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BOB ABERNETHY: Now, our Cover Story --
Buddhism in America. Over the next two weeks, we'll tell its story.
This week, we look at Buddhism's emergence in America and why many
Americans today are drawn to its teachings. Maureen Bunyan has been
following it for us. Maureen, welcome.
MAUREEN BUNYAN: Thank you, Bob. Bob,
this ancient religion with deep roots in Asia is being transplanted in
America, and it's finding fertile ground. Buddhism is the subject of
two Hollywood movies and a TIME magazine cover story, and there's the
new TV sitcom DHARMA AND GREG. So what's behind this new interest in an
old religion?
ROBERT THURMAN (Professor of Buddhist
Studies, Columbia University): The goal of Buddhism is not merely
faith. Faith may be a weigh station or a method that may be useful at
the beginning, but in the long run, the goal of Buddhism is knowledge.
JACK KORNFIELD (Co-Founder, Spirit Rock
Meditation Center): And the central practices of the Buddha are
compassion, care, and reverence for life and for all beings, and
mindfulness.
MARY WEBSTER: Buddhism is like finding
something you can explore and work with all your life.
BUNYAN: Buddhism is one of the major
world religions, tracing its roots back 2,500 years. The Buddhist
teachings say that all life involves suffering, which is caused by
self-centered desire. Suffering can be overcome by focusing on
awareness through meditation. Buddhism's story in America began 150
years ago. At that time, Asian immigrants began arriving in the United
States, bringing their faith with them. After World War II, the beat
writers, influenced by Asian Zen masters, popularized Buddhism for a
whole new American audience, an audience that continued to grow in the
1960s and '70s when young Americans who had studied in Asia returned to
share their experiences.
Mr. KORNFIELD: Buddhism is both a religion for some people, and
for many others, it's simply a way of life.
BUNYAN: Jack Kornfield is the founder of
Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California. In the 1960s, he
studied in Thailand and became a Buddhist monk. When he returned to the
U.S., he visited his parents on the East Coast, and one day went to
Manhattan to meet his sister-in-law, who was having a makeover at
Elizabeth Arden's beauty salon. He arrived in his robes, and while he
waited, he crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and began to meditate.
Mr. KORNFIELD: And then I heard one woman's voice yell out, "Is
he for real?" And I opened my eyes and in front of me were about six or
eight women with mud and avocado on their faces and their hair in
curlers and all these strange contraptions, and I looked out at them
and I wondered, are they for real? And somehow in that moment, I knew I
would have to make some adjustments coming back from the monastery to
live in the western culture.
ABERNETHY: Robert Thurman had similar
adjustment problems when he returned to the U.S. He had been ordained a
Buddhist monk in 1964 by the Dalai Lama himself.
Prof. THURMAN: So when I got back here, I realized that the
only thing anybody would ever think about me being a Buddhist monk was
that I was a lunatic, simply. So I felt I had learned some new things,
but I had no platform from which to share this with anybody, because as
a monk, I was simply out of the game.
BUNYAN: Thurman has found his platform
as professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University and a founder
of Tibet House, New York. While mainstream America still finds Buddhist
monks unusual, it is trying out Buddhism in all its traditions.
Here at the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, California, practitioners
follow the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism, a tradition brought to America
by Tibetan teachers, including the Dalai Lama, after they were forced
from their homeland in 1959. But Tibetan Buddhism is just one of the
many types of Buddhism embraced in this country today.
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Other popular traditions
include Vipassana and Zen. Norman Fischer is co-abbot of San Francisco
Zen Center. He feels that in America today, there's a type of Buddhism
for every taste.
NORMAN FISCHER (Co-Abbot, San Francisco
Zen Center): This is really a Buddhist bazaar, you know. I mean, every
kind of Buddhism known to humankind is here in the West by now.
BUNYAN: Across the country, people are
practicing meditation in Buddhist centers, on retreat, and on their
lunch hour. Mindfulness, focusing on the moment through sitting and
walking meditation, is at the core of Buddhist practice.
Mr. KORNFIELD: There's a sign in a casino in Las Vegas. It says
on the sign, "You must be present to win." And it's true in Las Vegas,
and it's pretty much the essence of the Buddhist meditations that are
offered. The first task in someone coming to Buddhist meditation is
just to learn to be more present in a wakeful and a kind way.
BUNYAN: But why is Buddhism, with its
emphasis on meditation, so appealing to Americans today? Helen Tworkov
is editor of TRICYCLE, the Buddhist review magazine.
HELEN TWORKOV (Editor, TRICYCLE): In
some ways, you might say Buddhism is in the right place at the right
time. Because it's not as if Buddhism has teachings which are superior
or more effective spiritually than Christianity or Judaism, but for
many of us, our experience with those traditions is that they lost
their capacity through their own bureaucratic institutionalizations.
Prof. THURMAN: It's some sort of feeling of, sort of spiritual
fulfillment and satisfaction. That's the real attraction.
Mr. FISCHER: Americans are, you know, waking up to the fact and
becoming shocked to the fact that actually life is tough, and there's a
lot of suffering. This is the beginning of Buddhism -- is the
acknowledgment that suffering is endemic to human life, and that this
needs to be acknowledged and realized, and that once this is
acknowledged and realized, there is a way to work with it.
BUNYAN: Buddhism is where Mary Webster
turned to work through her grief over the double loss of her mother and
brother. For a while, she moved into the Nyingma Institute to help deal
with her pain.
Ms. WEBSTER: But the Buddhist teachings on impermanence are
enormously helpful. And the Buddhist teachings around the separation
between self and others, Buddhists say that that's an illusory
separation, and when we die, we're not really gone in the sense either.
It moves the entire question of life and death onto a different plane.
Buddhism is not a Sunday religion, it isn't a one-day-a-week religion.
It's a way of life.
Mr. FISCHER: You can argue that it's not a religion, because a
religion is a belief in a supreme being, and there is no supreme being
in Buddhism. Each and every one of us has the Buddha nature in us, that
we are already Buddha, and all we have to do is bring that out. And I
think that just makes sense to Americans in a very real -- it just
makes sense.
BUNYAN: Next week, our second report on
Buddhism. Is there a uniquely American form of Buddhism taking shape?
From serious seekers to weekend dabblers, we'll continue our look at
the Buddhism phenomenon. Bob.
ABERNETHY: We look forward to that,
Maureen. See you next week.
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