American converts are taking a 2,600-year-old faith and making it over in their own image -- self-absorbed.As anyone who hasn't spent the last few years meditating in a cave in Asia knows, American Buddhism is booming. The 1990s saw three Buddhist movies and a gaggle of celebrity Buddhist pitchmen, including Beastie Boy Adam Yauch and actor Richard Gere.
Typically these sympathizers get their Buddhism, as beat author Jack Kerouac did, from books. Buddhist bestsellers used to come along once a decade: Kerouac's Dharma Bums in the '50s, Philip Kapleau's Three Pillars of Zen in the '60s, and Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind in the '70s.
James William Coleman is not a major brand, and his The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition is not destined for the bestseller list. It does shed light, however, on today's oddly bookish Buddhist vogue.
These "new Buddhists," as he calls them, patronize four types of Buddhist groups:
- Zen centers [Japanese Mahayana]
- Tibetan Buddhist centers [Vajrayana]
- Vipassana ("insight meditation") centers [Theravada]
- unaffiliated, nonsectarian centers
Most are baby boomers, almost all are white, and all practice meditation, which sets them apart from the members of Sokka Gakkai International-USA (a group that prefers chanting [Nam-myoho-renge-kyo] to meditation), the largest Buddhist organization in the United States and the only Buddhist group that attracts significant numbers of blacks and Hispanics. More>>
Boomer Buddhism Now
Dhr. Seven (Wisdom Quarterly, 2011)
A decade later, Buddhism in America continues to grow. Even if many Western practitioners are reluctant to label themselves "Buddhist" (or much of anything else), they have adopted the Dharma and tried to make the Buddha's teachings their own.
Meditation is on everyone's mind (although not necessarily on everyone's Day Planner). Brain research, yoga regimens, breathing lessons, workshops, CDs, and the "Zen" of everything motivates us to undertake The Quest in earnest.
What do we hope to achieve in our quest? Enlightenment, of course! But not so fast. The largest Buddhist movements are Mahayana (devotional Chinese, stripped down Japanese, ceremonial Tibetan). And their messianic message, awaiting the Maitreya, often discourage enlightenment and stress salvation -- saving others that is. We have socially engaged Buddhism, the cultivation of perfections
This is most poignantly seen in the Heart Sutra ("Perfection of Wisdom") and its continuing popularity. Next to no one studies the profound Doctrine of Anatta and the Five Aggregates to understand the meaning of the words most regard as just a mantra to chant).
That is not the self-sufficiency the historical Buddha emphasized (being a lamp unto oneself and seeking guidance not from teachers but from the Dharma directly). Even these oldest existing Buddhist school, Theravada, does little to promote lay meditation, presumably reserving it for monastics and retreatants.
Enormous lay-practitioner movements (Goenka and U Ba Khin in Burma and India, Dhammakaya and Buddhadasa in Thailand, and Ayya Khema and Bhikkhu Bodhi in Sri Lanka, etc.) have pushed meditation out of the abbeys and into people's living rooms and centers.
America's greatest contribution to the Dharma has not only been to continue the pioneering work of Western translators and publishers (like the Pali Text Society, Buddhist Publication Society, Wisdom Publications, and Pariyatti Press) but to restore women to their rightful position within the tradition. The Buddha included women early on and stated that his Dispensation would not be complete until women were ordained and practicing on par with men.
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