Buddhism is Australia's fastest growing
religion
By Walter
Jayawardhana, Lankaweb, June 22, 2007
Australia is having per capita
buddhists than any other western nation and it is the fastest
growing religion in the country
Sydney, Australia -- The Dalai lama’s recently
concluded visit to Australia that also included a meeting with
Australian Prime minister John Howard has once again drawn the
attention not only to the fact that Buddhism is the fastest growing
religion in Australia but also that there are more Buddhists in the
continent per capita than anywhere else in the Western world.
A Voice of America report said since 1996 the number of Buddhists in
the country have gone up almost 80 percent and now there are about
350000 followers of the religions first brought to the country by Asian
immigrants not only during recent times but also in the not so recent
past like 100 years ago.
The Voice of America report said Buddhism was now moving beyond the
Asian immigrant communities and spreading as a mainstream religion. The
report said, “Experts who study religious trends in Australia say many
converts to Buddhism found the teachings of some Christian churches too
rigid and intolerant of questions about the faith.
Converts say Buddhism gives them freedoms they have never had before.
Renate Ogilvie is a German-born teacher at a Buddhist institute here in
Sydney.Quoting him the report said, "In Buddhism you are allowed to ask
questions and actually you're actively encouraged to doubt and to
discuss and so on," Ogilvie said. "The Buddha said don't just believe
because I'm very famous, don't just believe because many people believe
what I teach. Be like the goldsmith, you know, apply the acid to the
gold to test it and the acid being your mind, your intelligence. So in
that sense it's a manifesto of intellectual freedom which is very, very
appealing."
The Diamond Way retreat facility in Sydney is typical of many small
Buddhist centers around the country and it has 140 members and like many
other groups here it follows the Vajrayana tradition from Tibet, seen as
the third main branch of Buddhism alongside the Theravada and Mahayana,
the report said.
The following is the rest of the report Phil Mercer broadcast for the
Voice of America:-
Phil Carlisle is the host of the Diamond Way gatherings.
"I think that Buddhism really suits people who have independent
thinking and are maybe discouraged or had enough of religions where
they're told what to believe rather than being given an opportunity to
see how something fits for them. Aussies are notoriously averse to
authority figures," Carlisle said.
Anthony Hickson is a recent convert. He was brought up in a strict
Catholic family.
The 27-year-old video editor has been attending meetings at the Diamond
Way center since the start of the year and believes Buddhism is showing
him a new way to live.
"I guess from coming here I don't think there's one truth" Hickson
said. "I think there's [are] many truths. My brother's pretty active in
the Catholic Church and that works really well for him and I've seen him
grow and change a lot. So I think for me it was just a different path
and a lot of the teachings made sense to me before I'd come here and
coming here it was just being around people. There's a good energy,
there's a good vibe. Things make sense."
The nuns offer a prayer asking for long life for the Dalai Lama,
Tibetan Buddhism's spiritual leader. The Nobel Peace Prize winner lives
in India as the head of the community of Tibetans who have fled Chinese
rule of their homeland.
His visit to Australia over the past several days created much
excitement among Buddhists and non-Buddhists. Large crowds greeted him
everywhere he went. Even Prime Minister John Howard met with one of the
world's most recognizable religious figures.
For Buddhist nun Robina Caulton, the enthusiasm surrounding the Dalai
Lama's visit shows how her faith has developed in Australia.
"The Dalai Lama has an enormous kind of following here. I mean I've
observed that traveling around the world - now based in the States,
right," Caulton said. "Australia's half the population of California and
there're probably more Tibetan Buddhist centers and more flourishing
ones than even actually in, say, the United States. … When he's in the
States people in one other state wouldn't even know he's there but
whenever he's in Australia the whole country knows so it's kind of
interesting."
Despite such enthusiasm, Australia remains a very Christian country -
with more than 75 percent of the population of 20 million belonging to a
Christian church. Some Anglican leaders have said Buddhism has little
community spirit but relies heavily on individual happiness. Buddhists
disagree. Many Buddhist communities have charitable operations, and they
say that a community's happiness depends on the lasting happiness of
ndividuals.
- Why is Buddhism
the fastest growing religion in Australia?
- Darren Nelson
The answer to this
inquiry is multi-layered and complex. It is a tantalising issue because
it highlights the changing spiritual landscape of Australia and provides
an insight into just how multicultural we have really become.
Cultures that were
foreign to Anglo-European Australians are now being adopted by some of
them - though not without some dissenting resistance. This level of
resistance in Australian society can be seen as a litmus test, used to
measure future political and religious tolerance in this country.
The story concerning the
rise of Buddhism in Australia is a compelling tale of a resilient
religion that has survived despite the odds. How is it possible for a
2,500-year-old philosophy, which began five hundred years before
Christianity and one thousand years before the Muslim faith, to be
relevant to modern life in Australia? Considering all the other ancient
religions that have faded from contemporary practice, such as the sun
worshippers of Ancient Egypt, the human sacrifices of the South American
Mayans and the Druids from the Dark Ages of England, Buddhism has
outlasted them all.
It does not preach the
dogma of a strange cult, nor seek converts with evangelistic fervour.
Those Australians who actively convert to Buddhism do so voluntarily,
and are usually well-educated middle-aged professionals who are
attracted to a sense of inner peace. This documentary therefore, seeks
to immerse itself in the substance of this seemingly magnetic Buddhist
approach. Perhaps it will be like seeing Australia for the first time,
through ancient eyes.
It is interesting to
note that in spite of the recent increase in Buddhist numbers across
Australia, Buddhism has actually played a part in Australian history for
some time. It did not just suddenly arrive in a recent wave of migrants.
Some anthropologists, in fact, have suggested that Buddhism was possibly
the earliest non-indigenous religion to reach Australia before white
settlement.
Between 1405 and 1433
the Chinese Ming emperor, Cheng-Ho, sent sixty-two large ships to
explore southern Asia. Although there is evidence that several ships
from that armada landed on the Aru Islands to the north of Arnhem Land,
it is not known whether they reached the mainland.
One unproved hypothesis
of Professor A.P. Elkin is that the belief of some Northern Territory
Koorie tribes in reincarnation, psychic phenomena and mental cultivation
is evidence of early contact with Buddhists. Despite certain rock
paintings that possibly depict Chinese junks weighing anchor or images
of the Buddha, actual material evidence remains to be seen.
The first documented
arrival of Buddhists in Australia was in 1848 during the gold rushes,
when Chinese coolie labourers were brought into the country to work on
the Victorian gold fields. These workers represented a transient
population that usually returned home within five years. It was not
until 1876 that the first permanent Buddhist community was established
by Sinhalese migrants on Thursday Island. There the ethnic Sri Lankans
built the first temple in Australia, while they were employed on the
sugar cane plantations of Queensland.
From the late 1870’s
onwards many Japanese Shinto Buddhists also arrived and were active in
the pearling industry across northern Australia, establishing other
Buddhist enclaves in Darwin and Broome. Buddhist cemeteries were kept
and festivals celebrated. Official government statistics compiled as
part of a national census in 1891 indicate that, at the time, there were
slightly more Buddhists in Australia (at 1.2%), than there are today (at
1.1%).
Buddhist numbers would
have continued to increase if the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901
had not been introduced to combat the ‘yellow peril’. Alfred Deakin, who
was destined to be Prime Minister three times, drafted the legislation
to pacify a somewhat xenophobic Caucasian electorate. This bill later
grew to represent the more broadly implemented White Australia Policy.
For the next fifty years
the benefits of mind training and meditation, as taught by Buddhism,
would be disregarded as some sort of obscure ‘eastern mysticism’. Except
for some remote surviving pockets of Buddhists (such as Broome and
Thursday Island), the religion became virtually extinct in Australia.
A small group of
committed western Buddhists formed the earliest known Buddhist
organisation in Australia, The Little Circle of the Dharma, in Melbourne
in 1925. Progress was slow though, until after World War II when local
enthusiasm for the White Australia Policy began to decline. In 1951 the
first Buddhist nun visited Australia. Sister Dhammadinna, born in the
USA, ordained and with thirty years experience in Sri Lanka, came to
propagate the Theravadin School of Buddhist teaching. She received
nation-wide media coverage.
Inspired by this visit,
the next year the Buddhist Society of New South Wales was formed under
the presidency of Leo Berkley, a Dutch-born Sydney businessman. This
organisation is today the oldest Buddhist group in Australia. Its
membership was, and still is, compromised mainly of people from
Anglo-European backgrounds.
In 1958 the Buddhist
Federation of Australia was formed in order to co-ordinate the growing
Buddhist groups that had sprung up around the country in Western
Australia, South Australia, Queensland and Victoria.
The Buddhist presence in
Australia had depended for the first hundred years on lay people with
only the occasional visits by ordained members of the Sangha (the
Buddhist clergy). But in the 1970’s the growing number of Buddhists
created a need for resident monks, and a new phase in Australian
Buddhism began.
In 1971 the Buddhist
Society of New South Wales established the Sri Lankan monk, Somaloka, in
residence at a retreat centre in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. This
became the first monastery in Australia. A succession of monasteries
representing different aspects of Buddhism slowly became established
around Australia; in 1975 at Stanmore in Sydney, in 1978 at Wisemans
Ferry in country NSW and in 1984 at Serpentine in Western Australia.
The charismatic face of
Buddhism, the Dalai Lama, (who was awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 1989
and describes himself as ‘a simple monk’), has travelled the world
constantly giving lectures and answering questions in 20,000 seat pop
concert halls. John Cleese speaks out for him in London, Henri
Cartier-Bresson records his teachings around France and Adam Yauch of
the Beastie Boys pop group has even interviewed him in Rome for
Rolling Stone magazine.
In the past few years he
has opened eleven Offices of Tibet, everywhere from Canberra to Moscow
and last year alone provided prefaces and forewords for roughly thirty
books. The 14th Dalai Lama, who holds the titles of Ocean of
Wisdom, Holder Of The White Lotus and Protector Of The Land Of Snows,
has even served as the guest editor of French Vogue magazine.
The three visits of the
Dalai Lama to Australia in 1982, 1992 and 1996 were joyful occasions for
Buddhists of all traditions, and huge crowds of Buddhists and the
general public gathered to hear him speak. On the third visit, and
despite virulent Chinese protests, the Dalai Lama met with and was
photographed with the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard. It was
now clearly evident at this stage, that Buddhism had become a
significant minority religion in Australia.
During this visit local
celebrities contributed generously to fundraising activities. For
example, Kate Ceberano, Rachel Berger and Frente were just some
of the ‘star-studded cast’ to perform at the Dalai Lama Lounge Room.
They helped to raise $14,000 over three nights. Mushroom Records
released a benefit album called The Mantra Mix CD, featuring
Jenny Morris, Jimmy Barnes and Johnny Diesel. One local advertising
agency, providing their services for nothing, came up with the slogan
"You missed Jesus. You missed the Buddha. Do not miss the Dalai Lama".
When was the last time such hype accompanied the visit of a religious
leader?
But Australians are not
alone in their sympathy towards his cause. The issue of Tibetan
oppression has come to the attention of Hollywood and with two new films
about his life in the cinematic pipeline, the Dalai Lamas’ profile has
not only moved into the mainstream, but has (much to the horror of the
Chinese Government) gone global.
The first to be
released, Seven Years In Tibet, tells the story of Heinrich
Harrer, a mountain climber and Nazi party member who encounters his own
sense of enlightenment after becoming the tutor to the young Dalai Lama
in Tibet in the 1940’s. The film has attracted healthy attention because
it stars Brad Pitt.
The other film is
Kundun, directed by Martin Scorcese. This epic tells the remarkable
tale of the Dalai Lama from his point of view, from his recognition as
the reincarnated Buddha of compassion at age two until his escape to
India at twenty-four. Recently released here in Australia, it was
reviewed by Channel Nines’ Sunday program on June 14th
and described as ‘the most beautiful and important film released this
year’.
Hollywood’s fascination
for Buddhism extends beyond these two screenplays, with many stars
expressing interest in the religion itself. In February 1997, the
karate-kicking action star Steven Seagall was recognised by the Nyingma
lineage of Tibetan Buddhism as the reincarnation of a 15th
century lama. Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys pop group has
organised two huge benefit concerts to publicise the plight of Tibet.
Actor Richard Gere,
together with Uma Thurmans father, Richard Thurman, has opened Tibet
House in New York, published books on the subject, and meditates daily.
Other practitioners that have come to attention include Tina Turner,
Harrison Ford (whose wife Melissa Mathison wrote Kunduns script),
Oliver Stone, Herbie Hancock, Courtney Love, composer Philip Glass (who
also worked on Kundun) and REM’s lead singer Michael Stipe.
The momentum of
Buddhism’s’ profile is driven by other, more subtle reminders as well. A
new make up is being advertised as Zen Blush, a new sitcom is
called Dharma and Greg, a designer fruit juice container has on
its’ label "Please recycle this bottle. It deserves to be reincarnated
too", and monks star in television commercials and news items.
Such recent exposure
does not take away the fact that Australians have been quietly turning
to Buddhism for some time. The statistics compiled in the 1986, 1991 and
1996 Commonwealth Government Census support the view that Buddhist
numbers have been steadily increasing. Between 1986 and 1991 the numbers
of practitioners rose from 80,387 to 139,847, a growth of 74%. Due
largely to the decrease in immigration numbers in recent years the
percentage growth for Buddhists slowed between 1991 and 1996 to 43%,
from 139,847 to 199,812. This rate of increase is still higher than that
of any other religion.
The three census surveys
also indicate that of the eight Christian denominations listed in the
analysis for New South Wales only three show an increase (Baptist,
Catholic and Orthodox), while five (Anglican, Church Of Christ,
Lutheran, Presbyterian and Uniting Church) have decreased in numbers.
Does the fluctuating
demographic between Buddhism and Christianity point towards
dissatisfaction with traditional Australian religious beliefs? Is
Buddhism more competitive than Christianity or is one spiritual
experience simply more meaningful than the other?
Of the 199,812 Buddhists
across Australia today, approximately thirty thousand are
Anglo-European’s who have ‘crossed over’, by choice, to this alternative
philosophy. They have turned from ‘Christian sinner’ to ‘Eastern
Mystic’. The slump in immigration figures from Buddhist countries is
apparently not enough to stall the continued growth in Australian
Buddhism, especially now that local support has been established. Back
in 1938 a Japanese Shinto monk, noting that it took China three
centuries to adopt Buddhism from India, said introducing it in the West
would be like holding a lotus to a rock and waiting for it to take root.
When the Age of Aquarius
spread across the world in the form of the 60’s alternative hippie
counter-culture, there appeared to be no shortage of poets, artists,
actors, writers and musicians interested in a voyage of inner peace
through Buddhist philosophy and meditative practices. John Lennon used
Buddhist mantras’ in the lyrics of his music such as Across the
Universe. Allen Ginsberg used a mantra (Buddhist blessing) to bless
the ground at Woodstock before the first fans arrived. Zen meditation
too, first embraced by the Beat poets in the 1950’s flourished across
first world nations as a healthy alternative to LSD-induced
enlightenment.
More importantly the
drug-fuelled 1960’s, when the Vietnam War was at its height, feminist
protestors burnt their bras and man landed on the moon, saw a relaxation
of traditional middle class values that allowed a greater versatility in
public consciousness. During this time, people had greater access and
freedom to experiment with new schools of thought (feminism, civil
rights, the peace movement, alternative lifestyles etc) without
suffering as many social ramifications as in the past.
According to the
Reverend Phillip Hughes, a Melbourne-based religious researcher, "many
people thought in the 1960’s that science itself was not sufficient to
really explain existence, but then they were not keen to go back to the
Judeo-Christian tradition with its holy books, miracles and so forth.
Also the need for a sense of peace has become more apparent".
Potential Buddhists are
attracted to the Dharma (Buddhist teachings) not only to take refuge
from a world of chaos and confusion, but also to re-invent their own
personal sense of a meaningful spirituality in a society of high-tech
consumerism, commercialism, violence and apathy. Compared to the
Christian beliefs many Anglo-European Australians grew up with, Buddhism
does not require its adherents to remain faithful to a specific dogma.
It is not a faith. It is
not technically a religion either, though when discussing systems of
worship it is easier to work with that label. It is more a psychology
and a philosophy wrapped around a moral code of mind training.
The founder of Buddhism,
Siddhartha Gautama (born in 563 B.C.), turned his back on the royal
family he had been born into, to live life as a simple ascetic monk. At
the age of thirty-five he became enlightened and ‘saw things as they
really are’, having achieved a mental state of absolute egolessness,
where he no longer felt any sense of narcissism or craving.
He became the first
Buddha and was quick to teach his disciples that he was not a god,
should not be revered and no rituals should be developed around his
teachings. Heaven and hell, he taught, are not external places that we
travel to after we die; they do not in fact exist. Rather, both places
dwell only in the hearts of people. People are either good or bad, pious
or evil. Paradise exists within our spirit, it is here and now, and not
some destination in the after-life.
Meditation, he believed,
is the process required for all adherents to achieve Buddhahood. This is
one of the main differences between Buddhism and other religions.
Practitioners are offered an ultimate goal, enlightenment itself, which
is equivalent to the level attained by the Buddha himself. He taught
that everyone is capable of achieving this, providing equality to all
his followers.
This is a radical
departure for born-Christians to realise when they first start studying
the principles of Buddhism. The best a faithful Christian could hope to
achieve with his devotion was entry to heaven as an angel where he is
still subject to the will of a greater being who could smite him anytime
at will. The Buddha teaches his disciples too become the same as he,
which is why he is not a god. In Buddhism there is no pecking order in
the after life, because that would require the presence of an ego, which
is the Buddhists life work to gradually eliminate.
Buddhism dispenses with
the notion of a Supreme Being, as does science, and explains the origins
and workings of the universe in terms of natural law. All of this
certainly exhibits a scientific spirit. The Buddha advised that we
should not blindly believe him but rather question, examine, inquire and
rely on our own experience. This scientific approach of cause and effect
was not overlooked by Albert Einstein in the 1930’s:
"The religion of the
future will be a cosmic religion", he said, "it should transcend a
personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both natural and
spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the
experience of all things, natural and spiritual, and a meaningful unity.
Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that would
cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism".
While the antipodean
blossoming of Buddhism seems to have gone from strength to strength
since the 1980’s, this has not always been the case. It is in the
Buddhist principle of godlessness that the journalist can find opposing
and dissenting voices to the Buddhist cause. This theological bone of
contention is the main source of friction with other religions.
On Wednesday, the 18th
of January 1995, Pope John Paul II arrived in Sydney and attended an
Interfaith Gathering in the Sydney Domain. Representatives from major
religions, including Protestant, Orthodox and Coptic Christians, Jewish
and Muslim were invited to share the platform with him. Notable by its
absence was Australia’s’ third largest religion, Buddhism.
The organisers told SBS
Radio that they were unaware that Buddhism was Australia’s’ third
largest religion and besides that there was no national leader of
Buddhism, so who were they to invite? The Sydney Morning Herald
reported that "somebody in the State Government had forgotten to invite
the Buddhists". This is unlikely, as the New South Wales Government is
very aware of the presence of Buddhists in this state and often invites
Buddhist representatives to State functions. A more likely explanation
is that the Vicar of Rome holds Buddhism in very low esteem as is
evident from the following extract from his book, Crossing The
Threshold Of Hope:
"Buddhism is in large
measure an ‘atheistic’ system. We do not free ourselves from evil
through the good which comes from God; we liberate ourselves only
through detachment from the world, which is bad. The fullness of such a
detachment is not union with God, but what is called nirvana, a
state of perfect indifference with regard to the world. To save oneself
means, above all, to free oneself from evil by becoming indifferent to
the world, which is the source of evil. This is the culmination of the
spiritual process. Christian mysticism is born of the Revelation of the
living God. This God opens Himself to union with man, arousing in him
the capacity to be united with Him, especially by means of the
theological virtues - faith, hope and above all, love".
Graeme Lyall, Chairman
of the Buddhist Council of New South Wales, strongly refutes the
Catholic position. "The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘atheism’ as
‘disbelief in the existence of God’ ", he said, "the Buddha is described
as the teacher of ‘gods and men’, so how can Buddhism be an atheistic
system? Religious arguments often come down to the use of religious
language. We must ascertain to what we are referring to when we use the
term ‘God’.
What is a ‘living God’?
Anything that is living is subject to death and decay, so why should we
place ourselves in the hands of something, which, like ourselves, is
impermanent? If he is referring to the old man with a white beard who
sits in the sky taking notes in his little black book ready for the day
of judgement, then he is out of step with modern theological thinking
and most other theologians.
Modern theologians, such
as Paul Tillich, suggest that the term ‘God’ refers to the ‘ground of
being’ - the very fact of existence. No Buddhist would argue with this,
but they may be reluctant to use the term ‘God’ to describe it".
Lay’s implication that
the Pope is out of touch appears to be more than just a knee-jerk
defence, when you consider that the ranks of Catholics themselves are
split on the issue. Irish-born Father William Johnston, a Jesuit priest,
spoke of his sympathy to Buddhism when he visited Sydney in early
January 1997. Here to attend the Religion, Literature and Arts
Conference at the Australian Catholic University, Father Johnston spoke
of the Christian churches need to introduce aspects of Eastern Mysticism
- such as meditation, yoga and Zen - if they want to increase numbers
attending weekly services.
"Some Catholics are very
nervous about meditation but there is a lot to learn from it and yoga
and Zen", he said. "The Catholic Church has always kept meditation very
strongly in its religious orders; our problem is that we didn’t teach it
to the laity, who are now looking for it".
Father Johnston,
director of the Institute of Oriental Religions at Tokyos’ Sophia
University, has lived in Japan since 1951 and believes Christianity has
become ‘too legalistic’, with ‘too many do’s and don’ts and not enough
vision and enlightenment’.
Besides the Catholic
Churches’ potentially bilateral reaction to Buddhism, local opposition
to the arrival of Eastern Mysticism has also occurred in the steel
manufacturing town of Wollongong, an hours drive south of Sydney. There
the Anglican Bishop of Wollongong, the Reverend Reg Piper has weighed
into the debate expressing his annoyance not only at the presence of
Buddhism, but the presence of a philosophy he sees as evil.
The contest began when a
Taiwan-based Buddhist sect, Fokuangshan, opened a huge fifty
million-dollar temple just south of the steel city in Berkley. The monks
there planned to promote their style of ‘humanistic’ Buddhism, which
emphasises the ‘oneness and co-existence of the global village’.
The Fokuangshan sect was
founded in the mid-1960’s and has more than one hundred branches
world-wide (including Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth) with 1.5 million
members and its own university, several schools, an organ donor bank, a
retirement home, even a cemetery. This growth is due to its’ charismatic
founding father, the Venerable Hsing Yun. The size of the Wollongong
temple, called Nan Tien, is second only to their headquarters in Taipei.
Bishop Piper’s concerns
are not shared by other Christian churches such as the local Uniting
Church, which has adopted a user-friendly approach to the temple. On
Tuesday, the 18th of June 1996, Bishop Piper appeared on the
ABCs’ 7.30 Report to voice his opposition.
Bishop Piper: See
when you have the bible view of humankind, generally, if it is outside
the framework of the truth - the bible terms it as evil.
Reporter: Is it a
deception?.
Bishop Piper: In
that respect, yes. While ever it is not based in the truth of Christ, it
would be a deception. Because Buddhism is basically an atheistic
religion. There is no god.
Reporter: Why is
that a problem?.
Bishop Piper:
Because God has revealed himself through Christ. Christ has been raised
from the dead. He said he is God. There is no other way to the truth and
no other way to really live except through Christ.
The growing curiosity
about Buddhism has so worried Bishop Piper that he has made a video
called In Search Of Paradise - A Biblical Response To Buddhism.
It is to warn all Christians of the evil deception of Buddhism, that has
arrived to convert them.
Reverend Shin of the Nan
Tien temple remains perplexed with Bishop Pipers attitude. "We don’t
convert people to Buddhism or change their religion", he said. " As long
as they feel comfortable with any of the practices or any of the beliefs
and it is good for the society, good for them and good for the family,
that is the most important thing. Whether they decide to become
Buddhists or not - that is not our concern".
Local opposition to
Buddhism also extends beyond the Christian clergy. A survey by the
Federal Office Of Multicultural Affairs, conducted in 1988, found that
41% of the general population did not wish to have a Buddhist as a
workmate. Only Muslims fared worse.
Despite this, on Sunday
8th February this year Australian Buddhists were delighted to
learn they had a friend in a high place when the Governor-General, Sir
William Deane, expressed his support at the opening of the Rahula
Community Lodge in Canberra.
"A report from the
Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Population Research a couple of
years ago, showed that over the ten years to 1991 Buddhism was by far
the largest growing religion in our country: an increase in the order of
some 300%" he said. "To a significant extent, of course, the figures
reflect the substantial increase in migration from south-east Asia over
that period.
But the second largest
national group were Australian-born Buddhists - many from non-Asian
cultures attracted by both the philosophy and the practice of Buddhism,
with its emphasis upon the search for inner peace and understanding. I
offer my very best wishes for the success of all that you hope to
achieve in the years ahead as future stages of the centre are completed.
May all your endeavours prosper and bring joy to those whom they are
intended to help".
Buddhism continues to
maintain a steady trickle of recruitment at the grass roots level.
According to the Venerable Pannyavaro, a monk based in Surry Hills in
Sydney, young people are still attracted to Buddhism because they are
looking for an alternative to established Christian churches and they
can explore Buddhism without feeling obliged to join.
"A lot of young people
in the twenty to mid-thirty age group are coming because they don’t feel
imposed upon", he said, " and there are deeper meditative techniques
they can draw upon". The Buddhist website he operates
(http://www.buddhanet.net) gets an average 9,000 ‘hits’ a day. Venerable
Pannyavaro offers cyber-nirvana at this site in the form of online
meditation sessions where people can log on, meditate and contemplate
the infinite.
There are now more than
ninety Buddhist temples and organisations in New South Wales, sixty-five
of them in Sydney. The bulk of the two hundred people who each week
visit the Buddhist Library, Meditation and Information Centre in
Camperdown in Sydney are in the thirty to fifty age group. About
eighty-percent are from a non-Asian background.
Much to the horror of
the Christian clergy (if they ever find out), Buddhism is even being
taught in one New South Wales primary school during religious scripture
classes. In early 1995 at Blackheath Primary School a group of parents
approached the principal, Kate Allan, asking the school to provide
Buddhist instruction as well as the traditional Catholic and Protestant
options. Now, forty-five of the schools three hundred and fifty students
attend classes in Buddhism.
"The move came from the
community", Allan says. "In the mountains we have quite a diverse
community and it was the choice of the parents to have these classes -
it was not something imposed on the whole school".
Answering the question of Buddhism's
growing popularity in is clearly going to be a rich and involved
conclusion. This religion seems to have, at first glance, a vigorous
influence on the world stage. Just when you think you have examined
the issues thoroughly, you suddenly discover that you are still only
looking at the tip of the iceberg.
---o0o---
