Soto Zen in Peru: Present and Future
Germain McKenzie-Gonzalez ABD at the Doctoral Program in Religion and Culture Catholic University of America (Washington, DC) Adjunct Faculty Niagara University (Lewiston, NY) [email protected]
CESNUR-ISR International Congress | June 5-8, 2014 | Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA
This paper is still on work. It is part of a lager project on Buddhism in Peru. This is a preliminary version. Please do not quote or reproduce without the consent of the author.
How does a religious tradition like Soto Zen find a place amidst the predominantly
Christian Peruvian society? This paper analyzes how Soto Zen Buddhism is being transplanted into Peru and what does its future look like.
Contemporary religious landscape in Peru is described in Chart 1, in the Appendixes, where Buddhist practitioners are included under the rubric of “Other Religions.” Barrett, Kurian, and Johnson (2001) state, on their part, that Buddhist adherents in 2000 numbered 57,731, which represented 0.2% of the country’s population, and predict that by 2025 they will number about
100,000, constituting 0.3% of all Peruvians (p. 590). Although there are not other sources with which to compare this statistics, my research on the different Buddhist groups actively operating in the country and on the approximate number of practitioners of each of them makes me think that the figures above are too elevated. Unfortunately, due to the lack of sufficient data, one can only speculate about this.
Chart 2 describes the different Buddhist groups and lineages present today in the country.
There are 22 Buddhist groups, which are distributed as follows: 10 are Tibetan, 8 are Chen/Zen/Son-related, 2 are Vajrayana, 1 Theravada, and 1 Pureland. This means, in short, that
Chen/Zen/Son Buddhism includes about half of all Buddhist groups in the country.
Chen/Zen/Son lineages, in turn, have diverse origins. On the one hand, those derived