The American Encounter With Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent

by Thomas A. Tweed

The American encounter with Buddhism began in 1844 with Henry David Thoreau's translation of a passage from a French edition of the Lotus Sutra and Edward Elbridge Salisbury's lecture on the history of Buddhism at the first annual meeting of the American Oriental Society. The debate that ensued in nineteenth-century America about the nature and value of Buddhism is the subject of Thomas A. Tweed's book. Tweed examines the impact of Buddhism and shows what happened when a new and transplanted religious movement came into contact with an established and significantly different tradition. For Tweed, the debate about Buddhism highlights the fundamental beliefs and values of Victorian American culture and delineates the cultural constraints on religious dissent.
At first, Tweed shows, Western interpreters had difficulty placing Buddhism within familiar traditions. Some emphasized the parallels between Buddhism and Catholicism, others the similarities between Buddhism and "heathenism." Later commentators began to stress Buddhism's doctrinal distinctiveness, while apologists presented Buddhism as compatible with familiar Christian beliefs and values and drew parallels between the Buddha and Jesus. After 1879, the conversation grew more lively and widespread as tens of thousands of Americans sought to learn more about Buddhism and a few thousand considered themselves Buddhists. While many of these sympathizers and adherents thought of themselves as dissenters from Victorian America, Tweed shows that, in important ways, they were cultural "consenters." Though dissenters were willing, in their embrace of Buddhism, to abandon the ideas of a personal creator and a substantial, immortal self, they shared certain values with their critics which they did not abandon--individualism, optimism, and activism. They tried to reconcile Buddhism with these values and to attempt in some measure to make Buddhism consonant with traditional Victorian American culture. Despite Buddhist apologists' success in stimulating interest and harmonizing Buddhism to Victorian values, the cultural strain remained too great for many. Although Buddhism attracted much attention, finally it failed to build enduring institutions or inspire more seekers to embrace the religion. It was not until the next century that Buddhism would find a cultural environment more conducive to its growth.

Genres: Buddhism, Nonfiction

276 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Early on in this book Tweed cites a bunch of mid-century scholars on early Chinese Buddhism, and compares his subject to theirs. This was a terrific analogy that stuck with me through the whole book. From the respective first-millennium Chinese and nineteenth-c. American textual records, Buddhism looks like this textual thing intellectuals toy with in order to resolve local cultural concerns that are truly their own.

It's important for me to "Always Be Historicizing" and remember that humans are products of their times, but I continued to experience shock at the level of disinterest early Victorian Americans had in building information by talking to live, actual Buddhists. I know it's better to chalk it up to ignorance ("they didn't know any better"), but it feels like willful incuriosity. Likewise, it was easier for me to imagine early American Buddhists (and Buddho-curious) as much driven by colonialist guilt as by their explicit aims that Tweed meticulously details: conscientious dissent, the search for truth, eccentricity cultivation.

Not my field of study, but I felt like I learned a lot about Victorian American culture. As a Buddhist Studies scholar it was also very cool to see the conversations our field had in the eighties (how do we deal with multiple Buddhisms? what kinds of thing can a Buddhism be? how do textual Buddhism(s) articulate with practice, belief, institution? what are Buddhism(s) as civilizational projects?) burble up into Tweed's work.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super informative! Now I know why socially engaged Buddhism is so popular in USA!

[versarbre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 1992. What a masterpiece. And it's quite striking that American historical studies of Chinese Buddhism seemed not accomplished that depth and originality!

[Susie Meister]

Tweed shows how Buddhism was introduced to American culture and who the people were who found the message attractive. In the broader spectrum the author is considering how dissenters (members of new and transplanted religious movements) related to the dominant religion and culture. He draws upon Moore (Spiritualists) and Albanese (transcendentalists) to show how this distinct group still shared some with Protestantism and Victorian culture. Tweed believes that turning one's gaze away from the object (Protestant/mainstream culture) can illuminate it. He places Buddhism within the context of theism, individualism, activism, and optimism to show how it fit into the broader conversation of the time. Scholars tended to speak of Buddhism as the singular and strange other. Tweed argues that this time with its industrialization, urbanization, and immigration combined to produce a spiritual crisis. As an alternative to the mainstream, converts usually had dealt with a personal crisis and a desire to solve a crisis of a religious community.