Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in the United States, with adherents estimated in the several millions. But what exactly defines a 'Buddhist'? This has been a much-debated question in recent years, particularly in regard to the religion's bifurcation into two camps: the so-called 'imported' or ethnic Buddhism of Asian immigrants and the 'convert' Buddhism of a mostly middle-class, liberal, intellectual elite. In this timely collection Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka bring together some of the leading voices in Buddhist studies to examine the debates surrounding contemporary Buddhism's many faces. The contributors investigate newly Americanized Asian traditions such as Tibetan, Zen, Nichiren, Jodo Shinshu, and Theravada Buddhism and the changes they undergo to meet the expectations of a Western culture desperate for spiritual guidance. Race, feminism, homosexuality, psychology, environmentalism, and notions of authority are some of the issues confronting Buddhism for the first time in its three-thousand-year history and are powerfully addressed here. In recent years American Buddhism has been featured as a major story on ABC television news, National Public Radio, and in other national media. A strong new Buddhist journalism is emerging in the United States, and American Buddhism has made its way onto the Internet. The faces of Buddhism in America are diverse, active, and growing, and this book will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding this vital religious movement.

The Brahma’s Net Sutra plays an important niche role in the development of East Asian Mahayana Buddhism. It is the primary extant Vinaya text that articulates the precepts from a Mahayana perspective. That is, it takes its main audience to be “bodhisattva practitioners,� mainly householders who remain engaged with society rather than becoming renunciant monks or nuns. The Vinayas, and especially the discourse in this sutra, show monastic and lay Buddhist practitioners engaged at every level of society, from top to bottom. Buddhist practitioners were involved in military affairs, political intrigues, matchmaking, and every other sort of “mundane� social activity. The Vinaya texts reveal how the Buddhist community in its time judged and dealt with such matters. The Brahma’s Net Sutra was written in two fascicles, each radically different in structure, content, theme, grammar, etc., from the other. The first fascicle discusses the forty Mahayana stages: the ten departures toward the destination, the ten nourishing states of mind, the ten adamantine states of mind, and the ten bodhisattva grounds. The second fascicle explains the ten grave precepts and the forty-eight minor precepts. These came to be referred to as the “bodhisattva precepts,� the “great Brahma’s Net precepts,� the “buddha precepts,� and so forth. The second fascicle has been especially esteemed, studied, and circulated separately for more than a millennium as the scriptural authority for the Mahayana bodhisattva precepts. [Adapted from the Translators' Introduction.]

The discourse of Buddhist studies has traditionally been structured around texts and nations (the transmission of Buddhism from India to China to Japan). And yet, it is doubtful that these categories reflect in any significant way the organizing themes familiar to most Buddhists. It could be argued that cultic practices associated with particular buddhas and bodhisattvas are more representative of the way Buddhists conceive of their relation to tradition. This volume aims to explore this aspect of Buddhism by focusing on one of its most important cults, that of the Buddha Amitabha. Approaching the Land of Bliss is a rich collection of studies of texts and ritual practices devoted to Amitabha, ranging from Tibet to Japan and from early medieval times to the present. The cult of Amitabha is identified as an integral part of Tibet's Mahayana Buddhist tradition in the opening essay by Matthew Kapstein. Next Daniel Getz, Jr., locates the Pure Land patriarch Shengchang more firmly in a Huayancontext and his Pure Conduct Society not so much in the propagation of Pure Land praxis but as a means of modifying anti-Buddhist sentiments. Jacqueline Stone's study of the practice of reciting nenbutsu at the time of death gives us an understanding of both the practice itself and the motivating logic behind it. Kakuban-the founder of the one major ""schism"" in the history of the Shingon tradition-is placed in a typology of Japanese Pure Land thought inJames Sanford's study of Kakuban's Amida hishaku. Hank Glassman contributes an essay on the ""subsidiary cult"" of Chujohime, whichderived from the cult of Amitabha but grew to such importance that it displaced the latter as the focus of worship in medieval Japan. In his examination of ""radical Amidism,"" Fabio Rambelli discusses different forms of Japanese Pure Land thought that constitute divergences from the mainstream or normative forms. Richard Jaffeexamines the work of the seventeenth-century cleric Ungo Kiyo, who sought to match his teaching to the needs and capacities of hisdisciples. Todd Lewis highlights the importance of cultic life and finds traces of the desire for rebirth into Sukhavati in stupa worship among Newari Buddhists. Charles Jones' ""thick description"" of a one-day recitation retreat in Taiwan provides us with a closer look at how the cult of Amitabha continues in present-day East Asia. Approaching the Land of Bliss moves beyond the limitations of defining Buddhism in terms of its textual corpus or nation states,opening up the cult of Amitabha in Nepal, Tibet, China, and Taiwan, and uncovering new aspects of Japanese Pure Land. Contributors: Daniel A. Getz, Jr.; Hank Glassman; Richard Jaffe; Charles B. Jones; Matthew T. Kapstein; Todd T. Lewis; Richard K. Payne; Fabio Rambelli; James H. Sanford; Jacqueline I. Stone.