An Introduction to Buddhism
in the United States

Philip Schrodt
The Center at Belvedere, Charlottesville, VA
Thursday, 10:00 - 11:30
12 Jan 2023 - 9 Mar 2023

Buddhism is one of the fastest growing religions in the United States, albeit developing from a small base in areas outside of the West Coast, and Albemarle County not only has an unusually large number of people self-identifying as Buddhist—variously as a religion, spiritual approach, and/or philosophy—but is also host to some major international Buddhist institutions, including the Mind and Life Institute co-founded by the Dalai Lama, the Ligmincha International Bön Buddhist center at Serenity Ridge half an hour south of town, and UVA's world-class Buddhist studies and contemplative sciences programs. More generally, the U.S. is unusual in having all of the major approaches to Buddhism represented roughly equally, as well as providing an environment where teachings are now shared on tens of thousands of podcasts and videos, and where the generally secular spin-off of "mindfulness", based on 2,500-year-old Buddhist meditation techniques, is now ubiquitous.

This course will provide a systematic overview of Buddhist history, approaches, and practices from the perspective of the U.S. in the early 21st century. We will first review how Buddhism spread from northeast India through most of Asia and recently to the West, and the three major approaches: Theravada, Mahayana (best known through Zen, but also the basis of most of the 150-years of Asian-American Buddhism and the contemporary approach of Thich Naht Hahn), and Vajrayana/Tibetan. We will then look at common core concepts in the Buddha's teachings, discussion some of the variety of meditation practices currently practiced, review some of the most commonly encountered suttas (classical Buddhist texts, typically written down about 2000 years ago), and then conclude with a discussion of various ways Buddhism is currently evolving in the US.

Each week will have links to a two or three short readings available on the web, usually from the at one time generally generously unpaywalled resources of the Lion's Roar magazine. [see update below] The web site will also contain a number of recommendations for further readings, typically books or more extensive web sites with recommended materials. The format will be roughly forty minutes of lecture followed by a twenty-minute Q&A period, though we have the room scheduled until 11:30 to allow for the possibility of a longer discussion and, well, there's always coffee at Greenberry's.

Update March-2023

Well, apparently there actually is a limit to the Lion's Roar articles you can read per month—I'm a subscriber but hadn't gotten my digital credentials established—but it is quite generous compared to a lot of sites. Digital-only access is currently only $30 for a year.

But more generally, we're in the middle of a sorting-out of what web sites---particularly those now offering a vast array of current and archival texts, videos, podcasts, courses, daily insights, etc etc etc---need to charge to stay financially viable, and well, they can't put out a tip jar or a dana basket (well, electronically they do...), so if you are interested in the material in this course, you might as well just spring for a subscription to Lion's Roar and Tricycle for the duration, and these are priced at the level of a nice dinner or a couple bottles of wine (or a fraction of one bottle, depending on your preferences)

On the structure of this web page…

Link to course registration:

https://https://thecentercville.org/calendar/event/68474. Registration is not required but is helpful for my planning. There is no charge for the course for Center members. See note at end on a possible future Zoom version of the course.

About me:

https://parusanalytics.com/introbud2023/about.html

Topics and suggested readings

The course is scheduled for 9 weeks to allow for the possibility of a "snow day." The primary headings for each week link to a web page with additional suggested readings, as well as an oh-so-WWW tastefully-selected thematic graphic.

Note: This outline should be relatively stable, but is subject to change (a few of the readings need some updating…): hey, it's Buddhism, everything is subject to change!

Last update: 24-Jan-2023

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

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. Depending on the size of the group, we may also have some time for individual introductions and backgrounds, why are you taking this, say something interesting about yourself that has nothing to do with the course.

Suggested reading:

Week 2: The Historical Buddha, the Pali Canon and U.S. Theravadan "Insight"

This week will begin by continuing the historical approach by considering the context within which Buddhism arose in India, the extent to which material attributable to the Buddha actually derives from a single historical person, then the institutionalization of Buddhism after the death of the Buddha, culminating in the written Pali Canon following about 500 years of a purely oral tradition, and then later influential commentaries, notably the Visuddhimagga and the "golden age of Indian Buddhist philosophy" in the first half of the first millennium CE.

The "Insight" tradition is derived from the "southern route" of Southeast Asian Theravadan in Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand, and came to the US in the 1980s through such now well-known teachers as Jack Kornfeld, Sharon Salzburg, and Joseph Goldstein, as well as Asian teachers such as Bhante Henepola Gunaratana and S.N. Goenka. Through the "mindfulness-based stress reduction" methods developed out of this by Jon Kabat-Zinn it is the basis of the now ubiquitous "mindfulness" movement and arguably the single most wide-spread contribution of Buddhism to contemporary U.S. culture.

Suggested reading:

Week 3: Mahayana in the US: Asian-American Buddhism and Zen

Mahayana is the "northern" route in the evolution of Buddhism which develops first in China, then from there, about 500 years later, into Korea and finally Japan. Fifteen or so centuries later, Buddhism arrives in the US in the middle of the 19th century through Chinese and Japanese immigrant communities primarily in Hawai'i (an independent country "annexed" by the US in 1898) and California (annexed in 1848...see a pattern here?) where Chinese labor was used extensively in the construction of railroads, and Japanese later immigrating to develop Californian agriculture. While this immigration was severely restricted by later laws (1882, 1917) the existing communities were able, against formidable odds such as Japanese-American internment during WWII, to establish a robust system of Buddhist institutions, largely in the Mahayana tradition, and specifically Chinese and Japanese "Pure Land" approaches.

Mostly though not completely ignoring these communities, starting in the 1950s Japanese Zen gained an substantial White following, notably (or "notoriously", depending on your perspective) through the "Beat Zen" of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and others. This view of Zen has persisted in US popular culture—one can order "Zenburgers", and no, they aren't vegetarian— while at the same time more orthodox Zen approaches have proliferated and established long-standing institutions, including some of the best-known U.S. Buddhist efforts in social work. In practice, the "Beat Zen" approach is gradually being replaced by various orthodox lineages, as well as interest in Zen's Chinese predecessor, Chan.

Suggested reading:

Week 4: early 21st century US convert Buddhism: The Tibetan/Vajrayana; Thich Nhat Hanh

Arguably the two most widely known Buddhist modernizers in the world are the Dalai Lama and the late Thich Nhat Hanh. Both became political exiles; both worked extensively to adapt, or at least explain, Buddhism to Western audiences. Beyond that, the two approaches are quite different with very different paths.

The Tibetan/Vajrayana is relatively small on a global scale—probably about 10% of Buddhists—but is disproportionately influential in the US due to the Tibetan diaspora which found refuge here following the Chinese conquest of Tibet, as well the charismatic influence of the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan tradition is also interesting in developing far later than the Theravadan and Mahayana, around 1000CE, and incorporates both Indian and Chinese elements as well as older Tibetan practices.

Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from his native Vietnam due to his anti-war efforts—notably persuading Martin Luther King to oppose the U.S. intervention—and spent the next forty years developing a global community, based out of Plum Village in France, which adapts Mahayana principles to the contemporary mix of lay and monastic practice. His many, many books are read widely on both sides of the Atlantic.

Suggested reading:

Week 5: A Fount of Fundamentals: The Four Noble Truths; The Eightfold Path; the precepts; dukkha, anata and annica

The all-too-common extent of understanding of Buddhism is some variant on "Life is suffering"—including a bumper-sticker variant not suitable for polite company—which tends to elicit the response "Like hey, that's a real downer man, why'd you want to believe that??" + end of discussion. Buddhism is in fact considerably more complex, but generally revolves around about a half-dozen core concepts—rather, collections of concepts—which we hope to an least introduce in 40 minutes

Suggested reading:

The wonderful people at Lion's Roar have put together many readings on each of these and there is a collection of these at week-five.html : pick a couple you find interesting and/or may wish to become more familiar with.

Week 6: Multiple Modes of Meditation

The contemporary meditation emoji is not terribly dissimilar from what some people believe to be the early representations in meditation from the Indus Valley at least 4000 years ago. But beneath that simple external posture are a remarkable number of different approaches. Scratching the surface here—David Fontana's 1992 The Meditator's Handbook discusses at least 40 approaches, across both Eastern and Western traditions—we'll briefly—oh, ever so briefly—introduce a number of these, and while any one of the approaches can easily occupy one or more seven-day retreats, and mature practice can take years, and plenty of people have done both, we wish to get beyond the popular literature, up to and including slick magazines at CVS, invariably with a beautiful blissed-out young blond White woman on the cover. Mindful, so to speak, of this latter popularization, we will also look at the origins and some of the controversies around secular "McMindfulness" (like "Hinayana", this is a pejorative), which is projected to become a multi-billion dollar business.

Suggested reading:

Week 7: A Symphony of Suttas

The Pali Canon runs for thousands of pages in English translations—an exact length is impossible to calculate as these all come with commentaries, but it's a fabulously huge amount of material—and understandably, some of this gets more attention in contemporary Western Buddhism than others. This week will focus on a small number of suttas that are currently central to Insight practice, as well as giving a sense of the varying styles found in this vast literature, and then review several more that are frequently encountered in Buddhist dharma talks, as well as the Heart, Diamond, and Lotus Sutras central to many Mahayana practices.

Suggested reading:

Pick a couple of these from this list and read (or skim) the originals, and usually you can also find some commentaries.

Week 8: American Dharma

Taking our cue from Ann Gleig's book, and extensive research, by this title, our final week will look at a three issues raised in recent years in various communities and contexts:

  • A core dispute within Buddhism (and, frankly, every contemplative tradition) is the degree to which practitioners are giving sufficiently to the community (and are deserving of support) by simply providing spiritual guidance, or whether serving material needs is also skillful practice. As Buddhism moved to the West, the [Mahayana] Buddhist Churches of America copied the model of Christian charity; Soka Gaikai International has intense social involvement; and Zen, both in ad hoc efforts such as the Zen hospices, and under charismatic leaders such as a Bernie Glassman and Joan Halifax, has institutionalized social engagement, for example, in the Zen Peacekeeper movement and the Upaya Zen Center. Theravadan and Tibetan lineages, in contrast, have done little, but in the Insight tradition, this is being challenged, for example, by Bhikkhu Bodhi and Donald Rothberg.
  • The issue of expanding the sangha beyond a well-educated wealthy White elite has become a major issue in the past decade, often intermixed with issues of intergenerational control, and we'll at least look at some of the voices and issues here, without expecting to resolve this. Once again, precedents such a B.R. Ambedkar's advocacy of Buddhism as a counter to the caste system in India 75 years ago, invoked in Isabel Wilkerson's recent discussion of the American caste system, Caste (2020), might be relevant.
  • While Buddhism was initially introduced to the U.S. by practitioners following various single Asian lineages, and this continued in both immigrant communities and the first generation of converts, almost all second-generation teachers (and many practitioners) now train in multiple approaches, and adopt many versions of this in their own teaching. Arguably, this syncretic tendency is being accelerated by access to hundreds of courses, and thousands of talks, on the web, from all approaches, while simultaneously the centrality of all-powerful teachers has been challenged by persistent sexual and financial scandals (a problem by no means confined to Buddhism, of course). We're very much in the middle of these transitions: where might they go?

Suggested reading:

A possible future version of the course on Zoom

I originally taught this course to about thirty people in the fall of 2021 on Zoom, since in the fall of 2021 we did everything on Zoom. I originally thought about doing this using a hybrid model combining in-person and remote participants, but, well, everyone hates hybrid, and heck, even before COVID those of us doing remote work knew everyone hated hybrid. Thanks to Jeff Fracher's Serenity Sangha (Zoom), I've got access to a Zoom account where I could do the course in that format again if there is sufficient interest (possibly including people in Charlottesville who don't find this time or location convenient): if you'd be interested in this let me know via email.