Editing Radical Buddhism in the West (section)

== Buddhism in the West ==

Although isolated encounters between Europeans and Buddhism date to the early modern period, Buddhism did not become a significant intellectual presence in the West until the nineteenth century, through the translation of Buddhist scriptures, the emergence of Oriental studies, expanding colonial networks in Asia, and the activities of Asian Buddhist reformers such as Anagarika Dharmapala and D. T. Suzuki. The World's Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in 1893, marked an important turning point in Buddhism's public reception in the United States.

The modern expansion of Buddhism in Europe and North America occurred primarily after the Second World War. The Beat Generation stimulated popular interest in Zen, while the arrival of Tibetan refugees following the Chinese occupation of Tibet introduced Tibetan Buddhist traditions to growing numbers of Western practitioners. Immigration reforms in several Western countries also established Buddhist communities representing Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna traditions, so that by the late twentieth century Buddhism had become a permanent feature of the Western religious landscape, sustained by both immigrant and convert communities.

Western Buddhism subsequently diversified into several overlapping currents. The Insight Meditation movement, associated with teachers such as Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, and Sharon Salzberg, popularized meditation among a broad lay audience, while numerous Zen and Tibetan teachers established enduring institutions throughout Europe and North America. Another influential development was the emergence of secular Buddhism, associated particularly with Stephen Batchelor, which reinterprets or rejects traditional Buddhist cosmology while emphasizing meditation, ethics, and critical historical approaches to early Buddhism. Because its principal concerns lie in philosophical naturalism and personal practice rather than structural critiques of political economy, secular Buddhism as such falls outside the scope of this article, though it becomes relevant below through its intersection with radical politics in more recent work.

From the second half of the twentieth century onward, Western Buddhists became increasingly involved in questions of war, peace, social justice, and the environment. Inspired by Asian Buddhist reformers, including Thich Nhat Hanh, the [[Tenzin Gyatso|Fourteenth Dalai Lama]], [[Buddhadasa Bhikkhu]], and [[Sulak Sivaraksa]], as well as by contemporary Western social movements, ''engaged Buddhism'' emerged as one of the most visible forms of Buddhist activism in the West. Engaged Buddhism has never represented a single political position: many of its practitioners have focused on humanitarian service, peace activism, and environmental protection within existing political and economic systems, while others have argued that Buddhist ethics requires a more fundamental critique of the structures responsible for generating suffering. It is this latter, structurally critical current that constitutes the subject of the remainder of this article.