The term American Buddhism can be used to describe all Buddhist groups within the United States, including Asian-American Buddhists born into the faith, who comprise the largest perctage of Buddhists in the country.
Hawaii has the largest Buddhist population by perctage, amounting to 8% of the state's population. California follows Hawaii with 2%. Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, South Dakota, Tnessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wyoming have a Buddhist population of 1%.

And others who have noted the problematic nature of equating ethnic Buddhists with Asian immigrants which elides the ethnicity or cultural specificity of white American Buddhists.
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Buddhism was introduced into the US by Asian immigrants in the 19th ctury, wh significant numbers of immigrants from East Asia began to arrive in the New World. In the United States, immigrants from China tered around 1820, but began to arrive in large numbers following the 1849 California Gold Rush.
Immigrant Buddhist congregations in North America are as diverse as the differt peoples of Asian Buddhist extraction who settled there. The US is home to Sri Lankan Buddhists, Chinese Buddhists, Japanese Buddhists, Korean Buddhists, Thai Buddhists, Cambodian Buddhists, Vietnamese Buddhists and Buddhists with family backgrounds in most Buddhist countries and regions. The Immigration Act of 1965 increased the number of immigrants arriving from China, Vietnam and the Theravada-practicing countries of Southeast Asia.
The first Buddhist temple in America was built in 1853 in San Francisco by the Sze Yap Company, a Chinese American fraternal society.
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Another society, the Ning Yeong Company, built a second in 1854; by 1875, there were eight temples, and by 1900 approximately 400 Chinese temples on the west coast of the United States, most of them containing some Buddhist elemts. Unfortunately a casualty of racism,
These temples were oft the subject of suspicion and ignorance by the rest of the population, and were dismissively called joss houses.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 curtailed growth of the Chinese American population, but large-scale immigration from Japan began in the late 1880s and from Korea around 1903. In both cases, immigration was at first primarily to Hawai‘i. Populations from other Asian Buddhist countries followed, and in each case, the new communities established Buddhist temples and organizations. For instance, the first sanctioned Japanese temple in Hawai‘i, the Hāmākua Bukkyo Kaido (later ramed as the Hāmākua Jodo Mission), was built in 1896 by the Jōdo-shū school under the guidance of Reverd Gakuo Okabe.
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In 1898, Japanese missionaries and immigrants established a Young M's Buddhist Association, and the Rev. Sōryū Kagahi was dispatched from Japan to be the first Buddhist missionary to Hawai‘i.
The first Japanese Buddhist temple in the contintal U.S. was built in San Francisco in 1899, and the first in Canada was built at the Ishikawa Hotel in Vancouver in 1905.
The first Buddhist clergy to take up residce in the contintal U.S. were Shuye Sonoda and Kakuryo Nishimjima, missionaries from Japan who arrived in 1899.

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The Buddhist Churches of America and the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii are immigrant Buddhist organizations in the United States. The BCA is an affiliate of Japan's Nishi Hongwanji, a sect of Jōdo Shinshū, which is, in turn, a form of Pure Land Buddhism. Tracing its roots to the Young M's Buddhist Association founded in San Francisco at the d of the 19th ctury and the Buddhist Mission of North America founded in 1899,
It took its currt form in 1944. All of the Buddhist Mission's leadership, along with almost the tire Japanese American population, had be interned during World War II. The name Buddhist Churches of America was adopted at Topaz War Relocation Cter in Utah; the word church was used similar to a Christian house of worship. After internmt ded, some members returned to the West Coast and revitalized churches there, while a number of others moved to the Midwest and built new churches. During the 1960s and 1970s, the BCA was in a growth phase and was very successful at fund-raising. It also published two periodicals, one in Japanese and one in glish. However, since 1980, BCA membership declined. The 36 temples in the state of Hawaii of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission have a similar history.
While a majority of the Buddhist Churches of America's membership are ethnically Japanese, some members have non-Asian backgrounds. Thus, it has limited aspects of export Buddhism. As involvemt by its ethnic community declined, internal discussions advocated attracting the broader public.
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Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is perhaps the most successful of Japan's new religious movemts that grew around the world after the d of World War II.
Soka Gakkai, which means Value Creation Society, is one of three sects of Nichir Buddhism that came to the United States during the 20th ctury.

Its main religious practice is chanting the mantra Nam Myōhō Rge Kyō and sections of the Lotus Sutra. Unlike schools such as Z, Vipassanā, and Tibetan Buddhism, Soka Gakkai Buddhists do not practice meditative techniques other than chanting.
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Another US Buddhist institution is Hsi Lai Temple in Hacida Heights, California. Hsi Lai is the American headquarters of Fo Guang Shan, a modern Buddhist group in Taiwan. Hsi Lai was built in 1988 at a cost of $10 million and is oft described as the largest Buddhist temple in the Western hemisphere. Although it caters primarily to Chinese Americans, it also has regular services and outreach programs in glish.
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While Asian immigrants were arriving, some American intellectuals examined Buddhism, based primarily on information from British colonies in India and East Asia.
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In the last ctury, numbers of Asian Buddhist masters and teachers have immigrated to the U.S. in order to propagate their beliefs and practices. Most have belonged to three major Buddhist traditions or cultures: Z, Tibetan, and Theravadan.

The glishm William Jones and Charles Wilkins translated Sanskrit texts into glish. The American Transcdtalists and associated persons, in particular Hry David Thoreau took an interest in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. In 1844, The Dial, a small literary publication edited by Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, published an glish version of a portion of the Lotus Sutra; it had be translated by Dial business manager Elizabeth Palmer Peabody from a Frch version rectly completed by Eugène Burnouf. His Indian readings may have influced his later experimts in simple living: at one point in Wald Thoreau wrote: I realized what the Oritals meant by contemplation and the forsaking of works. The poet Walt Whitman also admitted to an influce of Indian religion on his writings.
An early American to publicly convert to Buddhism was Hry Steel Olcott. Olcott, a former U.S. army colonel during the Civil War, had grown interested in reports of supernatural phoma that were popular in the late 19th ctury. In 1875, he, Hela Blavatsky, and William Quan Judge founded the Theosophical Society, dedicated to the study of the occult and influced by Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. The leaders claimed to believe that they were in contact, via visions and messages, with a secret order of adepts called the Himalayan Brotherhood or the Masters. In 1879, Olcott and Blavatsky traveled to India and in 1880, to Sri Lanka, where they were met thusiastically by local Buddhists, who saw them as allies against an aggressive Christian missionary movemt. On May 25, Olcott and Blavatsky took the pancasila vows of a lay Buddhist before a monk and a large crowd. Although most of the Theosophists appear to have counted themselves as Buddhists, they held idiosyncratic beliefs that separated them from known Buddhist traditions; only Olcott was thusiastic about following mainstream Buddhism. He returned twice to Sri Lanka, where he promoted Buddhist education, and visited Japan and Burma. Olcott authored a Buddhist Catechism, stating his view of the basic tets of the religion.
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An epic poem he had writt about the life and teachings of the Buddha, expounded with much wealth of local color and not a little felicity of versification. The book became immsely popular in the United States, going through eighty editions and selling more than 500, 000 copies. Paul Carus, a German American philosopher and theologian, was at work on a more scholarly prose treatmt of the same subject. Carus was the director of Op Court Publishing Company, an academic publisher specializing in philosophy, scice, and religion, and editor of The Monist, a journal with a similar focus, both based in La Salle, Illinois. In 1894, Carus published The Gospel of Buddha, compiled from a variety of Asian texts which, true to its name, prested the Buddha's story in a form resembling the Christian Gospels.
In 1887, The Buddhist Ray appeared, a Santa Cruz, California-based magazine published and edited by Phillangi Dasa, born Herman Carl (or Carl Herman) Veetering (or Vettering), a recluse about whom little is known. The Ray's tone was ironic, light, saucy,
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