In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

3 Protective Amulets and Awareness Techniques, or How to Make Sense of Buddhism in the West Martin Baumann introduction The past decades have seen a double growth regarding things Buddhist. In institutional terms, Buddhism has become firmly established in Western countries, with a bewildering multitude of schools, lineages, and traditions. Local groups and centers, as well as national and international organizations , continue to be founded. In many countries, the peak of proliferation has not been reached yet. Historian of American religion Richard Seager is convinced “that for many years to come, Buddhists in a number of schools and traditions will look back on the years between 1960 and 2000 as an era in which the foundations were laid for their sanghas.”1 In academic terms, the past decade was exceptionally fertile in producing a substantial collection of empirical studies and interpretive analyses of Buddhism’s spread and settlement outside of Asia. These take stock of past and present developments in a country, set up analytical categories, and apply theoretical frameworks. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, scholars and observers of the field can look back on a multitude of sophisticated publications . It is increasingly difficult to remain up-to-date.2 Buddhism’s spread and settlement outside of Asia have been scrutizined in general analytical perspectives, too. How did Buddhism “come over”? In other words, what trajectories can we distinguish for the way Buddhist ideas and practices came from Asia to the—broadly perceived—”West”? And what dominant patterns of Buddhist presence in a country are observable , due both to the transplantation processes and to developments in the receiving and sending countries? This article shall focus on the second question. The first question—how a “foreign” religion (in this case, Buddhism) has been transferred to a new socio-cultural context—shall be summarized in rough terms, differentiating three main trajectories. First, the religion might reach the new shores by way of migrating people who, after having settled, strive to preserve and 51 continue their traditions. Second, the religion might be sent by intention, with a missionary zeal to win converts. In the case of Buddhism, often expressly depicted as “passive” and non-missionary, two examples of this sort come to mind. Twentieth-century reformist Theravāda Buddhists founded societies explicitly to spread the Dharma (teaching) in the West. Convinced that Buddhism was the most appropriate religion for modern times, monks traveled to Europe and North America. Whereas these missionary efforts so far have not matched the high expectations of the senders, the second example, that of the Sōka Gakkai, is more impressive in several ways. Founded in Japan in 1930 and spread to all continents since the 1960s, this group’s particular emphasis on chanting practice enjoys a growing interest and membership in many parts of the world. Finally, the “foreign” religion might have deliberately been fetched from abroad by sympathizers and initial converts. In the case of Buddhism, texts in Asian languages were translated and published, Buddhist ideas and practices were adopted, and Asian teachers were invited to lecture.3 Turning to the second question—that of detecting dominant patterns of Buddhism in the West—this article shall rest on two main arguments. First, I hold that in order to understand Buddhism’s Western presence better , it is not sufficient to look only at past and present developments of Buddhism in these countries. Rather, the view has to turn to Asia and past religious changes there, because developments in Asia have been a prerequisite for activities and efforts located within the second and third trajectories of transmission. Second, my considerations shall be based on the heuristic “two Buddhisms” typology proposed by Charles S. Prebish and later adopted by others.4 My focus will be a different one, however. The notions of immigrant or ethnic on the one hand and convert or white Buddhist on the other, developed by others from Prebish’s early dichotomy, suggest that the main line of difference between these two Buddhist strands is one of people and ethnic ancestry. I shall rather argue that the religious concepts held and practices followed take prime importance in shaping the predominant strands of Buddhism in the West. I suggest that attention needs to be drawn to a contrast between traditionalist and modernist Buddhism , prevalent in non-Asian as well as in Asian settings. the paradigm of immigrant and convert buddhism reconsidered The classification of immigrant versus convert Buddhism originates with Prebish’s...

Share