Religion: Buddhism in America

“While the Vatican Council in Rome is celebrating the eventual unity of all Christians, here in New York we are celebrating the essential unity of all man’s religions,” Unitarian Minister Donald Harrington told his congregation at Manhattan’s Community Church last week. As Harrington completed his sermon, a prayer gong sounded, and a red-robed priest began to chant the ancient Shishinrai:

We reverently pay homage to the Eternal Buddha.

We reverently pay homage to the Eternal Dharma.

We reverently pay homage to the Eternal Sangha.

The Twelve Adorations were chanted and the Eight Paths of Righteousness explained. Sharing the platform were priests and scholars who had come from Japan to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Buddhism in the U.S.

Although last week’s service was the first to be held in a Christian church, U.S. Buddhism owes part of its current health to some shrewd borrowing from U.S. Christianity. To hold their largely Japanese-American membership—which yearly becomes more American and less Japanese—most congregations are turning from Japanese to English in their services, call themselves churches rather than temples to avoid identification with the occult. Services are held on Sunday, although all days are holy to Buddhists. The Buddhist Church of Seattle sponsors a Boy Scout troop, a day nursery, a Sunday school and a drum and bugle corps.

A few years ago, West Coast beatniks and other intellectually unemployed seized upon Buddhism with all the enthusiasm some earlier orientalists had shown for mah-jongg. Their brief flings were mainly with the Zen sect, which concentrates on self-examination and is the most intellectual of the major Buddhist sects. But most Buddhists in the U.S., like Buddhists in Japan, belong to the Jodo Shinshu sect, which teaches that the Buddhist goal of cosmic enlightenment can be reached through faith in Amida Buddha, the Enlightened One of Infinite Life and Light. Of approximately 100,000 U.S. Buddhists, probably 80,000 are Shinshu. The sect operates 56 churches, concentrated on the West Coast but including a modernistic New York temple dedicated by the touring group.

With the faddists mostly gone, a small group of serious Occidentals continue to find a unique serenity in Buddhism and often are the most active members of a congregation. There is no proselytizing and no dogmatic version of creation and salvation. Says the Rev. Takashi Tsuji, director of Buddhist Education for the Buddhist Churches of America (Jodo Shinshu): “There are 84,000 paths to the summit of the hill.”