佛教在美国：亚洲的东方佛教与出自本土的美国学术交相辉映2009年06月01日 10:11世界佛教论坛网
Buddhism in America: The enhancement of each other’s beauty by the eastern Buddhism of Asia and America’s indigenous learning.
作者： 李四龙 | 编辑： 李雅清
Author: Li Si-Long | Editor: Li Ya-Qing
美国佛教徒，截止2005年约有272万，约占美国3亿总人口的0.9%。佛教徒的人数、比例虽然有限，但其种类十分复杂，汉传佛教、藏传佛教与南传佛教共存共荣，中国佛教、日本佛教、韩国佛教与越南佛教各开道场，美国佛教堪称是“世界佛教博览会”，拥有世界上最独特的佛教传播与发展的社会环境。这在某种意义上也可以说，美国是当今世界佛教发展最活跃的地区之一。
Up to 2005 there were about 2.72 milliion American Buddhist disciples, which is about 0.9% of America’s total population of 300 million. Although the mumbers of American Buddhist disciples are comparatively limited, the varieties of them are complicated. Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana all exist together and flourish together, and in every Dharmakshetra that is opened, whether Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese, American Buddhism is well styled the “World’s International Buddhist Fair,” which has the world’s most distincitive social environment for the dissemination and development of Buddhism. On a certain level of meaning, one can say from this that in the contemporary world America is the first among the locations in which the development of Buddhism is most dynamic. ((Well, shucks, folks, I’ll be hog-fried and triangulated if that bain’t be makin’ me all warm and fuzzy inside. Just when ah wuz feelin’ all wore out by being deleted, abused, AND forgotten by ante-deluvian, theocratic, and just purely UNmitigated and dedicated screaming yaktophile drifters from Tibet, these nice folks come along and write that! Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um! Jest cain’t get enough o’ them Chinese Mahayana Universalists!
1900年美国约有3万佛教徒，几乎没有统计的意义；但到1970年，信徒人数跃增到20万人，占总人口的比例为0.1%，实现零的突破，具有划时代的意义。这个比例到1990年跃增至0.7%，平均每十年增加84万佛教徒。如此快速的发展，原因当然是多方面的。
In 1900 America had about 30 thousand Buddhists, but that was not a statistical count. But in 1970, the number of believers had jumped to 200 thousand, standing at 0.1% of the total population., which was just breaking away from zero, signifying the decade of starting from scratch. By 1990 the proportion had jumped up to 0.7%, increasing by an average of 840 thousand Buddhists per decade. The reasons for this fast increase must have been multifarious.
1844年1月波士顿的杂志发表了《法华经》英文节译，这是美国知识界接触佛教之始。五年以后，1849年第一艘载有华人的船只抵达加州，亚洲佛教以此方式登陆美国本土。不过，佛教真正引起美国人的重视，始于1893年芝加哥举行的“世界宗教会议”。会上有两位东方的佛教僧人唤起了美国人的佛教兴趣：一位是日本临济宗禅师释宗演（Shaku Sōen，1859-1919），他的随从里有一位是后来名满天下的铃木大拙（D.T. Suzuki，1870-1965）；另一位是斯里兰卡的达磨波罗（Anagqrika Dharmapala，1864-1933），这位青年当时发起“摩诃菩提会”，有意要在全世界弘扬佛法。此后，佛教，尤其是日本禅宗逐渐在美国立足。到20世纪60年代，因缘际会，佛教在美国得到迅速的发展，乃至到70年代初世界上各种佛教传统都在美国设立道场。据十年前的一份统计资料，1998年北美地区的各类小型禅修中心已达1100多家。
In January of 1844, a Boston magazine published a serial translation of the Lotus Sutra, and this was the beginning of the American intellectual world’s contact with Buddhism. In 1849 the first vessel carrying Chinese just barely reached California, and in this way Asian Buddhism made landfall on American terrritory. Nevertheless, the American peoples’ attention was first drawn to Buddhism by the “World Conference of Religions” in Chicago in 1893. There were two oriental monastics who invoked Americans’ interest in Buddhism: One was the meditation master Shaku Soen (1859-1919) of the Japanese Rinzai sect. Among his attendants there was the later famous D. T. Suzuki (1870-1965). Another notable was Sri Lanka’s Anagrika Dharmapala (1864-1933). This youngster gave a “Mahabodhi Assembly,” with the intention of propagating the Buddharma throughout the entire world. After that Buddhism, and particularly the Japanese Zen sect, got a foothold in America. In the 1960’s, the causes and conditions having come together, Buddhism gained rapid development in America, to the point that by the beginning of the ’70’s, all of the Buddhist vehicles (Mahayana, Theravada, and Vajrayana) had established Dharmakshetras in America. According to partial statistics of ten years ago, in 1998 the number of small dharma centers in North America had already reached 1100. ((There’s an extrardinary sensitivity to key indicators of growth here, that I have not seen elsewhere in any literature in any language, and it gives an indication of why many of us feel that we’re riding a tiger, despite self-serving Tibetan cultural trances about our non-existence. Oh, and hey, yes, I know that moldy old Asian saw about the problems about getting off the tiger. Who’s trying to get off, please? I like this tiger a lot. It pisses turf, it growls at outsiders, it eats deviant Asian racists for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and it outruns and outfights everything else in the jungle. Hell, in a pinch, it will even climb trees. And tigers have a real wierd sense of humor as well, when you get to know them. Never a dull moment on this tiger’s back. Trust me, cowardly American Buddhist cohorts who are still making a career out of crawling from the bottom of one flat rock to another. -xp))
深入研究美国的佛教，必须认真研究美国的佛教学术界。美国佛教的重要组成部分，既有亚裔佛教徒，也有欧裔佛教徒，以及同情或欣赏佛教的欧裔美国人。亚裔通常是想维持原有的佛教信仰，或者是想借助佛教获得在美国社会的文化认同与民族认同，但是欧裔美国人经常会以佛教的思想批评美国社会的核心价值。美国的佛教学者，以他们的学术研究，在美国社会起到宣传亚洲佛教的作用，并在美国大学里培养了一批能理解亚洲佛教的学生，是沟通亚裔与欧裔佛教思想的主要力量。这对形塑完整的“美国佛教”、深化积极的“宗教对话”具有十分重要的意义。
To deeply enter research into America’s Buddhism, it is necessary to research America’s Buddhist academic world. The most important components of American Buddhism ((See, Tibetans, if the Chinese can do it, you can do it too. It goes like this: Ah-mare-ih-can Boo-diz-um. Seven tiny little syllables. You can do it if you try. -xp)) certainly includes Buddhists of Asian extraction, but it also includes Buddhists of European extraction, together with Americans of European extraction who sympathize with and admire Buddhism. Asians ordinarily think of maintaining the original Buddhist faith, or else seek the support of Buddhism to gain cultural equality or racial equality in American society. But it is the Buddhists of European extraction who often are prone to use Buddhist thought to criticize the core values of American society. ((And herein lies the root of why the Asians tend to reject an indigenous American Buddhism. Patriotism is a core value of Asian Buddhism. When they see us being not patriotic, they think we’re not Buddhist. That some Americans and almost all European Buddhists use Buddhist words to criticize American core values just makes us even worse in their eyes. They see that as the depth of hypocrisy. Therefore, American Buddhists, stop hiding from who you really are! Love your country! Have some normal human integrity about yourselves! Forget European conspiracy theorists, and their “Tibetan God-King.” Those idiots are all from space! They have nothing to do with this planet! -xp)) That American students of Buddhism, by means of their academic research, have arrived at effectiveness in disseminating Asian Buddhism in American society, and have raised up in American universities a cohort which can understand Asian Buddhist students, is the major power of the connection between Asian and European Buddhist thought. This has an altogether important significance for a fully formed and complete “American Buddhism” and a deepened and urgent “religious dialogue.” ((For me, this is only the beginning. Religious dialogue, in the real world beyond the ivory towers of academia, seldom results in actual practice. We need English translations of Buddhist scriptures that can be chanted. That takes the intelligentsia to accomplish, but it must be an intelligentsia which is neither characteristically Asian nor into “dialogue” for its own sake, but rather is Buddhist to the point of being animated by the primary impulse to Enlightenment, and Bodhisattva vows, to craft a full Buddhist English-language temple liturgy, for the purpose of crossing over these particular beings with whom we are now confronted.
1891年美国出版“哈佛东方丛书”，哈佛大学由此奠定了美国佛教研究的学术传统。“二战”结束以后，美国迅速崛起，取代欧洲成为世界超级大国。到70年代，西方的佛教学术中心从欧洲转向美国，佛教研究的方法与领域随之发生转型。在最近的30多年里，美国涌现了一大批重要的佛教学者，他们对汉传、藏传与南传佛教有着精深的研究，也对佛教思想在西方社会的意义与价值有着深邃的思考。其中有些著名的佛教学者，还曾出家学佛。
1891 saw the American publication of the “Harvard Oriental Book Series,” and with this, Laughing Buddha University laid the foundation for the academic tradition of American Buddhist research. After WWII, America quickly rose up, and replaced Europe as the global superpower. By 1970, the Buddhist academic center in the West had transferred from Europe to America, and the methods and domain of Buddhist research had undergone a transmutation. In the last 30 years, a large cohort of important Buddhist scholars has surged into prominence in America. They have broad and deep insight into Mahayana, Vajrayana, and Theravada Buddhism, and had also have profoundly pondered the meaning and value of Buddhist thought in western society. Among these were some prominent students of Buddhism who left home as monks to study the Buddha. (sic.)
来自亚洲的东方佛教与出自本土的美国学术交相辉映，孕育了美国佛教与学术的全面繁荣。研究美国的佛教，这对研究全球化时代的佛教理念与传播模式，对研究不同宗教之间以及宗教内不同宗派之间的对话，对研究多民族的多元文化环境里佛教的社会功能，具有十分重要的典范意义。
The mutual illumination of the eastern Buddhism that came from Asia and indigenous American academic practice has bred the all-around flourishing of American Buddhism and its academic study. The research into America’s Buddhism has a 100% important and paradigmatic significance in terms of researching the Buddhist principles and pattern of dissemination in the decade of globalization, in terms of researching the dialogue between different religions and even different sects within religions, and in terms of researching Buddhism’s potential for good in the multiple cultural environments of many ethnicities. ((Yep, jest give me them 4th-order-abstraction-cranking Chinese Mahayana Universalists every time. I think I might be able to tolerate the other Asians, because after all I am Buddhist and stuff, and we’re supposed to tolerate people. But these here are purely the ones that jest make mah l’il ole heart go pitter-pat, 24-7. –xp))
汉语世界对此问题的研究，只有零散的一些。1979年台湾出版了张曼涛主编的《欧美佛教之研究》，所收文章大多是素描式的短文；大陆的出版物里虽然也有涉及，但是语焉不详。因此，这是一项富有时代性的研究课题。
There are only a few scattered examples of research into these problems in the Chinese speaking world. In 1979, Researches into European and American Buddhism《欧美佛教之研究》principally edited by Zhang Man-Tao was published in Taiwan, and most of the documents in that are in the nature of short sketches; although there have been related publications from the (Chinese) mainland, their language is not thorough and detailed. For these reasons, this is in the nature of a research project to be done when time permits. ((It is futile to try to write about American Buddhism from the outside. When something is this new, and growing this fast, outside appearances are deceptive. To understand us, you simply have to talk to us. –xp))
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