CONVERSION

In most times and places allegiance to Buddhism has not been an exclusive affair. Buddhist devotees have felt comfortable worshipping various local deities, as well as earning merit by making offerings to non-Buddhist mendicants (in India), embracing Confucian as well as Buddhist values (in China), or visiting Shint? shrines as well as Buddhist temples (in Japan). The inscriptions of the Indian king A?oka (ca. mid-third century b.c.e.)—the earliest surviving written Buddhist records—portray him both as affirming his own Buddhist identity and as supporting other religious groups. The English word conversion, usually understood to mean the complete abandonment of one religion and exclusive adherence to another, has little relevance in such a setting.

The closest analogue to the Western notion of individual conversion is the act of becoming a lay brother (up?saka) or lay sister (up?sik?), portrayed in early scriptures as a formal act of affiliation involving "taking refuge" in the three jewels (buddha, dharma, and sa?gha) and vowing to uphold the five lay precepts. Similar rituals are still performed today in many Buddhist societies, ranging from Sri Lanka to Taiwan. An alternative analogue might be found in the experience of becoming a stream-enterer (P?li, sot?panna), at which point one is said to attain a firsthand conviction of the truth of the Buddha's teachings. This generally takes place, however, only after a prolonged period of practice, demonstrating once again the lack of fit between the idea of conversion and Buddhist maps of the path.

Most commonly, adherence to Buddhism has not been the result of individual acts of faith but of a choice made by a ruler (e.g., in Sri Lanka in the third century b.c.e. or in Japan and Tibet in the seventh century c.e.) in the course of political consolidation and imposed upon the population at large. Such top-down or societal conversion (Horton) has been the standard mode of transmission of Buddhism outside India, with the notable exceptions of China and the West. Such exclusive state sponsorship has often been temporary, with a return to the norm of accommodating other local religious practices once a new political equilibrium has been achieved.

Examples of conversion in the exclusivist sense are easiest to find in Buddhist societies that have been significantly affected by a Western colonial or missionary presence, such as Sri Lanka (where the public conversion to Buddhism by Colonel Henry Steel Olcott under British colonial rule in the late nineteenth century has left a lasting legacy) or South Korea (where the growth of Protestant Christianity in recent decades has led to a strong polarization between Buddhists and Christians). Some Buddhist-based "new religions" in Japan, above all the S?ka Gakkai, also require their followers to renounce all other religious beliefs and practices.

Ironically, the Western notion of conversion appears to be falling out of favor among new adherents of Buddhism in the West, who often describe themselves as "taking up the practice of Buddhism" rather than "converting to the Buddhist religion." This reluctance to use the term conversion reflects not only the traditional absence of a sharp boundary between Buddhist and non-Buddhist practices in Asian societies, but also the profound changes currently taking place in the very notion of what constitutes "religion" in the modern West.

See also:Colonialism and Buddhism; Local Divinities and Buddhism; Ordination

Bibliography

Adikaram, E. W. Early History of Buddhism in Ceylon. Colombo, Sri Lanka: M. D. Gunasena, 1953.

Beltz, Johannes. Mahar, Bouddhiste, et Dalit: conversion religieuse et emancipation sociopolitique dans l'Inde des castes. Bern, Switzerland: Lang, 2001.

Gregory, Peter N. "Describing the Elephant: Buddhism in America." Religion in American Culture 11, no. 2 (2001): 233–263.

Hammond, Phillip E., and Machacek, David W. S?ka Gakkai in America: Accommodation and Conversion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Horton, Robin. "African Conversion." Africa 41, no. 2 (1971): 85–108.

Kapstein, Matthew. The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Nattier, Jan. "Who Is a Buddhist? Charting the Landscape of Buddhist America." In The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Prothero, Stephen. The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Thapar, Romila. Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, 2nd edition. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1959.

Jan Nattier