Andrew Lam writes that "if Americanization is a large part of globalization, the Easternization of the West, too, is the other side of the phenomenon."
I take it as some cosmic law of exchange that if Disneyland pops up in Hong Kong and Tokyo, Buddhist temples can sprout up in Los Angeles, home of the magic kingdom. Indeed, it comes as no surprise to many Californians that scholars have agreed that the most complex Buddhist city in the world is nowhere in Asia but Los Angeles itself, where there are more than 300 Buddhist temples and centers, representing nearly all of Buddhist practices around the world.
Lam sees other signs of the Dharma in the West, including prison meditation groups and the first U.S. Army Buddhist chaplain. Lam also suggests we may be about to enter a second axial age, which is an intriguing idea.
The first axial age occurred roughly between 800 and 200 BCE. During this time, many of the world's great religions either went through a major development (such as the emergence of Vedanta in Hinduism) or were established (for example, Buddhism). The theory is that there was some kind of shift in human consciousness that made people more self-aware and reflective.
There are arguments that another axial age began about the 16th century, beginning with the Reformation. I don't know about the Reformation, but I've read many arguments that, in Western Civilization at least, the way people understand and conceptualize truth has changed considerably since Copernicus proposed the solar system in 1543.
Last year the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) released data showing the percentage of Christians in America is shrinking and the percentage of those with no religion is growing. For whatever reason, people are finding their religions-of-origin aren't working for them.
Lam argues that the close co-existence of so many religions is hastening the axial age effect. "The old Silk Road along which so many religious ideas traveled has been replaced by a far more potent thoroughfare: unprecedented global migration, mass communications, and the information highway, which transcends geography."
There is another factor spreading Eastern culture to the West, including Buddhism. It is language. Simply put, more and more young Americans are studying Mandarin Chinese, and doing so in China. This is a subject close to home for me, because my daughter is one of them, now spending her junior year abroad in Hangzhou, China. Aside from gaining fluency in the language, she has experienced the breathtaking Buddhist statuary there and, while I do not anticipate that she will become a Buddhist herself, the experience has made Buddhism far more real and vital to her–she bowed to the Buddha out of respect. As the Chinese economy and world influence grows, Chinese language and culture will permeate American (and Western) culture more and more. Meanwhile, though suppression of Tibetan Buddhism continues for political reasons, Chinese Buddhism is no longer forbidden in its homeland to the extent it was during Cultural Revolution days. It too will quietly make its way to the West, if only to the extent that Buddhism will no longer seem quite so exotic to Americans and Westerners. And de-exoticizing (if there is such a term) is a major first step toward allowing a religion to grow in a new place.
Hi,
I didn’t understand the connection between learning any Chinese language and the spread of Buddhism. What does Buddhism have to do with China? You’ve also mentioned that China is the homeland of Buddhism. How come? Neither Kapilavastu (Buddha’s birthplace) nor Gaya (where Buddha attained enlightenment) are in China or anywhere near it. Finally, what is Chinese Buddhism? I have never heard of Swiss Christianity or Canadian Christianity, so how come this notion of Chinese Buddhism?
Shana — Buddhism is Asia is partitioned along national and ethnic lines far more than Christianity is. There really are distinctions between Chinese Buddhism, Korean Buddhism, Thai Buddhism, etc. Buddhism didn’t originate in China, but several of the major schools emerged there.