MARY ALICE WILLIAMS: Buddhism is the world's fourth largest religion, founded about 2500 years ago in India. The Buddha taught that life is suffering and the way to overcome that is to get rid of attachments. Widely practiced across Asia, Buddhism has attracted many converts in this country. They are developing forms of Buddhist practice that are often very different from the practices of Asian-Americans. Some observers believe there is a growing ethnic divide in American Buddhism. Correspondent Kim Lawton has our cover story.
KIM
LAWTON: In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Pat Phelan is
being installed as abbess, head of the Red Cedar Zen Temple.
She has taken the name Taitaku Josho to demonstrate her
acceptance of Buddhist precepts. She is being elevated to
her new position in a symbolic "Mountain Seat ceremony,"
attended by the Zen Center's members. Like Phelan, all of
the Center's members are converts to the Buddhist tradition
and its sometimes puzzling exchanges.A few miles across town there's another Buddhist temple, which people often mistake for a Chinese restaurant. Here Vietnamese Buddhists gather to worship in what's known as the "Pure Land" Buddhist tradition. Some members of this sangha, or worship community, have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years; others have arrived more recently.
The two Buddhist centers are in the same Bible Belt community, but virtually separate, largely unaware of each other. That's a situation increasingly common as Buddhism takes hold across America. The forms of practice are diverse, with numerous traditions. But many believe the biggest divide may be an ethnic one.
LOPON
CLAUDE D'ESTRÉE (Chaplain, George Mason University):
There is an Asian Buddhist community, and there is a Western
American Buddhist community, and they don't often mix.PROFESSOR RYO IMAMURA (Buddhist Priest and Professor, Evergreen State College): I think we co-exist peacefully, probably not interacting a whole lot.
HELEN TWORKOV (TRICYCLE magazine): There's definitely some divides, and I think we could call it a racial divide. I do not think it's a racist divide.
LAWTON: Buddhism has always traced a wide cultural path. From its beginnings -- 2,500 years ago -- in the Himalayan Mountains to its spread across Asia, Buddhism has adapted to and ultimately shaped each culture it has encountered.
Buddhism
first came to the United States more than 150 years ago
with the arrival of Chinese and Japanese immigrants. Even
in those days, there was interest from non-Asians.PROFESSOR STEPHEN PROTHERO (Associate Professor, Religion, Boston University): There was a sort of Buddhist boom in the late-19th century, and there was a second one that began in the '50s with the Beat generation and those kinds of people.
LAWTON: In the '60s and '70s that boom became a virtual explosion of non-Asian conversions, among them a relatively large number of Jews. Many of those converts now lead their own Buddhist communities, also mostly non-Asian converts.
Precise
figures are difficult to come by. Experts say there are
between three and four million Buddhists in the United States
today. About 75% of them are of Asian heritage. But despite
their numbers, many Asian Americans say they don't feel
sufficiently acknowledged in this country's Buddhist landscape.Hollywood and the media have perpetuated the impression that the American Buddhist community consists of mostly-white practitioners who follow charismatic Asian leaders such as Thich Nah Hahn or the Dalai Lama.
PROFESSOR
IMAMURA: I think when the term "American Buddhism" is
used, most Asian-American Buddhists feel outside of the
dialogue.LAWTON: Ryo Imamura is an 18th-generation Buddhist priest and a third generation Asian American. His grandfather ministered to the Buddhist community in the early-20th century in Hawaii, and in the '40s and '50s, Imamura's parents began a Buddhist Study Center in Berkeley, California. The Center attracted some non-Asians. Imamura says those times have largely disappeared. He says while Asian teachers may have started Buddhist groups here, white converts now lead them.
LAWTON:
Many say there are clear reasons that Buddhist groups tend
to divide along racial lines. In addition to obvious language
barriers, there are differences in practice. Most convert
Buddhists focus on meditation. Their communities tend to
be more lay oriented, with more women in positions of leadership.
For some converts, Buddhism is more a philosophy than a
religion. 
MS.
TWORKOV: In some cases, you have communities of these
people. I mean they really came out of the killing fields.
They came to this country traumatized by the wars in Southeast
Asia. Their needs are not only very different [from the]
needs of white middle-class Americans, they're very different
from the needs of very well educated middle-class Japanese
Americans.
PROFESSOR
PROTHERO: It needs to be admitted that this is the normal
course of things in American religion. We have had a history
of Lutheran groups in the U.S. who are Finnish or who are
German, who don't particularly interact with one another.
[The same can be said about] the Orthodox, Russian Orthodox
Christians, and the Orthodox from Greece, for example, the
Greek Orthodox.
KEN
TANAKA (Co-editor, THE FACES OF BUDDHISM IN AMERICA):
I certainly feel an excitement in the fact that you do have
virtually all the Buddhist groups represented here. And
not only for a conference, but living in a same community.
Given that, it is always going to be a minority religion,
that there ought to be much more interaction, mutual support,...
to survive for one thing.
MS.
TWORKOV: There's a lot of concern about bringing the
groups together. But frankly my own view is it's always
coming from a place of being politically correct, and there's
not necessarily a good reason for it. There's no reason
why people should not be developing their own kinds of practice
and their own forms of practice and working according to
their own needs.
