Tag: buddhism in america

Westernization of Buddhism: A New Denomination?

Throughout time and within the current of growing globality ideas, philosophies, morals, and religions have all been introduced, interpreted, and shared worldwide.  Notably, from the 1880s and 1890s until the early 1910s, there was a growing fascination with Buddhism in what is known as the West. Europeans and Americans who traveled to Asia brought back knowledge about Buddhism, among other religions. This knowledge about Buddhism began to grow both in the scholarship realm and the populous. Chapter Two of Thomas A. Tweed’s The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent, “‘Shall We All Become Buddhists?’ the conversation and the converts, 1879-1912” covers this growing fascination with Buddhism and why it struck Westerners so much. Importantly, the chapter discusses how the Western interpretation of Buddhism led to converts to the religion in America especially, and if that Buddhism was really the same as the Buddhism practiced in Asia.

Colonization may have opened the world up, but it also brought many challenges, one of which was the way that religions and their practices were interpreted. Buddhism, in the 1880s and 1890s, was brought to the West through Western scholars who would translate and read Buddhist texts, and then interpret them in their own Western mindset, a mindset that was heavily influenced by Christianity. There was very little conversation with Asian scholars of Buddhism, and thus this interpretation of the religion and philosophy led to a perhaps different Buddhism in the West than what was practiced in Asia.

Religion is something that is very important to many people who practice, and even those who do not. The importance of religion, thus, begs the question of whose ‘denomination’ or whose ‘interpretation’ of religion is the true one. Christianity has gone through many changes through that questioning, and interestingly enough, in the late 1800s and early 1900s in America, there was a similar line of questioning among Americans who were converting to Buddhists.

There were several Buddhists from Asia who immigrated, a “majority” of whom “were Chinese and Japanese living on the West Coast and in Hawaii”1. While there is not an exact number of practicing Buddhists at the time, there were twelve Pure Land Buddhist groups by 1906 along the West coast, and eight more by 19122. This slow growth of Buddhism correlated with the growth of Caucasian Americans who converted to Buddhism. Their Buddhism, however, “combined traditional Buddhist doctrines with beliefs derived from Western sources”3. This blend of Buddhism was informed mainly by the Western scholarship gathered about Buddhism that was not engaged in conversation with Asian scholarship on Buddhism and was heavily influenced by how Europeans viewed the world and their mainly Christian-centered ideals. Can this Buddhism be seen as part of the religion of Buddhism practiced in Asia or by Asian immigrants in America? As the text points out, “the Chinese transformed Indian Buddhism rather significantly”, however, some 19th-century writers questioned the authenticity of the Caucasian American Buddhists, saying they were “expressing, simplicity or explicitly, either competing personal religious convictions or naively self-assured notions about the true ‘essence’ of Buddhism”4.

There are many different ways to view such a complicated subject. On the one hand, there could be the view that most people in the late 1800s who converted to Buddhism “got it wrong, that only a handful were ‘real’ Buddhists” or that they “might have been driven more by love of the exotic or the quest for attention”5. However, the text also argues for self-definition- to trust the definition that each religious person chooses for themselves and that many of the Caucasian American Buddhist converts truly believed that they were Buddhist, even if it wasn’t the Buddhism practiced in Asia.

Self-determination is a weighty trust to give, that probably should be given weight, however, does that change the religion, or make it a different denomination? One could argue, certainly, that it does. The globality of Buddhism in the 1880s-1910s certainly argues that westernization of religion was important and that religion, as always, is never simple.

  1. Tweed, Thomas A. The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent (Chapel Hill, 2005), p.  34 [↩]
  2. Ibid, p. 36 [↩]
  3. Ibid, p. 40 [↩]
  4. Ibid, p. 41 [↩]
  5. Ibid, p. 42 [↩]

The American Encounter with Buddhism: What it tells us about Japan and it’s Pursuit of Modernity

In the second chapter of The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent, Thomas Tweed discusses American engagement with Buddhism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Tweed explains that, “This study analyzes the public conversation about Buddhism (in English) and focuses on Euro-American Buddhists.”1 The author describes a contradictory engagement with Buddhism in America: the chapter starts off with evidence of Buddhism’s proliferation in America, but quickly turns to consider the many factors which limited American support of Buddhism. In addition to shedding light on American reactions to Buddhism, Tweed’s chapter, “Shall We All Become Buddhists?” points to major differences in Japanese and Chinese engagement with overseas populations, and illuminates in particular the Japanese relationship with modernity. 

In his discussion about Asian-American Buddhists, Tweed asserts that “The Japanese provided greater support for their immigrant Buddhist communities than the Chinese. They apparently did so, in part, in response to Christian missionary efforts.”2 As evidence for this assertion, he points to the 1898 decision by the Japanese Jodo-Shin-shu (True Pure Land Sect) to send two representatives to the United States to study immigrant spiritual practices and the subsequent move by the Kyoto headquarters to send two missionaries, officially recognizing the Buddhist mission in America. Tweed’s observations are useful in a discussion of Japanese reactions to Western industrialization and modernization. Just as the arrival of Mathew Perry’s “black ships” in 1854 threatened Japanese sovereignty, Christian missionaries’ attempt to convert Japanese immigrants in America jeopardized the future of one of the major Japanese religious traditions. Japanese powers intervened to preserve Pure Land Buddhism in America and therefore prove that it was a religion suited for the modern age. Tweed points out that as opposed to Japanese powers, the Chinese did not send missionaries to their American immigrant communities.3 The resulting poor adherence to Buddhism that Tweed notes among Chinese-Americans mirrors China’s failure to institute the systematic program of modernization undertaken in the Meiji era in Japan.  

Both the adoption of Western ideas about Chinese-Americans and the copying of certain Western elements of Buddhism that Tweed observes also represent manifestations of Japan’s pursuit of modernity. Although they largely arrived after the Chinese, “Japanese immigrants, often repeating American criticism of the Chinese, tried to distinguish themselves from the “lower class” Chinese who seemed unable to assimilate.”4 This adoption of western beliefs allow Japanese-Americans to elevate themselves to a status above Chinese-Americans, and therefore separate themselves from a “less developed” nation. In addition, Tweed comments that “A limited amount of Americanization and Protestantization also occurred in Japanese Pure Land Buddhist communities before World War I.”4 The construction of Buddhism along Western lines demonstrates Japan’s attempt to Westernize within the traditional Japanese framework of Pure Land Buddhism. Modern Western powers attained global primacy through intense industrialization and a Christian civilizing mission, Japan sought to do the same by utilizing the discursive tradition made available by Buddhism. 

This pattern is indicative of the new conceptualization of religion which emerged in mid nineteenth century Japan “as both transcending the profane society and responsible for improving and ‘civilizing’ its mores.”5 Religion was now seen as a force separate from the state, that could be used as a tool in Japan’s civilizing and modernizing mission. The Japanese policy regarding Buddhism in America mirrors the propagation of Christianity as a “civilizing religion” by Western powers and is a reaction to the introduction of Western modernity which reached Japan, along with Perry’s ships, in 1854. 

 

Bibliography 

Tikhonov, V. M, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea – The Beginnings, 1883-1910: Survival as an Ideology of Korean Modernity (Brill, 2010). 

Tweed, Thomas, The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent (UNC Press Books, 2005). 

 

 

  1. Thomas Tweed, The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent (UNC Press Books, 2005), p. 38 [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 36 [↩]
  3. Ibid., p. 35 [↩]
  4. Ibid., p. 37 [↩] [↩]
  5. V. M. Tikhonov, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea – The Beginnings, 1883-1910: Survival as an Ideology of Korean Modernity (Brill, 2010), p. 113. [↩]