Tricycle | Awake in the World

Political discourse has made it popular to speak of Asian-American and Euro-American Buddhism as two distinct camps; yet this does not take into account the many divisions under each of these headings. In short, there is no love lost between different Asian groups in America. Just one example: every group with half a memory of World War II—the Koreans, the Burmese—still hates the Japanese, and often the Japanese still think of other peoples as the barbarians. Race and sectarianism are further complicated by the general lack of knowledge among Asian-American congregations about sects of Buddhism other than the ones that they follow; this is logical, as their devotion has not required the labored search common to converts. Another problem with dividing Buddhists into these two groups is that African-Americans are invisible.