Week 1: Introduction to the Course, Historical Overview of Global Buddhism, and Buddhist Modernizers

As the Californian teacher Larry Yang, a leader in the development of multicultural Buddhism in the US, notes, history is a form of awareness, as it deeply influences how we perceive the present. The initial part of this course will provide a broad historical foundation of Buddhism from its founding to the present, and this week will place particular emphasis on the rise, and in some instances, decline, of various approaches in different parts of Asia, then multiple strands of Buddhist modernism which arose in the 19th and 20th centuries in response to colonialism and the scientific and industrial revolutions, and finally the four (and a half?) routes through which Buddhism has become established in the US: Chinese and Japanese immigrant communities starting in 1850, Zen in the 20th century through missionary efforts into urban centers such as New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, Insight starting in the 1970s from the Burmese populist traditions, and Tibetan through the post-1959 Tibetan diaspora, and finally some late 20th century influence from the Vietnamese exile Thich Naht Hahn.

Suggested reading:

Link to maps and vocabulary from talk (pdf file)

Other resources

Note the dates on these: some, e.g. Huxley, Watts, Suzuki, are primarily useful for getting a sense of how various ideas gradually came to the US and as such, they are not necessarily reflecting contemporary practice or understanding.
  • Joseph Goldstein. One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism. (2003)
  • Charles Prebish. "Forum: Book Power: How the publishing industry is influencing Buddhism in the West." (September-2007: obviously a bit dated but an interesting reflection on just how quickly things have changed) https://www.lionsroar.com/forum-book-power/
  • Kate Crosby. Esoteric Theravada (2020), specifically the historical, mostly chapters 1, 6, 7
  • Rick Fields. How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America (1992)
  • Aldus Huxley. The Perennial Philosophy (1945)
  • David McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism (2008)
  • Shunryu Suzuki. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal talks on Zen meditation and practice. (1970)
  • Alan Watts. The Way of Zen. (1957)

Podcasts