Some years ago, while on a visit to Bodhgaya, I attended the opening of the Nihonji, the Japanese temple newly added to the little international community of Buddhist institutions that in recent decades has grown up around the site of the Buddha's enlightenment. The joint procession and ceremonies of this community that marked the dedication of the temple were simple but moving. For anyone sympathetic to the tradition of Buddhism (or, indeed, to the efforts of mankind as a whole to overcome the centuries of greed, hatred, and ignorance through which we have dwelt apart and in conflict), the act of monks from the far corners of Asia-Tibet, Burma, and distantJapan-coming together on this ancient pilgrimage site in mutual affirmation of their common bond was a powerful symbol of the fact that, in the midst of the spiritual disarray of the modern world, there may still be some grounds for hope. Let us not forget, after all, that no previous century in the two-and-one-half millennia since Sakyamuni's enlightenment witnessed such an event. TheJapanese temple was being opened on the day that I visited by representatives of one order of the Shingon school. I say on this particular day because in fact the dedication ceremonies of the Nihonji took many days, in order to accommodate the many separate orders and schools into which Japanese Buddhism is divided. In one sense, this was a happy arrangement, for it allowed a much larger number ofJapanese monks to make the long pilgrimage to Bodhgaya than could have done so had the ceremony been an ecumenical affair. In another sense, of course, it was a less happy reminder that Buddhism in Japan is deeply divided, and that there is no ecumenical movement of sufficient authority to overcome this division even on the sacred ground of the Buddha's enlightenment. As a religious institution representingJapanese Buddhism as a whole, the Nihonji was an illusion-like the chariot of King Melinda analyzed by Nagasena, a mere designation for the collection of its parts. These conflicting images from Bodhgaya-of our illusive bond to common, continuous tradition, and of our common bondage to real, persistent division -are nowhere more sharply focused than in North America, where, for the