I am not the first person to report on the marketing of Buddhism within the United States. In a 2000 issue of the Journal of Global Buddhism, Douglas M. Padgett wrote about the manufacture and marketing of meditation cushions in the United States and ruminated on the complex relationship between Buddhism's ostensible nonmaterialistic ideals and goals on the one hand and the nuts and bolts of money and consumption in the marketing of religious paraphernalia on the other. While such a study casts valuable light on the complexities and contradictions of contemporary Western Buddhist practice, I have other fish to fry here. I am concerned not with the marketing of Buddhist gear but with the marketing of Buddhism itself, its teachings and its practices. That is to say, I comment on the kind of Buddhism that has asserted itself in the marketplace of religious ideas in the United States, particularly through the kinds of commercial venues where religious ideas themselves are the commodity. This means, above all, bookstores and magazine stands, the places where people go to shop for reading material that will inform their Buddhist thinking and practice or merely satisfy their curiosity if they do not intend to practice but simply want information.
Beyond seeing just what kind of Buddhism is up for sale in contemporary North America, I also want to take this opportunity to explore a larger phenomenon within which this marketing operates and influences people's thinking in another area. By looking at how Buddhism is being marketed in the United States, I believe a dynamic through which people formulate ideas about the relationships between various religions can be discerned. In particular, I want to use the selling of Buddhist books and periodicals as a way to see how people arrive at their ideas about religious pluralism. As I shall show, the marketplace exerts a force that distorts (or adapts) Buddhism in such a way as to lead people to certain conclusions about religious diversity in general.
目次
Scope of the Inquiry 216 The Bookstore and Its Buddhist (Dis)contents 217 Reading the Bookstore 219 Buddhist Representation and Religious Diversity 221 Conclusion 222
