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1 i n t r o d u c t i o n TransBuddhism Authenticity in the Context of Transformation Nalini Bhushan and Abr aham Zablocki The Global Proliferation of Buddhism Buddhism is booming. In Western Europe, Australasia, and North America, Buddhism has attracted new converts not only in metropoles such as New York, San Francisco, London, and Paris but also in places such as Kansas and Ireland. In the former Soviet bloc, Buddhism has established a loyal following of new converts, while it is also undergoing a resurgence—after being suppressed for seven decades—in Mongolia and the Russian republics of Tuva, Kalmykia, and Buryatia. Buddhism is even growing in South and Central America, in Africa, and in Israel. In the United States, this boom has taken many forms. Buddhist converts often exist side by side with Buddhist immigrant communities and, although the worlds of convert and migrant Buddhists were once separate, the borders between them are becoming blurred as the children and grandchildren of converts and immigrants find themselves participating in Buddhist practices and identities that are simultaneously ethnically specific and culturally universalized . Not only does American Buddhism comprise a variety of vibrant Buddhist communities, but Buddhism in America is also having an impact on the practice of other religions. For example, Buddhism has inspired a renewed interest in the contemplative dimensions of Christian practice, and, under the rubric of “interfaith dialogue,” many of the techniques of Buddhist meditation practice are being incorporated into American lifestyles. It is not only in Western convert and Asian immigrant communities that the effects of the global expansion of Buddhism on Buddhist culture are apparent . Throughout Asia, Buddhism is being revitalized through a variety of linkages. In Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia, and the rest of the historically Buddhist world, new paradigms of Buddhist practice and identity are taking 2 Nalini Bhushan and Abraham Zablocki root. In some cases, this involves borrowing or communicating elements from other Buddhist societies, now newly in conversation with one another. As Karma Lekshe Tsomo points out in her chapter in this volume, Taiwanese nuns have played a central role in transmitting the full ordination lineage for nuns back to Sri Lanka, where it has been lost since the eleventh century. Globalized , American-inflected Zen has circulated back to Japan, sometimes mediated by Japanese teachers who have resided in the West, and sometimes by eagerly embraced Western roshis. Western feminist converts have been influential in transforming the position of women in Tibetan Buddhist communities, affording these women new opportunities to study and practice Buddhism in ways that were historically limited primarily to men, including the opportunity to study the full monastic curriculum and to participate in monastic debate. In India, the birthplace of Buddhism, ten-day vipassanā meditation courses, organized and taught by S. N. Goenka in a new modernist version of the Burmese forest tradition, have become popular, attracting middle-class Hindus, gaining a significant role in the Indian penal system, and even drawing Tibetan practitioners. In China there is a resurgence of interest in Tibetan Buddhism. Large crowds attend the Tibetan Buddhist Yonghegong Temple in Beijing. The fact that Chinese devotees come to study with charismatic Tibetan lamas has led the state to crack down, with limited success, on the participation of Han Chinese in Tibetan Buddhism. In Taiwan, the number of Buddhist nuns has exploded, and they now substantially outnumber monks. In India and Nepal, influential members of the Hindu elite may be found sitting at the feet of Tibetan exiles who had arrived destitute in South Asia only a few years before, while Indian and Nepali Buddhists from remote Himalayan communities have swelled the ranks of these exiles’ newly (re-)established monasteries. The transmission of Zen to the West—and the United States in particular— has been so successful that American Zen teachers are received in Japan with enthusiasm. In Southeast Asia political activists develop critiques of patterns of economic exploitation and social injustice by articulating modern visions of engaged Buddhism that reflect these activists’ immersion and participation in larger global networks that adopt such Western ideologies as environmentalism or American Transcendentalism. On the one hand, these networks reflect Buddhist members’ participation in a worldwide effort to engage religious institutions in struggles for social justice, such as the liberation theology movement in Christianity; on the other hand, these networks demonstrate the formation of global, pan-Buddhist identities that transcend particular national traditions. In...

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