relatively strong youth participation in Soka Gakkai also contrasts with their roles among immigrant Buddhist groups in North America.

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Conclusion

There are many reasons for studying Soka Gakkai. As a social movement, it has been particularly successful in creating a large, diverse, and geographically scattered membership. It also appears to have successfully managed the transition from an emergent to a mature movement. Melucci (1996: 4) argues that social movements afford many possibilities for analysis and these include: ideology, processes of mobilization, organizational forms, leadership, and forms of communication. Ideology has always defi ned this group; members identify with the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin. For Soka Gakkai members, mappō is the present as foretold by the historical Buddha, and Nichiren is the Buddha of the present. The road to salvation is through enlightenment, in this world, of enough people to overbalance evil and bring peace and prosperity in our time. This state can be accomplished through faith in the Lotus Sutra as expressed in chanting Nam-myōhō-renge-kyō, shakubuku, and study. Practice is clearly laid out, with twice-daily prayers, frequent meetings, and opportunities to participate in both educational programs and social activism. Nichiren taught that collective action, through politics, could reverse mappō and create paradise on earth. This message has not changed as Soka Gakkai emphasizes the power of personal self-realization and a commitment to social issues for all of its members. The organization brings this ideology into practice through chanting, education, cultural activities, and political action. Soka Gakkai has expanded its horizons outside of Japan, not only through a growing international membership, but also by the creation of diplomatic relationships, a focus on global issues, and its alignment with prestigious organizations like the United Nations. Leadership has been a central issue for the organization. James White (1970) predicted a possible schism between the well-educated members that Soka Gakkai was trying to attract and members from less privileged backgrounds. This issue is often expressed in concerns about leadership and remains current. At the local level, from my observations, leadership is based on ability and the resources available to provide guidance. Sharing responsibility is encouraged, and there appears to be a conscious effort to spread the tasks among as many members as possible. As president, Ikeda continues to be a controversial fi gure, revered by the members, honored by many prestigious and powerful people and organizations, yet reviled by his critics (mostly in Japan). He is a frequent target of the media and is constantly guarded by security offi cers. As there is neither

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a clear successor nor a clear process for choosing one, there is concern about the future of leadership within the organization. After the death of Josei Toda, the second leader of Soka Gakkai, in 1958, there was speculation that the organization would fade away, but Daisaku Ikeda has shown himself equal to the task of taking the organization into the 21st century. As Richard Hughes Seager (2006) observes, Ikeda’s energy and presence are of great importance to members throughout the world. While Soka Gakkai prepares all members to act as mentors and, through its emphasis on education, enables people to improve themselves through participation at many levels, leadership itself seems to be a contentious issue in a society that values egalitarianism yet is hierarchically structured to maintain solidarity within a diverse and widespread membership. What is clear is that, when the time comes, there will be no shortage of capable people with the skills for the job. The question is more likely one of who will command the respect and support of the membership. Another question, which is not asked in any of the literature I have seen, concerns the role of women in future leadership. Already there has been criticism from the Women’s Division about the lack of female leaders in top jobs within the organization (Usui 2000: 153–204). While a few countries, including Canada, have had women at the highest levels of responsibility, men generally occupy the most important and inﬂ uential positions. It will be interesting to see how these issues of leadership and the role of women develop in the next decades as the organization continues to spread outside of Japan. Soka Gakkai’s communication networks set it apart from many social movements. The publishing capabilities and attention to education have allowed the organization to disseminate its message throughout the world. Many members are involved with the arts and have used their talents, resources, and connections to help produce educational materials of exceptional quality. Web sites are sophisticated, easily accessed, and a constant source of information to connect membership throughout the world. If, as Melucci says, communication is a key factor in creating ideology and constructing solidarity within a diverse membership, then Soka Gakkai’s attention to its communication networks is well justiﬁ ed. Again, Ikeda is an important image in this construction: his encouragements, his visage, and his ideology are constantly presented to the membership through video-recordings and printed materials. If Soka Gakkai continues to focus on creating a global membership, it will be interesting to watch the relationship between chapters in Japan

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and those outside of Japan. At present, while groups outside of Japan relate back to the central organization, members in Japan tend to focus more on the organization within their own country. It is possible that this might change as educational and cultural institutes in Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa continue to develop and create new relationships within the global community. Membership outside of Japan may become increasingly independent of the parent organization, or the Japanese membership may have increasing opportunities for exchange with members outside of their own country. This is already a focus for Soka University, but with two universities now open in the United States, there is increasing potential for this face-to-face exchange of ideas and collective action. It is likely that these changes will be heavily dependent on recruitment, not only the numbers, but also the demographics. Many Soka Gakkai members in Japan are aging, and while the organization claims to attract signifi cant numbers of young people, there is a risk that recruitment will not surpass attrition as older members die or become frail and unable to participate to any extent. With increasing emphasis on social diversity, the social agenda may shift to focus more on local and national projects, such as youth programs against urban violence, gay rights advocacy, and literacy. These programs are already in place for many chapters in the United States. It will also be interesting to watch how the organization will choose to exert political infl uence in countries, particularly when the relationship between Kōmeitō and Soka Gakkai has been so contentious in Japan. Will members become involved in the political structures, or will they be content to work behind the scenes with grassroots movements that infl uence through cultural and educational programs? Soka Gakkai appears to be thriving, not only in Japan, but throughout the world as well. However, even if members number in the millions, it would diffi cult to say that the Society is a fully established institution. These numbers, while impressive, do not represent a majority in any country, and Soka Gakkai practice remains both unconventional and peripheral to mainstream ideologies and religions. Soka Gakkai has, however, evolved from an emergent social movement into one that displays many of the features of a mature movement, which Marx and McAdam (1994: 95) characterize as “larger, less spontaneous, better organized, and largely led by formal organizations that have gradually come to replace the ad hoc committees and informal groups that directed the movement at the outset.” It has aligned itself with

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such prestigious groups as the United Nations, engaged in mainstream politics, and created an elaborate bureaucracy to support its large international membership. McAdam (1994) asserts that a social movement will have greater impact if it addresses broad social issues rather than narrowly focused local concerns. If this is true, Soka Gakkai’s policies on human rights, environmental protection, and world peace have the potential, not only to attract new members, but also to effect real change in the world. The message is appealing; it is easy to believe in mappō in a world touched by epidemics, war, and social injustice, and Soka Gakkai offers a solution accessible to anyone. Buddhism has always been a religion of missionaries who have taken their message out and adapted it to the needs of people in distant lands. Soka Gakkai has taken Nichiren Buddhism and created a message accommodated to the needs of the present and, while the organization is generally understood as peripheral to mainstream culture, it has made signiﬁ cant progress in making its voice heard throughout the world.

References

Aruga, Hiroshi. 2000. “Soka Gakkai and Japanese Politics.” Pp. 97–127 in Global Citizens: The Soka Gakkai Buddhist Movement in the World, ed. David Machacek and Bryan Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Boston Research Center for the 21st Century. 2001. http://www.Brc21.org/who.html, retrieved 31 January 2004. Chappell, David. 2000. “Socially Inclusive Buddhists in America.” Pp. 299–325 in Global Citizens: The Soka Gakkai Buddhist Movement in the World, ed. David Machacek and Bryan Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dobbelaere, Karel. 2000. “Toward a Pillar Organization.” Pp. 233–56 in Global Citizens: The Soka Gakkai Buddhist Movement in the World, ed. David Machacek and Bryan Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Geekie, Constance. 2004. “Soka Gakkai: A Contemporary Social Movement.” Master’s thesis, University of Alberta. Hannerz, Ulf. 1992. Cultural Complexity: Studies in the Social Organization of Meaning. New York: Columbia University Press. Hurst, Jane. 2000. “A Buddhist Reformation in the Twentieth Century: Causes and Implications of the Conﬂ ict between the Soka Gakkai and the Nichiren Shoshu Priesthood.” Pp. 67–96 in Global Citizens: The Soka Gakkai Buddhist Movement in the World, ed. David Machacek and Bryan Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ikeda, Daisaku. 2003. The Power of One. Toronto: Soka Gakkai International Associa- tion of Canada. Kimura, Keiko. 1999. Daisaku Ikeda Up Close. Video-recording, Owner’s Promotion Ltd. Komeito. 2000. “About Us.” http://www.komei.or.jo/eng/about/index.htm, retrieved 30 March 2003.

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Machacek, David. 2000. “Organizational Isomorphism in SGI–USA.” Pp. 280–98 in Global Citizens: The Soka Gakkai Buddhist Movement in the World, ed. by David Mach- acek and Bryan Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Machacek, David and Kerry Mitchell. 2000. “Immigrant Buddhists in America.” Pp. 259–79 in Global Citizens: The Soka Gakkai Buddhist Movement in the World, ed. David Machacek and Bryan Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Machacek, David and Bryan Wilson. 2000. “Introduction.” Pp. 1–12 in Global Citizens: The Soka Gakkai Buddhist Movement in the World, ed. David Machacek and Bryan Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Magee, Michelle. 1995. “Japan Fears Another Religious Sect.” San Francisco Chronicle 27 December: A1. Marx, Gary and Douglas McAdam. 1994. Collective Behavior and Social Movements: Process and Structure. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. McAdam, Douglas. 1994. “Culture and Social Movements.” Pp. 36–57 in New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity, ed. E. Larana, H. Johnston and F. Gusﬁ eld. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Melucci, Alberto. 1996. Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Metraux, Daniel. 1988. The History and Theology of Soka Gakkai: A Japanese New Religion. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. ———. 1996. “The Soka Gakkai: Buddhism and the Creation of a Harmonious and Peaceful Society.” Pp. 365–400 in Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, ed. Christopher Queen and Sallie King. New York: State University of New York Press. ———. 2000. “The Changing Role of the Komeito in Japanese Politics in the 1990s.” Pp. 128–52 in Global Citizens: The Soka Gakkai Buddhist Movement in the World, ed. David Machacek and Bryan Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nichiren. n.d. “The Signiﬁ cance of the Prayer Beads.” http://www.nichiren.info/nichiren/beads.htm, retrieved 19 December 2003. Queen, Christopher and Sallie King, eds. 1996. Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia. New York: State University of New York Press. Seager, Richard Hughes. 2006. Encountering the Dharma: Daisaku Ikeda, Soka Gakkai, and the Globalization of Buddhist Humanism. Berkeley: University of California Press. SGI. 2002. “The Gohonzon: The Object of Worship: Nature and Meaning of Offerings to the Gohonzon.” www.sgi-usa.org/Buddhism/library/Nichiren/Gohonzon/offering.htm, retrieved 12 December 2003. SGI Canada. 2001. “Glossary.” New Century July: 41. Strand, Clark. 2003. “Born in the USA: Racial Diversity in Soka Gakkai International.” Tricycle 13(2): 51–57. Usui, Atsuko. 2000. “The Role of Women.” Pp. 153–204 in Global Citizens: The Soka Gakkai Buddhist Movement in the World, ed. David Machacek and Bryan Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. White, James. 1970. The Sōkagakkai and Mass Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Wilson, Bryan and David Machacek. 2000. “Introduction.” Pp. 1–12 in Global Citizens: The Soka Gakkai Buddhist Movement in the World, ed. David Machacek and Bryan Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

NUMRICH_f10_203-224.indd 224 4/4/2008 4:34:47 PM AFTERWORD: MODERNIZATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND BUDDHISM

Joseph B. Tamney

A common sociological approach to the study of contemporary religion is to understand specifi c religions in relation to the process of modernization. The use of a theory of modernization framework would help to eliminate some of the obvious confusion in the literature on Buddhism, in which the same religious changes are described as “Protestantization,” or “Americanization,” or “Westernization,” or “modernization” (Tamney 2007). For example, changes described as Americanization in the United States are perceived as aspects of modernization in Asian countries (Yang and Ebaugh 2001: 283). Further confusion occurs because of the tendency in Asia to describe changes in terms of “reforming” Buddhism, even though the same changes are perceived as modernist elements both in Asia and elsewhere (Yang 2000: 70). As Yang wrote about the increasing power of women in Buddhist groups in the United States and in Taiwan: “This refl ects a general modernization trend to which Reformed Buddhism has been trying to adapt in both nations” (2000: 85). In effect, the reformers are developing a modernized version of Buddhism. Here I briefl y describe the modernization process and its implications for religion. Then I use these ideas to understand and integrate some of the fi ndings about Buddhism in this volume.

Modernization

Modernization, as I conceive it, has ﬁ ve basic components: technological development, societal expansion and increasing population density, structural differentiation (i.e., the appearance of new, independent institutions such as an independent “church” or a capitalist economy), the fragmentation of societal culture (pluralism), and the growing importance of the individual at the expense of groups. The last characteristic has two aspects: individuation and individualism. Individuation means a person has an identity apart from social

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roles and group memberships (Coser 1991). Hence, modernization is a process in which people are more and more self-conscious about a personal identity that is increasingly unique. This self-consciousness, in turn, gives rise to individualism, which is the cultural affi rmation of the value of the individual, of every individual. As Durkheim wrote: “individualism . . . is the glorifi cation not of the self but of the individual in general. It springs not from egoism but from sympathy for all that is human, a broader pity for all suffering, for all human miseries, a more ardent need to combat them and mitigate them, a greater thirst for justice” (Durkheim 1973: 48–49). Our understandings of the social implications of individualism continue to unfold. Late modernity is characterized by affl uence (a signifi cant middle class), the spread of tertiary education, and globalization. Late-modern people are more concerned about mental health, self-actualization, and defi ning the meaning of the good life once necessities are no longer an issue. Refl exivity characterizes this period of modernization. Life is no longer determined by fate or tradition, but by us. Nature, the social world, and the self are perceived as open to control, as opportunities for enacting our ideas. Nothing is sacred in the sense of being unques- tionable. Skepticism or doubting is the order of the day. Regarding the self, for example, we need to “defi ne” and “actualize” the self. Personal decisions are guided by our choice of lifestyle; what we eat, how we dress, leisure preferences, choice of work, choice of religion should be consistent with our lifestyle. Such choices would make us authentic, that is, true to our selves (Giddens 1991; Giddens and Pierson 1998). Globalization is the current stage of societal expansion, a basic feature of modernization. Globalization can be described in relation to personality, social structure, and culture. Individuals borrow from different cultures, a process Kumar (1995: 145) called “cultural cannibalization/” People may eventually come to think of themselves as citizens of the world. Structurally globalization means “an ever-densening network of interconnections and interdependences” (Tomlinson 1999: 2). Cultur- ally globalization means the weakening of any relation between place and cultural options; that is, the same options are available everywhere. More immediately, the process refers to the appearance of “globalized cultures”—that is, not a single global culture but cultures sharing some basic characteristics such as support for human rights. In the current global situation, all societies must react to the West because of the political-economic dominance of this region. The long-term implica-

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tion of globalization, however, is a decentering of the historical process (Tomlinson 1992: 29, 105; Waters 1995: 3–4). What is the American version of modernization? Tweed (1992) identi- ﬁ ed American culture with self-reliance, optimism about human nature and the possibility of social progress, and activism, that is, a willingness to engage in social action to change society. Perhaps it is self-reliance that most clearly distinguishes American modernity. Americans historically have believed that all can aspire to wealth, and this belief in the equality of opportunity “tends to isolate [people] from one another, to concentrate every man’s attention upon himself ” (Tocqueville 1954, vol. 2: 23). People who have the means to satisfy their wants in a society of equals believe they “owe nothing to any man, [and] they expect nothing from any man; they acquire the habit of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they are apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands”(vol. 2: 105). Indeed Americans, more than other Westerners, value independence and do not support an activist government (Economist 2003).

Modernization and Religion

In the development of the world religions, at least two historical periods stand out. My assumption is that modernity begins in the axial period. Until this period of world history (roughly 600 BCE to 200 CE), groups were more important than individuals, and thus behavior was good or moral if it beneﬁ ted a group. In traditional or “folk-religious” ethics, to use Gustav Mensching’s (1973: 84) term, values “are related to the welfare and security of the folk,” and “they have validity only within the domain of the particular folk.” Good and evil are what is valuable or harmful for the survival of a particular people. In pre- modern societies, people were aware of individual traits; for instance, some members of a group were recognized as outstanding hunters or as more creative individuals. But personal identity was primarily as a member of a speciﬁ c group. During the axial age, religions started to focus on the salvation of individuals, and religious ethics was increasingly understood as universally applicable. Traditionally religion was not the basis of community but one aspect of an ethnic community. In Chinese societies, for instance, community was rooted in the family, especially through ancestor worship and the

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clan cult. People went to spirit-mediums and to temples as individuals for magical purposes, but the key rituals concerned communal welfare. The “supremacy of kinship” meant that “the Chinese throughout all of their history, have developed few secondary groups outside their kinship boundary” (Hsu 1986: 35), including congregational forms of religion—that is, until recently: As Peter Berger writes, individuation is now occurring everywhere: “all sectors of the emerging global culture enhance the independence of the individual over against tradition and the collectivity” (2002: 9). As a result, traditional religions are too out of step with modernization to survive intact. During the last two centuries, world religions have divided into two camps based on their attitude toward the urban-industrial stage of modernization. On the one hand, traditionalists, or as they are often called “fundamentalists,” reject modernity. On the other hand, modernists, or as they are often called “liberals,” accommodate modernity. Specifi cally traditionalist religions try to eliminate three characteristics of modernization: structural differentiation (especially the separation of religion and the state), the fragmentation of societal culture (pluralism), and the importance of the individual at the expense of groups. Modernist religions emphasize individual responsibility for choosing a religious path, accept religious diversity, and perceive the essence of religion to be abstract ethical values such as love, justice, or peace, which construction allows these religions to accommodate the separation of religion and the state. Traditionalists self-consciously resist modernizing forces in order to create a society in which personal identity is as a part of the religious group, the group controls the state and through it all other institutions, and the group’s values and beliefs infuse and dominate all parts of the culture (Tamney 2002: 13). Traditionalist religions provide continuity with the past and a bridge to modernity. The most signifi cant break with the past is that traditionalist religions are the consequence of individuation. Religious affi liation is an individual choice, and the group, therefore, is a voluntary organization. Traditionalist religions have retreatist and activist versions: in the former, people want to withdraw from society and create their own world, and in the latter they want to transform society into Christian societies, Buddhist societies, and so forth. In practice, traditionalists vary in the extent to which they want to transform society. Traditionalist religions appeal especially to the lower class. By joining traditionalist groups, the poor in modernizing societies can feel better

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about themselves as members of a spiritual elite, gain access to spiritual power that could be used for such things as healing and overcoming alcoholism, cope with a sense of powerlessness by interpreting their lives in terms of the working of supernatural forces (e.g., God’s will), and end their frustration over being poor by denying any desire for worldly things. Today, people around the world are joining traditionalist religions for these, and other, reasons. When members of traditionalist religions become middle class, their expectations for religion change, and thus modernized traditionalist groups appear. Modernized tradititionalists accommodate modernity to a greater extent than pure traditionalists. For example, they are more accommodating of individuation and individualism. Illustrative of the accommodation of individualism might be the importance of therapeutic values; the relationships in modernized traditionalist groups might be meant to give individuals more self-respect and greater control over their lives. Such support for individualism within modernized traditionalism would, however, be limited. Even modernized traditionalists want to be in a congregation that values limiting the autonomy of the individual. They retain a sense of estrangement from modern society. The important point is that traditionalist religions are resilient in modern societies because they have subdivided into classic and modernized forms, and thus can appeal to a greater variety of people. Afﬂ uence is likely to change the religious expectations of people in modernist religions. Such individuals who are both no longer poor and powerless and also have the time and training to reﬂ ect are more likely to seek personalized religious paths. Thus, late-modernity is associated with weakening commitment to any organized religion and an increased interest in a variety of spiritual traditions (Lambert 1999). Individuation comes to mean that people design their own forms of spirituality. Traditionalist and modernist religions react to pluralism in different ways. The former assert their superiority over all other religions and seek to eliminate other religions; traditionalists divide into those who condemn other religions and those who are reluctantly willing to tolerate other religions. Modernists accept religious diversity. They are interested in religious dialogue and search for common ground. While some modernists continue to believe in the superiority of their religion, others perceive all religions, or at least the world religions, as equally valid or useful (Roberts 1995). In practice, both traditionalists and modernists accommodate modernity, albeit to different degrees. Such accommodations must be

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legitimated. The resulting process is considered a matter of religious puriﬁ cation, of rediscovering the essentials of a religion. A world religion, for example, would be separated from a folk culture, and especially from a folk religion; in practice, this separation usually means that magical practices would be eliminated and personal piety would be emphasized (Tamney 1980; Yang and Ebaugh 2001: 278).

Modernization, Globalization, and Buddhism

Many people who grew up with Buddhism consider it superstitious or backward—pejorative terms implying that Buddhism is incompatible with modernity (Tamney 2005: 5; Tamney and Chiang 2002: 179–80). Today there is a self-conscious process of modernizing (or, as the process is sometimes called, “reforming”) Buddhism throughout Asia and in the United States. Generally Asian American Buddhist groups, at least initially, approxi- mate a traditional form of religion. In Japan, for instance, Buddhism was just an aspect of an ethnic identity. Appropriately, individuals were trained to think of themselves as a part of a group. Tetsuden Kashima described the Japanese interpersonal style of the Nisei, who were born in the United States during the ﬁ rst half of the last century: preference was given to group decisions over individual expressiveness; people desired consensus; and individuals showed “exceptional attentiveness to the attitudes of others.”1 This style expresses a fundamental aver- sion to interpersonal conﬂ ict and the importance of maintaining group harmony. Unsurprisingly both Christian and Buddhist churches could attract Japanese immigrants because they valued putting the group ahead of the individual, as he notes.2 As would be expected, religious congregationalism was not been important in Japan because traditionally individuals experienced group support as a part of the basic fabric of local societies. Asian American Buddhist groups serve their members by preserving traditional cultures: encouraging the wearing of traditional clothes, preparing ethnic foods, using ethnic languages, and learning ethnic

1 When a researcher’s name appears without a date of publication, this indicates that I am referring to an essay in this volume. 2 Of course, this attitude is more characteristic of traditionalist forms of religion.

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cultural practices, such as dances and music (McLellan). Even the Taiwanese immigrants studied by Chen, who want to modernize Bud- dhism, practice in temples that preserve aspects of traditional culture: participants speak Chinese (Mandarin or Taiwanese), celebrate Chinese celebrations, and take classes on Chinese language and other Chinese cultural topics. Unfortunately it is unclear from the research whether these practices actually preserve the traditional culture or represent a form of “cultural cannibalization.” In addition, these Asian American Buddhist groups have encouraged traditional religious practices: accumulating merit for a better rebirth, seeking help from deceased enlightened Buddhists, and ceding authority to the monks; the last trait follows from maintaining a fundamental distinction between the religious specialist and the layperson, whereby only the former use the technology of enlightenment (Coleman). McLellan suggests that as the second generation ages, gets married, and suffers the death of loved ones, they will accept more traditional ways because of the appeal of traditional life-cycle rituals. But modernization does not predict the wholesale destruction of traditional religions, only the declining appeal of characteristics incompatible with the essential elements of modernization. Undoubtedly Buddhists in the United States and elsewhere are developing a modernist form of Buddhism. This change is the result of the modernization of traditional societies, of state policies (especially in mainland China), of challenges from Christianity, and of the increasing contact of Asian Buddhists with Western Buddhists.3 The goal is to appear “modern” and thereby to attract more members (Eng 2003: 280). The same issues concern both second-generation Asian American youth and non-Asian Buddhists who are trying to “Americanize” Buddhist teachings and institutions. Younger, better-educated Asian American Buddhists accuse older Buddhists of “being too ritualistic and superstitious in their religious belief and practice, particularly those who focus on ceremonial sutra chanting, merit-making, appeals to the power and inﬁ nite compassion of Bodhisattvas, healing or protective rituals, and the use of various divination techniques” (McLellan). “Backward” Buddhism is not concerned with the spiritual development of the

3 For a discussion of state inﬂ uence on the modernization process in mainland China, see Yang and Wei 2005.

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layperson but with improving the material conditions of the individual or group (family or community) or with improving the chances of a better life after rebirth. Modernist Buddhism as described by Chen and others (Eng 2003; Tamney and Chiang 2002; Tamney 2007) has these elements:

– A stronger role for the laity, including women; establishment of lay Buddhist groups; Buddhist youth “are particularly hostile to the hierarchical and unapproachable attitudes of the monastic sangha, preferring teachers with whom they can ask questions, share ideas, argue, and even joke or play sports” (McLellan). – Groups exemplify Warner’s “de facto congregationalism;” they are voluntary communities; being a Buddhist is an achieved not an ascribed status (Bankston and Hidalgo). – An emphasis on creating an earthly Pure Land; engaging in social welfare programs and efforts to protect the environment; – Developing ties to global Buddhism and loosening ties to a single culture; – An emphasis on personal spiritual development, especially by studying the scriptures and practicing meditation. As Eng put it, a new generation of Singaporean Chinese sees “their religious needs as personal, no longer tied to the religious needs of their families or community. Thus, religion, to many of them, is a personal quest for spiritual- ism” (2003: 7). “Meditation-Buddhism” in the United States, like “reform Buddhism” in Asia, focuses not on beliefs or rituals or right behavior but gaining the experience of enlightenment through using the “technology of liberation,” especially meditation (Coleman).

In addition, Asian American Buddhist groups are faced with the challenge of helping their members adjust to a generally modern environment in which, for example, democratic families are the norm. Thus Asian American youth want “the development of non-traditional mechanisms for social control and conﬂ ict resolution in the families” (McLellan). These traits of modernist Buddhism are consistent with individuation, the importance of self-actualization, and the belief that a quality life is possible. Are there traits of modernist Buddhism in the United States that are distinctive of American Buddhist groups? Regarding self-reliance, Tweed claimed that Buddhism was as American as “robber barons and inventors, pioneers and cowboys” (1992: 132). However the afore-

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mentioned characteristics are not unique to the United States. Future research might look into whether Buddhist groups in the United States do show the inﬂ uence of an unusual cultural emphasis on self-reliance. Of course, it is also possible that in late-modernity this emphasis is in decline even in the United States (Tamney 2002). Little is known about the motivations of American Buddhists. Ear- lier research suggests that meditation appealed to white Americans as a way to improve mental health, as a means of personal growth, and as a source of an experientially based morality (Tamney 2007: 185–7, 189). More in-depth research is needed on the appeal of Buddhism, especially of meditation and similar practices. Coleman predicts Buddhist groups in the United States will become eclectic, blending beliefs and practices from Zen, Tibetan, and Vipas- sana traditions. However most Tibetan groups favor a “hot,” that is emotional, form of Buddhism. As Coleman says, it is not easy to blend “hot” Buddhism with the “cool” Buddhism of the other traditions, in which stillness is so important. Analyses of late-modernity would suggest that the blending is more likely to occur at the individual level rather than within groups. Adjusting to modernizing societies and globalization, as well as trying to attract converts in new cultural settings, pressures religious specialists to rethink the nature of their religion: what is essence and what is accident. In the American context, a distinction is being made between “ethnic Buddhism” and “pure” Buddhism (Numrich 1996: 61; see also Cadge 2005). For instance: “Tibetan spiritual leaders [in the United States] during the 1970s began exploring what in their religion was universally valid, and what was merely ‘Himalayan dogma’ and which therefore could go” (Paine 2004: 15). Monks agonize about changing monastic rules; supposedly changes are admissible regarding “minor” rules, but there is no agreed-upon understanding of what constitutes a “minor” rule (Numrich 1996: 50–2). Indeed, attempts to deﬁ ne pure Buddhism objectively or specify what rules are minor is futile. Chen studied well educated, middle-class Taiwanese immigrants. About 25 percent of Taiwanese Americans are Christian. So these immigrants are under pressure to defend their choice of Buddhism. They wanted both to establish superiority over Taiwanese American Christians and to appeal to white Americans. In Taiwan, they had perceived Buddhism as backward, superstitious, and for uneducated people—as more Chinese than Buddhist. For example, in Taiwan many Buddhists worship Ma-tzu (a goddess in Chinese folk religion), but this

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is not Buddhism; others burn incense in Buddhist temples to gain favors, but this is not Buddhism. Thus the immigrants sought to practice not a form of Buddhism that emphasized continuities with their homeland but a form that was “modern, western, and American.” These Tai- wanese claimed that they discovered a pure form of Buddhism in the U.S. “Pure” means a form of Buddhism that transcends culture. Not coincidentally, “pure” Buddhism turned out to be a form of the religion that is compatible with a modern, educated person’s outlook. In the United States (and probably in the West generally) middle-class people are attracted to modernist Buddhism. This attraction does not mean that they will become Buddhists. Some will simply study with a Buddhist teacher or read books about Buddhism but not consider themselves part of the Buddhist community, while others will self-identify as “Buddhist” (McLellan). What about Asian Americans? It is unlikely that traditional groups as such will endure. The question is whether Asian American Bud- dhist groups, assuming they survive, will evolve into traditionalist or modernist versions of Buddhism. Some Asian Americans stay within ethnic Buddhist communities “as a buffer against prejudice and hostility from the larger society” (McLellan). Of course, such participants may express only a “symbolic religiosity.” But a hostile social environment might encourage the development of a retreatist version of traditionalist Buddhism. Moreover working-class Asian Americans might fi nd in traditionalist Buddhist groups some of the same benefi ts that have made this form of religion appealing to this social class globally. Many essayists in this volume provide evidence that Buddhism is a global religion. International Buddhist groups have temples in the United States. Monks fl ow between Asia and America. In a globalizing world, American Buddhists are likely to have infl uence out of proportion to their number because of their wealth, the organizational skills and technological expertise that they are acquiring, and the dominant position of the United States in the current world system (Yang and Ebaugh 2001: 284). More research is needed on the global infl uence of American forms of Buddhism.4

4 However Soka Gakkai leaders in Japan are less interested in what Soka Gakkai members outside of Japan are doing than non-Japanese members are interested in developments inside Japan (Geekie). How common is this difference within Buddhist groups?

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Buddhist-Christian Competition

Because people live in more pluralistic societies and because of globalization, competition among religions has increased. In the case of Buddhism, the competition is mainly with Christianity both in the United States and in other countries. American Buddhists must not only adjust to the dominant culture, but also compete with Christians for people’s allegiance. Asian American Buddhists are very aware of the competition. Kim studied a Korean Buddhist temple, in which the sermons included the unusual element of a comparison with Christians, and the practitioners defi ned themselves in contrast with their co-ethnic Protestants. The competition is affected by the resources available to each religion and by their relative degree of fi t with modernity. Christian groups have more resources and have rationalized the proselytization process (Yang and Tamney 2006).5 In addition, Christianity has an advantage because it has had to adjust to modernity earlier than Buddhism. Competitive advantage is affected by the “Buddhist handicap”: a lack of urgency about religious growth (Tamney 2007). A consequence of belief in karma and rebirth is the attitude “that everyone has endless time to reach nirvana and that people can accept Buddhism only when their karma is good” (Tamney and Chiang 2002: 181). An Asian monk in America explained that the acceptance of Buddhism is “a matter of karma and of the spiritual maturity of sentient beings. If they are not ready ‘to become the vessels of the Dharma,’ it is useless to try to impose anything on them” (Nguyen and Barker 1998: 142). Fenggang Yang reported that parents attending a Chinese Buddhist temple did not pressure their children to practice Buddhism because they believed that such a commitment “depends on each child’s karma” (2002: 85). Not surprisingly, at the temple studied by Kim, there were no outreach activities or orientation sessions for newcomers to the temple. Thus, Buddhism has not encouraged proselytizing. Many Asian Buddhist immigrants from countries with Buddhist populations know little about Buddhism. Moreover, most Asian Buddhist communities depend on monks from the homeland, but it is diffi cult to fi nd such monks who are “bilingual (homeland language and English

5 See the articles in the Summer 2006 issue of Sociology of Religion (vol. 67, no. 2) for more details.

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or French), well-educated, and fl exible in their approach to Buddhism” (McLellan; see also Kim). At the temple studied by Kim, the religious education program was poor, although 131 Korean families participated in temple activities. American-born Koreans are put off by the lack of English-language programs. They are vulnerable when they go to college. “Buddhist Korean Americans arrive on campus as a notable minority, with little instructional background and little contact with other Buddhist students” (Kim). Many Asian Americans marry non- Buddhists (McLellan; Bankston and Hidalgo). Not surprisingly many children reared in Buddhist families cease to think of themselves as Buddhists. The future of Buddhism in the United States seems limited (Tamney 2007: 192–93). A new attitude toward proselytizing is appearing among Buddhists, however, in some locations. In Singapore and Taiwan, Buddhist growth is associated with greater outreach efforts, such as monks appearing on television, organizing college campus groups, and running summer camps for college students (Eng 2003; Sha and Shen 1996). A Chinese Buddhist temple in Houston has engaged in extensive outreach activities. “While the temple is open to all people who want to come, monks and lay leaders actively recruit people to join, and design programs to increase their participation and commitment” (Yang and Ebaugh 2001: 274). Many outreach programs at Buddhist temples show the infl uence of Christianity—summer youth camps, after-school programs (McLel- lan). What are the spiritual consequences, if any, of such changes? Does outreach affect Buddhist beliefs or does change in beliefs precede the elimination of the “Buddhist handicap,” or do both processes occur? East Asian Buddhists would seem especially open to conversion to Christianity because a specifi c religious identity does not seem to be an essential part of their ethnic identities. For example, unlike the South Asians, the Chinese do not identify their culture with Buddhism: “Chi- nese identity has not included a specifi c religion; rather the Chinese identify with a culture, part of which has been called Confucianism, part of which is Buddhist or Daoist, and part of which is a vaguely defi ned folk religion” (Tamney 1996: 40; see also Tamney and Hassan 1987: 41). Many Chinese Buddhist immigrant parents “place moral and cultural education above religious education. They bring their children to the temple to learn Chinese language, moral values, and behavioral proprieties” (Yang 2002: 85). Among the Chinese, culture is more identifi ed with a moral code than with a religion.

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Given the extraordinarily high percentage of Japanese living in Japan who do not identify with a speciﬁ c religion (see Table 10 in Kashima’s chapter), the same seems to be true of the Japanese. Kashima believes that there was harmony between Japanese Christians and Japanese Buddhists, in part, because religious identity was not so important, at least to the Buddhists. In contrast, Buddhism is an integral part of many South and Southeast Asian cultures. Yet it must still be the case that Christianity is perceived as foreign by all the Buddhist immigrants. Among the Chinese, Christianity is understood as preventing the performance of traditional duties associated with ﬁ lial piety and ancestor worship; however such duties are likely to decline in importance with modernization. In addition, however, Chinese have been repulsed by the Christian doctrine of sinful human nature, the idea of eternal punishment, and the perceived lack of tolerance among Christians (Tamney and Chiang 2002: 177). Several authors in this volume comment on the lack of tolerance. Taiwanese American Buddhists feel excluded from social circles of their Christian counterparts, who stigmatize Buddhism as superstitious (Chen). Accord- ing to Kim, Christians perceive the members of the Korean temple she studied as backward: “Virtually every temple member has a story of how they were hurt, offended, or annoyed by the overzealous recruiting efforts of Korean Christians.” The Taiwanese Buddhists studied by Chen responded to the competitive situation by asserting the superiority of Buddhism over Chris- tianity. They appreciated Buddhism because it encourages individuals to discover truth on their own through such practices as meditation. “Taiwanese American Buddhists describe themselves as embracing American qualities of individuality and independence even more than Christians.” Again, Buddhism was described as more tolerant, and as more in line with equality than Christianity. “In Buddhism everyone has the potential of becoming a Buddha, whereas, as they often hear tell, in Christianity only Christians can go to heaven.” As these comments make clear, these immigrants identify Christianity with a traditionalist form of that religion. Asian Americans apparently encounter mainly traditionalist Christian- ity. It does seem true that traditionalist Protestantism has appeal because it is understood as supporting a traditionalist morality, thus offering continuity with traditional Chinese culture (Yang 1998). However some of the aforementioned traits of traditionalist Christianity—the belief in

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sinful human nature, the lack of tolerance of other religions—do seem inconsistent with modernization, especially the acceptance of pluralism, of individualism, and of the importance of self-realization. What, then, do these immigrants think of the Christian Right, the epitome of traditionalist Christianity in the United States? Are the middle-class immigrants drawn to modernized traditionalist Christianity? Moreover what about Asian Americans, especially those in the middle class, who encounter modernist Christianity? How do modernist Bud- dhists compare their form of Buddhism with modernist Christianity? Has the Christian cooptation of meditation (Tamney 1992) weakened the appeal of modernist Buddhism? There has been research about criticism of Christianity by white American converts to Buddhism (Tamney 2007). How does this criticism compare with that made by Asian American Buddhists?

Conclusion

Nishimura’s essay shows the importance of specifi c historical factors, which are diffi cult to predict using an abstract theory, such as modernization theory. For example, racial prejudice and discrimination against the Japanese in the early twentieth century had surprising consequences for the Japanese Buddhist Mission of North America. In the short term, white attitudes led to immigration policies that ended Japanese labor migration, which had been the source of new members in the churches. However in the long term, the curtailment of immigration led to Japanese importing brides and setting up families, who became the backbone of the churches. In this essay, I have in effect assumed that people can be identifi ed with a single religion. However, according to McLellan, Asian immigrants are involved in multiple religions—Buddhism, Christianity, and Confucianism. They may belong to a Christian church, send children to an after-school Confucian-modeled education program, observe Bud- dhist holidays such as Buddha’s birthday, and perform Buddhist rituals for deceased ancestors. But there are two ways of understanding such mixing. On the one hand, it may refl ect a traditional understanding of religion; that is, a person should use whatever gods seem useful, as long as the various activities do not undermine one’s ethnic identity. On the other hand, such mixing may refl ect a late-modern willingness to

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combine religious beliefs and practices that are compatible with one’s lifestyle. In other words, mixing religious elements can have two quite different meanings. Of course, it is possible that people will shift from one meaning to another without changing their religious behavior in signiﬁ cant ways. Uniquely among Buddhist groups, Soka Gakkai has attracted people with various educational levels, African Americans, and Hispanics (Geekie). Perhaps such diverse appeal is a result of Soka Gakkai’s message. The goal is personal transformation that will lead to secular rewards and to solutions for global problems, such as global peace and saving the environment. It would be interesting to study the appeal of Soka Gakkai within a framework that included a comparison of the appeal of modernist Buddhism to white middle-class America and the attraction of Islam to African American (working-class?) America. A major contribution to modernization theory could be made by Buddhist scholars who would systematically compare modernist Bud- dhism in the United States, in other Western countries, and in Asian societies. Such an analysis would help theorists distinguish universal modernization from American, Western, and Asian versions of modernity. Likewise, a comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of traditionalist Buddhism, modernist Buddhism, traditionalist Christianity, and modernist Christianity would signiﬁ cantly advance our understanding of the competitive forces that are shaping the relative popularity of the world religions.

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Carl L. Bankston III is Professor and Chair in the Department of Sociology and Co-Director of the Asian Studies Program at Tulane University. He has published fourteen books and over one hundred journal articles and book chapters. His books have received the Thomas and Znaniecki Award of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association, the Louisiana Library Association Literary Award, and the Stanford M. Lyman Distinguished Book Award from the Mid-South Sociological Association.

Carolyn Chen is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Asian Ameri- can Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience (Princeton University Press 2008). Her research interests include religion, race, ethnicity, and immigration. She is now working on a new project that examines yoga, health, and spirituality in the United States.

James W. Coleman is a Professor of Sociology at California Poly- technic State University in San Luis Obispo. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of California Santa Barbara. In addition to numerous articles on criminology and the sociology of religion, he is the author of The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition (Oxford University Press 2001), The Criminal Elite: Understanding White Collar Crime (Worth Publishers 2006 [6th edition]), and Social Problems (Prentice-Hall 2006 [9th edition]), with Harold R. Kerbo.

Constance Lynn Geekie has been an Instructor on the Nursing faculty of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, since 2001. She holds undergraduate degrees in both anthropology and nursing, and is now a doctoral candidate in anthropology. Her work on Soka Gakkai formed the basis for her master’s thesis in anthropology, while her current research explores the effects of cultural constraints and collective social action on the lives of women in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania, with respect to their health and well-being.

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Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California Santa Barbara, specializing in gender, sexuality, and South- east Asia. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, she recently co-edited with Kristen Barber Narrating the Storm: Sociological Stories of Hurricane Katrina (Cambridge Scholars Press 2007). She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Mid-South Sociological Association’s Graduate Student Paper of Distinction Award as well as the MSSA’s Stanford M. Lyman Dissertation Scholarship.

Tetsuden Kashima is a Professor in the University of Washington’s Department of American Ethnic Studies and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology. His father, Tetsuro Kashima, was a Nishi Hongwanji Jodo Shinshu Kaikyoshi, and Tetsuden grew up within various Buddhist Churches of America temples. His doctorate in sociology is from the University of California San Diego, and he has authored Buddhism in America: The Social Organization of an Ethnic Religious Institution (Greenwood Press 1977) and Judgment Without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II (University of Wash- ington Press 2003).

Karen Chai Kim’s research focuses on the intersection of religion and race/ethnicity. She received her master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University, following a bachelor’s degree in sociology and Japanese studies at Wellesley College. She is currently a research afﬁ liate at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin.

Janet McLellan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her book on Japanese Canadian, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Chinese Buddhist communities in Toronto, Many Petals of the Lotus: Five Asian Buddhist Communities in Toronto (University of Toronto Press 1999), won the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association’s John Porter Memorial Book Award in 2000. A forthcoming book on Cambodian refugees in Ontario refl ects a fi fteen-year analysis of fi rst- and second- generation adaptation and integration. Her current research involves a study of Buddhist meditation centers in rural North America.

Arthur J. Nishimura is an Instructor at City College of San Fran- cisco. He completed his doctoral dissertation, “Religion, Ethnicity, and

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Organization: An Organizational Analysis of the Buddhist Churches of America,” at the University of Washington in 2003.

Paul David Numrich is Chair of the Program in World Religions and Inter-Religious Dialogue, Theological Consortium of Greater Columbus, Ohio, and Afﬁ liate Research Associate Professor in the McNamara Center for the Social Study of Religion, Department of Sociology, Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples (University of Tennessee Press 1996), recipient of the Distinguished Book Award of the Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association, and co-author of Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs in America: A Short History (Oxford University Press 2007), with Gurinder Singh Mann and Raymond B. Williams, and Sacred Assemblies and Civic Engagement: How Religion Matters for America’s Newest Immigrants (Rutgers University Press 2007), with Fred Kniss.

William H. Swatos, Jr., has served as Executive Offi cer of the Association for the Sociology of Religion since 1996, prior to which he served for six years as editor of Sociology of Religion, the ASR’s offi cial journal. He is also executive offi cer of the Religious Research Associa- tion, adjunct professor of sociology at Augustana College (Illinois), and senior fellow of the Center for Religious Inquiry Across the Disciplines at Baylor University, serving as managing editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion. A doctoral alumnus of the University of Kentucky, Bill is author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of over twenty books including the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society (Alta Mira 1998). His current research centers on pilgrimage religiosity, secularization, and resacralization, refl ected in his most recent book, On the Road to Being There: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity, also published in the Religion and the Social Order series (2006). With Kevin Christiano and Peter Kivisto he has written the text Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments (Rowman & Littlefi eld 2008 [2nd edition]).

Joseph B. Tamney is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Ball State University (USA) and Associate Fellow of the Life Cycle Institute at Catholic University of America. He received his B.S. and M.A. from Fordham University and his Ph.D. from Cornell University. He was a member of the Editorial Board for the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, editor of Sociology of Religion (1994–2000), and president of the

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Association for the Sociology of Religion (2003–4). His published works include: The Resilience of Christianity in the Modern World (SUNY Press 1992), American Society in the Buddhist Mirror (Garland 1992), The Struggle Over Singapore’s Soul: Western Modernization and Asian Culture (Walter de Gruyter 1996), The Resilience of Conservative Religion (Cambridge Uni- versity Press 2002), and with Linda Hsueh-Ling Chiang, Modernization, Globalization, and Confucianism in Chinese Societies (Praeger 2002).

NUMRICH_f12_243-246.indd 246 4/4/2008 4:35:12 PM Religion and the Social Order

Edited by William H. Swatos, Jr.

ISSN 1610–5210

The series Religion and the Social Order was initiated by the Association for the Sociology of Religion in 1991, under the General Editorship of David G. Bromley. In 2004 an agreement between Brill and the ASR renewed the series.

11. State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies. 2005. Edited by Fenggang Yang and Joseph B. Tamney ISBN 978 90 04 14597 9 12. On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity. 2006. Edited by William H. Swatos, Jr. ISBN 978 90 04 15183 3 13. American Sociology of Religion: Histories. 2007. Edited by Anthony J. Blasi ISBN 978 90 04 16115 3 14. Vocation and Social Context. 2007. Edited by Giuseppe Giordan ISBN 978 90 04 16194 8 15. North American Buddhists in Social Context. 2008. Edited by Paul David Numrich ISBN 978 90 04 16826 8 16. Religion and Diversity in Canada. 2008. Edited by Lori G. Beaman and Peter Beyer 978 90 04 17015 5 (In Preparation)

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