were born into the tradition—then about two-thirds
of U.S. Buddhists are of Asian descent.
A small proportion of those Asian-American Bud-
dhists trace their lineage to the Japanese, Koreans, and
Chinese who arrived in the first wave of Asian migra-
tion, which brought forms of Mahayana Buddhism
to the nation. Those third- and fourth-generation
Japanese-American communities continue to practice
their faith, as at the Seattle Buddhist Church (orga-
nized 1901), the fourth-oldest Jodo Shinshutemple in
the United States. But more recent immigrants and
refugees have transplanted almost every form of Asian
Buddhism. First-generation Americans from Sri
Lanka, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia have estab-
lished Theravada temples and retreat centers in more
than thirty states, including Wat Carolina (dedicated
1988) in rural Bolivia, North Carolina, although tem-
ples predominate in cities in California, Texas, New
York, and Illinois. In addition, Chinese, Koreans, and
Vietnamese practice multiple forms of Mahayana
Buddhism in hundreds of remodeled homes and new
buildings, such as Oklahoma City’s Chua Vien Giac,
a Vietnamese temple dedicated in 1982, and Southern
California’s Hsi Lai Temple, a structure built by Chi-
nese Americans in 1988 and still the largest Buddhist
temple in America. More temples appear in the
American landscape all the time. Asian-American
Buddhists continue to organize groups, renovate
homes, and build temples in urban, rural, and sub-
urban communities across the nation. And many con-
front obstacles—from bomb threats to zoning laws.
Contemporary cradle and convert Buddhists also
face many other issues. U.S. Buddhists must fashion
identity and negotiate power in a culturally Christian
nation, although Buddhism often has adapted to new
cultures as it crossed cultural boundaries during its
twenty-five-hundred-year history. Yet by the twenty-
first century, American Buddhists had to confront not
only divergent cultural values and the cultural clout of
Christianity, but also an unprecedented array of oth-
ers from the same tradition, for example at regular
meetings of inter-Buddhist organizations across the
country, including the Buddhist Sangha Council of
Southern California (1980), the Buddhist Council of
the Midwest (1987), and the Texas Buddhist Council
(1992). Like other American immigrants before them,
many post-1965 Asian-American Buddhists also face
the challenges of intergenerational tensions and pon-
der how much to accommodate and how much to re-
sist cultural practices in the United States—from meat
eating to MTV. Some observers have trumpeted con-
vert Buddhism’s “democratic” impulses, which have
opened participation and leadership to WOMENand
LAITYmore than in most Asian cultures, but it remains
to be seen how effectively they will extend that egali-
tarianism as they try to bridge racial divides among
Asian, Caucasian, Latino/a, and African-American
Buddhists. And it is not clear that the cultural dis-
senters who have been attracted to Buddhism will be
able to build institutions that nurture children and
youth and, thereby, assure the future vitality of the
convert centers.
Finally, Buddhists encounter the U.S. legal and po-
litical systems. The federal courts have decided that
even though they do not venerate a “supreme being,”
Buddhist conscientious objectors are protected under
the Selective Service Training Act (U.S. v. Seeger) and
that the First Amendment guarantees Buddhist pris-
oners “a reasonable opportunity” to practice the faith
(Cruz v. Beto). There are even Buddhist chaplains serv-
ing soldiers in the U.S. military. But in a nation that
still celebrates a theistic civil religion on its coins—
“In God We Trust”—American Buddhists continue to
struggle to make a place for those who take refuge in
Buddha.See also: Buddhist Studies; Christianity and Bud-
dhism; Europe; Zen, Popular Conceptions ofBibliography
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Boston and London: Shambhala, 1998.UNITEDSTATES