Unit 11 · Buddhist Texts Come to America

Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900) was a German-born scholar at Oxford University. He studied Sanskrit and the history of religions. He believed Western readers should be able to read the scriptures of Asia in English.

Müller planned and edited the Sacred Books of the East, a series of 50 volumes published by Oxford from 1879 to 1910. It included Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Chinese, Zoroastrian and Islamic texts. Müller himself translated the Dhammapada for volume 10 (1881).

The series made these texts widely available for the first time. Scholars today note that it also reflected its era: Müller chose which texts counted as ’sacred books’ and treated religions as mainly about texts, not practice.

T.W. Rhys Davids learned Pali from Buddhist monks while serving as a British official in Sri Lanka. He founded the Pali Text Society in 1881 and translated many suttas, including Buddhist Suttas (SBE 11, 1881).

His wife, Caroline Rhys Davids (1857–1942), was a scholar in her own right. She translated the Therigatha as Psalms of the Sisters (1909) and worked on the Abhidhamma. She later led the Pali Text Society as president.

Their work relied on Sri Lankan and Burmese monks, who taught them the language and supplied manuscripts. Historians today stress this collaboration, which older accounts often left out.

In 1879, the English poet Edwin Arnold published The Light of Asia, a long poem about the life of the Buddha. It retold the story from the prince’s birth to his awakening and teaching.

The poem was hugely popular in Britain and America, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. For many readers, it was their first picture of the Buddha. Its language made the Buddha sound like a noble Victorian hero.

Arnold’s poem also mattered in Asia. Anagarika Dharmapala later said reading it moved him deeply. Scholars note that a poem like this shapes an image of the Buddha that is partly the poet’s own; it is a retelling, not a translation.

The World's Parliament of Religions met in Chicago from September 11 to 27, 1893, as part of the World’s Columbian Exposition. It is often seen as the start of formal interfaith dialogue in the modern West.

Speakers included Christians and Jews as well as Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and others. The Hindu teacher Swami Vivekananda became famous for his opening words, ’Sisters and brothers of America’.

Some organizers hoped the Parliament would show Christianity as the highest religion. Asian speakers used the platform to present their own traditions on their own terms. Historians see it as a turning point in American knowledge of world religions, and of interfaith meeting.

Anagarika Dharmapala (1864–1933) was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, then a British colony. He grew up during a Buddhist revival that resisted Christian missionary schools. ’Anagarika’ means ’homeless one’, a title he took as a layman devoted full-time to Buddhism.

In 1891 he founded the Maha Bodhi Society to restore Bodh Gaya, where Buddhists believe the Buddha reached awakening. At the 1893 Parliament, he presented Buddhism as rational and compatible with science.

Dharmapala returned to America several times and helped spread Buddhism abroad. Some historians call his approach Buddhist modernism: presenting Buddhism in terms of reason and ethics for modern audiences. Sri Lankans honor him as a national hero.

Soyen Shaku (1860–1919) was abbot of Engakuji, a Rinzai Zen temple in Kamakura, Japan. He spoke at the 1893 Parliament, with his speech translated into English by his lay student, D.T. Suzuki.

D.T. Suzuki (1870–1966) then came to America. From 1897 he lived for about eleven years in La Salle, Illinois, working for Paul Carus of the Open Court Publishing Company, translating Asian texts. Carus himself had written The Gospel of Buddha (1894).

Suzuki later wrote many English books on Zen. From the 1950s, his lectures at Columbia University influenced writers, artists and thinkers. Scholars today note that Suzuki presented Zen in his own way, sometimes stressing experience over ritual and monastic life.

The Pali word dukkha is at the center of the Four Noble Truths. Rhys Davids and most early translators put it as ’suffering’ or ’pain’. That made Buddhism sound gloomy to some Western readers.

Later translators argued that dukkha covers more than pain: it includes the sense that things never fully satisfy because they change. Some chose ’unsatisfactoriness’; others use ’stress’ or leave the word untranslated.

Each choice brings out one side of the idea. A reader who sees only ’suffering’ might think Buddhism is pessimistic. A reader who sees ’unsatisfactoriness’ might think it is about mild dissatisfaction. Scholars say careful readers learn the original word and its connotation, or feeling.

Many early translators used a formal English that echoed the King James Bible, with words like ’thee’, ’verily’ and ’brethren’. Readers heard the Buddha speaking like a biblical prophet.

Some key words were translated with Christian terms. ’Sin’, ’heaven’ and ’priest’ sometimes appeared where the Pali meant something different. Scholars call this domestication: making a foreign text sound familiar.

Modern translators often use plainer English and keep Pali terms like dukkha, nibbana and kamma with explanations. Each approach has costs and gains, and comparing translations helps a reader spot a translator’s choices.

Some Western scholars in the 1800s thought the ’real’ Buddhism was found in ancient texts, not in the temples, rituals and relics they saw in Asia. They sometimes judged living Buddhists as having strayed from the texts.

Asian Buddhists pushed back and shaped the picture too. Monks in Sri Lanka and Burma taught the scholars. Leaders like Dharmapala and Soyen Shaku chose how to present their traditions abroad.

Scholars today describe Buddhism as both texts and living practice, from chanting and offerings to festivals and meditation. They ask whose representation of a tradition is being given, and they include the voices of practitioners.

Japanese immigrants began arriving in Hawaii and on the West Coast in the late 1800s. Many were Jodo Shinshu Buddhists. In 1899, two priests came to San Francisco and started what became the Buddhist Mission of North America.

Temples grew in California, Washington and Oregon. To fit American life, many used pews, hymnals, Sunday services and Sunday schools. Some called themselves ’Buddhist churches’. Services were often in English.

In 1944, while many members were still in the camps, the organization changed its name to the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA). Today it is one of the oldest Buddhist organizations in the United States. Scholars call such changes adaptation.

The camps were built in remote places like Manzanar in California, Heart Mountain in Wyoming and Topaz in Utah. Families lived in crowded barracks, with little privacy. There were ten main camps in all.

Buddhists faced extra suspicion because their religion was linked to Japan. Some priests were arrested early and held in separate camps. Still, Buddhist services, festivals and Sunday schools went on in the camps, often led by laypeople.

In 1988, the U.S. government formally apologized for the incarceration and paid reparations to survivors. Buddhist temples today keep the memory of the camps through services, exhibits and pilgrimages to the old camp sites.

People leaving the camps could not return to the West Coast at first. Thousands moved to Chicago, where jobs were available. They started new lives in neighborhoods on the North and South Sides.

In 1944, Rev. Gyomay Kubose and others started what is now the Buddhist Temple of Chicago. The same year, another group founded the Midwest Buddhist Temple, which later built a temple in the Old Town neighborhood. Both are Jodo Shinshu temples.

The Midwest Buddhist Temple is known for its summer Ginza Holiday festival, with Japanese food, crafts and performances. Both temples offer services in English and welcome visitors.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended quotas that had kept out most Asian immigrants. Families from Thailand, Sri Lanka, Korea, Taiwan, China and elsewhere began arriving in larger numbers.

After 1975, refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos resettled across the U.S., including in Illinois. They built temples in homes, storefronts and later large buildings. These temples help keep language, food and family customs alive.

Today many immigrant temples serve as community centers too. They hold language classes, festivals and youth groups. Scholars note that these communities make up a large share of American Buddhists, even though they appear less often in the media. They are part of the diaspora.

In the 1950s and 1960s, writers and students became interested in Zen, partly through D.T. Suzuki’s books. Japanese teachers such as Shunryu Suzuki founded the San Francisco Zen Center in 1962. Tibetan teachers came after fleeing Tibet in 1959.

In the 1970s, Americans who had studied in Asia founded meditation centers in the Theravada vipassana, or insight, tradition. Many convert Buddhists focus on meditation, retreats and study more than on rituals or festivals.

Scholars sometimes talk of ’two Buddhisms’ in America: immigrant temples and convert centers. Others say this split is too simple, since many communities mix both and the children of immigrants and converts share practices.

The Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso (born 1935), is the 14th Dalai Lama, a leading figure of Tibetan Buddhism. He fled Tibet in 1959 and has lived in exile in India. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022) was a Vietnamese Zen monk. He worked for peace during the Vietnam War and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967. Exiled from Vietnam, he founded Plum Village in France.

Both wrote many books in English and spoke to large audiences. Their teachings on compassion, mindfulness and peace reached many people who are not Buddhist. Scholars note that their public images are one part of much larger traditions. The Dalai Lama leads in exile.

The Pali word sati means remembering or keeping in mind. T.W. Rhys Davids chose the English word ’mindfulness’ for it in 1881, and the translation stuck. It appears in Buddhist verse and prose alike.

In the Pali Canon, sati is one step of the Eightfold Path, ’right mindfulness’. The Satipatthana Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 10) describes four foundations of mindfulness: body, feelings, mind and mental objects.

In the suttas, mindfulness is part of a whole path that includes ethics, wisdom and the goal of nibbana. Scholars point out that modern uses of the word often focus on attention and calm and leave out that wider context.

In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn started Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He drew on Buddhist meditation but taught it without religious language.

Programs like MBSR spread to hospitals, schools, sports teams and workplaces. Researchers have studied their effects on stress and attention. These programs describe themselves as secular, meaning not religious.

Some Buddhist teachers welcome this spread, saying it helps many people. Others worry that removing ethics and the larger Buddhist path changes the practice. Critics sometimes use the term ’McMindfulness’ for programs sold only to boost productivity.

Walk through Chicago today and you can find Shin temples from 1944, Thai and Sri Lankan temples, Vietnamese and Cambodian temples, Tibetan centers, Korean Seon temples and Zen groups. Each keeps its own heritage.

American Buddhists debate many questions: how to pass traditions to children, the role of women as teachers and nuns, how to include people of all backgrounds, and how to respond to the popularity of mindfulness.

From the 1893 Parliament to the temples of 1944 and the communities of today, Chicago has been part of this story. Scholars describe it as a history of both continuity and change.