Buddhists Sow Seeds With Youth to Protect Faith In U.S.

May 31, 2009

Author: Peter Smith

Source: The Courier-Journal

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20090531/NEWS01/905310388/1008/Buddhists+sow+seeds+with+youth+to+protect+faith+in+U.S.

As ceiling fans beat back the humid air, more than 150 people crowded in and around a temple on a remote Southern Indiana hillside last Sunday, marking the birth of their religion's founder.

"An, de sa de sa tang gia ta ha," they chanted, as worshipers lined up to ceremonially "bathe" a statue of a boy Buddha, ladling out water and flower petals from a bowl.

With golden Buddha shrines, prostrating monks in saffron robes, a traditional hillside temple location and picnic-style Vietnamese food, much of the scene could have been transplanted from predominantly Buddhist Vietnam.

But the afternoon-long ceremonies in Harrison County also reflected efforts to secure the tenuous future of American Buddhism, and they were heavy on youth involvement: Children sang and danced while teenagers mixed talk of Facebook and videos with traditional lion dances marking the religion's holiest day.

Buddhism -- personified by charismatic teachers such as Tibet's Dalai Lama -- has appealed to many spiritual seekers in recent decades and enjoyed Hollywood cachet.

But half of the adults who were raised Buddhist have left their childhood faith -- more than almost any other religious category, according to a 2008 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Intermarriage, complex teachings, a Buddhist tolerance for other religions and the gravitational pull of a majority Christian culture all play roles in this, researchers and local Buddhists speculate.

One prominent Buddhist author, Clark Strand, of New York, says the problem is that spiritual seekers in the United States too often come to temples only for meditation lessons and don't stay long.

'Change or die'

American Buddhism "must change or die," he said.

"There were a lot of people who felt the thing they liked about Buddhism was it's not a religion and does not have rituals associated with it," said Strand, a former Zen monk and senior editor of Tricycle, the magazine of record for American Buddhism.

He said that Buddhism could learn from Christianity and Judaism, given the powerful bond created through such rituals as baptisms, circumcisions, weddings and funerals.

"To hold on to the Buddhists they get ... the Buddhist centers are going to have to solve this problem of birthing them, marrying them and burying them," he said. "Those are the three transitional moments in human life that are generally managed by religion."