The original Buddhist teachings and practices were adapted to and by indigenous cultures as they spread from India throughout the Asian world. Drawing on a model suggested by this historical pattern, the question arises: how exactly would Buddhism accommodate embedded Western cultural patterns; how would it be reconfigured to mesh with modern American life and norms? Paul Carus (1852-1919), one of the earliest and most important popularizers of Oriental thought in America, provides a model for this question. Beginning with the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions, Carus, together with Asian missionaries (D. T. Suzuki, Shaku Soyen, Dharmapala), led a pioneering effort to introduce the "light of Asia" to Americans. They refracted that light, however, through a distinctly Occidental prism: Christianity, science, and "liberal-modernism." The powerful and combined influences of these three gave rise to a distinctly Americanized form of Buddhism. Thus, instead of converting Americans to Buddhism, they essentially converted Buddhism to America.
Moreover, due to the earlier European and American influence throughout the Asian world, the "Buddhism" these missionaries introduced to the United States had already acquired a modern, Western face. The Dharma that attracted American enthusiasts like Paul Carus, had undergone significant modification prior to its arrival; it was already customized for Western consumption. Ironically then, the immense popularity Oriental religions enjoyed in the West, can somewhat be attributed to the strange fact that they prefigured ideas and values attuned to the prevailing Western worldview and agreeable to the American mind. American Buddhism thus, was something of a mirror in the shrine--a looking glass that reflected not a new god, but an image of the beholder.
