Christopher Queen - American Buddhism

AMERICAN BUDDHISM

Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship

ROUTLEDGECURZON CRITICAL STUDIES IN BUDDHISM

General Editors:

Charles S. Prebish

Pennsylvania State University

Damien Keown

Goldsmiths College, University of London

The Curzon Critical Studies in Buddhism Series is a comprehensive study of the Buddhist tradition. The series explores this complex and extensive tradition from a variety of perspectives, using a range of different methodologies.

The Series is diverse in its focus, including historical studies, textual translations and commentaries, sociological investigations, bibliographic studies, and considerations of religious practice as an expression of Buddhisms integral religiosity. It also presents materials on modern intellectual historical studies, including the role of Buddhist thought and scholarship in a contemporary, critical context and in the light of current social issues. The series is expansive and imaginative in scope, spanning more than two and a half millennia of Buddhist history. It is receptive to all research works that inform and advance our knowledge and understanding of the Buddhist tradition. The series maintains the highest standards of scholarship and promotes the application of innovative methodologies and research methods.

BUDDHISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Edited by Damien Keown, Charles Prebish, Wayne Husted

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Paul Williams

WOMEN IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BUDDHA

Kathryn R. Blackstone

THE RESONANCE OF EMPTINESS

A Buddhist Inspiration for Contemporary Psychotherapy

Gay Watson

AMERICAN BUDDHISM

Methods and Findings

in Recent Scholarship

edited by

Duncan Ryken Williams

and

Christopher S. Queen

First Published in 1999

by RoutledgeCurzon

Published 2013 by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Editorial Matter 1999 Duncan Ryken Williams and Christopher S. Queen

Typeset in Sabon by LaserScript Ltd, Mitcham

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-700-71081-2 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-700-71204-5 (pbk)

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

CONTENTS

Diana L. Eck

Duncan Ryken Williams

Christopher S. Queen

Kenneth K. Tanaka

Senry Asai and Duncan Ryken Williams

Stuart Chandler

Penny Van Esterik

Thomas A. Tweed

James William Coleman

Phillip Hammond and David Machacek

Paul David Numrich

Charles R. Strain

Richard P. Hayes

Sangha Charles S. Prebish

Robert E. Goss

Richard Hughes Seager

Compiled by Duncan Ryken Williams

Compiled by Duncan Ryuken Williams

FOREWORD

Diana L. Eck

Wat Buddhanusorn is a jewel, a beautiful new Thai Buddhist temple dedicated in 1997 in Fremont, California, near San Francisco. It is one of several Thai temples in the Bay area and one of dozens now scattered throughout the United States. Its story is not unlike that of hundreds of new Buddhist communities in America. For over ten years, the Thai community of the Fremont area had gathered in a large bungalow house on Niles Boulevard. It converted the house into quarters for resident monks and classrooms for an education program ranging from instruction in Buddhism and the Thai language to instruction in music and dance. A converted garage had become its Buddha hall. Over the course of a decade, the community had come to include Laotian, Vietnamese, and Cambodian Buddhists as well.

When I first visited Wat Buddhanusorn in 1995, the new temple was under construction in the lot immediately behind the bungalow on Niles Boulevard. The foundation had been laid and a skeleton of two-by-fours framed. By the time of my next visit in late 1997, the stunning new temple had already been dedicated. With its graceful roof line and elaborate ornamentation, this temple is a striking and highly visible new addition to the religious landscape of Fremont. The drive down Niles Boulevard will never be the same.

Inside the Buddha hall of the new temple, a fine golden image of the seated Buddha graces the raised altar, and just behind it is a colorful mural, painted by a local Thai artist, depicting scenes of the three worlds the heavens, this world, and the netherworlds. The most remarkable part of this complex mural might well serve as a visual icon of the two-way traffic of influence and interaction constitutive of Buddhism in America. It is a painted depiction of Wat Buddhanusorn itself and, just above it, the city of San Francisco, represented by the unmistakable Golden Gate Bridge. The image gives vivid expression to the religious reality of this Thai Buddhist community. Just as Wat Buddhanusorn is now a visible part of the religious life of Fremont and the greater Bay area, so the Bay area is a visible part of the religious life of this Thai Buddhist community inscribed, so to speak, in the iconography of its altar. And just as Wat Buddhanusorn will have a role in reshaping the context of American public and civic life, so will the context of American life gradually reshape this Buddhist community.

This temple is one of more than one hundred fifty Buddhist temples and centers in the San Francisco Bay Area, documented by the Pluralism Project. In addition, there are new Hindu temples, Islamic centers, and Sikh gurdwaras. In Fremont alone, just down Niles Boulevard from Wat Buddhanusorn, there is a graceful Japanese Jdo Shinsh temple built by the first Buddhists in this area. A new Sikh gurdwara has been constructed nearby on Hillside Terrace, now renamed Gurdwara Terrace. The largest of the Hindu temples in Fremont shares its facility with a Jain congregation. Across town, the Islamic Society of the East Bay and St. Pauls United Methodist Church have just completed a mosque and a church, built side by side on the frontage road they named Peace Terrace. It is in this context that the Abbott of Wat Buddhanusorn participates in a Tri-City Ministerial Association, bringing together the clergy and leadership of an increasingly diverse area.

The new and more complex religious diversity that has become part of the American scene in the past thirty years, since the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, has raised a range of new research questions for those of us who study religion. A single community, like Wat Buddhanusorn, becomes the site for investigating the dynamic processes of cultural and religious change. How is a Thai Buddhist community like Wat Buddhanusorn negotiating a new identity in the American context? What does it mean to be Thai? American? Buddhist? How will the sense of cultural, national, and religious identity change with the second and third generations? How will their sense of what it is to be Buddhist change in the encounter with Japanese, Lao, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Korean, or Euro-American Buddhists? How will the relation of monks and laity evolve? Will the monks or laity participate in a pan-Buddhist council? In what ways will this Thai Buddhist community participate in such interreligious groups as the Tri-City Ministerial Council, and what changes might that encounter generate? What aspects of Thai Buddhist culture and tradition will prove most durable or most dynamic in the American context? The investigation of these and a multitude of other questions will require the sustained attention of a new generation of scholars.