Buddhism: Growing With Time

By Jessica Porter

With actors like Richard Gere and Orlando Bloom converting to Buddhism, the religion is becoming more main stream in American Culture. Considering many people in the United States grew up Christian, this new wave of Buddhism is taking many by surprise.

Buddhism originated from Hinduism and Indian thought around 500 B.C. As it began to travel to Western countries it spread more Indian thought than the religion of Buddhism. It is often hard to determine whether early scholars were speaking of Hinduism’s Bhagavad Gita or the Buddhist Lotus Sutra, Cliff Edwards, Religious Studies Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University said. Buddhism took hold in Europe before making its way to America.

“The British had been involved in Indian [culture] since the time of the American revolution. The basis [for America] was provided by European colonialism and then they translated the text which puts it into English. If you look at Buddhism in places like Europe, it’s more advanced, older and more established than it is here,” Daniel Perdue, another Religious Studies Professor at V.C.U. said.

Even with various sects and new ways of thinking about Buddhism, the religion still comes down to a few key concepts that have traveled through history. For example, the teachings and lifestyle of Siddhartha Gautama are the main components of Buddhism. Gautama is known as the first patriarch of Buddhism and the Buddha, meaning the Awakened One. He taught many principals in order for others to become like him, awakened (or enlightened).

As these concepts became more popular, they began to spread. Future successors to Gautama are known as patriarchs and they found different interpretations of his teachings, resulting in the various sects. Also contributing to various sects are the ideas traveling to different countries in Asia.

“Buddhism spreads out of India in several periods of dissemination. In the earliest period it goes to its neighbors like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Burma and so fourth. In the second period of dissemination it goes by way of the silk route to China, Korea and Japan. In the third period it comes over the mountain and passes into Tibet and from Tibet into Bhutan and eventually Mongolia,” Perdue said.

            As it spread through Asia, it is very interesting in the case of China because China has a way of resisting the outside world and seeing the rest of us as barbarians, Kevin Heffernan, Zen leader at Ekoji Buddhist Sangha – a Buddhist community in Richmond’s Museum District – and Zen Buddhism professor at V.C.U., said.

            It was able to acquire such a strong hold in all of these countries because of taking a different approach than other religions. Gautama did not emphasize a God, the origins of the world or other unanswerable topics. Instead he stressed the idea of the self and the interconnectedness of all things, Heffernan said.

            “He said ‘those are huge topics we could just argue until the end of time. His focus was on what can we agree on, what can we all experience directly here and now, without resorting to revealed knowledge.’ He was looking for something anyone could discover, what was available to everyone. I think that’s an interesting point in history,” Heffernan said.

Buddhism eventually made its way to America. Besides European colonialism, this is mainly because of immigrants who came here during various moments in history. According to Buddhism by Houston Smith and Philip Novak, the California Gold Rush of 1852 brought 20,000 Chinese to the United States and may have been the event that first brought ethnic Buddhism to United States soil.

            Japanese and Koreans then began to come to the United States, predominately settling in California.

            “Because the climate in California is so much closer to home people prefer going there. So a lot of Vietnamese and Asians are there and there are a whole lot of temples,” Huang Tran, a Buddhist born in Vietnam, said. He said in 1975 governments in countries like Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam fell and many refugees fled to the United States, bringing along their religion.

            Another contributor to the movement of Buddhism to the United States is war. Every war America has been involved in has created a greater understanding of the other country – socially, politically and religiously. People involved in the war see a new and foreign place and inevitably bring home their experiences. And people not involved in the war stay home and learn about it from the news, Heffernan said.

            “The transition of cultures during time of war, like the current war, World War II and the atom bomb created a lot of anxiety for people and had a lot of people questioning and looking abroad. There was more movement east and west after WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Before people have just ignored it, thinking it can’t be real; they can’t really be serious because this is the one true God.” Heffernan said.

            Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with other poets and writers, became very interested in meditation and used a lot of Buddhist ideas, like simplicity, in their own lives. They also held a strong connection to nature, a theme found in many Eastern religions including Taoism and Buddhism. Many of the books and essays written by them contain those themes.

Also the writers in the beat generation like Jack Kerouac became interested in Buddhism and incorporated Buddhist ideas into their novels. Kerouac began practicing Buddhism in the 1950s and thought it was his duty to spread the word to others. To do this, he wrote Some of the Dharma and later, The Dharma Bums.

            “When you make a war with someone you inevitably take something from them. Something of them goes into you. The beat generation would have never happened had it not been for WWII. It was the Japanese reverberation into the American culture,” Perdue said.