Buddhism in the United States
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There is a sizable Buddhist community in the United States, one that constitutes a truly transnational community in that it not only is flourishing in the United States after having started elsewhere but also because it has spread from its origins in India to many different parts of the world. Buddhism is an important religion in China and Japan as well as in India, and the American component has also taken a leading role in perpetuating the teachings of the Buddha and the ideas embodied in this religious doctrine. Buddhism is not a doctrinal religion, though it does have core beliefs and a core world-view. However, it is also a versatile religious philosophy which has been reshaped to serve different populations and to accommodate, assimilate, and intertwine with different views and religious doctrines in the different countries and parts of the world into which Buddhism has moved. This is true in the United States as well, and there are a number of different Buddhist groups or factions with slightly different practices, beliefs, and congregations in different parts of the country. Buddhism began at the time of the emergence of Upanishadic mysticism in ancient India, roughly during the period 800 B.C.E. to 600 B.C.E. The development of this ancient mysticism was a spiritual protest against the religion of the Vedas, which was aristocratic and based on sacrifice and magic. This was an ancient sacrificial religion that catered to an ec
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thought and practice. Since Buddhism emphasizes the individual, as a religion it tends not to be centralized" (Hochswender 166). In addition, he notes that "since the Buddha left so many sutras, or teachings as many as 84,000, all of them originally transmitted orally the question of translation and emphasis becomes critical to their meaning" (Hochswender 166). Thus, each "culture that has absorbed and passed on the Buddhist tradition has added its own flavor to the core of beliefs" (Hochswender 166).
Buddhism has come to America first accompanying different immigrant groups. It first arrived in the 1820s with the first wave of Chinese immigrants, and by 1875, there were 400 "joss houses" in California, usually incense soaked, top story dens crowded with ancestral relics, little lacquered Buddhas and dusty sutra scrolls ("Buddhism in the USA" www.spiritweb.org/
HinduismToday/94 07 Buddhism_in_the_USA.html). Buddhism had a resurgence in the 1970s as a number of Asian groups emigrated to the United States from places like Thailand and Vietnam. The pace of growth has increased recently. Since 1988, the number of English language Buddhist teaching centers has jumped from 429 to more than 1,062 (Van Biema www.pathfinder.com).
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Approximate Word count = 4192
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)
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