A Rational Teaching

Abstract

Abstract The specific processes by which Buddhism was transformed during the colonial period into a modern religion, and how this modern religion is an amalgam of both traditional Buddhist and post-Enlightenment thought, are now well established. It is largely taken for granted, especially on a popular level, that Buddhism is a rational and scientific religion of peace. This assumption, of course, obscures how Buddhism was understood as the religion of the enemy in the decades leading up to World War II. And the role Japanese Americans played in the making of Buddhist modernism has been understudied. This chapter begins with an overview of scholarship on Buddhist modernism before detailing how modernist themes are prevalent in the Berkeley Bussei. The chapter ends with a discussion of the exclusion of Asian Americans generally from the scholarly lineage of Buddhist moderns.