Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization

Tseng 2004.9.24 07:22 7146 Learman / BUDDHIST MISSIONARIES IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION / sheet 1 of 256 Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization 256 IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION / sheet 2 of 7146 Learman / BUDDHIST MISSIONARIES Topics in Contemporary Buddhism GEORGE J. TANABE, JR., EDITOR Establishing a Pure Land on Earth: The Foguang Buddhist Perspective on Modernization and Globalization STUART CHANDLER Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization LINDA LEARMAN, EDITOR Tseng 2004.9.24 07:22 256 TOPICS IN CONTEMPORARY BUDDHISM IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION / sheet 3 of Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization EDITED BY LINDA LEARMAN 7146 Learman / BUDDHIST MISSIONARIES University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu Tseng 2004.9.24 07:22 256 IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION / sheet 4 of © 2005 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in 100908070605654321 7146 Learman / BUDDHIST MISSIONARIES Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data Buddhist missionaries in the era of globalization / edited by Linda Learman. p. cm. — (Topics in contemporary buddhism) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8248-2810-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Globalization—Religious aspects—Buddhism. 2. Buddhism—Missions—History—20th century. 3. Buddhist missionaries. I. Learman, Linda, 1950– II. Series. BQ5925.B83 2005 294.3'72—dc22 2004006309 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources Designed by Elsa Carl Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group Tseng 2004.9.24 07:22 256 Contents IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION / sheet 5 of Series Editor’s Preface George J. Tanabe, Jr. vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction Linda Learman 1 1 Dharmapala’s Dharmaduta and the Buddhist Ethnoscape Steven Kemper 22 2 The Theravada Domestic Mission in Twentieth-Century Nepal Sarah LeVine 51 3 Grafting Identity: The Hawaiian Branches of the Bodhi Tree 7146 Learman / BUDDHIST MISSIONARIES George J. Tanabe, Jr. 77 4 Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invisibility of the Shingon Mission to the United States Richard K. Payne 101 5 Globalization and the Pursuit of a Shared Understanding of the Absolute: The Case of Soka Gakkai in Brazil Peter B. Clarke 123 6 Being a Zen Buddhist Brazilian: Juggling Multiple Religious Identities in the Land of Catholicism Cristina Rocha 140 7 Spreading Buddha’s Light:The Internationalization of Foguang Shan Stuart Chandler 162 8 The Compassion Relief Diaspora C. Julia Huang 185 9 Uniting Religion and Politics in a Bid for Autonomy: Lamas in Exile in China and America Gray Tuttle 210 List of Contributors 233 Index 235 Tseng 2004.9.24 07:22 Tseng 2004.9.24 07:22 7146 Learman / BUDDHIST MISSIONARIES IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION / sheet 6 of 256 256 Series Editor’s Preface IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION / sheet 7 of The usual term used to describe the spread of Buddhism is ‘‘transmission,’’ which implies the passing down of teachings and practices from masters to disciples in established lineages mindful of preserving past traditions. Buddhism, however, has also been presented to strangers, with successful propagation requiring innova- tive strategies of interpretation and accommodation. In modern times, the trans- mitters of Buddhism have been aware of themselves as missionaries not only to their own overseas communities but to foreigners as well. As with commercial and political institutions, Buddhism survives and thrives as a globalized religion in America, Brazil, Hawai‘i, China, Nepal, and other localities. It is widely recognized that globalization takes place through localization, but the strategies used by Bud- dhist missionaries in accomplishing this have not gained widespread recognition 7146 Learman / BUDDHIST MISSIONARIES through sufficient study. The present volume goes a long way toward filling this gap in our knowl- edge. It explores Buddhism as a contemporary religion of immense variation. In these pages, Buddhism appears as Theravada, Mahayana, and new religious movements extending beyond familiar homelands to foreign territory. At the heart of these stories are the missionaries themselves, clerics and laypersons pursuing their mission of propagating Buddhism throughout the world, especially in the West. George J. Tanabe, Jr. Series Editor Tseng 2004.9.24 07:22 Tseng 2004.9.24 07:22 7146 Learman / BUDDHIST MISSIONARIES IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION / sheet 8 of 256 256 Acknowledgments IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION / sheet 9 of This book is the outcome of the conference The Globalization of Buddhism: Case Studies of Buddhist Missions held in April 2000, at Boston University. I am very grateful to all of the participants, the Anthropology Department of Boston Uni- versity, and to my advisor, Rob Weller, who first encouraged me to organize a conference on this topic and has given much needed and timely, practical and intel- lectual support throughout the process. Professor Frank Korom, of the Religious Studies Department at BU, was also very helpful in getting me started; and Peter Gregory, Jill Ker Conway Professor of Buddhist Studies, Smith College, has been an ongoing mentor, for which I am extremely grateful. The Wenner-Gren Foun- dation, the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture of Boston University, and the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation supplied the necessary and much ap- 7146 Learman / BUDDHIST MISSIONARIES preciated funding. I am also quite grateful for the cooperation I received from the contributors to the volume; and to Professor George Tanabe, editor of the Topics in Contemporary Buddhism Series; Patricia Crosby, Executive Editor of the Uni- versity of Hawai‘i Press; two anonymous readers; and the managing editor at the press, who all helped turn the manuscript into a well integrated book. Tseng 2004.9.24 07:22 Tseng 2004.9.24 07:22 7146 Learman / BUDDHIST MISSIONARIES IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION / sheet 10 of 256 256 Introduction Linda Learman THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION / sheet 11 of Peter Berger has noted four cultural dimensions of the worldwide communication and economic integration called ‘‘globalization’’: the cultures of international busi- ness, of the Western intelligentsia, of American popular tastes and values, and of 1 Evangelical and Pentecostal Protestantism. Although the impact of these cultures may have been the major anthropological narrative of our time, we live in an era in which non-Western traditions, such as Eastern religions, martial arts, and healing practices, have also spread around the world. Globalization has involved multi- directional flows. Given the structures of power over the last century, however, the West has had a predominant role, but not an exclusive one. The Buddhists who are the focus of this book—Theravadins from Sri Lanka; Vajrayana teach- ers from Tibet; Zen, True Pure Land, Shingon, and Soka Gakkai Buddhists from 7146 Learman / BUDDHIST MISSIONARIES IN Japan; and two distinctive Chinese Buddhist organizations from Taiwan—are examples of transnational and cross-cultural movements resulting from and shaped by globalization but also making use of it. In the twentieth century, Buddhist traditions have not only increasingly forged links among themselves in Asia, they have also emerged from Asia, being carried by emigrants, picked up by travelers, and taught by Buddhist missionaries to new peoples of the Western and non-Western world. Moreover, now Western Buddhists are becoming influential propagators of the faith, in the West at least. Although the papers in this book deal specifically with late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century Buddhist missionaries, Steven Kemper raised the question of whether we should view twentieth-century Buddhist missions as a critical depar- ture from earlier Buddhists’ ethos and practice. He referred to Jonathan Walters’ dissertation ‘‘Rethinking Buddhist Missions,’’ in which Walters rejected the notion that premodern Buddhism was a missionary religion, at least in the Sri Lankan 2 Theravada tradition based on Pali texts. He maintained that the texts custom- arily used to establish a Buddhist missionary agenda have alternative readings that were totally missed by Buddhologists, who approached their subject with Anglo- American Protestant preconceptions and purposes. ‘‘Buddhist mission,’’ he said, Tseng 2004.9.24 07:22 256 2 • Linda Learman ‘‘is an Anglo-American construct that has been maintained only by silencing the premodern Buddhists who paradoxically are depicted as agents’’ (1:5). While I remained unconvinced by Walter’s arguments about premodern Theravada Buddhism, his research into the development of Anglo-American Prot- estant thinking on the concepts of ‘‘mission’’ and ‘‘missionary’’ is very useful, THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION / sheet 12 of both for the background it gives for the twentieth-century encounters between Buddhists and Protestants and for the comparative examples it affords. Thus, I shall summarize the varied meanings of ‘‘mission’’ in nineteenth- and twentieth- century Anglo-American discourse, drawing on Walters’ and others’ work, com- paring them to Buddhist examples, and pointing out their impact on the development of Buddhist missions in the twentieth century. Thereafter, I shall describe in broad terms examples of premodern Buddhist ‘‘missionary spirit’’ and move on to a discussion of the cases presented in this book. One of the main contributions of this work is our focus on the active proselytization by Asian Buddhists themselves. The second important contribution is sociological:

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