CONVERSION
In most times and places allegiance to Buddhism has
not been an exclusive affair. Buddhist devotees have
felt comfortable worshipping various local deities, as
well as earning merit by making offerings to non-
Buddhist mendicants (in India), embracing Confucian
as well as Buddhist values (in China), or visiting Shin-
toshrines as well as Buddhist temples (in Japan). The
inscriptions of the Indian king AS ́OKA(ca. mid-third
century B.C.E.)—the earliest surviving written Bud-
dhist records—portray him both as affirming his own
Buddhist identity and as supporting other religious
groups. The English word conversion,usually under-
stood to mean the complete abandonment of one re-
ligion and exclusive adherence to another, has little
relevance in such a setting.
The closest analogue to the Western notion of in-
dividual conversion is the act of becoming a lay brother
(upasaka) or lay sister (upasika), portrayed in early
scriptures as a formal act of affiliation involving “tak-
ing refuge” in the three jewels (buddha, dharma, and
SAN ̇GHA) and vowing to uphold the five lay PRECEPTS.
Similar rituals are still performed today in many Bud-
dhist societies, ranging from Sri Lanka to Taiwan. An
alternative analogue might be found in the experience
of becoming a stream-enterer (Pali, sotapanna), at
which point one is said to attain a firsthand conviction
of the truth of the Buddha’s teachings. This generally
takes place, however, only after a prolonged period of
practice, demonstrating once again the lack of fit be-
tween the idea of conversion and Buddhist maps of
the PATH.
Most commonly, adherence to Buddhism has not
been the result of individual acts of faith but of a choice
made by a ruler (e.g., in Sri Lanka in the third century
B.C.E. or in Japan and Tibet in the seventh century C.E.)
in the course of political consolidation and imposed
upon the population at large. Such top-down or soci-
etal conversion (Horton) has been the standard mode
of transmission of Buddhism outside India, with the
notable exceptions of China and the West. Such ex-
clusive state sponsorship has often been temporary,
with a return to the norm of accommodating other lo-
cal religious practices once a new political equilibrium
has been achieved.
Examples of conversion in the exclusivist sense are
easiest to find in Buddhist societies that have been sig-
nificantly affected by a Western colonial or missionary
presence, such as Sri Lanka (where the public conver-
sion to Buddhism by Colonel Henry Steel Olcott un-
der British colonial rule in the late nineteenth century
has left a lasting legacy) or South Korea (where the
growth of Protestant Christianity in recent decades has
led to a strong polarization between Buddhists and
Christians). Some Buddhist-based “new religions” in
Japan, above all the SOKAGAKKAI, also require their
followers to renounce all other religious beliefs and
practices.
Ironically, the Western notion of conversion ap-
pears to be falling out of favor among new adherents
of Buddhism in the West, who often describe them-
selves as “taking up the practice of Buddhism” rather
than “converting to the Buddhist religion.” This re-
luctance to use the term conversionreflects not only
the traditional absence of a sharp boundary between
Buddhist and non-Buddhist practices in Asian soci-
eties, but also the profound changes currently taking
place in the very notion of what constitutes “religion”
in the modern West.See also:Colonialism and Buddhism; Local Divinities
and Buddhism; OrdinationBibliography
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tion. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1973.CONVERSION