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Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America
Theravada is one of the three main branches of Buddhism. In Asia it is practiced widely in Thailand, Laos, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. This fascinating ethnography opens a window onto two communities of Theravada Buddhists in contemporary one outside Philadelphia that is composed largely of Thai immigrants and one outside Boston that consists mainly of white converts.
Wendy Cadge first provides a historical overview of Theravada Buddhism and considers its specific origins here in the United States. She then brings her findings to bear on issues of personal identity, immigration, cultural assimilation, and the nature of religion in everyday life. Her work is the first systematic comparison of the ways in which immigrant and convert Buddhists understand, practice, and adapt the Buddhist tradition in America. The men and women whom Cadge meets and observes speak directly to us in this work, both in their personal testimonials and as they meditate, pray, and practice Buddhism.
Creative and insightful, Heartwood will be of enormous value to sociologists of religion and anyone wishing to understand the rise of Buddhism in the Western world.
Wendy Cadge first provides a historical overview of Theravada Buddhism and considers its specific origins here in the United States. She then brings her findings to bear on issues of personal identity, immigration, cultural assimilation, and the nature of religion in everyday life. Her work is the first systematic comparison of the ways in which immigrant and convert Buddhists understand, practice, and adapt the Buddhist tradition in America. The men and women whom Cadge meets and observes speak directly to us in this work, both in their personal testimonials and as they meditate, pray, and practice Buddhism.
Creative and insightful, Heartwood will be of enormous value to sociologists of religion and anyone wishing to understand the rise of Buddhism in the Western world.
268 pages, Paperback
First published December 15, 2004
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November 17, 2022
Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka, & Thailand were the countries that Cadge focused on for her lengthy description of the diffusion of Theravada Buddhism into the US. Tracing various leaders and their initial interaction with Theravada Buddhism and the organizations that arose thereof- she described how she thought the US is a now important place in the consideration of Theravada Buddhism. Tracing those groups and trying to tie them to cofounders of relevant temples who were born in the US, and white- she seemed to have been trying to prove more than what she actually did. I gave it another read, and I still don't see if she met any certain conclusion, other than it is a highly complex diffusion. She then went on to further break down the already complex diffusion, by finding additional ways to analyze it through lineage, individual country, or whole continent.
However, I did notice some connections to other themes within her reporting. I picked up a little bit when she was reporting the statistics on Laotian and Cambodian organizations and temples. She wrote, "Quite apart from white Theravada Buddhist practitioners, groups that eventually founded the first Laotian and Cambodian temples in the United States were also started between 1978 and 1980 in the Washington D.C., area. Migration from Laos and Cambodia peaked in the early 1980s and these early groups slightly predated those peaks."1 This is where I initially started thinking there was more to what this girl was including in her observations. I think Cadge should have attributed lots of the migration to the cause. Furthermore, I think she should have made the connection apparent in her reporting regarding the tensions that were undoubtedly held between the white Theravada Buddhist practitioners and the ones from Laos and Cambodia. What she skirted around, was the Vietnam War. Not only was it the reason for most of the migration, it was certainly the cause of separation between the Laotians and Cambodians with the whites. Laos and Cambodia were both invaded and bombed by the US during that war.
Cadge mentions the Cambodians and Laotians again on the next page, saying, "Immigration from Theravada Buddhist countries continued in the 1980s, particularly from Cambodia and Laos..."2 Yet again, she made no mention of the cause of migration, yet we know that those who came from Laos and Cambodia- came from areas that had, indeed, been invaded by the US with their anti-communist agenda. Of course, they wanted to stay away from these white, US-born practitioners of their religion. This is especially true if you consider the appropriation they were seeing within the religious rituals.
Cadge mentions this again, saying, "Some of the mixing between Asians and Americans occurred in temples started by Sri Lankan, Thai, and Burmese immigrants to the United States, as opposed to those started by Lao and Cambodian refugees. This likely occurred because the monks and first-generation immigrants involved with Thai, Sri Lanka, and Burmese temples had a better command of English and were more assimilated to U.S. society than the monks and lay practitioners at Lao and Cambodian temples."3 She skirted around it again, here. She claimed that it was because of the English language and assimilation, but there was a great deal more to it than those things.
Moreover, these Cambodian and Laotian Theravada Buddhists already came from an area where their religion had been hijacked by extremists who used it as a weapon. Why on earth would they want to mingle with others appropriating it, especially in a country who had already invaded their homelands? In a country where consumerism runs rampant and their religion and way of life was based on sustenance and living with the earth? There was a lot more to it than assimilation and English. For someone who was so lengthy in her description of this diffusion of Theravada Buddhism, you would think that she would have made a paragraph or two to address that as existing concerns that played a role in the separation of white Theravada Buddhists and those from Laos and Cambodia. These underlying sentiments most certainly played a role. Sri Lanka may have been a bit off the beaten path, but Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos are all neighbors of Vietnam. They all have political histories, conflicts, and dealings with one another that go back eons. Their sacred places were transformed from one religion to another, and violence and tragedy have befallen the place for eons over religious turmoil. They had just cause to be cautious with the white US-born appropriators of their religion.
While Cadge goes into great detail about how the "Americans" contributed back to the Theravada Buddhists and vice versa through their different practices and how they shared a sacred canopy that covered their internal diversities, she still skirts around many aspects that ought to have been mentioned, in my opinion. She also used terms like "native-born Americans", "white", "white American-born", and "American" like they are all interchangeable. They are not. Americans are not only white. Americans are not only from the US. Americans are not all born in the US. I really went back a third time to check her usage of these terms, and she used them interchangeably. And she wrote this in 2005, so this should be from a perspective that acknowledges that you cannot use those terms interchangeably. America consists of North America, Central America, and South America, from the top of Alaska to the bottom of Argentina- people from various countries on this side of the world consider themselves American. She should have been a little more considerate than that. This is especially true considering just how much emphasis she placed on the 5 different countries that brought Theravada Buddhism to the US. There are Theravada Buddhists in Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, etc. It comes across as very US-centric and disregarding of other cultures, races, and ethnicities. Why break down the middle eastern ethnicities for pages and pages and put so much detail into that, if you're just going to lump the entirety of the Americas into "white US-born" terminology?
I understand that she was trying to explain the diffusion of Theravada Buddhism into the US, but I consider her terminology to dilute her message, in this scenario. Did she consider Black or Indigenous people at all in her statistics? An index search of the book proves that she didn't. Black and Indigenous people are US citizens, too. I would imagine that in the 1960s-1970s, most major metropolitan areas had large numbers of Black and Indigenous people in their population, and surely some of them were encountering Theravada Buddhism if it were diffusing as rapidly as Cadge claimed. Nonetheless, she spent a great deal of time analyzing the multiculturalism of both the people who brought the religion to the US and the occurrence of it here in the US upon diffusion. Yet, she seemed to skip the multiculturalism that existed here already, especially with her terminology.
1. Cadge, W. (2008). Heartwood. University of Chicago Press. 31. https://ccis.vitalsource.com/books/97...
2. Ibid. 32.
3. Ibid. 39.
However, I did notice some connections to other themes within her reporting. I picked up a little bit when she was reporting the statistics on Laotian and Cambodian organizations and temples. She wrote, "Quite apart from white Theravada Buddhist practitioners, groups that eventually founded the first Laotian and Cambodian temples in the United States were also started between 1978 and 1980 in the Washington D.C., area. Migration from Laos and Cambodia peaked in the early 1980s and these early groups slightly predated those peaks."1 This is where I initially started thinking there was more to what this girl was including in her observations. I think Cadge should have attributed lots of the migration to the cause. Furthermore, I think she should have made the connection apparent in her reporting regarding the tensions that were undoubtedly held between the white Theravada Buddhist practitioners and the ones from Laos and Cambodia. What she skirted around, was the Vietnam War. Not only was it the reason for most of the migration, it was certainly the cause of separation between the Laotians and Cambodians with the whites. Laos and Cambodia were both invaded and bombed by the US during that war.
Cadge mentions the Cambodians and Laotians again on the next page, saying, "Immigration from Theravada Buddhist countries continued in the 1980s, particularly from Cambodia and Laos..."2 Yet again, she made no mention of the cause of migration, yet we know that those who came from Laos and Cambodia- came from areas that had, indeed, been invaded by the US with their anti-communist agenda. Of course, they wanted to stay away from these white, US-born practitioners of their religion. This is especially true if you consider the appropriation they were seeing within the religious rituals.
Cadge mentions this again, saying, "Some of the mixing between Asians and Americans occurred in temples started by Sri Lankan, Thai, and Burmese immigrants to the United States, as opposed to those started by Lao and Cambodian refugees. This likely occurred because the monks and first-generation immigrants involved with Thai, Sri Lanka, and Burmese temples had a better command of English and were more assimilated to U.S. society than the monks and lay practitioners at Lao and Cambodian temples."3 She skirted around it again, here. She claimed that it was because of the English language and assimilation, but there was a great deal more to it than those things.
Moreover, these Cambodian and Laotian Theravada Buddhists already came from an area where their religion had been hijacked by extremists who used it as a weapon. Why on earth would they want to mingle with others appropriating it, especially in a country who had already invaded their homelands? In a country where consumerism runs rampant and their religion and way of life was based on sustenance and living with the earth? There was a lot more to it than assimilation and English. For someone who was so lengthy in her description of this diffusion of Theravada Buddhism, you would think that she would have made a paragraph or two to address that as existing concerns that played a role in the separation of white Theravada Buddhists and those from Laos and Cambodia. These underlying sentiments most certainly played a role. Sri Lanka may have been a bit off the beaten path, but Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos are all neighbors of Vietnam. They all have political histories, conflicts, and dealings with one another that go back eons. Their sacred places were transformed from one religion to another, and violence and tragedy have befallen the place for eons over religious turmoil. They had just cause to be cautious with the white US-born appropriators of their religion.
While Cadge goes into great detail about how the "Americans" contributed back to the Theravada Buddhists and vice versa through their different practices and how they shared a sacred canopy that covered their internal diversities, she still skirts around many aspects that ought to have been mentioned, in my opinion. She also used terms like "native-born Americans", "white", "white American-born", and "American" like they are all interchangeable. They are not. Americans are not only white. Americans are not only from the US. Americans are not all born in the US. I really went back a third time to check her usage of these terms, and she used them interchangeably. And she wrote this in 2005, so this should be from a perspective that acknowledges that you cannot use those terms interchangeably. America consists of North America, Central America, and South America, from the top of Alaska to the bottom of Argentina- people from various countries on this side of the world consider themselves American. She should have been a little more considerate than that. This is especially true considering just how much emphasis she placed on the 5 different countries that brought Theravada Buddhism to the US. There are Theravada Buddhists in Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, etc. It comes across as very US-centric and disregarding of other cultures, races, and ethnicities. Why break down the middle eastern ethnicities for pages and pages and put so much detail into that, if you're just going to lump the entirety of the Americas into "white US-born" terminology?
I understand that she was trying to explain the diffusion of Theravada Buddhism into the US, but I consider her terminology to dilute her message, in this scenario. Did she consider Black or Indigenous people at all in her statistics? An index search of the book proves that she didn't. Black and Indigenous people are US citizens, too. I would imagine that in the 1960s-1970s, most major metropolitan areas had large numbers of Black and Indigenous people in their population, and surely some of them were encountering Theravada Buddhism if it were diffusing as rapidly as Cadge claimed. Nonetheless, she spent a great deal of time analyzing the multiculturalism of both the people who brought the religion to the US and the occurrence of it here in the US upon diffusion. Yet, she seemed to skip the multiculturalism that existed here already, especially with her terminology.
1. Cadge, W. (2008). Heartwood. University of Chicago Press. 31. https://ccis.vitalsource.com/books/97...
2. Ibid. 32.
3. Ibid. 39.
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October 10, 2020Cadge seems to be caught between the worlds of reportive ethnography and stuffy academia here. When she is in full reporter mode, charting interviews and describing her experiences, her prose feels so much punchier and more alive. But when she gets stuck in the requisite academic paragraphs detailing theses and the like, things go very flat very quickly. Cadge seems quite uninterested in writing these parts of the book, and it shows.
As for the observations, I think it's interesting but not terribly surprising to see the way that white laypeople in America appropriate the elements of buddhism that they find useful and disregard the rest, looking down their nose at the more traditional Thai elements of the religion as backwards. I wish the book was willing to take more of a stance on this issue.
As for the observations, I think it's interesting but not terribly surprising to see the way that white laypeople in America appropriate the elements of buddhism that they find useful and disregard the rest, looking down their nose at the more traditional Thai elements of the religion as backwards. I wish the book was willing to take more of a stance on this issue.
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