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Introduction

One of the most monumental developments in the history of Buddhism was the way it began to catch on in North America. Its an incredible story, partly because Eastern and North American cultures are so very different, and for the longest time, it looked as though Buddhism was only a fad. How it gained intellectual and cultural respectability, therefore, is a very telling social event. Its an incredible story because, unlike other religions in North America, its spread of Buddhism that I’m going to talk about has little to do with the religion of immigrant communities coming to this country. North Americans had to have a good reason to reach out and try to connect with this foreign religion. And that tells us a heck of a lot about North American culture as it has developed since the fin de siecle. But perhaps the strangest aspect of the growth of Buddhism in North America is the role played by those on the fringe of society in its developments: the beatniks, the hippies and even a group that called themselves the Theosophical Society, who were much more interested in magic and the paranormal than what we would call mainstream Buddhism. Just the fact that the Buddhist baby survived in the midst of all the freaky BATH WATER is fascinating.

The Pioneers

Of course, it would be an exaggeration to say that everything out the development of Buddhism in North America was weird or even peculiar. Part of it was simply the product of curiosity and intellectual interest. Modern American society was born in the eighteenth-century and was a society that stressed the freedom of the individual and the freedom of thought that we see in the American constitution and the individualism of Americans today. That robust individualism causes North Americans to have some difficulty with Buddhist discipline and its emphasis on the absence of a isolated self. But in the eighteenth century, it meant that some scholars would be interested enough in the religion and behavior of other societies that they would break with tradition and begin to explore the wealth of thought outside their own land. It meant that they began to compare their own society with societies outside. And it meant that they began to develop the tools that they needed to understand other societies and their writing. One of those tools was Sanskrit.

Some of you who have seen the Indiana Jones movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark may have a romantic notion of those who know and study eastern languages and society. Well, Indiana Jones had a real counterpart in the eighteenth-century. His name was William Jones, but he was also known as Oriental Jones or Persian Jones because of his extensive knowledge of the East and the fact that he put it on the academic map. He wasn’t American, he worked and taught at Oxford rather than Princeton, but he was friends with many American scholars and figures like Benjamin Franklin, and what he told them was that countries like Persia had legends and literature every bit as deep and important as the Greek Iliad or Odyssey. He provided translations from Persian and Indian literature and founded the Asiatic Society where papers were read on oriental topics. He learned about Sanskrit writings while acting as a diplomat in India and he encouraged others to translate them. He was unimpressed with some of the translations he read, so he learned Sanskrit himself and found that Sanskrit was a “goldmine”. He started the journal Asiatic Researches which contained the first translations from Sanskrit and by so doing he opened that “goldmine” and began to make it available to others, especially the Americans.

Now literate Americans became more familiar with Indian philosophy. They still didn’t know very much about Buddhism but now they began to have books on Eastern philosophy in their libraries. It was a start. The famous writer Ralph Waldo Emerson turned the wheel when the journal of himself and his friends, the Dial that was founded in 1840 began to explore the scriptures. As you might expect, at first the scholars had a hard time distinguishing Buddhism from Hinduism. Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to get them mixed up. But eventually, he began to learn that Buddhism nullified the concept of the self and looked to have all uniqueness absorbed in something infinite called Nirvana (to be distinguished of course from the popular group). Ralph was typically American in that he didn’t like the idea of losing himself in nirvana and he was also a bit perturbed when he discovered that Buddhism was a religion without a God.

On the Dial, Ralph got himself a young assistant whose name was Henry Thoreau. Thoreau was a neighbor who did odd jobs. He would go on to become the author of Walden — one of the most influential books in all of North American Literature and recently a new age classic again. But long before he wrote that, he made his own translation of a fragment of a very important Buddhist writing — the Lotus Sutra and he was amazed at the combination of contemplation and practice. While be kept Emerson’s woodlot full in 1841, he found that Buddhism encouraged him to get in touch with something deeper by going inside himself in order to get outside of himself. He settled into a cabin on one of Emerson’s woodlot just outside of Walden Pond and he began to explore non-theistic contemplation. He was determined to get to the very bottom of existence and, without much formal knowledge of Buddhism, or an understanding of Sanskrit, he began to do something that goes to the very heart of Buddhism. He began to try to live in the present moment without being distracted by ideas of past and future, or of a need for possessions, or of unruly emotions. He created for himself an environment perfect for meditation and he waited for realization to come, much as the Buddha had done before him. And he discovered many of the same things that the Buddha did. In a very real sense he became a Zen master.

How much of a Zen master? Well, if you read a modern American Buddhist classic Wherever You Go, There You Are, you will find that it is filled with Thoreau. Let me read you just one quote (35). Thoreau gave all future American Buddhists, be they hippies, beats or freaks a truly American way of talking about Buddhism and an emphasis that got completely away from religious rules and rituals in order to concentrate on the very kernel of Buddhism — the stress on being in complete touch with the present moment with absolute clarity and the depths that this insight could provide. Anyone who read Walden, and most North American university students do, has a non-threatening introduction to some of the most fundamental Buddhist principles.

The next big event in the history of American Buddhism was a scholarly one. It was the publication of The Light of Asia on the teachings of Lord Buddha by Edwin Arnold. Arnold sent a copy to Bronson Alcott in philosophy at Concord Summer school. The American academic love affair with Buddhism began as the academics praised the book and began to get excited about it. Academics are influential teachers and they instruct the country’s elite. Alcott became a teacher and a proselytize for Buddhism. Published in 1878, The Light of Asia soon sold close to a million copies and was loved by writers like Oliver Wendell Holmes — the author of Sherlock Holmes. Buddhism became a household word and an academic fad.

The Bath Water Begins to Get A Little Murky

The American Buddhist baby was born. Babies, like the rest of us, are simple and in their own way perfect little Buddhas. Its when life and karma begins to intrude that things get a bit murky. The baby soon finds itself in some very serious BATH WATER. With popularity, all sorts of things can intrude into the bath water and make it difficult to see the essentials. That’s one of the problems faced by a spiritual insight when it intersects with a real society and a larger group of individuals. Religion is particularly susceptible to corruption since it hovers around the brink of the irrational and the mystical. Once formulated, religious belief has all the shortcomings of thought generally and there is no absurd idea ever conceived that has not been able to find a spiritual rationale.

In the 1870s, Americans had gone through a Civil War. They were no longer so sure that their society was perfect or that they could create a rational paradise on earth. Some of them began to explore the irrational — the spiritualist movement. Ghosts, spirits, messages from the spirit world became another flavor of the day. And even very serious people got caught up in the mod. One of these was a man by the name of Colonel Henry Steel Olcott. He heard about strange phenomenon at the Eddy Farm in Vermont. Olcott thought he’d go down and expose the fraud, instead he met a strange powerful big boned woman in garishly bright clothing who called herself Madame Helena Petrova Blavatsky. They became chums. She was a real character, had fought with Garibaldi in Italy and still had bullets that you could feel in her shoulder. And she was a spiritualist but with a difference she claimed to be able to talk to spirits and that she learned her wisdom from ancient Buddhist elders who were know to those in Tibet where she had traveled. She believed in spirits but thought that most of them were distractions, except for the elders who spoke to her directly as a medium. These were the only true spirit guides.

Olcott was fascinated. Together they formed the Theosophical Society. None of this would be particularly interesting, except for the robust character of Madame Blavatsky, except for the fact that the Theosophical Society were the biggest defenders of Buddhism in North America and made Buddhism exotic and occult in a very new age sense. Eventually, both Blavatsky and Olcott were seeing white garmented orientals with raven hair coming to them and telling them that they had a role to play in creating a society and promulgating ancient wisdom. They composed occult works that brought together western magic but put it in a fuzzy eastern framework. Even more important they began to lionize the Hindu swamis and Buddhist monks who were, supposedly, in touch with the eastern wisdom. And some of the people that they brought to lecture were not weirdos, they were serious religious men and women.

Eastern religion was still a second class citizen in the world of spiritual life. Buddhism was a formal religion for many and a serious religion for monks in many parts of Asia. But it lacked real energy, vitality and contemporaneousness. These are characteristics of a religion in decline. All that began to change as the Theosophical Society funded trips to India and Ceylon. The trips were of crucial importance in harnessing the energies of Indian Hinduism and Sinhalese Buddhism to a nationalist cause. For once, westerners were coming and praising indigenous religion and spirituality rather than trying to convert them to Christianity. Americans were legitimizing Eastern religion and making a connection, however strange and tenuous it was. The Sinhalese realized that they could not turn the Theosophists into true Buddhists but they were happy to have them as allies. 7 branches of the Buddhist Theosophical Society were established in Ceylon. An environment had been created for a more serious look at Buddhism. Olcott even helped the Sinhalese to produce a simple Buddhist catechism or Buddha Dharma . He was invited by Japanese Buddhists to come and to help revive Buddhism in that country. He gave 75 lectures telling the Japanese that they were on the tide of a real turn towards Buddhism that would eventually transform the West. In the words of the Japanese, “Olcott san has come.” Buddhism was beginning to feel its own strength and power.

The Theosophists were plagued with scandals as it appeared that Madame Blavatsky’s communication with spirits was fraudulent and the Society began to cave in upon itself. But they had put Ceylon and Buddhism on the cultural map. In 1881 a scholar by the name of Thomas Rhys-Davids collected Buddhist sutras and founded the Pali Text Society. The hunt for Buddhist texts had begun and the process of serious translation was underway. There were even a few westerners who were beginning to seek out Zen masters. At the World Parliament of Religion held in 1893 held in America, the Buddhists were part of the agenda. For the first time, Buddhism was put on something like a level footing with Christianity. and maybe Zen masters were beginning to think in ways that would bring them to the West in the confidence that they had something to offer rather than some vague ancient wisdom and magical knowledge and, more important, that Americans might be ready to listen.

By 1897, the first Buddhist master to come to the Americans was T. Suzuki. He stayed with Dr. Paul Carus who composed a highly popular book called The Buddhist Gospel which seemed to show the parallels between Jesus and Buddha. Suzuki got 3 dollars a week and was engaged in translating Buddhist texts. Carus was interested in developing Buddhist writings that would appeal to North Americans. The process of Westernizing Buddhism had begun.

The Beats

The period between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the end of World War II has been referred to in American Buddhism as the “lotus clinging to the rock.” Buddhism grew very slowly and remained largely academic. But this was the period where many Buddhist texts were developed and serious Americans became exposed to the sophistication of Buddhist religion and to Buddhist masters who began to visit, at first intermittently but eventually establishing their own zendos or temples. It takes a special kind of person to be the first at anything and to put up with the trials of establishing a community. Often these individuals are eccentric. Such a one was Noygen Senzaki, a student Soyen Shaku, a Japanese Zen master who could speak with authority on meditation and who himself spent 9 months teaching in America. Another Japanese missionary was Sokatsu Shaku. Both came to San Francisco. It is interesting to see how they related to Americans. Shaku had a student who told him that she had been studying art for 6 years. He asked her to carve him a Buddha. When she gave him the carving, he threw it out the window. He wanted her to carve a Buddha inside herself, but like all Zen masters, he tended not to explain himself but to try to get the student to have an immediate insight. Sometimes this worked with North Americans, probably much more often it didn’t. Shaku demanded obedience. He bought a ten acre farm on warn out land and expected his students to make a go of it. Naturally, they couldn’t compete with experienced farmers and became the laughing stock of the community. Stormy meetings meant that groups broke up. It was difficult to get North Americans to behave like Buddhist monks. Shaku was also typically Japanese in his authoritarianism and his demands on his student. His prize student rebelled when he tried to get her to be an expert at flower arranging and tea ceremony before he would ordain him. He ended up never speaking to him again.

That student, Sokei-an, started his own community in Greenwich village. In four years the zazen only grew from 8 to 15 students and they sat in chairs rather than cross legged. Meanwhile Senzaki created a ‘floating zendo’ that moved around Los Angeles. His students too sat in chairs; the community constantly changed; Senzaki was so irresponsible about money that he gave it away or spent it just as soon as it came in. Hardly the way to establish a permanent zendo. And behavior between these two was hardly conducive to spreading the Buddhist message. Sokei-an once told Senzaki “Senzaki-san, I think you are an egotistical ass.” Another time, Senzaki threatened to slap Sokei-an’s face. And yet deep Buddhism sometimes prevailed. Senzaki once told a supporter that when Sokei-an talked about human nature or ego, he always listened. Over the years these two pioneers had lots of listeners but very few converts. With World War II all things Japanese were taboo. Sokei-an and Senzaki found themselves in different internment camps. In 1945, finally freed Senazaki returned to Los Angeles where he composed a poem complaining about not being able to establish a zendo in “this strange land.”

Following the war, the Zen writer and teacher with the most authority in America was Suzuki. By 1953, he had become a figure and his age and bearing fit the mold of the gentle scholar. His informal style appealed to Americans. But most of all — unlike other Zen teachers who had tried their hand in America — he was willing to try to explain Buddhism “even if it might seem like pointing a finger at the moon.” And that’s what smart North Americans needed in order to get to first base with Buddhism — more of an explanation. But even someone as capable as Suzuki wouldn’t have been able to make much of an impact were it not for one of the great ironies of cultural history. The conjunction of Buddhism with a North American preoccupation. North Americans are obsessed with finding themselves. It could be said that this is what makes them interesting and curious and allows them to explore Buddhism. But the impulse is one that causes them to feel always dislocated, always needing to prove themselves, to rebel, to become individuals. The preoccupation leaves many people dissatisfied — hence the need for healing. The form that North American healing usually takes is psychoanalysis — helping you to find yourself and to accept the things you cannot change.

Now, while Buddhism seeks to negate the notion of the self and, ultimately, the need for psychoanalysis, both are concerned with healing. And Buddhism, like psychoanalysis encourages individuals to turn within themselves to find the answer. An understanding of the suffering in life is common to Buddhism and Freudian analysis. But, in the final analysis, Buddhism has to be critical of psychoanalysis because it believes that there is “no beyond, no underneath, no upon in our consciousness.” The mind cannot be shrunk nor dissected; it has no secret recesses; it is one indivisible whole connected to everything. But those who were interested in psychoanalysis were also interested in Buddhism, and particularly the practical method for awareness known as Zen Buddhism. In 1957, a Conference was held on Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis that featured Dr. Suzuki as a speaker. A long-term relationship had begun. Those who were attracted to psychology were attracted to Buddhism. And those who were most rebellious in their search for individuality were the ones who were most attracted to Zen. Among these were the beatniks.

Jack Kerouac was obsessed with the first noble truth of Buddhism — that all human life was suffering. And he tried to describe that suffering and human nature in starkly realistic terms. Gary Snyder, a friend of Kerouac’s, bummed around from job to job and finally explored Buddhism — like Thoreau — when he became a fire lookout in Washington. Allan Ginsberg alternated drinking, drug taking and experiment with Zen. In the case of Kerouac and Ginsberg, we have spokesmen for a new generation, incredibly modern writers, who — at least at some level — embraced Zen. These were university trained people, but their influence was not confined or even complementary of university life. They were bold adventurers and the created a new form of literary Buddhism in Ginsberg’s poetry and in works like Kerouac’s Dharma Bums. They were still typically American. Ginsberg didn’t like nirvana. He resented thinking of himself as nothing. Kerouac thought that Zen teachers were far too tricky and intellectual, even though he agreed that suffering was what life was all about. Only their friend Snyder really embraced the religion and then in a typically individualistic way. He didn’t like the way his legs hurt when he tried to meditate properly. Alan Watt wrote extensively about Zen but he wouldn’t meditate in even the quarter lotus position and criticized those who did. All of these people adopted a very easy and free floating, and entirely undisciplined, approach to Zen, as did many of their artist friends.

But they brought Zen squarely into the center of an American cultural event and extended its influence from scholarship and the fringe. Beat Zen was subjective, self-conscious and strident. It was used where it fit the mood. It wasn’t a real practice even in the sense that it had been for Thoreau. Zen was like Jazz. It was serendipitous and you simply took what you wanted. As Allan Watts put it — “it’s a free country”. They sometimes referred to themselves as Zen Buddhists.

Flower Power

The sixties generation gave Zen something quite different and thereby extended its influence. Their search for freedom built on the foundation of the beats but took a very different and more optimistic approach. They rejected the society in which they lived and they looked for happiness. They had little time for the grappling with suffering that plagued Kerouac. Instead, they wanted to drop out and seek their own answers. And the ultimate method towards happiness and new answers was the trip.

It is often claimed that the sixties was an irresponsible generation. But the reality is that the generation of the sixties was able to pursue their optimistic dreams with an energy that seems difficult to imagine today. They did not only drop out, but they created communes, developed different ways of making a living, pursued more natural lifestyles, effectively opposed a major and unjust war, and left an indelible imprint in their search for social justice and a better society. They may have been naive in some ways but their optimism allowed them to act and to seek.

There were different kinds of trips that need to be understood. Marijuana and LSD were not merely ways to deaden pain, they were ways of achieving new insights that would help with life. The culture of marijuana taking was so different from today that such a process now seems impossible or at best unlikely. But drugs were not the only trip. Individuals read deeply — for North Americans — in oriental religions. And the children of the sixties were willing to learn new disciplines and postures. For the first time, they were willing to try out meditation the way that it should be done. They gave up the rigid, defensive attitudes of their elders and were willing to try out new diets, new exercises and to trip out in meditation.

Imagine, if you will, how useful this was for Zen masters. In order to trip out, students were willing to sit peacefully and still. They had far less trouble just sitting and allowing the present moment to appear to them. Marijuana and LSD had already shown many of them the fulfilment in simply experiencing normal things, but these drugs had limitations — they were not enough and caused people to look deeper. But more important, these people were open minded. They had what Zen masters call beginners mind — they were willing to let Buddhism just happen to them.

And Suzuki, the Buddhist papa was in the right place at the right time. He didn’t want to give people new dogmas and rituals; he wanted them to have a practice that was useful. Useful immediately, but something that could provide even more for those who wanted to go deeper. And Suzuki spoke a language that Americans could understand. He spoke about a different kind of freedom — the freedom of the mind that comes from doing a practice without question — and he spoke the language of individualism with a new twist — not the discovery of our self but the discovery of our true nature.

Americans will still be Americans. The new generation had more patience than the past, but they were still in a hurry to live their freedom. Enter Yasutani-roshi, a 77 year old Zen monk with huge ears who crisscrossed America between 1962 and 1969. He felt that it was essential to experience enlightenment in some form quickly, so he introduced pressure cooker meditation sessions that attacked individuals’ sense of reality and pushed people through the barrier. He capitalized on the energy of a new generation and their desire to strike quickly. Many traditional Zen teachers are indifferent to kensho or think that it will arise gradually. But Yasutani made it a self-contained trip that could influence one’s life indelibly.

Towards a North American Buddhism

The emphasis on the first awakening or kensho fit in perfectly with the flower power generations notion of a tripping out and it supported the rush that people were in to achieve a new level of happiness. By this time, some intrepid North Americans like Phillip Kapleau had gone to Japan for serious training in Zen and had returned. North Americans by temperament and culture were now writing and teaching North Americans. Kapleau took the risk, even more than Suzuki, of explaining Buddism to North Americans, understanding that they needed to feel that they understood before they would commit. But here also was someone who would not compromise with North Americans where it counted. He disapproved of eclectic Buddhism and of sitting in chairs instead of using the correct posture.

Kapleau’s books made a huge difference in that they established the beginnings of a model for North American Buddhism and made it something far less exotic and mysterious. He took the chance of explaining it and tearing away the veil of secrecy. In so doing, it could be argued that he did some damage to the traditional master disciple relationship where the emphasis is on the master working with the evolving consciousness of the disciple. But North Americans have been exposed to many religions and cultures; they are a rationalistic culture; they will not simply have faith or be

obedience unless they are informed. This poses problems down the road for American mediators since it gives too much prominence to thinking. But it is an essential foundation for the involvement of North Americans.

Kapleau’s books got me into the Temple here because they answered many of my misgivings. Like most North Americans, my approach to Buddhism was highly rationalistic and I wanted enlightenment in two weeks or less. But I think that I am fairly typical of most North Americans in the way that I came to Buddhism and I think that Kapleau was right in his basic approach. It caused him some serious problems and an ultimate break with his own teacher in 1967.

The author of How the Swans Came to the Lake describes the period after 1960 very optimistically. Zen groups, he claims, have appeared like “mushrooms after a spring rain.” But, as I have argued elsewhere, I think that Buddhism still has a precarious foothold in North America. It is still highly reliant on the charisma of priests who either come from or have been trained in other countries. Its often a stage of intellectual growth rather than a way of life. Its still a junior partner even where it is paired with psychology and psychiatry. It hasn’t developed a robust culture of its own.

Zen Buddhism, the form of Buddhism that fits best with the North American culture, can no longer be termed a fad or an intellectual cum literary cultural form. But it has yet to establish firm roots. Whereas once the lotus clung to the rock; it has now embedded itself in the mud. Whether it will grow and spread depends very much on the cultural connections that it can make with North American society.

None of this, of course, impacts upon the truth of Buddhism as a spiritual way of connecting with all that is and truly reforming one’s life. The issue is one of cultural and historical importance. But whether or not Buddhism will become a real presence in North America in our lifetimes is still very much an open question.

These lectures are based on Stephen Batchelor’s book ‘The Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture’.