Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

The growing fascination for the exotic in late nineteenth-century United States reflected bourgeois Americans’ response to their increasingly industrialized world. In the process, Asia and its traditions were reimagined to suit the spiritual needs of disillusioned Americans “in search of Nirvana,” and looking for an antidote to modernization and mechanization. Asian Buddhists who traveled to the United States to promote the religion outside of the Pacific World became important cultural mediators who served as interpreters of Buddhism. Through an in-depth analysis of personal writings, institutional records, newspaper accounts, and other archival sources and building upon the work of scholars such as Judith Snodgrass and Richard Seager, this paper argues that Buddhist missionaries from Japan participated in the reinvention of the ancient religion that became appealing to certain Americans. For both Asians and bourgeois Americans, this new form of “Buddhism for all people” was deemed to be a viable buffer against modern decadence and offered a solution to the spiritual decay brought on by modernity. In the end, the injection of Asian religious beliefs within the U.S. culture impacted the development of spiritual identities, racial discourses, and intercultural exchanges amidst monumental socioeconomic transformations on both sides of the Pacific.