History in America

History of Buddhism in America goes back to a century and a half. In 1880, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, an American pioneer of Buddhist studies, traveled to Sri Lanka to explore Buddhism in 1881. His publication of “Buddhist Catechism” in 1881 along with Sir Edwin Arnold’s “Light of Asia” in 1879 served as the earliest publications to bring Buddhism to the general reader in the West. This was followed by Harvard University publication of “Buddhism in Translation” as part of its prestigious Harvard Oriental Series in 1896. With these beginnings, Buddhism played a significant role in spiritual, academic, intellectual, and cultural life in U.S. Since 1950’s, influx of Buddhists to America from Asian countries brought diverse Buddhist traditions to the U.S. adopted in their countries. Today, we have several traditions of Buddhism, mainly Theravada, Mahayana (includes Zen Buddhism), and Vajrayana (includes Tibetan Buddhism) spread around in New England states and the U.S. These different traditions arose based on individual cultural and heritage of their countries in Asia, which led to diverse rites and rituals. But the core doctrines of Buddha’s teachings, such as the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold path, remain the same and are common to all traditions.