d8be680d-2310-11ee-a077-c9de5a43d6bf /periodicals/.content/issue-items/TSFgsihbPeriodicalContent_02375.xml Transcending Borders: Using Regional and Ethnographic Studies to Envision the Future of Humanistic Buddhism

Arizona is a region where the population of Chinese Buddhists is low and the general populations of both Asian-Americans and Buddhists are small. Thus Buddhist communities find themselves not only distant from large centers of Buddhism in California, but also isolated from each other. A study of two very different approaches to Buddhism in Arizona may shed light on the future of Humanistic Buddhism (literally “Buddhism in the midst of people”) in similarly sparsely- populated regions of the United States.

d39f8724-07d1-11ed-87ba-c9de5a43d6bf /publications/.content/item/item_123456789_496.xml Transcending Borders: Using Regional and Ethnographic Studies to Envision the Future of Humanistic Buddhism

db7301a4-07d1-11ed-87ba-c9de5a43d6bf /publications/.content/item/item_123456789_456.xml Transcending Borders: Using Regional and Ethnographic Studies to Envision the Future of Humanistic Buddhism

Ellison Onizuka (1946-1986) made this observation upon viewing the Earth from Space Shuttle Discovery in 1985. A National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut, Onizuka became the first Asian-American and the first Buddhist to reach space. Raised as a Shin Buddhist in Hawaii affiliated with the Kona Hongwanji, Onizuka was struck by the lack of boundaries or borders—political, racial, or egoistic—visible from such a distance.