The article I found for this assignment is, “The Direction of Buddhism in America Today”, written by Carl Bielefeldt the director of religious studies and co-director of the Center for Buddhism Studies at Stanford University. The article explains in detail about Americanized Buddhism and how it affects our everyday lives. Bielefeldt also compares the Americanized Buddhism to the traditional belief brought from Asia and explains the three basic forms of American Buddhism. The article begins by talking about how the American media is filled with Buddhism beliefs. Bielefeldt talks about how “Zen”, a Buddhist belief, has become commonplace within Hollywood movies and magazines. He also talks about how the common Buddhist beliefs have affected social movements such as feminism, peace, ecology and animal rights. Lastly, in this section Bielefeldt writes about how Buddhism has taken America by storm through the creation of temples anywhere from, “Hacienda Heights, California to the cornfields of Iowa”. The next area Bielefeldt covers is the news coverage and media’s response to Buddhism. He begins by writing that the religion is always looked on in a positive way and is never blamed for the faults of Asian societies. For example, Bielefeldt means that no one associates the religion with the nasty quirks and problems related to politics in Burma. Another example Bielefeldt uses is, “No one implicates the Buddhists of Sri Lanka in the bloody campaign against the Hindu Tamils”. However, Bielefeldt instead writes about how Buddhists are actually victims of these terrible problems. This is seen for example, with the monks setting themselves on fire in objection to government rule as well as with, “Tibetan nuns tortured and jailed for their demonstrations against Chinese rule”. After writing about Buddhism found through America and its media Bielefeldt compares the Hereditary Buddhists from Asia to American Buddhism, which consists of, converts of different races. The “Hereditary Buddhists”, a Bielefeldt refers to them, are immigrant groups from the China and Japan region and have been influencing American Buddhist beliefs since the 1800’s but more recently the 1960’s. One of their major core beliefs as written by Bielefeldt is, “They don't expect to become enlightened beings like the Buddha; they just want the Buddha to help them make it through this life and into better circumstances in the next”. Both groups are similar in this belief but unlike the Hereditary Buddhists, Americanized Buddhism is far different because there are three different forms known as, Zen Vajrayana and Vipassana. The three forms share similar beliefs with each other as well as with the Hereditary Buddhists. In his article Bielefeldt writes, “Zen is undoubtedly the best known”, because of its boom in the 1960’s during many of the civil rights and “hippie” movements. The central belief of this group is the same as Hereditary Buddhists except with the addition of adding Western philosophy and psychology. The next groups, the Vajrayana, are based upon the beliefs on Tibetan monks and became a major Buddhist group in America around the 1970’s.
