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Reflections on Buddhist Demographics in America: An Initial Report on the First American Buddhist Census

by J. Gordon Melton and Constance Jones

A paper presented at the conference of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture meeting in Washington, DC, April 2-4, 2009.

Beginning in 1971, scholars associated with the Glenmary Research Center engaged in a decade by decade attempt to measure church and synagogue membership in the United States. With the cooperation of the Office of Research, Evaluation and Planning of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, the Department of Research and Statistics of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the 1971 research began with churches and synagogue associations listed in the Yearbook of American Churches and has steadily expanded from that base. The effort to measure membership immediately ran into problems of gaining the cooperation of the various church communities (denominations) and in 1970, for example, of the several hundred denominations listed in the YAC, only 53 cooperated with the study. That number more than doubled to 111 in 1980. The 1971 study was of exclusively Christian groups, while both the Conservative and Reform Jews joined in the 1980 study. The 1990 and 2000 studies were also limited to Christian and Jewish groups though the number of participants has steadily grown.1 For the upcoming “2010 Religious Congregations and Membership Study,” the Glenmary Research Center and the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (which had become a part of the ongoing effort in 1990) decided to further expand the data gathering to include the Asian American religious communities, specifically the Buddhist and Hindu communities (and the associated smaller Asian religions such as the Taoism, Shinto, Jainism, Sikhism, and Sant Mat). The Institute for the Study of American Religion (ISAR) based in Santa Barbara, California, was selected to conduct this part of the census, and responsibility was assigned to J. Gordon Melton, ISAR’s director, and Dr. Constance Jones, a member of the board.2 This paper represents a first report on the census effort relative to the Buddhist community.

1 See Bernard Quinn et al, Churches and Church Membership in the United States 1980 (Atlanta, GA: Glenmary Research Center, 1982; Martin B. Bradley, et al, Churches and Church Membership in the United States 1990 (Atlanta, GA: Glenmary Research Center, 1992). 2

The overall goal of the religious membership study is to provide a count on the number of adherents of the different denominations and religious associations on a county-by-county and state-by-state basis for the United States. The focus has been placed on the local centers and membership reported for both full members and the larger constituency of adherents for each local church/temple/center. For this study, emphasis is placed on communal gatherings and participation and the reported support experienced by each local center. Reporting will be done by the zip code of the location of the group’s meeting place, a factor which has significant implications for Buddhism, as most Buddhist groups still meet in rented facilities and a number of American Buddhist groups meet in borrowed facilities that may vary from week to week. Thus, the ultimate assignment of the study relative to Buddhism is (1) to produce a list of all the Buddhist groups currently gathering in the United States organized in zip code order, (2) to identify then relative to any association with which they are affiliated, and (3) to assign two basic figures to each center, the number of core adherents supporting each center and the number of constituency members who are related to it. That assignment carries with it a spectrum of questions and methodological considerations.

Preliminary Considerations

In accepting this assignment, ISAR began with an overview of the Buddhist community. Historically, American Buddhism begins around 1850 when the first Chinese began to immigrate to California in response to the discovery of gold. Among the new arrivals were followers of traditional Chinese religions, who constructed a set of joss houses to perpetuate their religious life in the new world, and some Buddhists. Generally forgotten, many of the immigrants were Christians, the product of the missions in China that had expanded significantly in the 1840s. The Chinese dominated the small Buddhist community for the next generation. Simultaneous with the emergence of the Chinese-American community, but largely disconnected from it, American intellectuals developed a manifest interest in Asian culture, including its religious life. Through the last half of the nineteenth century, interest in Asian religions, marked by the appearance, for example, of the first college-level classes in world religions, would increase decade-by-decade, accompanied by the initial attempts to fit these religions into some kind of a historical overview that would both account for their origin and offer some evaluation. Among the students of East Asian culture, some would become enamored of it and a few go even further and announce their adherence to the teachings of its primary religion—Buddhism. A very few would travel to Asia and take the formal step of converting, while the Theosophical Society, whose leadership was among those who formally converted to Buddhism, would become a major conduit presenting Buddhist ideas to the American populous. Meanwhile, the growing presence of the Chinese in the American West provoked a negative reaction among European Americans leading to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. The Act, in effect, invited the Chinese to return home and placed a set of burdens on those who remained. Their place in the work force would henceforth be assumed by Filipinos and Japanese. Initially the Japanese had migrated to Hawaii to work on the expanding plantations where they would established the first Shinto centers and lay the foundation for the present Buddhist

2 Melton is the author of the several editions of the Encyclopedia of American Religions (8th edition, Detroit: Gale/Cengate, 2009) and has monitored the development of the Buddhist and Hindu communities since the 1970s. Jones is the co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Hinduism (New York: Facts on File, 2007). 3 dominance of the religious scene, Hawaii being the only state in which Buddhism is the largest religious community. The expansion of the Japanese presence in America and the growing awareness of Buddhism among European Americans would culminate in the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. This event became a watershed for American Buddhism. It brought a number of Buddhist leaders to the United States and set the stage for the first formal conversions of European American to occur within the United States, the establishment of the Honpa Hongwanji in California by Japanese missionaries, and the development of the working relationship between publisher Paul Carus and D. T, Suzuki, leading to the translation and publication of a variety of Buddhist texts. Carus, the son of a Lutheran minister, would eventually identity himself as a Buddhist and write a set of “hymns” for the Honpa Hongwanji hymnal. The first phase of the transmission of Buddhism to the United States would come to an abrupt end with the passing of the Asian Exclusion Act in 1924. The bill would not only stop immigration from Asia for a half century, but deny citizenship to Asians already settled in the country. It is also the case that the first decades of Buddhist presence in America would introduce a structural divide that remains to the present. On the one hand are the immigrant Buddhist communities largely defined by language and the peculiarities of national cultures, and on the other the community of European and African American converts to Buddhism. During the period from 1924 to 1965, Buddhism grew very slowly. Chinese traditional religion established itself in the several Chinatowns in large urban areas (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York), but few Buddhist temples emerged. Several Japanese Buddhist groups developed communities in East Los Angeles from where they spread to Japanese communities primarily along the West Coast. The Honpa Hongwanji, which sought to accommodate itself to a Christian land by adopting the name Buddhist Churches of America, became the only Buddhist body with a national presence. Prior to World War II, none of the Japanese groups, with the exception of a few Zen centers, attracted non-Japanese to themselves. The occupation of Japan following the war, provided the first opportunity for a new beginning for American Buddhism. A small number of American soldiers station in Japan located several Zen monasteries that would accept them for training. Upon their return to their homeland, they discovered a wave of interest in Zen among a new generation of young adults, both those associated with the Beatnik movement and more serious religious seekers ready to join a Zen center. Based in the experience of meditation, and possessing a minimal amount of Buddhist “theological” baggage (including the acceptance of the pantheon of Buddhist deity figures), Zen found additional favor among the scholarly elite. In perspective, the next set of changes for Buddhism in American came about because of the Vietnam War. In an attempt to establish a coalition with Asian countries for the war, President Kennedy ran into resistance due to the American immigration law and its insulting language. He initiated an effort to pass a new comprehensive immigration bill, and though assassinated before it was ready, President Johnson saw to the final overhaul of America’s immigration policies, which became law in October 1965. The reaction to the new law was immediate, and immigration quotas from Asian countries have been filled annually ever since. Additionally, at the end of the Vietnam War, Congress would pass special legislation to allow a large number of Vietnamese into the country. That legislation would include provisions that evenly distributed the Vietnamese on a state by state basis, with an agreement from the new residents that they would stay where placed for a minimum of five years. 4

The 1965 immigration bill, bolstered by the increase of quota in the early 1990s, would completely remake the American Buddhist community. Tens of thousands of Buddhists would arrive annually from across Southern and Eastern Asia. The largest group would be those of Chinese heritage who arrived from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and other Southeast Asian countries. They were followed by the Vietnamese and Koreans, with lesser numbers from the dominantly Theravada lands—Sri Lanka, Thailand, Mynamar, and Laos. By the 1980s, when the American Buddhist Congress was formed, even with the expanding Japanese Buddhist community in Hawaii, other ethnic Buddhist communities had outdistanced the Japanese, though the Japanese, especially the Honpa Hongwanji remained the most prominent and visible element of the community. The Buddhist communities built by the post-1965 immigrants from Asia have become the dominant segment of American Buddhism, from all accounts some 70 to 80%. It is also the most underreported part of the community due largely to the continuance of Asian languages in religious discourse, worship, and organization. The remaining 20 to 25% of American Buddhism consists of English-speaking non-Asian converts. This convert community is unique in several aspects, possessing a significant number of intellectuals and an over-representation of people of Jewish ethnicity.3 The convert community began to emerge with the spread of Zen Buddhism, in recent decades enhanced by the growth of Chinese Chan Buddhist groups, a number of which have developed an Anglo constituency. A second phase began in the 1960s with the publicity given the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the exile of the Dalai Lama. American human rights advocates identified with the Tibetan community in India and began to support it financially. Some picked up the cause of preserving the Tibetan culture which led directly to the emergence of a group of scholars who studied the Tibetan language and began to translate Tibetan texts into English. Some of these scholars became students of the few Tibetan teachers in America at the time and joined the core of what has become the unique American Tibetan Buddhist community. Given the very small numbers of Tibetans admitted under the 1965 immigration law (Tibet not being an independent country when it was passed, and the Peoples Republic not yet recognized as the legitimate government of China ), the Tibetan Buddhist community in the United States is overwhelmingly non-Tibetan in membership. The third phase of the development of convert Buddhism came with the discovery of the Vipassana (aka Insight meditation) movement that had emerged in Mynamar and spread to neighboring India. Like Zen, Vipassana has a minimal amount of Buddhist theological content, its basic texts being small instructional booklets. It now competes with Zen for the attention of those who are attracted to a meditation-centered form of Buddhism. The various Zen/Chan, Tibetan, and Vipassana groups now include the great majority of American Buddhist converts, though with the spread and diversification of Buddhism, converts have appeared in every segment of the community. Given the low key approach to proselytization by Buddhism in general, most converts have come to the religion in a process that included their attainment of some familiarity with the religion and a subsequent approach to a group for affiliation. Many began practice on their own from having read a book, and an uncounted number who started practice alone have never related to a group. While Buddhists

3 In the over abundance of scholars and intellectuals, the Buddhist convert community differs from the Hindu convert community, though both share an over representation of converts with a Jewish heritage. 5 founded many groups, Buddhism lacks any essential imperative to group life such as that found, for example, in the Christian idea of “church.” It is to be noted that the largest number of commentators on American Buddhism have come out of or have been most closely related to the convert Buddhist community. As might be expected, their work has largely concentrated on that same convert community, which has been given extensive treatment, while the larger ethnic community has been relatively neglected. While converts make up less than 25% of the Buddhist community, more than 80% of the writings on American Buddhism focus upon this segment of community.4 This emphasis on the convert community has strongly affected the image of American Buddhism in a variety of ways. At present, some 45 years after the change in the immigration law in 1965, the United States is home to the entire spectrum of Asian Buddhism. In the six counties making up the Los Angeles and San Diego Metropolitan Areas, one can now find a richer diversity of Buddhism than anywhere in Asia, with Hong Kong its only near competitor. I have argued elsewhere that “denominationalism” is the primary way religion organizes and stabilizes itself in a free society.5 As Buddhism has moved into the relatively freer religious situation in the United States, we note that American Buddhists have adopted that model. As the community has grown, associations of Buddhist centers have emerged utilizing two basic characteristics: (1) nationality/language and (2) sectarian or theological tradition. Operating out of these organizing principles, local centers will affiliate with other centers with whom they share both a like ethnic/national/linguistic background and a theological heritage, thus creating what we have elsewhere termed Buddhist family and sub-family traditions out of which individual “denominations” have emerged. Thus, just as Protestants organized as Dutch Reformed, German Lutherans, and Scottish Presbyterians, so Buddhists have organized as Sri Lankan Theravadists, Japanese Zen, and Tibetan Vajrayanists. (Table one maps the patterns of Buddhist life in America.)6

4 There is now a large literature on American Buddhism. Louise H. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1971); Emma McCoy Layman, Buddhism in America (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1976); Tetsuden Keshima, Buddhism in America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977); Charles S. Prebish, American Buddhism (North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press, 1979); and Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1981); Thomas A. Tweed, The American Encounter With Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture & the Limits of Dissent (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka, eds. The Faces of Buddhism in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Charles S. Prebish, Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Richard Hughes Seager, Buddhism in America. (Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series) (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); and James William Coleman, The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 5 See J. Gordon Melton, “American Religion in the twenty-first Century,” in J. Gordon Melton, Melton’s Encyclopedia of American Religion (Detroit: Gale/Cengate, 2009): 41-50. 6 Buddhist have tended to follow the more congregationally oriented organizations (similar to the Baptists and Disciples of Christ) rather than the strong hierarchical structures such as the Presbyterians or Methodists. This may change as groups become more established and acquire property. 6

Table One: Buddhist Family Groupings

Theological tradition National Family groups Sub-family groupings

Theravada Burmese Cambodian Lao Sri Lankan Thai Vietnamese Mahayana Chinese Pure Land Chan Japanese Kegon Nichiren Shin Tendai Zen Japanese Buddhist nrms Korean Chogye Son Vrajayana7 Bhutan Tibetan Mongolian Chinese Esoteric/Hanmi Japanese Shingon

Western and Syncretistic groups

7 Most scholars consider Vajrayana a sub-group within Mahayana, but it is here considered as a new Family group on its own. This chart also points to the diversity of the community and to the observation that Vajrayana practitioners do not mix with other Mahayana groups as occasionally occurs among the other Mahayana groups such as, for example, Shin (Pure lands) and Zen practitioners. 7

As with Christianity, there is in Buddhism an ecumenical movement, which looks toward creating a unique and more-or-less united American Buddhism. This movement has had its greatest success in creating a high level of acceptance among Buddhists of the community’s diversity. Also, as will be found in all the major religious traditions, Buddhism has produced a variety of new, hard-to-classify, innovative variations from Falun Gong in China to Hao Hoa in Vietnam.

Launching the Study

Any attempt to survey such a diverse community as that presented by American Buddhism is fraught with a set of practical problems. First, a variety of estimates concerning the size of the Buddhist community have built on immigration and population figures of various national groups published by the U.S. government. Estimates based on these figures become speculative as the American government does not gather figures on religious affiliation. One must, therefore, estimate, the proportion of an immigrant community from a predominantly Buddhist country or representing a particular ethnic group who retain any attachment to Buddhism (as opposed to those Asians who would define themselves, for example, as Christians or nonreligious). Further speculation on the Buddhist population has come from various polls that have attempted to measure the Buddhist community in America with varying results. The most recent polls include ones sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts (2007) and the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). The Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found 0.7 % of Americans identifying themselves as Buddhist.8 Given a population estimate for the United States at the time of 301,290,332, the survey yields a Buddhist population of about 2.1 million. Just published , the third ARIS Survey (2009) based on data collected in 2008 found slightly less, about .5% of the adult population, or 1,189,000 adults. If we go with the same percentage in the entire population we arrive at 1.5 million Buddhists. Both figures are considerably lower than estimates by some Buddhist scholars that reach as high as 3.5 to 4 million. The more conservative polling results offer an initial standard by which to compare the results we expect to receive from the upcoming census. It will be of the highest interest to see how results derived from surveying all the centers matches the polls. Having some initial hypothesis as to the number of Buddhist we are likely to find through the census, we next turn to what is possibly the most significant (and certainly the most time- consuming) obstacle to overcome in preparing for the Buddhist census—the lack of a national directory of Buddhist centers from which to work. It must be acknowledged that a variety of individuals from those continuing the Pluralism Project at Harvard University to different dedicated individual Buddhists have attempted to create directories of centers and post them on the Internet. These proved to be most helpful starting points, however, even the best list (maintained by the Buddhist Education and Information Network (www.buddhanet.net), proved partial. Those who have put together Buddhist center directories have shown a distinct preference for downplaying reference to the many Buddhist center associations (as discussed above), an action based in part on an under-evaluation of the importance of said associations. The effect, in this case, was to lessen visits by compilers to association Internet sites where information about affiliated centers was readily available. To date, we have found no Internet

8 The Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey was based on data collected from May 8 to Aug. 13, 2007, among a representative sample of more than 35,000 adults in the U.S., with additional over-samples of Eastern Orthodox Christians, Hindus, and, more notably for our purposes, Buddhists. 8 directory of the Buddhist associations from a Buddhist source, and only one from a non-Buddhist source. For the purposes of this census effort, the first task was not only to compile a directory of Buddhist associations and centers, but to arrange said directory by state and then by zip code order for eventual merging with the Christian, Jewish and Muslim data. To accomplish this, we began with the one existing association directory and a variety of center directories currently existing on the internet. We initially conflated the several national directories, and are still in the process of comparing these to more local directories (mostly oriented on a single metropolitan area) and will finish by comparing the list with those published by the many center associations. In our initial compilation, we have located 199 associations of Buddhist centers, and 2274 individual centers. For each individual center we have attempted to secure a phone number, email address, and snail mail address. All the centers have at least one of the three, less than half all three. Table two shows the distribution of centers by state. While a number of centers will be added to our present list, we do not expect the overall number to significantly change the basic distribution patterns. In the table, the states are ranks according to the density of the Buddhist presence, density being measured by the size of the population to a single Buddhist center in the state. Thus, Hawaii has a Buddhist center for every 17,000 residents; in California there is one Buddhist center for every 59,000 residents, while in Mississippi, there is one Buddhist center for every 735,000 residents. 9

Table 2 Buddhist Centers State by State

Rank State Population 2008 Bud. Centers One Buddhist temple for every ____ thousand

1 Hawaii 1,288,198 76 17 2 Vermont 621,270 25 25 3 Alaska 686,293 14 49.0 4 D.C. 591,833 12 49.3 5 New Mexico 1,984,356 38 52 6 California 38,049,462 648 59 7 Maine 1,316,456 20 66 8 Oregon 3,790,060 47 81 9 Mass. 6,497,967 78 83 10 Colorado 4,939,456 57 87

*Arizona 6,500,180 54 120 *Connecticut 3,501,252 30 117 Florida 15,982,378 89 180 *Idaho 1,523,816 12 127 *Illinois 12,419,293 100 124 Kentucky 4,269,245 16 267 *Maryland 5,633,597 41 134 Minnesota 5,220,393 30 174 Missouri 5,911,605 25 236 *Montana 967,440 9 107 *Nevada 2,600,167 19 137 New Hamp. 1,315,809 13 101 *New York 18,976,457 141 135 North Car. 9,222,414 44 210 North Dak. 641,481 3 214 Ohio 11,353,140 48 237 Oklahoma 3,642,361 24 152 Penn. 12,281,054 51 241 *R.Is. 1,050,788 10 105 South Dak. 804,194 5 161 Tennessee 6,214,888 26 239 Texas 20,851,820 93 224 *Utah 2,736,424 19 144 Virginia 7,769,089 46 169 *Washington 6,549,224 61 107 *Wisconsin 5,627,967 48 117 Wyoming 532,668 3 178

Nebraska 1,783,432 7 255 Michigan 9,938,444 35 284 10

Georgia 9,685,744 38 255 Delaware 873,092 3 291 New Jersey 8,682,661 29 299 Iowa 3,002,555 10 300 West VA 1,814,468 6 302 Louisiana 4,410,796 14 315 Kansas 2,802,134 8 350 Arkansas 2,855,390 8 397 South Car. 4,479,800 11 407 Alabama 4,661,900 11 424 Indiana 6,376,792 15 425 Mississippi 2,938,618 4 735

This preliminary count of centers has already yielded significant insights concerning the Buddhist population. It has confirmed, for example, that Buddhism is concentrated on Hawaii, the West Coast and the Northeast, especially New England. These patterns are consistent with longstanding observations about the location of new religions in general, as well as more recent profiles of the locations of Asian Americans. In like measure, Buddhism is weakest in those areas of the country where Christianity is most entrenched—the Deep South and Midwest. Also, while California has by far the largest number of Buddhist centers, Hawaii has the largest number of Buddhist centers relative to the state’s population. Hawaii’s centers are disproportionately of Japanese heritage while those in California cover the spectrum. It is hypothesized that California will turn out to be a microcosm of the American Buddhist community. California stands out with 500 more centers that the New York and Illinois, the only other states in which we have located more that a 100 centers. Buddhism in New York and Illinois is a quantitatively distinct phenomena from that in California.

Who is a Buddhist?

Finally, we make note of the fact that large religious communities in a free society have fuzzy boundaries, and Buddhism is no exception. Fuzzy boundaries raise a spectrum of questions of religious identity, that is, “Who is a Buddhist?” Who fits into the community we are attempting to survey? As we begin this survey, we are assuming that American Buddhism is built around its communal structures (the associations of centers [denominations], secondary organizations [of the kind which Christian call parachurches], and tertiary organization [that is, groups of groups]) and the people who lead and support to them. Secondary organizations operating within the American Buddhist community include the Buddhist Peace Network, various martial arts organizations, clinics offering Chinese medicine, and Buddhist schools and training institutes). Tertiary organizations include the Midwest Buddhist Council, Buddhist Sangha Council of Southern California, and the World Fellowship of Buddhists. Members of both secondary and tertiary religious groups generally hold membership in one of the Buddhist associations and focus their practice (cultivation) of the Buddhist life at one particular local Buddhist center. 11

In assessing the size of the Buddhist community one can begin either with the primary Buddhist associations and centers and their understanding of their membership and constituency, or with individuals and their acknowledged self-identification (the approach adopted by religious polling). When encountering the fuzzy borderland, both approaches offer insights and both are fraught with difficulties. If one begins with Buddhist groups, one starts with the center of the community, that is, those groups that basically have inherited and carried the major Buddhist traditions, those which might be, for example, affiliated with the World Fellowship of Buddhists. From that perspective, two questions immediately arise. First, where do we draw the boundaries of the Buddhist community? As we move outward, which associations and centers are in and which are not? As one moves from the center of the community, one begins to encounter those groups who consider themselves Buddhist but who for various reasons are considered less than Buddhist or not Buddhist at all by the larger Buddhist bodies. Such questions of group identity come to the fore when a group consciously synthesizes significant elements from two or more religious traditions to create its particular path. This problem is particularly acute relative to the new religions of Japan, many of whom mix elements of Buddhism and Shinto (and even Christianity). It is also a live question among the Chinese whose temples often freely mix Buddhist, Taoist and Chinese indigenous religious elements. We are largely (but not completely) resolving this problem by extending the study to include all Shinto, Japanese new religions, Taoist, and traditional Chinese centers operating in the United States and allowing each to self-define their place on the religious map. Second, while American Buddhism has adopted the “denominational” form of organization, Buddhism is not organized like the more dominant Christianity, an essential difference being the absence of the “congregation” as an essential fact of religious life. Buddhism is more oriented on the relationship of the individual to a practice (cultivation) or a temple or to a particular teacher. Groups tend to be more oriented on group action or a teacher’s lineage, than the communal aspects of group life. (This observation is made with the understanding that communalism is alive and well among those who take monastic vows, the sangha.) However, the sangha aside, the Buddhist group itself takes on a different connotation from that which might be familiar to a practicing Christian for whom not forsaking the gathering of the community is a primary admonition of religious life. Moving to the local centers, many of whom do not maintain a membership list, one also encounters immediate problems with drawing the line between core supportive adherents and a constituency of sporadic supporters who may represent a variety of self-defined relationships with any particular group and/or the worship space it maintains. Looking still further from a center’s core, one encounters people who might define themselves as Buddhist but maintain no relationship with any Buddhist group and who may or may not engage in any Buddhist practice or adhere to any Buddhist beliefs. Thomas Tweed has given consideration to a variety of people whose relationship to the Buddhist community has been mediated more by a book and/or practice rather than any relationship with a group.9 He coined the term “night stand Buddhists,” a reference to someone who reads a Buddhist book and develops an individual practice or discipline from it. Tweed’s concept (applicable to most all

9 Thomas Tweed, “Who Is a Buddhist? Night Stand Buddhists and Other Creatures,” in Charles S. Prebish and Martin Maumann, eds., Westward Dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002): 27-33. Tweed is arguing for inclusion of people from the fuzzy boundaries of religious communities in the larger story that historians and others tell , more than suggesting that consideration of such individuals would significantly enlarge the demographics of any particular community. 12 religious groups) is a useful reminder of the fuzzy nature of religious identities on the boundaries of communities. The people he is discussing are difficult to locate and count, but it may be assumed that a proportionate number reside on the edge of all communities and given that polling, the most likely method to encounter people on the edge, has generally found smaller numbers than other methods of assessing the size of religious groups that the numbers of night stand Buddhists (or Muslims or Hindus) is relatively small. The number of the non-affiliated who nevertheless carry a particular religious identity or favor one religious group among the many is balanced by those individuals who both maintain Buddhist practice and even group membership while at the same time defining themselves as neither Buddhist nor even religious. This phenomenon permeates some the Buddhist meditation traditions, as one may practice Zen or vipassana meditation with or without a group and without accepting any labels. On sees this approach in many bookstores which still place books on Christianity, Judaism, and Islam under religion but those on Buddhism and Hinduism are arranged Eastern philosophy. One also sees attempts to place various forms of meditation under scientific labels, the most popular case being the attempt of a Hindu guru, Maharishi Mehesh Yogi, to grow the Transcendental Meditation movement as something other than a religious practice. It is expected that problems of conflicting individual and group identity will be handles on a case by case basis as they arise.

Conclusion

With these and other considerations, the Buddhist Census project is now (April 2009) well under way. It is expected that by the end of 2010, we shall have a new estimate of the size of the Buddhist community and a new up-to-date directory of its various associations and centers.