Buddhism in America
Buddhists in the American West
Buddhism first entered America in the middle of the 19th century when Chinese workers arrived in Hawaii and the West Coast. Japanese immigrants began to arrive in the late 19th century. Both groups soon built Buddhist temples in America; by 1875, there...
Discrimination and Exclusion
Anti-Chinese rhetoric in San Francisco and throughout the American West culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Japanese immigrants also faced hostility; by 1924, the exclusionary policy was expanded to include quotas that further restricted the...
East Coast Buddhists
On the East Coast, interest in Buddhism rose in the 1870s through the influence of prominent figures like Henry David Thoreau and H.P. Blavatsky, who founded the Theosophical Society with Henry Steel Olcott. Many of these East Coast Buddhists drew...
At the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions
The 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions, held at that year's Chicago World’s Fair, gave Buddhists from Sri Lanka and Japan the chance to describe their own traditions to an audience of curious Americans. Some stressed the universal characteristics of...
Internment Crisis
After the outbreak of the Pacific War between the United States and Japan in 1941, Japanese Americans who had already put down roots in America—citizens and noncitizens alike—were sent to internment camps. The internment crisis lasted from 1942 until 1946...
Zen Boom
In the 1950s a new generation of Buddhists, poets, and intellectuals brought their enthusiasm for Zen Buddhism to their work. Advocates like Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg placed Zen Buddhism at the cutting edge of the American literary and...
Building “American Buddhism”
Throughout the late 20th century, the Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana streams of Buddhism grew rapidly in the United States. American and Asian Buddhists built institutions and communities of practice spanning multiple generations. Download (PDF)...
New Asian Immigration and the Temple Boom
The Immigration Act of 1965, the fall of Saigon in 1975, and the overthrow of Pol Pot in 1979 brought new waves of Asian immigration to cities in the United States. Many arrivals from China, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia worked to establish...
Popularizing Buddhism
In the 1990s, a new form of popular Americanized Buddhism emerged with the publicity of celebrity followers like Richard Gere and Tina Turner. At the same time, new generations of Asian American Buddhists continued to grow and shape their traditions...
