Abstract
Abstract English This article examines generational shifts in popular narratives pertaining to dominant formations of Buddhism in the United States from 1950 to the 1990s through a postcolonial lens particularly sensitive to age, children, and family dynamics. A close read of Jack Kerouac's novels and the film Little Buddha identifies important features of this genealogy. This analysis shows that white Buddhist American converts' power and visibility have been reinforced by the Orientalist notion of a monk-convert lineage which presents the convert—represented as a free white young adult—as the sole heroic incarnation of the present and future of Buddhism in the modern world. Key words: Buddhism, Conversion, Religion and Age, Orientalism
Highlights
The 1922 late German Romantic novel Siddhartha (Hesse, 1999) contains two important conflicts between fathers and sons
Siddhartha’s father reluctantly allows his son to leave. Siddhartha discovers that he has a son
After agreeing to care for the child, Siddhartha becomes frustrated because his son has little interest in conforming to Siddhartha’s ascetic life
Summary
The 1922 late German Romantic novel Siddhartha (Hesse, 1999) contains two important conflicts between fathers and sons. Western Buddhist converts can maintain their cultural power through ever renewed self-presentations of themselves as being in young adulthood, no matter how old they are in reality.
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