Building and Negotiating Religious Identities in a Zen Buddhist Temple: A Perspective of Buddhist Rhetoric [1st ed.] 978-981-13-8862-0;978-981-13-8863-7

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-vi
Buddhism and Rhetoric: From an Intercultural Perspective (Fan Zhang)....Pages 1-15
A Brief History of Modern Zen Buddhism in the United States (Fan Zhang)....Pages 17-38
The Temple’s Paradox: Maintaining Cultural Traditions in the Discourse of Modernization and Democratization (Fan Zhang)....Pages 39-61
Constructing Buddhist Identity at the H Temple (Fan Zhang)....Pages 63-90
The Buddhist Rhetoric of the H Temple: What Does It Mean to Be an American Buddhist? (Fan Zhang)....Pages 91-100

Citation preview

Fan Zhang

Building and Negotiating Religious Identities in a Zen Buddhist Temple A Perspective of Buddhist Rhetoric

Building and Negotiating Religious Identities in a Zen Buddhist Temple

Fan Zhang

Building and Negotiating Religious Identities in a Zen Buddhist Temple A Perspective of Buddhist Rhetoric

Fan Zhang School of Journalism and Communication Xi’an International Studies University Xi’an, China

ISBN 978-981-13-8862-0    ISBN 978-981-13-8863-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8863-7 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Contents

1 Buddhism and Rhetoric: From an Intercultural Perspective����������������    1 1.1 Buddhism in an Era of Globalization��������������������������������������������������    1 1.1.1 Buddhism in the West��������������������������������������������������������������    4 1.1.2 Buddhism and Technology������������������������������������������������������    5 1.1.3 Defining Buddhist Rhetoric����������������������������������������������������    6 1.2 The H-Temple and Its Unique Buddhist Rhetoric ������������������������������   11 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   14 2 A Brief History of Modern Zen Buddhism in the United States ����������   17 2.1 Brief History of Modern Zen Buddhism in the West��������������������������   17 2.2 Modernization of Buddhism on a Global Scale����������������������������������   21 2.3 The Introduction of Buddhism to Ohio and the L City ����������������������   23 2.3.1 Temple Setting and Activities��������������������������������������������������   24 2.3.2 Temple Operation and Communication����������������������������������   26 2.4 Articulating Buddhist Rhetoric in the H Temple: On the Intersection of Culture, Communication, and Rhetoric����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   27 2.4.1 Viewing the H Temple as Both Intercultural and Rhetorical��������������������������������������������������������������������������   29 2.4.2 Competing Ideologies in the H Temple: When East Meets West������������������������������������������������������������������������������   32 2.4.3 Observing the H Temple as a Practitioner and Cultural Critic ������������������������������������������������������������������   33 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   36 3 The Temple’s Paradox: Maintaining Cultural Traditions in the Discourse of Modernization and Democratization����������������������   39 3.1 The Uniqueness of the Family Temple������������������������������������������������   41 3.1.1  as an Ideograph ������������������������������������������������������   43 3.2 The Married Abbot and Spousal Transmission: Pragmatism of American Buddhism������������������������������������������������������������������������   45

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Contents

3.3 The Role of Abbot N: More Than Just a Temple Wife������������������������   48 3.3.1  and  as Ideographs����������������������������������   50 3.4 Sunday Morning Dharma School: A Buddhist Moral Education��������   51 3.4.1 From Dharma Teaching to Moral Education ��������������������������   53 3.5 Sangha: This Is Where We Belong������������������������������������������������������   55 3.5.1 Community Building Through Membership ��������������������������   57 3.6 Seeing Through the Ideographs: A Democratic American Buddhism��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   58 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   60 4 Constructing Buddhist Identity at the H Temple������������������������������������   63 4.1 Technology at the H Temple and Identity Construction����������������������   64 4.1.1 Challenges from the Cyberspace ��������������������������������������������   67 4.1.2 A Buddhist Identity via Technology����������������������������������������   71 4.2 Dealing with the Secret Buddhist Identity: Being Rational and Trusting Yourself��������������������������������������������������������������������������   73 4.2.1 The Secret Buddhist Identity ��������������������������������������������������   75 4.2.2 Mix-and-Match Buddhism for Individual Needs��������������������   77 4.3 The Power of Naming: Rituals, Members, and Objects����������������������   79 4.3.1 Experiencing Dharma Names in a Foreign Discourse������������   81 4.3.2 When Names Are Transplanted: An Orientalist Approach������   83 4.4 Temple as the Sacred Space in Constructing Identity ������������������������   85 4.4.1 Sacred Gaze in the Sacred Space��������������������������������������������   86 4.5 New Dimensions and Meanings of the Buddhist Identity������������������   87 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   89 5 The Buddhist Rhetoric of the H Temple: What Does It Mean to Be an American Buddhist? ������������������������������������������������������������������   91 5.1 Rethinking the Buddhist Experience ��������������������������������������������������   92 5.2 Buddhist Rhetoric Revisited: Through the Lens of Modernism����������   96 5.3 Looking Forward—A Postmodern Buddhism������������������������������������   98 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  100

Chapter 1

Buddhism and Rhetoric: From an Intercultural Perspective

1.1  Buddhism in an Era of Globalization In the last few decades, globalization has brought an era of immense and unprecedented change that is affecting our lives in every domain and every possible way. The phenomenon of globalization refers to transplanetary processes that involve multi-directional flows of people, objects, places, technologies, and information (Ritzer 2011). Its crucial and profound impact is manifested most strikingly in the fields of economy and information technologies. In other words, more and more regions of the world are dominated by a capitalistic way of life and involved in the neoliberal economic system, while they are intimately connected to each other through instruments of information technologies. In globalization, religion is not only subject to the various flows and forces but also to an invasive global market. The academic study of religion is going through some major changes, particularly in the social sciences such as in history and in the humanities as well (Obadia 2012). The once localized religions like Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam are transcending the geographical, social, and political borders to become the “universal religions” with a combination of various elements from different streams. Religious beliefs and activities embed new meanings during adaptation to the new economic, cultural, and political realities. Breyer (1993) argues that the overwhelming and intensified religious expression, in a nutshell, is a strategic response to the pervasiveness of market economy and materialism under which new narratives and meanings of existence are competing for attention. On one hand, with the expanding transmigration of ideas, people, and practices, some religious communities that were born from certain cultures have had to adjust themselves in other cultural environments. Their ways of communication and practice needed to be interculturally “localized” for an external audience. On the other hand, pressure of the global market and neoliberal economy pushed religious communities to compete with each other and operate within the economic system. In order to survive and sustain, religions needed to be more “globalized” in order to echo © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 F. Zhang, Building and Negotiating Religious Identities in a Zen Buddhist Temple, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8863-7_1

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u­ biquitous modernity and economic materialism. This is a paradox I wish to explore further in this dissertation. Religious practices—rituals, activities, and even doctrines of different religions are encouraged to modify themselves into an ideal prototype for the convenience of their modernized audience. Quite often these religions borrow practices from each other because one strategy that succeeds on the marketplace may “work” for others as well. Nagata (1999) identifies religious globalization with “convergence and conformity” since their migration determined a redevelopment of rituals and activities. Among these changes, contemporary Buddhism is particularly notable when considering its migration from East to West, and when facing many challenges in a more secular world. For example, Buddhism has gradually developed the ritual of “churching” on Sundays in many Western countries although this practice does not exist in the original practices in Eastern countries (Nagata 1999, p. 232). Attempting to examine how social forces under globalization impact contemporary Buddhism, Nelson (2011) briefly sketches the main game-changing patterns: (a) growing tolerance for pluralism and diversity; (b) a steady flow of information via newly marketed communication technologies; (c) reconstruction of the decision-­ making process; and (d) greater personal agency to interact with all forces mentioned above. Like the author concludes in his case studies, old traditions, ways of practice, and teachings will not suffice the needs of people in the new era. Contemporary Buddhism is facing the challenge of institutional change and innovation. Or more precisely, it needs to find a way to interpret classical Buddhist teachings in new practices to cater to the needs of a wider audience who are intellectually, culturally, and emotionally different from their predecessors. What are often neglected in this discussion are questions concerning how religious identities are formed and negotiated under the impact of Buddhist globalization, especially its Westernized forms of practice and its adoption of technology. Thus, my primary goal in this study is to better understand the westernization of Buddhism and its adapted practices and rituals in the host culture. This study presumes that religious identities of the practitioners are constituted and negotiated through the strategic Buddhist rhetoric employed by the discursive behaviors and settings of Buddhist temples in the United States. Particularly, this study focuses on a Buddhist temple in northwest Ohio and the local community that is connected to the temple by practicing Zen Buddhist meditation and attending its various activities. The argument presented here is that the temple functions to constitute and negotiate religious identities of the community members through its various rituals and activities. At the same time, the generative space and settings of the temple also facilitate the religious identity formation and preservation. The central question this study strives to answer is, “How does a Zen Buddhist temple in the U.S.  Midwest facilitate the formation of religious identities of the local community through its strategic discursive activities, the adoption of technol-

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ogy, and the temple itself?” In order to answer this question, I specifically looked into four aspects during my study: first, how the temple utilize social media and various technologies to communicate with its members and discursively create and negotiate the online religious experience; second, what activities and rituals were staged by this temple and how do these ritual and activities facilitate the cultural maintenance of a Japanese Zen temple; third, how intercultural contexts were created by these activities and rituals and how differing cultural perspectives were mediated by them; and fourth, how the setting of the temple as a generative space reflect an adaptation of an Eastern religion in the West. As Buddhism has become the subject of interdisciplinary study and research in the past few decades, my study joins in the conversation of critiquing its Westernization and elucidating the impacts on local communities from a rhetorical perspective. In doing so, this research offers further insight into the future development of modern Buddhism, which is also applicable to other major world religions. Furthermore, this study also addresses the combination of modern Buddhism and communication technology in a more systematic and nuanced way. Specifically, challenges and concerns in the adaptation of technology have been disregarded and overshadowed by the convenience technology brings. In exploring the advantages as well as the challenges, I hope more implications will be identified for other temples and religious institutions for their future development. Finally, this study provides a better understanding of religious identity construction. In contemporary times when everything is accessible online, the technological transformation of modern Buddhism could alter how we define a qualified Buddhist and what counts as a sacred experience of practicing, which had to be ritualized in the past in traditional Buddhism. Is maintaining traditional monastic settings and religious activities able to complement the change of culture and language while facilitating the religious instruction? These are all interesting aspects this dissertation has explored and given an answer to. In addressing the issues listed above and answering the questions I proposed, this study used rhetorical criticism to examine the “Buddhist rhetoric” reflected in the activities, the space and place of the temple itself, and the content of its main website. Rather than researching multiple Buddhist temples and generalizing the Buddhist rhetoric, I provided a more nuanced understanding of Buddhism in the West through the careful study of one case. Although most temples claim they adopt similar practices and follow the same traditions based on their respective lineages and schools, the practices of one temple could differ drastically from another due to their geographic locations and settings, different community involvement, their way of utilizing technology, and how teachings are performed both offline in the temple and online by the abbots. Specifically, my dissertation draws from two major theoretical and methodological traditions: rhetorical criticism and intercultural communication, and the “Buddhist Rhetoric”—how rhetoric intersects with studies of Buddhist texts, performances, and activities.

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1.1.1  Buddhism in the West The widely recognized Buddhism and its popular practices came to the West around the mid-nineteenth century (Lenoir 1999). It is also well known as Buddhist modernism or secular Buddhism. In essence, it is considered to be a mixture of ancestral Buddhism and “modern discursive practices” that contain incongruities whether from the level of practice or from its doctrines and institutions (Higgins 2012, p. 111). Having been immersed in the social practices and intellectual atmospheres of the host societies in the West, secular, or modern Buddhism set out to facilitate full human flourishing without necessary worshiping of superhuman agencies (Higgins 2012). During its later development, the practices of modern Buddhism are designed to give more weight to lay practice and meditation, with canonical texts standardized, readable, and available to a larger audience. The once-strict boundaries between clergy and laity in Buddhist history also became blurred (Nagata 1999). To secure its status as a “world religion” with its expansion to every country and region, modern Buddhism also greatly increased its engagement in social and daily life, while taking positions and actions on popular issues like human rights, refugees, peace, and environment protection (Nagata 1999). Much more similar to or identified with the Christian tradition, Buddhist institutions and practitioners nowadays are gradually laying more emphasis on charitable activities, especially on helping the disadvantaged groups in society like orphans, youth, aged, and disabled, and devoting attention to the education of children and youth from kindergarten to college. The interpretation of Buddhism in the West has largely been done through an academic disciplinary lens. Its loose connection to spirituality and superhuman agencies frequently made people wonder whether it is a philosophy or a religion (Lenoir 1999). Meanwhile, it is more interesting to note that the perception of Buddhism in the United States, specifically Zen Buddhism, is increasingly associated with psychology and psychotherapy for its goal of revealing the full capacities of the human mind (Virtbauer 2012). Unlike other world religions that are always trapped in the science/religion dichotomy and debates, modern Buddhism is embraced by the Western societies as being “scientific.” Virtbauer (2012) notes that the combination of the “religious” part—rituals, monastic settings, and daily structures—and the “philosophy” part—mostly meditation practices—fulfill our definition of modern psychology, which stresses the study of functions and nature of behavior and mental experience. Thus, Buddhism offers a scientific method to analyze human experience and would inspire the full potential and capacities of the human mind. Such a secular re-formation of Buddhism or “Buddhism 2.0” has aroused controversies over the issue of authenticity (Batchelor 2012). Some may argue that the history of Buddhism is a process of interpretation and reinterpretation of dharma (principles and teachings of Buddha) and a history of reception in different cultures, while some traditional schools remain critical on the compatibilities made for modernity and argue for maintaining the “core ideas and values” (p. 90). In other

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words, traditionalists consider secular worldviews, engagements, and adaptations as potentially detrimental and hazardous to the very existence of Buddhism (Chandler 2010). One adaptation that has caused the most debate is the utilization of communication technology in modern Buddhism.

1.1.2  Buddhism and Technology Carneiro (2015) defines technology from two senses in light of the field “philosophy of technology” (p. 52). In a narrow sense, also in the perspective of mediatisation, technologies are modern devices and machines for “producing representations to channel or deliver messages,” which is intimately associated with commodity and mass production. In a broad sense, or the mediation approach, technology includes machines, but also things, artifacts, practices, and instruments that mediate relationships by extending “human and non-human capacities” (White 1964; Carneiro 2015, p. 54). Approaching the relationship between religion and technology from either perspective would bring about different interpretations. While the mediatisation perspective contends religion has been subjected under the modern marketplace by mass media, mediation approach rather sees technology as medium that transforms the religious practice and experience. The combination of Buddhism and technology has been fairly new, especially the use of Internet and communication technologies. However, some Buddhist scholars have been promoting the Internet as a platform to connect to more communities and to become more socially engaged. Nevertheless, the application of technology to Buddhist teachings and practice can be various and can bring unexpected results. In a study of spiritualizing technology, Busch (2010) examined the process establishing online authority through an electronic forum on a Buddhism portal E-Sangha. Busch concludes that content producers and moderators of E-sangha discursively and structurally shaped the religious community narratives to “frame Web environments as sacred community spaces” (2010, p. 13). Despite its novelty, this online forum raises a question about Buddhist authority. Who are spiritualizing these believer’s experiences and practices online? And who identified themselves as Buddhists without the formal conversion in religious institutions? Technology would not be able to solve these questions in this case but brings more confusion over limits and boundaries of using it. Even with religious authorities online, technology could also serve as a double-­ edged sword when put into controversial use. A study by Cheong, Huang, and Poon (2011) illustrate ways through which Singapore Buddhist monks expand their communicative capabilities online and offline. More than half of the priests interviewed had online interactions with practitioners through emails, while they also had their sermons posted online through podcasts, videos, or webcasts (p.  1172). It is not unusual for contemporary Buddhist leaders to “increase bargaining power” by manipulating their web presence. More specifically, as Cheong, Huang, and Poon (2011) argue, modern religious authority was communicatively constructed and

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legitimized through technology use, whereas traditional clerical authority was threatened by technological religious secularization. Thus tensions are created in between because some Buddhist leaders felt threatened when faced with epistemic online resources. Technological adoption in Buddhism still remains in the stage of “controversial,” while its stability still depends on organizational practices. Nevertheless, there are still foreseeable benefits brought by the use of technology. One of them is the ongoing interaction among Buddhist communities all over the world. Under the global narrative that Buddhism should be socially engaged and utilize its beliefs and practices to help with various political, environmental, and economic problems, it is argued that technology will be able to provide a platform to “create cooperation within diversity” (Brazier 2002, p.  219). Despite different traditions within Buddhism and various ways of practice, technology will be able to initiate the cooperation among communities locally and globally. Despite this growing need to utilize technology, MacKenzie and Wajcman (1999) contend that technology applications can hardly be neutral as they advance or constrain human actions and goals, especially when power or special interests are involved. Additionally, technology can aid the expansion of certain ideologies (Deetz 1990). Prior to the advent of technology, power differences already existed among social groups and structures in society. Through constructing media messages and conveying meaning, they developed a hierarchy of power relations. The power to influence in a contemporary mediated society largely relies on the ability to manipulate the media, and may increase or decrease based on the ways technology is utilized; as such, communication technology itself becomes a form of discourse or rhetoric. Moreover, technology never performs in a vacuum but is subject to the contingencies of time and space. Most frequently, systems of expression, thought, and the media deliver messages that contain embedded values that come with political implications in media products. In the case of Buddhism in the era of globalization, embracing technology was not merely about using it, but about shaping the rhetoric of its usage through the discourse of high-tech Buddhism, which includes: the repositioning of Buddhism in a multicultural world, the recognition of modern Buddhism as unlike the traditional Buddhism, as well as promoting the sense of civic responsibility and citizenship affiliated with the dissemination of modern Buddhist teachings.

1.1.3  Defining Buddhist Rhetoric A useful place to start defining what is Buddhist rhetoric is to understand what rhetoric is and the relationship among Buddhism, rhetoric, and communication. Foss, Foss, and Trapp (2002) define rhetoric as “the human use of symbols to communicate” (p. 3). Symbols are not necessarily linguistic but can take various forms such as body gestures and actions. As a matter of fact, humans use all sorts of “nonrhetorical objects in rhetorical ways,” and turn them into symbols in the communicative process (p. 3). In turn, human actions can be interpreted as symbolic by those

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who encounter or experience them. Thus, all human actions potentially can be interpreted rhetorically. Rhetorical criticism, as Foss (2009) points out, refers to the “systematic investigation and exploration” of the symbolic actions and artifacts while purposing to better understand rhetorical processes (p. 6). A deeper appreciation and understanding of the rhetorical action or artifact will be achieved when criticism is engaged. Rather than being universal, rhetoric arises from cultural contexts and reflects them (Johnson 1999). Since Kenneth Burke (1966) defines humans as “symbol using animals,” the study of rhetoric has been inseparable from culture. James Carey (1989) remarks on the interrelation between culture and communication via his innovative “ritual” view of communication, “that it is not only the transmission of intelligent information but also the construction and maintenance of an ordered, meaningful cultural world” (p. 19). Intercultural rhetoric draws attention to rhetorical actions that aim to create identifications and shared communities between different cultures. Through negotiation, adaptation, persuasion, and participation, rhetorical critics tend to peel off the cultural phenomena to understand values, discover power relations, and mediate tensions and differences. The H temple in this study is such a site where intercultural convergence or multiple understandings occur when local community members practice this ancient Eastern religion. How the temple abbots situate the teachings, rituals, and activities in their own rhetoric offers another layer of intercultural communication, specifically in the process of translation, negotiation, and making adjustments to the community’s needs. A thorough examination of cultural discourses of both the “guest culture,” where the Buddhism practices originate from, and the “host culture,” where the temple locates, would illuminate more implications of Buddhism’s appearance in the West. As Carbaugh and Wolf (1999) suggest, situating rhetoric in cultural discourse would enable us to discover “distinctive systems of terms, topics, and forms of expression” and recreate a sense of community with a shared understanding of being, acting, feeling, and relating (p. 26). The distinctive rhetoric of the temple and its abbots is more explicit once contextualized in cultural discourse. Equally important is the examination of the rhetorical heritage of Buddhism— the Buddhist rhetoric from the East. Mary Garrett (1999) proposes some methodological reflections in researching intercultural rhetoric. She questioned the appropriateness of the Greco-Roman rhetorical framework that consists of ethos, pathos, and logos in examining Eastern texts. In her research, Garrett took examples from ancient Chinese literature and reconstructed the definition of “rhetoric.” Meanwhile, she also challenged the popular stereotype that there has been a “lack” or insufficiency within Eastern rhetoric. The problem dwelled in the Orientalist perspective. As rhetoricians, Garrett maintains that we keep a critical and self-reflexive spirit, which “involves nothing more than a basic reality check,” for this might be the best way to avoid biases in our criticism (p. 61). Thus, my methodology in this study is the critical examination of the Buddhist rhetoric. In making sense of Buddhist rhetoric, it is crucial to know how rhetoric intersects with the field of religion. To some extent, this connection is obvious because religion is intimately linked with words and expressions. Whether spoken or written,

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words play the fundamental role in both defining and disseminating religion. Burke (1969) defines rhetoric as the use of words by human agents “to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.” He saw rhetoric, whichever form it may take, as deeply rooted in language itself. In connecting rhetoric and religion, Burke (1970) contends and describes the nature of religion as rhetorical. The linking of rhetoric to Buddhism is rather new and daring. While interpreting an ancient Asian religion with the framework that originated from the West, Garrett (1999) cautions us to avoid the Orientalist logic and be conscious of the cultural discourse that gives rise to the rhetorical tradition. Indeed, the rhetorical heritage of the East has been overlooked largely due to the power imbalance of the East and the West. The goal of critical rhetoric, as McKerrow (1989) proposes, is to demystify domination and power relations, untangle the discourse of power, and make the voice of the “cultural other” heard. In adding Asian rhetoric to our criticism, it is also a good opportunity to broaden our horizons, as it is almost a completely different system that honors non-expression, silence, the nonverbal, the softness and subtlety of ambiguity, and indirectness (Jensen 1987). The intersection of rhetorical criticism and religious communication brings new meanings to this field while reminding us of its ever-changing nature. From examining texts to visual images, to actual personal performances, from the verbal utterance to the non-verbal silence and action, Buddhist rhetoric needs more innovative exploration and interdisciplinary study. Historically, the rhetoric of traditional Buddhism had already taken various forms other than language like texts, speeches, and debates. Ch’an Buddhism, among various branches of Buddhism in China, exceptionally values non-verbal and silence as ways of expression. Taking examples mainly from the classic Chinese Ch’an Buddhism collection Transmission of the Lamp, the study of Wright mainly examines the unique discursive or rhetorical practices of classic Ch’an (Zen) and how it differs from the Western rhetorical traditions. The Ch’an Buddhist rhetoric, as Wright (1993) contends, is put into a “unique and transformative” use, in which “eloquence” is defined and articulated fundamentally differently from the Western rhetorical models (p. 24). The author concluded by identifying four dimensions of Ch’an rhetoric and analyzing their fundamental differences: the rhetoric of strangeness, the rhetoric of “direct pointing,” the rhetoric of silence, and the rhetoric of disruption. The strangeness of Ch’an Buddhist rhetoric was reflected in its unusualness even in its own cultural context, which included: comments made were not sought to explain; arguments were not meant to persuade the reader but functioned as “awakening;” and statements were not propositional. Fully devoted to awakening the mind of hearers and break them away from the traditional “normal” discourse, the Ch’an Buddhist rhetoric departed from the norm and conventions to undermine “norms” and grounds embodied in it. The rhetoric of direct pointing in Ch’an Buddhism referred to the use of non-verbal signs including rituals and complex spontaneous signs (Wright 1993). Depending fully on the recipient’s interpretation, it was a rhetorical act that “either communicates immediately or directly without reflection, or leaves the recipient out of place” (p. 29). The author named the rhetoric act “direct

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pointing” as to stress the significance of actions, which is as important as spoken words in Ch’an Buddhist rhetoric. Yet the referent hidden inside the sign was not always readily understandable to ordinary experience, just like the rhetoric of silence. Wright (1993) points out that the act of silence in Ch’an shares a common ground with other practices in Buddhism. In Buddhist rhetoric, silence manifested more than merely “absence of discourse,” but rather as a distinct way of “saying” on its own (p. 30). Silence was weaved into communicated interaction in continuing the dialogue and bringing fruition in awakened discourse. The critical power of silence lay in its ability to penetrate all “form” and disrupt all talk from conversational awareness. The last dimension of Ch’an rhetoric, rhetoric of disruption, took the form of non-traditional linguistic patterns and worked to “evoke an experience of disorientation and groundlessness,” because Ch’an rhetoric was designed to disorient the self-world relation (p. 32). The rhetoric of Ch’an Buddhism manifested as distinctly different from the Western rhetorical tradition. Instead of a means of persuasion and the use of eloquence, Ch’an rhetoric is a transformative device with “awakening” power to challenge the conventional subjectivity with non-verbal signs and unique language styles. When Western rhetorical traditions stress premeditation and memorization, Ch’an rhetoric ridiculed both, and was based on “encounter dialogue” narratives, which were fully situational. (p. 32) Words were not central to this rhetorical tradition but functioned to overturn and open the reader’s mind. It was even viewed as “anti-linguistic,” which entailed a more comprehensive understanding of the role language played in it. In essence, Ch’an Buddhist rhetoric aims to subvert preset beliefs and knowledge by an experience of groundlessness, emptiness, or openness to bring about the awakening. Kosaka’s 2010 study at a Japanese Buddhist Association in Denver CO found that Buddhist rhetoric is conceptualized not only as language in speeches and teachings, but also in interactions that involve members and abbots: direct participation and indirect participation. Furthermore, the study also noted the rhetorical techniques employed by abbots during their speeches. According to Kosaka (2010), these techniques mainly included term definition and use of anecdotes. In putting complicated Buddhist terms into plain words, abbots hoped to guide the learning process for beginner members. Meanwhile, the use of humor and personal anecdotes in speech also facilitated the understanding process of members. Another important aspect of Buddhist rhetoric is Buddhist visual rhetoric. Julie Gifford’s (2011) study chose to examine the Buddhist monument Borobudur in Indonesia and how it was informed by Mahayana Buddhism. The author provided a thick description based on her field trips to show how the architects of Borobudur represented Buddha in various forms and various experiences. In her analysis, monuments are “material instantiations” of the form of rhetoric that Aristotle called “epideictic” (p. 13). When such rhetorical forms usually do not argue explicitly for a particular course of action, it implicitly encourages people to adopt “culturally approved patterns of behavior” (p.  16). Gifford’s approach is obviously non-­ traditional either in her artifact or in her method. As visual rhetoric is a fairly new

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trajectory of rhetorical criticism, she “read into” the Borobudur architects and compared them to an epideictic speech, convicting the readers of the communicative nature of these architects and the ritual responses they may provoke. This approach is also applicable to examination of the setting of Buddha statues, portrayals, and other religious artifacts in the temple, which are constantly viewed as monuments that contain specific meaning. As artifacts in Buddhist rhetoric vary, so do the discourses. Sometimes, the rhetorical action is solely dependent on how the discourse shapes it. Following this vein, it is especially interesting to observe how Buddhist discourse is framed through media and engages the audience. Situating Buddhist visual rhetoric in the discourse of American print media, Dionisopoulos and Skow’s (1997) case study of the “burning monk” contend that the rhetorical meaning of a visual artifact is constituted not only by the artifact’s aesthetic form but also by the various discourses to contextualize the visual artifact. Different from the traditional rhetorical analysis that looks only at the rhetorical dimensions of the artifact, their study examined the discursive rhetoric for providing a context and guiding the audience to understand the visual images. Dionisopoulos and Skow’s analysis delved into the discursive rhetoric in American print media that tries to provide a “correct interpretation” for this image and spotted the dialectic struggle within it (p. 394). By examining newspapers, periodicals, and magazines during the 1963 political upheavals of South Vietnam, the authors proved that contextualizing the image along with discourses becomes an effective way to interpret the image and its hidden message. The Buddhist visual rhetoric, with discourses from other sources to contextualize it, may lead to multiple interpretations and even misunderstanding. In the similar vein that challenges the traditional textual artifact in rhetorical criticism, Gorsevski’ s (2013) case study utilizes Aung San Suu Kyi and her Buddhist identity as the artifact. In this study, Suu Kyi’s self-portrayals—discourse, images, and actions—were studied and situated within a political and postcolonial context. As the author contends, Suu Kyi’s Buddhist rhetoric expressed through her postcolonial subjectivity within the complicated political situation becomes an important rhetorical means in her fight for human rights and democracy for people in Myanmar. In the author’s analysis, Suu Kyi’s Buddhist rhetoric manifested as: Suu Kyi’s use of Buddhism to align herself with the Burmese identity; her constant practice of Buddhism (meditation) and validation from respected monks, which made her a spiritual leader beyond the political status; and her Buddhist inflected speeches. Also non-traditionally in this study, Suu Kyi was examined as a rhetorical “text” of postcolonial subjectivity infused by Buddhist humanitarianism. The author uniquely articulated the Buddhist rhetoric under political discourse through the persona of a female activist. One study that could probably illuminate the future Buddhist rhetorical criticism is Radwan’s (2012) “contact rhetoric.” As he conducts a close textual analysis of Pope Benedict XVI’s inaugural encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Radwan proposed a contact orientation that differs from discursive rhetorical theory. Rhetoric in this sense is manifested as “physical contact and touch” between people instead of

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words and languages that generate meaning in a traditional sense (p.  43). In his analysis, the mode of contact expressed as Christian love—knowing and feeling God is Love. And this contact could be operationalized into specific practices. Radwan’s contact theory brought another possibility in interpreting religion and rhetoric and is immediately applicable to the rhetorical practices of Buddhism. The fascinating case studies listed above have transcended our understanding of “what is rhetoric” as well as “how is rhetoric articulated.” The intersection of rhetorical criticism and religious communication brought us new meanings to this filed while reminding us of its ever-changing nature. From examining texts to visual images, to actual person and rhetorical discourses, to the verbal utterance to the non-verbal silence and action, Buddhist rhetoric needs more innovative exploration and interdisciplinary studies.

1.2  The H-Temple and Its Unique Buddhist Rhetoric Illuminated by the various studies on Buddhist rhetoric while creating my own interpretation of Buddhist rhetoric, I chose to start my research in a Temple located in northwest Ohio. To protect the privacy of the subjects in this study, I obscured the names of the city, the temple, as well as the abbots and the temple website. In the following chapters, they are referred to as the L city, the H temple, Abbot R and his wife Abbot N. In terms of adhering to the Western Buddhist traditions, temple settings, and the type of community engaged in the practices, the H Temple is considerably very representative of Western Buddhism in general: it performs Zen practices from a Japanese Buddhist lineage, which is featured by its popular meditation practice. The temple is located in a predominantly white, middle-class community, and the setting is very similar to other Zen Buddhist temples in the West. Most scholars still adhere to traditional methods only, like textual analysis and critical rhetoric criticism, especially in dealing with ancient canonical texts. Innovatively, this study utilizes a heuristic approach to participating and understanding Buddhist rituals and activities in order to investigate how Buddhist teachings are communicated to the members through verbal and non-verbal ways. I utilized participant observation during rituals and activities to get familiarized with the temple and abbots’ rhetorical strategies. My identity as a Buddhist practitioner facilitated participation in the activities of the temple. In the meantime, I also used textual analysis and rhetorical analysis to examine the abbots’ speeches on weekly activities and the content of the temple’s website, as well as the discourses that the rhetorical actions situate in. Specifically, I mainly participated at the temple’s weekly Sunday morning and Wednesday evening activities from December 2015 to December 2016. Wednesday evening activity is composed of different periods of meditation, private interview

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with a teacher, and a Dharma talk given by the abbot. Sunday morning activity includes sutra services, Dharma talk by the abbot, and also kids’ and teens’ Dharma school. Since the sutra service and Dharma talk are similar to Wednesday evening meditation and talks, my observation focused on the Dharma school—how t­ eenagers and children learn about Buddhism through various activities designed by the temple. Observations of how events and activities were organized and performed, how people in the community who attend these events interacted with each other, and how participants reacted to the abbot’s speeches were recorded on a weekly basis. In examining the content of the website, I performed a textual and structural analysis of the website of the H Temple. I mainly focused on the religious narratives framed by the website’s texts, visual images, videos, and podcasts, as well as how these narratives facilitate the practitioners’ religious identity construction together with their practices at the temple. The website contains the videos of abbot’s weekly address and focuses on upcoming events and responses to questions sent to him. A critical examination was done to examine the content of these videos, ranging from January 2015 to January 2017. This time frame was specifically selected to examine all the abbot addresses uploaded within 2 years of time and as a reflection of the temple growth. The structural analysis interpreted how the narrative was organized, the use of hyperlinks, and the utilization of technical controls for the website (like when and how live cameras are set up to simulate the temple experience for online practitioners). Through these interpretative methods, I elucidated how strategic Buddhist discourse was framed in this temple and on its website, and how it facilitated the formation of Buddhist identity among the practitioners. Additionally, I provided a nuanced discussion of the theoretical and methodological foundations of this study in the next chapter. Given the goal of this study, each chapter is constructed to accomplish some important sectors of the goal. Together, they illuminate the Buddhist rhetoric of the H temple and how religious identities are formed within such rhetoric. Chapter 1 begins by introducing this project as a whole with a statement of research questions, a rationale, review of relevant literature, and a preview of chapters. It also provides an overview of modern Buddhism and its recent development in the West. The chapter briefly describes modern Buddhism and how it differs from the traditional Buddhism. Specifically, this chapter identifies the differences between modern and traditional, while listing the ongoing rhetorical debates regarding the appropriateness of the Westernization process. Then I address the Westernization process of modern Buddhism: its secularization and its debatable adoption of technology. Chapter 2 aims to contextualize the historical, political, and cultural background that formed Modern Buddhism. I discuss how Buddhism, as an indigenous Asian religion, was introduced to the United States and remolded into a rational, scientific, and philosophical religion. After that, I depict how the modern Buddhist thoughts flew back to Asian countries and promoted the Buddhist secularization in the East. Furthermore, I trace how the global flow of Buddhism came to Ohio and L city and exemplified in the case of the H Temple. The second section of this chapter focuses

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on elaborating the theoretical and methodological framework. By elucidating the nature of rhetorical communication and the goals and procedures of rhetorical criticism, I advance my interpretation of Buddhist rhetoric and the adoption of critical intercultural communication. Based on abundant literature of previous studies on intercultural communication and Buddhist rhetoric, this chapter explores the relevance of rhetorical criticism to studies of Buddhism. Chapter 3 examines the H temple’s effort to maintain its Japanese cultural connections as part of its own tradition and heritage in the discourses of modernization and democratization. Mainly, I describe and analyze ideographs like , , , , and that embedded in the temple’s rhetoric about traditions from the Japanese Zen Buddhism. The argument of this chapter is: these self-asserted “traditions” that the H temple has been practicing are actually hybridity forms that are unique only to American Buddhism under the democratic ideology. In utilizing these “traditions” and keeping its oriental appeal to the Western audience, the temple finds its authenticity, its cultural tie to the East, and its surviving mechanism, which are representative of many forms of Buddhist temples in the U.S. Chapter 4 focuses on the identity construction in the H temple. The discussion states from the temple’s use of communication technologies. Specifically, I elaborate on the benefits and challenges of technology from the cyberspace, as well as the online religious experience from a user’s perspective. Following that, the discussion proceeds with a thorough examination of abbot R’s strategies in dealing with member’s secret Buddhist identity and the practice based on Western individualism through his abbot addresses. The third focus of this chapter is the naming practice of the H temple, by probing into the reasons and results of using Japanese names for members, rituals, and objects in the temple, I tend to explicate how the adoption of Japanese kanji names help construct the members’ Buddhist identities. Finally, the temple is examined as a sacred space in constructing the Buddhist experience. From the perspective of material rhetoric of the physical space, the special arrangement, religious artifacts, and ordinary ritual objects work effectively in building a collective Buddhist identity. The last chapter is the conclusion. The book is concluded by reviewing previous chapters and discussions, and reiterating implications for future studies of intercultural rhetoric, Buddhist rhetoric, and the process of identity construction. Specifically, how my critical understanding of Buddhist rhetoric is developed gradually and how critical intercultural communication needs to address issues surrounding religion, as religion has become a major force for unification and division in the twenty-first century. Given the recent situation of religious violence and flow of refugees, it has become an urgent topic to address: the religious identity building, community building, and conflict negotiation in relation to the surrounding cultural, ethnic, class, and educational contexts. There are potential benefits of critical intercultural research in areas of religious communication and this study can assist examinations of other religions and other global cities.

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References Batchelor, S. (2012). A secular Buddhism. Journal of Global Buddhism, 13, 87–107. Brazier, D. (2002). The new Buddhism. New York: Palgrave. Breyer, P. (1993). Religion and globalization. London: Sage. Burke, K. (1966). Language as symbolic action: Essays on life, literature, and method. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burke, K. (1969). A rhetoric of motives (Vol. 111). Berkeley: University of California Press. Burke, K. (1970). The rhetoric of religion: Studies in logology (Vol. 188). Berkeley: University of California Press. Busch, L. (2010). To come to a correct understanding of Buddhism: A case study on spiritualizing technology, religious authority, and the boundaries of orthodoxy and identity in a Buddhist web forum. New Media & Society, 13(1), 58–74. Carbaugh, D., & Wolf, K. (1999). Situating Rhetoric in cultural discourses. International and Intercultural Communication Annual, 22(1999), 19–30. Carey, J.W. (1989/1992). A cultural approach to communication. In Communication as culture: Essays on media and society (pp. 12–36). New York: Routlege. Carneiro, L. (2015). The implication of technology in mediatisation and mediation approaches to religious studies. Culture and Religion, (ahead-of-print), 1–15. Chandler, S. (2010). Buddhism in China and Taiwan: The dimensions of contemporary Chinese Buddhism. In Buddhism in world cultures: Comparative perspectives. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Cheong, P.  H., Huang, S., & Poon, J.  P. H. (2011). Cultivating online and offline pathways to enlightenment: Religious authority and strategic arbitration in wired Buddhist organizations. Information, Communication & Society, 14(8), 1160–1180. Deetz, S. (1990). Representation of interests and the new communication technologies: Issues in democracy and policy. In M. Medhurst, A. González, & T. R. Peterson (Eds.), Communication & the culture of technology (pp. 42–50). Pullman: Washington State University Press. Dionisopoulos, G., & Skow, L. (1997). A struggle to contextualize photographic images: American print media and the “burning monk”. Communication Quarterly, 45(4), 393. https://doi. org/10.1080/01463379709370073. Foss, S.  K. (2009). Rhetorical criticism: Exploration & practice. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press. Foss, S. K., Foss, K. A., & Trapp, R. (2002). Contemporary perspectives on rhetoric. Long Grove: Waveland Press. Garrett, M. (1999). Some elementary methodological reflections on the study of the Chinese rhetoric tradition. In A.  Gonzalez & D.  V. Tanno (Eds.), Rhetoric in intercultural contexts (pp. 11–17). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Gifford, J. (2011). Buddhist practice and visual culture: The visual rhetoric of Borobudur. Taylor & Francis. Gorsevski, E. W. (2013). Posting notes on Buddhism: Aung San Suu Kyi’s rhetoric of postcolonial subjectivity. Journal of Communication & Religion, 36(1), 173–195. Higgins, W. (2012). The coming of secular Buddhism: A synoptic view. Journal of Global Buddhism, 2012, 109–126. Jensen, J. V. (1987). Teaching East Asian rhetoric. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 17(2), 135–149. Johnson, F.  L. (1999). Speaking culturally: Language diversity in the United States. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Kosaka, T. (2010). Listening to the Buddha’s own words: Direct participation as a principle of the teachings of the Buddha. China Media Research, 6(3), 94. Lenoir, F. (1999). The adaptation of Buddhism to the West. Diogenes, 47(187), 100–109. MacKenzie, D. A., & Wajcman, J. (1999). The social shaping of technology. Buckingham: Open University Press.

References

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McKerrow, R. E. (1989). Critical rhetoric: Theory and praxis. Communication Monograohs, 56, 91–111. Nagata, J. (1999). The globalization of Buddhism and the emergence of civil society: The case of Taiwanese FoKuangShan movements in Asia and the West. Communication/Plural, 7(2), 231–248. Nelson, J.  (2011). Global and domestic challenges confronting Buddhist institutions in Japan. Journal of Global Buddhism, 12, 1–15. Obadia, L. (2012). Globalization and new geographies of religion: new regimes in the movement, circulation, and territoriality of cults and beliefs. International Social Science Journal, 63(209/210), 147–157. https://doi.org/10.1111/issj.12034. Radwan, J.  (2012). Contact rhetoric: Bodies and love in Deus Caritas Est. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 15(1), 41–93. Ritzer, G. (2011). Globalization: The essentials. Hoboken: Wiley. Virtbauer, G. (2012). The Western reception of Buddhism as a psychological and ethical system: Developments, dialogues, and perspectives. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 15(3), 251– 263. https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2011.569928. White, L., Jr. (1964). Medieval technology & social change. New York: Oxford University Press. Wright, D. S. (1993). The discourse of awakening: Rhetorical practice in classical Ch’an Buddhism. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 61(1), 23–40. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/ LXI.1.23.

Chapter 2

A Brief History of Modern Zen Buddhism in the United States

Cultural and global flows provide the context through which Asian religions globalize, are reinterpreted, and translated for new audiences. The idea of flows helps to capture the movement of discourses across time and space that have generated global religious practices. –Brook Schedneck

2.1  Brief History of Modern Zen Buddhism in the West There are millions of Buddhists in the West today. First brought to Europe and the U.S. by Chinese and Japanese immigrants, Buddhism has become the fastest growing religion since its entry to the West in the nineteenth century (Drew 2012). Credible estimates of the adult population of Buddhists in the United States are around 1.4–4 million (Wuthnow and Cadge 2004). However, this number only suggested a stable group who are qualified Buddhist and are affiliated with temples and Buddhist organizations. There are also considerable individuals and groups who attend Buddhist activities on a frequent basis and practice Zen on their own while identify themselves as “Buddhism sympathizers” (Drew 2012). According to a survey in 2003, 12.5% of Americans think Buddhist teachings and practices have a great influence on their spirituality. Up till now, the number is still growing, together with the number of Buddhist institutions, meditation centers, and practitioner groups. Buddhism itself seems to have a unique appeal in the Western popular culture: from a number of celebrities who identify themselves as Buddhists to the popularity of Buddha imagery on the pop culture market; from Buddha bar and restaurants to the pervasive “art of Zen” references in books and commodities. Millions of Americans who know little about Buddhism are familiar with the idea of Zen and Zen meditation. Studying Buddhism is always associated with the “cool factor” that other traditional religions cannot match (Drew 2012, p. 92). Even with the critical Western media, Buddhism appears to be favored through rose-tinted spectacles: © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 F. Zhang, Building and Negotiating Religious Identities in a Zen Buddhist Temple, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8863-7_2

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often perceived as peace loving, philosophical, rational, and non-violent. As a matter of fact, what many Americans and Europeans understand and favor by “Buddhism” today is a hybrid of selected Eastern Buddhist traditions and Western modernity, including science, philosophy, psychology, and pop culture (McMahan 2008). The popular image of Buddhism in the West today can hardly be found in its Eastern roots in Japan, China, or India. Meanwhile, Buddhism is neither an elite Western adaptation that only reflects the need of the elite population in the West, as many critics claim. It is rather, a new form of Modern Buddhism that emerges from the process of globalization and modernization in the past few decades. In exploring Buddhism’s mystic appeal in the West, Drew (2012) illustrates the reasons from the deep-seated cultural perspective. First and foremost, Buddhism is considered as rational and scientific in the Western discourse. Within the historical context of technological growth and industrial revolution during the nineteenth century, early Orientalist scholars, while disillusioned by the Christian and other monotheistic world-views that require “blind faith,” tried to locate Buddhism from a more rationalistic and scientific approach. Second, in contrast to other religious practices and rituals, meditation takes the center stage in modern Buddhism in the West. Many found it compelling because of the meditation emphasis that could help them practice and develop their minds. Moreover, Western Buddhism discourages superstition, magic, image worship, and gods (McMahan 2008). A Buddhist does not necessarily need to follow authority and dogma but concentrate on the cultivation of the self in a non-religious context, which perfectly fits into the discourse of modern science and liberal domestic values. Personal experience is, therefore, highly valued and emphasized while much of the belief is an exaggeration based on its history and origin in Asian countries. Today, the most popular idea of Buddhism in the West is that it is subjective and authoritative, treated more as spirituality than a religion. If Buddhism is viewed as a Western construct today, the very term “Buddhism” also originated from the West, which can be traced back to the early stages of systematic religious studies (Snodgrass 2003). Following biblical analogy of Christianity’s relation to Christ, Christian scholars assumed a distorted interpretation of Buddha as the founder of the religion, thus titled “Buddhism” to imply it is all about the life and teachings of Buddha. However, the word “Buddha” refers to the “awakened one” in Sanskrit but not specifically one person in history, in which sense, anybody can be the “Buddha” once achieved the awakened status (Snodgrass 2003). Originated from India in the fifth or sixth century B.C.E, spread into Sri Lanka and all over Southeast Asia, and finally was introduced to China, Japan, and South Korea, Buddhism was well distributed throughout almost all Asian countries as early as 1500s (Drew 2012). But it was only until the nineteenth century that Buddhism entered Europe and the U.S. via early canonical texts and immigrants of the Asian countries. Eastern Buddhism was officially introduced to the United States by a delegation of Japanese Buddhist priests to the World’s Parliament of Religion in Chicago, 1893 (Snodgrass 2003). To that point, the parliament was “an aggressively Christian event,” which was governed by a set of rigorous rules and discourses that

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were p­ ermeated by Christian presuppositions of “the nature and function of a religion” (p. 2). Indeed, these rules symbolize a domination of the “superior” West over the “uncivilized” East in ideologies during the nineteenth century. To challenge the Western presuppositions and their cultural superiority, the Japanese delegates argued that Buddhism, especially the Japanese Buddhism after Meiji revival, was “the most appropriate religion” for the modern world. The reason was that it combined both “truth and wisdom” from Western philosophy and Western religion (p. 3). Prior to the World’s Parliament of Religion in 1893, Buddhism was only heard of as Southern Buddhism or Northern Buddhism in Asia (Snodgrass 2003). It could be said that the Japanese delegates created the “Eastern” category from the results of their own Buddhist reform during Meiji Japan. This claimed all-encompassing teaching of Buddha is universal and comprehensive compared to whether Northern or Southern style, since its flexibility allows it to survive in both Western discourse and among a wide range of audiences over the world. Additionally, upon creating the Eastern Buddhism, delegates also avoided all disadvantages of the Northern and Southern style, like nihilistic and world denying (p.199). The transformation process was undoubtedly very successful, which made the new Eastern Buddhism rational and philosophical, which is compatible with the discourse of modernization. At the same time, it also became popular among the audience with a variety of cultural and spiritual backgrounds. The narrative of Zen Buddhism in the U.S. begins from this Eastern Buddhism: a repackaging for the Western audience that was tailored to their need of a more rationalized, modern, and philosophical religion. Nevertheless, Zen Buddhism itself was never a new invention like Eastern Buddhism. Zen Buddhism in the U.S. developed from its Japanese lineage of the Mahayana Buddhist Tradition (Laderman and Leon 2003). Originally from the Chinese Mahayana School, the term Mahayana means “Great Vehicle” and it predominates in China, Japan, Korea, and other Eastern Asian countries. Practitioners of Mahayana consider it greater than other Buddhist traditions in the West because it makes enlightenment possible to lay practitioners with families and regular jobs, whereas in traditions like Theravada, this process is restricted to monks and nuns who have renounced worldly lives (p. 48). Zen first emerged as a distinctive school of Buddhism in China in the seventh century. From China, Zen Buddhism spread to the rest of Asia like Vietnam and Korea and finally arrived in Japan by the thirteenth century (Ellwood 2012). The two main sects of Zen were introduced by Japanese monks studying in China and were distinguished by two forms of “Rinzai” and “Soto” (two different interpretations of meditation). However, Zen in the U.S. is a hybrid of the two while infused by new elements of the Eastern Buddhism. Suzuki Daisetsu Teitaro (usually known as D.T.Suzuki), the student of Zen Patriarch Shaku Soen, was believed to be the first to introduce Zen Buddhism to the United States (Virtbauer 2012). During the first half of the nineteenth century, D.T. Suzuki and other Japanese scholars constantly traveled to the U.S. and composed a number of literatures on Zen Buddhism to promote and develop Buddhist thoughts in the West. Nevertheless, it was after 1950s that Zen Buddhism found a

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wider audience outside Japan and created a Zen boom (Prohl and Graf 2015). Zen references appeared in popular brands, in books and magazines, and also in various commercials. It has transcended the religious context but become a popular and exotic way of life. The transformation of Zen Buddhism from Japan to the West occurred through the translation and transfer process, in which Zen was recognized as an “epitome” of religious experience whose main emphasis is meditation (Sharf 1995; McMahan 2008). Representing the Zen experience, this practice of ritual sitting/ meditation soon gained attention of millions across the world. The idea of sitting in silence has become an all-powerful method for individuals searching inner peace and enlightenment, releasing from stress, and healing emotional traumas from past experience. Meditation began to represent the whole of Zen Buddhism and its practices in the West. While deviating from its religious connotations that are still maintained in Zen Buddhism of Japan and other Asian countries, Western Zen spread beyond temples and institutions into hospitals, families, and recovery centers as a therapeutical treatment for mentally and physically suffered, even recognized by doctors and therapists (Virtbauer 2012). When D.T Suzuki brought the idea of Zen Buddhism to the West, one of his emphases was Buddhist psychology (Virtbauer 2012). With the effort to reframe Buddhism as a modern religion that can be allied with positivistic science, he claimed that Zen Buddhism is a genuine Asian practice that “reveals the full capacities of the human mind”(P. 251). D.T. Suzuki mainly drew from the East-West distinctions and Asian cultural and religious background to justify the Buddhist psychology. However, the pairing of Buddhism and Western psychology/psychotherapy was under much criticism in the beginning. Scholars who tried to make the conversation happen either remained orientalist from the Western perspective or occidentalist under the influence of Eastern religious background. With more indepth study of the textual sources and Buddhist teachings while situating them in the Western scientific discourse in recent years, the dialogue between the two are now expanding and under more scholarly attention. Buddhism is either believed to be an indigenous psychology as some of its early literatures suggest, or its teachings can match and be integrated into the Western psychotherapy system (Virtbauer 2012). The meditation practice, as the core of Zen Buddhism, is often described to be the method for accessing deeper and unconscious self of the individual. Once the undiscovered constrains and negative dispositions are exposed in the process, they might be easily transformed and released, which allows positive thoughts and compassionate forces to flow in for a healthier mind (McMahan 2008). The extraction of explicit religious commitments provides meditation a wider application. Constructed as a secular practice of self-cultivation or therapeutic session, meditation can be taught in public schools, health clubs, or even churches. It is also easier for attracting public research funds. To some extent, meditation practice contributed to the popularity and acceptance of Zen Buddhism in Western culture although its meaning, purpose, and social significance has completely changed from its traditional forms in the East.

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2.2  Modernization of Buddhism on a Global Scale Characteristics of Zen Buddhism in the West apparently make it more appealing, attractive, and vibrant compared with their traditional Eastern counterparts. In the long history of Buddhism development in the West, these characteristics are also considered as the outcomes of the “Buddhist modernism,” which emerge out of adaptation into the new culture and various intellectual forces of modernity (McMahan 2008). With the development of science and technology, rapid growth of mass media, demographic change of local regions, urbanization, industrialization, and class and power struggles that resulted from these changes, the modernization process is almost inevitable and unpredictable. Meanwhile, modernity also has immeasurable influence on how Buddhist develops in the East where it originated. Impact of globalization and market economy are transformative to the traditional temples. While still trying to maintain traditional rituals, practices, and the religious roots, they are gradually opening up to new opportunities and challenges from the West. As the origin of Zen Buddhism (also known as Ch’an in China), Chinese Buddhism is a great example of the “Buddhist modernism” in the East. Facing similar challenges of globalization, the leaders of Chinese Buddhism have attempted to engage the global civic community in order to augment and sustain their religious status. Their approaches could be identified by the strategies of convergence and divergence. Convergent in their borrowing from other Western religious practices, while divergent in their modernized interpretation of classic sutras and Buddhist teachings, and their non-traditional utilization of technology. Historically, Buddhism as an ancient religion has experienced several waves of upheaval in China in the last two centuries due to the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Wang 2013). Upon restoration in the twentieth century, it is expected to play an active role in ever-changing society. Contemporary Buddhism in China brought back old and rigorous religious traditions as well as new forms of practices influenced by Western worldviews (Higgins 2012). Meanwhile, the relatively “new” Buddhism in China has become more relevant and adaptable to the modern society, as Buddhist monks began to preach in a more secular way, introducing new ideas advised by the recent developments in the larger society, and even appropriating the use of communication technology (Xu 2015). The secularization of Buddhism in the East is greatly affected by Western religious practices. Additionally, they survive on the global market successfully with these strategies borrowed from the West. While maintaining its traditional ways of rigorous practice, the “new” Buddhism in the East also tries to become more open and approachable to ordinary laypeople and social communities. One important step of its secularization is practiced through charitable activities. Borrowed from the Christian tradition, many religions today are “associated with charitable behaviors” or have their own charitable organizations, like sedekah (charity) in Islam and zadaqa (voluntary charity) in Judaism (Nagata 1999, p. 236). Encouraged by the government, Buddhist monasteries in Eastern countries began to include more charitable activities in the past few decades (Ji 2012). As lay believers kept increasing

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by the end of 1990s, monasteries were able to use the donations to help the needed in society, which includes setting up schools in poor regions, adopting orphans, distributing free medicine, and helping with victims of natural disaster (Ji 2012). In a study of Buddhist charity organization research in China, André Laliberté (2012) finds that Chinese Buddhist philanthropic enterprises are expanding in a dramatic speed in the last few years. Seventeen out of thirty-one Buddhist associations in China have established charities or foundations by the end of 2008, which even surpasses the speed of temple rebuilding. Similarly in Japan, temples are treated like businesses in the ways that they reorient their services to meet the socio-economic needs of regular consumers (Nelson 2011). There is a major shift from serving the homes and communities to serving individuals due to an expanding sense of individualism and personal choice in Japan. Meanwhile, in dealing with the current problems and concerns of the society, temples developed newly configured Buddhist values to engage and enhance people’s quality of life. Instead of giving guidance on how to think and react to the social situations, temples began to take pragmatic actions and provide resources. These innovations include suicide prevention, establishing care homes and hospices for the elderly, establishing shelters for victims of domestic violence, and such. Another important manifestation of Buddhism’s worldwide secularization is its increasing involvement with the market economy. Globalization brought a more capitalistic way of life through abundant commodities and the unprecedented consumer experience. More and more religious goods are produced and consumed by lay believers through virtual stores and online platforms. Religious consumption is not a new phenomenon in the West with industrial production and the “standardization” of culture (Obadia 2011). Especially for the fast-spreading Buddhism, its iconography and symbols are becoming extremely fashionable in popular culture across the world, which can be found in music, fashion, and aesthetics (Obadia 2011). Generally speaking, the globalization of Buddhism is intimately ties to market and economy. This dominating “religious-economy model” has also greatly affected Asian Buddhists and Asian immigrants overseas as they practice Buddhism. To a large extent, religious institutions whether in the East or the West, although being resistant at first, are operating within an open market and rely on the “consumer economy” to sustain and survive. Nevertheless, the criticism over Buddhism’s detraditionalization and accommodation process has never ceased. There are also plenty of ongoing controversies on its modernization process. Despite the modernists like Zen Buddhists in the United States, there are also considerable traditional Buddhists worldwide who still practice rituals, hold onto the religious dogma, and maintain authority structures (Drew 2012). These are the people who still concern reincarnation, karma, life and death when practicing Buddhism. They consider secular worldviews and engagements as potentially detrimental and hazardous to the very existence of the Buddhism (Chandler 2010). At the mean time, they maintain a monastic way of religious practice: renouncing worldly pursuits while committing to the spiritual work in seclusion. As Modernists stress that hey have to compete membership with other cultural institutions and offer various services or artifacts to guarantee their competitiveness

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on the market, Traditionalists expressed great concerns over the degree of integration and adaptation of Buddhism in new cultures. As they claim, privatization and detraditionalization of some practices, like meditation, would only undermine the authenticity of Buddhism and turn ideas and practices into “purchasable commodities” (p. 103). The next section examines how globalized Buddhism saturates local regions like Mid-west Ohio and how a local temple run by Euro-American priests grew and thrived within the last 10 years.

2.3  The Introduction of Buddhism to Ohio and the L City The development of Buddhism in the L city has a relatively short history. As in most European countries, Buddhism was brought to Ohio by groups of Chinese and Japanese labor workers during mid-nineteenth century (Butalia and Small 2004). In the early twentieth century Japanese immigrants established the first Buddhist community and temple in Cleveland. With the influx of more Asian refugees and immigrants from countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and China during 1970s and 1980s, Buddhism began to thrive in Ohio. These temples and communities served as important spaces to maintain cultural ties and traditions for the new immigrants (p. 321). However, despite the rapid growth of Buddhist immigrants in the area, for most Ohioans, their direct contact began with the Buddhist impact on American pop culture (Butalia and Small 2004). With the Buddhism/ Zen themed books, movies, and commodities spreading nationwide in the late twentieth century, people got to know more about the religion and its principles. In Ohio, burgeoning Buddhist presence can also be seen in various art museums and institutions of higher learning: Buddhist collection becomes a separate section in multiple museums for introducing Asian culture; various schools and colleges also began a series of courses in Buddhist studies and Asian religion (p. 324). Over the past 35 years, about 60 Buddhist centers, groups and temples appeared across Ohio and attracted a great number of individuals. Affiliated with different lineages in their ways of practice, temples and centers that focus on Vipassana tradition, Tibetan tradition, and Zen tradition take the dominant place in Ohio Buddhism. After a long journey from East to the West, Buddhism is now becoming a popular religion in Ohio. Other than transmitting and maintaining traditional culture for immigrants, Buddhism is now a crucial religious belief that keeps enriching Ohioans’ spiritual lives. The Buddhist community in the L city, is also under the great impact of this “new” religion. Beginning from several meditation groups, the area now has a well-­ developed Buddhist temple that focuses on Zen traditions. The H-Temple is a family-­centered temple that offers a series practices and services related to Zen Buddhism to the local communities, such as meditation, intense religious retreats, martial arts teaching, Dharma school for children, and recovery groups for people with addictions. The main abbot, Abbot R, who is also a lecturer of music at the local university, serves as the senior priest and head teacher in the temple.

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The temple was founded around 2000. Abbot R, after finishing his study of music in a well-known city of the East coast of U.S, moved back to the L city in 2001 and co-founded the Zen center with his wife abbot N. The couple began their study of Buddhism at a renowned monastery in the 1980s. Later on, they respectively continued Zen study with multiple other teachers in the Soto Zen lineage. By the time the temple was founded, they are both qualified Zen teachers acknowledged by the lineage. Since its founding, the Zen center has grown bigger and attracted practitioners with a variety of backgrounds, including college students fulfilling credit for class, retired senior citizens in the neighborhood, white collar workers in L city area, and people from all walks of life. Interestingly, their spiritual backgrounds can be very diverse, too. According to the abbot R, “Buddhism has no religious tenets,” therefore members of the temple still remain active in Christian and Catholic churches, Jewish synagogues, and Islamic mosques. In 2010, The abbots were ordained as priests in the Zen center by a senior famous Zen teacher. Meanwhile, their students professed Buddhist vows, declaring their Buddhist faith. The event symbolizes a major shift of Zen Buddhism development in the L city area. In 2012, the center was renamed as the “H temple of L city” to clarify its purpose for people flocking to the center to practice. By the end of 2012, the temple has attracted nearly 100 members, out of which 50 are the active core. Abbot R received his final authorization as an independent Zen teacher through a “mountain seat” ceremony. Having been linked to other Zen centers for years, The H Temple marked its independence as well, making it a stand-alone institution for dharma teaching and Zen Buddhist practicing.

2.3.1  Temple Setting and Activities The H Temple is located in the suburb area of L city, Ohio, where abbot R and his wife renovated a family warehouse and turned it into the main temple area. At the same time they founded the temple around 2000, the abbots also opened an Aikido school  – a Japanese martial art school for both adults and children. As the high degree black belt in Aikido, Abbot R serves as the main teacher. The temple is mainly composed of three separate rooms: the lounge room near the main entrance, the main sitting room in the middle, and the Aikido room in the back. The lounge room is separated into two areas: abbot changing room/office and the public space for depositing shoes and resting on the couch. In the main sitting room, areas are also divided functionally. The sitting area takes two thirds of the room and is surrounded by benches and chairs. About 30 meditation cushions lie in the middle section and on both sides of the abbot’s cushion in the middle. So when members sit on the cushions, they are in two groups facing each other. Observers and people who have trouble crossing legs or sitting on their knees will usually choose to sit on the bench to meditate. The remaining one third of the room is saved for restrooms and changing rooms with several couches in the middle. The room in

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the back of the temple is reserved for Aikido classes. Walls and floors are renovated and specially designed for Aikido training. Additionally, the abbot also decorated the room with Japanese swords on the rack and Japanese calligraphies on the wall. Greatly influenced by Japanese culture where Zen Buddhism was from, the temple decoration contains many Japanese elements. Calligraphies, paintings and woodcuts on the wall are all in Japanese characters and related to Zen teaching. Pictures of the teachers in this lineage also hang on the wall near the entrance, most of which are Japanese. In the main sitting room, statues of Buddha, bells, wallpapers, and even cushions are all in Japanese style and arranged by the standard of Zendo (the meditation hall) from Japan. Like the decorations, services provided by the H temple are also in Japanese Zen tradition but mainly focus on 2 days of a week. Regular temple attenders are mainly divided into two groups, the Wednesday evening group and the Sunday morning group. Wednesday evening service contains multiple periods of Zazen (sitting meditation), walking meditation, occasional private interview with a teacher, and a dharma talk by the abbot. Attenders are usually temple members and are very familiar with the procedure. Upon arriving at the temple on Wednesday night, attenders usually chat with each other or change to their own Buddhist robes. A simple liturgy will be held at the beginning: people stand on their meditation cushions and chant the heart sutra together. By the time the abbot is dressed up in his robes, he will be invited and led by one of his students from the office and walk to the altar with his teaching stick or a horsetail whisk. The meditation then proceeds with students sitting on their cushions and abbot sitting against the altar. Most sitting meditations last 20  min. When the bell rings three times, everyone stands up and begins the walking meditation: pacing slowly and quietly in circles around the sitting area. After about 5 min walking, the sitting meditation resumes. The evening service ends with the abbot talk/teaching, which usually lasts 15 min and about a famous story from a Zen master in history. The topic of Wednesday teaching varies each week and abbot R usually decides what is to teach each time. While Sunday morning service shares the same meditation routine, it also features a dharma school for children. Families with children usually attend the Sunday morning service hoping their children will learn stories and teachings of Buddha in the dharma school, which is usually taught by qualified volunteers and members of the temple. After the morning liturgy, children and teenagers are taken to the lounge while their parents practice sitting meditation in the main room. The member or volunteer who teaches dharma school that day usually tells a story of Buddha and arrange activities with children. And when the main meditation and abbot talk are over in the main room, children will be led back by their teacher. Then together the children and teacher tell everybody what they have learned and discussed in dharma school of that day. Beside the Wednesday evening and Sunday morning services, there are many other activities staged occasionally in the temple, like annual religious retreats at the abbot’s farm, yoga classes, musical events and family support council. However, regular attenders of the temple communicate and connect with each other mainly through these two activities mentioned above.

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2.3.2  Temple Operation and Communication The temple maintenance and operation are mainly conducted by the volunteer work of its members who regularly connect with each other through email, Facebook messages and the temple website. Like many other Buddhist temples in United States, the temple survives on donations and membership fees. Donations can be made both on the temple website and in the temple, which is open to everybody. Donors can remain anonymous both online and offline. While the donation page is directly built into the temple website, people who choose to donate online can decide the amount and their preferred payment methods without leaving personal information. In the temple, a donation basket is placed near the entrance table with white envelopes and pens. Visitors or members can choose to leave cash or check in the envelope while marking down purpose of the donation: whether it counts towards monthly membership or a regular donation. While there is no specific regulation on how much the membership costs, upon registration, a new member is supposed to provide an annual household pledge amount and a payment schedule. Besides, the membership webpage lists a monthly and annual pledging guideline for members in proportion to the household income. For example, if the annual household income is around 10,000 dollars, the member could choose to donate 5–2% of the income, which are 42 to 17 dollars per month or 500 to 200 dollars per year. A core member group, also known as the leadership council, meets on a regular basis and makes major decisions about the temple. Meanwhile, they are also in charge of running budgets, sending weekly newsletters and notifications through emails, organizing activities online and offline, and reaching out to potential members on Facebook. In year 2015 and 2016, the leadership council consists of six regular members. Besides meeting physically in the temple during weekly activities, Facebook group is another significant site for the H temple members to meet and communicate. The Facebook group named “the H temple” was created in late 2014 by one of the leadership council members. By December 2016, it has already included 250 group members. According to the group description, any member may invite other members to join and everyone is encouraged to share news and ideas. Importance notifications, announcements about activities, and weekly abbot addresses will be posted to the group on a regular basis. Active members will also share thoughts and feelings about their practices in the group almost everyday. From Summer 2016, Abbot R began sharing live streaming videos of important activities in the group and invite thoughts and comments about these activities. Many group members who cannot travel to the temple for these activities thus took the opportunity to watch them from home and joined the discussion online. Apart from building connections among members, the Facebook group is also used to collaborate events and volunteers for the temple. Temple activity planners will usually reach out to potential volunteers and schedule date and location before the event. Once the volunteer’s

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role and work is decided, it is his/her own responsibility to finish the scheduled work. The following section discusses the theoretical and methodological foundations of this study. To advance my interpretation of Buddhist rhetoric and the adoption of critical intercultural communication, the nature of rhetorical communication is elucidated.

2.4  A  rticulating Buddhist Rhetoric in the H Temple: On the Intersection of Culture, Communication, and Rhetoric Before fully articulating my understanding of the Buddhist rhetoric generated in this temple and the critical perspectives I adopted in the process of participant observation, it is necessary to reflect on my own standpoint in this research. Sikes (2004) cautions us that a researcher’s worldview that they bring to their work can impact all aspects and stages of the research process. The fundamental assumptions they hold, whether ontological or epistemological, are often colored by their own values, beliefs, gender, sexuality, social status, and so on. Hence it is the researcher’s responsibility to be reflexive on their stance and the influence it might bring to the critical thinking process. Researchers themselves are also the part of the social world they are studying. Bear in mind that I conducted my research on the subjectivity of a Chinese woman born and raised in a traditional Buddhist family of China, therefore I view my position in this research as both privileged and unprivileged. Although never an official convert, I have identified myself as a Buddhist from early ages in life due to my family’s Buddhist belief and the cultural environment I grew up in. I have practiced Mahayana Buddhism in the past few years by reading sutras, going to temples, and disciplining myself with the Buddhist vows. Meanwhile, like a lot of Buddhists in China, my identity is also culturally ascribed in everyday life, since Chinese culture is heavily infused with Buddhist philosophies. Upon beginning this project, I consider my knowledge and experience in Buddhism as prerequisites. Additionally, the “not converted” status granted me some space between a follower and a scholar to critically examine the research process while being reflexive on my own. Topics of Buddha always fascinate me since I was a child. For me, it was a given in my life that I had never questioned before: life is intertwined with good karmas and bad karmas; everyone will inevitably fall into the circle of reincarnation; and practice always involves face-to-face teachings at the temple and bowing to the Buddha. However, my religious worldview kept changing with the fast-changing world around me. The first transformative moment was the massive use of technology among Buddhists and the temples they practice. Instead of books and tangible sutras, using online platforms and mobile applications to practice became a challenge for me both physically and mentally. At the same time, it also changed my

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view of the traditions kept in this religion. The second transformative moment was witnessing the varieties of Buddhism being practiced. It was until I came to the United States that I discovered the multiple interpretations and practices of the same religion. Buddhists in the United States are obviously more flexible than Buddhists in China, since most of them have the freedom to choose the kind of practice that can fit them best. Whereas in the East, most Buddhists adopt their believes from a family tradition when they were born. To me, the change is definitely overwhelming. Thus, the starting point of this study was the countless questions and confusions I have accumulated in between these moments. My study in communication is like my magnifying glass in the exploration for answers because meanings are infused and reinforced in the communication process. Specifically, it is intercultural, rhetorical, and a critical process for me. The answer dwells in-between Eastern and Western ideologies, in words and symbols, and also in my critical ability to discover and negotiate the meanings. Guest, Namey and Mitchell (2013) note that many aspects of some social milieus are “only visible to insiders” (p. 79). Not every researcher could obtain the insider’s perspective as confined by age, gender, ethnicity, and language. Simultaneously, I do realize that my identity as a Chinese woman may put me in a disadvantaged position in researching a temple from the predominantly white, middle-class community in the United States. Interestingly, as the only “cultural other” from the country where Zen Buddhism originated hundreds of years ago, I gained more insider’s perspective by joining the community with ease. Within the community, people identify with me since I am a Buddhist across language and culture. They also respect me because I represent the Buddhist with somewhat perceived “originality,” where their lineage was from in the first place. Embedding myself into the temple and its Buddhist community inevitably means the information I collect is unique to my audience and me. For the past 3 years, my research has been focused on Buddhism, technology, and intercultural rhetoric. I have come to the understanding that Buddhism has formed it own unique Asian rhetoric in shaping identities and providing guidance to followers that is distinct from any other religions. Placed in the Western discourse, this Asian rhetoric and its host culture create a unique intercultural setting that hasn’t been explored. As a Buddhist in both China and United States, I have practiced in both cultural contexts, both online and offline. Based on my experience, language, cultural traditions, community, personal values, and geographic locations may all have fundamental influences on what counts as a Buddhist and how to become a Buddhist. The exploration of Buddhist identity formation in this temple is also a quest of my own Buddhist identity formation affected by my intercultural experience and modern communication technology. This study is also part of my continual research agenda on rhetoric, culture, and religion. As religion had become a major force for unification and division throughout centuries, it came in frequent contact with members of other cultures with the global flows (Nakayama and Halualani 2010). With the globalization of religion and the increasing convergence and divergence between religious practices, rhetorical criticism could provide the key to interpret religious identity building, community

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building, and conflict negotiation in relation to the surrounding cultural, ethnic, class, and educational contexts. It also provides a powerful tool to examine the power dynamics in this process. Just like Ono and Sloop’s (2002) innovative project Shifting Border: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California’s Proposition 187 suggests, rhetoric functions as a way of structuring meaning and value in regard to groups on either side of the border. As a critical rhetorician, I envision myself to shift boarders, to seek out logic, hidden discourses, and the excluded voices that have the potential to initiate change through my own research.

2.4.1  V  iewing the H Temple as Both Intercultural and Rhetorical The H temple formed an extremely interesting intercultural hub with multiple dimensions. It is where the ancient Eastern religion meets the modern Western technology; the Eastern doctrines that generated from collectivism meet Western individualistic practitioners; it is also where people of different region and ethnicity meet and talk about their common belief. To critically examine the unique rhetorical performance of the temple, I categorized it under the “Buddhist rhetoric,” since it is different from the traditional discursive rhetoric but shares many common aspects with the traditional forms. As previously articulated, it is almost a different system that honors non-expression, silence, the nonverbal, the softness and subtlety of ambiguity, and indirectness (Jensen 1987). In treating this new aspects of rhetoric, we not only need to take into consideration of the intercultural context of where it originated and where it is practiced, but also the rhetoric traditions of Buddhism and its practitioners. In terms of the H temple, these forms can be texts and images from its main website, reports about the temple activities from the local newspaper, and also teachings of the abbot both online and offline. The non-traditional rhetorical forms are the rhetoric of temple space where the rituals and meditation are practiced, and the rhetoric of technology, which contains virtual platforms for members to practice and socialize from a distance. A critical lens to examine the Buddhist rhetoric reveals the Buddhist identities that are produced and reinforced in such an intercultural setting. A critique of the temple’s Buddhist rhetoric can also reveal the cultural and ideological conflicts between the East and the West. These ideologies are imbedded in regular abbot talks, online addresses, the temple’s website, their regular activities, and even their tangible spaces. In treating the H temple as a rhetorical unity, these are all “texts” waiting to be examined. More importantly, considering Buddhism as a comparatively marginalized religion in United States (as compared with Christianity and Judaism), such a critical lens also enables us to see how the dominant culture discourse strategically normalize and strengthen the dominant power structures that marginalize other voices. As Ono and Sloop (1995) note, the need to study communities that have been

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s­ystematically ignored under the historical power relations, critical focus on the marginalized discourse challenges the mainstream discourse, while making visible the power dynamics among social groups. A useful place to begin the critique is to conceptualize critical rhetoric in the context of intercultural communication. Critical rhetoric is never a new concept. When we mention being critical in rhetorical studies, it is far more than just theory and method. This is also true within the intercultural context. Mckerrow (1989) introduces and elaborates the function of critical rhetoric as “a critique of domination and freedom,” which demystifies the silent and non-deliberate relationship of power and knowledge (p. 92). The critique of dominance, as he explicated, focused on the discourse of power, which creates and sustains the social practices that control the dominated. In other words, it is the critique of ideologies. Dominance usually occurred through the “construction and maintenance of a particular order of discourse,” which in turn were reflected in the institutionalized rules to control the discursive actions of the dominated. (p.  94) Under this dominance and the pervasiveness of power, seeking for “truth” and recreating the “normal” without predetermined ideologies and discourse became the tasks of critique of freedom. Within an intercultural setting, this problem is largely reflected in the power dynamics between different cultures and the dichotomy of self and the “cultural other.” When examining the intersections of critical rhetoric and intercultural communication, a useful place is to begin is to tease out the interconnected relationship between culture, communication and rhetoric. Culture and communication has been reciprocally and constantly influencing each other. The culture forms individuals dwell in influence the way they communicate. In turn, it is through communication that we maintain, reconstruct, repair, and transform culture. As a unique aspect of communication, rhetorical actions should never be examined without cultural contexts. Rather than being universal, rhetoric arises from cultural contexts and reflects it (Johnson 1999). Intercultural rhetoric emerges as rhetorical actions that aim to create identifications and shared communities between different cultures. It is through negotiation, adaptation, persuasion, and participation that rhetorical critics unveil the cultural phenomena to understand values, discover power relations, and mediate tensions and differences. As a matter of fact, the conceptualization of culture has been constantly changing over time. Philipsen (1992) once defines culture as the socially constructed and historically transmitted patterns of symbols, meanings, premises, and rules. The original significance lies in nationstate. Over time, the meaning of culture has been broadened to include other realms like gender, ethnicity, social class, and “other identifications affected by interaction” (Moon 2010, P.38). Critical intercultural communication maintains that culture should never be treated singular and stable but constituted and frequently changing through communication. Echoing this view and situating his work within the ongoing debate about the role of culture studies in society, Rosaldo (1989) argues for the need to pluralize culture and identity as well as to redefine “cultural literacy.” In his view, the task of social analysis should never rest upon privileging certain modes of knowing at the expenses of others. Through his ethnographic study on grief and Ilongot headhunting, Rosaldo (1989) redefines

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culture as “busy intersections…where a number of distinct social processes intersect” (p.  17). This notion of culture as crossroads also challenged the traditional methodologies in studying phenomena in critical intercultural communication: that critics should always approach culture from multiple perspectives other than the dominant and inherent one. Meanwhile, the study of culture should also remain open-ended for new possibilities. Rhetoric and culture communication was first coined together through “ethnography of communication” during 1970s (González and Cheng 2004). Ethnographers of communication, in their direct contact with speech patterns within various natural culture settings, are the first group of scholars who turned to rhetoric. By producing a rich description of these speech patterns, ethnographers are able to interpret them and distinguish the cultural communities where they originated (p. 473). For example, using ethnographic interpretation in communication research, Carbaugh and Wolf (1999) examine “how single occasions can create culturally distinctive exigencies” (p. 20). The rhetoric contest outlined by the authors revolved around the issue of Mount Graham, a sacred and spiritual site for Apache Indians, but also an ideal astrophysical observatory for local white people. Competing rhetorics center on how we should view Mount Graham and what kind of activities are appropriate. However, multiple exigencies emerged when different rhetorical discourses were evoked on the meaning of “silence.” Reflection needs to be made upon definition of rhetoric and limitations of our current models in intercultural communication. Carbaugh and Wolf (1999) contend that the problem arise because of the lack of mutual intelligibility and community, which means the lack of shared meaning as basis for rhetorical action and the sense of community that organize diverse beliefs and shared identities. The authors suggested the application of a new concept to evaluate rhetorical occasions: cultural discourse. Situating rhetoric in cultural discourse enables us to discover “distinctive systems of terms, topics, and forms of expression” and recreate sense of community with shared understanding of being, acting, feeling, and relating (p. 26). Echoing with the cultural discourse of rhetorical action and calling upon the position of “rhetorical pluralism” among rhetorical critics, Xiao (1995) further gives us an example to manifest how intercultural communication is actually initiated by the “host culture” and the “taker” rather than the “giver” (p. 94). Xiao examines Yan Fu’s Heavenly Evolution (1894) as a translation of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics (1894) and discusses the role of translators within intercultural communication. In his analysis, the translation from English to Chinese version resulted in Yan’s invention and recreation of the content. Yan strategically eliminated the terms in conflict with Chinese traditional values and adapted his rhetorical style to the needs of Chinese audience. Through Yan’s translation, the once culturally conflicting ideas became meaningful and persuasive to its audience. As Xiao suggests that rhetoric is culture-bound, regarding Yan’s translation, it is fundamentally a moral choice (p. 94). This reflection added another layer to the considerations of intercultural rhetoric, especially when the mediator speaks for the original author. Moral issues should be examined together with the faithfulness of the translation, transaction, or the interaction itself. Taking culture discourse and tradition into

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c­ onsideration, intercultural rhetoric can sometimes be intercultural reinterpretation with proper rhetorical strategies for the indigenous audience. Equally important are also rhetorical heritages from other cultural traditions. For example, Hammerback and Jensen (1994) examine the persuasive qualities of the Plan of Delano and demonstrate the crucial role of culture heritage in rhetorical criticism (p. 54). By contextualizing three representative plans in Mexican history and examining their evolution, the authors compared them with the Plan of Delano and analyzed its rhetorical dynamics that reflected the cultural context of Mexican Americans. Rhetorical tradition once again proved its effectiveness in understanding and critiquing different rhetorical actions. Their persuasive power only become clear in light of their own cultural traditions. Through this case study, Hammerback and Jensen also complemented Starosta and Coleman’s (1986) framework regarding the discourse of ethnic communities: examining the significance of the specific rhetorical medium in speaker’s culture, and examining the speaker’s style of discourse broadly to include structures, images, content, strategies and appeals. Intercultural rhetorical criticism arises from the uniqueness of each ethnic community and their cultural experiences. In viewing the temple as an intercultural space or a hybrid culture form, approaches and studies listed above should all be taken into consideration in the examination process. For example, the Western culture as the “host” and “taker” in treating Eastern traditions and disciplines; the discordant cultural discourse of the adopted Eastern rhetorical practices; and the rhetorical heritage of Japanese Zen Buddhism as well as how their respective role to construct the member’s Buddhist identities.

2.4.2  C  ompeting Ideologies in the H Temple: When East Meets West Besides intercultural rhetoric, another crucial method applied in this study is ideological rhetorical criticism. Ideological criticism provides a means to analyze the power structure embedded in the Buddhist rhetoric of the H temple. Specifically, when the temple is viewed as an intercultural space that competing Eastern and Western ideologies appear and represent different patterns of belief and systems of thought, it is beneficial to untangle the complex relationship, as to better understand their influences on practitioners. When an ideology becomes hegemonic, as Foss (2009) indicates, it decides the way we understand the world and controls what is normal or obvious by establishing the norm. In order to maintain its position of dominance, “a hegemonic ideology must be renewed, reinforced, and defended continually through the use of rhetorical strategies and practices” (p. 210). One important strategy to identify the dominant ideologies is through the use of ideographs. As McGee (1980) contends, ideographs “are the basic structural elements, the building blocks of ideology” (p. 7). They are

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terms and phrases used in our everyday language but function to evoke a collective commitment to a certain ideology. Terms like liberty, law, equality, and peace could all be used as ideographs because of their rich social significance. McGee (1980) outlines four main characteristics of ideographs, which are: (1) “it is an ordinary language terms in political discourse;” (2) It is “high-order abstractions representing collective commitment;” (3) “it warrants the use of power, and guides behavior and belief into channels easily recognized by a community as acceptable;” (4) “it is culture-bound” (p. 15). A number of scholars have utilized the concept of ideograph in their examination of culture and rhetoric. For example, in Crafting Equality, Condit and Lucaites (1993) examine the shifting meaning of through speeches, newspapers, magazines, and other public discourses. They contend that the meaning of the word equality has been redefined and reconstructed throughout American history. Similarly, the study of Stassen and Bates (2010) explore as an ideograph. Through an analysis of qualitative survey, they claim that marriage function as ideograph by the “structure, abstraction, and ability to both unite and divide” among ideologically opposed groups (p. 5). Specifically, they concur McGee that ideographs should be understood diachronically in different times and cultural discourses. Additionally, ideographs also interact with other ideographs in various ways. They can be viewed as a cluster to represent one ideology or contradict each other and create tensions. Connelly’s (2012) case study exemplifies the interplay between ideographs by examining the tensions between and in the redactions of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review opinion. The author concludes that “national security” was privileged over “privacy” via the strategic use of silence. A thorough analysis of ideographs in the temple’s rhetoric not only provides an indepth understanding of the modernized Buddhist practices, but also the ideological force that forges these changes. Furthermore, critiquing the dominant ideology behind the mundane everyday language reveals the hierarchies of power and interest behind normal practices in the temple.

2.4.3  O  bserving the H Temple as a Practitioner and Cultural Critic In current intercultural rhetoric scholarship, research on Buddhist temple as an intercultural space hasn’t been given much attention. Assuming a critical perspective in intercultural rhetorical analysis serves as the mediator that bridge cultures together by making the marginalized visible. Meanwhile, linking intercultural rhetoric to Buddhist rhetoric broadens its horizon and illuminates insights into religious communication. It is much more than mediating differences and conflicts, building mutual understandings, and creating identifications between cultures and religions. It is more about cultivating tolerance among diversity, showing respect to

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differences, and challenges the inequity and dominant ideologies that favor elite cultural groups in the global and regional context. Specifically in the United States, Buddhist temples were originally built by early Asian immigrants and function to reestablish their community and preserve their cultural and religious traditions (Butalia and Small 2004). The presence of these temples provides an important venue for increasing cultural and religious diversity. They also bring issues of religious identity building, community building, and conflict negotiation in relation to the surrounding cultural, ethnic, class, and educational contexts. In his study of a Hindu Temple in Midwest United States, Rodrigues (1996) analyzes the discursive activities staged in the temple. Through intensive observation and participation of the public events over a period of 2  years, Rodrigues’s analysis proves that activities at the temple serve as “devises of identity preservation” (p. ii). The temple thus functions to maintain cultural identity of its members. The study also reveals the power dynamic underneath the interactions of Asian Indians and the host environment. According to Rodrigues, members of the temple — Asian Indians have employed a “rhetoric of rearticulation” to negotiate and cope with the external environment while maintaining their own ethnic identity. Similarly, in Kosaka’s 2010 study in a Japanese Buddhist temple in Denver, CO, trying to investigate how Buddhist teachings are communicated to the members of ceremonies, the author took a non-traditional ethnographic approach to examine both verbal and non-verbal aspect of the Buddhist rhetoric of the temple. The critiquing process, which is distinctively different from the traditional “reading and analyzing,” takes the form of participation and observation, which gives the scholar a better opportunity to identify the rhetorical acts and situations. Although conducted in a Western location, both the artifact and the method are heavily influenced by the Eastern rhetorical traditions. In this study, Kosaka’s (2010) approach began with detailed description of the Sunday service procedures and reverends’ speeches he attended. He noticed that indigenous languages like NEMBUTSU and AMIDA Buddha were frequently used in the Buddhist reverends’ speeches in order to promote “direct participation through listening to the Buddha’s own words” (p. 97). Through reciting these original words from the sutra in their own voices, followers find the simplest way to communicate with Buddha themselves. Apart from direct participation, indirect participation was also an important experience during the ceremony for both members and the reverends. Members’ indirect participation included sitting quietly and listening to speeches through both mind and body, while reverends’ referred to the delivery of speech itself, because they were considered to be “guided by Buddha” throughout the whole process (p. 98). Through participation and observation, Kosaka’s study indicated another important dimension in current methodology of rhetorical criticism: the incorporation of useful elements from qualitative research. As McKerrow and St. John (2005) suggest, “critical rhetoric operates as an orientation that allows the flexibility to respond to a diverse range of rhetorical experiences” (P. 347). Rhetoricians have begun utilizing a variety of qualitative research methods to critique different rhetorical artifacts, as they “sharpen the ability for critical rhetoric” to effectively engage the voices of marginalized rhetorical communities and mundane discourses that often

2.4  Articulating Buddhist Rhetoric in the H Temple: On the Intersection of Culture…

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“evade critical attention” (Middleton et al. 2011, p. 387). The use of situ methods in analyzing critical rhetorical places and performances expands the range of rhetoric in our current scholarship. To suggest a new method for situ analysis of everyday rhetorical experience, Middleton et  al. (2011) propose the name rhetorical field methods, which both include critical intervention of the rhetorical artifacts in traditional forms (like texts), and actions that are engaged to interpret certain space and processual forms of rhetoric that are only accessible through participation (like rituals and ceremonies). Specifically, ethnographic approaches like participant observation enable rhetorical critics to have a more productive articulation and assessment of the rhetorical space and actions. What’s more, participant observation allows critics to “experience the rhetorical action” as it unfolds, which offers opportunity to gain insights on “how rhetoric is experienced by rhetors, audiences, and critics” (Pezzullo 2007). As an alternative hermeneutic practice, rhetorical field methods focus on examining “live” rhetoric, which emerges from embodied, material, and everyday experience (Middleton et al. 2011). By combining texts and live experiences, rhetors and critics will be able to obtain a more indepth and reflexive perspective of the rhetorical experience and the critical process. In articulating the Buddhist rhetoric, which stresses subtlety, non-expression, and silence other than the expression of explicit language, participation and observation complement the traditional analytical process and enable the critics to experience the embodied rhetoric. Instead of “seeing and reading,” the rhetor will have the opportunity to “listen to and being touched by” the rhetorical actions (Conquergood 2002, p. 149). Middleton et al. (2011) offer three steps in participatory critical rhetoric: (a) Critics should account for and bring their commitments to the field, (b) critics should gather artifacts for criticism using a variety of rhetorical and qualitative data- gathering techniques, and (c) critics should engage in rhetorical critique of the artifacts they collected from the field to gain “insights from the interstices of lived experience” (p. 400). Therefore, for this study I utilized rhetorical field methods to articulate the unique Buddhist rhetoric of the H Temple of L city. I critically examined texts and structures of the website of the H TEMPLE. I mainly focused on the religious narratives framed by the website’s texts, visual images, videos, and podcasts, as well as the structure of the temple in appealing to its members and potential practitioners. Specifically, I examined the weekly “Abbot address” from Abbot R from May 2015 to December 2016. Besides the main website, another important online site of this study is their Facebook group. I participated in some discussions and mainly observed how members interact with each other while articulating their identities within the community. Meanwhile, I engaged in situ rhetorical analysis: participation and observation in their weekly activities from 2015 to 2016—mainly Wednesday night and Sunday morning activities to unearth and experience the “live” Buddhist rhetoric of the temple. Furthermore, I volunteered in temple events to get to know the community better, like teaching the Sunday morning Dharma school for children and helping with the setup of regular liturgy. In forming my critical analysis, I treated the temple and its community as a unity: as a rhetorical text. I focused on how this unity performed Buddhism and generated

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its unique Buddhist rhetoric to facilitate their identity construction. I aimed to elucidate how the temple abbot and members strategically construct the Buddhist rhetoric and how it is manifested in shaping who they are, what they believe, and how they communicate within and outside the community. In treating the temple as an intercultural space and place, I also probed into what rhetorical traditions and cultural heritages contextualized the identity formation process. These understandings provided insights into a further nuanced comprehension of Buddhist rhetoric in the Western discourse. Most importantly, the rhetorical field methods granted me another tool and perspective in examining power structures between different cultural forms and ideologies of the temple. As McKerrow (2016) notes, rhetorical criticism should be oriented toward an “emancipatory potential” that creates “possibilities for altering relations of power that currently constrain action” by examining “how discourse operates in a fragmented and destabilized social world” (p. 254). In recognizing the forms of domination and unpacking them, I intend to illuminate the potentials of and responsibilities of Buddhist rhetoric as well as the practitioners who perform it and are affected by it.

References Butalia, T. S., & Small, D. P. (2004). Religion in Ohio: Profiles of faith communities. Athens: Ohio University Press. Carbaugh, D., & Wolf, K. (1999). Situating Rhetoric in cultural discourses. International and Intercultural Communication Annual, 22(1999), 19–30. Chandler, S. (2010). Buddhism in China and Taiwan: The dimensions of contemporary Chinese Buddhism. In Buddhism in world cultures: Comparative perspectives. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Condit, C. M., 1956, & Lucaites, J. L. (1993). Crafting equality: America’s Anglo-African word. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Connelly, E. (2012). State secrets and redaction: The interaction between silence and ideographs. Western Journal of Communication, 76(3), 236–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570314.2011. 653470. Conquergood, D. (2002). Performance studies: Interventions and radical research. The Drama Review, 46, 145–115. Drew, R. (2012). Buddhist chic: A look at Buddhism’s appeal in the West. Svensk Missionstidskrift, 100(1), 91–113. Ellwood, R. (2012). Encyclopedia of global religion: Zen Buddhism. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Foss, S.  K. (2009). Rhetorical criticism: Exploration & practice. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press. González, A., & Cheng, H. (2004). Intercultural rhetoric. In J. L. Golden, G. F. Berquist, W. E. Coleman, & J. M. Sproule (Eds.), The rhetoric of Western thought: From the Mediterranean world to the global setting (pp. 471–478). Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt. Guest, G., Namey, E. E., & Mitchell, M. L. (2013). Participant observation. Collecting qualitative data (pp. 75–112). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Hammerback, J.  C., & Jensen, R.  J. (1994). Ethnic heritage as rhetorical legacy: The plan of Delano. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 80(1), 53–70. Higgins, W. (2012). The coming of secular Buddhism: A synoptic view. Journal of Global Buddhism, 2012, 109–126.

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Jensen, J. V. (1987). Teaching East Asian rhetoric. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 17(2), 135–149. Ji, Z. (2012). Chinese Buddhism as a social force. Chinese Sociological Review, 45(2), 8–26. https://doi.org/10.2753/CSA2162-0555450201. Johnson, F.  L. (1999). Speaking culturally: Language diversity in the United States. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Kosaka, T. (2010). Listening to the Buddha’s own words: Direct participation as a principle of the teachings of the Buddha. China Media Research, 6(3), 94. Laderman, G., & León, L. D. (2003). Religion and American cultures: An encyclopedia of traditions, diversity, and popular expressions. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Laliberté, A. (2012). Buddhist charities and China’s social policy: An opportunity for alternate civility? Archives De Sciences Sociales Des Religions, 158, 95–117. https://doi.org/10.4000/ assr.23789. McGee, M. C. (1980). The “ideograph”: A link between rhetoric and ideology. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66, 1–16. McKerrow, R. E. (1989). Critical rhetoric: Theory and praxis. Communication Monograohs, 56, 91–111. McKerrow, R. E. (2016). Critical rhetoric: An orientation toward criticism. In J. A. Kuypers (Ed.), Rhetorical criticism: Perspectives in action (2nd ed., pp.  253–268). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. McKerrow, R. E., & St. John, J. (2005). Critical rhetoric and continual critique. In J. A. Kuypers (Ed.), The art of rhetorical criticism (pp. 345–366). Boston: Pearson. McMahan, D. L. (2008). The making of Buddhist modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Middleton, M.  K., Senda-Cook, S., & Endres, D. (2011). Articulating rhetorical field methods: Challenges and tensions. Western Journal of Communication, 75(4), 386–406. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/10570314.2011.586969. Moon, D. G. (2010). Critical reflections on culture and critical intercultural communication. The handbook of critical intercultural communication (34–52 Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell Nagata, J. (1999). The globalization of Buddhism and the emergence of civil society: The case of Taiwanese FoKuangShan movements in Asia and the West. Communication/Plural, 7(2), 231–248. Nakayama, T. K., & Halualani, R. T. (2010). The handbook of critical intercultural communication. Malden/Chichester/West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Nelson, J.  (2011). Global and domestic challenges confronting Buddhist institutions in Japan. Journal of Global Buddhism, 12, 1–15. Obadia, L. (2011). Is Buddhism like a hamburger? Buddhism and the market economy in a globalized world. Research in Economic Anthropology, 31, 99–120. Ono, K.  A., & Sloop, J.  M. (1995). The critique of vernacular discourse. Communication Monographs, 62(1), 19–46. Ono, K.  A., & Sloop, J.  M. (2002). Shifting borders: Rhetoric, immigration, and California’s proposition (p. 187). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Pezzullo, P. (2007). Toxic tourism: Rhetorics of pollution, travel, and environmental justice. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Philipsen, G. (1992). Speaking culturally: Explorations in social communication. Albany: SUNY Press. Prohl, I., & Graf, T. (2015). Global Zen Buddhism-looking at the popular and material cultures of Zen. Journal of Global Buddhism, 16, 33. Rodrigues, P. (1996). Cultural discourses and identity maintenance of Asian Indians at a Hindu temple. Doctoral dissertation. Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture & truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. Sharf, R. (1995). Buddhist modernism and the rhetoric of meditative experience. Numen 42(3), 227–283. Sikes, P. (2004). Methodology, procedures and ethical concerns. In C. Opie (Ed.), Doing educational research: A guide for first time researchers. London: Sage.

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Snodgrass, J. (2003). Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the west: Orientalism, occidentalism, and the Columbian exposition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Starosta, W. J., & Coleman, L. (1986). Jesse Jackson’s “Hymietown” apology: A case study of interethnic rhetorical analysis. In Y. Y. Kim (Ed.), Interethnic communication (pp. 117–135). Beverly Hills: Sage. Stassen, H., & Bates, B. (2010). Constructing marriage: Exploring marriage as an ideograph. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 11(1), 1–5. https://doi. org/10.1080/17459430903412848. Virtbauer, G. (2012). The Western reception of Buddhism as a psychological and ethical system: Developments, dialogues, and perspectives. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 15(3), 251– 263. https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2011.569928. Wang, Q. E. (2013). Buddhism in modern China. Chinese Studies in History, 46(3), 3–6. https:// doi.org/10.2753/CSH0009-4633460300. Wuthnow, R., & Cadge, W. (2004). Buddhists and Buddhism in the United States: The scope of influence. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 43(3), 363–380. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2004.00240.x. Xiao, X. (1995). China encounters Darwinism: A case of intercultural rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 81(1), 83–99. Gonzalez and Cheng: Intercultural rhetoric. Xu, W. (2015, April 15). In age-old Buddhist scripture, help for modern woes. ChinaDaily.com. Retrieved from http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-04/15/content_20436737.htm

Chapter 3

The Temple’s Paradox: Maintaining Cultural Traditions in the Discourse of Modernization and Democratization

People who visit Buddhist centers often expect to see a Zen master with a strong Asian accent teaching or leading the services and are surprised that a new generation of Buddhist sensei, or teachers, are as American as the Protestant clergy person next door. –Abbot R

Maintaining cultural traditions has always been an issue for many Buddhist temples in the United States. Like the comment cited above from abbot R, a common assumption about a Buddhist temple is that it is always run by an Asian or at least by Asian Americans, since they represent the authenticity, the exotic, and the unknown myth from the other side of the earth. This assumption might be true within the first few decades after Buddhism was introduced to the U.S. by the Chinese and Japanese immigrants. However, with the dissemination of this ancient Eastern religion to the Western world, Buddhist demographics are also gradually changing to become more and more diverse. Therefore, we are witnessing the emergence of a new type of temple like the H temple with predominantly Euro-American practitioners. How these temples view traditions from a different culture and strive to maintain traditions to justify the authenticity of their temple in the discourse of Western modernity remains a crucial issue to be resolved. To illuminate Zen Buddhism’s encounter with Western modernity in the United States and specifically its democratization process, this chapter will examine the ideographs reflected in the temple’s rhetoric. Ideographs like , , , , and are used to defend the temple’s Buddhist traditions in the East. Yet, What they reflect in American Buddhism are actually liberal democratic ideologies in the Western discourse. By tracing back to the cultural and Zen Buddhist traditions in Japan, their variations after being brought to the U.S. by Japanese Americans in the early twentieth century, and analyzing their adaptation in the H temple in Ohio, I examine how Western modernity has shaped and reshaped the Buddhist traditions over time and location. Also, by probing into different facets of democratization process in the H temple, specifically the © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 F. Zhang, Building and Negotiating Religious Identities in a Zen Buddhist Temple, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8863-7_3

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l­aicization of the rituals, feminization of the temple members, and pragmatism of their dharma transmission, I argue that these self-asserted traditions that the H temple has been practicing are actually hybrid forms of Eastern traditions and Western ideologies, which are unique only to American Buddhism. In utilizing these “traditions” and keeping its oriental appeal to the Western audience, the temple finds its authenticity, its cultural tie to the East, and its surviving mechanism, a strategy applied by many Buddhist temples in the U.S. McGee (1980) defines ideographs as “the basic structural elements, the building blocks of ideology (p. 7). They are often found in political discourse as an ordinary-­ language term but representing collective commitment to a “particular but equivocal and ill-defended goal” (p. 15). Terms like property, religion, right of privacy, and freedom of speech are examples of ideograph that contain the social significance (p.  7). Furthermore, ideographs are also “one-term sums of an orientation” that appear in our everyday language but are quite vague at the surface (p. 7). They can be equivocal but flexible that allows a variety of interpretations. Members of a community may have different understandings in the nuances and subtleties of an ideograph within their own community. For example, when used as an ideograph, equality is not the same word in its meaning or its usage when situated in the context of United States and China. Connelly (2012) concurs that ideograph distinguishes itself from other rhetorical tropes “through its persuasive power” (p. 240). They are powerful in ways to awake culturally embedded ideologies through socialization. An examination of the ideographs of the temple’s rhetoric helps reveal the power structure and power relations in the discourse of Buddhist modernity. In other words, through the case of the H temple, we might develop a better sense of the “traditions” being maintained during the process of culture transplantation. Once named L city Zen Center, the H temple was renamed around 2011. Abbot R explained that the name change was needed “to better reflect the center’s growth as a spiritual home for Buddhism as well as to clarify its purpose.” Through this effort, as he had hoped, people’s perception of “Zen” may be officially linked to a religious belief but not a catchphrase for “selling digital devices” or “a relaxed, slightly Asian-esque lifestyle.” Later on, the lineage name was formally added to the temple name after abbot R mountain seat ceremony in 2015, which signifies an independence of the temple for dharma transmission as well as a succession of its Japanese Soto Zen lineage. In Buddhism, lineage signifies the line of teacher-­ student dharma transmission, which could be theoretically traced back to Buddha himself. Undeniably, the name “H temple” has more significant religious connotations than a simple “Zen center.” In an explicit way, this name will better inform its potential visitors about its religious affiliation and its linkage to traditional Zen Buddhism. Furthermore, it is also the kind of change abbot R and abbot N make regarding the authenticity of the temple. As a Zen Buddhist temple in U.S. Mid-west solely run by Euro-Americans with few Asian participants, one important strategy of the H temple in branding itself and appealing to the local community is demonstrating its cultural tradition and lineage heritage from Japanese Zen. Besides indicating it in the temple name, their approaches also include: running family-themed temple activities and rituals,

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a­ dopting Japanese kanji names and Buddha robes for practitioners, and developing the traditional Aikido (martial art) school and Sunday morning dharma school for local community. However, when situated in the backdrop of modernization and democratization of American Buddhism at large and compared to their Eastern counterparts, these seemingly “traditional” approaches have aroused some concerns over their authenticity and encountered unexpected difficulties in terms of reinterpreting the meaning of tradition and utilizing the Asian rhetoric in the Western cultural discourse. Meanwhile, in face of a more democracy-inclined audience, practices in the H temple have also been modified to suit the Western liberal ideologies like gender equity, individualism, and community building. When identifying itself as a Buddhist temple, the H temple is caught up in such an interesting paradox: is it still Buddhism that they are practicing when traditions are being altered and new ideologies are being served? If so, whose tradition are they inheriting from? How do we define this new “Buddha ideal” created by modernization and democratization in the United States? In the following section, I will focus on the harmonious status of the “family temple” ideal when transplanted from the Japanese context to the American Mid-­ west surroundings, pointing out the commonalities among different culture forms. Following that, abbot R’s rhetoric in defending and appropriating the tradition of “married abbot” and spousal transmission will be examined, which are the kind of Buddhist traditions being reinvented and reinterpreted several times in different cultural settings during last century. By analyzing the abbot N’s role in the temple both as the wife of abbot Rand a female priest, and the role of female members in the temple, I intend to shed light on how feminization has been infused into American Buddhism, which is drastically different from the traditional “temple wife” in Japan. A thorough examination of the practice of the dharma school in the H temple will demystify the de-emphasis of belief and the emphasis of moral education in their Buddhist teachings. Furthermore, the last part explicate the importance of Sangha— the Buddhist community to the H temple. By identifying ideographs used in the temple’s rhetoric, this chapter explains how they function to represent Eastern traditions on the surface but Western liberal ideologies at the core.

3.1  The Uniqueness of the Family Temple The first ideograph that frequently appeared in abbot R’s talks, and the temple’s theme of activities is . The H temple has always presented itself as a Zen Buddhist temple from the Japanese lineage. Indeed, Japanese culture and traditions predominately shaped the rituals and activities staged in the temple and greatly influenced the way members practice, communicate and even act in their community. One Japanese Buddhist tradition, which is distinctly different from many Asian Buddhist traditions, is the abandonment of “Home-leaving” (Starling 2015). In becoming a Buddhist monk, nun, or priest, one does not need to renounce the

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worldly relationships, like marriage and family. In contemporary Japan, family plays an important role and is “more visible” in and around Buddhist temples than any other countries (p. 144). Clerical marriage in Japan has been completely permitted and normalized by their government at the turn of twentieth century. As a result, the vast majority of Buddhist clerics in Japan are married and majority of the laity would prefer a married cleric to serve as abbot of their temple (Jaffe 2001). Furthermore, a Buddhist temple in Japan is more and more practiced as a family trade and can be inherited and passed on to the younger successor of the family. An important criterion of priestly authenticity in Japanese Buddhism is whether the abbot himself presents as “a family man and ritual specialist” (Starling 2015, p.146). Mainly run by families, the temple functions to serve the community and families in the neighborhood by hosting funerals, weddings and offering prayers to those in need. Abbot R and his wife abbot N founded the temple in a very family-centered way like many Japanese family temples. During an interview with the local newspaper, He commented on their relationship in co-founding the temple: In Japan, there’s a lot of family temples, and we’re kind of like that, she and I discuss everything together; we think about it way too much. … This is where we really meet, is in the dharma and in the practice, and she brings a lot of qualities that I lack.

The emphasis of the family and the close bond between abbot R and his wife can easily be found on the temple website, throughout his speeches, and in all kinds of temple activities. Unlike traditional temple websites that highlights the images of Buddha, on the homepage of the H temple, a picture of R and his wife leaning their heads together and smiling takes the most prominent position. Below the picture, a brief introduction follows the headline “A Message from the Temple Priests abbot R and abbot N”. Upon entering the website, one easily gets the impression that they are being welcomed by a happy family rather than by two Buddhist priests. Beside the main page, there are also plenty of family pictures on display under the sublink “teachers.” With detailed introductions of how both priests studied Buddhism and became dharma teachers in the past few decades, the page is also filled with plenty of family photos of the couple with their pet dogs, at different holiday trips, and with their child. Besides the model family image of the priests on the temple website, family also remains the central theme of most activities staged in the H temple. Specifically on Sundays, family themes dominate the morning rituals because of the scheduled “Dharma school for kids and teens.” As discussed in the previous chapter, Sunday morning service shares the same meditation routine with Wednesday night but has way more participants. The difference is that children and teenagers will also be participating the liturgy on Sunday services, like bowing to Buddha and chanting sutras. Hence, sutra chanting on Sunday morning is designed to be more “vibrant” with lots of clapping and cheering with children. What’s more, the regular service on Sunday will also reserve 15–30 min after the abbot talk for the dharma school teacher and children to discuss their class of the day. During this special ­presentation,

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children will be led to the altar and share with their parents and the community what they have learned about Buddha’s teachings on that day. These family-centered activities staged in the H temple also include the “Family Support Council,” and the “Dharma camp” for children. According to the introduction on the temple website, Family Support Council provides “a mutual family support network” for parents, classes on parenting with Buddhist contexts, and game nights. Similarly, Dharma Camp is for parents and Children “to bond with each other and other sangha families.” Both activities were newly created and promoted during 2016 to cater the needs of the community families. In summer 2016, the temple started its first dharma camp for parents and children at a member’s family farm. Over ten families from the temple community participated and spent the weekend camping, practicing liturgy, and listening to dharma talks together. In most of these activities, abbot R and his wife abbot N chaired the events together. This model family image, like other family-centered activities promoted by the temple, had been very effective in engaging the local community and bringing household members to the temple.

3.1.1   as an Ideograph Other than activities, family was also used as a main theme in R’s abbot addresses. During important holidays in 2016 like the New Year’s Day, Christmas, and Thanks Giving Day, the weekly abbot addresses were specifically made to guide members to spend the holidays with Family harmoniously. In particular, abbot R talked about how to treat Christian-based holidays from a Buddhist perspective and how to get along with judgmental relatives. In his abbot address of December 16, 2016, abbot R offered his suggestions in dealing with judgments from people who were close to practitioners. As he emphasized having nice connections with family and creating the good family experience, R prioritized the importance of family and the basic principles of being kind, loving, and patience in Buddhism. However, he also pointed out the necessity to remain “true to oneself” in these situations: I would usually not falsify anything, like I won’t say, “oh, no, I don’t practice Zen” to make somebody feel comfortable. I mean, that feels like going too far. I won’t bend the actual truth of my situation. … But I don’t have to go and making a big issue about it. If they have a big issue about it, guess what, they have a big issue about it. That’s on them, not on you, not on me. That’s not my job. My job basically is to discern what is my honest, authentic, true, deep response to being alive. …Ultimately, it comes down to really having to trust oneself, really honor your experience and your truth.

In abbot R’s suggestions, it was obviously crucial to keep the harmonious family relationship. But one premise was to be open as “who they are” and being honest of what they are doing as Buddhists. Instead of disguising oneself to seek recognition from family members, the practitioner may as well keep the differences and still be nice and generous.

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The guidance offered by abbot R was built upon the Western family values that highly honor individuality and mutual respect. When Eastern family practice collective decisions and expect consensus over difference views, Western family is more inclined to elevate the role of “self” over the whole family. Thus in face of judgments, one would be better to trust himself/herself rather than “making others feel comfortable.” Comparatively, Western family is also less hierarchical and more equal among members. Therefore, “family” in abbot R’s discourse indicated the equal relationship and the expectation to be understood for their individual differences. Similarly, in his address about “Surviving Thanksgiving in a Contentious Environment” on November 2016, abbot R also stressed the importance of tolerating differences among family members. Within the backdrop of 2016 presidential election, he specifically mentioned dealing with relatives with different political views. The suggestion R gave to members—from the Buddhist tradition—was to “set an intention for the family gathering” as to create “nice and connective experience.” To do so, he suggested members to be generous and patient to others as a way of their own practice. Besides, they should also “let them (the family members) be who they are” to avoid conflicts, because it does not necessarily mean agreeing with their point of view. Throughout the address, the theme is similarly centered on “self” and handling the situation from the perspective of remaining one’s individuality. Family is apparently important. However, whenever there is a disparity between an individual and his/her family, one should always “be true to themselves” while respect other people’s right in insisting their own opinions. It was based on the individual-centered family value that ideals like mutual respect and equality were developed, and thus reflected in abbot R’s family discourse. The temple is represented by the priests’ family and has been serving the families in the community. Family is why they started the temple and is also the goal of their services. Undoubtedly, family also symbolizes the temple’s Japanese lineage passed along from generations ago. Interestingly, the temple’s emphasis on family, a Japanese Buddhist tradition that contradicts monasticism, never contradicts with its midwestern surroundings. In a sense, the transplantation of the family tradition from one cultural context to another was very successful in the case of the H temple because of the commonalities in the family ideologies. The theme as an ideograph can be found in both Eastern and Western cultures. Ideologically, they connect to “happiness,” “children,” “marriage,” and “contribution,” which can be found in both cultural discourses. Because of these commonalities, the use of evokes a similar family ideology in the temple. When members thought it was a Japanese tradition that was preserved, it was actually the resemblance of Western family values. As abbot R himself has commented in an interview, their family temple from the Japanese tradition has “a very unique kind of a quality,” since “its (the temple) people being midwestern and almost all of them converts who were raised Christian.” R’s comment may have indicated the answer of such a harmonious existence, since modernization does not only entail changes but also assimilations. In the process of Buddhist modernization in the west, it is not just about incorporating elements of a

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new culture and weeding out irreconcilable ones, as McMahan (2008) stresses, “It involves a reconfiguration of both tradition and context through contestation and negotiation as much as enthusiastic embrace” (p. 19). In other words, the full acceptance of the Japanese family tradition in the Mid-west is based on its compatibility with the local Christian family views. The temple’s Buddhist community, though most of them converts, were born and raised with biblical principles. Traditional family views like the harmonious spouse relationship, emphasis on home and children are cultivated under these guiding principles. Therefore, despite the uniqueness of the family tradition in Japanese Buddhism among all Buddhist traditions worldwide, it is still easier for the H temple to promote their family-centered temple to the local audience. The priests’ non-monastic style and abbot R’s model image of the family man who cares about his wife and children not only justifies their Japanese traditions of the temple, but also caters the need of the local community who are looking for a family-friendly religion as an alternative to Christianity or Catholicism. Family serves as the medium and connection between the ancient Eastern religion and the midwestern cultural surroundings of H temple. Coincidently, the family theme of Zen Buddhism first originated during Meiji times in Japan at the beginning of twentieth century, spread with Japanese American temples in the United States in the last 50 years and finally settled in an American Zen temple in the midwest with peace. Like the ideograph , the words that cluster around may also reveal the Western interpretation of the family values. As culture-specific linkages between rhetoric and ideology, analyzing the word clusters also helps contextualize the functions of these ideographs in shaping and reinforcing the ideology. Two prominent ones that cluster around in the temple’s rhetoric are and . The next two sections examine the ideographs and in abbot R’s rhetoric and his effort to defend the legitimacy of “married abbot” and “spousal transmission” as Zen traditions. By doing so, I tend to illuminate the Western liberal ideologies of marriage and women as reflected through these ideographs and the pragmatism of American Buddhism.

3.2  T  he Married Abbot and Spousal Transmission: Pragmatism of American Buddhism Although taken as a tradition, for people who are not familiar with Japanese Buddhism, marriage is still an incompatible term with both priesthood and monasticism. A preconceived notion of a Buddhist priest is usually someone who shaves his head, never eats meat, and is never involved in marriage or any romantic relationships throughout his life. For most first-time visitors, abbot R apparently does not fit into the “right” priest type. To explain these inquiries, R made a special weekly address video titled “Scandalously Married Abbot” in 2015. In the video, he

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explained the different understandings of “abbot” in various Buddhist traditions. In the Zen tradition of Japan, the word “abbot” refers to the head of a temple rather than “exclusively head of a monastery.” Abbot R also mentioned his full transmission of the Soto Zen from his teacher in the lineage and his fully ordained status as abbot of the temple. In further clarifying the questionable status of being a priest and being married, he said: I am a priest, and an abbot. But I would never self-identify as a monastic. I don’t go around saying I am a monk. I am not a monk. I’ve got a wife, who is also ordained; I’ve got a daughter and a day job where I am a professor of music. ... Even the fact of might being able to be married and to be ordained has something to do with the historical lineage I am in, which is Japanese and its heritage, before (it was in) China and India.

Abbot R did not further explicate the tradition of clerical marriage in Japan. But two points are clearly stated in this clarification: first, he distanced himself from being a monk or monastic but an abbot and priest; second, clerical marriage has been part of the Japanese Buddhist history and heritage. Therefore, despite its rarity in the West and in other Buddhist lineages, it is still culturally reasonable and acceptable. By stressing the professionalism of his practice and his officially recognized ordination while referring back to the Japanese tradition, abbot R successfully appropriated the concept of “married abbot” to his Western audience. However, as much as the Zen Buddhism in Japan could be traced back to China and India, never was the clerical marriage tradition. More problematically, the novel Japanese clerical marriage has always been controversial in the Buddhist world within the last century and still today (Jaffe 2001). In traditional Buddhist nations like India, China, and Myanmar, receiving the ten precepts and going through ordination means recognizing the monastic life style: refraining from “sexual relations, marriage and family,” which is, becoming a monk (p. 2). The emergence of family temple and clerical marriage is a relatively new phenomenon during late nineteenth century as a turnout of a radical regime change and reformation in Japan from Tokugawa to Meiji (Jaffe 2001). The initiation of this policy by the Meiji government was to diminish Buddhism and prioritize Shinto. Even today, clerical marriage is still considered as unethical and a violation of clerical conducts by many Buddhist leaders inside and outside Japan (Jaffe 2001). Abbot R might be right referring it as a tradition from his Japanese lineage based on its normalization contemporarily. However, situating in a larger Buddhist discourse and the historical context, this is a controversial tradition to begin with and still needs reexamination in the dissemination process. The second time abbot R referred to the Japanese tradition of family temple in his weekly address was before the Denkai transmission of his wife N in 2015. In Zen Buddhism, Denkai transmission means the formal training when a teacher passes on precepts of the linage to the student (Loori et  al. 1996). Traditionally referred to as the “transmission” of the teacher’s mind to the student, this technique has been termed “the crucial pivot of the Zen teaching method” (Bodiford 1991, p.  423). The goal of the transmission is to lead the student to recreate what the teacher has experienced in his own enlightenment so that their minds become one.

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After the transmission, the student will receive a linage chart with all names of the ancestors and will be guided to become a priest. In the H temple, abbot R was the teacher who offered transmission to his wife N.  In announcing this news in the weekly address, he mentioned the rationality of receiving transmission from a family member. Not having “some history,” as R explains, but transmission in family lines is “very common” because there is a longer history of father-to-son transmission to maintain the family temple in Japan. Abbot R went on to talk about the spousal transmission in the West as a variation and how his teachers had been transmitted from their life partners: Is it a blurring of lines? Well, not really, it depends. Here’s the thing: if we are talking about therapy, if one person in the couple is the marriage counselor to the other, that’s gonna be funny and that’s not gonna work out.

In justifying their particular case in the H temple, he then stressed that the “ideal way for them” is to work as a couple and family to serve and guide the community forward. Although not part of the heritage of traditional Japanese Buddhism, abbot R still considered this couple priests mode as an acceptable and reasonable Western variation in the United States. This time, abbot R justified this unique spousal transmission by its practicality in the West and examples of multiple Zen teachers who have already done so successfully in the U.S. In his defense, spousal transmission is clearly not blurring the line of professionalism like the couple of marriage counselor and patient would. On the contrary, it is an adaptation in their situation to better serve and guide the community. Whether the married abbot tradition from Japan, or the spousal transmission practice that abbot R claimed as a reasonable adaptation in the West, it is not difficult to spot some pragmatism in their practice. Not adhering to the traditional doctrines, Buddhism in the H temple became more flexible and approachable to the lay community whether in formats or in beliefs when infusing to the Western discourse. Jack Kornfield (1988), the Theravada-trained meditation teacher and scholar, once summarizes the characteristics of American Buddhism as democratization, feminization, and integration. In his view, Western Buddhists are practicing more from an individualistic perspective: “to think and understand for themselves and are less suited to the hierarchical models of Asia” (p. 173). Later on, Lama Surya Das (1997) concurs and complements two more characteristics: pragmatism and engagement. Pragmatism is reflected on the emphasis on “ritual practice or observance and its benefit to the practitioner,” while engagement is focusing on broadening the spiritual practice to benefit not only the self but also the “family and community.” Generally speaking, Buddhism was remolded to appeal to a more democratic audience and its liberal social values in the United States: non-dogmatic teachings are introduced; lay-based organization and leadership are utilized; simplified beliefs and rituals are reinforced; and social engagements are added. The long-held traditions are negotiated and adjusted to suit its practitioners while rituals and ceremonies are domesticated. Instead of people practicing Buddhism and following the dogmas and rules, American Buddhism was reinvented to serve people — its followers. Hence, we are witnessing a transformed modern Buddhism today in the

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United States with a diversity of practitioners and a hybridity of practices extracted from multiple religious forms (Queen and Williams 2013). This transformation process has begun ever since Buddhism was introduced to the United States in the early twentieth century. The interesting case of the H temple is a demonstration and a result of the new Buddha ideal within the discourse of modernity and democracy. Under pluralist ideologies, controversial traditions like clerical marriage or spousal transmission could all be tolerated and understood for the benefit of personal practice and community. Although may have deviated from its original form, the new American Buddha ideal keeps attracting more practitioners because of its pragmatism in our society. In the next section, the female priest in H temple — abbot N and the role of female members in the temple will be analyzed, I intend to shed light on how feminization has been infused into American Buddhism, which is distinctly different from the traditional “temple wife” in Japan.

3.3  The Role of Abbot N: More Than Just a Temple Wife Abbot N’s presence as a female priest in the H temple might be the most non-­ traditional practice from their Japanese lineage but a great demonstration of the democratic American Buddhism. Unlike most Buddhist family temples in Japan when the husband dominates the priest role with wife assisting temple management and educating children, the priests in the H temple present themselves as a unity of family but equally independent in their roles of teaching and serving the community. As the wife of abbot R, abbot N distinguishes from the traditional temple wives’ assisting role. When it comes to major ceremonies and activities in the H temple, it is always the priest couple chairing and teaching together. During these events, abbot R and abbot N sit next to each other against the altar. While both formally dressed as priests in traditional Buddha robes, they take turns to give speeches but work together to complete the liturgy rituals. Traditionally, with strict gender roles in the Japanese family temples, “temple wives” (wives of the male Buddhist priests) are only expected to bear and educate the successor of the priest while serving as an assistant in the temple maintenance (Jaffe 2001). As wives, they are also banned from teaching and hosting rituals and sermons because these are the male abbot’s responsibilities. Apparently, N’s role in the H temple has transcended the “temple wife” and become equal to abbot R. She hosted weekly rituals by herself and teach Buddhist lessons by herself regularly. Even when two priests work together to complete liturgy and rituals, they have their own separate roles. For example, during the Eye-opening ceremony in November 2016 when people brought their own Buddha statues to the temple to be blessed by teachers, abbot R and abbot N worked together all through the ceremony. Members lined up and brought their Buddha to abbot R first, which he blessed with a brush in hand circling around the statue’s forehead. Then the Buddha was transferred to abbot N who sat in the opposite direction. She completed the blessing process by

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holding the statue above the incense burner for a few seconds. It is unimaginable to see this cooperation in a family temple of Japan, or temple run by Japanese Americans in the U.S. To some extent, this specific ceremony symbolizes the roles of abbot R and abbot N play in the H TEMPLE. While R is in the leading position as the abbot and the husband, N also have her own role not only as the wife but also an individual religious partner and teacher. During my participation at the temple, abbot N hosted Sunday morning and Wednesday night services independently from time to time. She also takes charge of most family-related events, like children’s dharma camp and family game night. In receiving her full ordination to become s Buddhist priest in 2015, abbot R commented on their partnership in the H temple: In terms of spiritual guidance and so on, we’re completely equal in terms of the community,” abbot R said. “And the way we actually are as a couple is that ... I’m public and I’m out there. The abbot is kind of like that, and actually, she’s the power. She’s the quiet power that draws everything in, and that’s the real power, but it takes a while to tell because it’s not the big in-your-face type of thing; it’s more a drawing power, so I’m more yang and she’s more yin.

Abbot R’s metaphor of Yang and Yin further serves to frame their relationship as partners in the temple or in life is more complementary and equal rather than dominative and submissive. Given the assumption that being a temple wife would best fit into the tradition of Japanese family temple, abbot N’s choice of being an independent female priest and teacher is a perfect demonstration of the democratization of Zen Buddhism in the United States. Similarly, within the H temple community, there are also more female members than male members participating in the temple management both online and offline. With diverse backgrounds and age differences, these female members prepare for liturgy, set up the meditation hall for attenders, organize children’s camp, teach Sunday morning dharma classes, and send out notification emails. To a large extent, the temple operation is relying on these female members. With the rise of women in membership and leadership, the H temple rejected the traditional gender roles in Japanese Buddhism and took the new Buddha ideal to incorporate egalitarian and democratic social values. Historically, it has never been an easy task to bring in gender equality into traditional Asian Buddhism. Even today, Buddhism in Asian countries is still seriously affected by criticism over sexism of male dominance (Gross 2014). Most leaders are men and male monastics are well supported while female leaders and monastics are barely visible. The situation is even worse in Japanese Buddhism due to the appropriation of the family temples since Meiji Era. Culturally, based on the Confucius ideal in Japanese society that women should be obedient to husband when married, temple wives or rather women in general have been submissive to their male partners (Ogoshi 1993). Additionally, the unique priest marriage in Japan did not gain official recognition from other schools of Buddhism in the first few decades after its appropriation. As a consequence, temple wives have been marginalized and remain invisible both doctrinally and institutionally. Their presence at the temple is restricted and their positions in the temple are always ambiguous (Noriko 2003).

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However, the fact is temple wives have been and still are responsible for majority temple work and administration despite their absence in the public view. The actual feminization process of Buddhism started when Zen was introduced to the West and had to infuse into the preexisting Western modern discourses. In the United States, it was also part of the democratization process in the late twentieth century. Women are more and more recognized as equal citizens as men and are involved into public arenas under the democratic influence. Gender equality is brought into the negotiation process when reconsidering and reinterpreting this old religion in the new cultural context. As a result, the new American Buddhism with socially engaged modes begun to incorporate women within modernist Buddhist settings (McMahan 2008). This reform on women’s roles means a radical departure from the traditional gender roles in Asian Buddhism but also more opportunities for women in the American Buddhism. Since then, women have been increasingly visible in Buddhist temples. Not only doing voluntary work for their own Buddhist belief, they are also taking on leadership roles and instructing male students as teachers. Like abbot N and other female member’s role in the H temple, the naturalization of female priests, teachers, and practitioners in the American temple is not only a hybridity under the democratic discourse, but more of a liberation from the traditional inequality and unequal relations of power. Presently, this positive change in Western Buddhism is also pressuring its Eastern counterpart, leading us to reconsider the definition of tradition and necessary reforms. Generally speaking, abbot N’s presence in the H temple may have created a dissonance with the traditional “temple wife” image, but it represents a hallmark of American Buddhism that gender equity is part of the contemporary dharma transmission.

3.3.1   and  as Ideographs One defining characteristic of ideograph, as McGee (1980) contends, is that they are culture-bound, which means that they are conditioned in certain cultural contexts of a particular society. Therefore, with the changing cultural context and state of society, ideographs should also be understood diachronically. McGee (1980) further complemented this view: “[i]n isolation, each ideograph has a history, an etymology, such that current meanings of the term are linked to past usages of it diachronically. The diachronic structure of an ideograph establishes the parameters, the category of its meaning” (p. 16). The diachronic structure of ideograph is exemplified by the use of and in two different cultural discourse in history. When the concept of “married abbot” and “temple wife” were first created in the Japanese context decades ago, these ideographs did not evoke sentiments like love, contract, commitment, and partnership. Rather, they represented the ideology of a male-dominated society and the submissive role of women as appendages. In the Japanese Buddhist context, “marriage” and “family” meant the trustworthiness of the temple and its abbot, since knowledge of priesthood was usually passed down

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within the family to male heirs. In contrast, when these traditions were transplanted to the United States, the same term that functioned as ideograph began to represent a whole new set of modern ideologies. Thus, abbot N’s role is completely different from the traditional temple wives in Japan, but an independent female priest and partner of abbot R. The modern adaptation of “spousal transmission” was also rationalized on the presumption that husband and wife are equal to each other as individual beings. It is based on equity that they can develop a professional relationship in the temple. In short, when the three ideographs , , and were used in conjunction, they collectively invoke and reinforce a set of democratized and modernized family values in the West. Instead of representing the “traditions” from Japanese Zen Buddhism, they reinterpreted these traditions in the new context. In the next section, the ideograph will be examined by looking into the unconventional practice of the dharma school in the H Temple. I tend to demystify the de-emphasis of belief and the emphasis of moral education in their Buddhist teachings.

3.4  S  unday Morning Dharma School: A Buddhist Moral Education Unlike the traditions mentioned previously that could still be found in Buddhist temples in Japan, dharma school is definitely “new” tradition—a Western practice when Zen was introduced to the United States from Japan. Dharma schools were originally modeled on Christian Sunday schools for Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) children to have some religious experience, which is similar to their non-Japanese friends attending Christian or Catholic churches on Sundays (Asakawa 2015). They are usually affiliated with Buddhist temples run by Japanese-­ Americans and serve to preserve Japanese culture and to foster association of Japanese Americans community in the United States (Queen and Williams 2013). Together with the dharma schools, cultural activities and Japanese language classes are also offered at these temples to serve the need of the American born Japanese immigrants and to maintain their cultural identity (Asakawa 2015). Over the years, the focus of most Japanese American temples has shifted from language teaching to broader cultural activities due to a decline of interest in language among younger Japanese Americans and an increasing membership of Euro-Americans. These cultural activities include tea ceremony, calligraphy, flower arrangement, Judo, Aikido (martial art) classes and such (Queen and Williams 2013). While serving as a representation of traditional Japanese culture, they also significantly increased the revenue of most temples. Nevertheless, as Zen Buddhism flourishes and grows in the United States in the past few decades, there are a great number of Buddhist temples and Zen centers built for and run by primarily Euro-Americans after the “Zen boom” in the 1950s.

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These “new” Zen temples/centers solely focus on Zen meditation as a major activity (Asai and Williams 1999). Compared to the traditional temples run by Japanese Americans, their emphasis is less religious and less culture-related but more on personal development. For example, these Zen centers would offer regular daily and weekly schedules of practice and intensive retreats but seldom provide cultural activities like celebration of the Cherry Blossom Festival or Buddhism teaching classes. Technically, the H temple fits into neither category described above. From temple formation, with the abbot couple and major attenders of the temple being Euro-Americans, the H temple is considered as one of the “new” temples. However, the temple still puts a great emphasis on its Japanese lineage, its religious affiliation, and has its own cultural focus. Two important ones are the Aikido (martial art) school and the dharma school for teens and kids on Sunday morning. The Aikido school started around the same time when the temple started in L city and it co-locates in the H temple. The abbots founded the Aikido school and named it S Aikido of Ohio (the real name of the Aikido school is obscured for privacy concerns). “S Aikido” indicates their lineage in Japanese martial art. Meanwhile, both abbot R and his wife abbot N are senior black-belt martial art teachers at this school. While the Aikido school is open to both adults and children, dharma school is specifically designed for children under 10 and teenagers. In the L city area, dharma school of the H temple was the first and only one since it was opened. It is also why the temple has been popular with local families in the past decade. On the temple website, the page of “Kids & Teens Dharma School” clearly lists its function: “Dharma School programs offer a place for children to engage in Buddhist studies,” where they will have access to basic Buddhist practice and “mindfulness activities.” However, based on the nature of the H temple community, their dharma school has lost the function of preserving Japanese culture or promoting association among the Japanese American community. In the mean time, it also shares very few similarities with the Christian or Catholic Sunday schools in terms of the religious education. Despite the claim of Buddhist teachings, dharma school in the H temple is more transformed into a place for moral education for children and teenagers. I volunteered to teach at the Sunday morning dharma school twice while observed and assisted teaching for other members several times during my participation. For several years, the H temple dharma school was managed by two female members of the temple. They are responsible for making lesson plans, organizing class activities, scheduling teaching dates and contents, and leading practices just for children. Formatted just like the Christian Sunday school, basic Buddhist principles and practices are taught here instead of the Bible. Children are also encouraged to meditate with their teachers for a short period each time. Depending on the attendance of each Sunday, every class may have different numbers of students aging from two to ten. The class content may also vary based on the attendance. The first class I taught was the story of “Kwan Yin and the Red Boy,” which Kwan Yin is the Bodhisattva (Buddha) of compassion and the Red Boy is her student. The teaching objective, as I was informed earlier, was to integrate Buddhist wisdom into the class content, which also fits into the Buddhist teaching principle of compassion and mindfulness. Two weeks before my class, I was added to a

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Facebook Group named “Dharma School Teachers Connect.” The group shares teaching ideas, class activities, and blank lesson plans. However, except for the discussion on teaching schedule and suggested readings from abbot R, there are very limited resources that could be applied to class. Following the blank lesson plan, I had to design a fifty-­minute class for children by myself from scratch, including designing games and activities. Therefore, on the day I taught, students learned about how Kwan Yin has always been nice and patient with her mischievous student the Red Boy and how student should behave in school and with their teachers. By the end of the class, I led the students to the altar and all of them told the story together to their parents and other attenders. Everyone was satisfied with the motto of the story: “to be a good student,” while it was intended to show the compassionate behavior of Kwan Yin. After the second class I taught, I realized that the teaching of dharma school is not text-based like the use of the Bible in Christian Sunday schools. Themes of classes are randomly based on the teacher’s preferences and his/her personal understanding of “mindfulness and compassion.” Given the fact that Buddhism has countless sutras translated into English and could be used as guiding texts, like what many Asian Buddhist temples would, none was used in the H temple during my participation. It was much more like an introduction of some “Buddhist experience” rather than Buddhist teachings. Consequently, children who attend dharma school regularly are quite familiar with the process of sitting, lighting up incense, and ringing the bell while knowing little about the Buddha they are bowing to. Some are even not taught how to behave properly in a Buddhist temple. There was the time that an eight-year-old took the Buddha statue from the altar near the entrance and left it on the floor with other toys. Such behavior would be unimaginable in a Buddhist temple in any Asian countries.

3.4.1  From Dharma Teaching to Moral Education With the de-emphasis of belief in Buddhist teaching, what was left was the focus on moral education. Every Sunday morning class will be taught under themes that connect to both Buddha and morality. Some common themes of teaching are: appreciation, being nice, listening to parents, caring and respecting each other, behaving in school, and being patient. Although Buddha and Buddhist teachings remain the main content, each class will be directed to these common themes in the end. For example, at one class I observed, the teacher taught students about the three treasures of Buddhism: “Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.” Essentially, these are the most basic yet difficult concepts in Buddhism with multiple interpretations in different traditions. Buddha refers to Shakyamuni or another enlightened being; Dharma means basic practices and principles; and Sangha represents the group of converted practitioners (Seager 1999). However, through a drawing activity, these concepts were simplified as “being nice,” “listening to rules at school,” and “taking care of friends and family.” while easy enough for children to comprehend, they are deviant

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from the religious connotation to fit into the curriculum of moral education and Western liberal values. Similarly in the teen’s dharma school, besides basic knowledge of Buddhism, teacher will also organize discussions themed like “healthy boundaries” and “how to maintain personal identity within the Buddhist context” to reinforce the moral education. For an Asian religion based on collectivism, it is interesting how these individualistic ideologies being integrated into the classes and creates new meaning in the Buddhist context. To some extent, the ideograph was highlighted by the prominent themes of the dharma school like “morality,” “proper behavior,” “participation,” and “creativity.” The “traditional” dharma school is used to reinforce popular educational ideologies in the West. While schools connect to “discipline,” “conformity,” “effort,” and “hardworking” in a collectivism based Asian culture, none of these seem to match the schooling experience of the H temple. Here, children are taught to be themselves as moral beings, but not to be recipients of religious information. As a relatively new “tradition” that originates from Japanese American temples in the United States, the promotion of dharma school only has a short history of less than a 100 years. For most Asian Buddhist practitioners, the practice and setup of most dharma schools are unconventional. Nevertheless, it is a true reflection of the American Buddhist belief system: based on personal experience, rational, morality, scientific, and “free from dogma and superficial beliefs” (Drew 2012, p. 97). This was yet another crucial step Buddhism took when being introduced to the discourse of modernity. In order to be more compatible with modern scientific rationalism, and to resonate with the rhetoric of scientific naturalism, which “leaves no space for spiritual realities,” Buddhist was brought to the West as a scientific religion without any “supreme creator” (McMahan 2008, p. 63). Much emphasis, rather than given to the study of sutras and devotional practice, was instead given to meditation and elevating personal experience. Sets of doctrine and principles no long apply while the authority of practicing is exclusively about personal enlightenment and awakening. Buddhism has evolved into, as Drew (2012) claims, “a spirituality suitable for autonomous individuals” (p. 97). Buddha is thus turned into a “pragmatic empiricist who dismisses all doctrines and faiths” (p. 99). It is up to the practitioner to test the truthfulness of teaching through his/her own experience rather than relying on external authorities like sutras. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand the de-­ emphasis of belief in most dharma schools in the U.S. Similarly, the moral education of Dharma school in the H temple, is not a coincident or single case but a contour of American Buddhism as a belief and spirituality within the discourse of modernity. Besides , the ideograph is another prominent theme discovered from the sangha building and sangha activities in the H temple. The ideograph functions to motivate members to be involved in more social-engaged activities and liberal social movements.

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3.5  Sangha: This Is Where We Belong Like the importance of family and dharma education, serving the sangha (community) has also been a predominant mission of the H temple members. Besides Buddha and Dharma, Sangha is the third jewel and refuge of the Buddhist path. It is an important commitment one has to make upon becoming a Buddhist. Originated from the early Sanskrit Buddhist texts, sangha was first used to denominate the monastic community of ordained practitioners. This included the monks and nuns who gave up their secular lives to follow the Buddhist path (Jerryson 2012). Teacher and lineage played significant roles in the forming of sangha since Buddha as teacher was an important role and image perpetuated in Buddhist traditions. Later on, the unique teacher-student relationship became institutionalized as lineage (Seager 1999). With the Buddhist dissemination within the West, the meaning of sangha was also broadened to imply the wider Buddhist community, both regionally and globally, both monastics and laity. In the United States, sangha became a broadly inclusive term, which refers to the group of people practicing meditation together, sharing the same traditions and the same teacher (Seager 1999). In terms of American Buddhism, sangha or community has become an inseparable part for any Buddhist groups or organizations. The sangha of the H temple is one of the local lay communities composed by temple members who practice together and support each other in various ways. A sangha covenant on the main page of the H temple website demonstrates this close bond. Under the “About” column of the temple introduction, the sangha covenant has its own separate page. With multiple pictures showing members gathering at temple service, weddings, and retreats, the covenant is listed above and reads: We the DKJ Sangha, with respect for the worth and dignity of each person, with wonder at the wisdom and compassion we seek to cultivate by practice, and with deep gratitude for the teachers of this lineage and our connection to one another, covenant to support each other by upholding the precepts of doing no harm, practicing good, and actualizing good for others.

This covenant is chanted together as a Sunday ritual, in which the Japanese name “DKJ” (Obscured to its initials here to protect privacy) is translated to English as “GH”—name of the temple’s lineage. As the content indicates, sangha building means more than mutual respect, but also includes the respect for one’s teachers and their lineage, while recognizing the practice of each member. Most importantly, it means an interdependent community. In practice, the ideal of serving the sangha saturates all activities and events. Every presentation, talk, and formal introduction begins with the greeting “hello sangha” and ends with “thank you, sangha.” From time to time, temple members also organized activities like a “Temple Pizza Party” or “Bowling with the Bodhisattvas” to promote the sangha relationship. Within the Facebook group, sangha members share stories, seek suggestions, and leave encouraging responses to support each other. A support group was even created during 2016 entitled “sangha circles.” All member of the community are encouraged to join and meet on a monthly basis to discuss topics such as “how to deal with difficult

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emotions,” or “how to work towards achieve the goals of equanimity and authenticity,” and “how to approach challenging parts of our practice  – such as being a Buddhist ‘in public’”. Ultimately, the goal of having sangha is to build a community in which everyone is recognized and supported for their Buddhist practice. For individual practice, community is also considered crucial. In his abbot address in December 2015, abbot R purposely addressed the importance of sangha on the Bodhi Day—the holiday to celebrate the awakening of Buddha under the bodhi tree. He said: The awakening is not a personal thing; it is also a community thing, something happens in the circle of sangha. It’s so important to be connected; I feel more and more…much of the bitterness happened today because people are getting isolated… so let’s awaken to our true nature; let’s awaken to the nature of community, to the nature of sangha.

As abbot R indicated, even the individualized practice and its ultimate goal— awakening—can be interpreted in a collective manner. Abbot R’s emphasis on sangha actually reflects another Western adaptation of the Buddhist traditions, specifically in American Buddhism: social engagement as an important form of practice. One popular interpretation of Zen practice in the West is to consider Dharma (Basic Buddhist principles) as a “practice of relationship to the body, the community, and the earth” (Queen and Williams 2013, p. xix). One’s spiritual practice is broadened to benefit not only the practitioner, but also the community and family members. To achieve this goal, it is not enough to just meditate on oneself, but to participate in a series of social activities that are beneficial to the community. On a smaller scale, it could be helping out the neighbors and organizing get-togethers for the sangha; On a larger scale, it could also be participating in demonstrations for environmental issues, peace rallies, and volunteering at charitable events. What lies in the heart of the socially engaged Buddhism is compassion for all living beings and a deep sense of social justice. Practitioners are convinced that dharma can be used to resolve social issues and for a collective transformation of the society. One important step of the social engagement was community/sangha building. Ideographically, sangha or functions to recall compassionate feelings practitioners have for the world, the environment, and their fellow practitioners. In mentioning the sense of community, the emphasis is laid on participation, sharing, equality, social justice, and making the world a better place. To a large degree, it is demonstrated as a series of politically leftist social concerns in the discourse of American Buddhism. The utilization of Sangha transcended meditation as a group and referred to gatherings for any important social issues locally or globally. With the expansion of Buddhist ideals in the West, the tradition of serving the sangha is infused with new meanings. According Coleman’s (1999) study on “new Buddhism” in the United States, 63% respondents (who identified themselves as Buddhists) support “increase involvement of their sangha in social activities,” and 33% believed that their community should be more “politically active” (p.  96). Similarly, a growing number of American Buddhists begin to use meditation to complement political work (Seager 1999). Different forms of activism also become

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part of the Buddhist practice, as important as sitting, chanting, and sutra reading, because the world is the largest community where compassionate and loving kindness need to be applied. In essence, community means commitment as a Buddhist practitioner to the self, to others, and to the world. Instead of retreating from the world, one should be prepared to the deep engagement with the world.

3.5.1  Community Building Through Membership Apart from the voluntary work at the temple and random dana (donation), the community of the H temple also built through membership. Quite different from many Buddhist temples in China or Japan that receive national funds from the government, almost all temples in the Unites States are self-reliant. Membership fees and irregular donations throughout the year are their only sources of income. As a result, “expanding the community” became a yearlong responsibility for existing members of the H temple. Newcomers are always reminded to join and become a sangha member on the Facebook group, during visits to the temple, even when browsing their website. As discussed previously, an annual financial contribution was the prerequisite of joining the sangha. Although there was no specific amount required, the temple website did list suggested amounts based on the household annual income. Additionally, while Wednesday night and Sunday morning were open to public, some of the important services were still exclusive to members, like Jukai and Sesshin (monthly intensive retreat), which were necessary practices in becoming a Buddhist. Therefore, “community” possessed an added layer of meaning: paid membership. It was especially so when community/sangha building was constantly associated with membership and financial contributions. In December 2016, leading members of the H temple initiated an activity on the temple Facebook group named “Mindful Monday Membership Challenge.” While everyone was encouraged to take the challenge and talk about the importance of sangha and becoming a member, people who took the challenge should videotape themselves and post to the group. About ten members posted videos to the Facebook group in the following 2 weeks. The contents of these videos were very similar: they showed appreciation for sangha and talked about why membership would help build the sangha. Later on, another recruiting video was posted in the group. This time, it was from a leading member talking about the H temple’s “membership goal” and “budget goal” at the beginning of 2017. In the video, everyone was encouraged to renew or join membership to help sangha reach the $100,000 financial goal and the 100-member goal before the second month of 2017. These members even made pie charts and bar charts to categorize the types of membership donations based on the amount. The point was, no matter which category your may fall into, the paid membership was an important means to build sangha and help the temple.

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Given the financial instability of the H temple, fundraising activities like the Membership Challenge may bring positive change to the institution. Nevertheless, it also created the impression that community building can only be achieved through monetary means, whereas volunteer work that relied on time and labor, like organizing, teaching, and cleaning were unrecognized. It also set up a limit to who could be a sangha member: only those who are financially eligible. Although the temple never claimed the necessity of donation to participate, certain exclusive practices and ubiquitous reminders, talks, and emails about membership to some extent reinforced the “unspoken policy.” In essence, consumerism was connected to the practice of sangha and community as they are commodified in the free market. When temples have to compete with other religious institutions in the neoliberal economy, marketing strategies became especially important. Sangha building—the practice that used to symbolize a collective Buddhist experience and peer-support were utilized for fundraising. In a sense, services provided in the H temple had already become commodities for customers to purchase. And a qualified customer had to become the community member. Only through the paid membership, they can enjoy services as practices, but not only “samples” in random participation. As Jeremy Carrette and Richard King (2005) suggest, “neoliberal ideology is creating a globalizing context in which a single model of the world—one dominated by economics and the values of the marketplace—is taking root” (p. 128). To this end, global religions were also refashioned accordingly. The business mode of religion has taken shape and impacted Buddhist temples and its traditions. Except for commodified services, a plethora of religious institutions are collaborating with commercial enterprises as branding strategies. Buddhist temples in Japan “drew amply from popular culture formats,” especially comics and animation (Porcu 2014). Some temples even used Hello Kitty in Buddha robes to attract the attention of the younger generation. Essentially, when neoliberalism expanded its influence from the West to the East, the religious economy became a global phenomenon. Over the last few years, the market framework was even applied by most temples in Eastern countries where Buddhism was originated. The forms and modalities of Buddhist practice are changing under the intensified relationship between market and religion. So are the traditions. And this trend, as Kitiarsa (2010) notes, will expand further rather than diminish with neoliberal economy.

3.6  S  eeing Through the Ideographs: A Democratic American Buddhism As McMahan (2008) argues, the phenomenon of Buddhist Modernism or many scholars have often meant by “Western Buddhism,” “American Buddhism,” or “new Buddhism” is actually “a hybrid of a number of Buddhist traditions that have cross-­ fertilized with the dominant discourses of western modernity, especially those rooted in Enlightenment rationalism, Romanticism, and Protestant Christianity”

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(p. 2). Following his claims, this chapter explores the specific case of the H Temple of L city and its effort to maintain traditions in the discourse of modernization and democratization. By explicating ideographs like , , , , and that embedded in the temple’s rhetoric about “traditions” from the Japanese Zen Buddhism, I argued that, these self-asserted “traditions” that the H temple has been practicing are actually hybridity forms that are unique only to American Buddhism under the democratic ideology. In utilizing these “traditions” and keeping its oriental appeal to the Western audience, the temple finds its authenticity, its cultural tie to the East, and its surviving mechanism, which are representative of many forms of Buddhist temples in the U.S. Change is undoubtedly inevitable when a tradition is transplanted from one culture to another. Buddhism makes no exception in its diffusion from the East to the West. As McMahan (2008) observes, any forms from a tradition are deeply embedded in local and national cultures as well as “a sea of social practices and unstated assumptions” (p. 62). When Buddhism arrives in the U.S., its traditions have been brought to the conversations that do not share the premises and presuppositions from the Asian culture. In order to connect with the “cultural norms and tacit assumptions” from an entirely different ideological system, tradition has to make adjustments (p.63). In this process, certain features of a tradition are extracted, highlighted, while some others abandoned or reinterpreted to resonate with the new cultural context. However, with the ongoing discourse of Western modernity, this ancient Eastern religion is facing more challenges in keeping its cultural heritages. Additionally, modernization of Buddhism has never been an exclusively Western project or the simplified orientalist experience to “other” the Eastern religion. It has become a phenomenon and subject of research. For example, scholarship of Buddhist modernity in Asian countries has been focusing on the strong affinities of modernization, Westernization, and colonization on traditional Buddhism. These multi-facet and intricate influences often dwell in struggle against Western economic and political domination, adaptation to modern technology and ideologies like equity and human rights, and the new rational/liberal ideals (Gokhale 1999). Sharing some similarities with the East, in the United States, democratization is one of the crucial and necessary changes Buddhism has to go through within the discourse of modernization (Queen and Williams 2013). To conclude, by tracing back to the Japanese culture and Zen traditions in history, as well as the evolution of certain Eastern Buddhist practices on their journey to the West, this chapter sketched a contour of the modernization process to contextualize the changes and transformations. Specifically drawing on my own experience of participation and the Buddhist rhetoric of the H temple, I first focused on the harmonious status of “family temple” ideal when transplanted from the Japanese context to the American Mid-west surroundings, pointing out the commonalities among different culture forms and the necessary process of assimilation as part of modernization. Abbot R’s rhetoric was carefully examined in defending and appropriating the tradition of “married abbot” and spousal transmission, which are the kind of Buddhist traditions being reinvented and reinterpreted several times in different cultural settings during last century. What’s more, an analysis of female priest

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abbot N and the role of female members in the H temple shed light on how feminization has been infused into American Buddhism, which is drastically different from the traditional “temple wife” in Japan. And in order to demystify the de-­ emphasis of belief and the emphasis of moral education in their Buddhist teachings, I probed into of the practice of the dharma school in the H temple from my own teaching experience. Furthermore, the meaning of sangha/community is explicated in the H temple and American Buddhism at large. By performing its own unique Buddhist rhetoric through the mixture of the Westernized practices and some variations of Eastern traditions, the H temple could be viewed as an extremely condensed form of Buddhist Modernity. Meanwhile, its location in the Mid-west also situated it in another layer of complexity: the discourse of democracy and traditional American social values. Efforts and struggles of the temple to maintain traditions while keeping up with times are also representative of most Buddhist temples in the United States. Like what abbot R commented at the beginning of this chapter, Buddhism has been transforming and growing into a global religion without having to justify itself by Asian teachers. But we wonder if this is still Buddhism that we are practicing. The modernization adaptation and the hybrid forms of American Buddhism invite not only concerns over authenticity, but also a reconsideration of our attitudes viewing tradition and making necessary changes without jeopardizing the core spirit.

References Asai, S., & Williams, D. R. (1999). Japanese American Zen temples: Cultural identity and economics. In American Buddhism: Methods and findings in recent scholarship (pp.  20–35). Richmond: Curzon. Asakawa, G. (2015). Being Japanese American: A JA sourcebook for Nikkei, Hapa... & their friends. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, Inc Bodiford, W. M. (1991). Dharma transmission in soto zen. manzan dohaku’s reform movement. Monumenta Nipponica, 46(4), 423–451. https://doi.org/10.2307/2385187. Carrette, J.  R., & King, R., 1966. (2005). Selling spirituality: The silent takeover of religion. New York/London: Routledge. Coleman, J.  W. (1999). The new Buddhism: Some empirical findings. In American Buddhism: Methods and findings in recent scholarship (pp. 91–99). Surrey: Curzon Press. Connelly, E. (2012). State secrets and redaction: The interaction between silence and ideographs. Western Journal of Communication, 76(3), 236–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570314.2011. 653470. Drew, R. (2012). Buddhist chic: A look at Buddhism’s appeal in the West. Svensk Missionstidskrift, 100(1), 91–113. Gokhale, B.  G. (1999). Theravada Buddhism and modernization. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 34(1), 33–45. https://doi.org/10.1163/156852199X00158. Gross, R. M. (2014). The suffering of sexism: Buddhist perspectives and experiences. Buddhist-­ Christian Studies, 34(1), 69–81. https://doi.org/10.1353/bcs.2014.0015. Jaffe, R. M. (2001). Neither monk nor layman: Clerical marriage in modern Japanese Buddhism (p. 328). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jerryson, M. (2012). Encyclopedia of global ­ religion.http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.bgsu. edu:8080/10.4135/9781412997898.n626

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Kitiarsa, P. (2010). Missionary intent and monastic networks: Thai Buddhism as a transnational religion. Sojourn Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 25(1), 109–132. https://doi. org/10.1353/soj.0.0043. Kornfield, J. (1988). Is Buddhism changing in North America?. In D. Morreale, & S. Fe (Eds.), Buddhist America. Centers, retreats, practices. New Mexico: J. Muir Publications. Loori, J. D., Treace, B. M., Marchaj, K. R., & NetLibrary, I. (1996). The heart of being: Moral and ethical teachings of Zen Buddhism (1st ed.). Boston: Charles E. Tuttle. McGee, M. C. (1980). The “ideograph”: A link between rhetoric and ideology. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66, 1–16. McMahan, D. L. (2008). The making of Buddhist modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Noriko, K. (2003). Feminist Buddhism as praxis: Women in traditional Buddhism. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 30(3/4), 291–313. Ogoshi, A. (1993). Women and sexism in Japanese Buddhism: A reexamination of Shinran’s view of women. Japan Christian Review, 59, 19–25. Porcu, E. (2014). Pop religion in Japan: Buddhist temples, icons, and branding. Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 26(2), 157–172. https://doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.26.2.157. Queen, C., & Williams, D. R. (2013). American Buddhism: Methods and findings in recent scholarship. New York: Routledge. Seager, R. H. (1999). Buddhism in America. New York: Columbia University Press. Starling, J. (2015). Family temples and religious learning in contemporary Japanese Buddhism. Journal of Global Buddhism, 16, 144–156.

Chapter 4

Constructing Buddhist Identity at the H Temple

Buddhism is not a religion in the same way that the theistic, monotheistic traditions are a religion. But it is a religion, I am a priest, there’s a temple. We do ceremonies, precepts, funerals, weddings, seasonal celebrations and holidays. To me, it’s not simply a philosophy. – Abbot R

This chapter focuses on the identity construction at the H temple. The process, which determines what a Buddhist is like and how the Buddhist identity is performed online and offline, is also representative of many other Zen Buddhist temples in the United States. Through my analysis of this chapter, the questions previously raised will be answered: How does the H Temple utilize social media and various technologies to communicate with its members and discursively create and negotiate the online religious experience? How does the setting of the temple as a generative space reflect an adaptation of an Eastern religion in the West? In a broad sense, “identity” refers to the process of how an individual grasp the meaning of situations in everyday life and his or her own position in relation to these situations (Hewitt 2000). The personal identity formed in this process, stands for the individual’s meaning-making experience as a separate and unique person. Identity construction has never been an easy process in any religion. According to Karma Lekshe Tsomo (2009), establishing religious identity is an “elusive and multifaceted process, both for those who claim these identities and for those who attempt to categorize them” (p. 78). The complex process differs among adherents of different religions and even believers possess various perceptions of what it means to be a follower and practitioner of that faith. For most Asian American Buddhists, their religious identity is composed of ethnic and cultural components, with “religion predominating on the cultural side” (Queen and Williams 2013, p. xx). This means that the religious identities of most Asian American Buddhists are constructed through their own unique cultural activates. Most Buddhist temples also serve as a cultural center for immigrant communities. In recognizing themselves as Buddhists, adherents also recognize the cultural heritage that helps build this unique identity. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 F. Zhang, Building and Negotiating Religious Identities in a Zen Buddhist Temple, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8863-7_4

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For example, most Japanese American Zen temples would organize activity like “calligraphy, flower arrangement, Japanese folk song and dance” together with meditation and rituals on a regular basis (p. 26). Yet, for most European American practitioners who were not born in a Buddhist family, nor share the Asian cultural heritage, identity is inscribed through other means. For them, the religious life in the temple becomes especially important and usually has an enormous influence on defining the way they identify themselves as Buddhists. Abbot R’s comment above suggests that Buddhism is still considered as a religion even without beliefs in the monotheistic traditions, because the religious life of Buddhists is still rich and abundant. To illuminate the dynamics of Buddhist identity in the H temple within the context of Western modernity, it is crucial to understand what everyday practice and religious routine mean to practitioners. In this chapter, I tend to contextualize the online and offline Buddhist experience in the H temple. In examining the temple’s use of communication technology and social media, the highly individualized practice, the naming strategies, and the temple’s sacred material space, I argue that the construction of Buddhist identity has taken on a new meaning in everyday practice within the discourse of modernity. Rather than granted or received externally through cultural and ethnic means as with Asian Buddhists, practitioners at the H temple actively choose and decide their own Buddhist experience. In a highly individualized manner, their experience might take various forms based on the personal choice. Additionally, with the loss of basic doctrines in Buddhism because of their incompatibility with the Western scientific discourse, the Buddhist experience has to be complemented by traditional rituals, ceremonies, and the use of religious artifacts. The following section will first focus on the temple’s use of communication technology, elaborating on the benefits and challenges from the cyberspace and interpreting the online religious experience from a user’s perspective. Following that, abbot R’s strategies in dealing with member’s secret Buddhist identity and the practice based on Western individualism will be examined. The third area of analysis is the naming practice of the H Temple. I probe into the reasons and results of using Japanese names for members, rituals, and objects in the temple to to explicate how the adoption of Japanese kanji names helped construct the members’ Buddhist identities. Finally, examining the temple from its space and religious artifacts, it is considered as a sacred space in constructing the Buddhist experience. Taking the perspective of material rhetoric of the physical space, I argue that spatial arrangement, religious artifacts, and ordinary ritual objects work effectively in building a collective Buddhist identity.

4.1  Technology at the H Temple and Identity Construction Like many other Buddhist temples in the United States, the H temple has a set of well-designed and well-maintained online platforms for practitioners to receive and share information about the temple on a regular basis. Through these platforms,

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members communicate with each other, listen to temple-sponsored talks and speeches, schedule meetings and donations online, and even meditate and practice rituals via web cameras. It is also through these virtual spaces that the temple advertises itself to potential practitioners near and far. Most importantly, they constitute a significant portion of the members’ Buddhist identity formation. For most regular attendees, meeting the sangha (the Buddhist practitioner community) online is almost as important as meeting it in person while visiting the temple. Basically, the temple’s online communication system consists of three main platforms: the main website, abbot R’s YouTube channel, and the temple’s Facebook group. The H temple main website functions as a synthesis and a directory of various kinds of information one needs to know about the temple, including an introduction to teachers and activities, information about Zen books, a digital event calendar, and the online application system and donation system. In becoming a member and making donations, one could easily complete the process online instead of traveling to the temple. In addition, the main website also provides links to The DG Podcast (abbot R’s own teaching podcast) and the simulcast. Here, abbot R updates important talks through audio files and a live web camera that faces the altar so that people can observe temple activities online at any time. Compared to the main website, abbot R’s YouTube channel serves fewer purposes. It is mainly used for the abbot’s weekly address. Beginning January 2015, abbot R started to address various issues and questions raised by practitioners on a weekly basis online. Most of the abbot addresses are video recorded by R himself from his office or home. In his talks, he answers questions that were posted during the previous week. These weekly addresses are linked to the main website and Facebook group. They have even gained popularity within the community. Once posted, each video usually gets an average of 150 views. The final online platform, the H temple Facebook group, is the most active and interactive among the three. As discussed in Chapter Two, the group already had 250 members by the end of 2016 and the number continues to grow. Although the active members (those who post every day) are less than 20, there are still more than 10 new posts each day. Therefore, most members simply read the posts instead of actively contribute to creating posts. Themes of these posts are often about announcements regarding new events and activities at the temple, questions and reflections about practice, and random articles on Zen and Buddhism. Occasionally, members also forward events and campaigns about environmental and social justice issues in the L city area. One important function of the temple’s online platforms is to help members stay connected and included even when they are far away, just like a virtual sangha. During my participation, I subscribed to abbot R’s YouTube channel, joined the temple’s mailing list through the main website, and was added to the Facebook group. Despite my physical absence during the summer for several weeks, daily and weekly online subscriptions to updates and teachings always kept me connected to new events at the temple. Whenever a new ceremony, a special ritual or even a casual gathering was held, pictures were immediately updated in the Facebook group to share with members. During summer 2016, abbot R began to use the live

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stream function on Facebook, which means group members could watch every event at the temple live from home or work. At the same time, small-group meditation was organized online via Google chat during the Fall Ango, a short period of intensive training in Zen tradition. While the organizer posted a suggested time to mediate in the Facebook group, those members who responded received e-mail invitations. Afterwards, participants sat in front of their web cameras at home during the specific time period. To some extent, communication technology indeed brought more convenience to the temple and its practitioners. Zen practice is neither confined by time nor location anymore. If needed, members could practice anywhere and anytime, yet still claim they are participating in the activities virtually. In addition, social networking websites keep everyone connected and closer. Members can still enjoy the feeling of inclusion and friendliness because of the advantages of modern technology even if they are not actively posting in the group or leaving comments to others. Reminders of activities appear on Facebook users’ notifications, emails with updates of the abbot address are sent to personal inboxes, and greeting messages of smiling faces are posted to the group on a daily basis. Comparatively, the virtual sangha of the H temple is much more powerful and influential than the physical sangha, who meet face-to-face in the temple every week. Although the two types of sangha overlap to a large extent, there are still members who solely rely on these online platforms to practice. For them, technology is the key and the necessary channel to feel included within the Buddhist group. In January 2017, a member of the H temple from San Diego, California expressed her gratitude to the temple and its online platforms through a video shared with the Facebook group. She commented: I’ve listened to abbot R’s podcasts about five years now…Bless him to have so many of them, 230 of them. I’ve never encountered a spirituality that’s so practical, so applicable to my day-to-day life… It’s amazing to me that I can in fact be part of this community. Now there’s the abbot’s addresses, temple simulcast… it’s incredible to be something that’s so much part of my life…I couldn’t be more grateful…it’s funny, it’s alive, it’s real.

Like many other online members who never physically visited the temple due to various reasons, this member identifies herself as part of the sangha through technology. This is quite representative of a whole new religious experience, which emerged in the past few decades with technological innovation, where religious identity in the cyberspace is becoming “real and alive,” as is the case for the member described above. Religious spaces are not limited to certain physical places in the neighborhood, but now extend to the “virtual geography” that can be reached by many (Brasher 2001, p. 70). Moreover, the increasing popularity of online meditation has begun to challenge our traditional definition of community, membership, and religious authorities. However, it might be hard for the H temple to know how many people are actually involved in its own virtual sangha. Nevertheless, this does not diminish the inclusivity its online platforms have created, and the ease of access for connection to the Buddhist community now.

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Another important function of these platforms is to brand the temple and recruit new members who are interested in joining. For most first-time visitors, their encounters with the temple and abbot R actually occurred online through the weekly abbot addresses and the Facebook group. Therefore, Internet has become a necessary and vital venue to recruit members and disseminate the temple’s religious influence. For example, a videotaped Sunday morning service was posted to the homepage of the temple website in order for potential members to understand expectations in the temple. In the one-hour-and-thirty-minute video, talks and activities were both recorded and included the audience/participant responses in order to demonstrate the liveliness of a regular Sunday morning in the H temple. Similarly, on the main website under the “Location” sublink, a small section from Google maps with the temple’s location is embedded on the page. By clicking the star button, people will be able to transfer the address to their own cell phones for directions. Similar widgets also include a digital calendar to indicate daily activities for the entire month and icon links to R’s YouTube and iTunes channels, with the option to subscribe by clicking a button next to the icons. Handy use of technology makes it easier for potential practitioners to get information about the temple online and directions for their trip to the actual temple offline. In presenting the temple and its community with visuals and audio, Internet is used as the medium for branding. This distinguishes the H temple from any other religious organizations in the area. Strategies like these can also be found in the Facebook group, where the group managers, or abbot R, immediately greet new members once they join. Typically, a group manager posts a message tagging the new member’s username and encourages others to say hello. A couple hours after the initial post, replies expressing warm greetings fill up the page. In addition, when becoming a new group member, newsfeeds about the temple and notifications are automatically turned on about all on-going and future events. On average, a member gets over ten notifications about the H temple group per day. Occasionally, abbot R and the group managers also send out invitations for special events as personal messages to members. While keeping the current members updated, the strategy here is to create a relationship with new members and involve them in the temple activities as much as possible.

4.1.1  Challenges from the Cyberspace Out of the need to accommodate a contemporary information society, religious organizations have begun to extend their geographic presence in the last few decades. By posting religious information and “relocate practices” online, they hope to utilize both real and virtual spaces to build the networked community (Cukier and Middleton 2003). A study by Cheong et al. (2009) notes that interactivity is a crucial feature of the mew media, through which members build ties to the organization and participate online. In their case study of the Protestant Christian churches in Singapore, members were encouraged to submit “blessing stories” to

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build the virtual community. Meanwhile, with the real and the virtual intersections in religious practice, more “horizontal relations” emerged than hierarchical ones, because the new media created a platform that enabled people to speak with equal opportunities among themselves and also between the church and its members (p. 296). Instead of listening to preaches passively, they can create their own religious narratives and connect to each other through these stories. In another sense, religious online platforms like websites could also be conceived as “imaged space to reflect the codified representations” of the religious leaders (Cheong et al. 2009, p. 294). Religious leaders may manipulate elements of the cyberspace to “control, engage, and build the religious community” (p. 294). In structuring the website and interacting with members, leaders may utilize elements like images, texts, and hyperlinks to exercise their own knowledge of politics and power (Elwood 2006). Compared to other religions in the West, the pairing of Buddhism and communicative technology has been fairly new since Buddhist practice has been traditionally based on monasticism. Group retreats and physical practices like chanting, sitting, and sutra reading are as important as attending rituals. With the secularization and modernization of Buddhism in both East and West, Buddhist temples also developed their strategic response to the information society and market economy with technological adaptation (Breyer 1993). For example, Zhang’s (2015) study of Longquan Monastery in China examines how a thousand-year-old Buddhist monastery uses communication technology to expand its social influence as a soft power of the state. Through social networking platforms and its own website, the abbot strategically weaves ideologies of nationalism and patriotism into its Buddhist rhetoric. Similarly, Cheong, Huang, and Poon (2011) illustrate how Singapore Buddhist monks manipulate their web presence to expand their communicative capabilities online and offline. As they argue, compared to traditional clerical authority, modern religious authority is “communicatively constructed and relegitimized” (p. 1162). The globalization of religion and the saturation of free market economies have posed a serious threat to the existence of many Buddhist temples and their traditional practices everywhere. Unlike the monasteries in China or Singapore mentioned above, most Buddhist temples in the United States like the H temple are self-supported without any funding from the government. Their problem is multi-­ layered regarding effective strategies to maintain traditions, attract new sangha members, and promote and brand themselves as an acceptable “new religion” in Western discourses. Most importantly, they have to satisfy the member’s need to help construct the unique Buddhist identity and build clerical authority through the online platforms. In branding itself and attracting members online, the H temple’s approaches with communication technology seemed to be rhetorically persuasive. Many first-time visitors admitted that they heard about or knew of the temple through its Facebook group. It was also quite common for some members to join and observe the group discussions for a while before deciding to make their physical visits. However, these approaches did not work in bringing real donations and benefits to support the temple. With the benefits of new communication technology, there are also worries and concerns. As for the case of the H temple, one of the biggest challenges these

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p­ latforms brought was a decline of the actual membership. Compared to the 250 people who joined the Facebook group online, the actual members who made annual donations and physical visits numbered less than 80 in 2016. According to a financial update newsletter from Leadership Council in June 2016, the temple only managed to pay its bills from January to May. With “razor-thin” margins, the temple was anticipated to be short about $1000 in the June. Current members were asked to make a one-time donation in addition to their regular contribution. Although it is clearly listed on the temple website that in becoming a member, one needs to “agree to the Sangha Covenant and pledge to make an annual financial contribution to the temple,” access to all kinds of online resources of the H temple is free and open to public. In other words, for most “Buddhist sympathizers”—people who are merely interested in Zen but not intended in becoming a serious Buddhist, podcasts, abbot R’s teaching videos, and the live stream activities and speeches are sufficient. In addition, one can also read some suggested Zen books on the website, and interact with members in the Facebook group without paying for anything. On the other hand, for adherents who are interested in becoming a Buddhist, it is necessary to participate in retreats like Jukai and Sessin in person to be officially recognized as a Buddhist. For a family temple relying on community donations to operate, losing membership definitely has a significant impact on its survival in the neighborhood. In this sense, the temple was caught in a dilemma by using modern technology. On one hand, information sharing and convenient platforms online effectively connect current members while attracting potential adherents. On the other hand, the access and convenience of virtual outreach make traveling to the temple and making physical visits unnecessary. In the face of these difficulties, on November 18, 2016, abbot R addressed the importance of attending temple services and his attitudes towards technology in the weekly abbot address titled “Harmonious Communication and the Importance of Showing up:” One of the things I wanna be clear about is that it’s very very easy to fall into unintended back and forth stuff when we sort of create these pistols and fire them into the internet, you know. And it’s very difficult in email or Facebook communication to have any kind real substantive communication of ideas… What we really need is true communication and true conversation…. We face the limits of this technology. The main thing is, within our own community, within our sangha, to maintain the integrity of the harmony within our sangha, and the way we do that is to show up.

In denying the quality of communication technology, abbot R’s outreach rhetoric seems to contradict the temple’s extensive use of the online platforms. Or perhaps he underestimated how much the community is relying on these platforms to function and connect. To some extent, “real” communication would not have happened without the technological assistance. What should be questioned is not only technology itself but also the way it is being utilized by various users. What abbot R referred to as “pistols,” the disharmony of communication online, might never happen in the face-to-face setting of the temple. Whenever practicing or visiting, people constrain their talks and behaviors while showing respect to others in the religious space, whether genuine of fake. However, the Internet gives people more freedom of expression when real names, identities are being concealed.

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When the online platforms were put into use, the communication mode has already shifted. Abbot R might be the one to dominant conversations in the temple as sensei (teacher), but in the computer-mediated communication, users take control in their own preferred ways and embed new meanings and contexts into the conversation (Kling 2000). Other than the loss of financial support from “real” members, abbot R’s concern over the harmony of sangha is also representative of a plethora of religious institutions as they strive to explore virtual space for religious influence. The disharmony, as abbot R later noted in the same address, also referred to the misunderstandings and misinterpretations that caused by “not having a real-time, face-to-face, and heart-to-heart conversation.” In his opinion, communication should be mediated through the body and its presence in the physical space. The “true communication” that R emphasized repeatedly actually represented a cultural creation in the American discourse—the “communication” ritual that requires self-­ disclosure in the process and aims at problem solving in its goal. It is the kind of communication that people “sit down and talk” to work out problems. As Philipsen (1992) argues, the notion of “communication” was articulated through a particular view of the relationship between self and others. It differs from “mere talk” but refers to the “close, supportive, and open” conversation between two or more interlocutors (p.74). Furthermore, “communication” is also considered as an artful “work” in constructing self and building relationship, which is distinctive in an American cultural setting. The purpose of “communication” or “true communication”, as Philipsen (1992) further contents, is to fuse the personal with the communal, and affirm oneself “through a process of social interaction” (p. 83). While “communication” is deeply rooted and valued in American culture, it does not necessarily apply to Zen practice that values “silence” and individual enlightenment experience. In many stories of Zen in Chinese and Japanese history, the “encounter dialogue” describes how a Zen master gives an answer of wisdom by sitting in silence. Yet, the response is often quickly understood and considered as a guidance of enlightenment. Similarly, silence is also interwoven into narratives, dialogues, and used in rituals and ceremonies purposefully. As the complementary “other” to speech, its message is “taken to complete the direction and intent” of other rhetorical practices (Wright 1993, p. 30). Another cultural specific expression used in Zen is Koan—brief stories, fables, questions, or description of situation that the master gave a metaphorical or symbolic sign to the disciples for reflection. Contrary to the American communication mode that everything is explicitly expressed and articulated, understanding Koan relies on the student’s own interpretation, which is based on his or her own practices. Hence it is often blurry and abstract. The awakening experience or enlightenment is achieved through these non-­ traditional discourses, because any attempt at a verbal understanding will “lead to a division of Oneness and pushes the disciple further away from the goal” (Suprun et al. 2013). Thus, “true communication” may be counteractive in one’s “awakening.” But instead, “true communication” in sangha will work effectively to motivate American practitioners who values it and who need the social and communal experience of Zen practice. In the H temple, the juxtaposition of multiple c­ ommunication

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patterns is an interesting yet representative phenomenon of modern Buddhism in the United States. It is a mixture of silence in meditation, obscurity in Zen teachings, and “meaningful” verbal communication in other temple activities; it is also a mixture of online chatting and offline face-to-face talks. This hybridity of communication is both high context and low context based on situations, and extremely flexible and adaptable whether online or offline to different recipients. In rituals and meditations in the physical space, words are not even necessary in conveying meaning. But in online videos and text-based Facebook chatting, words become vital in expressing every meaning. Like modern Buddhism in the American setting, its communication mode also evolved from single to plural and became diversified to meet the need of the people in a pluralistic society. In essence, digital communication and online Buddhist practices extended the geography of Buddhist studies and brought more choices and opportunities for both religious organizations and practitioners. However, the new mode of communication also threatened the traditional face-to-­ face communication ritual in American discourse. Furthermore, it may even affect how religious identities are formed.

4.1.2  A Buddhist Identity via Technology Technology never performs in a vacuum as most people have assumed. It is subject to the contingencies of time and space (Deetz 1990). Moreover, technologies are also embedded in a “complex social process” due to their design, use, and individual user preference (Cheong et al. 2009, p. 299). While exploring the temple website and making use of other online platforms, the members are actually establishing a negotiation process with system designers, content manager, and religious leaders. Additionally, “cultural norms and values” may also be added to these platforms to convey symbolic information (p. 299). Technology is thus never a simple tool to be utilized; it is better to consider it a medium that reflects and conveys certain interests and values (Deetz 1990). In the communicative process, technology itself becomes a form of discourse or rhetoric that performs systems of thought, messages, and embedded values. For example, in Laura Busch’s (2010) study of the Buddhist message forum E-sangha, the author demonstrates how web producers and forum moderators employ “discursive and structural Web strategies” to decide boundaries of Buddhist identity and maintain these boundaries as part of the “community schema” (p. 59). By manipulating the content and structural design of the website, authorities of E-sangha strive to facilitate the inter-Buddhist communication within guidelines and principles of a Buddhist orthodoxy from their own understandings and ideologies (Busch 2010). In this case study, the website and its producers worked to manufacture politics and consent among the users. In a similar vein, the online platforms of the H temple perform the same way. From the choice of platforms to website design, and to the content provided by the temple, the experience is more affected by cultural norms and the designer’s choice. Through the communication technology, it is the religious leader who crafts the

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adherents’ religious identities in various ways. First of all, in choosing a Facebook group as its main platform to attract and interact with members, the politics of technology has already leaned towards the group manager. The group is maintained by several volunteers who have the right to manage settings and add members. Although regular members create the content by using group discussions and posts, and every participant is guaranteed the equal right to talk and discuss matters, it is the group manager who has the right to delete or arrange the display of contents. If anything inappropriate appears, it will be deleted immediately. If necessary, the manager can also “pin” discussion threads or important information on top of the group interface to remind people about events or activities. Such arrangement, like agenda setting, has the potential power to influence everyone as recipients of information. Besides managing, active members of temple also have the power to lead discussion topics to attract attention. Normally, the post that is “liked” most in the group is always from abbot R or other leading members of the temple. Users will naturally pay more attention to these types of posts and discussion threads. As a manager of the group, one can also create events, add a file, and even add live stream videos. The power to manipulate technology falls into the religious leader’s hands. By manipulating the group experience, he or she can adjust the information members receive. During this process, the group member’s identity is formatted and reinforced with the embedded politic of technology. Following the goal of enhancing user experience and attracting potential members, the H temple website is also designed to contain certain social norms: a buyer’s market. The home page interface is very clear and easy to navigate while the themes and sublinks are also explicit in explaining their purposes. Once logged into the website, users can easily get an overview of the temple services and find what they are looking for. For instance, users can choose from a series of themes underneath the temple name, which are “Home, About, Activities, Contact, Donate, Join, Location, Podcasts, Schedule, Simulcast,” and “Bookstore.” Under each theme there are also sublinks that direct the user to a specific topic. For instance, under the theme “Schedule,” one can choose to view “Sunday morning service,” “Wednesday evening service,” or “Visiting the temple.” Within the sublink, descriptive texts and images are provided if the user is interested in knowing more. However, the user-­ centered web design and content on the H temple website serve less religious or educational purposes and are more structured like a commercial site for online shopping. Religious activities and yoga classes in the temple are labeled with prices and functionalities and ready to be picked by potential shoppers. Membership information is also repeated in several sublinks with detailed instructions on how to submit the application form and what benefits members can enjoy. Even under each of abbot R’s podcast lectures, a suggested donation amount is listed. For a regular “shopper,” the website is a great platform to display the religious commodities produced by the temple. For others who are merely browsing and enjoying the free access to resources, this is still a shopper’s experience to pick-and-mix their religious identity. Given that the website only facilitates operation of the temple while major activates still happen in the real space, it is still insufficient and misleading in attracting

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new members since there is a lack of substantial content about Buddhism. As the main website of a Buddhist temple, the most basic yet important concepts of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha are not mentioned at all. For most newcomers, the website has also been vague in articulating what it means and what it takes to be a Buddhist but focuses on what benefit one can gain from the activities provided. The closest introduction about Buddhism one can find is perhaps a small paragraph under the sublink “About Zen.” With detailed explanation on how an individual can “know who we are” from the Zen practice, only a few sentences mention that the tradition is actually from the teaching of Buddha. As Bruns (2008) notes, the development of social software and interactive technology meant new opportunities for Internet users to become content producers rather than just recipients of information. Internet is increasingly used for self-­ representation in the social sharing process. However, the new possibilities and opportunities brought by digital communication challenge the way religious identities are traditionally formed (Lovheim 2013). Contrary to the unified teaching and communal learning style one might experience in a face-to-face setting, religious narratives, symbols, and forms of interactions online provide a “spiritual marketplace” for users. Even for regular attendees of the temple who also use the online platforms, religious identities formed online are also integrated into their everyday life and affect how their identities are performed offline. Apart from practicing and learning in the physical space, a Buddhist sense of belonging may also come from communication within sangha in the virtual space. This change is necessary and inevitable with the technological globalization. Prior to the application of communication technology in the religious space, the politics of it should have been taken into consideration. While the H temple is not the first temple to experience this change, it will neither be the last. Religious identity needs to be reconsidered from this perspective, as what role technology plays and who are contributing to the construction process. The next section examines abbot R’s strategies in dealing with members’ secret Buddhist identity and the practice based on Western individualism. I examine in detail two specific addresses by the abbot to illuminate the individualistic ideal of American Buddhist practitioners and how it contradicts with the “no-­ self” principle in Buddhism.

4.2  D  ealing with the Secret Buddhist Identity: Being Rational and Trusting Yourself With the utilization of technology, a main virtual venue for abbot R to “talk to” community members was through his weekly abbot addresses on YouTube. This has also become an important means to help construct members’ Buddhist identities and a complement to his actual face-to-face teachings at the temple. Beginning from January 2015, abbot R first made the video for updating important events and activities in the temple. With more subscriptions later on, he began to add the “Q&A”

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section in these addresses to answer questions raised by community members. Most questions were about basic Buddhist principles and practices, like “what do Zen people believe in?” or “What does it mean to have the dharma transmission?” Whenever important or controversial incidents happened in society, abbot R also made addresses to offer his perspectives and guidance for members to deal with the situation. For example, the abbot address of June 16, 2016 discussed the Orlando nightclub shooting event while abbot Roffered his grief. On November 11, 2016, the address “what now?” was specifically about the Trump victory of the presidential election and what he felt Buddhist practitioners should do regarding the situation. However, the content of all these addresses were leaning towards guidance of proper Buddhists behaviors rather than political opinions on the events. From September 2016, the length of each abbot address was extended from 5 to 15 min or so. Meanwhile, abbot R shifted his focus from updates to the challenges of member’s personal practice. He successively elaborated on the Buddhist concepts of “grief,” “setting intentions,” “dealing with sexualities,” “the meaning of death,” and such. Rather than lecturing from historical texts and sutras, abbot R’s teaching style was more inspirational and experiential. Departing from the individual practitioner’s perspective, he did not give answers to questions directly but suggested practitioners to seek for the “path to enlightenment” themselves. For instance, in addressing the question of “what would happen if we die,” abbot R used a Koan—a traditional Zen short story—to indicate his point of view on death. Briefly, the koan was about how a Zen master encountered death twice and asked his teachers if the man in the coffin “live or dead.” However, he received the same answer of “I cannot say” each time. As time went by, the master finally transcended the meaning of “cannot say” and reached his own enlightenment. In the same way, abbot Rdid not explicitly answer the question. Instead, he commented: The real answer to this question, no one can tell you or explain to you. And honestly, people that have absolute certainty that (say) this is the answer, … and if it’s all figured out by them, they got it mapped out, they didn’t get it. That’s not the awakening of true awakening. There is something here about ‘not knowing,’ about not reducing everything to these categories. … There is nothing I can say, or would say to explain to you what that personal insight into the matter of life and death is. … You deserve to actually see for yourself in your own experience.

Just like abbot R’s comment above, in most of his teachings in the abbot address, “personal insight” and personal experience were prioritized in one’s practice. In order to achieve this insight of enlightenment, the only way is to practice—through meditations. Thus in his teaching, having the trust in oneself and one’s own practice became a necessity of being a Buddhist. His role as a teacher is only to guide the way, while it is totally the practitioner’s own responsibility to find out the “truth.” Similarly, throughout the abbot addresses in 2016, the suggestion of “trusting yourself” became a recurrent theme of all his teaching addresses.

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4.2.1  The Secret Buddhist Identity Another unique aspect of the identity construction process in the H temple is dealing with the common secret identity of being a Buddhist. Although attending practices, rituals, and dressing up in Buddha robes in the temple, members are still faced with pressure from family, friends, and even the society at large to misunderstand Buddhism as a cult practice. The concern had been such an ongoing issue in the temple that abbot R addressed it repeatedly in his weekly updates. The family of a sangha member asked if he had “joined the cult” by getting involved with temple services. Other members were criticized by Christians who believed that their meditation actually “opened a gateway for Satan and demons to come in and possess them.” Most commonly, there are members who are being judged by people surrounding them in various ways. Confronted by these judgments, most members remained silent about their religious belief and the temple practices. From the standpoint of U.S. culture, Buddhism or Zen indeed fits into some of the definitions of “cults” as a form of “deviant religious movements,” which do not originate from a parent church in the host culture and only emphasize participation (Finney 1991, p. 381). It is even more so that the transformed Zen Buddhism in the U.S. presents itself as a nontheistic religion that contradicts with the Abrahamic traditions in the West. Additionally, the communal life-style of retreats, the “charismatic” leader/ abbot, and the use of a foreign language and costume in a way perpetuate people’s confusion and stereotype of this “new” religious form. In explaining the “weird feeling” of being a Buddhist in the Midwest and going public about it, abbot R offers his perspective in the weekly address titled “Outted!” on September 16, 2016. In this address, R offered his suggestions in dealing with the “public” Buddhist identity: what to do when people know I am a Buddhist. He described the awkward feeling that one might have and explained the reasons as follow: A lot of the reason why it feels weird was…perhaps for many of us, it’s the first time that we are identifiably and noticeably part of a minority, and that’s not always a case. For example, me… I am an educated white guy who grew up in the Midwest in the middle class setting. Tons of privilege there, right? … So being a Buddhist publicly is actually the first time I experience myself as a minority in a kind of way. And it’s a lot out there, to suddenly be a part of a group that a lot of people would look at and say: oh, that’s other… Maybe they would incorrectly prejudge you with all kinds of goofy assumptions.

As abbot R indicated, the uncomfortable feeling came from being deprived of privilege in the minority spiritual status and experiencing dissonance with the mainstream belief system. To some extent, this sums up the awkward situation of Buddhism in the United States presently, which is detached from its historical and cultural roots in the transplanting process and the resulting incompatibility with the monotheistic rubrics. As early as the nineteenth century when Zen Buddhism was formally introduced to the United States by the Japanese, the focus was shifted from monastic to lay-­ based practice with a de-emphasis of spiritual beliefs (McMahan 2008). One distinctive feature of the new Buddhism from its Asian origin was the denial of a

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“supreme creator” and abandoning the doctrine of rebirth, which has “few common denominators among various Asian traditions” (Queen and William 2013, p. xviii). In order to blend Buddhism into the discourse of modern science, the early contributors also strategically highlighted meditation, chanting, social engagement, and other ethical activities and made connections to modern philosophy and psychology. Instead of searching externally for the savior figure, modern Zen Buddhism stresses the cultivation of consciousness internally through meditation practices. During this process, personal growth and enlightenment were prioritized within the context of Western rational worldviews (Queen and William 2013). The ultimate goal in practicing Zen today is about “awakening”—knowing the truth about self and its harmonious existence with the surrounding world. Therefore, the most practiced Buddhism in the U.S. is frequently tangled in the debate of whether it is a philosophy or a religion. For people who may have some knowledge of what it is and where it came from, Buddhism serves as a great alternative religious system or life philosophy. But for those who do not, it is the incomprehensible “other,” which cannot be explained with ease and clarity. Abbot R, too, mentioned the how irreconcilable Buddhism might be with the monotheistic religious structure. In the second part of “Outted”, he offered some suggestions for dealing with friends with “truth claims” and who might “swap Jesus or Mohammed for Buddha.” However, Given the history Buddhism had in Asian counties, abbot R did not suggest explaining the differences and giving facts. Instead, he suggested another coping mechanism: We could shout out: ‘you know, I never expected to be Buddhists, It’s kind of a surprise to me too. I found my experience up to that point had been unsatisfactory and been open to experience. I encountered the tradition (Buddhism) and found it incredibly nourishing.’ In fact, it seems really obvious to me. … It’s really fulfilling to me.

In this persuasion or clarification process, “I” was centered and “my own experience” was put first. In other words, “I” was not pushed or coerced into the practice but “found it incredibly nourishing myself.” In defending the authenticity of a religion, personal experience becomes the only justification rather than factual evidence. Indeed, personal experience does play a crucial part in Modern Buddhism. Specifically in American Buddhism, it has been grounded into the basic practice and became a necessary component of one’s Buddhist identity. In his abbot address of January 12, 2017, abbot R repeated “the trust in self” in admitting the Buddhist identity to family members: The first thing to realize is that, you really honor your internal wisdom and truth, you know, trust yourself. … And really, taking Jukai is about yourself taking refuge, in Buddha, Dharma, and sangha, as it is shaped and expressed in the H city sangha community.

Similarly in the statement above, “self” is positioned before any other condition in recognizing and becoming a Buddhist. In convincing the family, it is especially important to convince oneself and trust oneself, or in abbot R’s phrase, the “internal wisdom and truth.” Traditionally, the criterion for assuming Buddhist identity is to go through the refuge (the Buddhist ceremony for official conversion) in the Buddha, Dharma, and

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Sangha (Tsomo 2009). While self-recognition (Buddha) is a significant process, so are the teaching from masters (Dharma) and the learning from peers (sangha). In Asian Buddhist traditions, becoming a Buddhist usually means the communal monastic experience: tedious study of sutras with the teacher and long-term practice with peers. Obtaining the “truth” is a matter of time and accumulation of knowledge. Guidance to the right path is usually composed of multiple efforts and is not intended to be an easy process that can be accomplished by oneself. The urge to prioritize self and emphasize personal experience are actually the compromises Buddhism had to make when transplanting from the collectivism based cultural discourse to the “individualized model of spiritual fulfillment and liberation” in the West, which is generated from the discourse of liberal individualism (McMahan 2008, p. 196). In other words, “I” becomes the testimony of one’s own spiritual experience. As a distinct entity, the individual has the right to choose their self-directed ends free from any oppressive powers in social, communal, or institutional forms. In Zen practice, individual needs and inner freedom in a way have transcended any external conditions and prerequisites in reaching the state of “awakening.” Rituals, ceremonies, community support and even teachings are becoming experience-based from the individual perspective. The spiritual individualism and subjectivism have deeply rooted in the Western religious systems that it becomes the only means of negotiation for defending the legitimacy of Zen Buddhism. As abbot R suggests in his address, it truly is the only way to explain this foreign religion to the family and friends.

4.2.2  Mix-and-Match Buddhism for Individual Needs My experience from participating in activities, teachings, and rituals in the temple are about constructing and reconciling the individual-based Buddhist experience with my experience with Buddhism as collective and cultural-based. Interestingly, the actual word “Buddhist” was seldom used or publicly discussed in the temple, nor was the word “belief.” During his talks and teachings, abbot R always encourages practitioners to seek for inner truth and compassion, but he rarely ascribes these actions to the behavior of a Buddhist. Instead, the most frequently used word is “practice” and it is highly individualized. Even when participating in community-­ based activities or sitting with the sangha, it is about seeking support and encouragement for individual practice on the path of awakening. In abbot R’s rhetoric of spirituality, Zen practice equals to the belief system in other religions. In answering the question “What do Zen people believe in,” abbot R explicates the importance of practice in his abbot address of February 16, 2016: Zen is not so much a matter of believing in things in the sense of intellectual concepts. What’s very really relevant is your practice. So practice is the main thing, more than believing. … It’s not really a belief set. In that way it’s very rational…. Even though to be sure Zen has its own kind of rationality.

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According to abbot R, the emphasis on individual practice and the fact that it is not a belief set made Zen a rational religion. In other words, a Zen practitioner should believe in himself/herself instead of the external force or being. Therefore, among practitioners in the temple, there is a mix of purposes and goals due to individual needs. In bowing to the Buddha statue, one can choose to kneel down or stand still; in meditation, one can close eyes or open eyes. It is also perfectly normal to only participate in meditation and ignore other activities. It is a community without unification because every individual needs to be respected and valued because of their differences. Being a Buddhist is rather a matter of personal choice through constant practice without any involvement of external factors. At the same time, the practice can be really flexible based on personal schedules and preferences. If necessary, keeping the Buddhist identity as secret is also a choice and should be respected. In this regard, the H temple is not the only case. A loss of a “unified form” in American Buddhism has become a consensus among scholars and practitioners (Queen and Williams 2013). Immersed in the cultural discourse that celebrates pluralism, diversity and values individualism, Buddhism had to make adaptations in its communal style and hierarchical model to fit into the Western value system. These changes and adaptations constantly challenge its Asian origin and the essential beliefs and practices have aroused issues concerning authenticity. Over the years, the new form of Buddhism — American Buddhism — has undergone several waves of criticism for its radical change and its hybridity. One might wonder what is left to define Buddhism as a religion without basic beliefs like doctrines of reincarnation and karma? During the “massive subjective turn” in the 17th and 18th centuries, Western modernity shifted from the materialistic and extraverted emphases toward “an increased attention to subjectivity, selfhood, and the mind” (McMahan 2008). The modern notion of selfhood constantly stresses personal choice and self-reflexivity, which creates the role for the new Buddhism to fill, since it has been transformed into a highly individualized and non-institutional form of spirituality in the West. As Schedneck (2013) observes, “perfecting the individual self, through mental and physical activities, is part of modern trends of which Asian global religious practices have taken advantage of” (p. 39). The discourse of modernity compels individuals to decide their own lifestyles: what to believe, how to believe, and “how to practice those beliefs” (p.40). On one hand, the personalized spirituality form greatly increased the popularity of Buddhism since it is a religious format that everyone finds applicable. On the other hand, it is contradictory to the core teaching of Buddhism—the “no-self.” Buddhism posits that life is characterized by impermanence, loss of self, and dissatisfaction (Mitchell 2008). Our mundane existence and the fleeting pleasure it produces are all marked by the characteristic of “no-self,” which means, “within human nature, there is no permanent self or soul” (p. 36). The Buddha teaches us that the selfhood constituted by a body and a mind is false and impermanent and is always subject to change and always filled with duhkha — the suffering from dissatisfactory feelings. A belief or fixation on the permanent self will only lead to

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radical ends, like selfishness and egoism as the sources of duhkha. Additionally, this dissatisfaction also projects to the world around us. For example, clinging to a fixed sense of being young and attractive can cause great frustration and misery with aging of the body. The great awakening experience in Buddhism is a break from the illusive permanent self and a realization of the selfless love and compassion for others (Mitchell 2008). Compared to the decentralized selfhood in Buddhism, individualism stresses the wants and needs of an individual prior to the collective and social forms. As Tipton (1982) contends, “the efficiency of agents in maximizing the satisfaction of their wants is the cardinal virtue of this ethic, not their obedience or rationality” (p. 7). For practitioners, the overwhelming self-reliance, self-satisfaction, and independence may be inherently problematic because they create the false worldview that they are autonomous beings and not part of a greater unity. What is more contradictory is the practice of attaining “no-self” through the close attention to needs of self. Hatred, anger, sadness, and greed generated from the dissatisfaction would only bring duhkha, more sufferings and a permanent sense of lack in our lives. In the reflexive sense of Zen Buddhism, maybe it is time to reflect on the true meaning of practice. With the loss of doctrines and basic principles, the individual mix-and-­ match practice is only pushing American Buddhists further away from the ultimate awakening. The next section examines the rhetorical action of introducing Japanese Kanji names in regular temple communication and practices. Taking into account the idea of mutual intelligibility and cultural discourse, I shed light on the necessary adjustments a tradition has to make when introduced into the new cultural discourse and its influence on identity formation.

4.3  The Power of Naming: Rituals, Members, and Objects One interesting phenomenon at the temple is the use of foreign (i.e., Japanese) names for objects, activities, and even members in the community. Newcomers might have to adapt to this “coded language” when communicating to regular attendees. However, they will soon realize that these frequently used words and phrases are actually Japanese in origin. Besides constituting an “exotic” environment for a Japanese Zen temple, the naming practices significantly influence practitioners’ religious experience and guide them to recognize themselves as Buddhists. First of all, members tend to communicate with each other with their Dharma names both offline and online. Following the Mahayana Buddhism tradition in Japan where their lineage came from, members going through ordination will receive a dharma name to indicate they have made the commitments to the Buddhist precepts. As the precepts vary in different traditions, in Zen Buddhism, there are 16 precepts to receive (Seager 1999). Taking the precepts from a teacher means the lineage of ancestors formally acknowledges the person as a Zen Buddhist practitioner. In the temple, the ordination is achieved by going through the Jukai initiates

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retreat, which is also known as Bodhisattva Initiation or Lay Ordination. Jukai is directly taken from Japanese, while Ju means “to give” or “to receive,” and kai refers to the precepts (Prebish 2001). Specifically, at the H temple, the annual Jukai initiates retreats consist of four different periods of retreats, which last from 1 day to 6 days in length. Throughout the retreats, Jukai members live in the temple or the abbot’s family farm as a group to practice meditation, chanting and writing vows, and sewing their own Buddha’s robe, known as the Zen Rakusu — a simplified version of the actual Buddha robe which is worn around the neck and falls over the chest. On behalf of the temple, abbot R and abbot N give each member a dharma name that will be sewed or written on the back of the Rakusu by each member as a form of practice, together with both abbots’ seals and the temple seal. A common dharma name usually contains two to three characters from Japanese kanji, which are the adopted Chinese characters in the Japanese language. For example, the dharma name Kaishin, which means ocean heart or ocean of faith, represents the Japanese kanji 海心. However, dharma names are given based on the meaning, and will mostly be used and shown in the Romaji forms (the Roman letters used to indicate the pronunciation of Kanji, like Kaishin for 海心). Therefore, when ordained members receive their own Rakusu, both kanji and its Roman representation Romaji will be sewed to the back together with the English meanings. These specific Romanized dharma names are used by the H temple members in their daily conversation to address themselves and each other in the temple and online. When meeting each other face-to-face in the temple, instead of waving or shaking hands, members put palms together and bow while addressing each other by their dharma names. Although awkward to most new visitors, these names and greetings have been ritualized into everyday activity and become a norm of member communication and temple operation. In the virtual space, ordained members are also more inclined to identify themselves and others with their dharma names. Most members in the temple’s Facebook group added their dharma names to their own as a special middle name. For example, both priests added their dharma names (“R” and “D”) as middle names. Hence their full names always show up with the middle name whether online or offline. Additionally, it was the dharma names that they would like to be used by members in conversation. At the H temple, by not necessarily knowing what someone else’s name means or even what their original name is, members recognize their fellow practitioners through these Japanese kanji, and represents a closer bond within the community. Like Jukai, Rakusu, and the dharma names of ordained members, there are also other rituals and artifacts named directly with Japanese in the temple. Sesshin, which means touching the heart/mind in Japanese, is frequently used to name an intensive meditation session. The Sesshin practice is believed to stem from the Buddha himself (Shakyamuni) who reached enlightenment after intensive sitting meditation beneath the Bodhi tree (Morgan 2004). It is also closely associated with the Japanese Zen master Dogen who also reached enlightenment through steady meditation. In the temple, members organize occasional short period retreats like “October Sesshin” or “December Sesshin” over the weekend to practice silence and

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meditation. During Sesshin, Oryoki meals will be served as a way of practice. Also originated from Japan, Oryoki means “just enough” and indicates a meditative form of eating in monastic living. What’s more, in the H temple, meditation is usually referred to as zazen, the Japanese for seated meditation and the meditation hall is known as Zendo — the Japanese “Buddha hall.” The list can go on and on. For practitioners at the H temple, the act of naming, whether used to address peers or themselves, is part of the Buddhist identity performance. As Bidwell (2008) contends, “the primary social process remains central to creating and maintaining religious identity in contemporary Buddhism” (p. 3). It is through the social process that an individual develops the “meaning of situations in everyday life” and their own positions in relation to them (Lovheim 2013, p.42). The use of Japanese names infuses the social process with a new dimension of meaning and creates for members a unique discourse that is different from other social occasions in daily life. In other words, the powerful Japanese names enable a Buddhist discourse in the temple where identities are negotiated and rediscovered with meaning. A bell becomes sacred when it becomes a Densho; and “Mike” may not be quotidian Mike, but Kaishin the Buddhist.

4.3.1  Experiencing Dharma Names in a Foreign Discourse My first impression of the H temple was the unexpected encounter of these Japanese names. With some knowledge of Buddhist studies from my previous research and my own practice, I was prepared to hear terminologies like “Dharma,” “Sangha” or “Bodhisattva” at my first visit to the temple, as these have similar pronunciations in Chinese and English. They are translated from original Sanskrit of India that has been kept universal in different traditions and lineages of Buddhism. Distinctly different from my temple experience in China where monasticism is always represented by young Asian males, I was greeted by two Caucasian female members bowing in grey Buddha robes and introducing themselves in their dharma names. As they flipped their Rakusus over and showed me the kanji characters, I then realized that these were Chinese characters in Japanese. After a brief self-introduction, I was led to the main hall together with others and started to prepare for Zazen after the Densho (bell) was rung. This time, it didn’t take me long to figure out Zazen referred to sitting meditation. By the end of the night, abbot R gave a talk about koan (short stories for enlightenment) in the Zen tradition and master Ananda (a well-respected Zen master in history). Upon leaving the temple, I was reminded to help “restore the Zendo,” which means putting cushions and pillows back to their original positions. Throughout the night, there was no explanation about these Japanese terms as regular attendees were very familiar with them and new comers just followed along. During my participation in the following 2 months, I learned about these meanings through random conversations with regular attendees while observing their behavior when these special terms were used. Surprisingly, these Japanese words and phrases blend perfectly into the members’ English communication such that no

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one even questioned why they were used or if they represented the corresponding meaning correctly from Japanese. For regular attendees, using these Japanese terms means the “norm,” since this is how they were taught and how they recognize their practice. These foreign words and phrases have become part of the temple routine and everyday vocabulary regardless of a full comprehension of their meanings. The lack of understanding is especially evident when members identify themselves and their fellow practitioners through dharma names. By using the same type of names, they obtain the sense of community that is distinct from other communities. Nevertheless, most members know nothing about other members’ dharma names other than the pronunciation. Misspelling and mispronouncing happen frequently at occasions when names are required. There are times when some members do not even remember the meaning of their own dharma name after possessing it for a few years. For first-time attendees or newcomers with only a couple visits, it is more difficult to understand the situation, as “decoding” the language and associating words with certain objects and actions takes more effort than expected. Without further explanations, these Japanese terms also appear frequently on the temple website, on the Facebook group, and in weekly abbot addresses. At each monthly orientation session, abbot R takes the opportunity to introduce some of these terms to newcomers. However, getting used to them and fully incorporating them to the one’s own language system are never easy. The most effective strategy for new members is always to watch and learn along their practices with others in the temple. Not only in the H temple, the practice of getting another name for oneself may sound odd to most Western religions. Actually, having a dharma name is very common in Buddhism around the world. In Japanese Buddhism, Buddhist teachers bestow names on their heirs to acknowledge them in the lineage (Foulk 2008). Historically, the teachers bestow the family name “Shaku” and a personal dharma name, while “Shaku” indicates the family name of the Buddha Sakyamuni (P. 266). In Modern Japan, dharma name selections are regulated and restricted to a certain scope of characters and family name “Shaku” is no longer retained. However, teachers still select names that reflect their own lineage for their students, hoping to pass on the legacy. This specific name selection and name giving process was well preserved as a tradition when Zen Buddhism transmitted to the West. Interestingly, with the change of language and cultural settings, the tradition of giving dharma names in Japanese kanjis never changed in most Zen temples in the United States. One possible reason was the use of Japanese as the main language in most Zen Buddhist temples run by Japanese Americans at first, who considered the language itself as a cultural heritage to be retained (Foulk 2008). Later on, as the number of Zen practitioners expanded among Euro-Americans, this special naming practice was kept together with other rituals and viewed as a respect for the tradition. For the H temple, this tradition was well maintained and explains how Japanese permeates the local English communication among members in the community. However, the seemingly exotic use of foreign language has also caused confusion and misunderstandings due to a drastic change of its cultural discourse. From an intercultural perspective, this rhetorical action of adopting and using foreign names

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without shared understanding is fundamentally problematic. In order for a rhetorical action to be understood, as Carbaugh and Wolf (1999) suggest, it is necessary for members to build the mutual intelligibility among different cultures: “the shared, common, and publicly active meanings that can be presumed to be the basis for practical rhetorical action” (p. 21). The key to building such a basis is situating the rhetorical action in its own cultural discourse, which refers to a distinctive expressive system of terms, forms, and topics in every culture. In the case of H temple, the Japanese kanji names could only be interpreted within the Zen Buddhist rhetoric and Japanese cultural discourse. Once mingled with English without the premises of mutual understanding, it would cause more confusion in self-identification and communication at large.

4.3.2  When Names Are Transplanted: An Orientalist Approach Generally speaking, a name gives information and creates a unique label for an individual. Names reveal who we are, where we are from, what cultural background we grew up with, and sometimes even our age and personal preferences. Through this unique label we remember, recognize, and acknowledge one another in our daily communication. Thus people care about how they are addressed and how they conventionally present their names to others as an important strategy for identity management (Cheang 2008). At the same time, the meaning of a name is usually culturally ascribed and carries certain connotations in one culture and loses them in another. A name like Kaishin would immediately evoke connections to martial arts in Japanese cultural discourse since shin, which means “the core” or “the spirit”, has been used in lineage names of martial art in Japanese historically. Similarly, names like Mary or Lily would lose their symbolic meaning of “purity” once placed outside Christian cultural discourse. As an important component of the traditional Buddhist rhetoric, dharma names are given with much more symbolic meaning than the lexical meaning. It is an evaluation of the practitioner from his/her teacher based on the yearlong practice. It also symbolizes the kind of unique quality the teacher wants the student to be associated with and remembered by himself and others. In enunciating the dharma name, a cultural schema is activated which includes a set of different references, ideas, emotions, and behaviors. Thus, a dharma name may be interpreted with multiple layers of meaning in its own cultural discourse but just the superficial lexical meaning in other cultural discourses. Another example is the Dharma name suixi (随喜) in Chinese Buddhism. When introduced to the Western discourse, it was translated as “delightfully follow” in English based on the meaning of its characters. However, the concept was taken from several Buddhist sutras in Chinese, and means “to share the happiness of good karma.” Meanwhile, Sui is also a widely used term in Chinese culture, meaning “following the destiny or the law of karma.” However, when translated as “delightfully follow,” which is perfectly justifiable, it inevitably brings up the cultural resonance this word has in Modern English. Instead of being associated with an

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unconditional joy from the action of sharing the good karma and the destiny of karma in traditional Chinese discourse, it is easier to be understood as an action of personal satisfaction in English. For any Western practitioner who was bestowed name suixi but knowing nothing about Chinese culture, the name has lost its symbolic function in the first place, let alone communicating with the name among the members in the community. Similarly, the practice of borrowing Japanese dharma names in English communication may have kept the tradition on one hand but deprived its cultural connotation on the other. Kanji names, when being given, used, and communicated among members of the temple, have lost the mutual intelligibility within the Japanese discourse. Ultimately, the effort to keep the tradition of kanji names but decontextualizing them from the appropriate cultural discourse is a reflection of an orientalist complex in the Buddhist modernization process. Representations of the Orient, in Edward Said’s (1979) words, or oriental fantasies from the Western perspective are tied to the subjugated East. West became the one to speak for the East and dominates them. American Buddhism has largely fantasized the fusion of Buddhism with modern science and technology, as well as the modernization of all their practices. For example, the sect of Tibetan Buddhism in the United States has been following Dalai Lama’s lead to promote the communication between science and Buddhism (Knight 2004). The interest in this connection is mostly manifested as exploring the full capacity of human brain through meditation. Richard Davison, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, has claimed to find out that “certain neural processes in the brain are more coordinated” in people with extensive meditation training (para.11). Some practitioners of American Buddhism are also driven by the nostalgic feelings of keeping certain traditions in the new cultural context. The mix-and-match practices and hybrid forms of modern Buddhism are a demonstration of the nostalgic orientalist complex from the West (Schedneck 2013). The discourse of modernity appropriated the reconfiguration process. On one hand, when introducing Buddhism from the East to the West, Asian religious leaders aligned themselves with the rhetoric of rationalism and scientific naturalism, mostly because the modernized always means the better and the more civilized aspects of human development. On the other hand, Western religious leaders reconstructed Buddhist practices with “Romantic Orientalist ideals” by tracing back to the traditional elements (p. 41). In a sense, the Western “gaze” gave birth to the new Buddhism, which keeps the Oriental aura in its format, but has done away with the spiritual sectors and became more rational in all forms of practices. Therefore, we have the mysterious and exotic but intricate Kanji names to represent Zen and its authenticity in an American Zen temple. It is never about how they should be understood and utilized, rather it is about what this ancient and Asian practice symbolizes. It is about the romantic nostalgic complex the Western spiritual leaders behold in the name of the far Orient.

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4.4  Temple as the Sacred Space in Constructing Identity The last but crucial element of constructing Buddhist identity in the H temple is the temple space. In examining the rhetoric of spaces and places, we tend to pay close attention to the symbolic meaning and cultural connotations they embody (Dickinson 2002). Mundane spaces like museums, national parks, and public memorials are frequently visited and valued because of their symbolic importance. Similarly in a religious site like a temple or a church, the physical space is arranged to specific uses of their symbolic meaning. However, it is through the materiality of the symbols and their influence on people that the meaning of a space is constructed. As Carole Blair (1999) suggests, it is crucial to consider a “particular artifact or text’s material existence” and how it acts on persons (p. 16). In other words, the material rhetoric of a shared space or landscape takes into consideration people’s encountering experience, which plays an important part in their public identity construction (Zagacki and Gallagher 2009). Similarly, visual and material artifacts used in a religious space are also constructing the symbolic sacredness in ways that are largely taken for granted. For practitioners, religious identity has never been a given but needs to be cultivated and reinforced constantly in the sacred space through interacting with the material objects. This is especially in the case of modern Buddhism that emphasizes routine practices and rituals. To view Buddhist identity not as “abstract or disembodied,” I need to place it in the material spaces where everyday routine takes place (Dickinson 2002, p. 6). As previously mentioned in Chapter Two, the temple building of the H temple is actually renovated from of an old factory warehouse. One advantage of the warehouse structure is the spacious room and the tall roof, which is perfect for holding up to 100 people during important occasions. Resembling an authentic Japanese zendo (meditation hall) with interior decorations in Zen tradition, the temple’s structure was purposefully divided into three different rooms. The first room near the main entrance is used for socializing and depositing shoes. The second room, which is also the biggest one, serves as the main sitting area and room for rituals and events. The third room in the back is where Aikido training takes place. Compared to the first and the third one, the main sitting room constructs a distinctive sacred space with the presence of three Buddha statues, the altar table, burning incense, sound instruments, and cushions for sitting. The sense of sacredness manifests itself in the ways practitioners talk, walk, sit, and even bow. Without being a specific requirement, practitioners tend to lower their voices in front of the statue and around others in the room to show respect. Similarly, most people bow to the Buddha statue upon entering the room and leaving the room. The sacredness of the space is especially reflected in the ritual practices. Everyone becomes solemn at the bell strike and starts putting palms together. Through chanting, sutra reading, meditating, and listening to abbot R’s talks in the room, practitioners are able locate themselves in a “Buddha space” to explore the awakening experience.

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Participation in the rituals becomes the embodied experience for members to negotiate their Buddhist identity. As LaWare and Gallagher (2007) contend in their analysis of public art in the urban space, “spaces of attention” is created by the encounter of visitors in the landscape, which engages seeing, hearing, and touching as “mixed modalities” (p. 162). The enactment of the material rhetoric functions to “evoke a collective sense of understanding” among visitors (Zagacki and Gallagher 2009, p. 172). Similarly in the ritual practice, by ringing bells, holding sutra books, offering incense, and playing musical instruments, members’ Buddhist identity gets evoked and reinforced. In a typical Zen monastery in Asia, rituals are usually completed by monks who reside at the temple as part of their practice. However, in a family temple like the H temple, most members have the opportunity to become the “ritual staff” due to its non-monastic nature. They are thus in charge of playing these traditional Japanese instruments and distributing the sacred texts. Throughout the ritual, no oral orders are given but a certain instrument is played and becomes the guidance to proceed. For example, Densho (bell) ringing means time for gathering in the hall while Inkin (a hand-held bell) ringing means beginning of a meditation. In the process, participants collaborate with each other to create the unique collective ritual experience and a sense of belonging. Meanwhile, sound of bell, group chanting, smell of incense, printed sutra book in hand, and the performance of abbot in front of the Buddha statue comprise the mixed modalities to define and reinforce what it is like to be a Buddhist. The group bonds via this sense of shared identity. It is the materiality and spatial arrangement of the room that evokes this sense, thus making it a sacred space.

4.4.1  Sacred Gaze in the Sacred Space The arrangement of the religious artifacts in the temple similarly contributes to the material rhetoric in a more visual way. In the H temple, Buddhist statues become the centerpiece of the first two rooms. Upon entering the temple into the first room, a statue of Kwan-Yin (Buddha of compassion) is placed on the middle of the welcoming table with sign-up sheets and the donation box, marking the space as religious. Walking across the first room to the main sitting room, one would immediately notice a second Buddha statue in the most prominent place of the room: statue of Shakyamuni on the altar table near the windows. Above the entrance to the main sitting room, several black and white portraits of Zen masters in this lineage hang on the wall. For members and visitors, the placement of these artifacts incorporates the body into a vision of solemnity and sacredness. Whether Buddha statues or portraits of masters, the images exemplify the wisdom, the compassionate, the mindfulness, and the awakened self that practitioners should admire and learn from. By being purposely positioned in places that dominate the room space, they form a powerful “sacred gaze” on the practitioners and a constant reminder of precepts they have taken as Buddhists. As Morgan (2005) argues, “religious imagery is a particular type of world making that provides a visual mediation of a particular

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group of humans and the forces that help to organize their world” (p. 55). Indeed, the statues and portraits embody an intimate relationship one has built with the “awakened” through the sacred gaze. In a Zen Buddhist sense, it is the teacher-­ student relationship rather than the Supreme Being that motivates the practitioner to go further on this path. At the same time, gaze of the teachers prompts practitioners to be self-reflexive on their words and behaviors in the temple and also in their lives, which urges the performance of a Buddhist identity. The temple’s sacred experience has been significantly mediated through a material rhetoric. Even for the regular Zazen (Zen meditation), what we take for granted in daily lives is also infused with special meaning in the temple. Meditating in front of Buddha and in a communal style has been a tradition in Asian Buddhism. Before introduction to the United States, meditation was exclusively monastic and not applicable to lay practitioners. With ubiquitous meditation in the Western society today, in schools, psychologist’s office, and homes, sitting at the temple does offer some original and authentic monastic experience. It is especially so when the H temple elevates the role of Zazen over chanting, ritual, merit making (accumulation of good deeds) as the most important weekly practice. For most members, sitting routinely with others in their own Buddhist robe offers a great escape from distractions and trivialities of everyday life. Whether from burning incense, a Buddha image, guidance of abbot R, or any other Zen-related artifacts, the space offers security, familiarity, and the unique Buddhist “aura.” As a material space, the temple not only provides cultural resources and religious artifacts. It is where all these materiality become ritualized and embodied with the sacred meaning. The rhetoric of the temple space urges an action that reinforces this sacredness. The Buddhist identity is directly woven into bows, meditations, contemplation of the artifacts and images, and even casual encounter between members. This rhetoric is powerful because it is immersed in the banal religious life. Taken together with other rhetorical forms in the temple, they create and maintain what it means to be a Buddhist and make the H temple a generative space of the collective identity.

4.5  New Dimensions and Meanings of the Buddhist Identity What does it mean to assume a religious identity? What does it mean to be a Buddhist? These questions will surely be answered depending on different religious traditions and different individual perspectives. A Buddhist identity has always been fluid, especially when we contextualize the definition of Buddhism within the time and location continuum. Traditionally, when we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, we become a Buddhist. Today, the refuge ceremony is still the most important criteria. Yet, what makes a practitioner a Buddhist is becoming complex and inexplicable. Modernization brought about technology, and it directly leads to a revolution of our access to knowledge and a change of our worldviews. Juxtaposition of the old and the new, the novel and the traditional create a series of questions to the global religions. In American Buddhism, it is particularly an exigent one.

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In the H temple, practitioners build their Buddhist identities in a very random and self-tagging way. Rather than taking the refuge and treating it like a lifelong commitment—which most authorities of Buddhist traditions codify as criteria— their identities are closely related to their Buddhist way of living: a way of moral, spiritual and intellectual training based on personal choices and interests. Underneath the traditional practices of meditation, Buddhist robes, the Japanese naming process that justify the authenticity of their practice, members of the H temple form their identities in a very modernized fashion: through online groups, podcasts, YouTube videos, and website information. Some identity features can even be attributed to the “free market” view of religion under modernization: looking for personal benefits from aspects of Buddhism. The modernization process can also explain the scientific discourse of Buddhism in the H temple: being rational, “trust in oneself” in a religion based on “no self,” and denying some part of Buddhist teachings like reincarnation and miracle stories. Religious identities are not reinforced, rather, they are chosen and carefully crafted, and can even be concealed. This chapter explored the new dimensions and meanings of Buddhist identity. In delving into the effort the H temple has made to create the Buddhist experience for practitioners online and offline, I evaluated the effectiveness of these approaches. Through the rhetoric of technology, abbot R’s rhetoric of spirituality, and the rhetoric of materiality of the temple space, I shed light on how identities were constructed by different facets of Buddhist rhetoric. After all, the temple bears another paradox in utilizing these approaches. Western rationality urges the application of technology, individualism, and free choice. However, the barely connected Eastern roots of American Buddhism appeals for a reserve and respect of the traditional communal rituals and practices. Consequently, members’ Buddhist identity is formed as inherently hybrid and split, which is hazardous and misleading in their path to be enlightened and awakening. Going back to the question raised earlier in this chapter: when basic doctrines like reincarnation and karma and are at stake, it can hardly be identified as Buddhism or even a religion, but some hybrid collection of practices to make individuals feel good about themselves. The situation became more complicated when Buddhism was being commodified and pushed to the market under the neoliberal economy. Just like the format of the H temple website, in facing consumerism and free market, the religion had to change to satisfy “customer’s needs.” In their “cherry-picking” process, some traditions and doctrines that are not compatible with our time will be eventually done with. Like what Charles Taylor (2007) comments in his book Secular Age, Western societies have changed from “belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace” (p. 516). With the overwhelming individualistic thoughts and a deep belief in free choice, human became their own spiritual leaders as identifying who they are and what to believe, which would only cause more confusion when referring back to traditions. Interesting, the transformation process of Buddhism was initiated under the “Western gaze” and the Romantic fantasies of the East. When the Japanese introduced Zen Buddhism to represent the superiority of their culture to the Western world. They still had to articulate the religion through the modernity discourse and

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the orientalist framework. Assuming a Buddhist identity is not just bowing to Buddha, sitting in Zazen, and dressing up in Rakusu, but to have the critical and explorative spirit to see behind the statues and portrays, and to know truly what the religion is about and who is speaking for it.

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Chapter 5

The Buddhist Rhetoric of the H Temple: What Does It Mean to Be an American Buddhist?

In this book, I explored the rhetorical contours of the H Temple of L city, Ohio. By examining its opportunities for involvement, challenges to sustainability, and its ethical dilemmas in an era of globalization, I illuminated a new form of Buddhism within the context of modernization. Previous studies have detailed Buddhism’s transformation from East to West, from Asian Buddhists to Euro-American Buddhists, and from traditional to the multiple variations of Buddhism within this critical historical juncture. Grounded in these studies, this project approached the H temple as an embodiment of Buddhist rhetoric (with both discursive and non-­ discursive expressions) within the discourses of modernity. The primary goal of this study was to better understand the Westernization of Buddhism and its adapted practices and rituals in a host culture. The argument presented here was that the Buddhist rhetoric of the temple functioned to constitute and negotiate religious identities of the community members through its various rituals and activities. At the same time, the generative space and settings of the temple also facilitated the religious identity formation and preservation. By analyzing core ideographs in the temple’s rhetoric that aimed to maintain its Japanese Zen traditions, I discovered that they actually represented and reinforced Western ideologies related to individualism, gender equity, education, and community building. Additionally, by discussing the temple’s use of communication technology, the naming practice, the members’ secrecy of being a Buddhist, and the temple itself as a sacred space, I illuminated how identities were strategically constructed in the temple through these rhetorical practices. In the following sections, I first answer my research questions raised in Chap. 1. Then, I summarize the theoretical implications of the Buddhist rhetoric developed in this study. Finally, I suggest what this study can contribute to future research on religious communication, intercultural rhetoric, and critical rhetoric.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 F. Zhang, Building and Negotiating Religious Identities in a Zen Buddhist Temple, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8863-7_5

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5.1  Rethinking the Buddhist Experience Using the H temple as a case study, the central question I posed was, “How does a Zen Buddhist temple in the U.S. Midwest facilitate the formation of religious identities of the local community through its strategic discursive activities, the adoption of technology, and the temple space?” This question was broken into four detailed sub-questions: First, how does H temple utilize social media and various technologies to communicate with its members and discursively create and negotiate the online religious experience? Second, what activities and rituals are staged by the H temple and how do these ritual and activities facilitate the cultural maintenance of a Japanese Zen temple? Additionally, how are intercultural contexts created by these activities and rituals and how are differing cultural perspectives mediated by them? Finally, how does the setting of the temple as a generative space reflect an adaptation of an Eastern religion in the West? These questions will be answered respectively in the following section. Chapter 2 focused on the historical background of Zen Buddhism in the United States. In order to contextualize the historical, political, and cultural junctures that formed Buddhism as a global religion, I provided a brief history of how Zen Buddhism was introduced to the United States by Japanese delegates at the World’s Parliament of Religion. I discussed what necessary changes the ancient religion had to make to integrate into modernist discourse within Western societies. Under the influence of globalization, these changes expanded across geographic locations. In some Asian countries, Buddhism also became secularized. By this I mean that temples were shifting their focuses from traditional monastic training of monks and nuns to the spiritual needs of ordinary people. By broadening temple services to local communities and lay practitioners, these temples faced challenges within the capitalist market economy. Next, I narrowed my focus to the adoption of Buddhism within the Ohio and L city locales, most specifically, the temple this case study examined—The H Temple of L city. By briefly describing the temple setting and main services it offered, I aimed to showcase the rationale behind member communication and temple management, as well as its physical layout. The last section of Chap. 2 discussed my theoretical and methodological foundation for this study. By referring to case studies in intercultural rhetoric and ideological criticism, I introduced my primary framework to critique H temple’s rhetoric. Incorporating my own participation into the critical process made the study slightly different from the traditional methods of rhetorical criticism. With my participation, I read the temple as an entity of “live” rhetoric, which is manifested through activities, talks, spaces, and the material objects. Chapter 3 focused on the temple’s effort to maintain the Japanese traditions. In this chapter, I answered my second and third sub-question: “What activities and rituals are staged by the H temple and how do these ritual and activities facilitate the cultural maintenance of a Japanese Zen temple?” And “How are intercultural contexts created by these activities and rituals and how are differing cultural perspectives mediated by them?” In examining the temple’s rhetoric through the lens of

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ideological criticism, this chapter provided a close reading of the Western ideologies embedded in the temple’s Eastern traditions. Specifically, by examining the ideographs , , , , and , I argued that the discourse of Western modernity has totally changed these traditions from their original forms and meanings in Asia. In keeping them, the temple presented a seemingly “authentic” image of Japanese Zen Buddhism to attract potential adherents. For example, the temple purposely designed a series of activities that fell under the specific theme “family,” “education,” and “community.” As I have provided in detailed descriptions earlier, “Sunday morning sutra service,” “Family support council,” and “Dharma camp” were all held to strengthen the intimate relationship between parents and children in a Buddhist setting. At the same time, activities like the “Temple Pizza Party” or “Bowling with the Bodhisattvas” functioned to maintain the close bond within the community—sangha. Additionally, the setup of “Dharma school” was to achieve the goal of educating about Buddhist morality. When put together, these activities aimed to shape the temple as family-­ friendly and community-centered, just like the Japanese temples. Second, rituals staged in the H temple were directly copied from the Japanese Zen traditions. Derived from abbot R’s own religious education and his effort to keep dharma transmission in the Soto Zen lineage, the rituals—like sutra chanting, abbot talks, and sitting and walking meditations—were all presented as an imitation of an original Japanese temple. There was, as I found out, definitely an intercultural context created by them. In a broad sense, the Buddhist practice, as a religion and philosophy, was foreign to local Midwest practitioners. From teaching to meditation, from the Buddha image to the Japanese decorations in the temple, the temple symbolized a whole new religious system from the East, one distinctly different from Abrahamic religions in the West. An intercultural context was created once a visitor walked into the temple, saw the burning incense, sitting meditations, and talked with its members in Buddhist robes while wondering about the meanings behind these decorations and behaviors. For the temple members, an intercultural context was created whenever they needed to internalize the teachings and doctrines from these activities and rituals, or when they understood and articulated their own Buddhist identities. There were, indeed, a variety of cultural perspectives expressed through the rituals and activities in the H temple. However, the way these rituals were practiced reflected a distinctly American adaptation. Abbot N’s presence to guide and teach Zen students was quite unconventional, considering the absence of female priests in Zen Buddhist temples in Japan. Similarly, the father-son transmission in a Japanese family temple was also altered to a husband-wife transmission in the H temple to conveniently guide and serve the community. Some of the traditions maintained by the temple, and American Zen practices continue to be controversial within the Buddhist tradition. For instance, the “married abbot” as a leader is an issue that is still under debate today. What is more, some practices did not have Eastern Buddhist origins. For instance, Dharma school was borrowed from Christian Sunday schools and promoted among temples ran by Japanese Americans. In essence, the traditions and practices were selected and became hybridization for the temple’s benefits.

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The fact that the temple appeared “Japanese” did not mean it was “traditionally Japanese.” Underneath the Eastern nostalgia, it was democratic liberal ideologies that dominated the practices and behaviors of the temple’s members. To a large extent, this was the consequence of the reinterpretation and adaptation of cultural forms during Buddhism’s globalized transplantation from the East to the West. In this case study, the mediated shift between different cultural expressions paralleled the harmonization and assimilation of Eastern cultures within the United States. When “family,” “marriage,” “wife,” “education,” and “community” were claimed as Eastern traditions, the ideologies behind actually represented Western perspectives. In their new context, they symbolized a democratic, liberal, and individualistic worldview within this religion. On one hand, these changes were actually made towards a “better Buddhism,” in which women’s equal rights were recognized and family meant mutual respect and shared responsibilities. By integrating the liberal social values, Buddhism had the chance to be acknowledged and practiced by more people in the West. On the other hand, Buddhism practiced in the American setting became very questionable because of its seemingly deviant traditions and hybridity. It was more problematic that the cultural connotations of the religion were stripped away and can only be found in temple decorations, exotic dressing styles, and the use of non-English terms. The representation of Buddhism inevitably fell into the Westerner’s romantic fantasy of the East. Chapter 4 discussed the identity construction process at the H temple. This chapter answered the question “How does the H temple utilize social media and various technologies to communicate with its members and discursively create and negotiate the online religious experience?” and “How does the setting of the temple as a generative space reflect an adaptation of an Eastern religion in the West?” First, I analyzed the temple’s online platforms to elucidate the politics imbedded in communication technology and its potential influence on the users. Then, I focused on abbot R’s address—in order to articulate the reasons behind members’ “secret Buddhist identity.” Furthermore, I explored the material rhetoric of the temple space, with its religious rituals and artifacts, to exemplify the sacredness generated from their symbolic meanings. Finally, I examined the naming practice at the H temple to explicate how the adoption of Japanese kanji names helped construct the members’ Buddhist identities. To a large extent, the H temple relied on communication technology to operate on a daily basis: recruiting members, sending out notifications, managing activities, and organizing volunteers. These online technologies included three platforms: the temple website, the Facebook group, and abbot R’s YouTube Channel. A virtual sangha emerged from these online platforms, where people discussed their practices and other Buddhism-related topics. For the H temple, technology provided an opportunity for members to communicate regardless of time and geographic location. It worked effectively to help members stay connected and informed without physically visiting the temple. At the same time, these online platforms also greatly enriched the religious experience of members. Besides attending temple services on a regular basis, technology provided an alternative for them to watch rituals at home through live stream on Facebook, and to meditate with other members via web

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c­ ameras. Like rituals and meditation, technology has saturated the religious communication of the H temple and has become an inseparable part of members’ religious lives. However, these conveniences were also potential threats to the survival of the H temple. Free access to certain resources online directly resulted in a loss of membership. Consequently, the temple was caught in the dilemma of using technology: on one hand, it was crucial means to advertise and attract potential adherents; on the other hand, the “virtual Buddhism” was gradually replacing real face-to-face practices in the temple. When the temple constructed religious experience online, it was also an exercise of power and value through the rhetoric of technology. In the case of the H temple, religious leaders exercised the power to harness the Internet to manipulate user/ practitioners’ online experience. Specifically, they adjusted contents and settings of the discussion group and the temple website to fulfill their organizational functions and the community missions. Meanwhile, by teaching and addressing specific questions raised by members, abbot R’s YouTube videos also discursively created the online religious experience of the members. In Chap. 4, R’s role of discursively constructing the online religious experience was discussed further though an examination of his abbot addresses on the “secret identity” of members. The suggestions abbot R offered to temple members who have concerns about being a Buddhist in public, is to be rational and to trust themselves. What is reflected in his discourse was the deep-rooted belief in individualism. In essence, this was the consequence of Buddhism adapting to the discourse of modernity that emphasizes science and rationality. With the de-emphasis on belief and elimination of mystical doctrines like reincarnation and karma, self and personal experience became the only criteria for testing truth. Such a change in American Buddhism, however, pushes it further from the “awakening” goal of their practices, since the most important doctrine in Buddhism is to achieve enlightenment by a disengagement of the “self,” and a minimization of personal satisfactions. On the other hand, the fact that abbot R’s questionable teaching on the “secrets Buddhist identity” was accessible online further indicated that he may have potentially influenced more people and their perceptions of Buddhism other than just temple members. To this end, the H temple’s use of Internet and social media websites prioritized and reinforced certain ideologies. When technology created the illusion that the users had full control of what they see and what information they receive, it were actually the content producers, website managers, and social norms imbedded in the designs and interfaces that manipulated the online experience of users. The second section of Chap. 4 focused on how the temple was viewed as a generative space to reflect the adaptation of Eastern religion. On the surface level, the H temple was the perfect example of how Japanese Zen Buddhism was adopted by Euro-American practitioners. This adoption was reflected in members’ dressing styles, the temple’s decorations, the display of religious artifacts, and the use of dharma names. To outsiders, the temple created an Eastern aura that contrasted with its Midwest surroundings and appealed to people who were interested in Asian culture. To some extent, this was the reason why many people visited the temple for the

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first time. Furthermore, the space arrangement and use of religious artifacts transformed the temple into a sacred space for members. Through bowing to Buddha statues, contemplating masters’ portraits, playing with the sound instruments at rituals and such, the materiality and spatial arrangement of the sacred space evoked and reinforced members’ Buddhist experience and constructed their Buddhist identities. Therefore, on the surface level, the H temple was a successful adaptation of an Eastern religion in the West. However, what might cause our concern were the cultural connotations embedded in these efforts to make the temple “Asian” or “Japanese.” For example, I discussed the naming practice in this chapter. When officially converted into Buddhism, members had the chance to get their exclusive dharma names, which were taken from Japanese kanji. Instead of letters from the Latin-based English alphabet, the name used characters. Most of these names did not connect to their recipient because of the cultural difference and the lack of understanding in Asian cultural discourse and Buddhist name structures. Consequently, the name just became a fancy decoration and a privileged symbol to indicate the Buddhist convert status. From the case of the H temple, what cautioned me were the orientalist fantasies the Westerners implied underneath the direct transplantation of Asian rhetorical actions. The H temple was the perfect example just because it satisfied these fantasies of what Japanese culture and what Asian Buddhist practice should look like under the Western gaze. Similarly in American Buddhism, such a disrespect and orientalist attitude were also reflected in their “mix-and-match” practices extracted from all Asian Buddhist schools. As a result, one could go to a Japanese Zen temple, dress like a Chinese Buddhist, but chant Tibetan Buddhist sutras, because there was no distinction in the practitioner’s eyes as long as they were all “Asian.” To answer my last question, the temple was a generative space in producing their Buddhist rhetoric through space, materiality, and multiple discursive means. It was also generative in constructing the practitioners’ Buddhist identities. In terms of adaptation, it was a true reflection of most Eastern religions in the West: the borrowing and direct transplantation regardless of their respective cultural discourses.

5.2  B  uddhist Rhetoric Revisited: Through the Lens of Modernism The examination of the H Temple of L city intended to provide theoretical implications regarding the concept of Buddhist rhetoric, which is manifested in multiple rhetorical forms. In this study, I examined the traditional discursive rhetoric as found in texts and talks. I also explored the non-discursive forms: rhetoric of technology, rhetoric of materiality and its symbolic function in the sacred space. Most importantly, through my participation in temple activities and my interaction with people and the actual space, I acquired the “live” rhetoric of the H temple—my own experience to witness rhetorical actions as they unfolded. The process of

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conceptualizing and articulating Buddhist rhetoric in this case study intersected Buddhism in three different fields of studies: religious communication, intercultural communication, and rhetorical criticism. First of all, the concept of Buddhist rhetoric provided a useful analytical tool in examining studies of religious communication. In this analysis, I extended the definition of Buddhist rhetoric from traditional examination of sutras, religious texts, and images to the communicative processes between the temple leaders and its members. Taking into consideration the multifaceted modes of interaction, I treated the H temple as an embodiment of multiple rhetorical forms that reflect ideologies, urge actions, and construct identities. In viewing the temple as a complex rhetorical entity, this study aims to demonstrate the possibilities for future critics who scrutinize the communicative patterns of religious organization. Furthermore, I argue that a religious organization should always be treated holistically in the examination process, as these rhetorical forms complement each other to construct meaningful communication. In the case of the H temple, it was the teachings, rituals, practices, temple space, virtual platforms, and the abbot and members’ everyday language that constructed the unique Buddhist rhetoric and Buddhist identity. Second, in viewing the temple as an intercultural space, Buddhist rhetoric encourages future research of intercultural rhetoric by pointing out new sites of study. Unlike indigenous religions, the introduction of Buddhism to the United States also brought about issues of cultural heritage, cultural discourse, and competing ideologies embedded in different cultural expressions. Further, they are specifically articulated through different rhetorical forms. However, given the locality of different Buddhist temples, it is necessary to recognize that each temple may have its distinctive Buddhist rhetoric. This difference may also be found between temples run by Asian immigrants and Euro-Americans. Unlike the case of the H temple, the Buddhist rhetoric of a Japanese-American temple would contain less democratic and individualistic ideologies, because of the abbot and practitioners’ particular cultural heritage from Japan. Another significant intercultural aspect that needs further exploration is the direct transplantation of cultural forms, like languages, artifacts, and rituals. In this case study, they refer to the adoption of Japanese Kanji names, Buddha robes, religious artifacts, and gestures like bowing and kneeling. Because of their culture-specific characteristics, a direct transplantation to the new cultural setting may cause misunderstandings. What is needed is a proper “translation” process that guarantees the accuracy of their specific meanings and cultural connotations when being borrowed. It is also the critic’s responsibility to point out the stereotypical attitude from a dominant and privileged perspective. Therefore, it is useful for American Buddhist practitioners to be constantly reflexive on their rituals, practices, teachings, and delve into the meanings behind these actions. Just like Buddhist scholar Charles Prebish mentioned in his interview, Buddhist tradition always emphasized the importance of both study and practice as they interpenetrated (Heuman 2012). Cultivating the Buddhist literacy will be an effective complement to practices that only emphasize meditation, because the more one studies, the more one will understand the “intricacy and nuances” of Buddhist doctrines, and the more sophisticated his/her practice will be (p. 70). For

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example, together with Buddhist koan studies in most American Zen temples, the organizers may also consider opening culture study classes and sutra teaching classes to contextualize the stories in koan. It is also extremely beneficial for temples to collaborate and make use of the online learning platforms to share digital resources of Buddhist studies. More importantly, Buddhism needs to be treated as a comprehensive religious system in the West with unified translation systems like when it was introduced from India to China and translated from Sanskrit to Mandarin centuries ago. Indeed, it is important to embrace change. But it is crucial to remain the core values when change occurs. The last theoretical implication this study suggested is the examination of ideologies embedded in the religious discourse. One manifestation of the Buddhist rhetoric in the H temple is the Western democratic and liberal ideologies. As I have discussed in this study, they became prominent through frequent use of certain terms and phrases—ideographs. Like McGee (1980) contends, they are in everyday language, but can be problematic “because of their specificity” in invoking certain ideologies within the community (p. 7). It is even more problematic and confusing when their surface meanings contradict the ideologies they represent. For example, I demonstrated such a contradiction in Chap. 3, when ideographs like , , and were used to represent Japanese traditions but actually expressed democratic social values in the United States through certain temple practices. More importantly, examination of ideologies calls out the power structure of a religious organization. In critiquing the discourse of power, it further discovers the driving forces behind the dominance as well as the “construction and maintenance of a particular order of discourse” (McKerrow 1989, p.  94). For religious organizations, this is especially important, because their rhetoric is more powerful and influential in disseminating ideologies to adherents. In untangling the power structures embedded in their rhetorical actions through a thorough examination of their ordinary language, critics will be able to demystify the ideological construction process and unveil the interests that lie beneath this process. In sum, the concept of Buddhist rhetoric provided the critics with more opportunities to further advance studies of intercultural communication, rhetorical criticism, and religious communication. In a way, the complex dynamics of this concept presented new perspectives in viewing these areas of study. However, this concept should also be treated with caution because it lies on the intersection of these different fields. When engaging Buddhist rhetoric into specific cases, it is the critic’s responsibility to adjust and negotiate with each case to achieve the goal of critique.

5.3  Looking Forward—A Postmodern Buddhism In critiquing the Buddhist rhetoric of the H temple, this study aims to portray the current status of American Buddhism within the discourse of modernization. Given that American Buddhism is a broadly inclusive term that contains different schools, lineages, and traditions, there might be some nuances and variations in their

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respective situations. However, they are all inevitably subjected to the transformative influences modernity has brought. In other words, they are all facing the trends of radical detraditionalization, democratization, and secularization. The analysis in this study showed how the Western democratic ideologies dominated the temple discourse and practices over its Eastern traditions. Through the critical examination of different rhetorical forms generated by the H temple, this study also demonstrated how Buddhist became marketable, individualized, socially engaged, and pragmatic, which is nothing like their origins from the East. To some extent, the development of American Buddhism refreshes our foundational knowledge about this ancient religion. Some of the current trends even reflect a postmodernist fashion in its future development. As Lyotard (1986) argues, postmodernist thought is fundamentally build on a framework that challenges what we call the “master narrative.” Some practices of modern Buddhism have been constantly challenging the “master narrative” of our society. For example, the roles of women are being widely recognized as practitioners and priests in most American temples. This crucial change symbolizes a challenge to power narratives that position men as religious leaders. Similarly, socially engaged Buddhism and their liberal-­left activities are also speaking up for the marginalized groups like LGBTQ groups and minority groups. What is more, the reinterpretation of ancient Buddhist texts and the abandoning of traditional beliefs are also gestures that challenge the master religious narrative that centralizes these sacred texts and beliefs. As McMahan (2008) contends, the transition of Buddhist modernism to a postmodern Buddhism is unavoidable, because it is conditioned by fractures within our society. We have been familiarized with multiple interpretations of tradition, deconstruction of “original” ideals, and the ubiquitous narrative of “celebrating diversity and pluralism.” The American Buddhism is destined to walk on the path of postmodernism. Furthermore, an increasing number of critics and scholarship have begun to challenge the practice of modern Buddhism that is free of dogma, doctrines, rituals, and beliefs. Critics have gone back to the traditional monastic trainings, sutras, and disciplined practices to justify the “real Buddhism” (McMahan 2008, p.  254). A juxtaposition of the “non-traditional” practices and the reverse back to traditions created the heterogeneity in Buddhism today, which is also reflected as postmodern approaches. Finally, with the development of a postmodern Buddhism, we may be able to witness more and more variations of the religion today in different geographic locations. With globalized flows of cultural, religion, people, and ideas, there might be more combinations and hybridities in its future development. In a sense, Buddhism is still a global religion in terms of its influence. However, it is unknown if global Buddhism will even remain the same religion with emerging trajectories, variations, and modalities of interpretation through Internet, books, and other mediums. For researchers and critics, the answer lies in their continuous explorations of the future Buddhism.

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References Heuman, L. (2012). Pursuing an American Buddhism. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 21(3), 68–111. Lyotard, J. (1986). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press. McGee, M. C. (1980). The “ideograph”: A link between rhetoric and ideology. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66, 1–16. McKerrow, R. E. (1989). Critical rhetoric: Theory and praxis. Communication Monograohs, 56, 91–111. McMahan, D. L. (2008). The making of Buddhist modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.