page_title: Buddhism in the West
section_title: In North America
hierarchical_section_title: Buddhism in the West / 19th century / In North America
context_page_description: Buddhism in the West broadly encompasses the knowledge and practice of Buddhism outside of Asia in the Western world. Occasional intersections between Western civilization and the Buddhist world have been occurring for thousands of years. The first Westerners to become Buddhists were Greeks who settled in Bactria and India during the Hellenistic period. They became influential figures during the reigns of the Indo-Greek kings, whose patronage of Buddhism led to the emergence of Greco-Buddhism and Greco-Buddhist art. There was little contact between the Western and Buddhist cultures during most of the Middle Ages but the early modern rise of global trade and mercantilism, improved navigation technology and the European colonization of Asian Buddhist countries led to increased knowledge of Buddhism among Westerners. This increased contact led to various responses from Buddhists and Westerners throughout the modern era. These include religious proselytism, religious polemics and debates, Buddhist modernism, Western convert Buddhists and the rise of Buddhist studies in Western academia.
context_section_description: The first Buddhists to arrive in North America were Chinese immigrants to the West Coast in the 1848 Gold Rush. By 1875 there were 8 temples in San Francisco and many more smaller ones along the West Coast. They practiced a mixture of "Confucian ancestor veneration, popular Taoism, and Pure Land Buddhism." At about the same time, immigrants from Japan began to arrive as laborers on Hawaiian plantations and central-California farms. In 1893 the first Jōdo Shinshū priests arrived in San Francisco, and they formally established the Buddhist Missions of North America, later renamed the Buddhist Churches of America in 1899. The BCA is the oldest major institutional form of Buddhism in the United States. This organization acted as way for immigrants to preserve their Japanese culture and language as well as their religion.
  Asian immigrants also arrived in British Columbia, Canada during the 1850s (to work as miners), and the old immigrant population was bolstered by new influx of Asian migrants after the 1962 Immigration Act and also as a result of the arrival of refugees from Indochina. Mining work also led Chinese immigrants to Australia (in 1848) and New Zealand (1863).
  
  American Transcendentalist thinkers were interested in Eastern Religions, including Buddhism, though they were never converts. Emerson regarded Hinduism and Buddhism as anticipations of an ideal Transcendentalism. Thoureau meanwhile translated the Lotus sutra from the French.  
  An important event in Western Buddhism was the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago organized by John Henry Barrows and Paul Carus. The Japanese delegation included the priest Soyen Shaku and the layman Zenshiro Nogushi and had four priests and two laymen, representing Rinzai Zen, Jodo Shinshu, Nichiren, Tendai, and Shingon. The Sri Lankan Anagarika Dharmapala was also present and gave a speech promoting Buddhism. He spoke English with a passion which stirred the audience and drew much attention. He would later come back to the US for a speaking tour across the nation at the behest of Paul Carus and officiated the first Vesak celebration in San Francisco (1897). On his third visit to America, he attended a lecture by William James, who gave up his spot to Dharmapala. After Dharmapala finished speaking on Buddhist psychology, James is recorded to have said "this is the psychology everybody will be studying twenty-five years from now."
  In 1897, D.T. Suzuki came to the US to work and study with Paul Carus, professor of philosophy. D.T. Suzuki was the single-most important person in popularizing Zen Buddhism in the west. His thought was also influenced by Theosophy and Swedenborgianism. Suzuki's writings had a strong impact on Western intellectuals such as psychologists Erich Fromm and Karen Horney, poets like Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac as well as on other figures like Alan Watts and Edward Conze. Through his writings Suzuki contributed to the emergence of a Zen modernism which blends Asian Buddhism with transcendentalism and romanticism.
caption: 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago
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