c. 2008 Religion News Service

SAN FRANCISCO _ On a Saturday afternoon near this city’s predominantly Latino Mission neighborhood, a handful of people gather for a Buddhist study group in a sunlit room adorned with a single altar.

For half an hour, they chant a mantra derived from Sanskrit and Chinese. Then they switch to Spanish to discuss the central tenets of their branch of Japanese Nichiren Buddhism.

The participants hail from Peru, Uruguay and Mexico. They include retirees, a massage therapist, a youth counselor and a software engineer.

Nicknamed “Bucolics” for Buddhist-Catholics, or “Buddaloupistas,” for Buddhists who hold special devotion for Our Lady of Guadalupe, Latino Buddhists are a small but growing trend nationwide.

In 2003, the Hispanic Churches in American Public Life (HCAPL) study found that Buddhism is the second most popular faith among U.S. Latinos, second only to Christianity.

Gaston Espinosa, assistant professor of religious studies at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif., co-directed the study and was surprised by the finding, especially since Buddhism is not traditionally known for evangelizing to other faiths.

“What makes the story unique is that it’s so counterintuitive,” he said.

One exception, he said, is Soka Gakkai International _ the umbrella group that includes the San Francisco center, best known for its active outreach, racial diversity and healthy growth rate.

On the spectrum of American religions, Buddhists are small, and Hispanic Buddhists even smaller. Just 0.7 percent of U.S. adults (about 1.6 million) are Buddhist, according to the recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, and just over half of them (53 percent) are white. Just 6 percent of Buddhists are Latino, and among Latinos nationwide, only 0.5 percent (an estimated 95,000) are Buddhist.

Espinosa said the interest in Buddhism is based on ever-growing religious pluralism in America and the counter-cultural movement decades ago that raised Buddhism’s profile.

“My hunch is that like the larger population, many Latinos come to Buddhism … through some sort of meditative practice, whether it’s yoga or some other kind of spiritual practices that involve Buddhist elements and that prompts them to dig a little deeper,” Espinosa said.

Latinos say Buddhism is appealing for a variety of reasons. Jose Cabezon, professor of religious studies at University of California-Santa Barbara, first encountered Buddhism in college and then lived among Tibetan exiles in India, where he was ordained a monk. He served as a traveling translator for the Dalai Lama while completing his doctorate in Buddhist studies.

When he became a monk, Cabezon asked his family’s permission, and they agreed. “We’re talking 30 years ago, and at that point, Buddhism is still relatively unknown. So they may have agreed, in part, out of ignorance,” he said with a laugh.

Cabezon said Buddhism and Catholicism share an emphasis on meditation, especially in the Zen tradition, and on ritual, especially in Tibetan Buddhism. Both religions have strong monastic traditions, he noted.

Another factor is that Buddhist practice does not require giving up one’s religious background, said the Rev. Virgilio Elizondo, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame and co-director of the HCAPL study.

“In (the) Latino mentality, we see things as an and/and, rather than an either/or,” he said.

Others, meanwhile, say the Buddhist emphasis on compassion and community reflects Latino cultural values.

“Culturally, I think Latinos are very, very compassionate people,” said Linda Gonzalez of Berkeley, Calif., who practices the Soto Zen tradition of Buddhism. “It’s very cultural to think of the whole, the community, rather than of yourself. There are values around harmony and people helping each other.”

For some, the centrality of suffering in Buddhism speaks to their experience as a racial minority. Ryumon Hilda Gutierrez Baldoquin, a Soto Zen priest and editor of “Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism,” is one of them.

Growing up in Cuba, she wanted to become a Catholic priest until she was told that was impossible. She left Catholicism around age 19,, and today she is one of a handful of Latino Buddhist priests nationwide. In her spiritual teachings, Baldoquin focuses on identity and oppression.

The dharma, or Buddhist doctrine, “is a powerful tool to address both of these issues,” she said. “That people historically subjugated can put this into practice and be free in this lifetime is deeply appealing.”

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Although carried to the United States by the earliest Asian immigrants, Buddhism entered the mainstream in the 1960s through white converts and increasing waves of Asian immigrants. Still, Buddhist practice remains largely divided by race today _ a situation Latinos have to negotiate.

Spring Washam is the co-founder of the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, Calif., which largely practices Theravada Buddhism.

“Buddhism in America looks like there’s either an Asian temple _ which could either be Vietnamese, Korean or Chinese _ that does all their services in their language, and that’s is not very inviting,” Washam said, “or there’s the middle-age, wealthy, hippie type that’s very common.”

Washam is trying to establish a Spanish-language class for the Oakland center, which was founded with an emphasis on racial diversity. Her weekly People of Color group is about half African-American, 20 percent Asian-American and 20 percent Latino.

“(Latinos) are underrepresented, and we’re always looking for who’s not there,” she said.

Washam said Buddhism’s compassion practices help to deal with racism.

“A big part of what we teach is compassion for ourselves and others. As the oppressor and the oppressed, we are connected. We’re both suffering,” she said.

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While Latinos may be underrepresented in some parts of the country, in others they are driving Buddhist practice.

Alberto Fournier is on the board of Centro Budista Ganden Shedrub Ling, a Tibetan Buddhist center founded in 1990 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Although born and raised Catholic, he said he always knew there was “something else and something different.” He grew interested in Buddhism after a trip to India, but thought there were few outlets to express the faith in Puerto Rico. Then he discovered two existing Tibetan centers and found his path. A recent exhibit of the Buddha’s relics brought 5,000 people in one weekend, he said.

“I am not about to say that people are converting to Buddhism by the hundreds, but there is curiosity, there is a sense of attraction, there definitely is a need for something, and people are considering Buddhism as part of that possible set of somethings,” he said.

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As Buddhism slowly spreads through the Latino community in the U.S. and Latin America, Fournier said the real question is not just what Buddhism offers to Latinos, but what contribution Latinos are making to Buddhism.

He calls it Latin America the “tropical mandala, the tropical shambala.”

“Latin America is getting very ready to grow Buddhism from within,” he said, “and to eventually become an important tradition within Buddhism.”

KRE/CM END CRABTREE1,250 words, with optional trims to 950 A photo of Jose Cabezon is available via https://religionnews.com.