Theories of the Self, Race, and

Essentialization in Buddhism

This book analyzes Buddhist discussions of the Aryan myth and scientific
racism and the ways in which this conversation reshaped Buddhism in the
United States, and globally.
It traces the development of notions of Aryanism in Buddhism through
Buddhist publications from 1899 to 1957, focusing on this so-called “yellow
peril,” or historical racist views in the United States of an Asian “other.”
During this time period in America, the Aryan myth was considered to be
scientific fact, and Buddhists were able to capitalize on this idea through-
out a global publishing network of books, magazines, and academic work,
which helped to transform the presentation of Buddhism into the “Aryan
religion.” Following narratives regarding colonialism and the develop-
ment of the Aryan myth, Buddhists challenged these dominant tropes: they
combined emic discussions about the “Aryan” myth and comparisons of
Buddhism and science, in order to disprove colonial tropes of “Western”
dominance, and suggest that Buddhism represented a superior tradition
in world historical development. The author argues that this presentation
of a Buddhist tradition of superiority helped to create space for Buddhism
within the American religious landscape.
The book will be of interest to academics working on Buddhism, race and
religion, and American religious history.

Ryan Anningson is Flora Jane Baker Postdoctoral Fellow at Queen’s University

in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com

Theories of the Self, Race, and
Essentialization in Buddhism
The United States and the Asian “Other”,
1899–1957

Ryan Anningson
First published 2021
by Routledge
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© 2021 Ryan Anningson
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has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents

Author biography vii

Glossary ix
Acknowledgements xi

Introduction 1

1 The search for Aryan statues 21

2 Racecraft in America 39

3 Academia and Aryan ideology 57

4 Bioracism across Asia 84

5 Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation 104

6 The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism 121

7 Metaphysical Buddhism and the religion of joy 138

8 Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft 154

9 An Aryan Buddhist utopia 167

Conclusion 183

Bibliography 197
Index 217
Author biography

Ryan Anningson  is Flora Jane Baker Postdoctoral Fellow at Queen’s Uni-

versity in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Anningson completed a joint PhD
in Religious Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of
Waterloo in Waterloo, Canada. He earned his MA from Wilfrid Lau-
rier University in Religion & Culture and his BA from Acadia University
(Nova Scotia, Canada) in Political Science. While at Wilfrid Laurier Uni-
versity, he also served as a research assistant on the SSHRC-PDG Upper
Indus Petroglyphs and Inscriptions of Northern Pakistan project to pre-
serve the rock art of Pakistan. Included in this research were two work-
shops, during which Anningson assisted in teaching methods of cultural
heritage preservation and digital humanities to students in Pakistan.
Anningson’s  research interests focus on the intersection of race and
culture with the doctrinal adaptations of religious traditions. His studies
focus on the intense pressure racism exerts on religious adherents and
the new philosophical interpretations which develop under this duress.
Anningson focusses his research on the influences of racism, colonialism,
and culture, and on religious traditions, especially in their North Amer-
ican context.
Glossary

Sanskrit
Dharmakāya – the “truth body” of the Buddha in the trikāya, or three bodies
theory of Mahāyāna. This body is often regarded as the true nature of
the Buddha (Lopez and Buswell, 2014, 246). In the work of Suzuki, and
other Zen sources, the Dharmakāya is often presented as emptiness it-
self, or the universe as it should be, undefiled by ignorance.
Nirvāṇa – the soteriological goal of the Buddhist path, and the cutting off of
desire through the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion. Early
Buddhist thinkers debated notions of nirvāṇa regularly, but often agreed
that it was beyond the conception of sentient beings mired in the rounds
of rebirth known as saṃsāra (Lopez and Buswell, 2014, 589–590).
Śākyamuni – an epithet for the historical Buddha, as sage of the Śākya clan.
Śūnyatā  – meaning emptiness, associated with the Madhyamika school in
Mahāyāna. Nāgārjuna uses dialectical philosophy to argue that nothing
has a priori existence, but is instead impermanent and conditioned upon
the ignorant thinking of sentient beings (Lopez and Buswell, 2014, 872).
Tathāgatagarbha – often referred to as the “buddha-nature,” but also trans-
lated as the “womb of tathāgatas.” The capacity for enlightenment in
all sentient beings, generally obscured by ignorance and other mental
afflictions (Lopez and Buswell, 2014, 897–898).
Upāya – as a shortened form of upāyakauśalya, meaning “skilful means,”
or the ability of buddhas to teach everyone, according to their particu-
lar abilities. According to this perfection, buddhas can thus change the
doctrine in order to construct the optimal teachings for each student
(Lopez and Buswell, 2014, 942–943). This was also regularly referenced
by Europeans as proof that the Buddha “lied” to his followers (App,
2012, 178)

Japanese
Jiriki – “self power,” or the notion that an individual mediator can achieve
nirvāṇa, which functions as the opposite of tariki, especially in the Jōdo
schools. In Japanese history, jiriki is generally associated with the Zen
lineage (Lopez and Buswell, 2014, 593).
x Glossary
Nihonjinron – the study and promotion of Japanese uniqueness, which has
been implicated in the notion of Japanese superiority, nationalism, and
racism (Lopez and Buswell, 2014, 592).
Tariki – “other power,” or the idea that one must rely on the compassion of
buddhas like Amitābha in order to achieve enlightenment in the current
age of dharma degeneration. Tariki is posited as the opposite of jiriki. It
is most often associated with the Pure Land philosophy of Shinran and
Jōdo Shinshū (Lopez and Buswell, 2014, 896).
Acknowledgements

I should begin my acknowledgements at the start, as it were, with my parents.

Their loving relationship and the way that they raised me to be life-long
learner continues to shape the person that I am becoming. I am very proud
to call them my parents, and they have shaped my feelings of gratitude to
my extended relations who make up my being. Similarly, I must acknowl-
edge the continual support and love that I have received from my partner
Meghan. Not only do I rely on her support in taking care of life when I get
bogged down in writing, but she is also willing to let me ramble on about
obscure racism in history, for which I am eternally indebted.
I want to thank my supervisor Dr. Jason Neelis, as well as my other com-
mittee members Dr. Janet McLellan, and Dr. Jeff Wilson; as well as Dr.
Ashwani Peetush and Dr. Erik Braun, who served externally. The main
members of my committee, Dr. Neelis and Dr. McLellan at Wilfrid Lau-
rier University and Dr. Wilson at the University of Waterloo, read repeated
drafts of my dissertation, which was no small feat in itself. Their positive
support represents deep levels of loving-kindness and compassion. My com-
mittee members have supported me academically and professionally, but
also personally. Throughout my doctoral studies, my committee members
supported me in ways far beyond their own professional duties and men-
tored me to become a better scholar and human being. Not only was I given
immense professional aid from each of these individuals, but I was also
provided with opportunities to travel the world. I even did manual labour
fixing up the lake cabin of one committee member (whatever pays for grad
school!). I am forever grateful to all of you for the kindness shown to me
over the course of my graduate studies and beyond.
I could not have completed this project without the support and proof-
reading of my supervisor at Queen’s University, Dr. Shobhana Xavier. Her
assistance in editing and professional advice were invaluable to my project.
Xavier assisted me in obtaining my first academic position and serves as my
supervisor in this role. To say that I “owe her one” is a gross understatement.
When searching for work, I regularly claimed that I could be successful if
given a proper chance, and that opportunity was provided by Dr. Xavier.
xii Acknowledgements
I also managed to force a personal friend, Dr. Steve Schiffer, into reading
manuscript drafts. Steve’s summer writing intensive and editing assistance
helped me to turn my dissertation ramblings into a readable book. Our dis-
cussions on racism and anti-Semitism permeate my thinking in this book.
It would not be possible to thank everyone who influenced my develop-
ment as a scholar thus far. In my graduate studies, I was lucky enough to
receive support from a number of scholars who went out of their way to
ensure my success, including Erich Fox Tree, Carol Duncan, Jasmin Zine,
Chris Ross, Ashley Lebner, and Meena Sharify-Funk. These professors
regularly went out of their way to make sure that I was successful. Their
support has meant the world to me.
I should acknowledge my editors at Routledge, Dorothea Schaefter, Al-
exandra de Brauw, and Claire Maloney for all of their assistance. The team
at Routledge, as well as the editorial staff of Code Mantra have been very
accommodating and helpful throughout the publishing process. I want to
thank all of them for their grace and patience.
As one final acknowledgement, I would like to thank Justin McDaniel at
the University of Pennsylvania. It is likely that he does not remember me,
but I was presenting at a conference for graduate students at the Institute of
Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California, where McDaniel was the keynote
speaker. Following my talk on the motif of jewels in Korean Buddhism,
McDaniel suggested that whenever he is analysing a new text, he purpose-
fully disregards his first idea in order to push his thinking further. I have
remembered this advice ever since and it is this striving to push my own
thinking which resulted in the analysis of racism presented in this book.
Introduction

The year is 1957. A biology student at the University of California Los

Angeles (UCLA) rushes to the local bookstore; today in class, her profes-
sor mentioned studies into the religion of Buddhism, which despite its an-
cient eastern origin, seemed to be in accord with many aspects of modern
sciences. This tradition, she was told, was barely a religion at all, but more
of a philosophy of mind science, whose old wisdom had so enthralled the
leading scientists of the day. “It makes sense,” she thought, as she pedalled,
as “the East is more spiritual”; her dad told her once that this was scientifi-
cally proven. She had also been a big fan of Charlie Chan movies, so Asians
always seemed mystical to her. When she arrived at the store, she was in
awe; it seemed that everyone already knew about this secret doctrine. Bud-
dhism peered out at her through the long eyebrows of D.T. Suzuki, who was
featured in Vogue magazine.1 In the bookstore, she found a treasure-trove
of sources on Buddhism and science, from all over the world, but written in
English. In Buddhism and Science, she learnt that Buddhism was originally
an Aryan religion of science, which was corrupted through

intellectual derailment which the Buddha-thought has undergone in

Tibet, China, and Japan, in no small measure to the lack of congruity
that exists between the Indo-German and the Mongolian languages.
The tongue of the Mongol is simply incapable of rendering exactly the
content of the Pāḷi syllables.2

She then turns to another source, which is a monthly magazine that claims
philological sciences have proven Aryan Buddhists actually spread West
from India to Egypt and Greece; here the “sons of Thera,” which comes
from the Pāḷi “Theraputta,” spread Buddhism to ancient Egypt as “Ther-
aputæ” (therapist/therapy) in Alexandria.3 Buddhists were actually doctors
and early scientists in ancient Egyptian culture, which was bolstered by ci-
tations to top scholar Eugène Burnouf. As she continues her reading, she
turns to a more recent source which claimed that thousands of years before
Columbus, who was actually Greek, America was set aside to become a
great philosophic Aryan empire; in fact, there was a Buddhist university
2 Introduction
in Atlantis “which originated most of the arts and sciences of the present
race,” and this institute of higher learning was a massive pyramid featur-
ing a large observatory at the top.4 This university is now featured on the
American one-dollar bill. What kind of Buddhism was this young woman
reading? What is the relation of Buddhism to Aryanism, and what does this
relationship tell us about the history of race in the United States? Does this
Aryan Buddhism continue to influence Buddhist Modernism today? In the
following study, I will display the similar build of ideology created by Bud-
dhists in the United States, who promoted a form of Buddhism tied to rac-
ism and Aryanism.

Limiting the historical scope

History rarely provides easy boundaries for a beginning and an end. Even
a singular event or day is necessarily tied to the surrounding time period
and influences which went into making that event. This book details the
building of ideology, and a story of reconstituted ideas from the past being
remade repeatedly until they fit the cultural mood and became the zeit-
geist of the day.5 The history of anti-Asian racism in the United States,
sometimes labelled the yellow peril, did not begin on a day in 1899 and end
in 1957, but these years provide useful boundaries for analysis. In 1899,
Massachusetts-born economist and professor William Z. Ripley (1867–1941)
published The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study, which split Europe
into three distinct “races” of Alpine, Teutonic, and Mediterranean, based
on the supposed separations of the cephalic index; the book would become
highly influential in the Progressive Era, and would inspire a great rise in
American bioracism.6 The New York Times wrote a full two-page review
praising Ripley’s book. In 1899, we can also see shifts in American atti-
tudes towards colonialism more broadly. Culturally, 1899 marks the pub-
lication of “The White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling, which first
appeared in America in the New York Sun, and became a common phrase
in the American push westward as well as their continued colonial expan-
sion into the Philippines, Cuba, and beyond. The preeminent tale of the
human darkness which comes from colonial domination, Heart of Dark-
ness by Joseph Conrad was published the same year. The phrase “White
Man’s Burden” was even used in Pear’s Soap advertisements. American
soap advertisements presented their product and hygiene as the handmaids
of civilization.7 Soap advertisements associated civilization and “white”
skin through the use of their cleaning products.8
Internationally, 1899 marks an important turning point in American
yellow peril ideology through the Open Door Policy and the Boxer Re-
bellion. Although this was the height of colonialism, with the majority of
the globe under imperial rule, American policy experts and scientists alike
were questioning the efficacy of traditional military forms of colonial rule.9
The United States was viewed as ushering in a more enlightened form of
 Introduction  3
colonialism, as an “empire without colonies” with the Open Door Policy in
China in 1899.10 The Open Door Policy was negotiated without any repre-
sentatives from China present. As a result of the export trade flowing out
of China’s port cities, the economies of the surrounding provinces began
to change, including a decrease in production of local staples like rice for
more profitable export commodities. The “Righteous Fists of Harmony” or
“Boxers United in Righteousness,” commonly known as the Boxers, were an
anti- colonialist, anti-Christian group of militias who started a mass uprising
which was finally defeated by the Eight Nation Alliance.11 By the end of the
Boxer uprising over a year later in 1901, tens of thousands of foreign troops
had invaded mainland China and pushed all the way to Peking (Beijing). As
part of their platform, the Boxers believed that Christianity represented a
foreign imperial tool of capitalist expansion and used this interpretation to
justify attacking missionaries, the clergy, and Chinese Christians; in fact,
Chinese Christians were the first targets of the Boxers before foreigners were
attacked.12 Media coverage in the United States expressed shock and out-
rage at the barbarity of the Boxer Rebellion and the targeting of Christians
in particular. For Americans, the Open Door Policy was viewed as an in-
vestment to help China modernize through trade with other nations rather
than colonial invasion, but instead the people reacted with barbarity and
murdered the very ones being sent to help them. The developing field of
American bioracism could help provide the answers, as the Chinese were
posited as biologically and naturally unsuited to freedom and democracy.13
American “yellow peril,” or anti-Asian racist, fears were coalescing in 1899,
which was solidified by the Boxer Rebellion and Orientalist fears of an anti-
Christian and anti-democratic uprising from “the East.”14
1899 is also a significant turning point in the history of Buddhism in Amer-
ica. In 1898, a group of Issei (second-generation) Jōdo Shinshū Buddhists
started the Buddhist Mission of North America, the first permanent Bud-
dhist temple established on the mainland United States.15 After the Mission
was established, the group sent for Priests from Japan, who arrived in 1899,
to truly establish Shin Buddhism on American soil. In the San Francisco
Chronicle in 1899, they announced the arrival of Shūe Sonoda and Kakuryo
Nishima, and warned that they have come to “convert Japanese and later
Americans to the ancient Buddhist faith,” where, “they will teach that God
is not the creator, but the created; not a real existence, but a figment of the
human imagination, and that pure Buddhism is a better moral guide than
Christianity.”16 Buddhism had arrived in America and was something to
be feared; Buddhism was presented as an atheistic cult incompatible with
democracy, which supposedly promoted the mistreatment of women and
animals, and enslaved the minds of those unlucky enough to be lured by its
doctrines.17 During this era of “yellow peril,” not only were Asian people to
be feared, but their “foreign creed” represented a great ideological danger to
the nation, and the very minds of Americans. This is why I mark 1899 as a
turning point in the history of Buddhism and racecraft in the United States.
4 Introduction
We can see another shift in the Aryanization of Buddhism in the United
States in 1957, although this year certainly does not mark an end to racism
in Buddhism in the United States; 1957 marks a distinct year for Buddhism
in America and the “Zen Boom,” especially typified by the appearance of
D.T. Suzuki (1870–1976) on the cover of Vogue magazine.18 Throughout the
rest of that year, Suzuki would also appear in Time and Newsweek, before
he left America in 1958. Zen was a cultural object in America, and a fad
for broader audiences. As Todd Perreira points out, by 1957 “Zen” items
like incense burners could be purchased at major department stores across
America.19 Throughout this research, I nuance the idea of a “Zen Boom”
in America and attempt to reformulate it as a tipping point in American
fascination in Buddhism due in large part to the continued efforts of Bud-
dhists to present Buddhism for American audiences. In 1952 the McCarran-
Walter Act ended restrictions on Japanese American ability to move further
east beyond the borders set during internment. Finally, in Race and Reli-
gion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation,
Joseph Cheah begins his periodization of modern Buddhism in the United
States with the second Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Educa-
tion of Topeka (349 US 294) in 1955.20 I agree with Cheah that this marks
a shift in American culture regarding “race,” as the current research pro-
vides historical foundations for the modern phenomenon described in Race
and Religion in American Buddhism, and I think this overlap contributes to
periodization within the subfield. Readers will find many links in ideology
between the phenomenon described by Cheah post-1960s, and the devel-
opments from 1899 to 1957. In “Buddhist Modernism in English-Language
Buddhist Periodicals,” Lori Pierce provided many of the foundations for
the current work.21 In Issei Buddhism in the Americas, Pierce argues that the
“public conversation” surrounding Buddhist Modernism in periodicals was
characterized by discussions on “race.”22 It is through studying the English-
language periodicals produced from 1899 to 1957 that I draw the current
analysis of the Aryanization of Buddhism.

A note on sources and social location

This study analyses English-language primary sources from 1899 to 1957
in order to present the “public conversation” surrounding Buddhism in the
United States, forged within a transnational network between Asia, Europe,
and North America. I analyse Buddhist periodicals created during a pub-
lishing renaissance associated with the beginnings of Buddhist Modern-
ism, as well as newspapers and other popular media sources, and academic
analysis of Buddhism from the time; many of these sources were published
in America, while others were published in Asia or Europe and written in
English for the purpose of reaching American audiences, such as The Young
East and he Eastern Buddhist.23 In gathering this “public conversation,”
I attempt to follow in the methodological form of Thomas A. Tweed in The
 Introduction  5
American Encounter with Buddhism, as well as the cultural analysis of Ed-
ward Said in Orientalism. The idea of “race” and Aryanism is not present
on every page, or article in published materials on Buddhism, but they were
present almost every month in the form of periodicals, as well as in books,
and the broader American culture. Like Buddhist Modernism, the Ary-
anization of Buddhism did not fit within the limits of traditional lineages;
these discussions were widespread throughout various magazines and did
not conform to Zen or Pure Land or other schools. Throughout this study,
I refer broadly to “Buddhists” in this discussion, but it should be noted that
this represented only a part of the larger discussion. However, by focus-
sing on these supposedly marginal elements, this analysis sheds new light on
the history of Buddhist Modernism as well as Buddhism in America today.
The Aryanization of Buddhism takes place within larger conversations of
Buddhist Modernism and bioracism in America. Although Buddhism was
sometimes referred to as the “Aryan Path” during this time, Buddhists did
not dedicate full periodicals to Aryan Buddhism, but it was a part of larger
conversations of doctrinal adaptation in Buddhist Modernism. As an in-
tellectual history, there will be a certain level of disconnect from the lived
experiences of Buddhist on the ground. The arguments in Buddhist peri-
odicals represent an Aryanization of a form of Buddhism, rather than the
Aryanization of Buddhists. However, I do argue that this Aryanization of
Buddhism helped Buddhists to fit within the American religious landscape
and contributed to larger acceptance of the Asian American community. As
this is a discussion of racism and specifically bioracism with Buddhist uses
of Aryanism, the language in this study involves discussions of biology tied
to the existence of “race” and ideas of corruption, purity, superiority, and
inferiority. These notions have led humanity to genocide and other forms of
violence throughout history and continue to do so today. The discussions
herein are difficult, but it is through an analysis of these notions of racism,
that we can begin to root out these notions.
I am aware of the tensions that exist in the field of religious studies in
a privileged white man studying the historical racism of other privileged
white men. In many ways, it was people very much like me who contributed
to the intellectual discussion of racism forming around the globe in the 20th
century. It is also for this reason that I think people like myself should be
contributing to research which undoes the damage wrought by others who
studied “whiteness.” According to family genealogical research my relative,
John Anningson, was a medical officer with the East India Company. It
is likely that my own heredity was involved with the imperialism of India
and privy to the very tropes I analyse. It seems fitting that I should be one
to help deconstruct the arguments made to build ideological fortresses of
racism. I was cognizant of my own positioning as a white man throughout
my historical research.
When I was a child my family and I immigrated to the United States,
to Indiana, just weeks before I started grade one. We moved to DeKalb
6 Introduction
County, which was an historic hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity, dating back
to the 1920s. In the 1990s, the area continued to be a central hub for Klan
leadership. One of my earliest memories in the United States was a major
Klan rally that took place in my town, and I remember the tall, hooded fig-
ures pointing violently at passersby and shouting from beneath their masks.
The town of Auburn, Indiana made national headlines in the early 1990s
when they allowed the Ku Klux Klan to place a Christmas display on the
lawn of the county courthouse. I did not know who the hooded men were,
so I asked my parents, who told me the Klan was a hate group who targeted
black Americans, Catholics, Jewish people, and immigrants. I remember
being truly afraid at this news, and thought the Klan would come for me,
but my father assured me by saying that they would never know I was an im-
migrant. My family is from Canada and I am a white man, but this was still
my first lesson in white supremacy. I quickly realized that the Klan would
not know I was an immigrant because of my skin colour. Others could not
so easily hide. To live in the United States is to become a part of the system
of racecraft in some fashion. I realized that there were layers to whiteness in
the United States, as I consistently felt a certain status of being an outsider,
even from Canada. I got regular questions as a child, like whether I lived in
an igloo growing up. But I also knew that I was not treated as badly as oth-
ers. Unless the Klan started checking passports, I could not be picked out
of a crowd based on my skin colour or appearance. As a left-leaning youth
in rural Indiana, it became cool to like anything labelled as black culture,
such as Bob Marley, and even to refer to others as “white people” in a way to
rebelliously set oneself apart from the perceived culture of white supremacy.
This act of rebellion provided me with a sense of distance from the racism I
saw around me, as an outsider through immigration.
While attending Acadia University, I had the pleasure of taking Intro-
duction to World Religions with a preeminent scholar of Buddhism in
Canada, Bruce Matthews. When Dr. Matthews introduced Buddhism, it
was like a light went off for me, and a leftist Canadian from rural Indiana
was suddenly enthralled. I loved Buddhism. I studied the doctrines and
read books about Buddhist history even in my free time. Like many who
grew up in a Christian church and discovered Buddhism later in life, I
romanticized the traditions and believed that perhaps the doctrine was
corrupted from an original glory. This would, after all, explain away all of
the elements in Buddhism which I personally did not like, as I was search-
ing for a tradition which was the opposite of my upbringing. When I read
about Buddhism and Aryanism, I assumed that these represented singular
incidents, such as Dharmapāla’s use of Aryanism; I thought that perhaps
he was the only one who made this connection. In my graduate work, as
I studied the primary source documents written by Buddhists in the 20th
century, I quickly realized that Dharmapāla was not an exception, but the
norm. For those of us who discovered Buddhism and perhaps romanti-
cized or idealized the tradition, to see how widespread Buddhist uses of
 Introduction  7
racism became was disillusioning. Like a child realizing that their parent
is not wholly good and omnipotent, those of us who had romanticized a
notion of Buddhism as a tradition of logical philosophy will be disheart-
ened to see Aryanism throughout the Buddhist world. The social location
from which I write the current study is influenced by instances like this
from my past.
Now, I study racism in religious history academically. Early in my gradu-
ate studies, I had decided that I wanted to trace the development of intellec-
tual history of Buddhism in the United States, which specifically focussed
on doctrinal adaptations of the self, or the theory of anātman. I was lucky
enough to have Jeff Wilson as a member of my committee who literally had
boxes of Buddhist magazines sitting in his office, which started my process
of regular visits, first to the University of Waterloo to read full print runs of
publications. As I poured through magazine after magazine, a single word
continued to appear in my notes repeatedly: Aryan. The idea of Aryanism
did not appear in every magazine on each page, but it was so prevalent that
I began to catalogue all of the articles about Aryanism in Buddhism, and
then more broadly. It became very apparent to me how important this term
was when I read a poem in The Golden Lotus where Buddhism is referred
to as the “Aryan Path.” Readers searching for a more detailed discussion
of doctrine and the specific adaptations made will find these details in the
footnotes. Once I stumbled upon the notion of Aryanism, I followed this
through sources and citations like following breadcrumb clues. However,
the clues were everywhere in this case; I was searching for breadcrumbs in
a bakery. The myth of the Aryans was replicated in Buddhist magazines
across the world; it was also discussed in popular fiction, newspaper arti-
cles, and even written about by presidents. To follow the trail of racism in
America from 1899 to 1957 is to be completely overwhelmed by sources,
from Buddhist publications like The Light of Dharma and The Golden Lotus
to academic journals like the Journal of Race Development and even adver-
tisements for products. On a research trip to Columbia University, in the
basement of the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, I found a
treasure-trove of sources, from both within Buddhism, and without, that
all seemed to be discussing Aryanism. My past sense of perceived distance
from white supremacy allowed me to view trace these developments over
time like a detective following clues.
This notion was not relegated to a single group, but coloured the pres-
entation of Buddhists, as well as those reporting on Buddhism. One day,
while listening to National Public Radio while driving to campus, I heard
Paul A. Lombardo talking about the eugenics craze of the 1920s and the
sterilization of Carrie Buck, and something in my research clicked. Rac-
ism was so predominant in the United States that Buddhists had to react
intellectually to the presence of racecraft. What we, as scholars, should
question is not Buddhist uses of racism to promote their religion in the
United States, but the fact that this discussion was considered “science.”
8 Introduction
Similarly, I noticed that this racism was not an outright denigration of
others, but a discussion of history and science with its own internal logic,
drawing upon previous scholarship in religious studies and beyond. The
internal logic of racism prevalent in the United States has sometimes been
called white supremacy, but in the case of Buddhism this posed another
problem. Across the world, Buddhists promoted the notion of Aryan su-
premacy, but how can a “white” man from New Brunswick, Canada, and
Auburn, Indiana declare that Anagārika Dharmapāla or D.T. Suzuki are
white supremacists? Works by Robert Sharf and Donald Lopez have made
Suzuki and Dharmapāla into easy targets. What about Sokei-an, the Japa-
nese Zen missionary to New York City? Should I assert that he was a white
supremacist because of his use of Aryanism to explain Buddhist doctrine?
Something else seems to be going on here, and it was this search which led
me to the notion of racecraft. Buddhists were not displaying the racism
I had seen in the past. They were not Klan members, and given the pre-
war time period I study, their discussion of Aryanism was not the same
one being had by National Socialists in Germany either. Again, something
curious was happening. I was set on a quest to find why Buddhists would
engage such a discussion, and unfortunately, like childhood peer pressure,
Buddhists seemed to be doing it because everyone else was; Buddhists were
literally jumping off the bridge because their friends did it first. Growing
up in Indiana, I have always known racists. People who held racist beliefs
were not characters in a movie about the South, they were a regular part
of my life growing up. The idea of studying racism is thus appealing to
me, as I feel it allows me to expose this stunted and fraudulent thinking
as a sort-of double agent, which is a sense I’ve always felt as a “white”
immigrant in the United States. This is why I can see the logic of these
racist arguments, as I grew up around this thinking. My hope is to expose
the internal logics of racism, not to show their illogic, but so that we can
begin to break apart these ideologies and stop contributing to notions of
white supremacy in our daily actions. As this research shows, ideologies of
racism continue to build and reconstitute themselves in order to maintain
power structures, so that one cannot simply stake a claim as a non-racist,
but instead must provide continual vigilance as an agent of anti-racism in
order to stop these ideologies. The current study should challenge scholars
of Buddhism in North America to consider critical race theory, which are
important for analysing notions of whiteness and supremacy in Buddhism
in America.

Terms and theories

This study makes use of a number of specific terms which are important for
understanding the overall argument. These theoretical terms come from the
work Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Karen E. Fields
and Barbara J. Fields who analyse the history of racism in America as a
 Introduction  9
24
defining quality of the culture. First, we have the term bioracism, which is
a defining characteristic of American culture from 1899 to 1957. This term
refers to a constellation of ideas such as craniology, phrenology, and eugen-
ics. Previous literature has used the terms race sciences or scientific racism,
but it is important to note that these discussions have no real basis in sci-
ence, in the way we consider the term today as denoting a level of fact. The
biological notion of “race” simply does not exist in ways which do all that
is asked of it.25 Throughout this text, I use bioracism broadly, rather than
race sciences or scientific racism, to denote the way “science” was manipu-
lated in order to prove racism and justify prejudices and violence through
an unchanging sense of biology. Bioracism was a defining feature of the time
from 1899 to 1957. The beginnings of bioracism can be tied to the studies,
and subsequent exploitation of Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman, the “Hottentot
Venus,” by Georges Cuvier (1769–1832), the French naturalist and zoologist.
Bioracism is characterized by tying all traits and characteristics to in-born
biology, which is grouped hierarchically into “race.” These supposed “ra-
cial” groupings were then used to justify racism and systems like slavery.
As Eric Williams writes in Capitalism and Slavery, “slavery was not born
of racism; rather racism was the consequence of slavery.”26 Bioracism pro-
vided supposedly biological and therefore scientific justifications for slavery
and all other forms of prejudice. Ernest Haeckel (1834–1919) was another
important figure in the history of bioracism who promoted the idea of social
Darwinism, which utilized the biological theory of evolution to argue that
cultures evolved and devolved depending on their “racial” predilections,
and therefore suggesting that poorer nations were so inclined naturally,
while richer nations were that way as the result of in-born greatness.27 These
theories were meant to justify and explain the position of “Western” nations
during a period of intense colonialism and violence in the parts of the world
being deemed “inferior.” One of the most important figures in the history
of bioracism in America was Madison Grant (1865–1937), the lawyer and
zoologist, who created the Brooklyn Zoo, which housed human beings, and
penned The Passing of the Great Race which warned “white” Americans
of an incoming “eugenic apocalypse.”28 The Passing of the Great Race was
published in 1916, and by 1921 was in its 4th edition; Theodore Roosevelt
wrote a blurb for the back of the book, calling it “capital” in “purpose, in
vision, in grasp of the facts our people most need to realize.”29 Grant pro-
moted eugenic sterilization as well as an end to immigration in the United
States, and even claimed the:

least desirable, let us say, ten per cent of the community. When this
unemployed and unemployable human residuum has been eliminated
together with the great mass of crime, poverty, alcoholism and feeble-
mindedness associated therewith it would be easy to consider the ad-
visability of further restricting the perpetuation of the then remaining
least valuable types.30
10 Introduction
These are the words of an American “scientist” in the 1920s, just a cen-
tury ago.31 Grant was also influential in the movement to begin using Binet-
Simon intelligence testing for immigration.32 The testing of intelligence in
immigrants was meant to limit the supposed incoming flood of “feeble-
minded” individuals to America which would lessen the overall “stock.”
Bioracism also provided other means for stemming immigration such as the
measure of noses or cranial shape.33 This testing helped to place supposedly
scientific veneer over anti-immigrant sentiment and helped in the passing
of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, which included the Asian
Exclusion Act and the National Origins Act. The cutting of immigration
was coupled with policies of eugenic sterilization in the United States, mak-
ing bioracism a ubiquitous part of American culture. According to Angela
Saini, bioracism is making a comeback in modern American life through
education, medicine, and political policies.34 Modern racists are using sup-
posedly scientific methods, like IQ testing in children, to falsely assert in-
born biological differences which manifest repeatedly in each generation.
The second central theoretical term is the concept of racecraft. The the-
ory of racecraft from Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields in Racecraft:
The Soul of Inequality in America.35 “Races” are the “principal units” of
racism, garnered from the supposed groupings of individuals based on folk
taxonomies, perceptions of skin colour, and other supposed factors which
combine disparate groups of people.36 “Race” is a construct, which humans
have created to group individuals, likely stemming from the evolutionary
necessity of judging outside danger quickly, such as when strangers were
approaching. Biologically speaking, “there is no basis in scientific fact or in
the human genetic code for the notion that skin colour will be predictive of
intelligence,” character, or other factors.37 Intellectually, we can understand
that “race” is a construct, but this does not explain racialized violence in
America. The supposed existence of “race” is the basis for racism which,
“refers to the theory and the practice of applying a social, civic, or legal
double standard based on ancestry, and to the ideology surrounding such a
double standard.”38 Racism is not simply a belief system one holds, or even
a set of ideas whereby if an individual holds a specified number of bigoted
thoughts they cross a line of racism, but is a social action and the subsequent
production of justifications for the refusal of human equality or the threat of
violence.39 For racism to exist, it is dependent on the existence of “races” as
real a priori. Racecraft is defined by the addition of human imagination to
“race” and racism, as it refers to both the mental formations of individuals,
as well as the pervasive beliefs of a collective. Like witchcraft, racecraft is
acted upon and then imagined again, like spells being cast combined with
the obligatory belief in the efficacy of that spell, so that the end result, “pre-
sents itself to the mind and imagination as a vivid truth.”40 Through this pro-
cess of reimagining, racecraft is constantly retreating from view and being
reformulated again. For instance, we still process mug shots for criminals in
profile as a hold-over from studies of the cephalic index and criminality, as
 Introduction  11
41
it is quite difficult to recognize strangers in profile. Like witchcraft, race-
craft has its own internal logic, with specialists who are able to gain desired
results, sometimes through “tricknology.”42 There is no doubt that racecraft
“displaces structurally inbuilt social tensions onto available victims,” or
even that “oracles work within an idiom of thought that seems bizarre but
nonetheless has markedly logical and systematic features.”43 Conceptually,
racecraft is a productive term that describes the process of imagination
which took place in American Buddhism, which combined bioracism with
histories of ancient tribes and future utopias. Through this process of im-
agination Buddhists were able to create a community for themselves which
supposedly stretched deep into the ancient past, and therefore create space
for themselves using “racial formation.”44 I use the term racecraft broadly
throughout this study to mean the imaginative ways ideas of “race” and
bioracism were repurposed by Americans and Buddhists from 1899 to 1957,
and the “racial formation” of Aryanized Buddhism which helped Buddhists
create space within the American religious landscape. These figments of
collective imagination allowed for all of human history to be explained as
one of perennial patterning back to an ancient tribe who had supposedly
created all spirituality. In Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed,
as well as other works, Donald S. Lopez, Jr. has detailed the history of how
the Buddha became an Aryan; this research focusses instead on the Ar-
yanization of Buddhism.45 Using racecraft as a theory to study doctrinal
adaptation may seem strange, as we generally separate religious beliefs from
analysis through logic or motivation. We do not study the doctrines of a re-
ligion academically to search for the true motivations of the writers, but the
analysis of Buddhist publications provides us a clear view of “racial forma-
tion” as well as doctrinal adaptation, which, when compared to larger ide-
ologies dominant in the culture, can help us to make sense of some of these
doctrinal assertions and circular logics. The Aryanization of Buddhism in
the United States presents a particular case study which can tell us about the
place of racecraft in American culture and religious history more broadly.
Buddhists were able to utilize ideologies of racecraft in order to better sit-
uate themselves within America, as well as create their own reformulations
of the Aryan myth. Ideology comes from Marxist analysis and involves the
formulation of ideas through history and their purpose in practical social
terms, or intellectual history. The theory of cultural hegemony comes from
the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci and describes the way
ideologies come to completely dominate the intellectual landscape. I also
draw on the building-block approach of Ann Taves in Religious Experi-
ence Reconsidered who views religion as a series of disparate elements be-
ing formed to constitute a whole.46 When these blocks do not immediately
fit, they can be reconstituted, painted, or sanded, and then used again to
form the edifice of racecraft. This sense of racecraft goes directly against
the previously mentioned understanding of racism whereby a line is crossed,
and an individual is deemed racist. The process of racecraft is a continual
12 Introduction
one and requires consistent resistance, as each new formation brings further
bricks in the wall. In “Being Buddha, Staying Woke: Racial Formation in
Black Buddhist Writing,” Adeana McNicholl compares the Buddhist no-
tion of nirvāṇa, which can be translated as awakening, to modern notions
of anti-racism.47 The Buddha compared awakening, or “being woke,” to the
breaking of habituation which came from perceptual mindfulness allowing
the mind to be actively engaged in each moment and resist patterned think-
ing. In America, seeing “race” represents a patterned form of thinking in
nearly all aspects of life. From 1899 to 1957 in the United States, bioracism
was considered to be the most cutting-edge “science” of the day in a form
of imagining that can be called racecraft. The idea of “race” is so ingrained
in America that it is the basis of legislation, such as education policies and
census categories. To live in America from 1899 to 1957 was to see the exist-
ence of “race,” and to think otherwise would have been akin to questioning
common sense; as we know today, this represented a collective delusion, or
as the Diamond Sūtra says, like living in a dream, like a bubble on water.
For Buddhism, I analyse specific developments of racecraft within the
larger phenomenon of Buddhist Modernism and now Buddhist post-
modernism. In The Making of Buddhist Modernism David L. McMahan
describes larger nonsectarian developments of Buddhism in relation to mo-
dernity and the “West,” such as a decentralization of the monastic order
in favour of the laity, a focus on texts, and the inclusion of notions of sci-
ence and Buddhism.48 One strain within these adaptations was an Aryan
Buddhism which promoted bioracist interpretations of doctrine as a way
to modernize and fit within various cultures of a perceived “West.” Amer-
ican notions of bioracism were so predominant that in order to fit within
the religious landscape, Buddhists created a “global folk Buddhism” which
was spread around the world along with Buddhist Modernism. In American
Dharma, Ann Gleig argues that Buddhists in America today represent Bud-
dhist postmodernism, which draws upon imagined traditionalist elements
and reconstitutes them in modernist formations.49 Gleig discusses modern
Buddhist initiatives for diversity and inclusion, against the counter-reaction
to these measures within certain elements of the Saṇgha. The development
of Aryan Buddhism in the United States contributed to the foundations for
divisions within the Buddhist community along lines of racism, and also
shows that some of the modernist elements which are being drawn upon in
the postmodernist era such as connections to science are actually connected
to histories of Aryanism. The history of the Aryanization of Buddhism in
America can help to provide the foundations for continued strands or lines
of thinking still present in Buddhism in America. As I will return to in the
conclusion, Aryan Buddhism, like bioracism itself, is making a comeback
today, drawing on modernist notions of the past, such as in the writings of
Canadian Brian Ruhe who refers to himself as “The Nazi Buddhist.”
A great deal of the doctrinal discussions of Buddhism as well as the ideas
drawn upon in bioracism will seem strange to Buddhists, scholars, and
 Introduction  13
others. I utilize a broad and inclusive definition of Buddhism, which focusses
on hybridity which changes over a temporal range. For this theoretical lens,
I draw upon the work of Thomas A. Tweed and Jeff Wilson. In the works of
Thomas A. Tweed, including in “Theory and Method in the Study of Bud-
dhism: Toward ‘Translocative’ Analysis,” as well as “Nightstand Buddhists
and Other Creatures: Sympathizers, Adherents, and the Study of Religion,”
and “American Occultism in Japanese Buddhism,” Tweed calls for a focus
on hybridity in Buddhism which draws on disparate groups such as Theos-
ophists and others normally considered part of the occult. In “Mapping the
American Buddhist Terrain,” Jeff Wilson argues for the inclusion of “purple
Buddhists,” or those whose beliefs and practices mix Buddhism with other
traditions.50 This expanded sense of Buddhism, which shows transforma-
tion over time, utilizes Thomas A. Tweed’s definition of religion from Cross-
ing and Dwelling, which says, “religions are confluences of organic-cultural
flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and
suprahuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries.”51 Buddhists uti-
lized bioracism as a way to fit within the American religious landscape, and
used racecraft to cross boundaries of white supremacy by reformulating the
Aryan myth.

Chapter summaries
This study is separated in order to show the continued building of ideology
from 1899 to 1957, which is split by origins of sources. I embed the litera-
ture review throughout the text, as well as a continued history of racecraft.
Chapter 1 will focus on the history of the Aryan myth beginning far before
1899 and representing the original interaction of Buddhism and Aryanism
within the crucible of international colonialism and racecraft. The history
focusses on the development of Aryanism and bioracism through various
sources, which connect seemingly disparate entities like books on artistic
representation to a museum in Lahore and the imagined metropolitan centre
in Ancient Greece. This chapter traces the imagined development of a tribe
from Central Asia to be at the forefront of every major civilization in history.
This notion was spread across the globe and became the panacea solution for
tracing all historical development. By specifying certain imperial nations as
the end result of linear human development, the presence of Aryans became
the story of a singular group of individuals pushing all of humanity forward,
and thus placed imperial ideology as the perennial philosophy of humanity.
In Chapter 2, I analyse the pervasiveness of racism in American culture
particularly and the influence of racecraft on perceptions of Buddhism to
which Buddhists in America were reacting. The chapter begins with an
exploration of racism in America broadly, before turning specifically to
Buddhism in popular culture and the ways the religion was presented to
American audiences, such as through the invasion of aliens. The Aryani-
zation of Buddhism in America does not simply appear as an idea in a
14 Introduction
vacuum, carried out by one leader. Instead, these notions represent the
continual building of ideology. American culture was marked by racecraft,
and even considered bioracism the most cutting-edge explanation for so-
cietal development. This was the cultural milieu into which Buddhists en-
tered. The pervasiveness of the Aryan myth and ideologies of racecraft in
America forced Buddhists to engage with this discussion as part of larger
notions of religion and science. Therefore, to live in America and to be
American was to engage with racecraft, and to be included in discussions
of science and modernity writers dealt with notions of bioracism. Chap-
ter 2 presents the discussion, or cultural zeitgeist, which Buddhists found
themselves in while presenting their religion to American audiences from
1899 to 1957.
In Chapter 3, we look at the presence of Aryanism in academic studies of
Buddhism. Buddhists in America and popular culture drew upon scholarly
analysis of Buddhism, which presented the religion as a tradition of Aryan-
ism corrupted through “racial” degeneracy, which Buddhists reacted to in
order to present the religion for American audiences. Chapter 3 will analyse
the specific arguments made by academics studying Buddhism and show the
ways in which these studies perpetuate and develop notions of Aryanism.
Academic studies of Buddhism took the notion that Buddhism was a cor-
rupted religion for granted and set out to literally rewrite Buddhism to cor-
rect doctrinal interpretations for Aryan audiences. The authority claimed to
edit Buddhist texts was derived from the supposedly superior Aryan genetic
connection to the founder, to which European and North American aca-
demics felt themselves entitled. Academics in the early 20th century pre-
sented new translations of Buddhist texts which edited out supposed Asian
corruptions, such as karma or anātman, and justified these deletions by
claiming no “true” Aryan would have ever proposed such heresies. In some
cases, scholars actually write for the Buddha in the first person, allowing
them to posit a sense of disgust in the current form of Buddhism doctrines
directly into the mouth of Śākyamuni himself.
In Chapter 4, I engage Asian Buddhist responses and utilizations of race-
craft within the crucible of colonialism, beginning in Sri Lanka and then
Japan. Sri Lankan Buddhists utilized bioracism to reverse imperialist no-
tions of supremacy, while Japanese Buddhists justified colonial incursions
through Buddhist doctrines justified by the most “cutting-edge science” of
the day. Ideas of Buddhist Modernism were created within a transnational
network of thinkers, connected through publishing efforts. Notions of Bud-
dhism in comparison to science helped to spread the religious tradition
across the globe. However, included within this were notions of bioracism
and Aryanism. Buddhists were able to utilize this science during a period
of imperialism in order to place themselves as the superior Aryan founders
of Buddhism and use this as a way to critique colonial occupation. Bud-
dhist uses of bioracism to critique imperialism were not unilinear but were
instead used to fit specific situations; for instance, Japanese Buddhists used
 Introduction  15
notions of Aryanism to promote themselves as the superior Buddhists who
should colonize Asia, while Sri Lankan Buddhists used Buddhism to argue
against colonialism as a whole.
In Chapter 5, we turn to the specific doctrines utilized by writers tied to
Japanese-based lineages of Buddhism. Through the specific interpretations
of the self and a god in Buddhism, writers were able to reinterpret the his-
tory of Aryanism in order to posit Buddhism as the intellectual foundation
for all human development. Buddhists used the Aryan myth to argue that
they were not inferior, but superior beings who already possessed a reli-
gious tradition and a science. However, in the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese
Buddhists built this ideology into a narrative which placed Buddhism as
the foundation for all human notions of spirituality and philosophy more
broadly. In other words, Aryans were posited not just as superior people,
but Buddhism became the Aryanizing influence, which meant that Bud-
dhism was the ur-spirituality for all mankind. This sleight of hand is repre-
sentative of the imaginings of racecraft, as Buddhism could be substituted
for the Aryan “race,” meaning Buddhism explains human development, and
therefore the pinnacle of religion. This shows the change in understandings
surrounding Buddhism, from a once-great Aryan tradition now corrupted,
to becoming Aryanism itself, and therefore the underlying philosophy for
all human thought.
Chapter 6 focusses specifically on Zen and Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism in the
United States and what the interpretations of racecraft from each of these
groups tell us about the history of Buddhism in America, and Buddhist
Modernism more broadly. In the past, Zen has been presented as synony-
mous with Modernism, while Shin Buddhism was perceived as traditional
Buddhism tucked behind a supposed “ethnic fortress.” This chapter will
nuance these essentializations by comparing Zen uses of racecraft in com-
parison to new interpretations of Shin doctrine being developed in the pages
of youth publications. By analysing Modernist interpretations of Jōdo Shin-
shū Buddhism developed in the United States, we should begin to question
typical tropes about modernism versus traditionalism, as Zen uses of race-
craft even beyond the 1950s helped the lineage to be presented as scientific in
America, while Shin disavowal of Aryanism contributed to interpretations
of its foreignness.
In Chapter 7, I consider the writings of Metaphysical Buddhists, or
sources from the United States which view Buddhism through hybrid
lenses such as Theosophy. Metaphysical Buddhists used bioracism to claim
ownership of Buddhism as those connected genealogically to the founder
of the religion. Although Buddhism was the subject of a fad in the United
States during the Victorian Era, the limits of cultural dissent prevented
Buddhist doctrines from making inroads among American audiences. By
the 1940s, Metaphysical Buddhists used the position of Aryanism in Bud-
dhism to argue that the religious tradition was actually defined by “joy”
and a perpetual optimism for evolutionary development. Buddhists argued
16 Introduction
that by reinterpreting the doctrines of Buddhism to more closely fit with
supposed Aryan worldviews, the religious tradition could be one of opti-
mism and activism with a set goal. This goal was not the annihilation of
nirvāṇa, which was supposedly promoted by Asian Buddhists, but a final
merger with an over-soul that supposedly brought Buddhism further in
line with modern “science.”
Chapter 8 focusses on the reformulation of doctrines in Aryan Buddhism
to posit a religion of positivity, which focusses on human spiritual evolution.
By positing Buddhism as a religion of “joy” with a specified goal, the reli-
gious path could be recreated into one of individual development. However,
this individual path of self-improvement was not viewed as a purely selfish
endeavour, as Metaphysical Buddhists used Theosophical notions of evolu-
tion to posit that all human development depended on progressive spiritual
attainments. By engaging the supposedly correct Buddhist path, individuals
were pushing human evolution forward, whereas to promote a false form
of Aryan spirituality was viewed as holding back all progress. Rather than
claiming that Buddhism had been corrupted from a once-great tradition,
through Buddhist uses of Aryanism, Metaphysical Buddhists argued that
Asians were holding back human evolutionary progress. The perceived cor-
ruption of Buddhism could be portrayed as a cosmic battle for the notion of
progress itself.
Chapter 9 concludes the story of building ideology by looking at Meta-
physical Buddhist writers in the United States who used the history of Ar-
yan Buddhism to posit America as the home of a future Buddhist utopia,
as long as those who had corrupted the religious tradition in the past were
prevented from hindering evolution, and the ways in which these racist im-
aginings influenced the development of Buddhism in America. In the 1950s,
Metaphysical Buddhists claimed that America was previously identified
as the homeland for a Buddhist utopia, which would begin once a purified
form of the Aryan tradition could be domesticated in the United States.
This meant that those who had corrupted Buddhism should be removed
from the tradition, and thus allow it to be reborn in order to promote the
correct doctrines with Aryanism as its central feature. These imaginings
were promoted as nothing short of cosmically ordained, and the secret des-
tiny for Buddhism in America; in 1953, Manly P. Hall argued that the myth-
ical nation of Shambala would actually take up arms to purify Buddhism
and usher in the American Buddhist utopia.52 By 1957, the “Zen Boom” had
created an essentialized object in the United States, which was a spirituality
supposedly based in bioracism, or Buddhism and “science,” which contin-
ues to influence Buddhism in America and Buddhist Modernism, as well as
postmodernism.
In America today, there are many signs that the nation is going through
a reckoning with its own history. The United States, and Americans specif-
ically are dealing with the history of slavery and the continued influences of
a culture of pervasive and institutionalized racism. One of these reckonings
 Introduction 17
is how to deal with people in the past who may have held views we would
now consider racist. One symbolic way that America is contending with this
history which seems to galvanize people is the removal of statues. How do
we deal with those who may have done great things in the past, but also held
racist views, or even owned human beings? Just one century ago in America,
racism was a ubiquitous part of culture, of education, and even considered a
part of science; to look back on nearly any aspect of American life from 1899
to 1957 we can see things that we would consider racist today. During this
time period, racism was considered the most cutting-edge “science” of the
day. However, by tracing the presence of Buddhism in print culture during
the supposed yellow peril, we nuance our discussions by highlighting the
pervasive reality of racecraft in American culture. Racecraft allowed Bud-
dhists to build an ideology of supremacy, solidified through the reification
of bioracism, which created an ideology of Aryan supremacy which aided
the development of Buddhism in America.

Notes
1 Jane Naomi Iwamura, Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popu-
lar Culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 26.
2 Paul Dahlke, tr. Bhikkhu Sīlācāra, Buddhism and Science, (London: MacMillan
and Co., Ltd., 1913), 31.
3 Sital Chandra Chakravarty, “An Important Evidence of Buddhist Contact with
the West,” Young East 2, no. 9 (February 1927): 307. This author claims Thera
was associated with the Pāli Sthavira (meaning “elders”), which would mean
the Theraputtas are Sthaviravadins to which Theravāda claims a direct lineage.
This would mean that the “Sons of Thera” were ancient Theravadins.
4 Manly P. Hall, The Secret Destiny of America, (Los Angeles, CA: Philosophical
Research Society, 1944), 46.
5 For example, Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (Essai sur l’inégalité des
races humaines) by Joseph Arthur de Gobineau was published in 1853 with little
success. It was re-published in the United States by Josiah Nott in 1856 with an
eye to slavery. The Essai was published again in 1915 with the backing of top
bioracists like Madison Grant. It was this edition which became a best-selling
English translation.
6 William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study, (New York: D.
Appleton and Company, 1899).
7 Kees Van Dijk, “Soap Is the Onset of Civilization,” in Cleanliness and Culture:
Indonesian Histories, ed. Kees Van Dijk and Jean Gelman Taylor, (Leiden: Brill,
2011), 1.
8 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial
Conquest, (New York: Routledge, 1995), 34.
9 Harry E. Barnes, professor of history and international relations at Clark Uni-
versity tied the development of international institutions and the rule of law to
cephalic index in The Journal of Race Development in 1919. [Harry E. Barnes,
“The Struggle of Races and Social Groups as a Factor in the Development of
Political and Social Institutions,” The Journal of Race Development 9, no. 3
(1919): 394.]
10 Colleen Lye, America’s Asia: Racial Formation and Literature, 1893–1945,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 10; 22.
18 Introduction
11 David J. Silbey, The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game, (New York: Hill and
Wang, 2012), [Apple Books Version], 122. The English utilized Indian troops for
fighting in this war, meaning Indian troops were sent to fight the Chinese in or-
der to maintain the colonial empire.
12 Ibid, 179.
13 Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making
of the Alien in America, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018), 31.
Lye, 2005, 56.
14 Andrew Gyory, Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act,
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 11.
15 Michihiro Ama, Immigrants to the Pure Land: The Modernization, Accultura-
tion, and Globalization of Shin Buddhism, 1898–1941, (Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press, 2011), 3. The Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawai’i was estab-
lished in 1889, but Hawai’i was not a part of the United States. The annexation
of Hawai’i as a territory began on 4 July 1898. Hawai’i did not officially become
a state until 1959.
16 “Missionaries of the Buddhist Faith: Two Representatives of the Ancient Creed
are in San Francisco to Proselyte,” San Francisco Chronicle (13 September 1899).
Cited in Iwamura, 2011, 14, and Michihiro Ama, Immigrants to the Pure Land:
The Modernization, Acculturation, and Globalization of Shin Buddhism, 1898–
1941, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011), 3.
17 Daniel Pratt Baldwin, “The Religions of Asia,” The Indianapolis Journal, 28
May 1900.
18 Iwamura, 2011, 26.
19 Todd Perreira, “America’s Buddha in an Age of Empire: Cosmopolitan Domes-
ticity or Commodity Racism?” American Academy of Religion Annual Confer-
ence, Buddhism in the West Unit, Boston 2017.
20 Joseph Cheah, Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and
Immigrant Adaptation, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 5.
21 Lori Pierce, “Buddhist Modernism in English-Language Buddhist Periodicals,”
in Issei Buddhism in the Americas, ed. Duncan Ryūken Williams and Tomoe
Moriya, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 87. 87–109.
22 Pierce uses Thomas A. Tweed’s notion of “public conversation” from The Amer-
ican Encounter with Buddhism. It is this public conversation which I draw upon
to analyse the rise of Aryan Buddhism [Pierce, 2010, 89–90.]
23 Eastern Buddhist was the publication of D.T. Suzuki, run from 1921 to 1939 be-
fore halting due to the Second World War; it returned from 1949 to 1958. Follow-
ing Suzuki’s death, the magazine began publishing again, from 1965 until 2017.
24 Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in Amer-
ican Life, (London: Verso, 2012), 5.
25 Ibid, 4–5.
26 Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1944), 7.
27 Ernest Haeckel was born in Prussia (modern Germany). In 1899, he wrote The
Riddle of the Universe, in which he argued that Jesus of Nazareth was actu-
ally the son of Mary and a Roman officer, and therefore only “half-Jewish and
half-Aryan.” Haeckel was also a founder of the Monist League.
28 Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race: or the Racial Basis of European
History, (New York: Charles Scribner’s & Sons, 1916). Human zoos were com-
mon internationally in imperialist nations like Belgium and France.
Grant was a member of the Boone and Crocket Club of New York and was
a longtime correspondent of former President Theodore Roosevelt. While at
Dresden University, Grant studied with George Horace Lorimer (1867–1937),
 Introduction 19
who would later become the editor of the Saturday Evening Post, which carried
bioracist articles as well as the cartoons of Thomas Nast. Grant opposed immi-
gration on the basis of “hereditarian science” or bioracism, and claimed that the
American vision of immigration only worked with “Nordic” countries. In his
report on intelligence testing and immigration, Grant wrote, “This generation
must completely repudiate the proud boast of our fathers that they acknowl-
edged no distinction in ‘race, creed, or color’ or else the native American must
turn the page of history and write: ‘FINIS AMERICAE.’”
29 Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race: or the Racial Basis of European
History, 4th Edition, (New York: Charles Scribner’s & Sons, 1921).
30 Ibid, 54.
31 Eugenics was an international movement, with International Eugenics Confer-
ences held in London in 1912, and New York City in 1921 and 1932. Eugenics
policies were introduced in the United States beginning in the 1900s, but they
also became popular in Great Britain in France. By the late 1920s and 1930s,
there were eugenic sterilization policies in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and
Sweden.
32 Nell Irving Painter, The History of White People, (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2010), [Apple Books Version], 1083. Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon
never intended their test to be used for delineating adults at all. It was meant to
be a test for children to gain more access to help in school.
33 Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, (New York: W.W. Norton & Com-
pany, 1996), 230–233.
34 Angela Saini, Superior: The Return of Race Science, (Boston, MA: Beacon Press,
2019).
35 Fields and Fields, 2012, 25.
36 Ibid, 17.
37 Ibid, 9.
38 Ibid, 17.
39 Ibid, 17.
40 Glenn C. Loury, The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2002), 21–22.
Even in 1937, French-American Columbia University historian Jacques
Barzun (1907–2012) wrote Race: A Study in Superstition and in 1942, he wrote
Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race in which he called racism “the
witchcraft of our time.”
41 Painter, 2010, [Apple Books Version], 1414.
42 This phrase was used by Malcolm X and provides a nice sense of tricked results
using technology, which in itself defines bioracism quite well.
43 E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande, (Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1937), 1.
44 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism, (London: Verso, 2006/1983), 5–6.
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd
Edition, (New York: Routledge, 2015), 1.
45 Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, (Chicago,
IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 1.
46 Ann Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to
the Study of Religion and Other Special Things, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2009), 1.
47 Adeana McNicholl, “Being Buddha, Staying Woke: Racial Formation in Black
Buddhist Writing,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 86, no. 4 (July
2018): 907.
20 Introduction
48 David L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism, (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2008), 5.
49 Ann Gleig, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity, (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2019), 4.
50 Jeff Wilson, “Mapping the American Buddhist Terrain: Paths Taken and Possi-
ble Itineraries,” Religion Compass 3, no. 5 (2009): 840. 836–846.
51 Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion, (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 54.
52 Manly P. Hall, The Adepts in the Eastern Esoteric Tradition, Part Two: The Ar-
hats of Buddhism, (Los Angeles, CA: The Philosophical Research Society, Inc.,
1953), 107.
1 The search for Aryan statues

Introduction
The Aryan myth was created in order to justify the history of white
supremacy and mysticize these prejudices in order to become a cosmog-
ony. Scholars used such circular “proofs” for their research as the subjective
perception of beauty found in human skulls or the supposed similarities of
symbols found across the world. Europeans and North Americans were not
searching for the Aryan in order to quench a thirst for academic rigour, but
in order to build racecraft ideology and maintain colonial power structures.
As Hannah Arendt writes in The Origins of Totalitarianism,

for an ideology differs from a simple opinion in that it claims to possess

either the key to history, or the solution for all the “riddles of the uni-
verse,” or the intimate knowledge of the hidden universal laws which are
supposed to rule nature and man.1

Ideologies of racism could be built, or imagined, from folk ideas, cliches,

or their own wild assumptions; as we shall see, part of the insidious nature
of racecraft is its own internal logic, while completely ignoring historical
or scientific reasoning. Racecraft ideology can therefore be pictured like
a trap, which clouds the judgement and stunts the ability to think of those
falling prey to its spell. The Aryan myth developed in part through studies
of Buddhism, but it was in America that this myth falls within the purview
of bioracism. It was this developing ideology of Aryanism which Buddhists
utilized and repackaged to fit themselves within the American religious
landscape. In this chapter I analyse the building of racecraft ideology sur-
rounding the Aryan myth; the majority of this ideology development takes
place prior to 1899, but I detail this history in order to show the intellectual
roots which were drawn upon in the United States beginning in the 20th
century.
Ideology is built through reconfiguring ideas from the past and reconsti-
tuting them with new forms, which means that building racecraft ideolo-
gies domestically and Orientalism internationally which were entering the
22  The search for Aryan statues
United States at the same time as Buddhism helped to shape social notions
of the religion more broadly. In this chapter, we go back in time slightly to
begin in the 18th century in order to trace the development of Aryan race-
craft ideology coming into America by 1899. Aryan ideologies built across
the globe during the 18th and 19th centuries, resulting in racism and violent
anti-Semitism. However, for “white” Europeans and North Americans, the
Aryan myth was the “key to history” which both explained and justified
white supremacy, and by tying the Aryans to the Garden of Eden in a cos-
mic battle against Semites, racecraft ideology could be expanded into a cos-
mic battle for the “soul” of mankind. Below, then, I begin in the crowded
hot streets of colonial Lahore and a young Rudyard Kipling on a trip to the
“Wonder House.”2
The face, and hair, of the Buddha in ancient statues will help transport
us half the world away to the Sorbonne in Paris, France, where we find our-
selves in an art class with some of the leading artistic minds in the world.
Through a series of misunderstandings, mistranslations, and racecraft, we
can trace ideas from art history books to laboratories to racialized violence.
What do statues in Paris tell us about Buddhism in America? How did Bud-
dhism, and the Buddha, come to be associated with “race” in the first place?
Displaying the development of the Aryan myth more broadly helps us to see
the ideological process which allowed academics, Buddhists, and other in-
tellectuals to first make the Buddha into an Aryan, but eventually Aryanize
the tradition of Buddhism. Racecraft allows those “with eyes to see” the
ability to read alternative histories into specific objects, such as an ability
to see the parameters of human beauty in skulls or to view “Greek racial
genius” in Gandharan Buddhist statues. Racecraft tricks the eyes and the
mind into hallucinations of the past, which sees patterns where none exist.

Looking into the eyes, and hair, of Aryan statues

In 1882, a young Rudyard Kipling, future author of Kim and The Jungle
Book was going to visit his father at the Lahore Museum, where he was cu-
rator. Rudyard Kipling wanted to attend Oxford, but his parents lacked the
financial means to send him, and so he had begun his career as a journalist
for the Civil and Military Gazette. At just 17 years old, Kipling had already
travelled across the British empire, having been born in India (modern Pa-
kistan), sent for schooling in England, and now having returned to India
to work before attending university. Kipling had spent a great deal of time
in the Lahore Museum, or “the wonder house,” as Kipling referred to it,
as it was filled with some of the finest treasures in India’s long history. The
Lahore Museum is a large brick building in Mughal architectural style with
ornate arches etched into the brick, and a series of domes and towers which
resemble minarets. He passed the crowded, dusty streets in downtown La-
hore, and touched the large canon out front as he passed by, moving through
the large wooden doors into the cool air of the museum. He looks up to see
 The search for Aryan statues  23
the three-tiered ceiling carved with beautiful designs leading to the heights
at the top of the dome before he turns immediately to enter his favourite
room of the museum, the statues of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas from ancient
Gandhara. The artistic representations of Gandhara are the first known de-
pictions of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas iconically; earlier representations
of the Buddha were aniconic and did not show him in human form. One
of Kipling’s favourite statues in the Gandharan school features Śākyamuni
starving to death, with sunken eye sockets and protruding ribs, pictured just
prior to the gift of Sujata. The emaciated Buddha’s eyes are sunken back
into his skull and veins seem to protrude from underneath his skin display-
ing great stress and pain. According to Kipling, the Gandharan statues of
the Lahore “Wonder House” tell another story of human history and racial
evolution, rather than a gift of rice-milk.
Kipling, like many others who viewed the Gandharan Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas, were convinced that these ancient statues were proof of the
greatness of former Greek empires and told us about the importance of the
Hellenic world. This assertion may give the reader pause, as the Buddha was
not Greek. According to early scholars of India, the Buddha was “racially”
Aryan, connected to the northern tribes of the supposed Aryan invasion
from the Central Asian Steppes of Tibet. This assertion about the Buddha’s
racial heritage, although based on nothing more than the area in which he
was said to have been born combined with his royal parentage, was viewed
as scientific fact. Although the Buddha’s area of birth was questioned many
times in the centuries before 1900, such as tracing the Buddha to Africa
or Norse mythology, by the 20th century, the Buddha was racially Aryan
from Northern India, or modern Nepal; this was now fact because British
colonialists had discovered his place of birth. By this I mean to say in the
Orientalist sense of knowing, coined by Edward Said, which suggests a so-
lidification in the knowledge of Orientalist systems whereby only through
“Western” modes of knowing was something “True.”
Studies of Buddhism contributed to the development of the Aryan myth.
William Jones, a British linguist in the 1780s is credited as having discov-
ered the relationship between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and therefore
the existence of an Indo-European language family. Max Müller, as well as
Eugène Burnouf, analysed the Buddha in philological terms. Müller’s work
on Indo-European languages, and the positing of an original ur-Aryan lan-
guage, was influential in the creation of the Aryan myth; this contribution
grew far beyond the reach of the academic Müller, who regretted the way his
philological studies were employed for racecraft later in life. Müller’s work
was linguistic, and he decried the lack of scientific rigour to which his ideas
contributed, remarking, “an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan
blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of
a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar.”3 Müller’s ac-
ademic intentions may have been true, but his theories were easily used to
split the world into two.
24  The search for Aryan statues
Müller posited an Aryan language, spoken by the Buddha, as well as the
corruption of Buddhism over time. Combined with these interlocking ideas
is another, less discussed, hypothesis from Müller who separately posited
the presence of Turanian languages. This language family comprised the
“other” to the Aryan language family, including Semitic languages, Tur-
kic, “Mongolic,” Tibetan, and “Tamulik (Dravidian).”4 Certain languages
were left “unclassified” but Müller suspected Japanese and Korean of being
Turanian languages as well. Unwittingly or not, Müller added scientific cre-
dence to the Aryan myth and the separation of the world between Aryan
and Semitic. Early studies of Buddhism contributed to the Aryan myth
through philological works connecting Indo-European language families,
making the Buddha an Aryan, and the languages of Europe connected. For
Rudyard Kipling in the “Wonder House,” the linguistic connections could
be perceived in the artistic genius personified in the face of Gandharan Bud-
dhas. According to Kipling and many other Orientalists, Greek society had
provided India with the artistic ability to create beautiful art. That con-
nection was not a singularity in history through the invasion of Alexander
the Great, but perpetual cultural trade of Aryan peoples, whose Central
Asian tribe had spread out to India as well as west to Greece and Rome.
The Buddha statues were therefore proof, not of Indian artistic and religious
greatness, but of Aryan superiority, which once covered everything from
Hellenic Greece to Gandhara. Burnouf was part of an expedition which
traced the presence of ancient Aryans from Greece by focussing on swastika
carvings compared to Indian counterparts.
Half a world away, in a classroom in the Sorbonne, Paris’ most famed
institute of artistic learning, students study the Greek statues which were
viewed as the pinnacle of artistic as well as human beauty. These scholars
of European art were told that the Greek statues represented the paragon
of not only artistic, but also human beauty. Part of this beauty was derived
by their white colour, as this was said to be a signifier of their purity; the
“white” Greek statues were then posited as proof that “white skin” was
the most beautiful phenotype. From the Greek statues, we can also be as-
sured that ancient Greeks were actually between 9 and 13 feet tall, as their
physical beauty and stature was proof of their inner strength of character.
In the 18th century, Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) was a Ger-
man art historian who used the authority derived from the Renaissance to
claim that “beauty” was a matter of scientific fact, which could be quan-
tified through art.5 It should be noted that Winckelmann himself did not
have access to Egyptian or Greek art at this time, as both areas were under
Ottoman control, so his studies were based on Roman recreations of Greek
statues. Winckelmann claimed that the Greek statues were the embodi-
ment of human beauty and perfection, which grew out of Hellenic freedom
of culture. Winckelmann’s theories were solidified by the work of Petrus
Camper (1722–1789), who wrote the time’s most influential book on artistic
 The search for Aryan statues  25
illustration; Camper was the one who created the diagram of intersecting
lines on the face to make beauty quantifiable through symmetry.6 Accord-
ing to Winckelmann, Greek statues were also the most beautiful due to
their white colour. This logic is particularly ironic given that we now know
Greek statues were dark in colour and painted with bright colours. It was
the Roman copies which were white, as they were made in plaster casts. In
fact, when British Orientalists found Greek statues and transported them
back to England, they believed the original patina was wrong and scraped
the statues with metal tools to remove the dark overlay, thus destroying the
original art of the Parthenon. Greek civilization was deeply cosmopolitan
with influences from Egyptian, Semitic, and Eastern cultures, but in Black
Athena, Martin Bernal shows how Greek culture was redesigned as Aryan
to remove Semitic and African roots in the 19th century.7 Like artistic merit
in general, the assertions of Winckelmann were purely subjective, as his
constructions of beauty were based purely on the stereotypes of the age; for
instance, Winckelmann described the eyes of Chinese people as “an offence
against beauty,” which allowed him to disregard Asian art in the develop-
ment of human history.8
In the 18th century, physical complexion was not simply an individual’s
aesthetic beauty, but many believed that this was a reflection of the inner
purity of the soul. Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801), a Swiss-born Prot-
estant clergyman living in Zurich published On Physiognomy in 1772, which
claimed physical beauty reflected the inner state of the soul.9 Throughout
the 18th century, the perception of beauty was said to reflect the inner state
of human beings, while various studies were completed throughout Europe
to suggest that “caucasians” had the most beautiful features in history. In
Petrus Camper’s 1792 guide to artistic illustration, he created a chart of hu-
man beauty, with the Apollo Belvedere statue as the pinnacle, ranked “100”;
the Apollo Belvedere statue was touring Europe at the time. The statue’s
head is then contrasted by relative positions of beauty in descending order
with Apollo Belvedere, a European skull, a “kalmuck” (Asian) skull, a “ne-
gro” skull, and finally a chimpanzee skull.10 Camper’s chart was meant to
show relative position against an ideal, as the human skulls rank “70” for the
beauty of the “negro” and “kalmuck” skulls, while the European skull ranks
“80,” suggesting that all of humanity has fallen a great distance from the
ideal. The numbers associated with this chart became far less important than
the evolutionary tale people saw when looking at the image and the relative
position of beauty between skull shapes. Camper’s chart circulated during
the height of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and thus promoted the idea of “Afri-
can” people as being less human, and closer to beasts, than other people. As
a book on artistic illustration, Camper’s chart promotes the idea of white
supremacy by placing the Greek statue as the ideal paragon of human per-
fection, with “white” people second, although Camper wanted to prove that
beauty was quantifiable, his views were not necessarily considered science.
26  The search for Aryan statues
Turning art to “science”
The supposed “science” of bioracism was rising quickly in the United States,
fuelled in part to provide justification for the practice of chattel slavery.
Samuel George Morton (1799–1851) was an American anthropologist, and
President of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences. He was the son of immi-
grant Quakers from Ireland, but both his parents died by the time he was 18
and so a rich uncle in England financed his education.11 He was a professor
at the University of Pennsylvania from 1839 to 1843, meaning he would have
taught some of the top doctors and anthropologists in America. Morton was
a student of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), who became a star
scientist in European bioracism, teaching English, German, and other Euro-
pean nobles throughout his tenure at Göttingen University.12 Blumenbach’s
doctoral dissertation, On Natural Variety of Mankind (De Genesis Humani),
was only 15 pages long. Blumenbach believed strongly that outer traits were
a sign of inner strength of character, and therefore beauty was a sign of evo-
lution. Blumenbach is credited for having ended the belief in “monsters” as
his skull collection of 245 proved the similarity in skeletal structures. Blu-
menbach combined the Norma Verticalis (the top view of the skull) with skin
colour to suggest that climate produces phenotype, with the equator being
the centre of non-beauty, and beauty increasing the further north one moves
away from the equator. Blumenbach is also credited with coining the term
“caucasian” to mean “white people”; his assertion was based strictly on the
perceived beauty of the skulls.13 Morton believed that each “race” was a
completely separate species, who retired with over 1,000 skulls in his col-
lection, mostly derived from colonial expansion, such as his collection of
Seminole Warrior skulls which he received from the US Army in 1835.
Bioracism was posited as explaining not only current conditions of the
world but providing a panacea explanation for all of human social develop-
ment. These early bioracists posited that the existence of “races” explained
the development for all human philosophy, religion, and other institutions,
and provided the ability to read “race” anywhere into the past in imagi-
native ways that can be described as racecraft. In Crania Aegyptiaca; or
Observations on Egyptian Ethnography Derived from Anatomy, History and
the Monuments (1844), Morton claimed that the best dressed and most
well-buried sarcophagus in Egypt all had the same cranial measurements as
modern British people. Morton even asserts that the “wooly hair” described
in ancient Egypt was the result of wigs, rather than the presence of Afri-
cans, although he does not say why. Morton again uses the Apollo Belvedere
statue to represent the pinnacle of human beauty and skull shape, which is
then directly contrasted with skull “341-Negro” and then skull “343-Young
Chimpanzee.” According to Morton, his chart should help to explain how
Europeans came to have the “highest intellectual endowments,” but he cau-
tioned that this should not be read as a condemnation of other “races” as
less human.14
 The search for Aryan statues  27
Even well-meaning bioracists who claimed their work should not be read
as a condemnation of others could quickly have their words used against
them in the imaginings of racecraft. Josiah Nott and George Gliddon felt
that Morton’s work provided intellectual justifications for “racial” hierar-
chies, and utilized the work of Samuel Morton in their own research, Types
of Mankind: or, Ethnological Researches Based Upon the Ancient Mon-
uments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and Upon their Natu-
ral, Geographical, Philological, and Biblical History, which was published
in 1854, and dedicated to Morton.15 Aside from their penchant for snappy
titles, Nott and Gliddon also wanted to provide scientific justification for
Southern slave ownership. Josiah Nott (1804–1873) was a physician from
the University of Pennsylvania who later went on to found the University of
Alabama School of Medicine; he was also a polygenist who believed each
“race” was created separately, and therefore the biblical story of Genesis
was only the history of “white” people.16 George Gliddon (1809–1857) was
an English-born Egyptologist who was living in America, as well as a poly-
genist.17 Nott and Gliddon produced the Types of Mankind to reinterpret
the craniological assessments of Samuel Morton, to which they added sub-
section comparisons, which display profiles of a “Hottentot Wagoner” next
to an “Orang-Outan” or a “Hottentot from Somerset” beside a “Chimpan-
zee.”18 Not only do Nott and Gliddon provide additional subcategories for
“types” of black people, but the cephalic index rankings also prove that
Africans actually rank below the cranial structure of a young chimpan-
zee; bioracism ranked many of those of African descent as uglier and less
evolved than primates. The Apollo Belvedere is maintained as the norma-
tive human skull shape.
Here we can see a direct line of consequences, combined through race-
craft, or the building of ideology; the assertion of Greek statues as the pin-
nacle of beauty led to Camper’s artistic hierarchy of human beauty, which
was used for Samuel Morton’s chart of skull-shape evolution, before finally
appearing in the extremely racist works of Nott and Gliddon. In other words,
these assertions can continue on, far beyond the life or intentions of the au-
thor who produced it. Morton was not the only one to get a revitalization
through Josiah Nott, as he also funded a new translation of Arthur de Gobi-
neau’s An Essay on the Inequality of Human Races, which posited the Aryan
master “race” throughout history; Nott instructed his translator, the Swiss-
born Henry Hotze of Mobile, Alabama, to translate the text with southern
slaveholding ideology in mind. In 1856, The Moral and Intellectual Diversity
of Races: With Particular Reference to Their Respective Influence in the Civil
and Political History of Mankind, from the French of Count A. De Gobineau
was published by Nott, with the inclusion of Morton’s cranial measurements
in order to posit a polygenist explanation for American slaves. Like many at
the time, Nott believed that miscegenation was as unnatural as beastiality,
due to polygenesis, and would eventually destroy “racial purity,” as was the
title of his 1843 article, “the Mulatto is a Hybrid – probable extermination
28  The search for Aryan statues
of the two races if the Whites and Blacks are allowed to marry” in the Amer-
ican Journal of Medical Sciences.19 Ideas such as Gobineau’s theory of the
Aryans, or the idea of Greeks as paragons of human beauty throughout
history continues to reconstitute themselves and return even beyond their
original lifespan.
Historians, artists, Orientalists, and others contributed to the creation
of the Aryan myth. William Jones was a British judge in India who wrote
Grammar of the Persian Language, the first English guide to classical Per-
sian, in 1771. By 1786, Jones was a justice in the Supreme Court of Bengal,
where he used classical Indian texts, like the Vedas, to learn Sanskrit. Jones
told the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which he founded:

the Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful

structure: more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin,
and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of them a
stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar,
than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed,
that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them
to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer
exists.20

Scholars posited that an original Aryan language must have existed prior
to the separation of the Indo-European language family. In fact, scholars
connected this discovery to the Garden of Eden, as they believed it may
have been in India, and Aryan was the original language.21 Up until the
18th century, it was common to see history in cycles of progress and de-
cline, which could then be catalogued in order to form a blueprint for main-
taining power.22 These common hypotheses were built as ideology into
“scientific fact,” such as the idea that northern climates produce stronger
men and “chaste” women, leading to the hypothesis that all military inva-
sion in human history had taken place from north to south.23 These 18th-
century assertions grew into cliches and then were concretized by bioracism
as “fact” in the 20th century. As Tomoko Masuzawa has pointed out, this
belief in an ur- language contributed the Universalist notion of common
human origins, which led to the rise of comparative religion as a discipline
of academic study.24
The man most credited with the development of the Aryan myth is Comte
Arthur de Gobineau. Gobineau moved the Aryan from obscure philolog-
ical study to familiar trope, as he expanded the history of this “ur-Aryan
language” to one of universal truth of Aryan national greatness throughout
history. Gobineau claimed that the Aryans represented the master “race”
who pushed human society along, which would theoretically attract inferior
peoples, leading to miscegenation; Gobineau blamed the revolutions of 1848
in Europe entirely on “race-mixing.”25 Many Orientalist scholars of the
time, such as Eugène Burnouf, praised the Buddha as a social revolutionary
fighting against caste distinctions; for Gobineau, the anti-caste outlook of
 The search for Aryan statues  29
Buddhism spelled its defeat, as he says “it was chiefly from the base people
that he enrolled the majority of his proselytes. At the moment that he threw
aside the prescriptions of the Vedas, the separation of the castes no longer
existed for him, and he declared that he recognized no other superiority
than that of virtue,” which resulted in a “plunge into the black classes.”26
Not all scholars portrayed the Buddha as an anti-caste revolutionary.
In comparison to the orthodoxy of Aryan Buddhism which scholars cre-
ated in the late 19th century, Mahāyāna Buddhism was posited as the ultimate
corruption of doctrine. In 1876, Burnouf wrote of Mahāyāna Buddhism, “the
pen refuses to transcribe doctrines as miserable in respect of form, as they
are odious and degrading in respect of meaning.”27 Whether the Buddha was
an anti-caste revolutionary or a dangerous promoter of “racial degeneracy,”
Buddhism was seen as corrupted over its historical development as it spread
outside of its original Aryan homeland. According to early scholars of Bud-
dhism, as Buddhism spread further from its homeland, it became increasingly
corrupted. According to Max Müller in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Soci-
ety in 1880, by the time Buddhism reached Japan, it was thoroughly corrupted,
so as to be a totally different religion; in fact, he wondered semi-rhetorically:

is it not high time that the millions who live in Japan and profess a faith
in Buddha should be told that this doctrine of Amitābha is a second-
ary form of Buddhism, a corruption of the pure doctrine of the Royal
Prince, and that if they really mean to be Buddhists, they should return
to the words of Buddha, as they are preserved to us in the older Sūtras?
But these older Sūtras are evidently far less considered in Japan than
the degraded and degrading tracts, the silly and mischievous stories of
Amitābha and his paradise of which, I feel convinced, Buddha himself
never knew even the names.28

The theory of Asian corruption from an “original Buddhism” was already

present in academic studies of Buddhism. However, by 1899, these studies
began to utilize one of the most modern and cutting-edge “sciences” availa-
ble to them in bioracism, including the Aryan myth.
Rather than being connected to Buddhism, bioracists argued that the Ar-
yan people had spread westward towards Europe. Aryans were viewed as
physically different, depending on their perceived level of purity, which ex-
plains the idea of ancient Greeks being extraordinarily tall, rather than just
their statues. Gobineau also described the Aryans as having fair-skin and
blue eyes. In a similar fashion to Edward Said’s description of Orientalism,
the Aryan myth became a cottage industry, where “expertise is attributed
to it. The authority of academics, institutions, and governments can accrue
to it, surrounding it with still greater prestige than its practical successes
warrant.”29 According to the Aryan myth, the Aryans were a tribe of fair-
skinned people in the Central Asian Steppes, or modern Tibet, who then
moved out to India, and then Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Europe.30 The Ar-
yans were therefore posited as being at the centre of every major civilization
30  The search for Aryan statues
known to Orientalists. This logic was used to justify the colonization of
India by European powers, who believed themselves to be the end result of
Aryan development throughout history.
The Aryan myth filled in the gaps for Orientalists and all of their Uni-
versalist notions of history and philosophy; this myth places anyone who
claims the title directly at the scene of every major development in human-
ity. In “Race, Class, and Gender in the Formation of the Aryan Model of
Greek Origins,” by Martin Bernal, he argues that the Aryan myth posited
the idea that supposedly “superior races” conquered “inferior” ones, but
eventually the “inferior” group would win out by sapping the vital fluids
of the supposedly more masculine group; the Aryan myth claimed that the
caste system in India represented the Aryan attempt to guard their blood
purity against the Dravidians, which were described as “heroic.”31 The Laws
of Manu which detail the caste structure and its mystical origins was the first
text British Orientalists translated as a structure for ruling India; the Brit-
ish famously claimed a great respect and admiration for the Laws of Manu
which they compared to their own nobility structure.32 The Aryan myth
justified current prejudices and views of hierarchy, or as Hannah Arendt
writes:

finally, the Comte de Gobineau developed an opinion already generally

accepted among the French nobility into a full-fledged historical doc-
trine, claiming to have detected the secret law of the fall of civilizations
and to have exalted history to the dignity of a natural science…thus he
made that discovery, for which he was so much admired by later writers
and biographers, that the fall of civilizations is due to a degeneration of
race and the decay of race is due to a mixture of blood.33

Arendt and Bernal tie the Aryan myth to class, as the Aryan myth forged
a connection among the supposed aristocracies of every major civilization;
Gobineau himself blamed “race-mixing” for the revolutions of 1848, as
well as the French Revolution, and even claimed his research on the Ar-
yan myth was “only a means to assuage a hatred of democracy and of the
Revolution.”34
This connection meant that a person’s own self, their own blood in fact,
was a warrior in a cosmic battle, or “this meant that inner experiences could
be given historical significance, that one’s own self had become the battlefield
of history.”35 Racecraft, through Aryanism, allowed people to become part
of a larger narrative which connected them either to all human triumphs, or
labelled individuals as a perpetual stumbling block to human development;
this imagined connection, through bioracism, would be concretized and
presented as “science” so an individual’s relation to these human triumphs
would actually become quantifiable. The inclusion of the Aryan myth is fol-
lowed by its inverse in the exclusion of the “other,” or Semite in reference to
 The search for Aryan statues  31
the Aryans; this notion was quantified into a science through the use of the
One-Drop Rule in the United States or the Nuremberg Laws in Germany.

The Aryan myth goes worldwide

So, it was through the Aryan myth, derived from ancient linguistic families
to posit a blue-eyed tribe who was responsible for the upwards trajectory of
human technological development for centuries, that we can trace a direct
line from our classroom in the Sorbonne to the exhibits of the Lahore Mu-
seum. The mythical Aryan tribe, traced through language families and artis-
tic depictions of the swastika became the explanatory theory for all of human
history, including the rise and fall of empires. The swastika is an ancient sym-
bol found all over the world with prehistoric origins. However, “swastika” is
really a term of convenience for a variety of symbols of varying origins that
likely have little or no connection with one another.36 In fact, Max Müller di-
rectly criticized any use of the term “swastika” outside of India, warning, “it
is a word of Indian origin, and has its history and definite meaning in India.
I know the temptation is great to transfer names, with which we are familiar,
to similar objects which come before us in the course of our researches. But
it is a temptation which the true student ought to resist.”37 The swastika be-
came a symbol through which people could imagine a heroic tribe pushing
humanity forward and creating new technologies throughout human history,
struggling against singular enemies wishing to hold them back.
It was racecraft, in a search for “Aryan origins” to all human develop-
ment which connected the singular swastika all over the world. In the letter
quoted above, Müller is writing to Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890), a
German businessman turned amateur archaeologist, who made his for-
tune as an importer and exporter of goods before turning to the Greek city
of Troy and research on Aryan Greeks.38 Schliemann employed Eugène
Burnouf as a research assistant during his expeditions researching Aryan
origins of the swastika. Burnouf himself was a known anti-Semite who
wrote in an 1872 letter to Schliemann, “the swastika should be regarded as a
sign of the Aryan race. It should also be noted that the Jews have completely
rejected it.”39 The swastika, or fylfot, or gammadion, became a symbol of
the Aryan “race” which bioracists searched out like bread-crumb clues laid
out through all of human history; according to bioracists, the mythical Ar-
yan could also be found in human skulls, which represented ideals of human
beauty that were somehow “scientific.” Here we can see the continual build-
ing blocks of racecraft ideology over time. Opinions about human beauty
become fetishized in human skulls, leading to the concretization of artis-
tic ideals and biological determinism in craniology and phrenology. In the
end, bioracists collected hundreds of human skulls, often through nefarious
methods, to trace this supposed ideal of beauty through human history. In a
similar fashion, a constellation of symbols which all seem to show rotation
32  The search for Aryan statues
were grouped and tracked across the globe to prove the supposed “racial”
greatness of a tribe from Central Asia that eventually created every major
civilization in history.
Through its newfound association with Aryanism, the swastika was
taken up by völkisch groups in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Völkisch
Movement was a network of nationalist groups who explored mystical and
esoteric histories of Aryans, meaning Germanic or Teutonic peoples, and
their connection with Norse and Greek mythology. These groups connected
the German and Aryan “races” and proposed an evolutionary ascendancy
over all others; the major thinkers in the Völkisch Movement were later held
as intellectual godfathers within the German National Socialist movement.
Hitler calls the swastika a symbol of Aryan man in Mein Kampf. Unfortu-
nately, for many in Europe and North America, the swastika is most closely
associated with German Nazism and the horrors of the Second World War.
So it was that Rudyard Kipling looked into the eyes of the Buddhas of
Gandhara and their Bodhisattva retinues and saw only Greek “racial ge-
nius”; the Buddha was not an Indian prince, but an Aryan, having more in
common with Osiris and Apollo than Asians. The face and countenance of
the Buddha were placed next to the pinnacles of human beauty in the Greek
statues and found comparable. For Orientalists, the Buddha’s “racial” con-
nections, or supposed Aryan heritage, are what made him great in the first
place, while the Greco-inspired Buddhist art proved his “racial” heritage,
as well as the presence of Aryans in ancient India; who else could have made
such beautiful statues? This is obviously circular logic, as to create such
wonderful art, the artist would have had to be Aryan, while the art had to
be Aryan because it was wonderful.

The Aryan in Buddhism

For Buddhism, the idea of the “Aryan” was present in the religious texts
studied by European scholars, further lending credence to the racial con-
nections being proposed by bioracists. In Sanskrit, ārya means noble or
superior; it is generally a self-designation, or one given as a compliment,
rather than an ethnic or phenotypical identifier. For instance, the commonly
known “four noble truths” in Buddhism are actually more accurately ren-
dered as the “four truths for Aryans” or noble people. The descriptor of
spiritual nobility is found throughout Buddhist texts including descriptions
of the āryabuddha and his āryadharma, which is a common phrase for de-
scribing Buddhism as a whole. The swastika is a common religious symbol
in India, and Buddhists have used it for millennia across Asia; the symbol
still denotes Buddhist temples on maps in East Asian countries, and in
Korea bright neon swastikas show Buddhist temples in the night-sky.40
Orientalists were searching for Aryans and swastikas all over the world,
and found it in Buddhist India; as Donald S. Lopez, Jr. points out, they
were also met with an “empty throne,” with no living Buddhists to speak
 The search for Aryan statues  33
41
for the tradition in its ancestral homeland. British imperialists latched on
to this connection, which provided linguistic and supposedly “racial” and
genetic connections between Europeans and the Buddha himself. This was
connected to the idea of the Aryan tribes conquering the lesser Dravidians
to suggest a common theme throughout human history; according to myth,
the superior Aryans have always (and therefore will/should always) push
forward human evolution through the creation of new empires, while other
groups represented by the Dravidians or Semites, constantly attempted to
foil this progress. The presence of the term ārya in Buddhism provided the
impetus for the imaginings of British and other imperialists who believed
themselves Aryan and helped to place the Buddha directly within larger
conversations of bioracism. The Buddha as an Aryan also provided the ex-
planatory factor for the corruption scholars of Buddhism posited in the re-
ligion’s history. If the Buddha was an Aryan, but his tradition was spread to
Dravidians, Asians, or “Mongoloid” “Kalmucks,” then this would explain
the corruption of the religious tradition.
The Aryan myth provided a connection for Europeans and North Amer-
icans to Buddhism, while also providing explanation and justification for
anything they believed “wrong” in the religion. Scholars searching for the
Garden of Eden wanted to prove that the language spoken there was He-
brew, thus proving the historical trajectory of the Old and New Testaments,
but instead, they were presented with Aryanism, which contributed not only
to the idea of a central human language, but also the possibility of multiple
gardens to explain human “racial” development. In other words, Aryan-
ism became a panacea explanation for all racism and prejudices held about
the history of human development and its influence on modern hierarchy
and socioeconomic positioning. The Aryan myth provided almost spiritual-
scientific justification for current prejudices, which had been repeated over
and over throughout centuries. Further, it allowed European and North
American imperialists to lay claim to the entire Buddhist tradition as their
own, while disavowing the historical presence of Buddhism throughout
Asia.

The Aryan myth and the Semites

To speak of the Aryan myth, we must also discuss anti-Semitism, as Sem-
ites are posited as the “other” against whom the Aryans have always been
fighting. It is not possible to provide a full historical account of anti-Semitic
thought, as a fear of the “other” has permeated much of the history of man-
kind. Anti-Semitism can be traced, in part, to the history of the Crusades
and Orientalism, as the world was viewed as split in twain between “good”
and “evil” forces. Anti-Semitic mythology developed over millennia and
posited Jewish people as purely evil, and therefore working against the
forces of civilization and goodness itself. Anti-Semites throughout history
imagined Jewish people as cannibals, blood drinkers, and engaging in other
34  The search for Aryan statues
forms of horrific behaviour, as a direct result of being Jewish. For instance,
this fear can be traced to a recurring myth, known as “blood libel,” which
claims that as punishment for the death of Jesus, Jews are forced to drink
the blood of Christian children, which created local cults, such as Simon of
Trent, who was a three-year-old Italian boy supposedly eaten by Rabbis.
Here we have a perfect example of racecraft, as popular myths, local prej-
udices, and fear are combined to create a narrative of racism so strikingly
silly, and yet dangerous in its lived consequences. The Comte de Gobineau
claimed that Semites were once an offshoot of the Aryan “race,” but were
supposedly polluted due to miscegenation with people of African descent.42
Ernest Renan, a famous anti-Semite who posited that Aryans and Jews were
locked in a constant battle, posited the Khazar myth, which argues that
Jewish people are the descendants of “racial mixing” between Turkic people
and the trading posts of Mediterranean region, and thus not connected to
Aryans at all.43 Renan buttressed his anti-Semitism with references to phi-
lology and Gobineau, creating a circular logic of racecraft, which allowed
him to make wild religious claims, such as the idea that the god of Judaism
was actually the Old Testament idol of the golden calf, Baal, and that their
holy land was actually Mecca.44 Anti-Semitism was such a dominant idea in
Europe and North America, that the ideology spread globally.
Anti-Semitism became so culturally predominant that it spread through-
out Asia, which further displays the nonsensical nature of racecraft ide-
ology. In 1914, King Vajiravudh (King Rama VI, 1881–1925), the King of
Thailand, referred to the Chinese as the “Jews of the East,” and utilized
common anti-Semitic tropes when he blamed them for, “racial loyalty and
astuteness in financial matters…money is their god. Life itself is of little
value compared with the leanest bank account.”45 In the United States, anti-
Semitism was a part of American life, as many social institutions banned
Jewish members and marginalized citizens; for instance, in 1922 Harvard
University banned all Jewish students and Yale University added “physical
characteristics” as part of their admission process, which was not changed
until the 1960s.46 In How Jews Became White Folks Karen Brodkin argues
that Jewish-Americans were able to position themselves as a model minority
in part due to their economic success, but also because they provided a
“buffer” for “white” American culture as an “off-white race” against people
of colour.47 American Jews have historically known the threat of violence,
both domestically and internationally, and have therefore attempted to fit
themselves within American patterns of racecraft.

Conclusion
The history of the Aryan myth is a large constellation of ideas, brought
together through various academic channels to become concretized within
a singular story of a tribe from Tibet that moved out to overtake human
history. The assertion of supremacy throughout all history and based on
 The search for Aryan statues  35
inborn traits can be called an “invisible ontology,” and racecraft describes
the process where “invisible ontologies require and then acquire anchors in
sensible experience, including quasi-biological anchors.”48 Europeans found
evidence, such as similarities among symbols or linguistic relationships, to
suit the hypothesis that their power and greatness was not only justified, but
cosmically ordained throughout all time. Previous literature on the history
of the Aryan myth specifically is robust, including Nell Irvin Painter, David
Anthony, Martin Bernal, and Léon Poliakov. The Aryan myth also influ-
enced the history of Orientalism as presented by Edward Said. In Buddhism
and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, as well as his other works, Donald
S. Lopez, Jr. has also detailed the racial history of the Buddha as well as
early Buddhist uses of Aryanism by Anagārika Dharmapāla. Dharmapāla’s
use of anti-Semitic language coincided with the rise of bioracism, which he
used to resist British colonialism. This study focusses more specifically on
the introduction of Buddhism to America through a transnational network,
and specifically on uses of bioracism throughout the Buddhist world which
helped to create space for the development of Buddhist Modernism in the
United States. In his work, Lopez details how the Buddha became an Aryan
and the influence that had on studies of Buddhism, while this project ex-
plains how Buddhism was Aryanized and the impact of this process on the
Buddhist religion more broadly.
By making Aryanism and bioracism the central focus of Buddhist history
from 1899 to 1957, we can see how widespread Buddhist uses of bioracism
became beyond just Dharmapāla, as it spread throughout Asia. Similarly,
by focussing on this racist stream of Buddhist Modernism we can see how
racecraft allowed Buddhism to become so popularized in America less than
a decade after the Second World War. Lopez focusses the majority of his
studies on scholarly and Orientalist interactions with an essentialized object
they called Buddhism. Here my focus is entirely on Buddhist uses of Aryan-
ism across the globe and the specific ways in which that intellectual history
manifests in the United States.
By situating specifically on the United States, we will see how Buddhist
uses of racecraft allowed them to fit more comfortably within American
culture and the religious landscape. Buddhist uses of racecraft led to the
success of the religion beginning in the 1950s. As such, it is evident how
ubiquitous the Aryan myth was, and by putting bioracism as a central fac-
tor in Buddhist success, we can nuance our scholarly assertions about Bud-
dhism and science. By focussing on bioracism, we can see that this racism
was considered the most cutting-edge “science” of the day. American bio-
racism represented the “scientification” of prejudice and supremacy, which
Buddhists were able to reverse in order to posit themselves as an Aryan
tradition. Edward Said sums up this history succinctly;

My point is that the metamorphosis of a relatively innocuous philo-

logical subspecialty into a capacity for managing political movements,
36 The search for Aryan statues
administering colonies, making nearly apocalyptic statements repre-
senting the White Man’s difficult civilizing mission – all this is some-
thing at work within a purportedly liberal culture, one full of concern
for its vaunted norms of catholicity, plurality, and open-mindedness.
In fact, what took place was the very opposite of liberal: the hardening
of doctrine and meaning, imparted by “science,” into “truth.” For if
such truth reserved for itself the right to judge the Orient as immutably
Oriental in the ways I have indicated, then liberality was no more than
a form of oppression and mentalistic prejudice.49

Although Buddhists immediately dealt with the intense yellow peril prej-
udice and animosity, concretized through bioracism and the Aryan myth,
subsequent chapters further tease out this narrative to trace the ways in
which Buddhists were able to use their own internal doctrines combined
with racecraft to fit themselves with modernity. By engaging the modern-
izing influence of “science” through American bioracism, Buddhists were
able to fit themselves within American culture. We continue to see the in-
fluences of this history in popular culture representations of Buddhism as
well as some current iterations of Buddhist Modernism globally. In the next
chapter, we focus more specifically on American bioracism and uses of the
Aryan myth.

Notes
1 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (San Diego, CA: Harcourt
Brace & Company, 1973/1948), 159.
2 Stanley K. Abe also utilized the “Wonder House” to tell the story of Buddhist
art, and the story of resistance from Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) Tamil Ananda
Kentish Muthu Coomaraswamy (A. K. Coomaraswamy 1877–1947). Stanley K.
Abe, “Inside the Wonder House: Buddhist Art and the West,” in Curators of the
Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism, ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr.,
(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 107.
3 F. Max Müller, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas, (New York:
Longmans, Green & Co. 1887), 120.
4 Maurice Olender, tr. Arthur Goldhammer, The Languages of Paradise: Aryans
and Semites, A Match Made in Heaven, (New York: Other Press, 2002), 5.
5 Nell Irving Painter, The History of White People, (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2010), [Apple Books Version], 247.
6 Ibid, 268.
7 Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classic Civilization, (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 137.
8 David Bindman, Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Idea of Race in the 18th Cen-
tury, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 89–90.
9 Painter, 2010, [Apple Books Version], 268.
10 Ibid, 274.
11 Ibid, 750.
12 Ibid, 295–296.
13 Ibid, 344.
 The search for Aryan statues 37
14 Samuel George Morton, Crania Americana: Or, a Comparative View of the Skulls
of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America, (Philadelphia, PA: J.
Dobson, 1839), 5.
15 Josiah Clark Nott and George R. Gliddon, Types of Mankind: or, Ethnological
Researches Based upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Cra-
nia of Races, and Upon their Natural, Geographical, Philological, and Biblical
History, (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854), Frontspiece.
16 Painter, 2010, [Apple Books Version], 764.
17 Ibid, 837.
18 Nott and Gliddon, 1854, 458–459.
19 Josiah Nott, “The Mulatto Is a Hybrid—Probable Extermination of the Two
Races If the Whites and Blacks Are Allowed to Marry,” American Journal of
Medical Sciences 6 (1843): 252–256.
20 David W. Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age
Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2007), 7.
21 Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and
the East, 1680 to 1880 (The Social Foundations of Aesthetic Forms), (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1984), 1.
22 Martin Bernal, “Race, Class, and Gender in the Formation of the Aryan Model
of Greek Origins,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 94, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 1006.
23 Ibid, 1006.
24 Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Uni-
versalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, (Chicago, IL: The Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 2005), 1.
25 Le Comte Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines,
2nd Edition, (Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot et Cie, 1884), 23.
26 Gobineau, 1884, 440.
27 Eugène Burnouf, Katia Buffetrille and Donald S. Lopez, Jr., trs. Introduction to
the History of Indian Buddhism, (Introduction à L’Histoire du Buddhisme Indien),
(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2010/1876), 497. “La plume se
refuse à transcrire des doctrines aussi misérables, quant à la forme, qu’odieuses et
dogradanues pour le fond.”
28 F. Max Müller, “On Sanskrit Texts Discovered in Japan,” The Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 12, no. 2 (April 1880): 174.
29 Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 94.
30 Anthony, 2007, 4.
31 Bernal, 1995: 1006.
32 Said, 1978, 78.
33 Arendt, 1973/1948, 165.
34 Léon Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in
Europe, (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 233.
35 Arendt, 1973/1948, 175.
36 Malcolm Quinn, The Swastika: Constructing the Symbol, (New York: Rout-
ledge, 2005), 1.
37 Quinn, 2005, 1. Personal letter from Max Müller to Heinrich Schliemann.
38 Ibid, 22.
39 Ibid, 22. Personal letter from Eugène Burnouf to Heinrich Schliemann.
40 T. K. Nakagaki, The Buddhist Swastika and Hitler’s Cross, (New York: Toshi-
kazu Kenjitsu Nakagaki, 2017), 35.
41 Donald S. Lopez, Jr., From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha, (Chi-
cago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 213.
42 Arendt, 1973/1948, 175.
38 The search for Aryan statues
43 Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?” in The Limits of Nationalism, ed. Chaim
Gans, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 11.
44 Said, 1978, 150.
45 Wasana Wongsurawat, “Beyond Jews of the Orient: A New Interpretation of the
Problematic Relationship between the Thai State and Its Ethnic Chinese Com-
munity,” Positions 24, no. 2 (May 2016): 555.
46 Barry J. Eichengreen, Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Reces-
sion, and the Uses—And Misuses—Of History, (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2015), 5.
47 Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What that Says about Race
in America, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 1. In colonial
Hispanic America, it was possible to purchase a royal certificate of “whiteness”
no matter physical characteristics.
48 Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in Amer-
ican Life, (London: Verso, 2012), 206.
49 Said, 1978, 254.
2 Racecraft in America

Introduction
Racecraft has played a predominant role in American history and culture
since the founding of the nation. American economic strength was built
on slave labour and the subsequent economic growth of the Atlantic Slave
Trade; even after the end of slavery, the search for cheap labour resulted
in America’s open immigration policy following the Civil War. In the 19th
century, we can see that bioracism was obsessed with measurement and
accuracy, whereas 20th century American bioracism was marked by the
struggle for “purity” and the need to remove supposedly unwanted elements
from the human gene pool.1 The previous chapter detailed the rise of the
Aryan myth globally, while this chapter will analyse Aryanism and biora-
cism in American culture specifically. In Racecraft, Field and Fields argue
that racecraft creates a “garbage in/garbage out” circularity, which allows
adherents to side-step reason and critical thinking; in this chapter, we see
how the “garbage in” of the Aryan myth was combined and reconstituted
in America with degenerate family studies and nativism to eventually build
ideology towards the “garbage out” era of the 1920s where tens of thousands
of American citizens were forcibly sterilized or experimented upon.2
The Aryan myth and bioracism dominated American culture, especially
in the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in the rise of racecraft in the Ku Klux Klan
and other groups, jingoistic fears, and racist violence. In this chapter, I an-
alyse the rise of bioracism in America, with particular focus on yellow peril
and anti-Buddhist fears. However, racecraft in America was ubiquitous at
this time, as some scholars have even labelled this time period the era of a
“eugenics craze.”3 Bioracism at this time was not considered a marginalized
pseudoscience but was viewed as the most “cutting-edge science” of the day,
as it confirmed prejudices and justified inequality and power dynamics. In
American bioracism, Americans were promoted as the best form of the Ar-
yan “race,” but this posed a problem. Since the earliest days of bioracism,
poor Southern “whites” defied the logic and presuppositions of Aryanism;
bioracists in the North posited degenerate family studies to explain the cor-
ruption of the Aryan “race.”
40  Racecraft in America
In analysing racecraft, there is a tendency to think of racism as a one-
way avenue between a supposedly dominant group and an “other”; however,
racecraft is more complicated than that, and generally involves the mainte-
nance of political and economic power. American bioracists used evolution-
ary thinking to argue that “inferior races” would simply pass away as they
were bred out of existence to create new developments. Bioracists assumed
that black Americans were “racial” remnants attached to previous evolu-
tions of humanity; this meant that tracing the degeneracy of “white” Amer-
icans was the more “scientifically” pertinent question of the day. Bioracists
attempted to find “purity” throughout history, and believed that this no-
tion could be remade in America using “modern science.” Below, I begin in
Washington, D.C. at one of the most famous KKK rallies in American his-
tory. At the Klan rally, we meet Lothrop Stoddard, one of the most influen-
tial American intellectuals of the 1920s. The Klan and other bioracists used
anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and yellow peril ideology in order to pro-
mote the idea that American “racial purity” was the dominant factor in the
history of the United States. Bioracists like Stoddard used this assumption
of American exceptionalism and purity to trace a supposed genealogical
lineage of corruption, which was evidently damaging the fabric of American
culture. American bioracism was not simply the purview of obscure scien-
tists and academics, but was also pervasive in American popular culture.
After the Klan rally, our next stop is to the movie theatre and the local
comic book store, where the anti-Asian racism of the early 20th century was
on full display. The yellow peril and Buddhism appeared in American popu-
lar culture repeatedly throughout 1899 to 1957, as anti-Asian fears were used
to sell everything from household cleaners to pop music.4 Racecraft ide-
ology and bioracism were ubiquitous in American culture and considered
to be one in the same with “science.” This chapter displays the ideological
landscape which Buddhists were entering beginning especially in 1899 with
the solidification of American bioracism and continuing well into the sup-
posed “Zen Boom” of the 1950s. Buddhist utilization of bioracism was not
simply the result of chance, or even racism, but was the concerted decision
to utilize the most cutting-edge “science” of the day following over a genera-
tion of accusations that Buddhism and science were incompatible.

Lothrop Stoddard and the Ku Klux Klan

Imagine a young man, living in Washington D.C. It is August 1925, and to-
day he is heading downtown for the big rally. The nation’s largest fraternal
organization is having a big rally today, and they are going to have a num-
ber of top speakers, even political leaders are slated to attend. The papers
are predicting tens of thousands of people, and so the young man wants to
be assured of a good seat. The Washington air is thick with humidity and
summer heat. He is hoping to see the famous author and “Exalted Cyclops,”
Lothrop Stoddard, whose book on science and history is a best-seller; not
 Racecraft in America  41
only that, the late President Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) even personally
recommended that every good American read Stoddard’s book, The Rising
Tide of Color Against the White World Supremacy. Even the most recent hit
novel, The Great Gatsby, mentions Stoddard.5 You see the parade begin-
ning. Thousands of figures, 14 across and as far back as the young man can
see down the street, begin to move through the streets of America’s Capital.
The figures move like spectres in the familiar white robes of the Ku Klux
Klan. The Klan has come to Washington, D.C. in order to rally support
and to promote the organization. The young man notices that the Klans-
men are not wearing their masks; his dad told him that so many politicians
and prominent businessmen are Klansmen now, they do not worry so much
about hiding their faces.
Finally, the young man sees the celebrity he came to see; Stoddard’s eyes
are magnetic and intense, but he is immediately drawn to his thick mous-
tache, curled upwards into hooks at the end. Stoddard stands next to a
woman, although she is not dressed in Klan robes. The woman is Margaret
Sanger, who had started the American Birth Control League with Stod-
dard. Sanger and Stoddard agreed that controlling the birth rate through
science was key to maintaining the purity of American “stock.” Ameri-
cans, they claim, represent a distillation of the Aryans, the most advanced
peoples in history, but this inheritance must be protected, or else the entire
nation would be overrun. As the young man stands in the crowd, waiting
in anticipation for Stoddard to speak, he notices the Ripley’s Believe it or
Not! Museum, which features a poster on the outside; according to “The
Marching Chinese” poster, if “all the Chinese in the world were to march 4
abreast past a given point, they would NEVER finish passing though they
marched forever and ever.”6 The young man listens to Stoddard’s speech
about the rise of populations in Asia and Africa relative to the birth rate in
the United States as he continues to glance over at the Ripley’s poster; in
1924, President Calvin Coolidge had signed The Immigration Act of 1924,
which included the National Origins Act and Asian Exclusion Act, which
Coolidge said was “to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity.”7 Ac-
cording to Sanger, now that immigration was ended, the only way to pre-
vent a “eugenic apocalypse” is through birth control methods. This is not
pre-war Germany, but the United States. The preponderance of racecraft in
American culture displays the social milieu which Buddhists were reacting
to, and helps us to explain the willingness to employ racecraft in the pres-
entation of Buddhism for Americans.
In August of 1925, the Ku Klux Klan famously marched in a grand parade
in Washington, D.C. at the height of the groups influence with over 30,000
hooded racists marching by the White House; the next day the Washington
Post reported on the front page, “White-robed Klan cheered on march in
nation’s capital.”8 The Ku Klux Klan underwent a resurgence in 1915, and by
1925 held immense sway in American politics and culture; the 1925 Indiana
State Legislature was colloquially known as the “Klan legislature,” due to the
42  Racecraft in America
preponderance of members in the government.9 According to the Klan, they
believed themselves to be, “self-proclaimed guardians [who] sought to pre-
serve an older, moral, and political order and to save an imperilled America
from alien immigrants, foreign ideological systems, and interlopers in our
midst.”10 Although most associated with anti-black racism, the Second Ku
Klux Klan also included anti-Asian, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, and anti-
immigrant rhetoric in their assertion for the purity of America. In an era of
mass immigration, the supposed “purity” was of primary importance for
many Americans from 1899 to 1957. Lothrop Stoddard was one of America’s
most influential popularizers of bioracist theory, a founder of the American
Birth Control League, and member of the Ku Klux Klan and American
Eugenic Society; his writings were very influential in Nazi Germany where
he was considered an intellectual forefather. According to Stoddard, “the
colored peril of arms may thus be summarized: The brown and yellow races
possess great military potentialities…they are very likely to be mobilized
for political reasons like revolt against white dominion or for social reasons
like over-population.”11 Stoddard was a major intellectual figure in Amer-
ica in the 1920s, including being invited to publicly debate W.E.B. Du Bois
on the subject, “Shall the Negro be encouraged to seek cultural equality?
Has the Negro the same intellectual possibilities as other races?” Stoddard’s
other published works include a book on the “Under Man,” or the inverse
of Nietzsche’s Übermensch; Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the
Under Man (1922) features a hammer and sickle on the cover, and suggests
that inequality is a natural law, which means to support equality for all will
lead to chaos and the breakdown of civilization. Following his trips to Nazi
Germany in the 1940s followed by Nazi defeat in the Second World War,
Stoddard’s popularity and influence dropped substantially.

“Race creation” in American history

In many ways, the historical trajectory of the peoples of the United States
could be defined as one of “race creation”; from the importation of Africans
to enact a system of perpetual slavery, or the position of the Irish as Celts,
Americans have perpetually created and re-created “races” in order to fit
dominant moulds.12 During a visit to America in 1881, English historian
Edward A. Freeman (1823–1892) said the United States, “would be a grand
land if only every Irishman would kill a negro, and be hanged for it.”13
The historical trajectory of the Irish in America provides a useful example
for the process of “racial formation,” as well as a comparison with Asian
Americans. In American history, anti-Catholic legislation represented some
of the earliest laws brought over from Europe, including taxation to pay
for Protestant Churches in Massachusetts and New York State’s denial of
citizenship for anyone who refused to renounce the Pope, which was only
overturned in 1821.14 This anti-Catholic fear was also popular in Ameri-
can culture, as the salacious Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk: The Hidden
 Racecraft in America  43
Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed (1836), which described the
regular practices of rape and infanticide that were said to go on in Catholic
cloisters was the second best-selling book of the Antebellum Era after Uncle
Tom’s Cabin.15
Anti-Irish sentiment has a deep history in England, going back to the
13th century, which included laws which prevented Irish people from en-
gaging certain trades or even serving as witnesses in trial.16 Robert Knox
(1791–1862) was a Scottish anatomist and ethnologist who was one of the
most popular bioracists of his time, whose career was only stunted by his
involvement with the Burke and Hare Murders whereby William Burke and
William Hare were found to have murdered 16 people in order to provide
cadavers for Knox’s public lectures; according to Knox, the Great Irish
Famine should have been supplemented by ethnic cleansing.17 According
to bioracism, the Celts were a decidedly separate and “inferior race” from
the Anglo-Saxons, who were Aryans.18 Especially in American bioracism,
Celts were viewed as related to the Mediterranean region, and therefore
Africa, which is displayed visually in an 1876 Harper’s Weekly cover.19 The
picture by Thomas Nast displays an African-American slave stereotype sit-
ting across from an ape-like Irishman on a scale; the scale separates the
“Black” problem of the South from the “White” problem of the North, but
assesses them equally. The ape-like chin and features of the stereotyped
Irish “Paddy” was common at the time, and used for both men and women,
such as Samuel R. Wells’ illustration, “Contrasted Faces,” which compares
Florence Nightingale with Bridget McBruiser, to show the difference be-
tween Irish and “white.”20
Following the Civil War, the American economy experienced major up-
heavals as part of the Second Industrial Revolution, the Panic of 1873 which
triggered the Long Depression, and with the introduction of wage labour for
many more Americans. In the American west in the 1870s and 1880s, Irish
labourers began agitating as “white men” against Chinese workers; Irish
immigrants were known politically for bloc voting, which led to pro-union
politicians attempting to court the Irish vote and promoting anti-Asian poli-
cies. The strength of Irish presence in unions is portrayed in popular culture
through police unions and the “Irish Cop.”21 By 1899, the Irish were largely
considered part of the “Teutonic Race” of Europe and included the Amer-
ican expansion of “whiteness.”22 The Irish were once a reviled group in the
United States, but Irish immigrants were able to reverse these tropes and
find inclusion within the bounds of American “whiteness,” in part due to
playing themselves off of black and Asian Americans. An alternative way
of stating this would be to say that factionalism within American labour
unions prevented meaningful organization, as labourers split themselves off
by “racial” enclave. The position of the Irish within America’s hierarchy of
“race” is an example of the ideological nature of racecraft, as a group once
reviled as “human swinery” would be included within the Aryan race over a
matter of approximately 30 years.23 The Irish display the tenuous nature of
44  Racecraft in America
American “race creation.” Through this process of resistance and racecraft,
Irish immigrants were able to be included in the coveted position of “white”
within American culture, which allowed them to tap into a history of Aryan
distillation popular among American bioracists.
Bioracist thinking revolved predominantly around the position of the
varieties of European, and how these “racial characteristics” both ex-
plained and predicted the supposed hierarchy of peoples. In the mid-19th
century, myths of Anglo-Saxonism predominated bioracism, as Norse and
Saxon history were combined and romanticized to create a “pure” version
of British history. “Racial distillation” suggests that through the process
of conquering new lands and inhabiting more rugged terrain, a “race” can
become distilled and therefore greater than in the past. Ralph Waldo Em-
erson (1803–1882) was one of America’s top intellectuals in the 19th cen-
tury, the father of Transcendentalism in the United States, and a major
proponent of Anglo-Saxon “race” theory. Emerson argued “Norsemen”
were distilled over centuries into the “godly and grand British race,” which
would mean that Americans are “double-distilled” as an even greater
“race,” the reason being that the “Anglo-American” lived in a harsher
climate and was closer to nature in comparison to the urbanized British.
Emerson argued that America, Boston or New York, would be the future
capital of “All-Saxondom.”24
For many bioracists in the 20th century, the theory of American distil-
lation could be repackaged as “science” and presented as a justification for
segregation. Josiah Nott and George Gliddon argued that the lack of mis-
cegenation in America, which was a product of segregation, was the reason
for American greatness over other nations. In fact, the famously anti-Irish
Ralph Waldo Emerson claimed that when entering America the Irish gain
“blue eyes,” while the former “blackness” of Europe disappears.25 Ameri-
can bioracism was used to prove the special place of Americans in historical
development, as they were theoretically becoming a more distilled Aryan
“race”; this “providential history,” as Emerson called it, explained the sud-
den rise of the United States on the world stage, and posited the creation of
a new world centre beyond London.
Bioracism was so ubiquitous during this time period that to critique the
premises of such thinking was to question the validity of science. In other
words, American culture was based in racecraft, with a wall so thick that
researchers need not even look outside. Those who did not believe in bio-
racism through the evolution of races and the process of sterilization were
known as “sentimentalists.”26 Edward A. Ross (1866–1951) was a profes-
sor at Indiana University, Cornell and Stanford, as well as President of the
American Sociological Association from 1914 to 1915; his books popular-
ized bioracism for American audiences and sold over half a million copies
during his lifetime.27 In “The Causes of Racial Superiority” Ross labels an-
yone who does not agree with eugenic sterilization a “sentimentalist,” who
 Racecraft in America  45
was actually an impediment to all human evolutionary progress. Bioracist
Madison Grant argued that “sentimentalists” were dangerous to the Amer-
ican future, as they fought against “nature,” and thus argued those who do
not agree with eugenics should also be sterilized.28 We might call this theory
devolution, being the opposite of evolution, but during this time period it
was also portrayed as a corruption or pollution. In 1921, then Vice-President
Calvin Coolidge provided an editorial for Good Housekeeping magazine,
which was the most popular magazine for women of the era; in an article
titled “Whose Country is This?” Coolidge argued that “we must face the
situation unflinchingly…[not be] so sentimental….there are racial consider-
ations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons.”29 Calvin
Coolidge signed the 1924 Immigration Act and Asian Exclusion Act, “to
preserve the ideal of American homogeneity.”30 For many early bioracists,
the Darwinian process of evolution meant that races closer to primates
would eventually die out in order to create new evolutions; in other words,
many bioracists believed that black people would eventually perish entirely,
thus marking a new post in evolution. This theory found support among the
American school of Anthropology, which was largely based in theories of
“racial” evolution and craniometry.

Anti-Semitism in America
Discussions of Aryanism in the United States involve anti-Semitism, as
“Semites” are posited as the perennial “other” of Aryan attempts to push
humanity forward.31 Philological developments regarding Aryan and Tura-
nian languages developed in bioracism to supposedly prove that Semitic
peoples had been the shadow of the Aryans dating back to the Garden of
Eden.32 Perhaps one of America’s most influential anti-Semites was Henry
Ford, who ran his own personal newspaper called The Dearborn Independ-
ent, which published regular conspiracies involving the world’s Jewish
population, which were later published as a four-volume series titled The
International Jew.33 In The Dearborn Independent, Ford published a num-
ber of anti-Semitic conspiracies, such as Anglo-Israelitism, or the idea
that the real lost tribe of Israel is the Anglo-Saxons who founded America,
thus transforming America into a holy land and making all Jewish peo-
ple in the world impostors. Ford also published stories arguing that Jesus
was not Jewish, but Nordic, for which he cited the self-proclaimed “Evan-
gelist of Race,” Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927).34 Chamberlain
was a British-born philosopher and bioracist considered a godfather of the
Nazi Party who married Richard Wagner’s daughter. Chamberlain wrote
the anti-Semitic The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century in 1899, which
sold over 100,000 copies and was also an editor of the Atlantic Monthly. The
Nordic heritage of Christ became an important issue for German Christians
with the rise of the Nazi Party, who also accepted that Jesus could not have
46  Racecraft in America
been Semitic.35 Following his trip across the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh,
a famed supporter of the Nazis, became a technological consultant for the
Ford Motor Company in the 1930s; however, according to Ford, “when
Charles comes out here, we only talk about the Jews.”36 In fact, both Lind-
bergh and Ford were awarded the Grand Service Cross of the Supreme Order
of the German Eagle, the highest honour the Nazi Third Reich bestowed on
foreigners; in 1938 Lindbergh flew to Germany for the occasion, while Ford
held his own ceremony in Detroit with over 1,500 people in attendance.37
One of the most famous European anti-Semites during the era was Georges
Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936), a librarian at Universities of Montpellier,
Rennes, and Poitiers and author of L’Aryen: Son rôle social (1899), where he
posited anthroposociology, which analysed the racial heredity of the body
in relation to society, arguing that outer “beauty” reflected inner superior-
ity, and vice-versa. L’Aryen devotes 17 pages to the “Jewish Menace,” which
he claims is attempting to trick “lower races” with tales of democracy in
order to drive out the “Nordic races.”38 Bioracists relied on each other heav-
ily, with William Z. Ripley citing Lapouge over 25 times. They were also
in direct correspondence, as Lapouge was invited to speak at the Second
Eugenics Conference at the American Museum of Natural History in 1921,
as well as the Sixth International Birth Control Conference in New York in
1925 organized by Margaret Sanger.39
Anti-Semitism permeated American culture, especially in the 1920s and
1930s. Through racecraft, this anti-Semitism was tied directly to yellow peril
fears as well, due to the “scientifically proven” connection of the Turanian
language and Aryan history. It was through this deliberate use of racecraft
that all of the world’s corruptions could be pinned squarely on the out-
group, who were supposedly a cabal of “Under Men,” bent on ruining the
progress of humanity, who were controlled by the Japanese, or the Chinese,
or whomever, but seemingly at all times and in all places, the Jews. These
imaginings represent an active racecraft underpinning American culture.
Racecraft has been one of the most historically significant factors in the
development of the United States and American particularism. There are
multiple volumes simply on the history of bioracism in America and its con-
nection to racecraft more broadly. American bioracism focussed largely on
explaining American particularism through “race” and finding “scientific”
ways to maintain this imagined purity. As we see in works like Madison
Grant’s, the “races of Europe” and their supposed maintenance were the
focus of American bioracism, rather than a concern for those deemed “in-
ferior.” In fact, Madison Grant was the Secretary of the New York Zoolog-
ical Society in 1906, when he successfully lobbied to have an African man
named Ota Benga (1883–1916) displayed in the Bronx Zoo within the ape
exhibits.40 Benga’s teeth were sharpened in order to make him look more an-
imalistic and less human. The New York Times reported that, “some of them
poked him in the ribs, others tripped him up, all laughed at him”; Benga
shot himself in the chest with a revolver and died in 1916 after being denied
 Racecraft in America  47
the ability to return to Africa due to the First World War.41 Bioracism al-
lowed for the dehumanization of most of the world’s population, as well as
the creation of the “white race,” while also developing the technology for the
maintenance of its supposed purity. This bioracism was held as “science”
and common sense, combining the “proof” of academic legitimacy on top
of the veneer of folk reasoning, to become unquestioned in American cul-
ture. By transforming racecraft into a “science” in bioracism, prejudices
could be theoretically proven and justified, not only as anecdotal evidence
but as the natural order of the world throughout all time. This ideology en-
capsulated not only the world of scholarship and science, but also popular
culture, including music and entertainment. The idea of Asian degeneracy
and “racial inferiority” was so prevalent in American culture, that ques-
tioning such assertions would have been tantamount to questioning the very
validity of “science.” Yellow peril ideology became so widespread within
“science” that it even came to encapsulate science fiction.

Captain America, the little green men, and yellow peril

ideology in American popular culture
The doors of the movie theatre burst open and crowds stream out into the
street, followed by the trail of popcorn. Your heart still races after see-
ing Drums of Fu Manchu, another in the Fu Manchu series, featuring the
preeminent evil scientist and Asian supervillain.42 In an earlier Fu Manchu,
Boris Karloff as Fu Manchu declared, “conquer and breed. Kill the white
man and take his women!”43 In your excitement, you decide to go into the
local bookshop and turn directly to the comic books. After the action of
that evil Dr. Fu Manchu, you wonder what other sorcery may come from
the “mystical East.” A Captain America comic jumps out to you immedi-
ately; he is one of your favourite characters. It is “The Gargoyle Strikes,”
and you are disgusted by the evil monster on the front cover. This monster
towers above the other characters on the cover and seems to be worshipped
by minuscule devotees in front of him; his face features blood-red lips curled
into a snarl which reveals monstrous pointed teeth. The creature’s nose is
wide with his nostrils flared, and his eyes are slanted, yet angered, while he
sits in a hostile position with his fists clenched. Incense smoke rises from
pots on either side of him as Captain America punches a ghastly looking
Asian with stereotypical bucked-teeth, but his skin is a ghoulish grey-green,
who has been brainwashed by this deadly gargoyle. It is at this moment that
you realize where you have seen the ghastly monster, enslaving the small-
minded to fight with the Nazis against Captain America. It is the Buddha;
just like the one you’ve seen in pictures of Japan at Kamakura! Does the
Buddha hypnotize people like that? Does Fu Manchu work for the Buddha?
You decide to purchase the Captain America, as well as “Airlords of Han,”
a Buck Rogers comic about Rogers fighting “Han Chinese half-breeds” in a
dystopic American future, as well as Behind the Flying Saucers, which is the
48  Racecraft in America
first book on Roswell aliens, which says the “little fellows…lack beards” and
are ethnic looking who are definitely not “Aryans.”44 American popular cul-
ture built on the ideology of academic studies of Buddhism, which posited
Asians as a corrupting force universally, and throughout all time. Japanese
Buddhists attempted to fight against dominant tropes about Asian corrup-
tion and the degeneration of Buddhism using racecraft and bioracism in
order to better fit within the American religious landscape.
The science fiction trope of the “little green men” has become ubiquitous in
American tales of space aliens from another planet, but these tiny creatures
were originally a metaphor for the other aliens arriving from distant shores.
The alien hordes which were meant to invade from another planet reflected
American social fears of an Asian “other” invading from a distant land and
destroying the American cultural and environmental landscape. Jack Lon-
don (1876–1916) wrote “The Unparalleled Invasion,” a sci-fi short story in
1910 for McClure’s Magazine following his time as a war correspondent dur-
ing the Russo-Japanese War where he had come to share a begrudging re-
spect with the Japanese.45 Following London’s return from Japan, he moved
to California where he became active in Socialist and Eugenics clubs in the
San Francisco area, likely further solidifying his yellow peril anti-Asian sen-
timents. In “The Unparalleled Invasion,” China undergoes its own “Meiji
Restoration” under the direct influence of the Japanese; in the story, the mas-
sive Chinese population is taught the cunning and manipulative ways of the
Japanese, and therefore take over Asia. London directly tied this alliance to
bioracism when he wrote, “they were brothers. Long ago one had borrowed
the other’s written language, and, untold generations before that, they had
diverged from the common Mongol stock.”46 Eventually the “Asian menace”
is set to overrun Europe, which forces “Western” powers to launch biological
warfare which covered China in “a score of plagues” from which “no crea-
ture was immune.” By 1976, China had attempted to invade America, and
thus deferred American Centennial celebrations. The short story ends with
the various nations left as part of the “Great Truce” vowing to never use the
types of destructive weapons employed against China ever again.
The yellow peril theme of danger resulting in a teaming of Chinese and
Japanese nations was a regular trope; in The Iron Heel, a dystopian novel by
London, he writes

The cry in all Asia was “Asia for the Asiatics!” And behind this cry was
Japan, ever urging and aiding the yellow and brown races against the
white…Most savage of all was the Japanese Oligarchy that arose. Japan
dominated the East, and took to herself the whole Asiatic portion of the
world-market, with the exception of India.47

The science fiction writing of Jack London, as well as others during this time
period mirrored American yellow peril anxieties and fears. Popular culture
 Racecraft in America  49
both reflected and reinforced the developing ideologies of Asian alienness
and fear.
The religion of Theosophy, which posits interstellar travel and alien life
based on racial evolution, was deeply influential in the creation of many
science fiction tropes in the United States.48 Science Fiction allows authors
and audience to imagine the future, whether as a dystopian warning or a
guide towards utopia; from the beginning, science fiction such as War of
the Worlds by H.G. Wells have allowed Americans alternative venues for
dealing with paranoia surrounding an invasion by outsiders.49 As Christo-
pher Roth argues, “much of this anxiety is rooted in the paradox of Anglo-
Saxon anti-immigrant sentiment in a nation founded by Anglo- Saxon
immigrants. These ambiguities are resolved only through a racial suprem-
acism that transcends history and autochthony.”50 Richard Shaver was one
of many Theosophists who became influential in the world of science fiction
when he published a supposed key to “ancient resonances” used to con-
nect ancient cultures and alien worlds known as the “Mantong Alphabet” in
Amazing Stories. Shaver’s worldview was largely derived from Theosophy,
which he called a “science” of “racial memory.”51 In fact, one of the most
popular science fiction comics of the 1940s was “I Remember Lemuria!”
which was directly based on the Theosophical location of Lemuria, which
was the home of a previous “root-race.” Many science fiction stories written
in America in the 1950s argue that “Venusians,” or those from Venus are like
Aryans, while “Martians” are short, hairless, and feature oddly coloured
skin.52 For science fiction, Martian invaders are often a totally destructive
force, allowing readers to trace the development of societal degeneracy to
their very presence. For Japanese Buddhists, their connection to Aryanism
through bioracism allowed them to claim a new position of superiority, and
thus trace the degeneracy of Buddhism back to alien outsiders.
A fear of “aliens” dominated American culture during this time period,
including both invaders from outer space and immigrants from other lands.
In fact, as Beth-Lew Williams has demonstrated, American culture derives
its idea of the alien immigrant from the period of Chinese immigration
to the West Coast; prior to this, American immigration did not require a
passport and was open to everyone, with US policy focussing on attracting
specific immigrants rather than restricting others.53 One of the greatest cul-
tural fears gripping the United States was the supposed “yellow peril,” or
anti-Asian fear which separated an essentialized “East,” or Orient against
the “West,” or Occident; this motif is encapsulated nicely by Greenberry
George Rupert, or G.G. Rupert (1847–1922), whose book titled The Yellow
Peril, or the Orient vs. the Occident as Viewed by Modern Statesmen and
Ancient Prophets (1911) features Uncle Sam literally sword-fighting a figure
with the long single braid and triangular straw hat of a Chinese stereotype,
alongside a globe split in two between “Orient” and “Occident.”54 As an
Adventist Pastor and dispensationalist author, Rupert used the Book of
50  Racecraft in America
Revelation to suggest that the fight against Asia was a cosmic one, which
would end with the return of Jesus Christ to the world.55

Buddhism in American popular culture

The clash of the “Occident” against the “Orient” was viewed in apocalyptic
terms, whether as a “clash of civilizations,” or a “eugenic apocalypse,” a sin-
gular and monstrous “East” was portrayed as rallying the troops against the
rightful domination of the “West.” In Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions in
American Culture, Jane Naomi Iwamura argues that the essentialized “Ori-
ental Monk” character has continued to represent the ambivalent ways in
which American culture consumed Asian religions.56 The “Oriental Monk”
portrayed an essentialized “Mystical East” for American film and later tel-
evision audiences. D.W. Griffith (1875–1948), famous director of Birth of a
Nation, the box office smash which tied the greatness of the United States
to a romantic vision of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915 also directed Broken Blos-
soms, or the Yellow Man and the Girl in 1919; Broken Blossoms is based on
the short story, “The Chink and the Child” by Thomas Burke. Charlie Chan
was another popular character in American film and radio, who was a wise
detective but spoke in broken English to accentuate his “otherness.” From
1899 to 1957, it would have been nearly impossible to avoid stereotypical
portrayals of Asians as mystical and cunning in American popular culture.
Part of this portrayal was an almost slavish connection to Buddhism.
In American popular culture, Buddhism was portrayed as a pessimistic,
atheistic religion, which, coupled with immigration, may usher the end of
Christianity; this trope combined views of Asians during the yellow peril
and fears of an oncoming clash of civilizations as America dealt with war
scares with Japan as well as eras of pessimism and dread surrounding world
wars and the Great Depression. In contrast to the visual analysis of Iwa-
mura, throughout this section, I focus on published materials regarding
Buddhists, such as newspapers and books popular at the time. Due to immi-
gration as well as American interest in Buddhism, news media reported on
religion and attempted to essentialize the religious tradition for explanation
to American audiences. In these portrayals, local media outlets answered
“what is Buddhism,” with the assessment that it is “the religion of gloom
and melancholy.”57
American popular culture more broadly portrayed Asians as an oncom-
ing menace, who were currently realizing their own power by recognizing
the anti-democratic tradition of Buddhism and their own supposed genetic
impetus towards slavery. Buddhism was blamed in American popular cul-
ture as the creator of “opium, foot-binding, widow burning, infanticide” and
a number of other societal ills.58 Popular sources repeated the corruption
myth asserted by Buddhist Studies academics, such as Daniel Pratt Baldwin
in The Indianapolis Journal who claims, “Buddhism is a badly deteriorated
religion. Although there is no warrant whatever for it in his gospel, in the
progress of 2,500 years image worship of the grossest kind has fastened itself
 Racecraft in America  51
59
upon this delightful system.” For Americans, this corruption of Buddhism
could be tied directly to racecraft; in fact, this racecraft can also be used to
claim superiority, such as newspaper articles which assert that each religious
figure was sent to regenerate their specific “race,” while Jesus was the only
figure able to preach to all of the “races” of mankind.60 Bioracism allowed
for previously held prejudices to be concretized and given the appearance of
scientific truth for all time.
Racecraft became a determining component of American popular as-
sessments of Buddhism. In an article from 1906 recounting the daily life of
Buddhists, they are described as living in “poverty and squalor,” which is
a reflection of their pessimistic doctrine, but the religion may be showing
signs of change because, “the more intelligent Buddhists know that it is a
fraud.”61 Buddhism was portrayed as an immoral religion, which allowed
for rampant corruption among those who were seen as “genetically prone”
to such vices; for instance, in “What the People Are Reading,” T.L. Brown
says Japan is, “a country that is corrupt from one end to the other” and
describes, “the debauchery of the Buddhist priests of unutterable cruelty,
of trafficking in human flesh.”62 According to Brown, the Japanese citi-
zens are totally ignorant of the world, and only know what the emperor or
Buddhist priests want them to know, while their population is growing to
“menacing proportions.”63 From the Japanese to, “the treacherous Malays”
of Sri Lanka, American media portrayed Buddhists as the worst of human
evolution.64 For American popular culture, Buddhists were “unspeakable,”
perpetrators of “the grossest materialism, selfishness,” and allowed, “cru-
elty everywhere prevail…they are so repulsive.”65
The total Buddhist population was greatly exaggerated in American
media sources during this time period, which Tweed also discusses in The
American Encounter with Buddhism. In the El Paso Herald, Buddhists
accounted for 20% of the global population, while the Salt Lake Herald
calculated Buddhists at 50% of the world! Not only was the world split in
twain, but Christianity may be losing the “war of the cradle.”66 These in-
flated numbers were also cited by bioracists in order to posit that Asians
were licentious and sexually insatiable. In American media sources, Asians
were portrayed as being duped into this repulsive behaviour, so much that,
“their religion is such a mixture and held with so little seriousness as to be a
joke, were their condition not so tragic.”67 Buddhists were to be feared, but
pitied; Buddhism was portrayed as a doctrine of lies, for which nearly half
the world’s population had fallen. The ambivalent nature of racecraft can be
seen in the ways American media portrayed Buddhism.
In American media sources, the “other” is often portrayed with am-
bivalence, as “evil” men and pitiable women who need saving from them.
Sometimes the “other” is portrayed as a sickly mass group held at the mercy
of a small cadre of tyrants. In many cases, like those found in degenerate
family studies, the blame for racial failure was laid at the feet of promiscu-
ous women, as “the Japanese, like the French, are volatile and untruthful
and unchaste.”68 Unfortunately, this social problem was not rectified by
52  Racecraft in America
the religious tradition of the Japanese as Buddhist priests were portrayed
as licentious and actively engaged in the business of prostitution, whereas
American women were portrayed as educated, happy, and free. This por-
trayal relied far more on tropes of racecraft, as Asians are portrayed as
the ones mistreating women, while America is held as a bastion of gender
equality. Meanwhile, in the very description of Buddhist doctrine, Carpen-
ter claims the Buddhist notion of rebirth is just like “Hinduism,” where

one’s soul, like that of John Brown, is always marching on. The moment
he dies he is born again, his soul passing at once into the form of a man,
a dog or some other animal, or worse than all, into a woman.69

Like many other cases of Orientalism, women living under Buddhism were
portrayed as being in particular need of assistance in order to save them
from a situation in which they were completely marginalized. Racism of-
ten seems tied to toxic notions of masculinity as well. It should be noted
that some of the top voices in the development of Buddhist Modernism, and
Aryan Buddhism, were women, including Ruth Fuller Everett, Lily Adams
Beck, and others.
Buddhism was portrayed as anti-social and life-denying, and as a religion
which robs its adherents of any reason for living. Popular sources in Amer-
ica referred to Buddhism as a religion of “pure atheism” where a Buddhist
resigned oneself to “the surrender of life as misery” as “there is no God
needed in Buddhism as this life has no ultimate meaning” which meant,
“Buddhism is anti-social.”70 This religion did not have a god, did not have
a soul, and portrayed the ultimate goal in existence as utter annihilation.
The supposed religion of atheism and nihilism came to America at a time
of increased fears for the future of American Christianity, and American
writers worried that a “hard and hopeless” religion like Buddhism would ac-
tually spread in America due to the dire circumstances in the world.71 Chris-
tian newspapers, such as the Intermountain Catholic worried that in a time
of intense alienation, a religion which teaches believers “that they are like
God himself – eternal, and with no beginning in space or time” may attract
young Americans.72 The combination of a foreign doctrine, a perceived
waning interest in Christianity, combined with anxieties surrounding im-
migration created a yellow peril fear of Buddhism as the destructive end of
American Christianity. Meanwhile, Śākyamuni was viewed as comparable
to Jesus, as “next to Jesus Christ it seems to me that Buddha is the greatest
religious genius the world has ever produced.”73 The Buddha was separated
as an Aryan in American media sources. The Buddha was a man of moral-
ity and superiority, while the religious tradition which bears his name was
nothing but a tragic reflection of the original. Although the Buddha was a
great spiritual teacher comparable to Christ, his religion and its doctrines
were portrayed as dangerous, especially in the hands of particular “races.”
 Racecraft in America  53
Conclusion
Racecraft has been a defining feature in the history of the United States.
Slavery in the United States first involved indentured servitude among those
of European descent, but in order to create a system of perpetual chattel
slavery, Africans were kidnapped and held for generations. In 1618, before
the arrival of African slaves the city of London signed a deal with the Vir-
ginia Commonwealth to ship vagrant children to the Americas for labour; in
London, companies were paid five pounds per head, while in America chil-
dren could fetch up to 20 pounds of tobacco each.74 Of the approximately
300 children brought to America between 1619 and 1622, only 12 were still
alive in 1624. American notions of racecraft have continued to change and
develop since even before the founding of the nation. To be American is to
deal in some fashion with racecraft. For some, this relationship is a death
sentence, while for others it means being given exceptional privilege, such as
the ability to make pronouncements about large swaths of people and hav-
ing those words be considered “science.” In Racial Formation in the United
States Michael Omi and Howard Winant analyse the trajectories of “race
creation” or “racial formation,” and show the various paths taken by differ-
ent groups, such as the Irish, Jewish Americans, and Italians.75 This process
differs through the particularities of racecraft, but there is no doubt that to
“be American” is to engage “racial formation.” For Buddhists in America,
racecraft presented a way to reverse dominant American intellectual tropes
of superiority versus inferiority, as well as the dangers of corruption. Amer-
ican culture, both academically and popularly was defined by the eugenics
craze and notions of purity; Buddhists were able to capitalize on these dis-
cussions in order to fit themselves within American culture.
The boiling cauldron of racecraft was becoming more developed in Amer-
ica by the 1920s. The sleight of hand of racecraft had allowed the Buddha to
become an Aryan, who could be held as an ideal moral philosopher in the
tradition of the Greeks. Meanwhile, Asians were a corrupting influence who
had attempted to destroy the Aryan doctrine given to them. This corrupted
tradition was allowed to spread throughout Asia through the procreation of
supposedly inferior and promiscuous women, whose unrequited sexual ap-
petites had produced such a mass of slavish and unthinking individuals that
a false Buddhism now threatened the current stronghold of Aryan greatness
in the United States. Meanwhile, scholars argued that they held the key in
their academic studies based on the pure and original Buddhism of its Ar-
yan founder, which could then be taught to Asians in order to save them
from themselves. This trope largely mirrored American colonial ambitions
in Asia, which viewed the Open Door Policy as way to claim ownership over
major swaths of Asia. Following American success in China, the United
States turned to the market viewed as the next most prosperous in Japan
and found a unique time to capitalize in the Meiji restoration. American
54 Racecraft in America
racecraft was not simply racism created in a vacuum, but was able to draw
on the knowledge of supposed experts in bioracism as well as academia. In
the next chapter, we analyse the role of academia on the continued develop-
ment of Aryanism in Buddhism.

Notes
1 Edwin Black, War against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create
a Master Race, (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003), 159.
2 Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in Amer-
ican Life, (London: Verso, 2012), 6.
3 Paul A. Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme
Court, and Buck v. Bell, (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
2008), x.
4 John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats, “Introduction: Yellow Peril Incarnate,”
in Yellow Peril! An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear, ed. John Kuo Wei Tchen and
Dylan Yeats, (New York: Verso, 2014), 1.
5 In The Great Gatsby Tom Buchanan claims to be reading “this man Goddard,”
before stating “well, its a fine book, and everyone ought to read it. The idea is
if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all
scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
6 Tchen and Yeats, 2014, 254.
7 “The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act),” United States Depart-
ment of State Office of the Historian, retrieved 21 August 2016. The Immigration
Act quotas were repealed with the Nationality Act of 1965.
8 “White-Robed Klan Cheered on March in Nation’s Capital,” Washington Post,
Sunday, August 9 1925.
9 Kelly J. Baker, Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant
America, 1915–1930, (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2011), 227.
10 Ibid, 235.
11 Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat against White World
Supremacy, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 99.
12 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd
Edition, (New York: Routledge, 2015), 5.
13 Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race, Vol. 1, 2nd Edition, (Lon-
don: Verso, 1994/2012), [Apple Books Version], 223.
14 Nell Irving Painter, The History of White People, (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2010), [Apple Books Version], 524.
15 Ibid, 537.
16 Allen, 1994/2012, [Apple Books Version], 615.
17 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 134.
18 William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study, (New York: D.
Appleton & Company, 1899), 326–330.
Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race: Or the Racial Basis of European
History, (New York: Charles Scribner’s & Sons, 1916), 57–58.
Robert Knox, The Races of Men: A Fragment, (Philadelphia, PA: Lea &
Blanchard, 1859), 212.
19 Thomas Nast, “The Ignorant Vote—Honors Are Easy,” Harper’s Weekly: Jour-
nal of Civilization 20, no. 1041 (December 9, 1876): cover.
20 Samuel R. Wells, New Physiognomy: Or Signs of Character, as Manifested
through Temperament and the External Forms, and Especially in ‘the Human Face
Divine’, (New York: Samuel R. Wells Publisher, 1866), 537.
 Racecraft in America 55
21 Painter, 2010, [Apple Books Version], 804.
22 Ibid, 788.
23 Ibid, 642.
24 Ibid, 639.
25 Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life, (Boston, MA: Houghton Miifflin
Company, 1859), 9.
26 Grant, 1916, 44.
27 Painter, 2010, [Apple Books Version], 985.
28 Madison Grant, “Discussion of Article on Democracy and Heredity,” Journal of
Heredity 10, no. 4 (April 1919): 165.
29 Calvin Coolidge, “Whose Country Is This?” Good Housekeeping 72, no. 2 (Feb-
ruary 1921): 14.
30 “The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act),” United States Depart-
ment of State Office of the Historian, retrieved 21 August 2020.
31 Barry J. Eichengreen, Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Reces-
sion, and the Uses—and Misuses—of History, (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2015), 5.
32 Maurice Olender, tr. Arthur Goldhammer, The Languages of Paradise: Aryans
and Semites, A Match Made in Heaven, (New York: Other Press, 2002), 1–2.
33 Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate, (New
York: Public Affairs, 2001), 5. Adolf Hitler once said, “I regard Henry Ford as
my inspiration.”
34 Houston Stewart Chamberlain also compared the Boer War (1899–1902) with
the Boxer Rebellion, stating, “one thing I can clearly see, that is, that it is crim-
inal for Englishmen and Dutchmen to go on murdering each other, for all sorts
of sophisticated reasons, while the Great Yellow Danger overshadows us white
men, and threatens destruction.”
35 Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi
Germany, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 15.
36 Painter, 2010, [Apple Books Version], 1361.
37 Ibid, 1361.
38 G. De Vacher Lepouge, L’Aryen: Son Role Social, (Paris: Ancienne Libraire
Thorin et fils, 1899), 498.
39 Painter, 2010, [Apple Books Version], 1225.
40 Angela Saini, Superior: The Return of Race Science, (Boston, MA: Beacon Press,
2019), 217.
41 Ibid, 217.
Reginald Jevons, “Ota Benga and the Public Curiosity,” The New York Times,
(30 September 1906), 1.
42 Drums of Fu Manchu, directed by William Witney and John English (1940; Stu-
dio City, Los Angeles: Republic Pictures).
43 Drums of Fu Manchu, Witney and English, 1940.
Tchen and Yeats, 2014, 9.
44 Philip Francis Nowlan, “Airlords of Han,” Amazing Stories 3, no. 12 (March
1929), 14.
Frank Skully, Behind the Flying Saucers, (New York: Henry Holt and Com-
pany, 1950), 133.
Patrick B. Sharpe, Savage Perils: Racial Frontiers and Nuclear Apocalypse in
American Culture, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 107.
Carter Hanson, “1920s Yellow Peril Science Fiction: Political Appropriations
of the Asian Racial ‘Alien’,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 6 (1995): 312–329.
45 Colleen Lye, America’s Asia: Racial Formation and Literature, 1893–1945,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 40.
56 Racecraft in America
46 Jack London, “The Unparalleled Invasion,” McClure’s Magazine 35, no. 3 (July
1910): 308.
47 Jack London, The Iron Heel, (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1908), 233. The Iron
Heel is the future name of the United States.
48 Christopher F. Roth, “Ufology as Anthropology,” in E.T. Culture: Anthropology
in Outerspaces, ed. Debbora Battaglia, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2005), 48.
49 John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats, “Anglo America’s Great Game,” in Yel-
low Peril! An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear, ed. John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan
Yeats, (New York: Verso, 2014), 218.
50 Roth, 2005, 74.
51 Ibid, 49.
52 Ibid, 91.
53 Beth-Lew Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making
of the Alien in America, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 4.
54 G.G. Rupert, The Yellow Peril, or the Orient vs. the Occident as Viewed by Mod-
ern Statesmen and Ancient Prophets, (Britton, OK: Union Publishing Co., 1911),
cover.
55 Ibid, 44.
56 Jane Naomi Iwamura, Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popu-
lar Culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 13.
57 “What Is Buddhism?” The True Republican, 13 October 1926, (Sycamore, IL), 3.
58 W.S. Marquis, “Christianity in World’s Affairs,” The Rock Island Argus, 17 Jan-
uary 1910, (Moline, IL), 6.
59 Daniel Pratt Baldwin, “The Religions of Asia,” The Indianapolis Journal, 28
May 1900, (Indianapolis, IN), 3.
60 Marquis, 1910, 6.
61 “Burma, Stronghold of Buddhism,” The Salt Lake Herald, 27 May 1906, (Salt
Lake City, UT), Section Two, 5.
62 Brown, 1938, 63.
63 Ibid, 63.
64 Ibid, 63.
65 Baldwin, 1900, 3.
66 Frank G. Carpenter, “Ashes of Buddha,” El Paso Herald, 21 May 1910, (El Paso,
TX), 22.
“Burma, Stronghold of Buddhism,” 1906, 5.
67 “The Korean Religion—A Very Tragic Joke,” The Hartford Herald, 28 January
1916, (Hartford, CT), 6.
68 Baldwin, 1900, 3.
69 Carpenter, 1910, 22.
70 “What Is Buddhism?” The True Republican, 13 October 1926, (Sycamore, IL), 3.
71 R.H. Fitzhugh, “Lack of Faith among Christians,” Blue-Grass Blade, 16 Septem-
ber 1906, (Lexington, KY). This article was originally published in the Lexing-
ton Leader.
72 “Primary Questions of Christian Doctrine,” The Intermountain Catholic 5, no.
20, 13 February 1904, (Denver, CO and Salt Lake City, UT), 1.
73 Baldwin, 1900, 3.
74 Painter, 2010, [Apple Books Version], 181–182.
75 Omi and Winant, 2015, 1.
3 Academia and Aryan ideology

Introduction
Racecraft and Orientalist scholarship have played a predominate role in the
early study of Buddhism and shaped the way in which studies of Buddhism
were conducted for over a century afterwards. In the previous chapter, we
analysed the role of bioracism in American culture, while in this chapter,
I will turn specifically to the world of academia and bioracism in Amer-
ica, and the ways in which this supposedly “scientific” desire to purify
the United States influenced the study of Buddhism. Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
labelled these Orientalists “curators of the Buddha,” in his highly influen-
tial edited volume which provided one of the first meta-studies of Buddhist
Studies and brought to light a number of the cultural assumptions that
went into the creation of an essentialized object known as Buddhism.1
I discuss some of the same early scholars here, such as Max Müller and T.W.
Rhys Davids who shaped the ways in which European and North Ameri-
can academics have studied Buddhism and the impact this had on Buddhist
communities beyond academia; however, as bioracism spread within Amer-
ican culture, it continued to influence the study of Buddhism from 1899 to
1957. Not only did scholars of Buddhism continue to draw upon the Aryan
myth during an era of bioracism, but they directly reinterpreted Buddhist
doctrine in order to better fit supposed Aryan understandings. The early
“curators” were cited and drawn upon in the 20th century to create more
detailed studies tracing the supposed corruption of Buddhism, and drawing
the Aryan positioning of the Buddha to its logical conclusion. This cottage
industry continued to build in the 20th century, as scholars used philol-
ogy and the “science” of bioracism to speak for the Buddha directly. The
wider academic discussion in America went beyond assertions of the Bud-
dha’s identity, to now include psychology, immigration, and even individual
health and reproductive rights. The ideology of racecraft was so predomi-
nant in America that each study could rely on the other to become part of
the academic discussion, and filter out into American lives on the ground.
Racecraft allowed scholars to speak for the Buddha, which Buddhists in
America would draw upon to further Aryanize Buddhism. In this chapter,
58  Academia and Aryan ideology
I analyse academic and scholarly literature on Asians and Buddhism in com-
parison with larger currents in American bioracism. Now that the Buddha
had been remade into an Aryan, scholars wanted to define the essential core
of Buddhism, as this would allow them to trace the corruption of Buddhism,
like a genealogical spread which would theoretically provide credence to
bioracist hierarchies. I begin with David and his trip to the Psychothera-
pist; psychology was influential in the essentialization of Buddhism through
the “Asian mind,” and the supposedly “racial” psychological connection of
all Buddhists to the original corruption. Once the “Asian mind” could be
known, scholars could decide which doctrines the Buddha meant to include,
and which were late additions from opportunistic charlatans. Then, I relay
the story of Carrie Buck and the Buck v. Bell Supreme Court Case and show
the roots of the ideology which led to Carrie’s saga through degenerate fam-
ily studies and young women like Deborah Kallikak and Margaret Juke.
The heartbreaking story of American degenerate family studies has been re-
counted by scholars like Stephen Jay Gould, Paul A. Lombardo, and others.
I use their stories to show the developing ideology of racecraft in America
and its influence on academic studies of Buddhism which posited their own
degenerate family studies for Buddhism which traced the corruption of the
Aryan doctrine to the “Asian mind” of China, or the supposed demonology
of Tibet.
Through racecraft, any “race” could be labelled as the genealogical fore-
bears of the Dravidians and therefore part of the corruption of the Aryan
religion. We end with a pivotal moment in the life of a young American
during this time period as they receive their eugenics certificate. Ameri-
cans who wanted to prove their “scientific” suitability with their mate could
send away to the Eugenics Record Office and prove that their match would
benefit “the race.” I compare the American eugenics certificate to the way
scholars of Buddhism in Asia portrayed an imagined true Buddhism as
a civilizing influence; scholars like T.R.V. Murti in India argued that the
Buddha really preached Mādhyamika philosophy, and that this dialectic
thinking was the foundation for all “Western” thought meaning it was the
“Asian mind” which should truly be spread over the globe as civilization.
When viewed together, studies of Buddhism continued to be reinforced by
racecraft ideology and bioracism, which Buddhists would draw upon to
Aryanize Buddhism in the United States. This discussion of Buddhism took
place within a wider ideology of racism which defined the “Asian mind,”
promoted forced sterilization, and argued that the perceived corruption of
human society could be traced and stopped.

Psychology and racecraft

A young man named David opens a dark wooden door and enters a dimly
lit room with dark velvet cloth lining the walls. Pillows of purple, pink, and
red with gold jangles at the corners line the floors and candles burn on brass
 Academia and Aryan ideology  59
candelabras in the corner. David’s eyes begin to adjust to the candlelight
as he finally makes out the figure in the corner. The figure is dressed in
a grey suit which is in direct contradistinction to the seemingly haremes-
que aesthetic he has attempted to cultivate. The figure asks David to come
in and sit on a large red velvet lounging couch. Once David lays back on
the couch, the figure takes his position in a chair behind him and opens a
large red tome with golden sun embossed on the front. The man in the grey
suit asks David to shut his eyes and count backwards from ten slowly; in a
deep, slow voice, the figure tells David to picture the sun at the centre of the
universe, before picturing the universe as an “Aryan Mandala,” then pro-
ceeding further towards the sun in order to penetrate the physical barrier
between the mind and the “racial unconscious.” As David penetrates the
“Aryan Mandala,” he is told to undergo a self-deification process where he
will meet the “Aryan Christ” who is the centre of human spiritual develop-
ment. Although Asian “races” were more naturally spiritual, Aryanism was
synonymous with human religious historical development; according to the
figure in grey, Americans and Europeans were reclaiming their spiritual
heritage with the help of modern science. The ferocious and masculine Ar-
yan should tap into the spirituality of the effeminate and introverted “East”
in order to promote a new evolution in human religion. In fact, the figure in
grey informs David that all religions are a form of solar mysticism with the
Aryan sun in the centre. The Aryan mystic in the grey suit asserts that he
underwent a self-deification process in 1913 and transformed himself into
an Aryan Christ who realized complete union with the “racial storehouse.”
The mystical figure in grey sits back into his large armchair. He tells his
“patient” David to come back next week for another psychological treat-
ment. C.G. Jung claims to have transformed his psychological theories into
a science of the mind, applicable to all peoples across the world through a
collective unconscious.
The rise of psychology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries allowed for
the “mind” of entire “races” to be essentialized and defined against others,
which were perceived as a form of “science.” Psychology as an academic
discipline was directly influenced by bioracism and lent “scientific” justi-
fication to assertions about the mind tied to “racial characteristics.” This
assertion of scientific fact provided credence to the supposed passing on of
traits via the “racial unconscious.” Psychology added a “scientific” mental
explanation for the prejudices found in bioracism; for instance, drapetoma-
nia, which was a psychological disorder occurring specifically in African
slaves, whereby their brains fought against their natural predisposition to-
wards submission and were plagued by uncontrollable desires to run away
from home.2 Drapetomania provides one of the most thinly veiled examples
of bioracism, as this provides an explanation for runaway slaves while never
even questioning the basic presupposition that certain humans were geneti-
cally predisposed to slavery; the idea that people simply did not want to be
slaves never seemed to factor into the “scientific” equation.
60  Academia and Aryan ideology
In some cases, psychology added a veneer of scientific legitimation to the
pronouncements of racecraft, which allowed for psychological predilection
and traits of mental capacity to be linked to biology and unchanging no-
tions of hereditary “racial genius.”3 Although theories in psychology varied
widely, it is still possible to argue that psychology in the early 20th century
added the mind and even the subconscious to racecraft notions of biological
determinism. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), a German physician who is
considered a founding father in the history of psychology taught a number
of students during his tenure at Leipzig University, including Sir Francis
Galton, the founder of eugenics.4 According to Sigmund Freud (1856–1939),
the “racial unconscious” of “East” and “West” had developed too separately
over the generation so as to now be separate entities which are not shared by
all of humanity.5 The idea of racially contingent unconscious minds would
have likely found intellectual support from bioracists who promoted no-
tions of polygenesis, whereby human “races” developed separately from
each other. Freud’s pupil, Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961), the figure in grey,
believed that he could bridge this supposed gulf and find the commonality
between the various “racial subconsciouses.” In 1909, Jung hypothesized a
phylogenetic layer, or physical storehouse of “racial memories” in the brain,
which was passed down genetically as a form of social remembering.6 Based
on the notion of biological memory layers within the brain, separated by
“race,” Jung later posited his theories of the transpersonal collective uncon-
scious in 1916 and his theory of human archetypes in 1919.7
Jung’s research continues to be influential among New Age and Neo-
Pagan movements, as well as Hinduism and Buddhism; Jung provided the
foreword for English translations of The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo
Thodol), which became popular in the 1950s and 1960s. In his “psychologi-
cal commentary” on the Bardo Thodol Jung asserts that Asians are spiritual,
effeminate, and mystical, before reinterpreting the entire religious text to
better mesh with his assertions.8 In a truly odd word choice, Jung says the
“book of the dead” is not the “niggardly European” whose thought is mired
in division, but the all-encompassing “Universal Mind,” which includes all
of humanity’s complex psychology.9 It should also be noted that the 1957
Oxford University Press edition of Wentz’s Book of the Dead (3rd edition)
features a swastika on the front cover. Psychological “types” could be tied
to racecraft and combined through perceived connections of “race” and in-
telligence testing in order to posit traits and mental capacities strictly regi-
mented through genetics. Jung’s psychological archetypes, viewed through
the prism of racecraft, allow for power dynamics to be attributed to biol-
ogy and natural abilities, thus making current prejudices recursive histories
which can be explained as heredity derived from past generations. To put
this even more bluntly, an individual could be proven more mentally prone
to slavery by psychological assessment where the justification for slavery
derived from their mental capacity for servitude, and this predisposition
could be seen in biology, because the individual’s father was also a slave.
The idea that chattel slavery was a system of bondage and imprisonment
 Academia and Aryan ideology  61
could be side-stepped, while psychological predispositions justified the ac-
tions of slave-owners as following the natural order. Theoretically, the true
crime then would be to place individuals in a situation which is dissonant to
their own understanding of the world, and fought against the processes of
nature. Racecraft can transform the very enslavement of people or the acts
of discrimination to be justified as helping the very subjects of that cruelty.
Through his assertion of a universal unconscious, Jung began to engage
with the Aryan myth and the idea of Aryan mysticism as humanity’s origi-
nal religion.10 Jung asserted that the Aryans practised a “solar mysticism,”
and therefore the sun, as a representation of a singular “race,” as the centre
of the universe, or “Aryan mandala.”11 According to Jung, the Aryans were
also at the centre of human historical development, which could be seen
in the repeated sun motif of Indian, Egyptian, and Greek spiritual motifs;
Jung provided counter proof for this trope through its absence in non-Aryan
parts of the world, claiming, “the Jews do not have this image.”12 Jung fur-
thered common anti-Semitic tropes of the time, such as those supported by
völkisch movements, which claimed that Jewish peoples were itinerant, and
lacked roots, or connection to a land, which was imperative for civiliza-
tional development; therefore Jews, according to Jung, do not have a people
or a land from which to draw their “racial” strength, and are therefore lack-
ing souls.13 Jung discusses this separation in “The Role of the Unconscious”
(“Über den Unbewusste”) (1918), where he wrote, “the Jew is domesticated to
a higher degree than we are, but he is badly at a loss for that quality in man
which roots him to the earth and draws new strength from below.”14
The popularization of psychology in the United States allowed for race-
craft to be determinative of mental capacities and “types.” In the United
States, individuality was removed by tying intelligence, psychological for-
mations, physical appearance, and future success all to hereditary predispo-
sitions derived from racecraft. In America, success and justification could
be derived through birth, while others were deemed forever suspect simply
based on their national origins. The “Asian mind” could be known, and
theoretically controlled, by the “Aryan mind,” which had been perceived
as naturally superior through all of human history; the proof for such an
erroneous statement could be derived by the mere fact of “race.” There-
fore, a European or American academic could make pronouncements about
Buddhism which were considered fact simply based on the notion that this
was a “white” person with a PhD, given through the prestigious institutions
of “white” learning. The “Asian mind” could be known through such pon-
tificating as well. Alternatively, racecraft allows for the discounting of all
opinions from Asians, or others, as their ideas were lesser for having been
derived from supposedly inferior minds, produced by degraded genealogy.
Nothing a person of colour did or said would be “enough” to penetrate the
walls of this intellectual fortress. This form of psychological theory also
replicates colonialism, whereby the very minds of subjects can be occupied
and defined, although not tied to the horrors of imperialism, but “science”
which was only produced in European and North American universities.
62  Academia and Aryan ideology
Academic studies of Buddhism and the influence of racecraft
Academic studies of Buddhism from 1899 to 1957 promoted the religion as
an ancient form of psychology, which was an assertion that could also be
utilized within racecraft to suggest that supposedly superior Aryan minds
had a great propensity to speak for an Aryan religious tradition versus those
who had corrupted the doctrines and created idolatry. Books on Buddhism
and psychology are still popular today with approximately eight thou-
sand book results on Amazon, and even full university courses dedicated
to the subject. In 1900, Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys Davids (1857–1942)
published the Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics which was the first
European academic analysis of the Dhamma Sangani, or the first book of
the Abhidharma.15 C.A.F. Rhys Davids was the honorary secretary and
later president of the Pāli Text Society and a noted academic at University
College, London. During her early career, Rhys Davids writings show her
agreement with her husband, Thomas Williams (T.W.) Rhys Davids, who
was a philologist and popularizer of many “original Buddhism” theories,
as well as a critic of Theosophy. However, her son Arthur died in the First
World War as a decorated fighter pilot, while T.W. Rhys Davids died in 1922;
following these difficult events, C.A.F. Rhys Davids started to study The-
osophy and dabbled in Spiritualism. Rhys Davids asserts that the Buddha
meant to posit a self, or soul, but this teaching was later transformed into
the anātman doctrine by greedy monks hoping to confuse their followers
into a sort of spiritual stupor and thus produce more donations.16 It was
“monkish gibberish” which had created no-self, rather than the Buddha.17
In Gotama the Man, Rhys Davids actually writes for the Buddha in the first
person, and opines for his true doctrine of the self, “thus the positive word
with which I could have helped man was taken from me and the negative
word, which by itself makes my teachings worthless, is put forward as the
most characteristic note in our philosophy.”18 According to this scholar
of Buddhism, the Buddha was disappointed with the way his religion had
turned out. Buddhists did not know their own religious tradition, which had
been stolen and slandered by the very entities who had claimed to be pro-
tecting it. What then was the true self of Buddhism? According to academic
studies of Buddhism during this time period, the influence of the “Asian
mind” on the development of Buddhism could be reversed in order to find
a true self which was in accordance with the “Aryan mind,” which was the
original producer of Buddhist doctrine.
Scholars of Buddhism pointed to specific doctrines within the religion to
trace the supposed corruption and argue that this displayed the influence of
non-Aryan forces. According to the German scholar George Grimm (1868–
1945), Buddhism was originally synonymous with Hinduism because rebirth
and nirvāṇa are not possible without an atman, which means that Buddhism
must have a Self.19 According to these scholars, an Aryan would have pos-
ited a Self, as to argue against a Self would be illogical, and anathema to the
 Academia and Aryan ideology  63
20
“Aryan mind.” Grimm claimed that the Buddha adopted reincarnation
and karma from “Hinduism” whole-heartedly, while others claimed that
Buddhists added these aspects later to make Buddhism more appealing to
the Indian masses. The mischaracterization of Buddhism compared to an
essentialized “Hinduism” is a recurring theme, which allowed scholars to
specifically attribute the corruption of Buddhism to specific groups or indi-
viduals. The academics of the 20th century cited philologists such as Max
Müller, who blamed the linguistic developments of Sanskrit in India for the
prevalence of deities in Hinduism, which he said was originally the result of
Aryan attempts to subjugate the “dark skinned, Negro-like savages” who
were the Dravidians.21 Scholars in the 20th century provided further justifi-
cations for this theory through the use of bioracism.
Conversely, other scholars of Buddhism argued that anātman represented
the true original teachings of the Buddha, while other doctrines represented
the corruption.22 Instead, Jennings, a British academic who taught at Patna
University in India throughout British occupation, literally rewrites Bud-
dhist sūtras in order to remove any elements of karma and rebirth from
the doctrines of Buddhism, as these represent later “Hinduizations.”23 The
point here is not to become bogged down in similarities between Hindu
and Buddhist metaphysics, but instead to focus on the fact that only Eu-
ropeans and North Americans could asses Buddhism correctly. Accord-
ing to Jennings, “Gotama rejected the personal deities of Hinduism,” but
“to the minds of his later followers, however, the gods and spirits of India,
Hindu or otherwise, once more appealed,” which began the degradation of
Buddhism.24 In fact, Jennings even argues that the Buddha is not respon-
sible for the religion we currently call Buddhism, but instead the current
tradition was created by the Buddha’s evil cousin, Devadatta.25 Although
“whataboutism” certainly does not make an academic argument, it is hard
to imagine an academic scholar in America arguing that Jesus had misinter-
preted the doctrines of Christianity, and that the Bible was in need of some
careful editing. According to scholars employing racecraft, Buddhists did
not adequately understand the Self, or their own religion, but the final word
on the issue rests with scholars and “scientists” from Europe and North
America. It was the hubris of racecraft with the “scientific” backing of bi-
oracism which gave Europeans and North Americans the ability to speak
for the Buddha himself, and correct him, while those who had historically
practised and studied the dharma could be deemed a corrupting influence
through pronouncement. The “Aryan mind” could be known by Europeans,
which meant that scholars could speak for Buddhism.
The Pāli Text Society was highly influential in spreading Buddhist ideas
throughout the world, but in many ways the group followed imperialist
agendas whereby Europeans would travel to Buddhist countries and export
a supposedly uncorrupted true Buddhism for their readers while dispar-
aging the religious history of those nations. The Pāli Text Society began in
1881 with T.W. Rhys Davids and became the preeminent voice for scholarly
64  Academia and Aryan ideology
translation and “original Buddhism” analysis. The Journal of the Pāli Text
Society largely featured European scholars, but the findings within are cited
in American sources as well. The Pāli Text Society became known as the
forum for top scholarship on Buddhism as well as South Asian religions
and languages, but it also represented European scholars travelling, meta-
phorically or literally, to South Asia and sending back the treasures of Asia.
The Journal of the Pāli Text Society promoted itself as “real” and “pure”
Buddhism, being spread out to European and American audiences without
the adulterations of generations of Asian corruption.
In various articles in this journal, we can see the promotion of Univer-
salism in the idea that all human history and experience could be known
through proper academic study, and was thus connected in a singular nar-
rative for development. In The Invention of World Religions Tomoko Masu-
zawa argues that Universalism propelled the development of comparative
religion as a discipline more broadly in order to justify colonial expansion
and racecraft.26 Universalism allowed European imperialists to remake all
the globe, as well as human history, as a story which leads directly to them;
for instance, in “Notes on the Enlarged Text of the Mahävaṃsa, Extant in a
Kambodjan Manuscript,” German scholar Edmond Hardy writes that the
Mahāvaṃsa originated in “the pearl of the British Indian Empire,” rather
than India, which shows the sense of ownership the British claimed over
Indian history.27 Not only did scholars of Buddhism claim Buddhist history,
but they even felt themselves justified in speaking for Buddhism. F. Otto
Schrader, a German Indologist, claimed that the Buddha’s “noble silence”
in regard to nirvāṇa and the ātman was because “he could not attain any
inner certainty of it.”28 The Buddha, who is said to be omniscient in many
sūtras did not fully comprehend the doctrines of Buddhism, but luckily a
German who studied Sanskrit does. Schrader claimed to have gone through
the Pāli canon in search of a definition for nirvāṇa, but came up short, so he
instead deduces that Buddhists are forbidden from discussing the nature of
nirvāṇa, or else he would have found it, and that the Buddha himself must
have been more concerned with śīla, or proper conduct.29
European scholars used the notion of Universalism to posit that the his-
tory of Buddhism was an allegory for the larger history of mankind. Ac-
cording to Orientalist scholars of Buddhism, one form of Aryan Buddhism,
characterized by its discussions of philosophy, split and moved west towards
Egypt and Greece, while another form of corrupted Buddhism, defined by
idol worship and a belief in spirits, spread east throughout Asia. The Jour-
nal of the Pāli Text Society can be viewed as a subtle form of colonialism,
whereby European scholars viewed all of Asia as theirs through Aryan
Universalism. For European intellectuals, Universalism was not an argu-
ment for the validity of all religious traditions, but an historical justifica-
tion for imperialism through the evolutionary development of humanity
traced backwards by colonial powers. In this sense, the “Asian mind” could
be known and controlled, not only in the current day, but throughout all
human history. Scholars’ knowledge of the “Asian mind” meant that the
 Academia and Aryan ideology  65
supposed corrupting influence on Buddhism could be known, and thus
could be traced, providing scholars with a form of degenerate family studies
for Buddhism, and therefore the entire “Orient.”
The “psychological justification” of religion was tied directly to race-
craft and the idea of a “racial” psychology. In “Oriental Wisdom and the
Cure of Souls: Jung and the Indian East,” Luis O. Gómez argued that Jung
essentialized the “Eastern mind” in order to portray “the East” as effem-
inate, mystical, and naturally spiritual.30 Gómez analyses the Orientalist
assumptions at play in psychology on Asians and the ways in which these
broad generalizations have continued to influence American culture as well
as studies of Buddhism. To this day, Jung’s works on Buddhism continue to
be popular. Jung’s use of Buddhist doctrine and imagery in psychological
presentations is quite poetic, and provides those who wish to find connec-
tions ample spaces for overlap between psychology and Buddhist doctrines.
In Mindful America, Jeff Wilson analyses the transformation of mindfulness
to fit psychological models of therapy.31
Through mindfulness, which is often presented in a similar fashion to
the Zen of D.T. Suzuki in that it predates Buddhism as an essential core,
Buddhism becomes a therapeutic tool for people to cope with the stresses
of modern life, or even to become more skilful workers in a capitalistic soci-
ety.32 Today, mindfulness is being infused with psychology in order to create
seemingly “better” individuals. Prior to 1957, psychology was infusing itself
with Buddhism to more fully know the universal subconscious and better
explain the “Asian mind.” Mindfulness has been fit within medical and psy-
chological frameworks in the United States, and is practically considered
“science” on its own. As Wilson argues, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduc-
tion (MBSR) is now a recognized technique used in American schools, pris-
ons, and workplaces.33 In 2001, Slavoj Žižek claimed that mindfulness and
other forms of modern Buddhism provided the perfect ideological supple-
ment for late-stage capitalism, as it allowed all social problems to be dealt
with internally, and thus removed any agency for collectivization. A century
ago, psychology defined the entire “Eastern mind,” but through the Aryan
myth and the collective unconscious, scholars could know, in the greatest
sense, the true words of the Buddha and speak for him. They could posit
the purportedly correct view and thus purify the Aryan tradition through
“science.” Meanwhile, bioracists in the United States viewed themselves as
cleansing the entire nation to remove unwanted corruptions through the use
of “science.” In the early 20th century, this pseudoscience was bioracism,
which helped to trace the supposed degeneracy of humanity.

Degenerate family studies, Carrie Buck, and corruption

Carrie Buck was the first person to be sterilized in Virginia.34 Her mother
lived in the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, and
at age eight, Carrie was given up for adoption. However, at 16, Carrie was
raped by a family member, and was then sent to live with her mother at
66  Academia and Aryan ideology
the colony. Although never accused of a crime, she was pregnant out of
wedlock, and the court claimed her Stanford-Binet Intelligence test ranked
her as an “imbecile.” When Buck was later tested as an adult, she showed
no signs of mental impairment. Eugenicists pointed to the mother, as well
as Carrie and her young daughter, as proof of the hereditary nature of so-
cial problems, as news sources portrayed “these people [who] belong to the
shiftless, ignorant and worthless class of anti-social whites of the South.”35
Carrie Buck’s daughter was given up for adoption, and Buck was forcibly
sterilized at Cold Springs Harbour Laboratory. The incident made national
headlines, and Buck’s case ended up in the Supreme Court in 1927, as Buck
v. Bell (274 U.S. 200). The Supreme Court upheld the Virginia sterilization
laws 8 to 1, “for the protection of the individual and of society”; Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in the majority brief that it was “better for all
the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime,
or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are
manifestly unfit from continuing their kind,” before famously concluding,
“three generations of imbeciles are enough.”36 The Chief Justice of the court
was former president William Howard Taft, who was active in the national
eugenics movement, and even wrote on the promise of eugenics in Unitar-
ian Christian magazines. Following the Buck v. Bell decision, over 30 states
enacted their own sterilization measures, and certain groups, such as pris-
oners, were sterilized en masse. By 1968, over 65,000 Americans had been
sterilized, with California leading the way by far.37 In fact, of the 60,000
people sterilized between 1907 and 1956, California accounted for approx-
imately 20,000, with Virginia accounting for only 6,800. California’s steri-
lization programme focussed mainly on women of colour, although prison
sterilization programmes also gave forced vasectomies.
Even before the development of eugenics, racecraft was used in order to
remove those deemed unwanted and powerless in society as colonies were
used as repositories for prisoners, or those deemed “unfit” for any reason.
In The Long Revolution, Raymond Williams writes that colonies were orig-
inally places to ship “characters whose destinies could not be worked out
within the system as given were simply put on a boat, a simpler way of re-
solving the conflict.”38 In other words, Australia was not the only “prison
colony” used, but instead, colonialism provided wealthier nations with a
way to cast certain citizens out to a land seemingly beyond return.
Negative eugenics, enacted through forced sterilization, was viewed as
the more scientific and humane version of sending undesirable citizens to
distant colonies. Americans were not perceived as callous monsters for en-
acting scientific sterilization, but instead viewed as enlightened and progres-
sive.39 Indiana was the first state to enact mandatory sterilization in 1907,
with a law based on the premise that, “WHEREAS, heredity plays a most
important part in the transmission of crime, idiocy, and imbecility…”; this
law was later struck down as negating due process.40 However in 1922, the
Eugenics Record Office presented a model sterilization law meant to assist
 Academia and Aryan ideology  67
states in withstanding court challenge. The Eugenics Record Office (ERO)
was started at Cold Spring Harbour in 1910, New York by Charles Benedict
Davenport, who was also a founder of the Carnegie Institution Station for
Experimental Evolution in 1904. Davenport was a “proud Anglo-Saxon,”
who placed scientific emphasis on “the value of superior blood and the men-
ace to society of inferior blood,” which he derived from his experiments on
chickens.41 The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Springs Harbour famously
gave out eugenics certificates prior to marriage based on blood analysis, and
created the craniological and blood measures used to justify the 1924 Immi-
gration Act. The 1924 Virginia Sterilization Act states that “heredity plays
an important part in the transmission of insanity, idiocy, and imbecility,
epilepsy, and crime.”42 When Hitler and the National Socialists (Nazis) rose
to power in 1933, they actually used the Virginia sterilization laws in the
creation of the Nuremberg Laws and other anti-Semitic measures in order
to ensure they would hold up in court.43
American bioracists subjected American citizens to torturous attempts
to manipulate “science.” In a more gruesome incident, San Quentin Peni-
tentiary doctor, Leo L. Stanley and his team were found to be performing
experiments of testicular replacement to see if eugenic progeny could be
reversed.44 The testicles for these experiments were taken from the corpses
of “white” people, or else used the animals more closely associated with
“white” people on bioracist evolutionary scales. Many early forms of bi-
oracism tie specific races to particular animal qualities, such as Africans
with monkeys, or Asians with pigs; Europeans and North Americans were
supposedly associated with deer, gazelle, and other similar creatures. Along
with sterilization bills, 30 of 48 states passed anti-miscegenation laws be-
tween 1913 and 1948, as miscegenation was believed to be a source of racial
deterioration through the loss of blood purity.45 Some groups in America
opposed sterilization measures, namely Catholics and Socialists; Catholics
considered eugenics to be a breach of sacred human bodies, while Socialists
pointed to class biases within eugenic sterilization programmes and meas-
urements. Eugenics began to lose steam throughout the 1930s, as Americans
saw Nazis work these theories to their logical conclusion. However, it was
not until the Civil Rights protests of the 1960s and 1970s, which displayed
the preponderance of sterilization in black, Indigenous, and Latinx commu-
nities which finally forced the end of American eugenics. Virginia repealed
its eugenic sterilization law in 1974, and Carrie Buck died in 1983. On the
75th anniversary of the Buck v. Bell decision in 2002, the governor of Vir-
ginia issued a formal apology to Carrie Buck and placed a plaque in her
honour in Charlottesville.46
The case of Carrie Buck shows the ubiquitous nature of racecraft,
through eugenics in America in the late 1920s and early 1930s, as well as the
real-life consequences of the growing ideology of race and the genetic he-
redity of traits deemed negative. Like the list of hereditary traits attached to
the Virginia statute, including “idiocy,” nearly anything could be deemed a
68  Academia and Aryan ideology
negative trait which could decrease the American “stock.” The logic is simi-
lar to the idea of shipping criminals and other individuals deemed undesira-
ble off to colonies, such as Australia or the Americas; eugenics provides the
logical conclusion of this thinking with the scientific efficiency of cutting off
“degenerative breeding” at its source. This is the conclusion to ideologies of
superiority and othering; ideologies which blame singular groups or indi-
viduals for corrupting the purity of nations, religions, or races. When spe-
cific groups are dehumanized and blamed for social problems, their murder
or forced sterilization is viewed as justified.
The sterilization of Carrie Buck displays the ubiquitousness of American
bioracism, and the destruction wrought by ideologies of race and purity,
as well as the danger presented for all members of society; for Buddhists
in America, Carrie Buck’s story is merely the beginning of a decades long
programme of sterilization which saw the state of California lead the way by
nearly three times the rate of their nearest comparison. Buck’s case displays
the development of ideology from viewing specific groups as lesser, or ru-
ining the purity of the nation, to concretizing those beliefs in “science” and
then using that bioracism to justify physical violence over generations. For
Buddhism, the developing yellow peril ideologies throughout the United
States created a fear of Asians, scientifically justified through bioracist as-
sertions of Asian mysticism, slavishness, and penchant for authoritarian-
ism. Ideologies of poor southerners as lesser, and corrupting the “racial”
purity of America built into a progressive desire to cleanse the nation for
future generations, and the scientific means to do so through eugenics. For
Buddhism in America, ongoing ideologies of Asian corruption and shifting
“national-racial degeneracy” combined with a progressive and paternalis-
tic need to assist nations in catching up to modernity by promoting white
supremacy through “scientific” bioracism, which resulted in the physical
violence of colonialism, the Second World War, internment, and subsequent
dropping of bombs on Asia throughout the Cold War.
However, the building blocks of Carrie Buck’s sterilization started to
come together far before, as degenerate family studies had already placed
the blame for genetic corruption on the head of young women deemed mor-
ally unfit. In 1912, Deborah Kallikak was a 22-year-old student at the New
Jersey Home for the Education and Care of Feebleminded Children, in
Vineland, run by psychologist and eugenicist Dr. Henry H. Goddard (1866–
1957). A Quaker from Maine, Goddard would move on from his post at the
Vineland school in 1918 to become the first football coach for the University
of Southern California. Goddard’s book, The Kallikak Family: A Study in
the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness (1912), featured pictures of degenerate
families which appear to be doctored in order to make the children appear
more menacing. The book also makes the assertion that what we now know
as Down Syndrome was actually due to racial connections through misce-
genation with Asians, or making them of the “Mongolian Type” [aka Mon-
goloid]. The name Kallikak is a pseudonym, which Goddard derived from
 Academia and Aryan ideology  69
the Greek words kallos, meaning “beauty,” and kakos, meaning “bad,” thus
creating the pseudonym of dangerous beauty. Deborah Kallikak’s real name
was Emma Wolverton (1889–1978). However, the study of Ms. Kallikak at
the Vineland school was far more indicative than a singular young woman,
as according to Goddard, analysing the supposed source of her feeble-
mindedness unlocked the specific source for all hereditary degeneracy. For
instance, the supposed disease of “Thalassophilia,” or unconditional love
of the sea, which created homelessness through a perpetual need for move-
ment. Bioracists declared that Thalassophilia was a recessive disease passed
on genetically, as they had only ever found it in men.47 This supposed gene
for “nomadism” is an example of eugenicists very obviously ignoring envi-
ronmental factors in favour of an unproven biological explanation.
To trace the history of American racial degeneracy, we must return to
the ending days of the American Revolution. Martin Kallikak was the sup-
posed great-great-great grandfather of Deborah, whose bravery and cour-
age made him a war hero in the fight against the British. Following his war
effort, Mr. Kallikak was returning home to see his beautiful and upstanding
Quaker wife; however, on his way, he made the frightful choice to stop into
a tavern for a drink where he had a dalliance with a “feeble-minded” tavern
girl. This young barmaid had a son who she named Martin Kallikak Jr.,
but the townsfolk called him “Old Horror,” as he was “scarcely recognize[d]
as normal.”48 Old Horror was prodigious, and according to Goddard, his
bloodline could be traced to 1,146 individuals in the New York and New
Jersey areas, including Deborah; of this brood, 262 were feeble-minded, 179
were “normal,” and 581 were undetermined. Meanwhile, Martin Kallikak
Sr. went on to live a monogamous life with his wife, and produce a number
of upright offspring. The case of Deborah Kallikak and her relatives proved,
according to Goddard and other bioracists, the words of Josephine Shaw
Lowell, who said “promiscuous and criminalistic” women were spreaders of
a “deadly poison” which could be passed “even to the third and fourth gen-
erations.” The case of Martin Kallikak and his family proved that women,
especially those perceived as “feeble-minded” and therefore more prone to
“harlotry,” were to blame for the racial degeneration seen displayed in poor
“whites.” However, the case of Deborah Kallikak was just one major study
in the subfield of degenerate families included in bioracism to explain the
perceived downfall of the white race in poor and rural areas.
In fact, the Kallikak study followed earlier studies of the Ishmael tribe,
claimed to be a degenerate family in Indianapolis based on the ad-mixture
of miscegenation between “whites” and “Southern negroes” who moved
during the Great Migration, or the Jukes from New York State.49 Richard
L. Dugdale (1841–1883) wanted to be a sociologist, and so he started work-
ing at prisons in upstate New York. According to Dugdale, it was not in-
dividuals who were a problem to society, but a type of family, who spread
negative social behaviours. Dugdale published “The Jukes”: A Study in
Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity, also Further Studies of Criminals
70  Academia and Aryan ideology
in 1877, and it was republished five more time before 1895.50 The Jukes cre-
ated the idea of degenerate family studies, and helped to “scientifically” ex-
plain the presence of supposedly bad Americans against other mythology
of racial distillation and American exceptionalism. According to Dugdale,
there were approximately 1,200 Jukes living throughout New York State,
whose family made up large portions of the prison system, and had cost the
taxpayers over $1,308,000, “without reckoning the cash paid for whiskey, or
taking into account the entailment of pauperism and crime of the survivors
in succeeding generations.”51 In fact, the matriarch, Margaret, was referred
to as “the mother of criminals.” Or, to put it more succinctly, “fornication,
either consanguineous or not, is the backbone of their habits, flanked on one
side by pauperism, on the other by crime.”52 The idea of “hereditary pau-
perism” and criminality was now made into “science.” This bioracism con-
tinued in American culture, as evidenced by a 1977 NBC television show,
The Kallikaks, which depicted an Appalachian family moving to California
where they feuded with their neighbours, named “the Jukes.”53
One of the most lasting contributions of American academic bioracism
to eugenics was the creation of degenerate family studies. Scholars detailing
the history of bioracism generally split eugenics into two categories; posi-
tive eugenics is when specific characteristics are promoted as beneficial, and
those characteristics are promoted through childbirth for the creation of
“superior stock.”54 In other words, positive eugenics means the promotion
of breeding for individuals who have positive genetic characteristics, like
intelligence and beauty. In fact, the great “drum-major and prophet” of race
Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt promoted positive eugenics throughout his
books as part of the “strenuous lifestyle,” and “warfare of the cradle.”55 In
fact, Roosevelt wrote his own Teutonist race histories while in office, and af-
ter leaving the presidency, he became president of the American Historical
Association. For Roosevelt, writing around 1900, bioracist discussions still
swirled around who counted as “white,” and determining which nations of
Europe benefitted the overall makeup of America and which ones detracted;
in other words, Roosevelt wanted to “prevent the higher races from losing
their nobler traits and from being overwhelmed by the lower races,” which
was why he viewed “race suicide fundamentally infinitely more important
than any other question in this country.”56 However, this mode of thinking
was beginning to change and be replaced with negative eugenics. This devel-
opment started with the creation of degenerate family studies.
Negative eugenics, as opposed to positive eugenics, is based on the idea
that specific characteristics are harmful to the overall gene pool and that
by eliminating these supposedly destructive elements, the overall “stock”
of humanity is raised. As the name suggests, negative eugenics is enacted
through the removal of traits from the gene pool, either through sterili-
zation, such as Carrie Buck, through creating legislation against specific
partnerships, such as anti-miscegenation laws, or genocide, as most directly
 Academia and Aryan ideology  71
evidenced by the Holocaust. According to President Roosevelt in his 1889
book, poor southerners were:

people drawn from the worst immigrants that perhaps ever were brought
to America – the mass of convict servants, redemptioners, and the like,
who formed such an excessively undesirable substratum to the other-
wise excellent population of the tidewater regions in Virginia and the
Carolinas. Many of the Southern crackers or poor whites spring from
this class, which also in the backwoods gave birth to generations of vio-
lent and hardened criminals, and to an even greater number of shiftless,
lazy, cowardly cumberers of the earth’s surface.57

In 1912, Goddard warned that “there are Kallikak families all about us”
as “they are multiplying at twice the rate of the general population,” and
“no amount of education or good environment can change a feeble-minded
individual into a normal one” because “the inferior would always outbreed
superior stocks.”58 Racism creates a world whereby everyone should be
feared, and the very presence of children different than one’s own is to be
considered a threat. Through Carrie Buck and Deborah Kallikak, as well
as Margaret Juke, we can trace the ideology of degenerate family studies,
and the pinning of “white race suicide” on the “harlotry” of individual
young women; this social problem could be stopped through a “warfare of
the cradle,” a term coined by Goddard. Eugenicists spearheaded prison re-
form movements, education campaigns, as well as sterilization legislations
and immigration restrictions. Through degenerate family studies, we can
see how leading social reformers of the time viewed the “debasing and de-
moralizing influence of an unrestrained feebleminded woman.”59 This view
of individual women was also prominent in the rise of social work, and the
creation of religious missions for unwed mothers.60 Often, Catholic homes
for unwed mothers presented the alternative to eugenic sterilization.
Degenerate family studies show the growing ideology of racecraft in
America from 1899 to 1957. What begins as the quest to find the origins of
“white racial degeneracy” creates the “mother of criminals,” who is then
tied to another fictional woman in Deborah Kallikak. These fictionalized
women, blamed for their supposed “harlotry” and thus labelled as danger-
ous to society writ large, become true cautionary tales as their oppression
is acted out in the form of real women, such as Carrie Buck. It was just
five years after the publication of Goddard’s study of the Kallikaks that
Indiana proposed their first sterilization laws, and just 15 years later the
Supreme Court would rule on the case of Buck v. Bell. Tying all perceived
negative traits to genetics, and therefore mothers, allowed everything which
was “bad,” like laziness, to be tied to heredity and by extension, science.
Of course, these traits, tied to genetic degeneracy included anything, and
could even be created after the fact, such as “The tribe of Ishmael,” another
72  Academia and Aryan ideology
fictionalized family of degeneracy from Indianapolis, which had been cre-
ated over generations through the miscegenation of poor whites and black
people; along with “pauperism” and “licentiousness,” another proof of Ish-
mael degeneracy was their preference to breed with black people. The cause
of their supposed degeneracy was proven by their supposed degeneracy.

Creating degenerate family studies for Buddhism

Academic studies of Buddhism similarly created a “degenerate family stud-
ies” subfield in order to explain the perceived corruption of the Aryan reli-
gious doctrine, directly tied to racial characteristics. Scholars of Buddhism
at the height of the eugenics craze, in the 1920s and 1930s identified the
supposed source of the corruption of Buddhism from a once-great Aryan
tradition. The notion of Buddhist corruption over time became so ubiqui-
tous that scholars never questioned the validity of this central premise, and
instead attempted to trace the denigration of Buddhism throughout history.
In a similar fashion to the way Deborah Kallikak was not a human woman,
but a symbolic representation of degeneracy, so to scholars of Buddhism
posited an essentialized “Hinduism” or “Chinese mind” which could be
blamed for the corruption of Buddhism.
Academic scholars of Buddhism from 1899 to 1957 attempted to define
a central and essentializing philosophy for the religion, which could then
be tied to a specific people through racecraft. The Yogācāra school of Bud-
dhism was created by brothers Asaṅga and Vasubandhu, and is often la-
belled the mind-only school, as they posited the ālāyavijñāna or storehouse
consciousness. Scholars labelled the Yogācāra school as “Chinese,” or
“Hindu” variously, but multiple sources claim the Yogācāra represents the
final corruption of Buddhism.61 The Yogācāra school was blamed for the
expanding pantheon of Buddhism which scholars posited as the late addi-
tion, corrupting the agnostic philosophy of a social reformer as scholars
like T.W. Rhys Davids portrayed the Buddha in the past.62 The Yogācāra
school was blamed for the supposedly “degrading” influence of Amitābha
Buddha and the Pure Land Schools.63 According to bioracism, the Chinese
mind was characterized by slavish mentality and lack of critical thought,
sometimes referred to as “Coolieism.”64 Edward Conze (1904–1979), scholar
of Prajñāpāramitā literature, claims the Chinese mind was “ill-equipped for
grasping the sublimities of Buddhist thought,” which is why they reverted to
additional deities and religious lands.65
Racecraft allowed for over a millennium of doctrinal and philosophical
development to be traced to ignorance. According to the logic of the yel-
low peril, this could mean that half the world’s population had fallen prey
to philosophical negativism and idol-worship. In Arthur Berriedale Keith’s
(1879–1944) Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon, he refers to Yogācāra
practitioners as magicians, rather than Buddhists, because he claims the
school only practices devotion to Buddhas and Bodhisattvas for material
 Academia and Aryan ideology  73
66
gain. Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, according to many early Buddhist Stud-
ies academics represented the corruption of Buddhism, as it devolved into
the worst aspects of an essentialized “Hinduism” with the addition of Chi-
nese philosophical negativism. Scholars of Buddhism could combine co-
lonial tropes against Hindus as Dravidians and bioracist assertions about
Asian mentality through racecraft, and posit that the Yogācāra was the
very idea which developed into the corruption of Buddhism. In fact, Keith
comes to the conclusion that on a philosophical level, the Yogācāra is simply
“unthinkable,” and “absurd also, and any attempt to carry it out simply
leads into difficulties.”67 According to Keith, for scholars of Buddhism, and
hopefully one day Buddhists themselves, “the entire conception must be
laid aside.”68 For scholars of Buddhism during this time period, all elements
deemed corrupting to Buddhism could be labelled as Dravidian and there-
fore disavowed from the tradition.
Racecraft allowed Europeans to claim a connection to Buddhism through
imagined genetic connections to the founder. According to George Grimm,
German academic and author of The Doctrine of the Buddha (1926), Euro-
pean and Indian Aryans were originally one “race,” but that India devolved
following the invasion of non-Aryans. According to Grimm, the Yogācāra
schools come from the influence of these non-Aryans upon the philosophi-
cal development of Buddhism, writing:

the opposition in which many commentaries stand not only to the

teaching of the Buddha himself, but also to the Aryan Indian genius
generally, really forces one to the assumption that these commentators
were not pure Aryans at all, but Dravidians (the original inhabitants
of India) who lived in South India in large numbers in the time of the
Buddha, and still do today. The Singhalese also consist of Aryan and
Dravidian elements.69

Grimm asserts that the commentarial tradition of Buddhism “certainly re-

sulted in the direct opposite to what we previously came to know as the
Aryan Indian genius with its powerful Ātman doctrine, which revealed itself
through the centuries…In fact, this Buddhism is no religion for the Indian
Aryan.”70 Much like bioracists asserted that a singular figure, like Deborah
Kallikak, was the root of America’s social troubles, scholars of Buddhism
attributed the corruption of Buddhism to singular monks like Asaṅga or
Buddhaghoṣa.71 The “Asian mind” which tied psychology and racism could
then be blamed for all of the corruptions of the supposedly once-great Ar-
yan tradition, such as Yogācāra philosophy or Amitābha in Sukhāvatī. For
many European scholars, the Aryan tradition of Buddhism was gone, as it
had been driven from its homeland and corrupted doctrinally. However, for
scholars of Buddhism within Asia, defining the central philosophy of Bud-
dhism outside of the traditional scholarly nexus could allow Buddhism to
remain an Aryan tradition and the source of Asian greatness.
74  Academia and Aryan ideology
Scholars in the 19th century had already decided that the Buddha was
an Aryan but his religious tradition was corrupted when given to those of
“lesser” capabilities tied to racecraft, so that by the 20th century, scholars
of Buddhism need only to search for the source of this supposed degen-
eracy. Where this degeneracy was located tells us a great deal about the
positioning of the scholar in question. What is also interesting is the com-
plete agreement we seem to find in the underlying structure of the argument
that the Aryan tradition had been corrupted. The assertions of Orientalist
scholarship from a generation ago were now the facts upon which scholars
of Buddhism could draw upon for their own studies. Carrie Buck was cer-
tainly not a Buddhist, and yet her story still touches the lives of thousands
of Buddhists in America who were also sterilized across the country in Cal-
ifornia, and through the pure fantasies of racecraft thinking, we can also
see connections to Asian Americans in the “Mongoloidism” of the Ishmael
tribe. The presence of Asian “blood” was viewed as a polluting factor within
the genetics of bioracism and the racecraft “purity” of the nation. We can
see the direct building blocks of ideology as various strands are brought
together to form a singular web of racecraft; this web, although seemingly
disjointed and illogical, comes together to connect the imagined tribes of
Central Asia with the supposed tribes of Indiana.
By the 1930s, studies of Buddhism could assume that the Buddha was an
Aryan, and his doctrine was corrupted, and set to work tracing this cor-
ruption back through a process of inverse mapping whereby scholars could
define the moment all went wrong. This singular moment of corruption
could be tied to any elements deemed Dravidian as the very nature of the
supposedly singular Hindu or Chinese mind was perceived as destructive,
and could therefore be viewed as a perpetual pattern throughout all human
history. Tracing supposed Buddhist degeneracy through generations would
theoretically provide European scholars justification for an imperial pro-
ject which would teach a supposedly true Buddhism back to Asia, but for
scholars in colonized nations, identifying the essentialized core of this real
Buddhism could prove that the “Asian mind” from which Buddhism sprang
was the true Aryanizing force of history. This essentialization delineated
who supposedly counted in the imagined Aryan development of humanity,
much like a eugenics certificate would tell an American who passed in a
created “white America.”

Eugenics certificates and proof of superiority

The certificate finally came! The laboratory sent back the results, and now
there is scientific proof that breeding will improve the overall stock. The sci-
entists at the lab tested for all the major genetic defects, as well as checking
ancestry. Any breeding between the two specimens tested will most likely
result in healthy offspring that would be beneficial to the species. The most
cutting-edge scientists of the day claim that like species must breed together,
 Academia and Aryan ideology  75
as too much diversity within a gene pool is corrupting, and produces neg-
ative qualities. The certificate comes in a large manilla envelope with the
name of the laboratory where the genetic testing took place, “Cold Springs
Harbour Laboratory, Cold Springs Harbour, New York,” embossed on the
front. The certificate is gold with a red wax stamp from the laboratory’s
official seal; the scientists at the lab want to promote healthy breeding in
order to counteract some of the problems that science has discovered re-
cently due to genetic variation. This certificate is not for the breeding of
farm animals or designer pets, but was a genetic marker for people who
wanted to prove their hereditary quality to their partner before marriage.
The certificates were produced by the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory in
conjunction with the Eugenic Record Office, where they tested the genetic
background of anyone who applied for a certificate. The Eugenic Certif-
icates were promoted as a sort-of insurance policy for “white people” to
ensure the racial background of their partner, and therefore the assurance
that their offspring would be eugenically fit. The certificates featured a pic-
ture of two “dolichocephalic” fair-skinned “Aryan” individuals dressed in
wedding attire, with the caption “The Eugenic Ideal”; next to the image, the
certificate declares, “This guarantees that I have examined the sender of this
card and find a perfect physical and mental balance and unusually strong
Eugenic Love possibilities, well fitted to promote the happiness and future
welfare of the race.”72
There were also advertisements promoting young married couples to
get eugenic certificates as a way to avoid any “surprises,” whereby a part-
ner could sneak their genetic past. One such advertisement features a man
dressed in full tuxedo pulling back in horror as his possible bride-to-be,
who features a large nose and brachycephalic skull shape, attempting to
assure her fiancé that he does not need a eugenic certificate. The messaging
of the advertisements is clear, without a eugenic certificate tested by sci-
entists, your future partner may be lying about their eugenic degeneracy;
in other words Jews, Italians, and others may still be “hiding” even within
our homes, but luckily science can guard against such incursions. Modern
science was providing a new safeguard in America’s “warfare of the cradle,”
as commanded by President Teddy Roosevelt. Eugenic certificates in the
United States were a physical item which a person could carry with them
in order to prove their genetic superiority, and theoretically justify their
position in society. Eugenic certificates concretize racecraft in the form of
documents which mark supposed superiority, although really it was just a
test of ancestry and whether or not a person had blood which was deemed
polluting.
Racecraft often involves the definition of an “other,” against an essen-
tialized view of self, which then justifies and perpetuates power dynamics.
Racecraft in the form of eugenics dehumanized all people, and made them
into “breeders” contributing to “stock.” Those who were already margin-
alized in the United States due to racecraft found themselves completely
76  Academia and Aryan ideology
dehumanized through bioracism. Eugenics certificates were also designed
to reduce fears of a common issue within racism, which is the idea of “pass-
ing.” Legislations such as the “One-Drop Rule” were meant to prevent
issues such as a person with black great-grandparents accidentally being
welcomed into “white society.”73 Bioracism concretizes the separation of an
out-group from the in-group, and a eugenics certificate literally functioned
as proof of an imagined superiority. In the Rudyard Kipling tale Kim, the
main character, who is an Irish-Englishman living in India, actually carries
papers which attest to his heredity. Through the history of American inter-
action with Buddhism, Asian Buddhists have regularly been denigrated as
corrupting the tradition due in large part to supposed “racial inferiority.”
By labelling Buddhism as an Aryan tradition, the religion could function
as a eugenics certificate of its own, whereby possessing this supposedly true
Buddhism could be viewed as a mark of superiority, or the presence of Ar-
yanism within. If Buddhism represented the original Aryan religious tradi-
tion, which “scientists” claimed, then possessing this imagined uncorrupted
Buddhism would mean that the owner was an Aryan.
Academic studies of Buddhism from 1899 to 1957 posited that the Buddha
was an Aryan who founded a great religious tradition which was then cor-
rupted into the modern form of Buddhism we have today, but for academics
living in colonized countries, Buddhism itself was portrayed as superior,
proven by racecraft. Tirupattur Ramaseshayyer Venkatachala (T.R.V.)
Murti (1902–1986) was an Indian academic, translator, honorary member
of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (IABS), and Advaita
Vedāntist Hindu, who was writing mainly in the decade following the end of
British colonialism in India.74 Murti dedicated his 1955 book, The Central
Philosophy of Buddhism, to his teacher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who was
a professor of philosophy at the University of Calcutta and University of
Oxford before becoming the second president of India in 1962.75 Radhakr-
ishnan spread the idea of Universalism within Indian academics, and ar-
gued that the history of India had a “divine unity” with religious Hinduism
as its central core.
Murti argued that the Buddhist Mādhyamika doctrine represented the
singular core of Indian philosophy, and therefore Indian “racial” genius; for
Murti, Buddhism was still a form of Hinduism which posited an alternative
notion of the Self. Murti argues that, “the fundamental difference between
Buddhism and the Upanisads ̣ seems to be about the metaphysical reality of
an immutable substance, which is the true self of man”; although the reli-
gions originally emanated from the same divine unity, according to Murti,
they eventually became split by human misunderstanding, because “is not
a fundamental metaphysical difference the source of all other differences?”76
Following the end of British colonialism, Buddhism could be marked as
the central philosophy for all human historical development, which would
make India the home of Aryan development. Buddhism is posited as rep-
resenting the genius of the Indian religious mind, rather than an Aryan
 Academia and Aryan ideology  77
77
tradition separated from Hinduism. Other scholars, such as J.G. Jennings
also wrote that Buddhism, in its present iteration, was a branch of Hindu-
ism, although this represented the corruption of the tradition.78 European
scholars like Jennings argued that Buddhism in its current form had a soul
and a god, meaning they believed in the “fundamental unity of all life and
spirit… [therefore] from the very tenets of Buddhism it is evident that the
theories of the Vedānta had reached their full development.”79 According
to Jennings, Ārādạ Kālāma and Udraka Rāmaputra, the two ascetics who
the Buddha studied with prior to his enlightenment, taught that there was a
“Universal Soul (Param-ātman), and the need of the individual ego to attain
re-absorption therein,” making Buddhism doctrinally Hindu.80 For Jen-
nings and many European scholars, a Hindu-Buddhism hybrid was meant
to be viewed as a denigration from a once-pristine tradition; the “Hindui-
zation” of Buddhism was the result of the negative karma of Indians, which
was portrayed “scientifically” through bioracism.81 For Murti, however, the
Buddhist tradition remains Aryan, and is proof of Indian “racial” genius,
which was then spread out from the subcontinent to Egypt, Greece, and
eventually Europe, although heavily corrupted.
In the 1920s and beyond, Yogācāra was portrayed as the ultimate corrup-
tion of Buddhism by scholars which cast it into the realms of imaginary pure
lands and fantastical heavens, whereas for Murti, Mādhyamika represents
the central philosophy of Buddhism in its true form. According to Murti,
Buddhism was not the religious tradition as it exists currently because this
was corruption, but instead was originally a form of intense philosophical
analysis typified by the Mādhyamika school.82 Murti is able to disavow the
later date of Nāgārjuna’s developments by arguing that his philosophy is the
central characterizing force of Buddhist thought, against which all other
forms of teaching could be judged, including texts defined by scholars as
representing “original” Buddhism. Mādhyamika, as the central philosophy
of Buddhism, can then be posited as a recursive philosophy for all spiritual
development, or the main idea for all human religious thought. Murti even
cites the scholar William James to argue that Mādhyamika is a form of Ab-
solutism, and therefore the highest form of spirituality, while the Yogācāra
and Theravāda schools represent provisional teachings meant for those of
lesser intellect.83
Portraying Mādhyamika as the central philosophy of Buddhism allowed
scholars to portray the religion as Absolutism, defined by an essentialized
monism. This view of the Mādhyamika as Absolutism would suggest that
an individual must always be in relation to a central entity, which posits
the notions of a monistic god for Nāgārjuna. Scholars of Buddhism pointed
out that Absolutism is normally tied to the philosophy of Hegel, which for
Murti meant that Buddhism could be posited as the central philosophy for
European thought in history. All of human spirituality and religious histor-
ical development could be tied directly to the “Indian mind.” Mādhyamika
was portrayed as an ur-Absolutist philosophy which undergirded European
78  Academia and Aryan ideology
philosophical development, and even modern science.84 Scholars like Murti
argued that in fact, science could be aided by the monistic philosophy of
Buddhism. As Richard King details, India was seen as the cradle of all civi-
lization as far back as the late 19th century, and the Mādhyamika focus con-
tinues the narrative that the “East” is inherently spiritual while also placing
Western philosophy as the capstone of humankind’s intellectual thought.85
Just as European and American scholars utilized Universalism to explain
all of human development and place the Aryans at the centre of this trajec-
tory, so too Asian academics placed Mādhyamika Absolutism as the central
philosophy for religious evolution. Scholars across the world agreed that
Aryans were at the centre of human historical development, but everyone
claimed to be the Aryans. This form of Mādhyamika Buddhism is posited as
a sort-of missing link in European Universalism, and by labelling it as Ab-
solutism, the supposed soul-denying and pessimistic atheism of Buddhism
could be disavowed.86 By portraying Buddhism as a singular unified philos-
ophy, which was Mādhyamika “Absolutism,” Buddhism could be portrayed
as an acceptable religion for American audiences, as it was really a deep
philosophical analysis of our relationship to a god. For Murti, who was an
Advaita Vedāntist Hindu writing just after the end of British occupation,
Buddhism was Universalism which at its core displayed the Indian spiritual
genius. Buddhism, meaning a deep philosophy of critical analysis rather
than rituals and lineages, could be seen as the fount for not only Indian
spiritual development, but human religion more broadly. Scholars of Bud-
dhism across the globe used racecraft in order to imagine a Buddhism of the
past, which could simultaneously explain or change the future trajectory of
global politics.

Conclusion
Scholars attempted to define the central core of Buddhism in order to meas-
ure its supposed corruption, while also claiming that they had some stake
in the original greatness and purity. Scholars of Buddhism portrayed the
religion how they believed it ought to be, and fit the doctrines and practices
of the religion within their frames. For scholars of Buddhism from 1899
to 1957, portraying Buddhism “correctly” meant speaking for the Buddha
in the first person or editing sūtra texts to remove the parts which do not
conform to views on Buddhism. In many ways, scholars of this era were not
studying Buddhism at all, but portraying Buddhism as fitting into the Ar-
yan myth. For Murti, portraying Buddhism as the central philosophy of the
Indian mind, and therefore human historical development allowed Indian
history and Universalism to be portrayed as superior to Christianity and
“Western” history. Whether speaking for the Buddha, editing his words,
or simply ascribing what he ought to have meant, scholars of Buddhism
 Academia and Aryan ideology  79
during this time period viewed Buddhism through the lens of racecraft, and
therefore portrayed it to their own ends. Scholars of Buddhism would be
cited by Buddhist magazines in order to prove that the doctrinal interpre-
tations, and adaptations, being made followed scholarly views. However,
scholarly views on Buddhism at this time varied so widely, that one could
find academic backing for almost any portrayal of Buddhism. The one thing
everyone seemed to agree upon was the idea that the Buddha was an Ar-
yan. By portraying Buddhism as “the Aryan religion,” it meant that anyone
who claimed to be Aryan believed themselves to have some stake in Bud-
dhism and to be able to speak on its behalf. Whether European, American,
or Indian, scholars of Buddhism who claimed themselves to be genetically
connected to the founder of the religion were portrayed as able to speak for
the Buddha himself. This provides another example of the workings of race-
craft, as we can see that thinking becomes stunted, where opposing sides
agree upon the fundamentals but only disagree in form; racecraft was so
ubiquitous that few seemed to question the Aryan origins of the Buddha,
but were only concerned with what this Aryanism meant for the current
status of Buddhists.
Imagined communities can bind a group and create cohesion, but fol-
lowing the collective trauma of colonialism, this idealization of the past
has sometimes created unintended consequences. In Wretched of the Earth
Frantz Fanon argues that the bourgeoise of a previously colonized nation
will often attempt to replace the colonial class and recreate national myths
to place themselves in positions of power just as the imperialists did.87 In
Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson shows the way nations are im-
agined in order to create cohesion among individuals who will likely never
meet one another, and thus carry within themselves an imagined history of
the group which they play out in their own daily lives.88 Anderson claims
that a society will repeatedly recreate their founding myths in order to re-
inforce this homogeneous view of community. For Murti, the Aryan myth
of the Europeans could be replaced with a new formulation which placed
Asians as the true Aryans, thus making the “Asian mind” the central factor
in human religious development. By simply reformulating the existing Ar-
yan myth, Fanon argues that post-colonial academics are left with “insuffi-
cient material” to build a new culture, thus recreating the internal divisions
and racecraft fomented by colonial governments. In many nations who have
endured colonialism in the past, thinkers have continued to reformulate the
Aryan myth in order to prove their supposed greatness, often as a way to put
down ethnic minorities within their own culture. We can see the repeated
acting out of this Aryan myth which claims all religion as the product of a
singular “racial” mind in many nations today, including India. In the next
chapter, we turn from academics and other interlocutors to Buddhist uses
of racecraft specifically.
80 Academia and Aryan ideology
Notes
1 Donald S. Lopez, Jr. “Introduction,” in Curators of the Buddha: The Study of
Buddhism under Colonialism, ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr., (Chicago, IL: The Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1995), 1.
2 Samuel A. Cartwright, “Report on the Diseases and the Physical Peculiarities of
the Negro Race,” The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 7 (May 1851):
691–715.
3 Nell Irving Painter, The History of White People, (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2010), [Apple Books Version], 689–690.
4 Peter J. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, 3rd Edition, (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 2003), 308–310.
5 Sigmund Freud, “Moses and Monotheism: Three Essays,” in Freud—Complete
Works, ed. Ivan Smith, (E-Book Edition, 2010/Originally 1939), 4931.
6 Richard Noll, The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement, (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 6.
7 Ibid, 6.
8 Franz Aubrey Metcalf, “The Encounter of Buddhism and Psychology,” in West-
ward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia, ed. Charles S. Prebish and Martin Bau-
mann, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 351.
9 W.Y. Evans-Wentz, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or The After Death Experi-
ences of the Bardo Plane, according to Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English Ren-
dering, (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 511–512.
C.G. Jung, “Psychological Commentary on ‘The Tibetan Book of the Great
Liberation’,” in The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, ed. W.Y. Evans-Wentz,
(London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 476.
10 Noll, 1994, 78–79.
11 Ibid, 78–79.
12 Ibid, 129.
13 C.G. Jung, “The Role of the Unconscious (1918),” Civilization in Transition, Vol.
10, The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1970), 464.
14 Jung, (1918), 1970, 464.
15 C.A.F. Rhys Davids, ed., A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics of the Fourth
Century B.C., (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1900), 1.
16 C.A.F. Rhys Davids, Sākya or Buddhist Origins, (London: Kegan Paul, Tench,
Trubner and Co., 1931), 339.
17 C.A.F. Rhys Davids, Buddhist Psychology: An Inquiry in the Analysis and Theory
of Mind in Pāli Literature, (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1914), 194.
18 C.A.F. Rhys Davids, Gotama the Man, (London: Luzac, 1928), 68.
19 George Grimm, ed. M Keller-Grimm and Max Hoppe, The Doctrine of the
Buddha: The Religion of Reason and Meditation, (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,
1958/1926), 7.
20 Louis de la Vallée Poussin (1869–1938) and others argued that saṃtāna, or
“Mindstream” was the true Buddhist self. [Louis De La Vallée Poussin, The Way
to Nirvāna:̣ Six Lectures on Ancient Buddhism as a Discipline of Salvation, (Lon-
don: Cambridge University Press, 1917), 30.] Poussin uses the term Mindstream
̣
for samtāna, which means the connection between the moment-to-moment aris-
ing and ceasing of a singular being.
21 Max Müller, “On the Relation of the Bengali to the Arian and Aboriginal Lan-
guages of India,” in Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Sci-
ence, (London: R. & J.E. Taylor, 1847), 348.
22 J.G. Jennings argues that if the Buddha taught a doctrine of atman, karma, and
rebirth he would not have hesitated to teach his religion in India. [J.G. Jennings,
 Academia and Aryan ideology 81
The Vedāntic Buddhism of the Buddha: A Collection of Historical Texts Trans-
lated from the Original Pāli, (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1947), xxiv–xxvi.]
23 Ibid, 15.
24 Ibid, lxi.
25 Ibid, lix. The idea that Buddhism in its present form was the creation of
Devadatta, which is made by Jennings, suggests that modern Buddhism is cor-
rupted from its very base, as the real Buddha had little involvement in what we
know today. For a very simplistic comparison, this would be the equivalent of
saying that Judas Iscariot created what we now call Christianity today.
26 Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Uni-
versalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 2005), 1.
27 Edmond Hardy, “Notes on the Enlarged Text of the Mahävamsa, ̣ Extant in a
Kambodjan Manuscript,” Journal of the Pāli Text Society (1902–1903), (Lon-
don: Pāli Text Society, 1903), 69.
28 F. Otto Schrader, “On the Problem of Nirvāna,” ̣ Journal of the Pāli Text Society,
1904–1905, (London: Pāli Text Society, 1905), 158.
29 Ibid, 170.
30 Luis O. Gómez, “Oriental Wisdom and the Cure of Souls: Jung and the Indian
East,” in Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism, ed.
Donald S. Lopez, Jr., (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 263.
31 Jeff Wilson, Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Medita-
tion and American Culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 81.
32 Ibid, 77.
33 Ibid, 95.
34 Paul A. Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme
Court, and Buck v. Bell. (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
2008), 1.
35 Stephen Jay Gould, “Carrie Buck’s Daughter,” Natural History 111, no. 6 (July–
Aug. 2002/1984): 12.
36 Buck v. Bell 200 U.S. 274 (1927), 203; 207; 207.
37 Painter, 2010, [Apple Books Version], 1075.
38 Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution, (London: Penguin Books, 1965/1961),
83.
39 Gregory Michael Dorr, Segregation’s Science: Eugenics and Society in Virginia,
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 167.
40 Daniel Kelves, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Hered-
ity, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Reprint Edition, 1998), 109.
41 Painter, 2010, [Apple Books Version], 1046.
42 Ibid, 1071.
43 James Q. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making
of Nazi Race Law, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 2.
44 Ethan Blue, “The Strange Career of Leo Stanley: Remaking Manhood and Med-
icine at San Quentin Penitentiary,” Pacific Historical Review 78, no. 2 (2009): 210.
45 Lombardo, 2008, 274–275.
46 Painter, 2010, [Apple Books Version], 1080.
47 Kelves, 1998, 48–49.
48 Henry Herbert Goddard, The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-
Mindedness, (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1912), 14.
49 Nathaniel Deutsch, Inventing America’s Worst Family: Eugenics, Islam, and the
Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael, (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2009), 5.
50 Richard L. Dugdale, “The Jukes:” A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and He-
redity, also Further Studies of Criminals, (New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1877), 3.
82 Academia and Aryan ideology
51 Ibid, 1877, 70.
52 Richard L. Dugdale, “The Jukes:” A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and
Heredity, also Further Studies of Criminals, 5th Edition, (New York: G. P. Put-
nam’s Sons, 1895), 70.
53 The show was cancelled after just one season.
54 Kelves, 1998, 85.
55 Horace M. Kallen, Culture and Democracy in the United States: Studies in the
Group Psychology of the American People, (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924),
129.
56 Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, (Baton Rouge: Loui-
siana State University Press, 1980), 144–145.
57 Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1917/1889), 105–106.
58 Goddard, 1912, 71.
59 Allison C. Carey, “Gender and Compulsory Sterilization Programs in America:
1907–1950,” Journal of Historical Sociology 11, no. 1 (March 1998): 81. This state-
ment figured into the Presidential address of Amos Butler when he became head
of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections.
60 Elizabeth Rigotti, “The Indulgence of Professionalization: Adoption Services,
Maternity Homes, and Catholic Negotiations in American Society, 1895–1990,”
PhD Dissertation, (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University, 2019), 5.
61 J.G. Jennings, The Vedāntic Buddhism of the Buddha: A Collection of Historical
Texts Translated from the Original Pāli, (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1947), 489.
T.R.V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Mādhyam-
ika System, (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1955), 109.
62 Charles S. Hallisey, “Roads Taken and Not Taken in the Study of Theravāda
Buddhism,” in Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonial-
ism, ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr., (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press,
1995), 47. 31–62.
63 Galen Amstutz, “Limited Engagements: Revisiting the Non-Encounter between
American Buddhism and the Shin Tradition,” Journal of Global Buddhism 3
(2002): 1.
64 Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making
of the Alien in America, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 31.
Colleen Lye, America’s Asia: Racial Formation and Literature, 1893–1945,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 56.
65 Edward Conze, ed. Bruno Cassirer, Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies: Selected
Essays by Edward Conze, (London: Spottiswoode, Ballantyne, & Co., 1959), 17.
Conze was an Anglo-German Sanskritist who became interested in Theoso-
phy early in life before later joining the Communist Party in Germany to oppose
Hitler, which likely influenced his views on Buddhist supernaturalism, [Edward
Conze, The Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic, Part 1: Life and Letters, (Shelborne,
1979), 37].
66 A. Berriedale Keith, Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon, (London: Ox-
ford University Press, 1923), 251. Keith was a Scottish constitutional lawyer and
Indologist.
67 Ibid, 1923, 247.
68 Ibid, 247.
69 Grimm, ed. M Keller-Grimm and Max Hoppe, 1958/1926, 33.
70 Ibid, 33.
71 C.A.F. Rhys Davids blames Buddhagoṣa. C.A.F. Rhys Davids, ed., A Buddhist
Manual of Psychological Ethics of the Fourth Century B.C., (London: Royal Asi-
atic Society, 1900), 1.
 Academia and Aryan ideology 83
Murti pins the corruption on the Yogācāra thought of Asaṅga. Murti, 1955, 109.
72 Robert Bogdan Collection, “Eugenic Certificate,” Disability History Museum
(1924): https://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/lib/detail.html?id=2925
73 The Nuremberg Laws were similarly designed to prevent Jews from portray-
ing themselves as Aryan Germans. The idea of racially “passing” struck fear
in the hearts of many who attempted to retain a homogeneous society and is a
major root in the development of anti-Semitism. [Karen E. Fields and Barbara
J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, (London: Verso,
2012), 108.]
74 Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and “The
Mystic East,” (New York: Routledge, 1999), 128–130.
75 Ibid, 128. Radhakrishnan was the first Vice-President of India in 1952 and the
second President in 1962.
76 Murti, 1955, 20. Italics and diacritics in original.
77 Ibid, xxiv.
78 Jennings, 1947, xxiv.
79 Ibid, xxv.
80 Ibid, lxvi.
81 Ibid, xxv.
82 Murti, 1955, 3.
83 Ibid, ix.
84 Murti, 1955, 286.
85 King, 1999, 1.
86 Murti, 1955, 287.
87 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York: Grove Press, 1963),
151–152.
88 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism, (London: Verso, 2006/1983), 10.
4 Bioracism across Asia

Introduction
In America, Asian Buddhists were viewed as corrupting Buddhism, a
“once-pristine” tradition, which was asserted by academics studying Bud-
dhism, and racist presuppositions about the “Asian mind,” but they were
able to counter these myths using arguments that were considered to be
cutting- edge “science” in bioracist notions of Aryanism. As bioracism
spread throughout the world, Buddhists were able to utilize the internal
mythologies and reframed assumptions of white supremacy tied to Aryan-
ism to place themselves at the pinnacle of supposed hierarchies of “race.”
Aryanism provided Asian Buddhists a counter argument to prevailing no-
tions of “race” hierarchies which argued they were inferior, and instead
used Buddhism as an Aryanizing influence to claim superiority over Eu-
ropeans and North Americans, which were characterized by materialism.
Twentieth-century notions of codifying and defining “racial” characteristics
lead to essentialized thinking, whereby half the world was characterized
by materialism or spirituality, and superiority or inferiority. In Culture and
Imperialism Edward Said argues that any resistance which utilizes racecraft
“leads inevitably to an elitism of the intelligentsia, rooted in the vision of
a radical regeneration of national culture.”1 In The Wretched of the Earth
post-colonial theorist, psychiatrist, and revolutionary Frantz Fanon ar-
gues that nations who have dealt with colonialism will reframe precolonial
history, view international struggle as solidifying and purifying national
culture, and increasingly take on an international consciousness.2 Across
Asia, Buddhists were able to couple racecraft with their own tradition, or
at least the “Western” presentation of Buddhism, and draw upon their own
imagined history in order to promote themselves as biologically and spirit-
ually superior while also enlisting a new international consciousness. If the
international scientists being promoted throughout the world are saying Ar-
yans are somehow the pinnacle form of humanity, how could Buddhists not
turn this to their own advantage?
In so many ways, Orientalist scholarship and racecraft had combined to
empty the past of any connection to Asia or Buddhist tradition, which also
mirrored the colonial agenda to rob a nation of its history.3 Buddhists were
 Bioracism across Asia  85
able to counter that narrative by claiming that they were the true Aryans
and therefore reframing human history with Buddhists at the core of de-
velopment. Asian Buddhists were able to utilize a transnational publishing
network in order to reformulate colonial tropes with Buddhism and Asian
Aryans at the centre. In this chapter, I compare the use of Aryan Bud-
dhism in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), which was directly colonized by the British,
and Japan, which later functioned as a colonial power attempting to remake
Asia in its image. Each nation used Buddhism and racecraft in order to po-
sition themselves as the true Aryans which had dominated human history;
for the colonized nation, the Aryan myth served as “scientific proof” that
Buddhists were the most superior “race” and did not need colonial “aid,”
whereas for imperial Buddhists the Aryan myth proved that they were the
ones who should conquer Asia. Buddhists throughout Asia were able to
counter dominant colonial tropes to argue that they had not corrupted the
“pure Aryan tradition,” and were in need of help from the “real Aryans,”
but instead argued that they were the Aryans and that bioracism supposedly
proved that European and Americans were impostors spreading only pesti-
lence and violence. Buddhists were able to counter dominant colonial tropes
by positioning themselves as Aryans as well as using bioracism to connect
Europeans to Semites, which were viewed as negating the positive evolution-
ary work of the Aryans. Below, then, I analyse the writings of Ceylonese (Sri
Lankan) and Japanese Buddhists, with a particular focus on the 1920s and
1930s, or the lead-up to the Second World War; during this time period Bud-
dhist magazines utilized the myths of bioracism in order to reverse colonial
tropes about Asian corruption and position Aryan Buddhists as the central
factor for all human spiritual development. Promoting the Japanese “Yam-
ato race” as the purifiers of Buddhism who would recreate the former glory
of an Aryan spiritual tradition of “science” allowed Buddhists to claim that
they were responsible for all human development and should therefore be the
power to help Asians return to their former glory. I begin with the Boxer Re-
bellion and its subsequent coverage in American media which posited Asians
as inhuman and corrupt, not just in a singular instance, but as representative
of all human history. American media coverage sometimes portrayed those
of Asian ancestry as monstrous and inhuman. This perceived backwardness
was spread through biological imaginings of bioracism to represent a char-
acter trait of every individual with Asian blood throughout all of human
history; this was a time when Down’s syndrome was associated with Asian
ancestry! This chapter details the responses to historical portrayals of Asian
inferiority using Buddhism to reverse these tropes and suggest that colonial-
ism and “Western” powers represented the true danger to humanity.

The international yellow peril, or portraying

Asians as monsters
On 28 July 1900, Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization published a cover
story in response to the Boxer Rebellion in China with the caption “Is this
86  Bioracism across Asia
Imperialism?”4 The left side of the cover features Chinese men wearing the
long braid of hair, robes, and slippers associated with stereotypical Chinese
dress at the turn of the 20th century; however, the faces of the Chinese men
are monstrous, with wild eyes and gnarled teeth showing. The Chinese men
are flanked by heads on pikes; many are seen on pitchforks and other imple-
ments in the background, while the head of a young woman is carried in the
foreground placed on a rifle bayonet. In the monsters’ other hand, he holds
a sword with a curved blade, further showing his backwards nature. This
figure tramples an American flag which is covering the doll of a young girl;
this monstrous frame stomps on decency and innocence itself. His partner
in terror is another Chinese Boxer figure clad in black; his skin is even more
leathery and tight than his counter part, and his profile image reminds one
of a skull, but still featuring a wispy “Fu Manchu” goatee. This despicable
reaper kneels over a fallen young girl; she appears to be American and no
more than ten years old. The monstrous figure holds a knife directly above
her neck, pointing it down and about to strike; the picture is meant to ob-
fuscate the difference between the young girl’s hair, blood, and the stripes
of the American flag. Whether a murder has already taken place, or we are
witness to one, the ghastly Chinese are the perpetrators, and they feel no
shame or remorse at such heinous acts as child murder. From the right side
of the image, appear our saviours, President William McKinley and Un-
cle Sam. McKinley brandishes the sword of a cavalry officer, while Uncle
Sam pushes forth with a bayoneted rifle in one hand, and an American flag
in the other; in the white space between the strips of the American flag is
printed “Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness under Treaty Rights.”5
The addition of “treaty rights” to the common refrain of the Declaration
of Independence was added in response to the US Open Door Policy which
allowed for commercial expansion in Chinese ports, which partly contrib-
uted to the Boxer Rebellion. On the cover, as President McKinley readies
his sword to defeat the evil Boxers, we are assured that “no blow has been
struck except for liberty and humanity, and none will be.”6 In other words,
our initial question of whether or not this image represents imperialism
is already answered for us with a resounding “no.” The cover image from
Harper’s demonstrates the intense anti-Asian fears of Americans known as
the yellow peril. The Chinese, and by extension Asians more broadly, were
viewed as inhuman; not only does the monstrous portrayal of the figures
themselves display this, but the point is driven home as one man prepares to
brutally murder a child. No beings with the soul of humanity would stomp
on a child’s doll as she is stabbed; their monstrous and barbaric nature can
be seen in everything, from their eyes to their misshapen swords and the
decapitated heads on pikes. This cannot be imperialism, we are assured, as
America is striking a blow for decency and for safety; in fact, this is violence
done in the name of “humanity,” but does it not follow then that the Chinese
Boxers must not be human? In the United States, Asians were not viewed as
truly human, in the same capacity as Americans and were therefore viewed
 Bioracism across Asia  87
with intense suspicion and racism, but also the victims of racially motivated
violence. The United States promoted international fears of barbaric Asians
who did not respect human life, while enacting policies of violence against
Asian Americans domestically. By 1900, American citizens viewed Asians
as “racially” inferior, backwards, and barbaric; Buddhists across Asia at-
tempted to reverse these dominant tropes by utilizing Buddhism in combi-
nation with the most “cutting-edge science” of the day, which was bioracism
specifically in the form of the Aryan myth. Portrayals such as this one in
Harper’s Weekly should help to display the impetus for Buddhists to reverse
the narrative and portray themselves as civilized and religious, especially
during an era of intense colonization. For Asian Buddhists, they may have
seen themselves on the other side of the painting, being asked if America
represented imperialism. For Asian Buddhists, European and American
imperialism represented the true barbarity.
Buddhist presence in the United States can be traced to a few points of
initial contact including Chinese workers coming to Hawai’i (although it
was not a US territory until 1900) and California, Japanese immigrants fol-
lowing in the footsteps of the Chinese as they created more institutional
strength, or some scholars who place the beginning of Buddhist presence
with the famous translation of the Lotus Sūtra in the Transcendentalist jour-
nal, Dial or the Chicago World’s Parliament of Religions.7 The fact is, “Bud-
dhism” enters the United States through many avenues, depending on its
form and the location from which it originated. Chinese immigrants came
to Hawai’i and California beginning in the 1850s, but were met with massive
hostility.8 Chinese immigrants were included in all of the yellow peril para-
digms I have previously discussed, and in California they were particularly
the subject of persecution and exclusion at the hands of organized labour.
Unions particularly lobbied for Chinese exclusion, as they viewed Chinese
immigrants as “slaves” being brought to undercut American workers and
further enrich monopolists.9 This economic factor provided a further ad-
dition to the cauldron of racecraft as the Chinese, viewed as racially prone
to slavery and sexual perversion, were seen as taking all of the American
jobs as they were let into the country en masse. Politicians in Western states
began supporting the notion of Chinese exclusion on both sides of the aisle,
Republican and Democrat; the idea of Chinese exclusion was so popular on
the West Coast in 1876 that each candidate simply vied for the restrictionist
vote, rather than putting forth any alternative.10 Again, this culture of ani-
mosity resulted in actual violence as hundreds of Chinese communities were
literally “driven out,” with the entire community loaded onto trains and the
buildings razed; the pinnacle of this phenomenon came in 1885 and 1886
when 168 separate communities in the American West rounded up and drove
out their Chinese residents, erasing their very presence by burning homes
and personal belongings.11 This violence included the planting of bombs in
Chinese-run business, indiscriminate shootings, lynching, and arson. The
final result of this round of violence was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1888,
88  Bioracism across Asia
although this never actually stopped immigration as over 300,000 Chinese
citizens still immigrated to America between 1882 and 1943.12 Similarly,
ending Chinese immigration and literally driving residents out of town left
a shortage of cheap labour on Hawai’ian sugar plantations and Californian
fruit farms; rather than filling this labour shortage with domestic workers,
which was the supposed goal of the exclusion acts, business people searched
for new sources of nearly unpaid work.13 In many ways, the most direct result
of the Chinese Exclusion Act was the Gentleman’s Agreement with Japan in
1907 whereby Japan would restrict its own emigration of citizens looking to
work in America, and the United States would allow for immigration from
women and children in order to reunite families and allow for those already
residing in America. Due to persecution as well as the economic backing of
host institutions, Chinese immigrants did not create the same institutional
foothold as the Japanese in America. Japanese Buddhists created temples in
Hawai’i in the 1880s and San Francisco by 1899. Japanese immigrants to the
United States were able to create a more permanent institutional foothold in
the United States through the creation of institutions like language schools,
and economic strength especially in the fishing industry.
Japanese Buddhism has changed drastically over its long history, includ-
ing the proliferation of entirely new schools of thought. Traditionally, as
in the case of Nichiren or Shinran, these changes were undertaken during
periods of intense strife, pessimism, and dread, leading many Japanese Bud-
dhist groups to have a particular focus on mappō, or the age of declining
dharma, whereby “true Buddhism” will be forgotten and only simplified
forms can be practised, not with the goal of enlightenment per se, but re-
birth in a better age or location when it will be more suitable to practise the
dharma.14 In 1868, the Meiji Restoration began in Japan, whereby the new
emperor Meiji wanted to modernize Japan and shape it into a world power
as quickly as possible. This included bringing experts from Europe and the
United States to teach military strategy, technology, and science. The na-
tion underwent a vast transformation and quickly joined fads of modern
science, including new works on bioracism. The Meiji Restoration famously
upended a number of Japanese traditions, such as the end of the Shogunate
and Bushido culture more broadly, the centralization of Shinto as state reli-
gion, and the repression of Buddhism as a foreign influence.15 Meiji officials
labelled Buddhism as a foreign influence against the state religion of Shinto
and called for its removal from the nation. This followed the Tokugawa or
Edo Period described by Duncan Ryūken Williams in The Other Side of
Zen, when Buddhism had been in a state of decline; it was also portrayed
as superstitious and backwards by foreign emissaries and missionaries al-
lowed into Japan.16 The Meiji Era also marks the beginning of the flexing
of Japan’s international might, with the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895
and the surprise victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, which
truly set Japan as the “Britain of the East.”17 Following their victory in the
Russo-Japanese War, Japan signed trade deals with Britain, which angered
 Bioracism across Asia  89
the United States and became an ever greater player on the international
stage; this political reality was further buttressed by cultural tales of Asians
taking over the world to create ideologies of yellow peril.
In order to maintain position within a drastically changing society,
Japanese Buddhists were forced to adapt throughout the Meiji Era creat-
ing the new forms of shin bukkyō, or New Buddhism, which attempted to
bring religious doctrines in line with modern science.18 Japanese Buddhism
also incorporated Shinto shrines during this period as a way of positioning
the religion as patriotically Japanese. The results of shin bukkyō develop-
ment in the Meiji, and especially the Taishō Eras, created a Buddhism which
was more adapted to the laity with a focus on meditation, denigrated ritual
and superstition, and created a publishing boom for Japanese Buddhists,
especially writing in English.19 Shin bukkyō supported a number of reforms
which would align it with Buddhist Modernism, including rethinking tradi-
tional conceptions of the universe in Buddhist cosmology, like Jambudvīpa,
which originally presented earth as a humongous (sometimes golden) moun-
tain in the middle of a vast ocean, and creating a new focus on original Bud-
dhism, including missionary trips to India and Sri Lanka, as described by
Richard Jaffe.20 As part of the modernization process, Buddhists supported
many reforms which were viewed as “progressive” and “modern” in society,
including the Boy Scouts, temperance movements, and eugenics and biora-
cist “sciences.” Part of the modernization process also involved the study
of Japanese distinctiveness throughout history and its impact on Buddhist
literature. This is not the first time such mandates were undertaken, such
as during the Tokugawa Shogunate when kokugaku, or “national learning”
was instituted as a Shinto revival school which forced Buddhist monks,
viewed as corrupt and out of touch at the time, to study Japanese literature
and history in order to determine particularities about the people through-
out history.21 The movement advocated the removal of all foreign elements
from Japan, including Buddhism and Confucianism, and instead argued for
the primacy of imperial rule and a return to the practice of ancient Shinto.
The kokugaku movement was a Shinto intellectual school which focussed
on the unification of Japan through the strong personage of the emperor
and the study of Japanese history, combined with a philosophical model
that a return to that imagined historical simplicity would yield a positive
future for the people of Japan. This mode of thought provided foundations,
in some ways, for the movements which would come during the Meiji and
Taishō Eras, when Japanese Buddhists began to reinterpret Japanese his-
tory in order to unify what they viewed as a fractured Japan.
The place of Japan in the history of American relations with Asia and co-
lonialism more broadly is a unique one; the island nation was never colonized
and instead served as a colonial force throughout Asia. For the history of
Japanese and American political relations more broadly, I engage pertinent
examples throughout this chapter, rather than attempting to detail an entire
history of Japanese-American relations prior to the Second World War in
90  Bioracism across Asia
this section. For now, it is sufficient to say that Japanese Buddhist groups
had already dealt with internal pressures and had gained the ability for ad-
aptation and change at a time when their own government was demanding
reform. Many of the tools employed by the Japanese to further Aryanize
Buddhism through racecraft were forged during the Meiji Restoration.
However, Buddhists in Asia who were being forced to deal with colonial-
ism and “Western” incursion also utilized the rising ideology of bioracism
to use Buddhism as a countering force against the arguments of imperial-
ism by employing racecraft. Buddhists writing for American audiences and
Buddhists writing in America were reacting to the criticisms hurled against
them over the past 50 years and longer.22 Buddhism was accused of nihilism
and corruption tied directly to Asian “racial” degradation; as we can see
from the cover of Harper’s Weekly, and many other examples of anti-Asian
imagery in the United States, Asians were viewed as monstrously inhuman,
and seemingly beyond the pale of normal human behaviour. In light of this,
Buddhist intellectuals writing in English were motivated to use the most
modern “scientific” critiques being levelled against them, which meant bi-
oracism. Buddhism was thus Aryanized as a defence first, which seemingly
developed into a counter-offensive in the years leading up to the Second
World War. Below, I do not suggest that Buddhists actively promoted a
“holy war” as suggested by Victoria, but instead used the critiques made
available to them through their varying relations to colonialism in order to
counter dominant imperial tropes.

The “science” of anti-Semitism and colonial resistance

in South Asia
The island nation of Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon during the co-
lonial period, has been a Buddhist stronghold for millennia, and from the
turn of the 20th century became a regular pilgrimage site for Japanese Bud-
dhists seeking instruction in “original Buddhism.”23 Ceylon was directly
colonized by the British, whereas Japan was an imperial nation in its own
right; however, Sri Lankan Buddhist writers still promoted the Buddha and
themselves as Aryan, although in a very different tenor against colonial
powers. The polemics of particular lineages faded from view against a more
powerful common enemy in the form of European and North American
colonialism. It should also be noted that The Maha-Bodhi and the United
Buddhist World was expressly written in competition with the Pāli Text So-
ciety, meaning these represented the two forms of Buddhism being exported
from colonial Ceylon; both sources utilize arguments about an imagined
original Buddhism and the supposed Aryan pedigree of the Buddha, but
for the colonized writers in Ceylon, this Aryanism takes on a particular
tone of chauvinism and anti-Semitism. The Pāli Text Society promoted a
Buddhism of Aryanism, but this was only the supposedly uncorrupted Bud-
dhism, which academics claimed was corrupted later due to the influence
 Bioracism across Asia  91
of Asian Buddhists. Japanese Buddhists argued that Theravāda had no real
claim to being the original Buddhism, because the texts were all committed
to paper around the same time, so Mahāyāna could have just as easily repre-
sented this supposed true Buddhism. In Ceylon, they claimed they were Ar-
yans. Dharmapāla and others called for reform in Ceylon, and even said that
Mahāyāna countries like Japan could help them out in restoring Buddhism.
Ceylonese writers were less bothered with polemics between Theravāda and
Mahāyāna, and more concerned with distinctions between Aryans and the
British, or Buddhist and Christian. So for the colonized Ceylonese, the Jap-
anese were Aryan because they were Buddhist, but that was insufficient for
the Japanese because they were the imperialists. They were not colonized
Buddhists, but wanted to be perceived as the best Buddhists. Although aca-
demic assertions of historicity prevented Mahāyāna Buddhists from claim-
ing to be “original,” Aryanism allowed them to claim to be the supposedly
superior Buddhists for the world, regardless of lineage distinctions, which is
typical of Buddhist Modernism.
Anagārika Dharmapāla, and therefore Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) Buddhism
as a whole, was influenced by the teachings of the Theosophical Society
through his relationship with Colonel Henry Steele Olcott and Madame He-
lena Blavatsky; Dharmapāla met the pair when they took pansil in 1886, and
became a close companion, travelling with them to Japan in 1903 and 1913.24
Originally, Dharmapāla promoted the Theosophical Society as represent-
ing an imagined true Buddhism, while his own presentation of the dharma
was influenced by Theosophical language and belief in racecraft. As Ste-
phen Prothero has described, the relationship between Olcott and Dhar-
mapāla strained through the years, eventually breaking as Dharmapāla was
convinced that the Theosophists were actually working against the interest
of Ceylonese Buddhists.25 By 1905, Dharmapāla had become antagonistic
to the Theosophists and no longer wanted them representing Buddhism in
America, calling Annie Besant “chief among theosophic charlatans…who
deliberately misrepresent Buddhism.”26 Although Dharmapāla disavowed
the Theosophical Society, the doctrines of Theosophy continued to impact
his thought, as he wrote about the power of the Mahatmans in his personal
journals later in his life.27 In fact, Dharmapāla viewed the Mahatmans as an
ideal for human perfectibility, and provided the impetus for spreading Bud-
dhism to America as a way to push human evolution forward. For Dhar-
mapāla and other South Asian Buddhists, their nation was under colonial
British rule, while there seemed to be great global interest in Buddhism, it
seemed to come from academics like the Pāli Text Society who claimed to be
uncovering the supposed original Buddhism, or Theosophists who said they
were spreading an imagined uncorrupted Buddhism. In both cases, Asian
Buddhists themselves were disregarded as corrupting the Aryan Buddhism
discovered by “the West.”
Unlike Japanese Buddhists who came from a powerful nation embark-
ing on its own colonial path, with a deep sense of tradition including an
92  Bioracism across Asia
imagined recursive history which could be mined for patriotism, Sri Lankan
(Ceylonese) Buddhists had experienced years of imperial rule and the embar-
rassment of being internationally labelled as ignorant about the once-great
religion that the “race” had theoretically corrupted.28 Dharmapāla creates
a different argument for Buddhist Aryanism, as he posits Buddhist Aryani-
zation as a unifying force to bring the world’s Buddhists together against a
common enemy. In “Who are the Aryans,” Dharmapāla argues that Euro-
pean languages are actually Dravidian, rather than Aryan, and claims that
this means all Europeans are actually Mleccha, or the Sanskrit word for bar-
barians, and Europeans actually practise a religion of “Semitic animism.”29
Throughout historical bioracism, and in the doctrines of Theosophy,
the Semites are held as the perpetual enemy and antithesis to the Aryan.
Dharmapāla’s earlier writings utilize anti-British tropes to critique colonial
imposition, while Dharmapāla later begins to use anti-Semitism directly as
a masked critique of not only the British but “Western” imperialism and
chauvinism more broadly; by utilizing anti-Semitism and the Aryan myth,
Dharmapāla is able to concretize his own critiques as “science.”30 In other
words, by placing the British within the “Semitic” camp, while Buddhists are
in the “Aryan,” Asian superiority becomes a matter of history and “science”
simultaneously, or a matter of obvious fact. Anti-Semitism therefore has the
dual purpose of critiquing the imperial incursion of the British specifically
and tying this critique to larger patterns of “science” already deemed as
“fact.” Although Anagārika Dharmapāla has previously been understood
as a budding nationalist, his relation to bioracism helps us to nuance that
discussion by showing that his nationalism was “scientifically” based for
the time period; in other words, we may view Dharmapāla’s racecraft as
modernism. In Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed Donald
S. Lopez Jr. discussed some of Dharmapāla’s anti-Semitic writings against
the “West,” however by viewing this language within the development of
bioracism, we can see how the “science” of anti-Semitism was used to con-
cretize anti-colonial critiques while also apparently proving Asian Aryan
superiority.31
Buddhists living under colonial rule used the “science” of bioracism to
argue that they were actually the superior Aryans, while European imperi-
alists were inferior. As the British invaded and occupied Ceylon, supposedly
bringing the “best of civilization” in the form of technology and Christian-
ity, Dharmapāla wrote,

it is this religion fit for the apeman that European Christians want that
Buddhists should accept, and annually millions of money are being
spent to preach this tribal religion of a wild Semitic tribe to the Aryan
people of Ceylon.32

Dharmapāla placed the blame for this negative religion squarely on, “the
originators of the barbaric religion [the] Hebrews.”33 However, the Japanese,
 Bioracism across Asia  93
and their “Religion of Peace” are now under threat from “Western mate-
rialism and Christianity,” which are “built on the foundation of semitic
barbarism…like a parasite praying on other religions.”34 It was common
in anti-Semitism and bioracism to describe Jews as parasitic. As scholars
claimed that Buddhism was a superior religion due to its “racially superior”
founder, colonized Buddhists capitalized on this academic argument for
their own political aims to claim that imperial “assistance” was not wanted.
This colonial chauvinism was actually quite misplaced, as Asian Buddhists
claimed they were in fact “scientifically” superior, and could therefore take
care of themselves. In fact, Dharmapāla argued that European colonialism
was corrupting the Aryan nation as,

bestialism, alcoholism, and bastardism were the adjuncts of the sen-

sual civilization that was forced on the helpless races. Whisky, rum,
opium, syphilis, were the gifts of the European civilization that the
non-European races received from the unmoral pioneers of piracy…
the spirit of destructiveness is ingrained in the western mind, being the
result of their having imbibed the spirit of Jahwehism of the Old Tes-
tament of the Jews of Canaan. The unmoral civilization of the Semitic
tribes of Palestine.35

For Buddhists in South Asia, Buddhism was a superior religion according

to science because the Buddha was an Aryan and Jesus was a Semite; Dhar-
mapāla used bioracism to promote Buddhism and resist colonialism. Race-
craft allowed Dharmapāla to flip colonial tropes and “prove scientifically”
that Buddhists were superior against all encroachment. Through racecraft,
all of Asian history could be tied to the “race” of the Aryan founder, while
the colonial powers of Europe could all be relegated through their connec-
tion to a Semitic carpenter. For Dharmapāla, the supposed Aryan heredity
of the Buddha made all Buddhists into superior beings, but it was the Jap-
anese who would spread this theory out from the traditional homeland of
the religion to make Buddhism itself the Aryanizing force in human history.
As scholars from around the world looked to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India
in a search for an imagined pure original Buddhism, Buddhists attempted
to unite the Buddhist world under the power of Japan, the only “country
[that] escaped from the cunning of the European diplomat….Japan isolated
herself for nearly 300 years from European contact, and that had been her
salvation.”36 Japan was viewed as perpetuating the cause of Buddhism, and
therefore represented a form of hope for other colonized Asian Buddhists in
the 1920s and 1930s, as they,

were superior in patriotism to all other races on earth. European cun-

ning could not bring the children of the land of the rising Sun into the
darkness of European immorality. Alone Japan stood as a beacon of
light to the degenerate peoples of Asia.37
94  Bioracism across Asia
For European and North American bioracists, Asians represented back-
wardness and therefore fear, but for colonized Buddhists, bioracism proved
that the Japanese were in fact the saviours of the “darker races.”38 Written
in the Japanese magazine The Young East, in “An Appeal to Japanese Bud-
dhists” Dharmapala argued that, “with the introduction of Buddhism…
Japan became Aryanized,” placing the nation and its religion in a supe-
rior position to those who adopted the lesser “Semitic creeds” of Islam and
Christianity; Dharmapāla argued that colonialism and false Buddhism were
being spread by those who “call themselves Aryan,” while true Buddhism
should be spread across Asia by restoring it from the “pure Aryan form of
Buddhism from the Japanese storehouse.”39 Dharmapāla used the Aryan
myth and bioracist arguments wrought against Asians to prove the White
Man’s Burden, and instead flipped those arguments to place Buddhists and
Buddhism at the centre of human historical development. According to
Dharmapāla, Europeans could never help Asia because they were mired in
the backwardness of a Semitic creed; Europeans had misread the history of
Aryanism, and they were in fact the Dravidians.
Like Buddhist Studies academics, Dharmapāla held the Buddha was ra-
cially superior, and posited Buddhist philosophy as a foundational stone
for the development of humanity, but from within his colonized framework,
he argued that this is proof of Asian superiority against British colonial
forces. Buddhism was presented as an anti-colonial force of resistance for
Dharmapāla as he attempted to unite the Buddhist world around the sin-
gular location of the Maha-Bodhi temple. Dharmapāla expressly compares
the Maha-Bodhi temple to Mecca and argues for the importance of having
a singular unified location of Buddhist worship; this singular location is
similar to scholars of Buddhism during this time period attempting to find
a “central philosophy” which would essentialize Buddhist doctrines. Across
Asia, various Buddhist movements were contending with colonialism re-
sulting in the adaptations we normally define as Buddhist Modernism, from
Taixu in China to Ledi Sayadaw in Burma. However, the most important
player for the history of Asia during the first half of the 20th century, as well
as for Buddhism, was Japan.

The study of Japanese distinctiveness in Buddhism

In the Taisho Period, following Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese
War and still feeling the influence of anti-Buddhist thought percolated
in the Meiji Era, Buddhists began writing tracts about the place of Bud-
dhism in Japanese history which promoted the religion as domesticated,
active, and patriotic. Nihonjinron literally translates to “theories/discus-
sions about the Japanese,” but it relates to a genre of texts which focus on
defining Japanese national and cultural identity through the study of a dis-
tinctive essence of “Japaneseness.” The study of Nihonjinron is historically
 Bioracism across Asia  95
connected to Kokugaku learning, but became increasingly important dur-
ing the Meiji persecutions of Buddhists, and finally reached its pinnacle
beginning in the Japanese colonial era of the 1930s. This period of war
promotion through the study of nihonjinron is sometimes referred to as
kurai tanima, or “dark valley,” by Japanese historians.40 The descriptor
of the Japanese as self-less, fitting the Buddhist notion of anatman and
the nationalist State Shinto, is most predominant in historical vignettes,
presented in numerous publications, describing the extraordinary acts of
historical Japanese citizens. These vignettes represent perhaps the most
obvious example of historical reimagination for the purposes of parallel-
ing modern social biases. Military heroism was used as proof of Buddhist
“selflessness” and Japanese spirit, as in “Self-Effacing Life of the Late
General Nogi” who died a “Noble Death” in the Russo-Japanese War, and
displayed “noble deeds before the eye of the world’s powers [proving] what
the sons of Yamato are capable of.”41 In a bold claim for Buddhists, Mita
states, “the letters written by the late General Nogi prior to his death show
that he had attained enlightenment and had been fully prepared to meet
death.”42 M. Mita then describes the officer’s conduct at home, his mod-
esty and simplicity, and his patriotism and devotion to the Emperor, which
were all viewed as signs of his self-less attitude and Yamato spirit. Through
the use of Nihonjinron, Japanese character and even gender could be ide-
alized and romanticized such as in “A Representative Woman of Japan,”
which characterizes the innate qualities of devotion to Emperor, Buddha,
and family of a Japanese woman.43 This idealized Japanese woman lives a
“self-less life” by engaging in the “samurai spirit bequeathed to her both by
her parents and husband”; her life is given meaning by sending her children
to war.44 Nihonjinron is the belief in a defined core characteristic for Jap-
aneseness which was promoted during the Meiji Era in order to separate
a unified Japan, with Buddhism and Shinto together, against perceived
outsiders, including China, the United States, and Europe. Lala Har
Dayal (1884–1939) was an Indian polymath and social revolutionary who
is quoted repeatedly in Japanese Buddhist magazines; in 1927 he wrote,
“the Japanese are great in every sense of that word – great because of their
patriotism, their love of progress, their earnestness, their energy, their tra-
dition of art, and their deep religious view of life.”45 Japanese Buddhists
used Nihonjinron to counter their perceived liminal state, not only in Ja-
pan but also in the United States. A globalized network of bioracism and
colonialism allowed Buddhists to counter dominant tropes about “true
Buddhism.”
The study of nihonjinron allowed Buddhist writers to create ideological
defences against multiple lines of attack, including domestic persecution
as well as external forces.46 Scholars of Buddhism posited that Japanese
forms of Buddhism, especially the Pure Land Jōdo schools represented
the ultimate corruption of Buddhism. Galen Amstutz and others have
96  Bioracism across Asia
detailed the Orientalism and colonial tropes used to denigrate Pure Land
philosophy and the biases of scholars studying it in the 19th and 20th cen-
turies.47 The agnostic tradition of philosophy posited by scholars as Aryan
Buddhism was held against the “corrupted” tradition of salvation through
“other-power” in Pure Land Buddhism, which allowed scholars to view
Japanese Buddhism as the endpoint of Buddhist corruption. In many ways,
it seems as if Orientalist disdain for Pure Land Buddhism came from its
supposed similarities to Christianity, as scholars argued Aryan Buddhism
was a “self-power” tradition without the need for a salvationary interloc-
utor. Japanese Buddhists found their religion under attack from within
Japan as well as from outside forces, creating an impetus to adapt Bud-
dhist presentation to answer the arguments of these detractors. American
racecraft provided a useful way for intellectuals to adapt earlier notions of
“Japaneseness” to the “science” of the “Yamato race.” For the Japanese,
counter arguments to these attacks had already been formulated beginning
with kokugaku and later switching to nihonjinron. Buddhists were also able
to find useful explanations for their place in history using both emic doctri-
nal arguments as well as modern science.
When Japanese Buddhists attended the Columbian Exposition in 1893,
part of the World’s Parliament of Religions at the Chicago World’s Fair,
Japan was discouraged by perceived mistreatments at the hands of Amer-
ican diplomats.48 Japan was being treated as an underdeveloped nation
internationally, while their customs, religion, and “race” were insulted,
leading to widespread resentment. The World’s Fair was an “object les-
son” in “Social Darwinism,” as the booths were set up to mirror bioracist
evolution ending with European Christianity as the pinnacle for human
development.49 The Japanese attended the Columbian Exposition with a
two-pronged approach in order to portray Japanese Buddhism as superior
to other forms of Buddhism and Western philosophy.50 Japanese Buddhists
used the teaching of the five periods, derived from Tendai Buddhism as
well as the defining of Mahāyāna Buddhism as philosophical Idealism to
promote their own religious superiority. According to the five periods doc-
trines of the Lotus Sūtra, Buddhism was initially preached by the Buddha
at a low-level because his followers were not advanced enough to hear the
true doctrine; the religion progressed and spread out from its homeland
until the Buddha met the most advanced people on earth in its most east-
ern corner, where he taught the full version of Buddhism, which could all
be contained within a singular vehicle, or Ekayāna.51 Japanese Buddhists
used emic arguments derived from the Lotus Sūtra to position themselves
as the most superior Buddhists; this Buddhism, they argued using Western
academic sources, was a superior philosophy of mind that lay the founda-
tion for Western thinking, but only reached its pinnacle when it came into
contact with Japanese “racial” greatness.
As Japanese intellectuals worked to define the origins of the “samurai
spirit” of selflessness, respect, and honour in every Japanese citizen, the
 Bioracism across Asia  97
nation of Japan embraced the modernizing influence of bioracism.52 Zen
Buddhists, most notably Shaku Sōen in Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot, or Zen
for Americans and D.T. Suzuki as well as Bushido: The Spirit of the Samurai
by Inazo Nitobe all represent this recurring trope. Sōen presented Bushido
as Zen, both of which were one and the same with Japaneseness or nihon-
jinron; the Bushido was said to be selfless and courageous, at total calm due
to the cutting off of clinging to an ego-soul. According to Sōen, “I firmly
believe that what makes Oriental culture so unique is due to the emphasis
laid upon patriotism, filial piety, faithfulness, and abnegation of self.”53 The
Bushido spirit was an important part of popularizing Zen in America as
Bushido by Nitobe was reprinted over 100 times in 12 languages, and Ser-
mons of a Buddhist Abbot, which was the first English work on Zen continues
to be recommended on Buddhist reading lists.

“The Yamato Race” in Japan and beyond

Perhaps the most important modern “science” of the day, which had been
popularized throughout America and beyond, through a spreading hegem-
ony of American distinctiveness, including shaping government policy, was
eugenics. When scholars of Buddhism say that Japanese Buddhism em-
braced aspects of “science” in the 1920s, they are also referring to jinshukaiz-
engaku, or the “science of race betterment,” which could be enacted through
yŭseigaku, or the “science of superior birth.”54 One of the most popular
publications in Japan throughout the 1920s and 1930s was Yŭsei Undŏ, or
“Eugenics Movement.”55 This hegemonic spreading of Japanese superiority
through the avenues of bioracism, as well as art, literature, and education
were defining characteristics of the Japanese imperial project.56 Examples
of Japanese cultural influence include the operation of Yamato Hotels, a
chain of hotels in Manchuria along the Japanese-run SMRC rail line, whose
slogan was “Carrying the Light of Civilization.”57 Japanese painters and
authors also produced works in the 1930s and 1940s which supported the
ideology of Japanese superiority.58 The Japanese form of the eugenics craze
was spread across Asia as Japan colonized nations. For instance, in the first
issue of Yŭsei Undŏ, there is a picture spread featuring the faces of a “Chi-
nese Public Servant” contrasted with a “Japanese Warrior” to show that
distinctive features such as cranial shape, nose width, and skin complexion
make the Chinese uniquely suited to menial tasks and bureaucracy versus
the independent fighting spirit of the Japanese. The term Yamato means
“great,” and is theoretically derived from a Chinese word which was used
to refer to the inhabitants of the island of Japan. However, beginning in the
1880s, the term became associated with eugenics to mean a “race” of “pure
blood” derived from Japanese national interiority prior to the 20th century.
Although the idea of the Japanese as “Yamato” people has endured for cen-
turies, bioracism allowed the Japanese to use racecraft, transforming them-
selves into the pure “Yamato Race,” which was scientifically, spiritually,
98  Bioracism across Asia
and technologically superior; the concretization of this scientific fact pro-
vided further justification for Japanese imperial policy.
Internationally, bioracism spread throughout transnational networks,
including within North America. Even beyond Asia, the magazine Tairiku
Nippô was an issei (first generation) Japanese-Canadian magazine which
promoted the superiority of the “Yamato race” and promoted the Emperor
as a “racial” role model which was used to justify the invasion of Manchuria
in 1931.59 By the Second World War, the Japanese government tied their
victory specifically to racial superiority, as in the 1943 plan to invade and set
up pan-Asiatic control written by the Japanese government called, Yamato
Minzoku wo Chūkaku to suru Sekai Seisaku no Kentō or “An Investigation
of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus” which specifically cites
American bioracists, as well as Nazi German social scientists, and Western
philosophers like Plato and Aristotle.60 The document also contains a dis-
cussion about what will be done regarding “the Jewish Question,” with the
inclusion of multiple anti-Semitic propaganda cartoons and multiple uses of
the phrase “blood and soil.” Part of Japan’s modernization process included
developing fields of scientific inquiry; from 1899 to 1957 bioracism in the
form of eugenics was considered a form of “science.” Even after the Sec-
ond World War, bioracism continued to inflict violence upon Japanese cul-
ture as the Eugenic Protection Law which was signed in 1948 to prevent the
birth of “eugenically inferior offspring,” which was only replaced in Japan
by the Maternal Protection Law, signed 1996. However, sterilization was
practised far less in Japan than in the United States or Germany, or even
Norway or Sweden for that matter, who sterilized 40,000 and 63,000 people
respectively.61 For the Japanese to become “modern” and to become “West-
ernized” they needed to include racecraft. The Japanese, and Japanese Bud-
dhists in particular, already had a history of adapting their presentation
to suit the whims of the government and the demands of society through
kokugaku, nihonjinron, and shin bukkyō, which made them particularly pre-
pared for the incursion of bioracism and the “Yamato race.”
Japanese Buddhists used these arguments to add Buddhist justification to
theories of “racial” superiority and colonialism, as well as the militarism of
the Showa Period and the violence of the Second World War. In the pages
of Buddhist magazines written in Japan and in North America, the Yam-
ato and Aryan “race” were used interchangeably to mean the Japanese and
Buddhists. This point was solidified spiritually and politically as Anagārika
Dharmapāla declared “with the introduction of Buddhism…Japan became
Aryanized,” while Adolf Hitler bestowed the political title of “Honorary
Aryans” on all Japanese people, stating

I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to

ourselves…Indeed, I believe the more steadfast the Chinese and the
Japanese remain in their pride of race, the easier I shall find it to get on
with them.62
 Bioracism across Asia  99
Bioracism spread across the globe, creating an ideology of “scientific”
legitimation.
Bioracism was spreading throughout the world at precisely the moments
when nations needed justification for invasion and imperialism, or as in the
case of Ceylon a counter argument to resist colonialism. In Darwin, Dharma,
and the Divine G. Clinton Godart details the history of bioracism in Japan
and its impact on Japanese pre-war totalism; Godart says that many his-
tories have posited a direct “Darwin to Pearl Harbour” trajectory but he
argues that bioracism can actually be viewed as part of a larger network
of Japan’s modernization process. Godart writes that “social evolutionary
theory (shakai shinkaron)” became ubiquitous in Japan, so that the anti-
religious socialists on the left and Buddhist, Shinto, and Christian groups
on the right agreed of a possible oncoming utopia through evolution.63
Racecraft ideology was being spread all over the world as bioracism, and in
many cases leading to the seemingly logical conclusion in an oncoming uto-
pia based on “scientific purification.” The history of pre-war Japan has been
analysed in a myriad of ways, including through the lens of religion. A great
deal of this history focusses on Japanese military expansion, both through
earlier victories in the Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War, and
through imperial expansion in Korea (1910) and Manchuria (Manchuokuo,
or China, 1932). In religious studies, Donald S. Lopez, Jr. discussed the
anti-Semitic rhetoric of Dharmapāla in Buddhism and Science, while Judith
Snodgrass, Robert Sharf, and others have detailed chauvinistic presenta-
tions of Japanese Buddhism prior to the Second World War. However, if we
view these phenomena through the lens of racecraft, which shows us how
bioracism was used to modernize Buddhism and connect it with “science,”
then we can gain further insights on the development of this stream in Bud-
dhist Modernism.
By engaging bioracist ideology, which was being spread all over the
world, Buddhists were able to entrench themselves as a “scientific reli-
gion” while also being provided counter arguments against criticism and
imperial encroachment. At a time when bioracism was so globally ubiq-
uitous, especially in the prosperous “West,” it becomes more evident why
racecraft was included with religious intellectual understandings. For
Buddhists in Japan, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), as well as other parts of Asia,
Buddhism provided a ready-made language of resistance to narratives of
inferiority. Buddhism could guard against the “political chicanery” of the
inferior “West,” which had seen China “reduced to imbecility” and left
India “a starving skeleton.”64 Rather than viewing discussions of anti-
Semitism across Asia as separated and marginal incidents, I argue that
they represent the utilization of racecraft in order to promote a particular
form of Buddhist Modernism. Bioracism allowed Buddhism to fit more
comfortably within discussions of “modern science,” and further allowed
them to make claims as Aryans and create space for themselves against
the incursion of European and North American forces who claimed to be
100  Bioracism across Asia
the true Aryans, who even held the knowledge of an imagined Buddhism
beyond corruption.

Conclusion
The 1910s and 1920s represent periods of intense colonialism and spreading
notions of bioracism, but Buddhists were able to capitalize on the favoura-
ble position of Buddhism in the “West” to reverse these tropes. Buddhists
such as Anagārika Dharmapāla were able to reframe imperial and racist de-
bates regarding the supposed natural positioning of peoples on an imagined
hierarchy in order to make Aryan Buddhists superior in comparison to the
British, who were actually genetically inferior through their connection to
Jesus. This was not simply a racist fantasy, but was considered “science”
being spread by powerful nations; Buddhists were able to capitalize on this
bioracism in order to reverse these colonial tropes and argue that they were
the true Aryans. In The White Buddhist, Stephen Prothero described the
relationship between Dharmapāla and Theosophists, which is likely where
he got a great deal of his Aryan evolutionary language.65 However, as time
goes on and Dharmapāla disavows the Theosophists, his language takes on
increasingly sophisticated uses of bioracism as a way to criticize colonial
occupation “scientifically,” which was often presented as anti-Semitism.
Dharmapāla’s specific use of anti-Semitism and bioracism has been detailed
by Lopez in Buddhism and Science; however, this chapter shows the contin-
ued development of Dharmapāla’s racecraft within a larger transnational
Buddhist network. In Seeking Śākyamuni, Richard Jaffe details the history
of Japanese Buddhists travelling to Ceylon and India in order to learn more
about “original” Buddhism in the homeland of the Buddha. Japanese Bud-
dhists were not simply tourists pilgrims, but they were also on an ideological
mission whereby learning about a supposed original Buddhism would help
them to refine their own arguments for Japanese Buddhist superiority, and
to position themselves as the protectors of the best form of Aryan Dharma.66
Buddhist uses of Aryanism were not limited to Dharmapāla, but spread
through a transnational network of Buddhist intellectuals who were writing
and travelling throughout Asia during this period of overwhelming impe-
rialism and racism. Dharmapāla’s use of Aryanism to promote Buddhism
and reverse colonial tropes is part of a larger story of Buddhist bioracism
throughout Asia, and the developing notions of superiority which contrib-
uted to the further developing of racecraft. Japan was never colonized but
was instead an imperial power leading into the Second World War; Japanese
Buddhists did not cheer the war effort, but they did provide, wittingly or
unwittingly, doctrinal justifications for imperial power using the supposed
“science” of bioracism, which simultaneously helped to modernize the reli-
gion through perceptions of Buddhism and science. In the next chapter, we
focus more specifically on the doctrinal adaptations and ideological build of
pre-war Japan using Buddhism and bioracism, beginning with a re-telling
of the discovery of America, far before 1492.
 Bioracism across Asia 101
Notes
1 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 217.
2 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York: Grove Press, 1963),
207–208.
3 Ibid, 210–211.
4 William A. Rogers, “It this Imperialism?,” Harper’s Weekly 44, no. 2275 (July 28,
1900): cover.
5 Ibid, cover.
6 Ibid, cover.
7 Jeff Wilson, Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Medita-
tion and American Culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 15.
Judith Snodgrass, Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism,
Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition, (Chapel Hill: The University of
North Carolina Press, 2003), 1.
8 Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making
of the Alien in America, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 5.
9 Ibid, 19.
10 Ibid, 45.
11 Ibid, 1.
12 Ibid, 9.
13 Historically, American economic success was based largely on finding new
sources of unpaid labour. For more discussion on the role of economic greed in
the perpetuation of slavery, see: Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Race-
craft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, (London: Verso, 2012), 111.
See also: Chapter 3, “White Slavery,” in Nell Irving Painter, The History of White
People, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010), [Apple Books Version], 157.
14 Kazuo Kasahara, A History of Japanese Religion, (Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Co.,
2001), 191.
15 James Edward Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and
Its Persecution, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 5.
16 Duncan Ryūken Williams, The Other Side of Zen: A Social History of Sōtō
Zen Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2005), 5.
17 Colleen Lye, America’s Asia: Racial Formation and Literature, 1893–1945,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 23. Bioracists asserted that
the innermost land-locked sections of the map held Asia’s greatest treasures,
suggesting Tibet or Central Asia. This would also follow myths of Theosophy
regarding the location of the Mahātmāns government.
18 Notto R. Thelle, Buddhism and Christianity in Japan: From Conflict to Dialogue,
1854–1899, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987), 220.
19 Judith Snodgrass, “Publishing Eastern Buddhism: D.T. Suzuki’s Journey to
the West,” In Casting Faiths: Imperialism and the Transformation of Religion
in East and Southeast Asia, ed. Thomas David Dubois, (New York: Palsgrave
Macmillan, 2009), 47.
20 Richard M. Jaffe, Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern
Japanese Buddhism, (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2019), 5.
21 Mark McNally, Proving the Way: Conflict and Practice in the History of Japanese
Nativism, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 260. This school of
thought developed when public perception of Buddhism was low with the monks
considered corrupt and out of touch.
22 Donald S. Lopez, Jr. From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha,
(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2013).
Urs App, The Cult of Emptiness: The Western Discovery of Buddhist Thought
and the Invention of Oriental Philosophy, (Rorschach: UniversityMedia, 2012).
102 Bioracism across Asia
23 Jaffe, 2019, 10.
24 Stephen Prothero, The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steele
Olcott, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 5; 10.
25 Anagarika Dharmapala, “Theosophical Falsehood,” The Maha-Bodhi and the
United Buddhist World 17, no. 1 (January 1909): 7. Annie Besant became presi-
dent of the Theosophical Society-Adyar in 1908.
26 Ibid, 7.
27 Steven Kemper, Rescued From the Nation: Anagarika Dharmapala and the
Buddhist World, (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 52.
28 Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, (Chicago,
IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 15.
29 Anagarika Dharmapala, “Who Are the Aryans,” The Maha-Bodhi and the
United Buddhist World 28, no. 7 (July 1920): 123. Scholars generally separated
the world into Aryan and Semitic [Olender, 1992, 5].
30 This idea comes directly from a conversation with Dr. Alicia Turner of York
University. I would like to especially thank Dr. Turner for her collegiality and
assistance in working through these ideas.
31 Lopez, 2008, 74.
32 Anagarika Dharmapala, “The Religion of the Ape Man,” The Maha-Bodhi and
the United Buddhist World 29, no. 2 (February 1921): 63, 65.
33 Ibid, 63.
34 Anagarika Dharmapala, “The Future of Buddhism in Japan,” The Maha-Bodhi
and the United Buddhist World 29, no. 3 (March 1921): 98–99.
35 Anagarika Dharmapala, “The Reconciliation of Religion and Science,” The
Maha-Bodhi and the United Buddhist World 28, no. 7 (July 1920): 116.
36 Anagarika Dharmapala, “Buddhism and Politics,” The Maha-Bodhi and the
United Buddhist World 29, no. 1 (January 1921): 2–3.
37 Ibid, 2–3.
38 Ernest Allen, Jr., “When Japan Was ‘Champion of the Darker Races:’ Sato-
kata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism,” The Black
Scholar, Black Cultural History 24, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 23.
39 The Anagarika Dharmapala, “An Appeal to Japanese Buddhists,” The Young
East 3, no. 6 (November 1927): 192. The Young East was a Japanese- Buddhist
publication created by the Young Buddhist Association. The magazine ran from
1925–1944.
40 Thomas R.H. Havens, Valley of Darkness: The Japanese People and World War
Two, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978), 5.
41 M. Mita, “Self-Effacing Life of the Late General Nogi,” The Young East 4, no. 2
(July 1928): 51.
42 Ibid, 51.
43 Hanso Tarao, “A Representative Woman of Japan,” The Young East 4, no. 2
(July 1928): 55.
44 Ibid, 55. “A Representative Woman of Japan” is on the page following the tale of
General Nogi.
45 Har Dayal, “The Mission of the Japanese Buddhists,” Young East 3, no. 1 (June
1927): 11.
46 Eugène Burnouf, Katia Buffetrille and Donald S. Lopez, Jr., trs. Introduction to
the History of Indian Buddhism, (Introduction à L’Histoire du Buddhisme Indien),
(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2010/1876), 497. “La plume se
refuse à transcrire des doctrines aussi misérables, quant à la forme, qu’odieuses
et dogradanues pour le fond.”
47 Galen Amstutz, “Limited Engagements: Revisiting the Non-Encounter between
American Buddhism and the Shin Tradition,” Journal of Global Buddhism 3
(2002): 1.
 Bioracism across Asia 103
48 Snodgrass, 2003, 1.
49 Ibid, 1.
50 Ibid, 5.
51 Ibid, 198. Eastern Buddhism was the term Japanese Buddhists coined in order to
separate themselves from the traditional bifurcation of Southern and Northern
Schools of Buddhism.
52 G. Clinton Godart, Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine: Evolutionary Theory and
Religion in Modern Japan, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017), 6.
53 Shaku Soyen, Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot (Zen for Americans): Addresses
on Religious Subjects, (Chicago, IL: The Open Court Publishing Company,
1906), 104.
54 Jennifer Robertson, “Blood Talks: Eugenic Modernity and the Creation of New
Japanese,” History and Anthropology 13, no. 3 (2002): 191. Japanese scientists
began eugenic investigations into the concept of “pure blood” as early as 1880.
55 Ibid, 191.
56 Annika A. Culver, Glorifying the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in
Manchukuo, (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013), 15.
57 Ibid, 19; 17.
58 Ibid, 59.
59 Aya Fujiwara, “The Myth of the Emperor and the Yamato Race: The Role of
the Tairiku nippô in the Promotion of Japanese-Canadian Transnational Ethnic
Identity in the 1920s and the 1930s,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Associ-
ation 21, no. 10 (2010): 37.
60 Godart, 2017, 189.
61 Ibid, 268, fn. 128.
62 Christian W. Spang and Rolf-Harald Wippich, eds. Japanese-German Relations,
1895–1945: War, Diplomacy, and Public Opinion, (New York: Routledge, 2006), 2.
63 Godart, 2017, 121.
64 Dharmapala, January 1921, 4.
65 Prothero, 2010, 5.
66 Jaffe, 2019, 151.
5 Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s
foundation

Introduction
In the 1920s and 1930s, to talk of “Buddhism and science” included no-
tions of bioracism and the Aryan myth. These racist notions of “science”
were spread throughout a transnational publishing network which included
justifications for colonial domination from European and North Ameri-
can powers, such as academic studies, but were also used by Buddhists to
reverse these tropes and posit Buddhism as an Aryanizing influence that
would actually transcend “race.” These networks spread from Ceylon (Sri
Lanka) to Japan through travel networks of Buddhists and Theosophists,
as well as trade, magazines, and other sources. As part of larger discus-
sions of “Buddhism and science,” Buddhist writers interpreted doctrine
through interpretations of Aryanism and bioracism. In the previous chap-
ter, Buddhists used the concretizations of supposed science to critique
imperial incursion and promote Buddhism as an Aryanizing force, which
could overturn the inferiority posited by bioracism. In this chapter I ana-
lyse the doctrinal adaptations and interpretations of bioracism discussed
in Buddhist publications. By doctrinal adaptations, I mean that Buddhists
were interpreting their doctrines through the lens of what was perceived to
be the most cutting- edge science of the day. Through this interpretation,
Buddhists were able to transform their religion from one which was once
perceived as backwards to a tradition which was synonymous with scientific
development itself. As such, I analyse a number of publications, produced in
Japan in English and shipped to America such as The Eastern Buddhist by
D.T. Suzuki, The Young East, as well as those produced in America, includ-
ing Zen by Dwight Goddard and Cat’s Yawn by Sokei-an, among others. In
Global Origins of the Modern Self, from Montaigne to Suzuki, Avram Alpert
argues that D.T. Suzuki should be viewed as part of a global movement of
thinkers, rather than simply as a Japanese partisan.1 In articles like “D.T.
Suzuki and the Nazis” Brian Victoria has repeatedly accused Suzuki of
cheering the Japanese war effort and promoting fascist interpretations of
Buddhism.2 It is important to note that Suzuki’s interpretations changed
throughout his lifetime, but in this chapter I focus largely on the period
 Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation  105
which has been labelled the era of “nationalist Suzuki,” or during the pre-
war period in Japan up till the post-war era of the 1950s.3 However, by fo-
cussing specifically on Japanese Buddhist uses of bioracism and the Aryan
myth, we can see that Japanese Buddhists were not actively cheering the war
effort in a vacuum, but were providing intellectual justifications utilizing
arguments perceived as cutting- edge “science” at the time.
I begin with an “alternative history,” described in Buddhist magazines,
of the discovery of America whereby Japanese Buddhists were the first to
make the discovery, long before Christopher Columbus. Buddhists used the
Aryan myth to position themselves as the founders of human spirituality
and philosophy more broadly, which allowed them to claim ownership of
all progress, including the discovery of America. Rather than accepting
the assertions of supposedly Aryan Americans, Japanese Buddhists argued
that not only were they the true Aryans, but that they were also the ones
who discovered America first. If Buddhists were responsible for the devel-
opment of spirituality in human history, then they would be the most ideally
positioned to spread religion and civilization throughout Asia, rather than
colonial powers. Japanese Buddhists used bioracism to argue that they were
the “superior race” and not “the West” or Christianity. In the 1930s, one
Buddhist source presented a new history for the discovery of America.

The Buddhist discovery of America

Buddhist sources in America presented an alternative history to the nar-
rative which many learned in school. According to Buddhist sources in the
1930s, ancient Aryans were adept in boat-making technology which was far
beyond that which was available in Europe during the Dark Ages. These
ancient Aryans set out across the ocean to spread Buddhism; they used their
advanced maps and boats to reach new lands. When Buddhists reached the
first island of the Western Hemisphere they decided to stop and create a
temple for the Aryan Buddhas of the past. These gigantic statues utilized
technologies far beyond the comprehension of the inferior natives, which
serves as proof that these religious statues came from outside. The ancient
Aryan Buddha statues can still be found today on Easter Island. The Aryan
Buddhists then continued their journey to modern-day Mexico; proof of
this can be found in the names of places like Oaxaca, which sources claim
as a mistranslation of Śākya, for Śākyamuni Buddha. According to this leg-
end, Buddhists were actually responsible for the discovery of “the West”
and accomplished this task long before the European Christopher Colum-
bus, who was Italian and not Aryan. According to Buddhist sources, this is
why “almost every vessel found adrift or stranded on the coast of the Ameri-
cas, or on the Hawaiian or adjacent islands has on examination proved to be
Japanese.”4 Due to this Aryan presence, America experienced “a slow, but
constant infusion of Japanese blood,” especially within Indigenous commu-
nities who are now biologically related to the Japanese.5 This imagined fact
106  Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation
can be further justified by the swastikas within Native American artwork,
as this suggested Japanese cultural presence. In bioracism, America was a
distilled Aryan nation due to the purity of the blood of Americas’ founders,
but Japanese Buddhists argued that they were the Aryan presence in early
America, theoretically resulting in national greatness; in fact, one source
even claims that Alexander Hamilton was a Buddhist, which proves that
Buddhism was actually at the heart of America.6 By presenting an Aryan
religion tied to bioracist “science,” Mahāyāna Buddhism could be logically
presented as the fount of all human development, including the discovery
of America, which would theoretically transform it into a Buddhist country
from the beginning. I do not argue that the United States is a “Buddhist
country,” but I do argue that viewing Buddhist history in the United States
through the lens of racecraft allows us to gain a more nuanced picture of
Buddhist presence in America. Rather than positing a sudden explosion of
Zen popularity in the 1950s labelled the “Zen Boom,” I argue that through
racecraft, Buddhists were able to resist dominant colonial tropes and pro-
mote their religion as a tradition of “science” and superiority.
Like their counterparts in Sri Lanka, India, and Tibet, Japanese Bud-
dhists were directly connected to the Theosophical Society, in many ways
utilizing the group and their publishing to promote Buddhist ideas in the
United States.7 The most notable connection came through Beatrice Lane
Suzuki (1878–1939), a devout Theosophist from New Jersey and wife of D.T.
Suzuki. In 1920, D.T. Suzuki, Beatrice Lane, and her mother Emma Eskine
Hahn joined the International Lodge of the Theosophical Society-Adyar in
Tokyo.8 When Suzuki left Tokyo to assume his teaching position at Ōtani
University, the Suzuki’s created the first Theosophical Lodge in Kyoto on 8
May 1924 (White Lotus Day). Lane wrote articles for The Eastern Buddhist,
The Young East, and other publications, often focussing on the esoteric as-
pects of Shingon Buddhism. She was also an enthusiastic supporter of the
Order of the Star in the East (1911–1929), a messianic branch of the The-
osophical Society based on the prophecy of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Suzuki
was actually rather critical of the Order of the Star, an opinion which Lane
claimed was due to the vast similarities between the Theosophical Order
and Japanese Buddhism.9 Suzuki actively promoted the Theosophical so-
ciety within his own Buddhist writings while his wife was alive, although
they did disagree on many points and Suzuki’s interest in Theosophy waned
greatly after her death. In some instances, Suzuki is quite laudatory of The-
osophy, writing in a review of a biography on Blavatsky, “there is no doubt
whatever that the Theosophical Movement, made known to the general
world the main doctrines of Mahāyāna Buddhism.”10 Theosophical writers
are regularly featured in The Young East and other Buddhist magazines, in-
cluding their analysis of Buddhist doctrines. As Japan’s imperial ambitions
increased, Japanese Buddhists combined ideologies of bioracism masquer-
ading as “science,” Theosophical views of spiritual evolution, and emic Bud-
dhist notions of doctrinal development in the Ekayāna tied to Nihonjinron.
 Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation  107
This ideology of Buddhist development and corruption allowed Japanese
Buddhists to create a degenerate family study for Buddhism, which justified
Japanese colonial expansion.
Buddhist sources produced in Japan portray other Buddhist nations as
having fallen behind, or lapsed in their maintenance of supposed purity,
so as to require aid in language which largely mirrored the Japanese impe-
rial agenda. However, these sources were also able to draw on larger tropes
within academic and popular discussions of Buddhism as well. In Buddhist
Studies sources, Tibetans and Indians were blamed for the original corrup-
tion of Buddhist doctrine, while the “inferior races” of China and Japan
only damaged it further to become the religion of cruelty today; for Japa-
nese Buddhists, India and China did not corrupt Buddhism, but had only
been taught a partial version, which they had subsequently forgotten, due
to their “racial” inferiority. In the writings of Japanese Buddhists in the
1920s and 1930s, writers attempted to create Buddhist doctrinal justifica-
tions for colonialism which supported the Yamato “race” as superior and
teaching supposedly true Buddhism to “inferior” peoples. According to the
Japanese, it was when Buddhism reached the superior Yamato people that
the full doctrine could be taught.11 It was this assumption of spiritual and
political greatness distilled through history and the supposed maintenance
of “blood purity,” which made the Japanese uniquely suited to rule Asia.12
According to Buddhist writers, Indian civilization began with Buddhism,
which led to a renaissance, but eventually the “greedy Brahmins” of Hin-
duism “cruelly smothered” the religion to maintain class power.13 Japanese
Buddhist sources make clear that Hindus are to blame, as “the rulers forsook
Dhamma and became tools in the hands of the vindictive Brahmans.”14 In
these sources, Hinduism is an essentialized object representing the corrupt-
ing force of “Dravidians,” rather than the actual lived religious tradition.
According to Japanese Buddhists, Buddhism gave India government, art,
architecture, and general civilization. In “Civilization Without History,”
J. Takakusu similarly argues that India has only literature, but no actual
history.15 Takakusu argues that “Buddhism must be said to be the prime
factor that purged ancient India of its dirt and filth and brought out a new
India,” which simultaneously degrades India as a country while prioritizing
Buddhism.16 Buddhism is placed as the singular foundation for all of human
history, and it simultaneously becomes the “Aryanizing” factor, rather than
“racial Aryanism.” Buddhism becomes science, religion, and civilization si-
multaneously, which reverses tropes of colonialism and racecraft.
Japanese writers argued that Mahāyāna Buddhism particularly was at
the heart of all Indian cultural development, which according to Oriental-
ists at the time meant all human development, but the religion had since
been corrupted by “Hinduism,” which had made the Theravāda school into
closeted Brahmanism. This argument serves the dual purpose of justifying
Japanese colonial superiority and serving as a Buddhist, and anti-academic,
polemic for Mahāyāna. Buddhist Studies academics attempted to portray
108  Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation
Mahāyāna as a later development of doctrinal expansion from the traditional
Theravāda, but Japanese Buddhists wrote extensively to argue that Ther-
avāda could not be proven any more “original” than Mahāyāna. Japanese
Buddhists argued that Mahāyāna was actually the uncorrupted teaching
of the Buddha and that Theravāda is only Buddhist through copying the
Mahāyāna school. Robert Cornell Armstrong (1876–1929) was a Methodist
Missionary to Japan, who claimed it was Brahmanism which “crept into
Hinayāna Sūtras,” and corrupted the religion in India.17 Mahāyāna Bud-
dhism becomes the imagined true original Buddhism, while Theravāda is
presented as the later corruption due to their connection to the “racially”
inferior “Dravidian” Hindus. By arguing that Mahāyāna Buddhism repre-
sents the fount of all civilization, Japanese writers argued that this was the
true civilizing programme for Asia, rather than “Western” capitalist impe-
rialism. According to J. Takakusu, “the Indian people can never be made
contented and happy only by policies of reconciliation, for they are blind to
economic interest…Buddhism and Buddhism alone will bring permanent
peace not only to India but to the whole world.”18 History was reimagined
to place Mahāyāna Buddhism at the centre of Asian historical development
beginning in India, meaning typical notions of Aryan supremacy and the
need for colonialism could be reversed to place Japanese Buddhists at the
centre of religious history. Japanese Buddhists utilized traditional bioracist
tropes combined with Buddhist doctrine in order to justify imperial ambi-
tions for the Japanese state.
However, Japan never actually conquered across Asia to India. In many
ways, Japanese colonial ambitions never realized their full optimism; when
temples were established in Taiwan, Korea, or other Japanese colonies, they
were named fukyōsho (local branch temple), suggesting they were already
a part of Japanese territory, while temples in Hawai’i were named fukyōjo
(missionary station), which means they would eventually be part of Japan.19
The difference in designation suggests that Japanese officials saw Korea as
already a part of Japan, whereas Hawai’i and Siberia represented future ter-
ritories from which missionaries would eventually spread. Buddhism, rather
than “Western” or “white” culture, represented the true civilizing influence
for the world. Given the fear of a Japanese fifth column in the United States
during this time period, it should be noted that many nations had their own
colonial plans for America.20
China posed an entirely different issue for Japanese writers, as the coun-
try was Mahāyāna, and ostensibly the source for most Japanese religion and
culture, including the writing system. Japanese authors posited that China
had become backwards and corrupt, in part due to a lack of eugenic breed-
ing, which allowed for a mass of degenerate populations.21 The Buddhism
of China was argued to have become a bastion of ritualism and supersti-
tion, with no spirituality left. The Japanese viewed themselves as inherently
spiritual people, with Mahāyāna Buddhism as the core of their develop-
ment, versus the “materialistic West” which had only capitalism and greed
 Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation  109
at their core. In the 1930s, Japanese Buddhist writers detailed the vast num-
bers of Buddhist temples across China which had been allowed to fall into
disarray due to Chinese lack of management skills.22 By the ultranational-
istic 1930s, Japanese Buddhist writers also argued that due to “low Chinese
intelligence,” Mahāyāna Buddhism was only performed in ritual in China
and therefore the country never actually became Buddhist; alternatively, the
Yamato Race “are not believers in fiction, superstition, or mythology.”23
Japanese Buddhist writers claimed that differences between the Yamato
and the Chinese explained the expansion of devotionalism and cosmolog-
ical beings. Japanese Buddhists argued that the Chinese had ideologically
corrupted Buddhism, which mirrored academic arguments at the time, such
as J.G. Jennings in The Vedāntic Buddhism of the Buddha.
The Chinese are even blamed for denigrating Buddhism to such a state
that they allowed “Lamaism” to flourish in Tibet. In “Religious Features of
Manchoukuo,” Mock Joya claims that Mahāyāna was too foreign to Chinese
temperament, and therefore China never actually became Buddhist.24 Joya
asserts the “Chinese are fatalists…their sense of religion had no opportu-
nity of developing in the past, religions having mostly been regarded as only
means of gaining power.”25
Joya explains that China underwent a long process of degeneration, in
which the religion was adapted by “savages” and monks who “are now
mostly ignorant and unlettered…[and] do not know even the most simple of
the teachings of Buddha.”26 At this point, Japanese Buddhists argued, the
Chinese have no actual religion, and so it is only through Japanese “proper
guidance…they will embrace true religion.”27 In the 1920s and 1930s,
Japanese Buddhists provided emic doctrinal justifications for the Japanese
imperial project in Manchuria and beyond. They used the scientific model
of eugenics, provided from the United States, and the language of coloni-
alism and the White Man’s Burden, combined with historical discussions
defining a singular Japanese spirit to promote the government’s militaristic
and nationalist agendas. Buddhists were able to create a degenerate family
studies for Buddhism, which simultaneously explained the corruption of
Buddhism and Japanese Buddhist greatness, as well as placing Mahāyāna
Buddhism in Japanese form as the fount of all civilization, thus justifying
Japanese colonial expansion.

“Yamato racial genius” and the Buddhist conception of God

Japanese Buddhist magazines produced in America, by which I mean
magazines associated with a particular Japanese lineage, also promoted
a “Yamato” centred version of the religious tradition. Dwight Goddard
(1861–1939) was an American Christian missionary to China who then spent
1928 living in a Japanese Zen temple before returning to the United States to
create “The Followers of the Buddha, An American Brotherhood,” a Bud-
dhist study and practice group for Americans in 1934.28 In Zen: A Magazine
110  Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation
of Self-Realisation, published by Goddard, a swastika is featured on the
header of each page; although the swastika is nothing new in Japanese
Buddhism, it had become a known symbol for the Aryan “race” as early as
1905. Völkisch groups employed the swastika as early as 1907, and Rudyard
Kipling famously used a swastika above his signature.29 All of this is to say
that the racial connotations would not have been lost on American readers
of Zen. In 1928, Ernest Shinkaku Hunt (1878–1967), the Jōdo Shinshū priest
who famously continued to hold services in Buddhist Churches in Hawai’i
to prevent their closure during the Second World War started the Western
Buddhist Order to specifically trace “Indo-European” racial heritage back
to the Aryan founder of the religion.30 Hunt would later be fired from the
English-language school he helped to found, although some claimed it was
due to Hunt’s “Theravāda” leanings, Hunt himself claimed his exit was due
to his non-Japanese heritage.31 One of the most important ways Japanese
Buddhists, both in Japan and in the United States, positioned Buddhism
and Asia above “the West” was through conceptions of the self and god.
Japanese Buddhists argued that the materialism of Europe and the United
States meant they had no true religious beliefs, and that Mahāyāna Bud-
dhism created the spirituality which defined the Yamato “race.” Japanese
Buddhist magazines regularly ran the publications of European academics,
such as William Stede who claimed that Europe and North America had
lost their way to materialism, but that all of this may be thwarted with the
introduction of Buddhism. In Japanese Buddhist magazines of the 1930s,
the United States was not a haven for democracy and freedom or a place of
“racial superiority,” but instead a crass land of materialism, as magazines ran
monthly totals of Ku Klux Klan lynchings to promote the idea of American
barbarity.32 Articles in The Young East clearly point out A merican hypoc-
risy in condemning the invasion of Korea but supporting American actions
in the Philippines, and other forms of “whataboutism”; the point is not to
determine which side is correct, but to note that the United States and Japan
used each other to justify their violence. Conversely, the Japanese claim that
the “racial problem [is] solved by Buddha” already, so that Japan did not
experience racism.33 Japanese Buddhist authors claimed that only America
had a problem with racecraft, and only their religion could justify murder;
the Japanese and Buddhism were marked off as blameless. Buddhism was
thus being transformed from a pessimistic tradition whose supposed immo-
rality was a reflection of their atheistic religion and backwards pedigree into
a superior tradition of morality and “racial” understanding, transformed
through notions of god and a soul.
Buddhists in the 1920s and 1930s presented a Buddhist conception of god
which was supposedly more aligned with “scientific facts,” as the Buddhist
god was portrayed as a monistic over-soul; those from Japanese Buddhist
lineages presented this deity as being tied to “Yamato racial genius” which
had theoretically perfected the Dharma. Buddhists from Japanese lineages
were able to draw upon the supposedly scientific language of psychology to
 Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation  111
argue that they were naturally more spiritual, and as Buddhism represented
the original Aryan religion, they would be uniquely qualified to spread this
doctrine all over the world. These arguments were in contradistinction to
the cultures of “the West” who were portrayed as having fallen so deeply
into materialism that they could barely still be called religious people. In
the history of Buddhist Modernism, scholars have often focussed on the re-
moval of supernatural elements from presentations of Buddhism, but these
articles should help to nuance that picture, by showing Buddhist utilization
of depictions of god.
Depictions of a Buddhist god during this period were portrayed as an
over-soul or divine entity with which individual souls will eventually merge,
rather than supposed Christian portrayals of god as a conscious judge and
arbiter. Japanese Buddhist magazines continued to use a number of The-
osophically inclined Buddhists, such as Masatoshi Gensen (M.G.) Mori,
who presented the idea of the over-soul as a Buddhist form of god. In lan-
guage which would have been very familiar for American audiences, these
Buddhists utilized presentations of god in Buddhism which were similar to
Transcendentalist notions of the over-soul.34 American notions of an over-
soul have a long history, and marked a useful explanation for American
“spiritualists.” Buddhists were able to mirror “scientific” sources, such as
C.G. Jung, when Buddhist magazines label Asia as “spiritual” while Amer-
ica is “materialistic.” In claiming that Buddhism does have a god, but one
which is more scientifically plausible and rational to the human mind and
therefore different than Christianity, Buddhists were able to mysticize the
notion of god in order to make Buddhism more culturally acceptable glob-
ally. Buddhists did not claim that their religion “has a god” in order to mir-
ror Christian beliefs, per se, but instead used the particularities of a new
notion of god to reinforce the ideas of Buddhism and science, and claim
their own superiority against the academic thinking of human development
at the time.
By claiming to be more “spiritual,” Japanese Buddhists utilized the
claims of bioracism against itself, by claiming to be the founders of religion
itself. For Japanese Buddhists, the economic success which Europe and the
United States enjoyed, and claimed was proof of their purported “racial”
evolutionary superiority, was actually a hindrance in comparison to the
abundance of spirituality which Asian nations possessed. In other words,
how could “materialists” connected to a “Semitic Creed” possibly tell the
founders of all human spirituality anything? For Japanese Buddhists, mate-
rial progress in the form of armaments should not be the goal, but spiritual
awakening, which only Buddhism can provide. The Eastern Buddhist quotes
the leader of the Jōdo Shinshū Nishi Honganji at length:

Recently, the material progress of the world has been really over-
whelming to such an extent even as to overshadow the significance of
the spiritual side of human life; but the latter can never be ignored or
112  Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation
silenced, for when the time ripens it is sure to raise its head and un-
mistakably express its will. And there is no doubt that we are now
approaching such a time; do we not hear the cry: “Enough with mate-
rialism and naturalism?” To be rich, to be comfortable, to be powerful
and overbearing, – this does not cover the whole field of human aspira-
tions. Far from it; but let us now be more humane, more considerate of
others, more brotherly to one another, and let the strength of a nation
be measured by these virtues and not by the number of battleships and
thoroughness of military equipments.35

Japanese Buddhists attempted to reverse the dominant tropes of racecraft

which argued that material prosperity naturally followed monotheism, as
this was the “best” form of religion, to instead argue that all human spirit-
uality could be linked to Japanese Buddhism.36
Spirituality and materialism became buzzwords for Buddhists from 1899
to 1957 which stood in for a sense of cultural superiority and triumphal-
ism which was sweeping totalistic Japan, but was also utilized by colonized
Buddhists to assert religious chauvinism.37 Defining the “West” as materi-
alistic in opposition to the spiritual “East” mirrored psychological asser-
tions of supposedly scientific fact. Japanese Buddhist authors quote many
Europeans and North Americans to prove Asian spirituality and reverse
tropes about the nature of their religion; for instance, authors in The Young
East quote British-born author living in Canada and Buddhist Lily Adams
Beck, who wrote, “Europe has a religion which satisfies her heart but not
her head and a philosophy which satisfies her head but not her heart. We
have a religion and a philosophy which can do both.”38 Japanese Buddhists
presented their arguments in English-language periodicals in order to speak
to the intelligentsia of Asia, but also directly to Americans and Europeans.
Buddhists were able to reverse tropes of Buddhist pessimism and atheism
by utilizing the arguments of racecraft, which claimed they were naturally
spiritual and held the Aryan religious tradition for all humanity. Buddhists
were further able to solidify this claim of spirituality by asserting that their
religion had a soul and a god, which were both in perfect accord with mod-
ern science.
The assertion of a god in Buddhism does not represent merely a case of
blind religious osmosis, but a calculated and active assertion regarding the
status of Buddhism in the perspective of global religions. Furthermore,
Buddhists were not simply capitulating to mainstream American thought by
claiming to have a god in Buddhism, but instead suggesting that their god
was understood in a more monistic, nuanced, and scientific light, allowing
them to further claim superiority over Christianity. Americans had regu-
larly asserted that Buddhism was akin to atheism or nihilism, but the Bud-
dhist conception of god removed this critique. Charges of atheism would
have been damning in America during any age, but in the 1920s and 1930s
during the height of the first Red Scare it would result in real trouble.39
 Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation  113
Buddhists did not simply posit god into Buddhism, but utilized Buddhist
understandings, such as the three-bodies of the Buddha in Mahāyāna tra-
ditions, to argue that their religion held a more nuanced understanding of
deity beyond the understandings of those in theoretically non-Aryan tra-
ditions. In Japanese Buddhist publications, authors presented the god of
Buddhism as in accord with a universal soul, making the development of the
Aryans, and therefore all human spirituality tied to the perceived suprem-
acy of Buddhism.
Other authors argue that the definition of science is the rational search
for truth, which is also the definition of Buddhism, making them synonyms.
In “Primitive Buddhism” T. Kimura argues that the Buddha was never a
scientist, as claimed in America, because he was concerned with humanity’s
spiritual life; instead, the very definition of “science” is the problem, be-
cause Buddhism is a spiritual science of mind, thus surpassing both catego-
ries.40 Buddhism is portrayed in Japanese sources as the fount of all human
intellectual activity, including science. If Buddhism represented the founda-
tion upon which all spirituality was built, Buddhists could reverse colonial
tropes of human evolution to place Buddhism, rather than monotheistic
Christianity, as the pinnacle. For Japanese Buddhist sources, “Western”
forms of science were not needed because, “the Buddha Dharma is all this
plus something else, and that something else is what makes it a religion. It is
the spirit of Buddhism.”41 Buddhists used racecraft, which posited the Ar-
yan peoples at the centre of all human historical development to argue that
Buddhism, the Aryan religion, was actually the catalyst for human devel-
opment. Buddhism is not comparable to science or to philosophy, because
Buddhism is science and it is philosophy, or as Dwight Goddard wrote,
“Truth itself become merged into the One Unity of the Buddha-Nature.”42
Buddhists presented their religion as synonymous with science, and re-
lied on bioracist presentations of Aryanism to argue that Yamato under-
standings of god represented the pinnacle of Buddhist philosophy, which
could then be spread out to the rest of the world, especially in the United
States. Buddhist presentation to the United States had adapted from the
1899, when the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Buddhists teach god is
“created” while by the 1940s, Buddhists could baldly state that the religion
worshipped a singular “God.”43 Rather than being understood as a capitula-
tion to Christian norms, the Buddhist god was understood to be a monistic
universal notion of science and philosophy which formed the foundation for
all human development; Buddhism had thus been transformed into the cen-
tre of all human history and the Japanese “racial genius” had been charged
with the protection of this evolutionary endeavour. By countering assertions
of nihilism and atheism, Buddhism could be presented as the more domi-
nant religion with one god, which adheres to science, and was founded by
an Aryan. Japanese Buddhism and the Yamato “race” now supposedly rep-
resented the all of civilization, and therefore represented the best option for
recreating Asia, rather than “Western” colonialism.
114  Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation
Japanese Buddhists used emic discussions of the self to promote their re-
ligion as the superior form of the Buddhist tradition, which was science, to
promote themselves as the true Aryans in contradistinction to the Chris-
tianity of Europe and North America. For Japanese Buddhists like D.T.
Suzuki, especially in the late 1930s as Japan was already in the Second Sino-
Japanese War, “it took the Japanese genius,” meaning Yamato Race, to
truly mature Buddhism, which was the foundation for all historical develop-
ment.44 Japanese Buddhists used racecraft in order to position themselves
as the historically superior peoples of Asia, who had in fact perfected the
very rock upon which all of human culture now rested; Japan therefore does
not need colonial aid from other powers, but will be the new “Aryans” to
teach other nations about civilization. By utilizing Buddhism, the Japanese
were able to resist and reverse dominant colonial and racial tropes and pres-
ent themselves and their religion as superior which helped Buddhism and
Japanese immigrants create more space in America, eventually becoming
the “model minority,” as well as positioning Japanese Buddhism as exem-
plary in Buddhist Studies for over a generation. In the process, the Japanese
contributed to the further Aryanizing of Buddhism, adding justifications
for direct military conquest.
Alternatively, Japanese Buddhists presented Christianity as a religion of
violence, in part due to its Semitic origins in the personage of Jesus. Chris-
tianity is not portrayed as a universal religion of forgiveness through god’s
grace, but a Semitic tribal religion of blood sacrifice and violence. Suzuki
claims that the crucifixion of Jesus was “revolting…the symbol of cruelty or
of inhumanity. The idea of washing sin with the blood of Christ crucified
reminds us of the primitive barbarism of victim-offering to the gods.”45 He
wrote that the “Buddhist idea of death is rest and peace, not agony,” espe-
cially for an “innocent victim”; according to Suzuki, only a religion which
is inferior at its core could believe such a thing.46 A Buddhist, on the other
hand, “wants Enlightenment, not salvation”; Japanese Buddhism, Suzuki
claims, is “always motivated by enlightening all.”47 Christianity, Suzuki
claims, believes in forgiveness through violence, while Buddhism practises
merit-transference, which is a sign of pure love for all beings. Colonial tropes
about Christian superiority are reversed by Japanese Buddhists, who state,
“Jesus once sent a disciple to fetch him an ass: now asses are sent out to
find disciples for Jesus.”48 Anti-Christian polemics were tied to bioracism,
and used to promote the supposed greatness of Buddhism, especially in the
1930s at the peak of Japanese imperialism and the lead-up to the Second
World War. In Buddhist periodicals, this did not end with religious taunting
tied to anti-Semitism, but included the justification of militaristic violence
justified through Buddhist imagining of supposed “racial” hierarchies.
Within the same articles and periodicals, the notion of enlightening all
beings was directly tied to the Yamato “race” and the colonial project. Jap-
anese Buddhists argued that China and India would be taught true reli-
gion, and that this was upāya, or skilful means, a skill normally reserved
 Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation  115
for buddhas and bodhisattvas. Buddhists could then portray the Japanese
Army as enlightened bodhisattvas aiding the world, rather than an invading
force. Through these justifications, the supposed bodhisattva army could
do no wrong. It is telling to read magazine print runs in hindsight, as we
know that war is coming, but one cannot help be struck when reading Bud-
dhist magazines from the 1930s, that war was most certainly coming; this is
the development of ideology. Again, I do not posit that Buddhists were at-
tempting to create a “holy war” across the world, but they certainly created
justifications for the creation of a

New Order in East Asia, whereby Japan desires an independent China,

governed by an administration sympathetic towards Japan allowing
her to have legitimate facilities for trade and commerce…as we see the
conditions in relation to U.S.A. and the Middle & South American
Republics.49

Manchuokuo proved that this assessment of Japanese motivations was not

correct, but we can still see the development of ideologies even during colo-
nial expansion.
In the grips of war, societies tend to rally support and imagine their
actions on the side of righteousness.50 Following the start of the Second
Sino-Japanese War but prior to the Second World War, Junjiro Takakusu
wrote an article about the rise of nationalism and what is to become of
“the New Japan.”51 Takakusu argues that Mahāyāna Buddhism provided
the foundation for all historical development, and therefore “the Japanese
Spirit should contain the nature of superiority”; this notion of superiority
was the direct result of the Yamato Aryan greatness, as they had moved
humanity forward throughout centuries. Buddhist publications during this
time period also relate the qualities of self and the Yamato “race” which de-
scribe Japanese war heroes. Essentialized tales of Japanese war heroes ap-
pear increasingly in Buddhist publications throughout the pre-war era; for
instance, Shigenari Kimura was promoted as a “typical warrior of feudal
Japan,” who was polite, filial, and even a part-time tea-master who contin-
ued to fight for “State tranquility.”52 In an era of totalist politics, Japanese
Buddhists used racecraft to justify state actions through the dharma, as
well as promote essentialized notions of nihonjinron through tales of exem-
plary women and soldiers. As Brian Victoria and others have pointed out,
Japanese culture during this time period argued that the nation was one
body who should be willing to follow the “head” of the emperor, meaning
Japanese citizens would have likely viewed themselves reflected in the pages
of these honour stories. Through stories of historical Japanese war heroes
who personified Buddhist no-self and Japanese Bushido, an ideological
“just-war” theory was created to buttress violence. Japanese Buddhist mag-
azines presented stories of warriors who exemplified Zen and “selflessness.”
These justifications were also provided to ward off the spectre of America,
116  Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation
and even the “Western mind,” which represented global materialism, bar-
barism, and “racial” degradation. Japan became a distilled version of the
“Eastern mind” which was spiritual and represented by Buddhism, which
was science, philosophy, and freedom. American bioracism at the time held
that the Aryan people had moved out from Tibet to Greece, before going to
Germany and then England, where they finally became distilled in the fron-
tier as Americans; Japanese Buddhists held that the Aryans spread from
India eastwards to China and Korea, before both Buddhism and “racial”
greatness became concentrated in the Japanese. These both represent the
development of ideology.

Conclusion
Japanese Buddhist militarism and nationalism do not simply appear, but in-
volve historical precedents and a reworking of the ideas available at the time,
or “whatever is lying around.” In Global Origins of the Modern Self, from
Montaigne to Suzuki, Avram Alpert argues that Suzuki’s adaptations of the
Self show that he is not an “outsider” reacting to Western encroachment, but
was a fully engaged participant in a global debate; Suzuki’s reformation of
the Self was done in conjunction with “modern science” in the form of bio-
racism as well as American uses of racecraft.53 Japanese Buddhists in Japan
and the United States faced intense pressure through colonial encroach-
ment, racist pressures wrought through the yellow peril, violence, and other
factors which demanded adaptation. To fit within a culture dominated by
racecraft and counter the attacks of racism levelled against them, Buddhists
across the world used their religion to resist, and say that they were not
inferior, but in fact superior. They utilized arguments and histories already
present in Buddhism, as well as their own national historical ideologies, to
resist imperialism and attempt to unite Asia. This resulted in militarism
and nationalism and eventually the Second World War. I do not argue, like
Brian Victoria, that Japanese Buddhists cheered a “Holy War” en masse,
but instead suggest that the history of Buddhist persecution in the Meiji
Era, combined with the racial chauvinism of the United States, England,
and other colonial powers, created a situation whereby Japanese Buddhist
intellectuals attempted to explain what was already happening, and in some
cases, provide religious and “scientific” justification to the situation.
Japan was able to counter American economic superiority by claiming
that they were rich in spirituality, which was in fact the basis for all Ameri-
can science and philosophy, therefore undercutting this argument. In other
words, racecraft was fought with racecraft. Buddhists utilized racecraft
and bioracism in Japan and the United States, suggesting that this inclu-
sion represented a part of the modernization process of Buddhism. Through
racecraft, Buddhists who claimed to be Aryans were able to speak for Bud-
dhism with a cosmic-level of confidence, as an Aryan, “accepts no infallible
guide but his own enlightened conscience, which is one with the enlightened
 Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation 117
54
conscience of the universe.” In fact, Goddard asserts that Buddhism itself
means evolution to “higher potentialities of the spiritual life”55 Japanese
Buddhism was portrayed as the pinnacle of Buddhism for American au-
diences, but through racecraft, by the 1930s Zen especially was presented
as religion itself, “proven scientifically” though bioracism. For Suzuki, a
global or universal Self would have been akin to having no Self at all, as
individuals would realize their oneness with the universe through satori,
however, we can also say that for Suzuki, this Universalism was the Dhar-
makāya with Japanese Buddhism directly at its centre.56 Alpert is right to
see Suzuki as being engaged with European and North American discus-
sions on the nature of the self, rather than an external factor, but I would
add that Suzuki engaged this discussion through the lens of racecraft; it is
through the “modernizing” philosophy of racecraft that we can see how Su-
zuki posited an ultimately self-less universe, but Japan still lay at the centre
of this unification.
In the history of the United States, the Japanese are often portrayed as a
“model minority” who have been able to fit themselves culturally within the
landscape of the United States and create a positive space within American
hierarchies of racecraft.57 In many cases, the status of Asian Americans
in the United States as a model minority has been attributed to economic
power and the ability to “buy-in” to the American dream. In “Social, Re-
ligious, and ‘Spirit-based’ Capital within Cambodian and Lao Buddhist
Communities in Ontario,” Marybeth White and Janet McLellan display
the influence of “spirit-based” capital on the introduction of Buddhism for
immigrant communities.58 This social capital includes economics as well
as perceptions of religion, racism and other factors. White and McLellan’s
analysis helps us to reposition the role of religion and religious thinkers for
immigrant communities in America. Japanese Buddhists used religious phi-
losophy, tied to the “science” of bioracism, to provide notions of superiority
within the ubiquitous Aryan myth. Similarly, the publication of these ideas
in regular magazines and other mass market publications would have pro-
vided Asian Americans the ideas and language for resistance on the ground.
The supposedly “scientific” arguments found in Buddhist magazines may
have provided additional tools for immigrant and racialized Buddhists in
America to use in order to carve out space for themselves within the Amer-
ican social landscape at the time.

Notes
1 Avram Alpert, Global Origins of the Modern Self, from Montaigne to Suzuki,
(Albany: State University New York Press, 2019), 250–251.
2 Brian Victoria, “D.T. Suzuki, Zen and the Nazis,” The Asia Pacific Journal 43,
11, no. 4 (October 2013): 2.
3 Jeff Wilson and Tomoe Moriya, “Introduction,” in Selected Works of D.T.
Suzuki, Volume III: Comparative Religion, ed. Jeff Wilson and Tomoe Moriya
(Volume Editors) and Richard M. Jaffe (General Editor), (Oakland: University
of California Press, 2016), xiii. xi–xxx.
118 Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation
4 Shujiro Watanabe, “Ancient Japanese in America and their Descendants,” The
Young East 2, no. 1 (June 1926): 17.
5 Ibid, 17.
6 Lewis W. Bush, “An Ancient Religion for Modern Needs,” The Young East 4,
no. 12 (October–December 1934): 24.
7 There are numerous examples of mutual influence and overlap between the
Theosophical Society and Japanese Buddhism. [Shin’ichi Yoshinaga, “Three
Boys on a Great Vehicle: ‘Mahāyāna Buddhism’ and a Trans-National Net-
work,” in A Buddhist Crossroads: Pioneer Western Buddhists and Asian Net-
works, 1860–1960, ed. Brian Bocking, Phibul Choompolpaisal, Laurence Cox,
and Alicia Turner, (London: Routledge, 2015), 53–55].
8 Shin’ichi Yoshinaga, “Three Boys on a Great Vehicle: ‘Mahāyāna Buddhism’
and a Trans-National Network,” in A Buddhist Crossroads: Pioneer West-
ern Buddhists and Asian Networks, 1860–1960, ed. Brian Brocking, Phibul
Choompolpaisal, Laurence Cox, and Alicia M. Turner, (New York: Rout-
ledge, 2015), 59.
9 Daisetsu Suzuki, Suzuki Daisetsu Zenshu, v. 36, (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2003),
547. Personal letter from Suzuki to Lane dated 4 August 1930.
10 D.T. Suzuki, “Book Reviews—The Real HP Blavatsky; A Study in Theosophy
and a Memoir of a Great Soul,” The Eastern Buddhist 4, no. 4 (July 1931): 377.
11 “An Incomplete Picture of India,” The Young East 2, no. 11 (April 1927): 384.
12 Colleen Lye, America’s Asia: Racial Formation and Literature, 1893–1945,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 23.
13 Ganga Charan Lal, “Buddhist Renaissance in India: II. ‘Why we Lost India,’”
The Young East 4, no. 5 (October 1928): 161.
14 Ibid, 161.
In “An Incomplete Picture of India,” the anonymous author argues that India
was entirely without a knowledge of self until Buddhism gave the ancient Indi-
ans history. [“An Incomplete Picture of India.” April 1927, 384.]
15 J. Takakusu, “Civilization without History,” The Young East 2, no. 4 (September,
1926): 111.
16 Ibid, 113.
17 Robert Cornell Armstrong, “A Discussion of the Origin of Mahāyāna Bud-
dhism,” The Eastern Buddhist 4, no. 1 (July–September 1926): 35.
18 Takakusu, 1926, 115.
19 Michihiro Ama, Immigrants to the Pure Land: The Modernization, Accultura-
tion, and Globalization of Shin Buddhism, 1898–1941, (Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press, 2011), 36.
20 Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 219.
21 “Buddhist Activities in China,” The Eastern Buddhist 3, no. 3 (March 1924): 274.
These include dilapidated temples, licentious and ignorant monks, and total re-
liance on ritualism.
22 Tokiwa and Sekino, “Buddhist Monuments in China (Shina Bukkyō Shiseki),”
The Eastern Buddhist 3, no. 4 (December 1925): 376.
23 Soyen Shaku, tr. D.T. Suzuki, Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot: Addresses on Reli-
gious Subjects, (Chicago, IL: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1906), 125.
24 Mock Joya, “Religious Features of Manchuokuo,” The Young East 4, no. 11
(July–September 1934): 43.
25 Ibid, 45.
26 Ibid, 39.
27 Ibid, 44–45.
28 Robert Aitken, “Foreword,” in A Buddhist Bible, ed. Dwight Goddard, (Boston,
MA: Beacon Press, 1994/1938), xviii.
 Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation 119
29 The swastika has been used by Japanese Buddhists for centuries, suggesting that
there is nothing particularly novel about its usage. However, the Swastika was
being used to represent racial Aryanism even in 1905 [T.K. Nakagaki, The Bud-
dhist Swastika and Hitler’s Cross, (New York: Toshikazu Kenjitsu Nakagaki,
2017), 35]. Hitler published his first book, The Germanic Revolution, in 1905 and
1913 with a Swastika on the cover.
30 Louise H. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawai’i: Its Impact on a Yankee Community,
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1971), 154.
Duncan Ryūken Williams, American Sūtra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in
the Second World War, (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2019), 44.
31 Hunter, 1971, 154.
32 “Dual Character of Americans,” The Young East 1, no. 9 (February 1926): 303.
33 S. Yonemura, “Solution of Racial Problem and Himalayan Civilization,” The
Young East 2, no. 1 (June 1926): 3.
34 Japanese Buddhists were engaging American intellectual-historical traditions
within their attempts to domesticate themselves in the United States. Brian Vic-
toria has pointed out similar parallels between the use of spirituality and ma-
terialism in the years preceding the Second World War, especially in relation to
the rise of nationalism. However, “spirituality” used in this form has its roots
in the tradition of American Transcendentalism. American Transcendentalists
were generally favourable to Asian religious traditions and attempted to portray
them as differing paths all pointing towards the same ultimate reality. Transcen-
dentalists labelled this view as “spirituality,” representing an individual search
for Truth in opposition to “materialistic” institutional religion which smacked
of ritualism, dogma, and economic indulgence.
35 Kwōyen Otani, “The First Step Towards the Realization of World-Peace.”
The Eastern Buddhist 1, no. 4 (November–December 1921): 258. “Naturalism”
claimed each “race” held a specific connection to the earth. Those groups who
moved around, such as nomadic groups, were considered “lesser” as they were
unrooted and therefore lack solidity.
36 In The Eastern Buddhist, William Stede, a European scholar who was an editor
at the Pāli Text Society, is quoted as saying “the West” has lost all of its ideals to
materialism, but this could be thwarted if Americans and Europeans begin to
accept Buddhism. [William Stede, “A Deeper Aspect of the Present European
Situation,” The Eastern Buddhist 3, no. 2 (Spring 1924): 154.]
Other Buddhist sources even report on dwindling church attendance in the
United States to suggest that the religion is failing due to a lack of spiritual-
ity. [H.A. Giles, “Professor Takakusu on Christianity,” The Young East 3, no. 1
(June 1927): 9.]
37 Brian Daizen Victoria, Zen Terror in Prewar Japan: Portrait of an Assassin,
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 9. “Totalism” is the political term
normally used for the Showa ultra militaristic period.
38 Lily Adams Beck, The Garden of Vision: A Story of Growth, (New York: Cosmo-
politan Book Corp., 1929).
Shigeo Takeda, “The Challenge of Buddhism to the World,” The Young East 4,
no. 10 (March 1930).
39 K. Nakajima, “Sino-Japanese Dispute and the Japanese Buddhist,” The Young
East 7, no. 3 (Autumn 1937): 2. Even though this piece was written in 1937, it de-
tails the historical development of Chinese and Japanese tensions, and he details
the fear of Communist takeover. The Communist Party in China was also gain-
ing power throughout the 1920s, leading to major uprisings and the beginnings
of the Civil War in 1927.
120 Aryan Buddhism as humanity’s foundation
40 T. Kimura, “Primitive Buddhism,” The Young East 1, no. 9 (February 1926):
281–282.
41 M.G. Mori, “The Mystic Side of Buddhism,” Hawaiian Buddhist Annual 2
(1931): 89.
42 Dwight Goddard, “Salutatory,” Zen: A Magazine of Self Realisation 5, no.1
(January 1930): 2.
43 Sokei-an, “What Is Buddhism?” Cat’s Yawn 1, no. 7 (January 1941): 28.
44 Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, “The Shin Sect of Buddhism,” The Eastern Buddhist 7,
nos. 3–4 (July 1939): 227.
45 Ibid, 259.
In the 1920s and 1930s the “racial” heritage of Jesus was called into question,
especially in comparison to the Aryan nature of the Buddha. In Europe, Hou-
ston Stewart Chamberlain argued in The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century
(1899) that Jesus was actually Nordic, with blonde hair and blue eyes, a claim
which was reprinted in the newspaper of famed anti-Semite Henry Ford, The
Dearborn Independent. The heritage of Jesus was also a point of contention for
German Christians prior to the Second World War, as Christian churches in
Germany remade Jesus as an Aryan rather than a Semite. [Susannah Heschel,
The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, (Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 5.]
46 Suzuki, 1939, 259.
47 Ibid, 270.
48 M.G. Mori, “Paul Richard on Religious Cant,” The Young East 4, no. 10 (March
1930): 325.
49 Kanji Nakajima, “The New Order in East Asia As Seen by a Buddhist,” The
Young East 8, no. 2 (1939): 1.
50 Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives us Meaning, (New York: PublicAffairs,
2002), 5.
51 Junjiro Takakusu, “The New Japanism and the Buddhist View on Nationality,”
The Young East 8, no. 1 (1938): 1.
52 Atsuharu Sakai, “Shigenari Kimura, A Typical Warrior of Feudal Japan,” The
Young East 8, no. 2 (1939): 47.
53 Alpert, 2019, 5.
54 Dwight Goddard, “Zen in Japan,” Zen: A Magazine of Self Realisation 5, no.6
(June 1930): 14.
55 Goddard, January 1930, 8.
56 Alpert, 2019, 250–251.
57 Madline Y. Hsu, The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model
Minority, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 3.
58 Marybeth White and Janet McLellan, “Social, Religious, and ‘Spirit-based’
Capital within Cambodian and Lao Buddhist Communities in Ontario,” Studies
in Religion 44, no. 2 (June 2015), 161.
6 The Shin Boom and
Zen Aryanism

Introduction
In the previous chapter, we learned about the Buddhist discovery of
America, and how Japanese Buddhists presented Mahāyāna as the fount
from which all civilization flowed. In the late 1930s and 1940s, the cul-
tural mood had shifted to the escalating tensions of war. The Great De-
pression levelled the global economy. In response, a rise of international
strongmen brought fascism in both Europe and Asia, and Japan began
its imperial campaign beginning with the Second Sino-Japanese War in
1931. This chapter analyses the writings of Japanese Buddhist sources in
the late 1930s, prior to the shuttering of publishing due to the war effort,
as well as Japanese American sources in the years just prior to internment
during the Second World War and those following release in the 1950s. The
pre-war period in Japan and the United States has received a good deal of
coverage from a widespread group of scholars including Brian Victoria,
Robert Sharf, and Duncan Ryūken Williams. Victoria especially is known
for his writings on pre-war militaristic Japan and the involvement of Japa-
nese Buddhist writers and thinkers, as well as military personnel and par-
amilitary assassins.1 Williams presents the history of Japanese internment
through the voices of those imprisoned in the United States during the Sec-
ond World War due to their “race.” These stories provide harrowing tales
of courage in the face of racism, but also show the development of new
religious understandings forged literally in the horse-stables of internment
camps.2 My discussion in this chapter contributes to this ongoing conver-
sation by analysing the publications of Zen adherents in Japan as well as
Jōdo Shinshū Buddhists in the United States, which nuances discussions
of these lineages by showing the ways in which Shin Buddhists actively
modernized their interpretations of doctrine in comparison to Zen uses of
bioracism. I further complicate this discussion by focussing on the particu-
larly Pure Land, or Jōdo, aspects of Suzuki’s writings prior to the Second
World War, despite the common assertion that Suzuki promoted milita-
ristic Zen during this time period. Although this research does not upend
discussions of Suzuki and fascism or the Buddhist Churches of America as
122  The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism
an  “ethnic fortress,” this chapter nuances these discussions. Particularly
by highlighting the reimaginings involved in racecraft. Who was actually
involved in the supposed process of modernization in America? Was it
only Zen practitioners or were others involved? To find out, we take a trip
to 1950 to Berkeley, California and the Berkeley Buddhist Church for a
Zen meeting with D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, and the staff of the Berkeley
Bussei. Why was a Zen meeting held in a Buddhist Church? In the final sec-
tion we compare the uses of racecraft in the Zen school in America versus
the Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist Churches of America (BCA); by focussing on
the BCA, we can see that Shin Buddhists were actively promoting forms of
Buddhist Modernism sometimes even bordering on secular presentations,
while Zen Buddhists utilized racecraft to promote alternative presenta-
tions of Buddhism which posited the religion as having a soul and a god.
The comparison of Zen and Shin further nuances discussions of the role
of Zen and D.T. Suzuki in Japanese militarism (totalism); although Suzuki
did promote a Zen which was a supposedly unmediated spirituality based
on pure experience that often promoted the “Yamato race” as superior,
he also wrote extensively on the Shin doctrines of his ancestors and their
superiority in religious history.3 For Suzuki, this distinction suggests that
he was not promoting Zen for the purposes of nationalism, but was instead
using “modern science” to promote Japanese spirituality more broadly
through the use of racecraft.
The final section of this chapter compares Jōdo Shinshū and Zen uses
of racecraft in the United States in order to nuance our traditional under-
standings of the place of BCA in the history of Buddhism in the United
States and Buddhist Modernism more broadly. Through analysis of writ-
ings from the BCA as well as Zen schools in America, we nuance traditional
scholarly interpretations of the history of Zen and the BCA in America and
see the ways in which Aryan Buddhism continued to influence the popu-
larity of Buddhism and the 1950s Zen Boom. Japanese Buddhist uses of
racecraft allowed them to claim more space within the American religious
landscape, and promote Zen as a religious tradition for supposedly superior
individuals.

Rethinking the Zen Boom

The year is 1950, and you have been invited to a Zen meeting on Friday
night featuring talks from some of the most famous names in American Zen
teachers, D.T. Suzuki, Gary Synder, and Alan Watts.4 When your parents
asked about where you were going, you did not know exactly what Zen was,
but you told them it was “hip” and that Jack Kerouac and the other Beats
were doing it. Not only was this a place for cool people, but apparently D.T.
Suzuki was going to be there too. According to Suzuki, Zen represented a
bare attention to the world as it was, but really it seemed to be some sort of
mystic unification with the universe. Suzuki said that Zen was synonymous
 The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism  123
with Japaneseness, and that the natural state of all Japanese people is one of
Zen, but Watts says the Japanese represent a “square” form of Zen which is
all about tradition and rules. Who is correct? The meeting is to be held at the
Berkeley Buddhist Church, which is part of the Jōdo Shinshū lineage, not
Zen. Just a few weeks back, a friend was reading a book about Buddhism,
and he told you that Jōdo Shinshū was barely even part of Buddhism, and
that they believed in a totally different Buddha. Why was the meeting being
held there? This place did not look like any Buddhist temple in magazines,
as it had pews and an organ; it looks more like a church than an exotic
temple. In the Berkeley Buddhist Church, you pick up a copy of their youth
magazine, Berkeley Bussei and begin to look through the articles. As you
thumb through the pages, you find articles on Zen, on Shin, and even some-
thing they call “original Buddhism,” whatever that means. It is strange, you
think to yourself, that learned professors would call this type of Buddhism
a corruption and a fantasy, but Zen is becoming so popular. After all, you
are attending this meeting at the Buddhist Church, and members are present
at the meetings. You sit down on the floor and listen to the speakers, such as
D.T. Suzuki who talks about how Zen and Jōdo, as he calls it, are both rep-
resentative of true Buddhism, but that they each deal with a different type
of personality for mankind. How ingenious!5 In many ways, the original
foment of the growing Zen Boom started in the Berkeley Buddhist Church
and involved the members of the Berkeley Bussei. Why was Shin Buddhism
erased from the history of doctrinal adaptations for Buddhism in America?
Scholars focussed on the physical changes in Shin practice, such as the ad-
dition of pews and hymnals, but relegated BCA thought to being a “foreign-
oriented” conservative tradition, which unlike the rest of Buddhism, had
walled off adherents in an “ethnic fortress.”6 After the end of interment,
the Buddhist Churches of America did represent a communal centre for
Japanese-Americans who had seen their culture and history decimated and
stolen. Due to strong centralized leadership through the Honganjis, Jōdo
Shinshū has remained relatively conservative as opposed to other forms of
Buddhism more normally associated with Buddhist Modernism. However,
Shin Buddhists represent some of the most active and prolonged changes in
Buddhism in America. Racecraft is part of the reason this lineage has been
traditionally understudied. Studies of supposedly uncorrupted Buddhism
in the past marked Jōdo Shinshū as an example of Buddhist corruption,
while Shin Buddhists were attacked and interned prior to and then during
the Second World War.
In Japan, Buddhist sources provided intellectual Buddhist justifications
for Japanese imperial incursion throughout Asia, while Buddhist sources
from the United States were forced to confront the racism of the yellow peril
first hand. Anti-Asian riots as well as individual incidences of racist violence
plagued West Coast communities. In the late 1930s, Buddhist publications
from Japan ceased due to the war. However, in the United States some Bud-
dhist publications based in Japanese lineages were able to continue, like
124  The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism
Bussei magazines, which were the youth-led newspapers within Jōdo Shin-
shū Buddhist Churches.
In the 1950s, American culture experienced a supposed “Zen boom,”
whereby Zen Buddhism became the subject of a cultural fad, even result-
ing in D.T. Suzuki posing on the cover of Vogue magazine.7 Zen was pre-
sented as the object of fascination for fashionable elites, with talk of Zen,
“a kind of Japanese philosophy, vaguely Buddhist in origin,” spreading
across party conversation as well as fashion magazines like Mademoiselle.8
In language reminiscent of our current age, Zen is described, “in the form
of an adjective – to everything from styles in painting to personality types
and from forms of verse to states of consciousness.”9 In previous literature,
the Zen Boom was presented as a sudden explosion, whereby Buddhists
were able to capitalize on the successes of the Victorian Era and appear
into American culture. However, this research nuances this discussion, as a
“boom” never really happened. Zen was not transplanted from Japan one
day in 1950, but was the result of intellectual debate and doctrinal devel-
opments created through the prism of racecraft. It was racecraft ideology
which allowed Buddhism to fit more comfortably within American religious
frameworks and racecraft which allowed Buddhists to promote themselves
as superior, rather than inferior subjects in need of assistance and educa-
tion. Racecraft allowed Buddhism to be positioned as a supposedly Aryan
tradition for Aryan people.
In the history of Buddhism in America, and Buddhist Modernism more
broadly, Zen is normally positioned as one of the most important lineages
for the development of thought and practice. The “Zen Boom” in the United
States is marked by the proliferation of Zen as cool and hip, or even a spirit-
uality beyond the strictures of religion itself.10 This mystified presentation
of Zen helped the religion find space within the American religious land-
scape, but also set up the appropriation of Zen as a cultural object. In previ-
ous scholarly and Buddhist literature, Zen in America was posited as being
synonymous with Buddhist Modernism.11 Articles like Sharf’s “The Zen of
Japanese Nationalism” were meant to counter this perception, and show the
ways Zen was also used to promote totalism and violence. By analysing Zen
publications through the prism of ideologies of racecraft, we can further
complicate these notions by showing that Zen was not always on the fore-
front of modernism.
By focussing on Buddhist uses of Aryanism, we can see that Zen writ-
ers were promoting racecraft, which helped them to stake claim within the
American religious landscape, despite seemingly non-Modernist interpre-
tations of doctrine and practice. Sokei-an (1882–1945) is the Japanese monk
who created the Buddhist Society of America, later First Zen Institute of
America, and married Ruth Fuller Everett Sasaki (1892–1967), a great pro-
ponent of Zen in America who published multiple works throughout the
1950s and 1960s.12 Sasaki was also Alan Watt’s mother-in-law. Cat’s Yawn
was the publication of the Buddhist Society of America, produced from 1940
 The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism  125
to 1941 in New York; although Sokei-an largely published detailed tracts on
the Rinzai lineage, he also utilized Metaphysical terminology in explaining
Buddhism. For Sokei-an, there is a god in Buddhism, and it is directly tied
to our own “God-Nature.”13 According to Sokei-an, the “[Dharmakāya] is
our God. We worship this.”14 Sokei-an also claims that the Buddhist inter-
pretation of nirvāṇa is merger with the, “soul knows all that we know…it is
the great soul.”15 The Buddhist path is imagined as an evolutionary merger
with the over-soul, as Sokei-an writes, “go with the soul, which is not yours,
back to that original state whence you have come!”16 Writing in the United
States during war with Japan, and while many Japanese-Americans were
interned across the country, Sokei-an asserts, “yes, Buddhism is a religion
and Buddhism has a God.”17 This Buddhist god was not a capitulation to
Christianity, but a utilization of the language available to him as a Japanese
person living in America in 1940; similarly, Sokei-an was drawing on alter-
native understandings based in racecraft to posit a superior understand-
ing of god. Sokei-an mirrors the nihonjinron of Japanese writers focussing
strongly on the superiority of lineage and Japanese Buddhism, complete
with vignettes of ideal Yamato character throughout history.18 Shortly after
the Second World War, American culture developed a sudden interest in
“Zen” which catapulted figures like Sokei-an and D.T. Suzuki in to the na-
tional consciousness.
Just after the Second World War, in the 1950s, Zen Buddhism became
widely popular in the United States as a cultural object, which was in part
derived from ambivalent feelings within American culture towards Zen as
exotic and Buddhism as an Aryan tradition. The fact that Aryan presenta-
tions of Buddhism continue throughout the 1950s, well after the horrors of
the Second World War and new perceptions of Aryanism and bioracism,
suggests that Buddhists were able to capitalize on the positioning of Bud-
dhism as an Aryan tradition. Sokei-an stopped publishing Cat’s Yawn with
the outbreak of the Second World War, but began printing Zen Notes from
his newly founded First Zen Institute of America in 1954. Each issue of Zen
Notes contains Japanese language lessons, which is telling given the fear
with which the Japanese language was viewed just a decade prior. By 1954,
kanji represented exoticism and a perceived authenticity. The kanji is pre-
sented as calligraphy, further exoticizing and even mysticizing the language
for the uninitiated. As Zen, and Buddhism more broadly, become entwined
in American culture, consumerist capitalism was also able to include it
as a product; by 1959 Zen Notes contains advertisements for incense and
meditation pillows authentically made in Japan.19 It was also in the 1950s
that American department stores first began to carry Buddha statues for
decoration, and other exotic items.20 Zen Notes continues to mix Aryan-
ism and Buddhism throughout the 1950s, even a decade after the Second
World War, as each issue features the “Eye of Horus,” an Egyptian symbol.
Eighteenth-century scholars connected the Buddha with the Egyptian god
Horus, as both were viewed as Aryan; this academic argument was also
126  The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism
present in the doctrines of the Theosophical Society, and even Carl Jung
asserted that Egypt and Horus were archetypes for “Western” civilization.21
The inclusion of the “Eye of Horus” represents a continuation of the Aryan
myth which now places Buddhism, and by extension Japan, at the centre of
human historical development. In the 1950s Zen boom, Buddhism was Ar-
yan and Japanese, and doctrinally this Buddhism now had a god connected
directly to the Self.
By presenting a god in Buddhism, with which individuals would eventu-
ally merge as a final religious goal, Zen could be seen as active, and the result
of individualized strenuousness. If Zen is “bare experience,” as presented by
Suzuki and others, then it makes sense that our individual perception of life
might be interpreted as a self, connected to god.22 One may argue that the
notion of a Buddhist god is not necessarily new, and certainly coincides with
the doctrine of upāya, or skilful means, for American audiences, but that
this doctrinal debate can be ended with a return to Śūnyatā, or emptiness,
as the adherent will eventually realize the ultimate truth of emptiness. How-
ever, Sokei-an specifically undercuts this Buddhist argument with a more
concretized form of god as he claims,

Emptiness is a living being, so has active power. It has will power and it
starts movement in the quietude of the universe…this is a very impor-
tant part of Buddhism – understanding the omnipotence of Emptiness.
This emptiness takes the place of your God.23

It should also be noted that Sokei-an wrote these words previously, as he

had died in 1945, but these words are reprinted in Zen Notes 18, from 1971,
suggesting that the doctrinal adaptations held on for much longer within
the presentation of American Buddhism. In issues of Zen Notes from 1960,
the Zen Institute continues to publish racecraft tales of the Aryan “race” in
Buddhism. Aryanism provided Buddhism a language with which to better
fit themselves within American religious frameworks, such as when Sokei-an
writes “as Aryans, [Buddhists] consider themselves the race of the sons of
God, purest in the World”; there is no doubt that we can see a change in
doctrinal presentation for Buddhism in the United States when describing
Buddhists as “the sons of God.”24
What the Aryan myth actually proves about the Zen Boom is its nonex-
istence; Buddhism did not explode onto the American cultural scene in the
1950s with great popularity, but instead Buddhists had been subjected to
racialized arguments against themselves and their religion for over 50 years
and had developed counterarguments about Buddhist “racial” superiority
using the very notions of “science” and bioracism levelled against them. Ja-
pan and Japanese Buddhists learnt all aspects of “Western science” in the
early 20th century, including bioracism in the form of eugenics, which was
then repackaged and utilized through racecraft. Buddhists were present in
the United States from 1899 to 1957, and on top of working, creating families,
 The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism  127
and practising their religion, they were also developing new interpretations
of their own religious doctrines within the prism of the most “cutting-edge
sciences” of the day, which was bioracism; the racecraft that was created
by Aryanizing Buddhism contributed to the popularity of Buddhism in the
United States as well as the development of Buddhist Modernism.

Racecraft in America and Shin modernism

In the United States, Zen Buddhism is often compared to Jōdo Shinshū,
or the Buddhist Churches of America, with this comparison generally
meant to reflect a divide between an “ethnic fortress” and a mystical and
meditation-based “hip” lineage.25 Although the dichotomy of Zen and Shin
has been called into question by scholars and Buddhists alike, even as early
as D.T. Suzuki in the 1930s, we continue to set these two forms of Buddhism
against each other for direct comparison. The difference in comparative
studies of Zen and Jōdo today is the continued nuance added to these com-
parisons, whereas earlier studies specifically denigrated Shin Buddhism as
a corrupted form which had plagiarized the worst aspects of Christianity.26
Instead, my work follows Richard K. Payne, Scott Mitchell and Natalie
Quli, and Michihiro Ama who add Jōdo Shinshū thought to the develop-
ment of the intellectual history of Buddhism in America. Directly engaging
with the doctrinal adaptations of Shin Buddhists in America helps us to
further nuance studies of Buddhist Modernism and Postmodernism as well.
For Shin Buddhists in America facing intense racist discrimination,
Amida Buddha was viewed as a universalizing force between Japan and
the United States. Emyō Imamura was born in 1867 as the son of another
Buddhist Priest of the Nishi Honganji. He trained with Buddhist Modernist
Yukichi Fukuzawa, who viewed Shin practice as a moral training which
would force Priests to become more socially engaged.27 Imamura also
joined Hanseikai, a Modernist group which promoted lay-Buddhist educa-
tion as well as Temperance. In Democracy According to the Buddhist View-
point (1918), Imamura argues that all distinctions are annihilated through
Amida, which he claims coincides with science, and that this form of Pure
Land belief may create a social revolution as adherents help to instigate the
Western Pure Land of Sukhāvatī on earth.28 If Amida is a representation of
the workings of scientific reality, then neither democracy nor autocracy, the
United States or Japan, had an inherent moral value, and the only true good
in the universe could be found in the dharma. Imamura goes on to say that
if Amida is a symbolization of science, then the Shin view of ultimate one-
ness with Amida represented a form of spiritual science. Shin writers em-
phasized the rational and practical aspects of the religion, focussing on the
imminent aspects of Amida within ourselves, making Sukhāvatī possible
on earth. For instance, according to Akegarasu Haya, when beings realize
that Amida is within them, and therefore they have already realized Sukhā-
vatī, “all lives are leaping and dancing, and we live together with others,
128  The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism
work together, enjoy together…one who himself finds out such a life sees the
whole world living such a life.”29
When American newspapers and travel journals wrote that Buddhism was
not compatible with democratic values, Shin intellectuals wrote that Bud-
dhism was the best religion for all forms of government, capable of creating
a Pure Land today. Emyō Imamura and Ernest Shinkaku Hunt published
the Hawaiian Buddhist Annual together under the auspices of the Interna-
tional Buddhist Institute (IBI), which was part of the Hongwanji Buddhist
Mission (HHMH). The Hawaiian Buddhist Annual also prominently fea-
tures swastikas in the 1930s, a time in which the symbol would have been
definitively associated with the Aryan “race.” The symbolism would cer-
tainly not have been lost on Hunt, who wrote about the Buddha’s Aryan
racial history in the bylaws of the Western Buddhist Order. Buddhism, as an
Aryan religion, is posited as the end goal of both philosophy and science, as
nirvāṇa is defined as the “very antithesis of Ignorance.”30 The author goes
on to say that Buddhism was originally a philosophy of mind and science,
but the inherently religious Japanese added spirituality in order to create the
Buddhism which would become the basis for all human history.31
Shin Buddhists in America did not necessarily present Buddhism as a
form of science, like other sources, but argued that the Aryan history of
Buddhism created superior understandings beyond modernity itself. Writ-
ers in Europe and North America argued that the Buddha was an early
scientist, who really created a form of mental analysis, but Japanese Bud-
dhists argued that this term was too limiting. M.G. Mori writes in “The
Mystic Side of Buddhism” that Buddhism is not a science, philosophy, or
religion; instead, he argues that the “thinkers of ancient India, those intel-
lectual leaders of the most philosophical people known in history,” or the
Aryans, are responsible for moving human evolution forward.32 Due to its
advanced spirituality and Aryan genealogy, “the Buddha Dharma is all this
plus something else, and that something else is what makes it a religion.”33
Positioning Buddhism as the total of spirituality, science, and philosophy
allowed Buddhists to claim superiority over Christianity in North America
and Europe by claiming genealogical connection to the supposed Aryans.
By claiming to be the true Aryans, who have access to a tradition beyond
human understandings, Shin Buddhist magazines parallel anti-imperialist
discussions by arguing that Christianity and America were harming more
than they were helping. In The Light of Dharma, a magazine published by
the Buddhist Mission of San Francisco from 1901 to 1907, K. Kino reverses
earlier tropes about Buddhists and Christians to argue,

if Almighty God, be there such a personal being as set forth in Chris-

tianity, listen to such prayer, and bestow upon him the blessing asked,
then he has deviated far from the divine nature, and is but a demon or
satan.34
 The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism  129
Kino goes on to say that the idea of forgiveness in Christianity is degrading,
as it would allow sinful beings into heaven, and mean that

Christianity is nothing but a false doctrine to enforce immorality and

injustice to man, and instead of leading him to the higher existence, it
will drive him to the lower life of the beasts, namely lead him gradually
to degenerate.35

This theory of Christian degeneration reverses typical tropes common in

America regarding Buddhist degeneration.
By tying Buddhist history to Aryanism and Christian history to Semites,
Buddhism could be the explanation for all human spiritual development.
In The Hawaiian Buddhist Annual writers argue the god of Buddhism is the
Dharmakāya, “the spirit of the Universe in the primary state of pure Bud-
dhahood,” which also manifests as Amida and other spiritually advanced
beings.36 Through this interpretation of a Buddhist god, Buddhism could
be posited as the “quintessential core of religion” for American audiences.37
Buddhists were thus able to reverse tropes against their tradition separating
supposedly original Buddhism from its corruption, as all human develop-
ment was Buddhism. As Aryans, Buddhists could claim that Europe and
North America represented the “racial corruption,” rather than Asian Bud-
dhists. Writers in the Annual even claim that “Western science” will fail to
progress any further because it separates “matter” from “spirit,” whereas
those who study the Dharmakāya know the “well-ordered movement” of
the true nature of the universe.38 In this case, Buddhism is not presented as
“having a god,” but is instead presented as god itself. Whether it is the land
of America being discovered or the first cause of human historical devel-
opment, Aryan Buddhism could be placed at the beginning, thus allowing
Buddhists to claim space during a period of intense marginalization. Or,
put another way, is that when Japanese Buddhists were told they “did not
belong in America,” Buddhists were able to use “science” to argue that they
were here first.

Shin Buddhist youth publications in the early 1950s

Jōdo Shinshū youth organizations nuance our historical discussions of
Buddhist Modernism, as these publications show early examples of new
interpretations of doctrine normally associated with other schools of
Buddhism. Throughout the West Coast, Jōdo Shinshū youth organiza-
tions created publications for their groups; the most widespread of these
publications was the Berkeley Bussei, published by the youth group of the
Berkeley Buddhist Church. The Bussei was being published prior to the
Second World War, but was closed during internment, and then reemerges
following the war in 1950.
130  The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism
In the Spring of 1942, the writers of the Bussei discuss their fear of be-
ing sent away to internment camps, as they plead, “as loyal Americans and
followers of the Buddhist faith we know that we have but one course to
traverse, that being to serve our country in whatever way she may ordain
simultaneously guided by the Teachings of the Buddha.”39 Racecraft forced
these Buddhists from their homes, based strictly on the assumption that
Japanese citizens were biologically incapable of living in freedom. In the
Spring 1942 issue, George Jobo Nakamura puts it succinctly when he states
that “we will be asked to leave our home very soon. We do not want to leave.
We want to stay.”40 It is worth noting that the Office of Strategic Services, a
predecessor to the CIA created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945),
would have certainly been reading the pages of the Bussei, so it is possible
that some content was written with them in mind. During this time, the US
military was reading communications from Japanese-Americans in order to
look for secret codes and signs of disloyalty, which may explain the positive
tone with which these articles are written; however, Japanese Americans
also served in the military during the Second World War, including as trans-
lators.41 The final internment camp was not closed until 20 March 1946,
nearly seven months after Japanese surrender.
By looking at the youth publications of the Jōdo Shinshū Buddhist
Churches of America, we are presented with a different picture of Japanese
Buddhism not marching for “Holy War” or justifying colonialism, but at-
tempting to fit themselves and their religion within a culture of racecraft.
In fact, given the overwhelming racism faced by Japanese Americans as
well as global tensions, the articles show deep changes in Buddhism in
America for a younger generation. Keiko Wells and other scholars have
previously analysed the physical changes made to Jōdo Shinshū temples
in the United States, including the addition of pews, hymnals, and even
the change in institutional name to “Buddhist Churches of America” rep-
resent adaptations made to the religious tradition in order to better fit
within the American cultural landscape.42 However, few scholars have
looked into the BCA for doctrinal adaptation, in part due to scholarly
bias in labelling Shin Buddhism an “ethnic fortress,” which was por-
trayed as both immovable and impenetrable.43 Although the BCA served
as a traditional place of community gathering and cultural celebrations,
by focussing on Shin doctrinal adaptations, we can nuance the “ethnic
fortress,” and see changes even within its supposedly immovable walls.
Alternatively, can there be any wonder why a group may become inter-
nalized and mistrusting of outsiders following decades of yellow peril
ideology and violence resulting in actual imprisonment in internment
camps? Doctrinal adaptations show the nuances of change within this
marginalized group.
In the Bussei, young Shin thinkers like Newton Ishiura promote the idea
that Amida is actually a symbol of faith, and not a true person.44 Another
story is told which details a debate breaking out among youth groups in the
 The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism  131
Berkeley Buddhist Church as one group suggested replacing the statue of
Amida on the altar with Śākyamuni, which represents a major departure
from Shin iconography.45 The authors describe this debate as a “battle” be-
tween Shin and “original Buddhism,” further displaying how the group had
internalized the ideologies of American studies of Buddhism. However, this
would suggest that a debate was raging even within the so-called “ethnic
fortress” as early as 1940 whether to embrace elements of the shin bukkyō
and Buddhism being promoted in the United States as pure and original,
adapt the Pure Land as a secular tradition, or continue the traditional teach-
ings of Shin. In “A Liberal Interpretation of Jōdoism” M.G. Mori writes,
“self-discipline [sic] taught bystanders Śākyamuni” is necessary in order to
find Amida’s paradise, suggesting a collapsing of denominational polemics
for Buddhism in America.46 Within these Shin sources, belief in Amida is
presented as an imminent and rational “science” as well as the worship of a
transcendent god responsible for all human happiness. Younger generations
of Shin adherents, many born in the United States, began to call for reform
in light of common societal and academic tropes, and the pressures of anti-
Japanese racism. As Buddhist Studies academics called Japanese Buddhism
the religion’s most degraded form, Shin Buddhists in California wrote ar-
ticles on “Gautama Buddha: Great Reformer,” and created Nikāya study
guides, as well as printing instructions for meditation practice.47
In the 1950s, Shin Buddhists were reinterpreting their doctrines through
science and even secularism, harkening back to original texts, and prac-
tising lay education; in some way, this “ethnic fortress” was a paradigm of
Buddhist Modernism. In “Buddhism in Daily Life,” Sunya N. Pratt (1898–
1986) wrote about ways to bring Amida practice in daily life for Americans,
as well as promoting Śākyamuni within Shin practice.48 The “Religion”
section of the 1950 Bussei contains far more mentions of Śākyamuni than
Amida, including one article about nirvāṇa with no mention of Shinjin. This
change in presentation does not make the authors any less devoted to Shin,
but suggests changes in approach designed to reach new audiences, and the
ways in which Shin thinkers contributed to the larger discussion of Bud-
dhism in America. There is evidence of secular interpretations and a shift
to Śākyamuni even prior to internment, however, these calls become more
frequent, and combined with sūtra study and meditation practice, which
provides evidence for adaptations which transpired in the camps through
“horse stable Buddhism” as well as the reinterpretations of youth groups.49
Buddhism in the United States has adapted through the prism of race-
craft. This is particularly the case for Japanese forms of Buddhism, as racist
ideologies grew to imprisonment. The decision to force Japanese-Americans
into internment camps should be seen as part of a larger growing ideology
of anti-Asian racism. In the Western United States, Japanese immigrants
had created a number of successful communities, despite racial segrega-
tion; Japanese immigrants were still very much second-class citizens as they
were “aliens ineligible for citizenship.”50 They were often accused of “taking
132  The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism
all the jobs,” especially related to fishing and other industries. In the 1942
military report to the United States, Hawai’i, California, Washington, and
Oregon are defined as part of the Pacific theatre of operations, thus allow-
ing anyone to be interred. On 19 February 1942, Executive Order 9066 was
signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and all persons of Japanese ancestry
were ordered to report to internment camps. As Duncan Ryūken Williams
details, Buddhist priests were under great suspicion from the US govern-
ment who believed they were Japanese nationalists loyal to the emperor51;
the US Army officially cited their “Emperor-worshipping doctrines” and
“philosophy of Japanese supremacy.”52 In part, it was the “horse stable
Buddhism” produced in the internment camps which further adapted Bud-
dhism in America. The ideology of Japanese internment did not suddenly
emerge after Pearl Harbor, as American fiction and popular culture had
used Japanese invasion and internment as a trope as early as 1907, such as
one pulp fiction novel which predicted the Japanese would blow up the Pan-
ama Canal.53 In 1935, the Los Angeles-based Committee of One Thousand
published stories warning that the Japanese would attempt to poison the
water supply using “human excrement” in combination with their “danger-
ous hygiene practices.”54
The ideology of racecraft involved continual reimaginings, built like
blocks into an edifice where ideas could simply be taken for granted like
common knowledge, such as the supposed danger posed by West Coast Jap-
anese immigrant communities. Prior to Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant General
John L. Dewitt (1880–1962) had the military conduct a study which mapped
each Japanese community in proximity to strategic military assets, such as
the Los Angeles Air Field, San Francisco Port, and electric power stations;
he concluded that the Japanese must represent a fifth column because so
many of them lived within close proximity of these strategic points. In fact,
he was confident enough to claim,

it could not be established, of course, that the location of thousands

of Japanese adjacent to strategic points verified the existence of some
vast conspiracy to which all of them were parties. Some of them doubt-
less resided there through mere coincidence. It seemed equally beyond
doubt, however, that the presence of others was not mere coincidence.55

Japanese Americans were pushed into specific areas through segregation,

and then blamed for living within these tight-knit communities forced close
to industrial zones like the ports and airfields. Here again we can see the cir-
cular logic of racecraft, as Japanese immigrants were barred from living in
specific areas of town, while their living together in “enclaves” was viewed
as proof their “otherness” and inability to assimilate. American Sūtra by
Duncan Ryūken Williams provides an excellent, albeit heartbreaking, ac-
count of life within internment camps, and provides hope through his analy-
sis of new developments of ecumenicist and doctrinal adaptation within the
 The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism  133
horse-stables, which shows the strength of the human spirit while bearing
the brunt of actual violence brought on by racecraft. Japanese-Americans
would not be granted citizenship until 1952 with the McCarran-Walter Act,
and in many cases were barred from moving beyond the West Coast until
long after the war. This research focusses on the writings of Buddhists who
were able to contribute to intellectual discussions within a transnational
publishing network. As we have seen through Buddhist claims to discover
America and representing the foundation of all human religious develop-
ment, the discussions of elites and uses of racecraft can border on the truly
absurd. However, the conclusion of racecraft ideology is marginalization,
dehumanization, and violence. Ideology does not develop in a directly linear
fashion; we cannot say that Jack London’s Unparalleled Invasion led directly
to mass incarceration in internment camps. However, like building blocks,
these popular stories, folk tales, bioracism, and other elements combine to
create an “invisible ontology” which is realized through actual violence.56

Conclusion
The internment of Japanese American Buddhists was in many ways the end
result of building racist ideologies in the United States, given justification
by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Popular sources in America, such as fiction
writing, had accused the Japanese American community of being a fifth col-
umn since 1907, meaning this ideology had been percolating for a generation
by 1942. Japanese Buddhist sources prior to the Second World War display a
building ideological trajectory towards the invasion of Manchuokuo (Man-
churia) and other imperial excursions. Ideological justifications for war were
provided before violence ever took place. Similarly, in the United States,
by tracing the public conversation we can see a building racism imagined
through processes of racecraft, combined with religious, academic, and pop
culture depictions of Asians, to create justifications for internment and vi-
olence even before events such as Pearl Harbor took place. The internment
of the Japanese was not a sudden idea created to manage a suspect group
of people following an international attack. It was the result of a suturing
together of yellow peril fears and racecraft, imagining Asian Americans as
a supposed fifth column purposefully grouping themselves around strategic
points to instigate an invasion which provided justifications for internment,
prior to the events of Pearl Harbor.
In studies of Buddhism, Zen and Shin have often been compared, and
in the past Zen was held as a Modernist form, whereas Shin was posited
as an example of “ethnic” or “traditional” forms of Buddhism.57 The Bud-
dhist Churches of America have been labelled as an “ethnic fortress” and
positioned within “baggage” and ethnic or traditional typologies. Primary
sources from Shin youth organizations show new interpretations of Shin
doctrine as well as interpretations of Zen and Śākyamuni. Scholars also
labelled the Buddhist Churches of America a “foreign-oriented” ethnic
134 The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism
organization, but Emyō Imamura, Newton Ishiura, and others were writ-
ing of their religious life as Americans. In 1957 and beyond, Zen publica-
tions continue to posit Buddhists as Aryans in America, suggesting the
“Zen Boom” represented the cultural object of Zen finding space within the
American cultural landscape. The inclusion of Aryanism in Zen during a
period of sudden popularity suggests that this particular form of Zen had
become “ethnically” American, by taking on the particular cultural idiosyn-
crasies of America’s “invisible ontology.” Conversely, writers in publications
sponsored by the Buddhist Churches of America show signs of Modern-
ist interpretations which focus on “original” Buddhism and downplay the
importance of rituals. Shin Buddhists in America worked to domesticate
themselves in the United States through Sunday school programmes, writ-
ing Buddhist hymns and prayers, and the adaptation of physical spaces.58
Shin Buddhist writers also discussed the adaptation of doctrines to fit mod-
ern life in America. Zen Buddhism during the “Zen Boom” utilized tradi-
tional Japanese forms of sitting and practice, and even Japanese aesthetics.
However, Zen Buddhism was able to more fully utilize the Aryan myth
through the imagining of racecraft. It was this process which helped Zen
find space within American culture.
More recent studies of Buddhism have analysed Shin within the Mod-
ernist movement such as Michihiro Ama’s Immigrants to the Pure Land.
In American Dharma Ann Gleig analyses the history of the Secular Bud-
dhist Association (SBA) as a feature of post-modern Buddhism.59 In many
writings of the SBA, they similarly claim to be returning to the founder,
Śākyamuni, and his supposed agnosticism.60 Similarly, Stephen Batchelor
argues that atheist interpretations of Buddhism remove the accretions of
Asian Buddhism which developed an agnostic tradition into an organized
religion.61 Writings in the Berkeley Bussei help us to nuance typical distinc-
tions in studies of American Buddhism about secular Buddhism which is
normally viewed as a trend of Buddhist Modernism. The American obses-
sion with Aryanism and bioracism, particularly in the form of phenotype
or skin colour, was spread across the world as a form of modernism and
“science.” This ethnic American belief in racecraft became a feature of Bud-
dhist Modernism. These findings build upon the scholarship of David L.
McMahan and others, by complimenting their research, while adding fur-
ther texture to the historiographical landscape of Buddhism in America.

Notes
1 Brian Daizen Victoria, Zen Terror in Prewar Japan: Portrait of an Assassin,
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019), 9.
2 Duncan Ryūken Williams, American Sūtra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the
Second World War, (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2019), 100.
3 Zentai-shugi is the Japanese term for “total-ism,” or a national totalitarianism
which views the nation as a singular body with the emperor as the head. This
 The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism 135
term was used by the Japanese to describe the kokutai, or “nation-body” de-
veloped in Japan prior to the Second World War. The Japanese used the term
“totalism” to describe their government prior to the Second World War, which
is also employed by Brian Daizen Victoria in Zen Terror. [Victoria, 2019, 9.]
4 This story is based on true events, but the details are fictionalized. This meeting
is described in Jane Naomi Iwamura, Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and
American Popular Culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 57.
5 Ibid, 57.
6 Donald Tuck, Buddhist Churches of America Jodo Shinshu, (Lewiston, NY: Ed-
win Mellen Press, 1987).
7 Iwamura, 2011, 26.
8 Ibid, 34.
9 Nancy Wilson Ross, “What Is Zen?” Mademoiselle, (January 1958): 64.
10 Zen was presented as a spirituality beyond Buddhism, which had tapped into
the very current of religiosity in the human experience. For a larger discussion
on Zen as the underlying spirit of human spirituality, see: Judith Snodgrass,
Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the
Columbian Exposition, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
2003), 266.
For a discussion of this phenomenon within the mindfulness movement, see:
Jeff Wilson, Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Medita-
tion and American Culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 43.
11 James William Coleman, The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an
Ancient Tradition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 94–95.
12 Janica Anderson and Steven Zavahi Schwartz, Zen Odyssey: The Story of
Sokei-an, Ruth Fuller Sasaki, and the Birth of Zen in America, (Boston, MA:
Wisdom Publications, 2018), 4.
13 Sokei-an, “Sokei-an Says,” Zen Notes 18, no. 10 (October 1971): 1.
14 Sokei-an, “Sokei-an Says,” Zen Notes 1, no. 3 (March 1954): 1.
15 Sokei-an, “Concerning Soul,” Cat’s Yawn 1, no. 4 (October 1940): 13.
16 Sokei-an, October 1940, 13.
17 Sokei-an, “What Is Buddhism?” Cat’s Yawn 1, no. 7 (January 1941): 28.
18 “The Transmission of the Lamp” is carried in every issue. Sokei-an makes clear
that Rinzai practice is necessary for full enlightenment.
19 Zen Notes 6, no. 1 (January 1959): 1.
20 Todd Perreira, “America’s Buddha in an Age of Empire: Cosmopolitan
Domesticity or Commodity Racism?” American Academy of Religion Annual
Conference, Buddhism in the West Unit, Boston, MA, 2017.
21 Donald S. Lopez, Jr., From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha,
(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 144–145.
22 Sokei-an calls this notion “Vijnana-Consciousness,” which is akin to a soul
because it has individual experiences. [Sokei-an, “Sokei-an Says,” Zen Notes 4,
no. 8 (August 1957): 1.]
23 Sokei-an, “Duhkha-Nirodha: Cessation of Agony,” Zen Notes 7, no. 12 (Decem-
ber 1960): 8.
24 Sokei-an, “Sokei-an Says,” Zen Notes 7, no. 10 (October 1960): 2.
25 Natalie E.F. Quli and Scott A. Mitchell, “Buddhist Modernism as Narrative:
A Comparative Study of Jōdo Shinshū and Zen,” in Buddhism Beyond Borders:
New Perspectives on Buddhism in the United States, ed. Scott A. Mitchell
and Natalie E.F. Quli, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015),
198–199.
Iwamura, 2011, 42–44.
26 Galen Amstutz, Interpreting Amida: History and Orientalism in the Study of Pure
Land Buddhism, (Albany: State University New York Press, 1997), 5.
136 The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism
27 Michihiro Ama, Immigrants to the Pure Land: The Modernization, Accultura-
tion, and Globalization of Shin Buddhism, 1898–1941, (Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press, 2011), 134.
28 Yemyo Imamura, Democracy According to the Buddhist Viewpoint, (Honolulu,
Territory of Hawai’i: The Publishing Bureau of Hongwanji Mission, 1918), 23.
Akegarasu Haya (1877–1954), a student of Kiyozawa Manshi, similarly argued
that the universal mind of Amida could be used as a basis for tolerance and
acceptance of all people’s [Akegarasu Haya, ed. and tr. Gyoko Saito and Joan
Sweany, Shout of Buddha: Writings of Haya Akegarasu, (Chicago, IL: Orchid
Press Publications, 1977), 167–168].
29 Ibid, 1977/1936, 167–168.
30 M.G. Mori, “The Mystic Side of Buddhism,” Hawaiian Buddhist Annual 2 (1931):
89. Mori says the Dharmakāya and Tathāgatagarbha are “the relationship… of
the individual to a Whole.” Mori is clear that this union with the “spirit of the
Universe” is “mysticism.”
31 Mori, 1931, 89.
32 Ibid, 89.
33 Ibid, 89.
34 K. Kino, “Civilization and Superstition,” The Light of Dharma 4, no. 4 (January
1905): 247.
35 Ibid, 248.
36 Mori, 1931, 89. These doctrinal interpretations were being asserted by Buddhists
during the “yellow peril.” Generally in Trikāya theory, Amitābha is saṃbhog-
akāya, while human embodiments such as Śākyamuni are nirmāṇakāya [Paul
Harrison, “Is the Dharma-kāya the Real ‘Phantom Body’ of the Buddha?” The
Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 15, no. 1 (January
1992): 44–96.] In Shin thought, Amida Buddha is mostly identical to the Dhar-
makāya, differing only in function.
37 Ibid, 89.
38 Ibid, 89.
39 Jim Sugihara, “A Message,” Berkeley Bussei 7 (Spring 1942): 2.
40 George Jobo Nakamura, “Foreword,” Berkeley Bussei 7 (Spring 1942): 1.
41 Williams, 2019, 176.
42 Keiko Wells, “The Role of Buddhist Song Culture in International Accultur-
ation,” in Issei Buddhism in the Americas, ed. Duncan Ryūken Williams and
Tomoe Moriya, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 164.
43 Alfred Bloom, “Shin Buddhism in America: A Social Perspective,” in The Faces
of Buddhism in America, ed. Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka, (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1998), 31.
44 Newton Ishiura, “Philosophy Dodging Religion,” Berkeley Bussei (January
1950): 13.
45 K. Imamura, “Oneness,” Berkeley Bussei (January 1951): 6.
46 M.G. Mori, “A Liberal Interpretation of Jōdoism,” Berkeley Bussei (January
1951): 11.
47 Mana, “Great Reformer: Gautama Buddha,” Berkeley Bussei (January 1950): 7.
48 Michihiro Ama, “‘First White Buddhist Priestess:’ A Case Study of Sunya Gla-
dys Pratt at the Tacoma Buddhist Temple,” in Buddhism Beyond Borders: New
Perspectives on Buddhism in the United States, ed. Scott A. Mitchell and Natalie
E.F. Quli, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015), 62.
49 Williams, 2019, 99.
50 Colleen Lye, America’s Asia: Racial Formation and Literature, 1893–1945,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 5. Included in the idea of be-
ing an “alien ineligible for citizenship,” specific states prevented Asians from
 The Shin Boom and Zen Aryanism 137
owning lands, such as Arizona (1917), Louisiana (1921), New Mexico (1922),
Idaho (1923), Montana (1923), Oregon (1923), and Kansas (1925). These laws
would have been especially impactful as Japanese Americans had generally
been forced into farm labour. In 1909, 2/3 of the total Japanese population in
California worked on farms, and Japanese farms accounted for nearly 10% of
California’s agriculture by 1918, which means the land ownership laws of the
1920s would have been economically devastating. Beyond land ownership, “al-
iens ineligible for citizenship” were not allowed to testify in court or to serve
as guardians for a minor child, meaning Japanese men were not allowed to be
single fathers in the United States. In 1913, California enacted the Webb-Haney
Alien Land Law, which was specifically designed to limit “Mongolian owner-
ship of soil to a space four feet by six.” [115] This measurement represents a jail
cell. When Japanese farm land was confiscated during internment, the top farm-
ing concerns (corporations) in California estimate the land was worth over $35
million.
51 Williams, 2019, 5.
52 H.S. Burr, U.S. Navy Reserve, District Intelligence Officer, U.S. Navy, “Naval
Intelligence Manual for Investigating Japanese Cases in Hawai’i,” RG 389: Re-
cord of the Office of the Provost Marshal General, 1941, (Japanese Internment
and Relocation: Hawai’i Experiences, University of Hawai’i, Hamilton Library,
Special Collection, Box 3, A-40), 50–51.
53 Lye, 2005, 103.
54 Ibid, 106.
55 Ibid, 105.
56 Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in Amer-
ican Life, (London: Verso, 2012), 194.
57 Kenneth K. Tanaka, “Issues of Ethnicity in the Buddhist Churches of America,”
in American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, ed. Duncan
Ryūken Williams and Christopher S. Queen, (London: Curzon Press, 1999), 3.
Tuck, 1987, 5.
Coleman, 2002, 267.
58 Lori Pierce, “Buddha Loves Me This I Know: Nisei Buddhists in Christian
America, 1889–1942,” in American Buddhism as a Way of Life, ed. Gary Storhoff
and John Whalen-Bridge, (Albany: State University New York Press, 2010), 168.
59 Ann Gleig, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity, (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2019), 276–277.
60 Ibid, 276–277.
Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awak-
ening, (New York: Riverhead Books, 1997), 5.
61 Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, (New York: Spiegel & Grau,
2010), 212–213.
7 Metaphysical Buddhism and
the religion of joy

Introduction
In the previous three chapters, we analysed the writings of Japanese and
Japanese American Buddhists recreating their tradition for broader
American audiences in order to both proselytize and create space within
a landscape dominated by racism. In the following three chapters, we will
turn to Metaphysical Buddhists in America, or those who have previously
been called convert Buddhists, beginning in the early 1900s, but then fo-
cussing largely on the post-war era.1 Metaphysical Buddhists include those
Tweed called “the rationalist inheritors of the ‘Skeptical Enlightenment’
who advocate positivism and evolutionism or esoteric inheritors of an oc-
cult tradition who inclined toward Spiritualism and Theosophy.”2 Following
the Second World War, Buddhists in the United States were able to utilize
already- existing discussions surrounding the heritage of the Buddha and
the corruption of doctrine to present themselves as heirs to a great Aryan
tradition. Metaphysical Buddhists in America viewed themselves as con-
nected to the historical founder of the religion through a hereditary sense
of Aryanism supposedly proven by bioracism, which created a chauvinist
notion of Aryans saving Buddhism from the corruption of Buddhists. For
Americans, Asian nations were always presented as distant and exotic, but
through media, imperial endeavours, and then finally through the complete
destruction of the Second World War, America was beginning to feel a sense
of ownership over these countries and their people, as well as Buddhism.
Bioracism allowed Americans to know Asia throughout history, and even
to own the underlying spirituality of Buddhism, which was thought to be
rightfully Aryan. As Edward Said writes in Culture and Imperialism,

to be American was to feel Asia, but only in dominance and distance,

but they did feel themselves to be Aryan, and this made the discoveries
of India an opening up of a treasure chest, or a flowering for one’s own
benefit.3

Charles Taylor expresses that modernity is marked by a turn towards sci-

entific rationalism, romantic expressivism and monotheism; each of these
 Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy  139
were present in Buddhist doctrinal adaptations made in America, but all
were coloured by racecraft.4 The Aryan myth, a product of bioracist logics,
allowed many Americans to feel a genetic kinship with Buddhism, which,
in turn, enabled them to claim the right to speak for Buddhism. From there,
it only required a few small steps more to claim a romanticized version of
Buddhism as their own tradition. Metaphysical Buddhists in America, play-
ing into a long tradition of colonialism, argued that Buddhism was a once-
great tradition now corrupted, but that things could be turned around with
the help of a supposedly superior group. The promise of this transformation
was nothing short of a new American utopic project. This utopia could only
be ushered in when American Buddhists realized the supposedly original
Aryan doctrines, such as the presence of a god. By engaging the supposed
“science” of bioracism, Metaphysical Buddhists were actually fitting them-
selves more in line with perceptions of modernity. For imperialist thinkers,
this utopia was civilization, complete with market participation and the em-
bracing of modern culture.
For Buddhists in America, the United States could be positioned as a
future homeland for the “double-distilled” Aryans to move human evolution
forward by reclaiming their ancestral religious tradition; ownership of this
tradition would need to be reclaimed from those who had inappropriately
been in possession of the religion and were responsible for its corruption.
The position of Americans as superior Aryans is comparable to Japanese
Buddhist uses of Ekayāna in Chapter 4, which argued that Buddhism grew
progressively until reaching its most distilled form in Japan. The follow-
ing three chapters analyse the role of Metaphysical Buddhists in the United
States on the continued development of Aryan Buddhism. This chapter de-
tails the reformulation of Buddhist tradition in America by Metaphysical
Buddhists to posit that the religion was defined by positivity and joy, rather
than pessimism and dread. In order to reverse tropes of Buddhist pessi-
mism from the Victorian Era, Buddhist writers like Paul Carus promoted a
Buddhism which was life-affirming, due in part to the alternative doctrines
discovered through Buddhist connections to Aryanism. Metaphysical Bud-
dhists used bioracist language to push Buddhism beyond the cultural limits
of American optimism and activism by presenting a religion of imagined ge-
netic superiority, complete with notions of a soul and a god. In The Making
of Buddhist Modernism David L. McMahan argues that Buddhist Modern-
ism represents a “Global Folk Buddhism,” which combines disparate ele-
ments normally labelled as “popular” traditions of Buddhism and blends
these liberally with uses of magic for this-worldly benefit and reconstitutes
them in ways normally labelled as elite Buddhism.5 American Metaphysical
Buddhists utilized the “invisible ontology” of American notions of racism,
which were spread across the world as “science,” thus reformulating the par-
ticularly “ethnic” American use of racecraft to become a sign of modernity
in the development of global Buddhist Modernism, a point that I will return
to in the conclusion, but Aryan Buddhism represents a continued strain of
Global Folk Buddhism, derived from ethnic American views on racism,
140  Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy
but spread globally as a strain of thought within Buddhist Modernism. For
Buddhists in America, the United States became a canvas on which to paint
an evolved image of a reclaimed Buddhism, shorn of the deficiencies and
corruption brought by its time in the hands of Asian practitioners. What
would this new portrait look like? Who would help construct and define the
project of an Aryan-American Buddhism? Who would be excluded from
such a picture?
In this chapter, I analyse the writings of Metaphysical Buddhists from
1899 to 1957, with a particular focus on the years from 1944 to 1957; dur-
ing this time period Buddhist magazines focussed on Buddhist histories of
corruption and the dangers of devolution, but also supplanted this pessi-
mism with a newfound optimism by portraying Buddhism as a religion of
unbound positivity, tied to the development of the Aryan “race” throughout
history. We look first at the story of Charles Moore, who was arrested for
promoting atheism in America in 1899. Moore’s story helps demonstrate
how Theosophical doctrines of “racial” evolution crafted Buddhism as a
religion of joy, replete with notions of a soul and a god. This chapter’s main
thrust, that is the focus on the reworking of Buddhism using early and mid-
20th-century Metaphysical understandings, helps us understand the flavour
of religiosity being applied to an imported Asian tradition. We examine
the era-specific character of cosmic orderings and perennialist inclinations
which came to shape Buddhism’s Aryanization and Americanization. As
Chapters 8 and 9 progress, we will come to see how these imprints of Meta-
physical practice become crucial hallmarks of an emergent Aryanized Bud-
dhism. Readers unfamiliar with the influence of American Metaphysical
religion on Buddhism in the 20th century may find some of the ideas bizarre
or overly idiosyncratic, but this language was used to explain Buddhism
for American audiences. These chapters aim to unravel and make sense of
their impact, and to bring readers into the fold so that they can appreciate
Said’s sentiment of the “treasure chest” of Asian culture was often defined
by era-specific American cultural contexts.

Atheism and nihilism, or the religion of joy

On a bitterly cold day in February 1899 in Lexington, Kentucky, as Charles
Chilton Moore warmed himself near a cast-iron stove, he thought he heard
a stirring outside. With his long, thick, white beard beginning to freeze due
to the condensation of his breath, Moore may well have reflected on the cir-
cumstances that brought him to that day. It was financial troubles that pre-
vented him from heating the building full time. In the midst of the cold snap,
perhaps he felt all he could keep warm were his intellectual pursuits. Moore
had recently decided to publish another issue of his beloved newspaper, The
Blue-Grass Blade. In the pages of this publication, Moore published articles
on women’s suffrage, science, and atheism. It was a dangerous thing to hold
non-Christian beliefs at the turn of the 20th century in America. In many
 Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy  141
ways, Moore was following in the footsteps of his grandfather, a 19th-
century Evangelist named Barton W. Stone who was a highly influential
voice during the Second Great Awakening, and Moore himself had started
his career as a minister but had since left the church after reading about ge-
ological dating of the earth. He became, in the eyes of many at the time, an
apostate and committed himself to spreading atheism. On this chilly winter
day his clerical vestments served only for warmth. Though he would come
to be dubbed “Kentucky’s Most Hated Man,” he finished preparing the final
copies of The Blade to be shipped out with great pride. It was at this moment
that he heard the creak of footsteps on the wooden stairs outside of his door.
He waited, watching his breath in the cold air, for the knock at the door,
but none came. With a crash, federal agents rushed into the cold room and
began overturning tables and emptying drawers. The aged Charles Moore
was then arrested and taken into custody. The crime for which Mr. Moore
was charged? Spreading obscenity through the mail system, or violating the
Comstock Law, a federal charge. Moore was sentenced to two years in the
federal penitentiary, although his time was commuted after six months. To
be an open atheist in America at the time meant running the risk of finding
oneself at the mercy of a justice system that lacked a place for non-believers,
and Moore found this out the hard way.
Buddhists have defended their religious traditions against accusations of
atheism throughout interactions with European and North American trav-
ellers to Asia; however, in presenting the religion for American audiences,
Buddhists were forced to adapt their religion in order to counter accusations
of atheistic nihilism. It was also in 1899 that the San Francisco Chronicle
announced that two Buddhist priests had come to spread their religion of
atheism in America, contributing to an era of more intense yellow peril an-
imosity.6 In fact, Tweed argues the charge of atheism was one of the limits
which Buddhism experienced when attempting to domesticate within the
American religious landscape during the Victorian Era.7 As Tweed points
out, in America Buddhist nirvāṇa was associated with annihilation, therefore
making the religion perceived as nihilism; this assessment was furthered by
the assertion that Buddhists do not have souls.8 However, Buddhists began
to counter this argument by claiming to have some sense of a soul and a god,
which were viewed as taking part of evolutionary processes, making the re-
ligion more akin to science than Christianity. This notion of a Buddhist self
and a god were in direct opposition to many of the words of Buddhists as well
as academics, who presented anātman as part of the traditional doctrines;
in the 1940s and 1950s, by tying the corruption of Buddhism to bioracism,
Metaphysical Buddhists could actually reverse these doctrines as they saw fit,
and use these adaptations to explain the devolution of Buddhism in the past.
In asserting a Buddhist notion of a soul, and a god, both of which are
tied to the idea that an Aryan religious tradition would obviously con-
tain these elements, writers could explain how Buddhism was corrupted
through  the supposedly “racial” additions of anātman and nihilism. For
142  Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy
these predominantly “white” commentators of the time, the nihilistic el-
ements of Buddhism were not doctrinal or part of the “essence” of Bud-
dhism, but were rather endemic within the “oriental race.” We might say
that “Buddhism” encountered charges of atheism entering the American
religious landscape, but there can be no doubt that these accusations were
levelled differently depending on the background of the particular Bud-
dhists and the responses from Buddhist practitioners similarly differed. For
example, Japanese Buddhists reacted differently to charges of atheism than
Metaphysical Buddhists. To discuss Japanese reaction to the notion of Bud-
dhist atheism, we might look to comparisons of Amida and Christian god,
written by early Jōdo Shinshū intellectuals like Kagahi Sōryū, the founder
of Nishi Honpa Honganji in Hawai’i who was chastised; whereas for Met-
aphysical Buddhists in the United States, works which mirrored Christian
forms like The Gospel of Buddha by Paul Carus were hugely successful at
pushing back against charges of nihilistic atheism.9
These differing, and occasionally conflicting, explanations of Buddhism
in America helped develop what we can now see as its hybrid roots, largely
in the years from 1899 to 1957, as the dharma was presented as including
a dizzying array of admixture of Hinduism, Theosophy, Christianity, and
any other number of traditions which saw elements overlaid and syncretized
with Buddhist doctrine during this time period. Throughout this chapter, I
tease out the mixture of traditions, where appropriate, and discuss the rea-
soning behind some of these attempts at hybridity.10

Aryans and evolution in Theosophy and Buddhism

From approximately 1899 to 1957, Asian Buddhists claimed Theosophical
doctrines were closely akin to their own, although this notion changed over
time, while Theosophy practitioners claimed to represent a kind of true
Buddhism presented for Aryans. It is through this engagement with a soul
and a god, which we can see today as heavily refracted through then con-
temporaneous and pervasive bioracism, which began the transformation of
Buddhism in a “religion of joy” for American audiences.
Buddhism in America is well-known today for hybridity in belief and
practice. At the time when Buddhism was really taking hold in America,
syncretic interactions made it even more difficult to determine who in
America was a Buddhist. From 1899 to 1957, as American Theosophists,
many of whom claimed that their religion was in perfect accordance with
the teachings of Buddhism, and perhaps would have read academic texts
on Buddhism as well as other works written in English, assembled a hodge-
podge of doctrines that bridged and borrowed extensively. In “Who is a
Buddhist?” Tweed calls those who take an interest in Buddhism, but whom
he argues we have not counted as Buddhist in the traditional sense, “night-
stand Buddhists.” For our purposes, where the aim is less on definitional
boundaries and more on understanding a particular kind of syncretic
 Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy  143
process and history, I purposefully leave the boundaries of “who is a Bud-
dhist” very fluid. This fluidity is critical to understanding the relationship
between Buddhism and Theosophy during the era in question.11
In many cases, Theosophy was presented as authentic Buddhism, pack-
aged for Americans; this assertion can be found in Buddhist magazines pub-
lished in the United States and Asia, as well as Theosophical magazines.
Similarly, in engaging a careful reading of Buddhist and Theosophical
publications from 1899 to 1957, we can see numerous points that may be
a source of confusion in trying to parse the difference between these doc-
trines. The Golden Lotus was a Metaphysical Buddhist magazine, produced
in the United States, which began publication in 1944 and ended in 1967,
making it one of the first and longest running Buddhist magazines produced
in America.12 Although Robert Stuart Clifton (1903–1963) was editor from
1944 to 1960, the majority of the articles are anonymous.13 The Golden Lo-
tus contains reprints of the Mahātmān Letters, and features quotes from
The Secret Doctrine throughout the early volumes, featured as stand-alone
quotes on pages with insufficient coverage.14 This confusion crossed the
spectrum of Buddhism in America prior to 1957, as a 1931 issue of the East-
ern Buddhist claimed, “undoubtedly, Madame Blavatsky had in some way
been initiated into the deeper side of Mahāyāna teaching and then gave out
what she deemed wise to the Western world as theosophy.”15 As I discussed
in Chapter 5 on Ceylonese responses, there is no doubt that Buddhist rela-
tions to Theosophy and Theosophists changed over the years, and became
almost certainly negative in the 1930s and 1940s for much of Asia. Before
we delve more deeply into the ways Theosophical beliefs shaped American
Buddhism, particularly along “racial” and Aryan categories, a review of so-
ciological and doctrinal elements of American Theosophy may be prudent.
Like so many American religious traditions, the particularly American
strain of Theosophy made much of “race.” For example, in the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, founders Joseph Smith and Brigham
Young connected black skin to internal sinfulness and the biblical story of
the Curse of Ham; the LDS Church denied ordination in the priesthood for
black men until 1978.16 Similarly, Mormons believed that Native Americans
were actually Jews who had become “tawny” from time spent in the sun.17
American religions almost demand an answer to the “question of race.”
To be a religious voice in the United States means to deal in some fashion
with racecraft. Theosophists were no exception. Theosophical doctrines
were meant to accord with religious history and modern science, and there-
fore liberally use racecraft in historical explanations of the universe and
spiritual means of advancement.18 In 1888, Theosophy’s founding vision-
ary, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) published The Secret Doctrine
in which she claimed to have studied the ancient Book of Dzyan, written in
the secret language of Senzar.19 Dyzan, Blavatsky claimed, was a transliter-
ation of Dhyāna, or Chán or Zen, suggesting her Secret Doctrine was a sort
of mystical Zen.
144  Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy
One might think her interest was primarily spiritual, not racist, but let us
look a bit further. In The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky described the universe
as a system of seven rounds, or ages of the earth, seven root races, and seven
sub races.20 She claimed that earth is currently in its fourth, materialistic
age and during the final three rounds the planet will slowly return to its
spiritual form. Blavatsky argued that through a spiritual science, Theos-
ophy, modern science would be saved from its materialism and begin to
progress human evolution towards its eventual goal. Blavatsky’s Theoso-
phy posits a race-based spiritual evolution for all of humanity which takes
place over the entire galaxy; as humanity evolved spiritually, they would
develop new races which were higher than the previous, who would eventu-
ally become so religiously evolved that they would move to a new and better
planet.21 This means that humanity moved to the current “Earth chain”
of planets for this racial epoch after acquiring such spiritual skills so as to
evolve the entire human race forward.22
Undergirding this interplanetary, evolutionary rubric is a concept of
“root races.” The “root races” of humanity define the entire spiritual age;
the current age and “root race” is the Aryan. The evolution of human spirit-
uality is tied to rotations of evolution and involution; the previous “root
race,” or Atlanteans, were advanced technologically but totally materialis-
tic, whereas the Aryan race had begun the evolution of spirituality added
to science.23 When the fourth root race lived on earth, they created an ad-
vanced civilization with electricity and airplanes which lived on the island of
Atlantis. According to Blavatsky, the fifth root race, the Aryans, conquered
the Atlanteans and subsumed them into their clans. The remaining Atlante-
ans, who were “yellow and red, brown and black” were destroyed due to
their supposed inferiority, although some managed to escape to Africa and
Asia.24 According to Blavatsky,

the last survivors of the fair child of the White Island perished ages
before. Their elect had taken sheet on the sacred Island, while some of
the accursed races, separating from the main stock, now lived in the
jungles and underground, when the golden yellow race became in its
turn “black with sin.”25

Aryans could only push human spiritual evolution by defeating the evil
“yellow” “accursed races.” According to Theosophical cosmology, through-
out history the Mahātmāns, or Adepts, have formed a “spiritual hierarchy
of earth,” who lived in mountains in Tibet as very advanced spiritual be-
ings; occasionally, a Mahātmān chooses to progress human religious de-
velopment and descends to walk among humanity. The Buddha was this
adept for the Aryan “root race.” The group of Mahātmāns are officially
the “Great White Brotherhood” and they are headquartered in the “Great
White Mountains” in Tibet, where all “eternal Buddhas” live.26 The Adepts
of the Great White Brotherhood represented the spiritual goals of human
 Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy  145
evolution, while sin was a physical substance which sticks to the soul and
causes the skin to darken. The more concentrated an individual’s karmic
misdeeds, the “darker” their phenotype.
In the 1900s and 1910s, the intellectual history of Theosophical maga-
zines serves the dual purposes of unifying narratives of the past and fore-
telling humanity’s spiritual future; “Aryan” group throughout disparate
history from the Egyptians to Pythagoras, Galileo, and Rosicrucians are
all claimed by authors in Theosophical publications to be promoting The-
osophical doctrines, as long as one hold “a correct reading of the meaning
of these philosophers.”27 According to Theosophists at the time, Egypt was
invaded by ancient Aryans, which explains the connection of these two em-
pires through imaginative interpretations of racism, or racecraft.28

Developing a “religion of joy”

But what of the concept of permanent souls? And what of the charges of
nihilism? According to Theosophists, Buddhism had a soul, and that soul
held a specific career of spiritual progression, comparable to the Bodhisat-
tva doctrine. In Theosophy, individual souls, or monads, will continually
be reborn and gain progressing spiritual capacities until realizing union
with divinity, the over-soul, and thus becoming gods. Through the process
of Theosophical self-deification, the eternal realm and mortal realm move
closer and closer; each being who becomes a god means there are more de-
ities present on earth. In The Inward Light (1908) by H. Fielding Hall, Bud-
dhists were said to believe in transmigration of the soul whereas the doctrine
of anātman was explained to mean that, “nothing is true…the undertone
of the world’s sorrow.”29 In other writings, Fielding Hall claims that the
dharma of the Buddha was separate from the Buddhism of Buddhists before
going on to tie this corruption to racial inferiority, climate, and misunder-
standing of the Aryan founder.
It was clear in American Metaphysical literary sources that many prac-
titioners thought Americans were an evolutionarily superior people. Amer-
ican Metaphysical Buddhists were convinced that Buddhism had a soul
because Buddhism cohered with science which were both equivalent to The-
osophical doctrines, while simultaneously believing that Buddhists, includ-
ing monks and nuns, could be wrong about their own tradition due to their
decreased “racial” propensity for logical thinking. One popular magazine
in the United States combined Metaphysical beliefs common in America,
but outside of Theosophy, and created a new presentation of Buddhism
for American audiences. The Open Court (1887–1936) was a popular maga-
zine published by Paul Carus, dedicated to the “Science of Religion.” The
Open Court was not a Theosophical publication, but was a top magazine for
American intellectuals interested in Metaphysical spirituality. Paul Carus
was one of the most famous Buddhist propagators in American history; D.T.
Suzuki lived with Carus in La Salle, Illinois, and assisted in publishing The
146  Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy
Open Court until the early 1910s. In “Becoming American,” Simon Nelson
Patten (1852–1922), an historian and economist at the University of Pennsyl-
vania born in Chicago, argued (in step with supposedly “scientific” frame-
works) that Americans had a pure “race” and a pure language, but through
science could be made into a stronger stock. Patten deployed what we now
call bioracist understandings which declared Aryans were great due to their
propensity for violence.30 Americans are compared to taming wolves whose
“aggression is not bad, but it requires a fitting end to make it an uplift-
ing force.”31 Patten felt Americans’ continued “racial” primacy depended
on leaning into this aggression and propensity for violence. Patten was not
alone. In “Fylfot and Swastika,” Paul Carus traces the swastika symbol
around the globe, and provides maps and figures to show the preponderance
of Aryanism in the Americas.32 Carus was one of the most famous Buddhist
propagators in American history and his work supported a prevailing strain
of American “racial” thinking which claimed American lineage would lead
back to distilled Aryans, giving America a claim to possess a supposedly
authentic and true Aryan heritage. This idea of Aryan distillation was the-
oretically proven through “science” and expanded cosmically through the
doctrines of Metaphysical religious traditions.
By 1915, Buddhists in America had a history of dealing with the accu-
sation of nihilism and atheism; this charge had been levelled against them
throughout the Victorian Era, as described by Tweed, but appeals to what we
would now call racecraft provided Buddhists with new and “scientifically-
based” answers. American Metaphysical Buddhists continued to utilize the
doctrines of the self, or anātman, in order to adapt Buddhist doctrine, while
simultaneously employing logics of racism to explain the supposed corrup-
tion of the Asian “other.” Throughout the publications of Metaphysical
Buddhists, it is clear that the supposedly original Buddhism is only known
by European and North American sources, such as academics; this notion
of a superior knowledge of Aryan religious tradition allowed Metaphysical
Buddhists to claim widely disparate doctrines as fact, such as the presence
of a soul. Carus famously wrote The Gospel of Buddha in 1894, which was
meant to present the Buddha and his dharma as part of the religion of sci-
ence, and also attempted to reconcile Buddhism with “Western” traditions,
such as monism.33 Carus utilized language and conventions which would
have been recognizable to Americans, as the Buddha is presented in a man-
ner befitting a Greek philosopher and stylized in prose similar to the New
Testament. Carus claimed that the five skandhas, proposed by the Buddha
as the building blocks of that which humans ignorantly mislabel a self, are
actually in the wrong order, and through reordering them we can correct
this mistake in Buddhism and find the Buddhist soul.34 According to Carus,
the Buddha denied an ātman, and therefore “Hinduism,” but did not deny
“the mysterious ego-entity…in the sense of a kind of soul-monad” which is
in contact with the material world.35 The supposed existence of “soul-forms”
in Metaphysical Buddhist literature suggests these early quasi-Buddhists
 Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy  147
were discovering what they considered the true original Buddhism, on
terms that very much required Buddhism to have a soul, and were now able
to “purify” the religion of its years of historical degradation.36 For Meta-
physical Buddhists from 1899 to 1920, Buddhism must have had a soul, as
the Buddha was a racial Aryan, and as naturally spiritual peoples, Aryans
would have a soul; this was the kind of circular logic required by racecraft.37
By asserting that Buddhism had a soul, and a god, with an upwards evo-
lutionary trajectory towards an ultimate reward, Carus and other Meta-
physical Buddhists could assert that Buddha was, “the first positivist before
positivism was ever thought of,” which is actually compared to the inde-
pendent focus on self of Nietzsche.38 In America, Buddhism gained a soul
and a god, although the definition of these entities was still hotly debated;
American writers, as well as proselytizers from across Asia, claimed that
the Buddhist religion had a self and a god, both of which were superior to
Christian understandings. It is through this new interpretation of god and
self that Buddhism could transform from the religion of gloom and melan-
choly, as it had been seen by many Americans during early encounters, to
the interpretation that in Buddhism, “life is Joy…when the Soul awakens,
man will arise with a shout of joy.”39 In fact, when understood properly as
an Aryan, the Buddha “aims at bringing back into humanity the joy of soul-
life.”40 Buddhism, therefore, becomes joy itself, as (according to those at the
time) it is a religion of superior biological origins, based on the concept of
“the joy of soul-life,” and presenting the goal of final merger with the over-
soul. The supposed cynicism of the first noble truth and the annihilation of
anātman and nirvāṇa are countered with an evolutionary upwards trajectory
for the soul, tied directly to bioracism and the notion of white supremacy.
In the years following the Victorian Era, Buddhism in America was being
refashioned as a religion of joy with a soul and a god. In the 1940s and 1950s,
this notion of a Buddhist god would become reified as the proof for Aryan
interpretations of Buddhist doctrine.
To Manly P. Hall writing in the 1940s, whom we encounter in more detail
in Chapter 9, the over-soul in Buddhism is an impersonal spirit present in all
things; the personal aspect of the larger over-soul, or “regenerated personal
Self,” is Amitābha.41 To reiterate, Metaphysical Buddhists tied their current
and future superiority to the idea of their “scientific” superiority, proven by
their knowledge of uncorrupted Buddhist doctrine of the self, as “to [Bud-
dha] there was nothing real but the Self, nothing absolute but the Self, no
true attainment but perfect unification with the Self.”42 For Metaphysical
Buddhists, Amitābha represented humanity’s inner desires for faith as the
personal aspect of the over-soul, which is why Sukhāvatī was created by
the adepts, as it was the perfect religious form “for those incapable of the
supreme achievement,” or nirvāna. ̣ 43 Although this is actually comparable
to the outlook of Shinran, for Hall it is meant to directly disparage Asian
Buddhists, who must settle for lesser attainment. According to Hall, the
adepts also created a superior mystical tradition which was “identical” to
148  Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy
the practices of the original Arhats of the Buddha himself, and this tradi-
tion is displayed in the “Zen Buddhism of Japan.”44 But which Zen was Hall
really referencing; the Dzyan of Blavatsky, the Zen of Suzuki or something
else entirely?

Aryan mysticism and Buddhism in the period of the

Second World War
Aryan mysticism spread all over the world prior to the Second World War.
Ariosophy is a term associated with a number of esoteric cults popular in
Germany and Austria between 1890 and the 1930s.45 Ariosophy was con-
cerned with the study of Aryans, especially through ancient forms of sun
worship and theories of gnosis. Ariosophists also claimed influence from
Theosophical thought, which was combined with historical recreations of
Germanic paganism. Adolf Hitler openly claimed that he was inspired by
the “race-based” spirituality of Theosophy and praised the United States as
the only country attempting to solve its “race problem.”46 As Lopez quoted
in Buddhism and Science, Buddhist Modernist leaders such as the Chinese
monk Taixu (1890–1947) wrote letters to Hitler praising him as a future
leader of the Aryans.47 Mystical interpretations of Hitler himself as cru-
sader for “race” became popular in the 1930s and 1940s, with some contin-
uing long after the end of the Second World War. It is through its links with
Ariosophy, völkisch theory, and Theosophy that Buddhism and Buddhist
symbols came to be used by Nazis and other fascists. As we shall see in the
conclusion, connections between Buddhism and esoteric fascism are being
reformulated to create a new ideology for Buddhism in the 21st century.
Nazi occultists drew upon similar sources of Theosophy and bioracism to
argue for the supposed future-greatness of the Aryan “race.” Savitri Devi
Mukherji (b. Maximiani Julia Portas, 1905–1982) was a religious figure and
writer on Nazi-Occultism who believed Hitler would revive Aryan culture
as an avatar of Viṣṇu.48 Savitri Devi continued to teach Nazi occultism
throughout her life, and published her last book in 1979. Miguel Serrano
(1917–2009) was another proponent of “Esoteric Hitlerism” and Chilean
diplomat, who wrote that Buddhism became a world religion due to its Ar-
yan “racial” greatness, and claimed that Hitler was a Buddha because he
removed the illusion (Sanskrit = maya) that “inferior races” should be al-
lowed to propagate freely. Serrano was a confidant of C.G. Jung and Her-
man Hesse, and he continued writing about Hitler and Neo-Nazism into the
2000s. Jung himself spoke very highly of Hitler, claiming he was, “possessed
by the archetype of the collective Aryan unconscious,” who was, “a spiritual
vessel, a demi-divinity…the messiah of Germany who teaches the virtue of
the sword.”49 The National Renaissance Party was a political party started
in New York City by James Madole in 1949, which expressly used Theosoph-
ical doctrines on “race,” combined with Esoteric Hitlerism and political fas-
cism. The Italian fascist Julius Evola (1898–1974) also described Buddhism
 Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy  149
as a tradition of Aryan greatness and suggested that future fascists begin
to study the tradition.50 Aryan mysticism connected Hitler and Buddhism
through the doctrines of Theosophy, but this focus on Hitler continued far
beyond the end of the Second World War.

Conclusion
In the pages of American magazines, Metaphysical Buddhists were able to
transform what was considered to be a pessimistic religion of annihilation
to religion of joy, with a soul, and leading to eventual merger with an over-
soul. According to Metaphysical Buddhist writers, the religion was now a
positive notion of self-progress, with a goal that was socially acceptable. Not
only did Metaphysical Buddhists feel themselves justified in transforming
Buddhism, because they believed they were Aryans like the Buddha, but in
adapting the doctrines, they also believed they were Aryanizing Buddhism
itself. The addition of elements of a soul was not seen as a late accretion to
the tradition, but a purification through stripping away Asian additions to
the doctrine. Buddhists used the “scientific rationalism” described by Taylor
as a sign of modernity, but instead engaged a circular logic whereby the doc-
trine was identified as corrupted because it no longer accorded with “Ar-
yan philosophy,” and this notion was being proven because Buddhism was
currently being “purified” by imagined Aryans. Metaphysical Buddhists
asserted that doctrines of a soul or a god must represent the true teachings
of Buddhism, because these notions accord much more easily with Aryan
views on the universe. However, Metaphysical Buddhists did not stop by
simply “identifying the problem” in the corruption of Buddhism, but they
also ascribed progressive and active ideologies for the development of Bud-
dhism and human history. By combining the notion of Aryan history as
progressive in competition with outside forces with Theosophical notions
of “race” evolution, Metaphysical Buddhists could posit that all of human
history was a progressive evolutionary process towards a known goal. Bud-
dhism and bioracism allowed American Metaphysical Buddhists to imagine
their religion as an evolutionary path of self-improvement.
The Aryanization of Buddhism represents a domestication of Buddhism
in American culture as well as a process of “modernism” for Buddhism.
Further, the Aryanization of Buddhism presents an example of what David
L. McMahan calls “Global Folk Buddhism” in The Making of Buddhist
Modernism.51 The idea of “ethnic” has historically been synonymous with
the “other,” or people of colour. Even in studies of Buddhism, scholars have
separated “modern” from “ethnic,” or labelled American Buddhists as “im-
porters” bringing their exotic goods in from distant lands. The Aryaniza-
tion of Buddhism in America suggests that “ethnic” proclivities, such as
the use of racecraft, absolutely animated adaptations of Buddhism in the
United States. To become American was to fit oneself within the already ex-
isting structures of racism. However, these Buddhists believed themselves to
150 Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy
be Universalists, and saw their racecraft as “science”; this “Folk Buddhism”
of the United States was spread out through this hegemony in order to per-
petuate itself as a form of Buddhism and science. Upon entering America,
Buddhism took on the American cultural “gods” of Aryanism and racecraft
ideology in order to better fit within American social structures. Buddhism
was not becoming racist in the way we might normally think of such no-
tions as marginal, but was instead using intellectual arguments to fit within
American culture more broadly. It is for this reason that we can say that
Buddhism utilized racecraft, an indelible part of American culture which
was tied to modernism from 1899 to 1957, in order to portray the tradition
as modern and American. To understand the larger ideologies surrounding
Aryanism and Buddhism, in the next chapter we will attend a guided med-
itation class in 1945.

Notes
1 Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of Amer-
ican Metaphysical Religion, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 5.
In this final section, I will focus on Metaphysical Buddhists, utilizing the idea
of Metaphysical religion from Catherine Albanese, to mean Buddhists whose
dharma was viewed through the prism of Metaphysical doctrines such as Theos-
ophy or New Thought. These Buddhist traditions represent mixtures of Ameri-
can religions and thought with Buddhism as it was being presented to the United
States; in some cases, such as The Golden Lotus, which began as a “Theosophi-
cal Buddhist” magazine before eventually amending their mission statement to
place themselves firmly with “original Buddhism.” Metaphysical interpretations
of Buddhism represented a hybridity in language of presentation, and some-
times belief, which mixed Theosophical doctrines and Buddhist lineages. As this
tendency was so widespread throughout Asia, it is impossible to parse out the in-
dividual doctrines of each religion. Sometimes Buddhist hybridity is the result of
stylistic presentation, while at other times this mixing represents a true hybridity
in belief.
2 Thomas A. Tweed, The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844–1912: Victo-
rian Culture & the Limits of Dissent, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2000/1992), xxxiii.
3 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), xxi.
4 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 5.
5 David L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism, (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2008), 261–262.
6 Jane Naomi Iwamura, Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popu-
lar Culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 13–14.
7 Tweed, 2000/1992, 5.
8 Ibid, 130.
Daniel Pratt Baldwin, “The Religions of Asia,” The Indianapolis Journal, 28
May 1900, (Indianapolis, IN), 3.
“The Korean Religion—A Very Tragic Joke,” The Hartford Herald, 28 January
1916, (Hartford, CT), 6.
9 George J. Tanabe, Jr., “Grafting Identity: The Hawaiian Branches of the Bodhi
Tree,” in Buddhist Missionaries in the Era of Globalization, ed. Linda Learman,
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 81.
 Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy 151
10 I will treat the doctrines of Theosophy and Metaphysical Buddhism as one in the
same because they were largely presented as such. Theosophical doctrines were
present in Buddhist literature and vice versa, but I think it makes perfect sense
that for seekers during this time period, the two traditions would become con-
flated; the main reason for this conflation being that from approximately 1899 to
1957, Asian Buddhists claimed Theosophical doctrines were closely akin to their
own, while Theosophy claimed to be true Buddhism presented for “the West.”
11 Thomas A. Tweed, “Who Is a Buddhist?’ Night-Stand Buddhists and Other
Creatures,” in Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia, ed. Charles S. Prebish
and Martin Baumann, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 17.
12 The Buddhist Ray ran from 1888 to 1894. This is probably the very first Buddhist
publication by Americans and for Americans while not be associated with any
foreign forms of Buddhism.
13 Robert Stuart Clifton was from Birmingham, Alabama. He was ordained in the
Jōdo Shinshū Nishi Hongwan-ji lineage in 1934 and served as a director of the
BMNA until 1942, when he received a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
enquiry concerning his activities with Japanese immigrants. Following this en-
quiry, Clifton became the editor-in-chief for the Golden Lotus until moving to
England to start the Western Buddhist Order there in 1952, then subsequently
being ordained again in Laos as a Theravāda monk in the lineage of Venerable
Sumangalo before starting the Penang Buddhist Association in Malaysia where
he lived until his death on 6 February 1963.
14 “The Mahatman Letters,” The Golden Lotus 2, no. 3 (March 1945): 41.
15 Daisetsu Suzuki, “Book Reviews,” The Eastern Buddhist 5, no. 4 (July 1931): 377.
16 Matthew L. Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst, “Introduction,” in The Mormon
Church and Blacks: A Documentary History, ed. Matthew L. Harris and Newell
G. Bringhurst, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 1.
17 Matthew Dougherty, “None Can Deliver: Imagining Lamanites and Feeling
Mormon, 1837–1847,” Journal of Mormon History 43, no. 3 (July 2017): 22.
18 H.J. Spierenburg, ed. The Buddhism of H.P. Blavatsky, (San Diego, CA: Point
Loma Publications, 1991), vii.
19 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Reli-
gion, and Philosophy, vol. I, Cosmogenesis, (London: The Theosophical Publish-
ing Company, Ltd., 1888), viii.
20 Blavatsky, vol. I, 1888, viii.
21 Ronnie Beach and John Peck, “Development of Man’s Principles During the
Rounds,” The Theosophical Forum 27, no. 3 (March 1949): 153.
22 Ibid, 153.
23 Peter Stoddard, “The Origins of Man,” The Theosophical Forum 27, no. 6 (June
1949): 361.
24 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Re-
ligion, and Philosophy, vol. II, Anthropogenesis, (London: The Theosophical
Publishing Company, Ltd., 1888), 11.
25 Blavatsky, Vol. II, 1888, 319.
26 Lydia Ross and C.J. Ryan, “Who are the Mahatmans?” The Theosophical Forum
23, no. 5 (May 1945): 208.
27 Jerome A. Anderson, “The Alchemy of the Rosicrucians,” Universal Brother-
hood Path 15, no. 7 (October 1900): 376. Italics in original. All the Aryan ages are
connected, including Egyptians and Rosicrucians. Rosicrucianism was a popu-
lar movement in early 17th-century Europe which sought to uncover the ancient
esoteric truths of the past by mixing Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and Christianity.
28 Gottfried de Purucker, “Civilizations of Pre-History,” The Theosophical Forum,
2, no. 5 (Nov. 1941): 330.
29 H. Fielding Hall, The Inward Light, (London: The Macmillan Company, 1908), 54.
152 Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy
30 S.N. Patten, “Becoming American,” The Open Court 29, no. 7 (July 1915): 385.
31 Patten, 1915, 385.
32 Paul Carus, “Fylfot and Swastika,” The Open Court 16, no. 3 (March 1902): 153.
33 Universal “ether” was still believed to be a scientific fact, meaning monism
provided spiritual terminology for the natural force permeating the universe.
It should also be noted that prominent bioracists were members of the Monist
League, founded by Ernest Haeckel.
34 Paul Carus, The Dharma, or the Religion of Enlightenment: An Exposition of
Buddhism, 6th Edition, (Chicago, IL: The Open Court Publishing, Co., 1918),
29. Note that the five skandhas begin with mental formations for Carus, which
is typical of Theosophy and other forms of Metaphysical religion, and possi-
bly based on his understanding of Yogācāra. He then returns to rūpa, although
attaching it to a soul, which then acts theoretically through karmic volition
[mental formations, soul-forms, soul-groups/sensation, consciousness]. The tra-
ditional ordering of the skandhas in the Pāli Canon are: form, sensation, percep-
tion, mental formations, and consciousness. For Carus, mental formations are
already present when our “soul” contacts form. This “soul” then groups these
sensations in comparison to mental formations to produce consciousness.
35 Paul Carus, The Gospel of Buddha: Compiled from Ancient Records, (Chicago,
IL: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1915), viii.
36 Carus, 1918, 29.
37 For many, Asian Buddhism was already corrupted with annihilation and
soullessness as its heartwood. Carus and his fellow writers in The Open Court
promoted their philosophies as a science of religion.
38 Paul Carus, Nietzsche and Other Exponents of Individualism, (Chicago, IL: The
Open Court Publishing Company, 1914), 135. Carus claims the Buddha was a
proponent of “individualism.”
39 Henry T. Edge, “Man’s Mighty Destiny,” Universal Brotherhood Path 15, no. 3
(June 1900): 137.
40 Edge, 1900, 137. Italics in original.
For a further example, in The Universal Brotherhood Path Herbert Coryn
(1863–1927), president of the Brixton Theosophical Lodge in South London,
claims that for Buddhists “life is joy,” while Hindus wait for joy in the next life.
Coryn claims that all existence is built on opposites, and so therefore the dark-
ness of “Hinduism” presents “different stages of evolution. They are co-existent,
and just as light dispels the darkness, so the presence of the positive quality
tends to raise the negative upwards.” [Herbert Coryn, “Life Is Joy,” Universal
Brotherhood Path 15, no. 3 (June 1900): 139.]
41 Manly P. Hall, The Mysteries of Asia, (Los Angeles, CA: Philosophical Research
Society, 1929), 32.
42 Ibid, 1929, 32.
43 Manly P. Hall, The Adepts in the Eastern Esoteric Tradition, Part Two: The Ar-
hats of Buddhism, (Los Angeles, CA: The Philosophical Research Society, Inc.,
1953), 29.
44 Ibid, 1953, 29.
45 Nicholas Goodrick Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and
their Influence on Nazi Ideology, (New York: Tauris Park Paperbacks, 2005),
123–125.
46 Edwin Black, War against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create
a Master Race, (Washington, DC: Dialog Press, 2012), 5.
47 Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, (Chicago,
IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 73–74.
 Metaphysical Buddhism and religion of joy 153
48 Nicholas Goodrick Clarke, Hitler’s Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan
Myth, and Neo-Nazism, (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 5. In
a similar fashion to Hitler himself, Savitri Devi was a strict vegetarian who
believed the death penalty should be used against those who did not respect
animals.
49 C.G. Jung, “The State of Psychotherapy Today,” in The Collected Works of C.G.
Jung, Vol. 10: Civilization in Transition, ed. R.F.C. Hull, (Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton University Press, 2014), 157.
50 Julius Evola, The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery Ac-
cording to Early Buddhist Texts, (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1996/1943), 13.
51 McMahan, 2008, 261–262.
8 Buddhism and the evolution
of racecraft

Introduction
In the years following the Second World War, Metaphysical Buddhists
presented their religion as a doctrine of active and optimistic joy, which
they claimed was not an addition to Buddhism, but a reformation to the
supposedly true, original teachings. This supposed “purification” was jus-
tified by claiming that the reforms were “scientific” and therefore making
Buddhism further accord with Aryanism. Through bioracism, not only was
the removal of supposed corrupting influences considered a “scientific” pro-
ject, making history more accurate, but would also help modern “science”
through furthering Aryan studies. Promoting Americans as the true Aryan
Buddhists who would purify the religious tradition in order to recreate its
former glory through “science” allowed American Metaphysical Buddhists
to disregard Asian history and recreate the tradition as they saw fit. If the
history of the Aryan “race” was the story of progressive evolution towards
European culture and monotheism, as many sources posited, then it would
make sense that the Aryan spirituality of Buddhism was also based on this
upwards trajectory. In this chapter, Metaphysical Buddhists remade Bud-
dhist doctrines in order to posit a religion of joyfulness, rather than suffer-
ing; in this chapter, the notion of Buddhist joy will be expanded in order to
posit an end goal for the religion, which helped to reformulate the Buddhist
path as a journey of individual evolution and self-discovery.
Remaking Buddhism as a religion of joy, as the previous chapter situated,
meant that it had to involve evolution towards a goal; by adding a soul and
a finite goal, Buddhism in America could be formulated as a journey of self-
improvement. In order to show this notion of Buddhism as human evolution,
we delve deeper into Metaphysical interpretations of Buddhist tenets, finding
in the literature of the time new presentations of the Aryan Eightfold Path, a
vision of Buddhism as a progressive inter-planetary evolution towards The
Heights, and the concept of mystical unification with the over-soul. In these
interpretations, we come to see how Buddhism was presented as a hybrid
tradition by Metaphysical practitioners in order to promote a religion of
 Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft  155
evolution and upwards movement, trafficking in à la mode notions of human
progress. By positing Buddhism as evolution, Metaphysical Buddhists could
identify the source of supposed corruption, which had set Buddhism on its
alternative trajectory, but then also blame that group for being a detriment
to human progress. By making Buddhism appear to be evolutionarily tied to
the development of the Aryan “race,” Metaphysical Buddhists argued that
the supposed Asian corruption of Buddhism was actually preventing hu-
man spiritual evolution in total. Once a corrupted tradition defined by pes-
simism and suffering, Buddhism could now be refashioned as a progressive
religion of evolutionary spiritual development. Where would this upward
trajectory lead? This chapter analyses Metaphysical Buddhist notions of the
soul and god, which developed in popular literature on Buddhism, as well
as the publications of Buddhist groups attempting to explain the religion
for American audiences. The notion of a soul in Buddhism was combined
with the idea of a once-great Aryan tradition and its subsequent corruption
over generations. Metaphysical Buddhists argued that if the Buddha was
an Aryan, the religion would have a soul, and then used the assertion of a
Buddhist soul to argue the tradition was being purified to its former glory.
Metaphysical Buddhists posited a religion of upwards evolution in order to
justify the adaptations being made to the religious tradition, not as new ac-
cretions, but a purification of the tradition to reinstate its supposedly Aryan
roots. By doing so, the perceived purification of Buddhism would not only
result in individual spiritual gains, but human evolution through notions of
“racial” and religious progress.

Evolution and the upwards journey of the soul

At the local university, they are offering a workshop with guided medita-
tion. You have heard about Buddhism in the past, but you figure it is worth
trying it out for yourself to see what all the fuss is about. Plus, the war has
just ended, and both the Nazis and the Germans were defeated, so you need
something to calm your nerves, and Janet at work said meditation is great
for that. You walk into a dimly lit room and take your seat. A woman in
a dark flowing robe enters the room and says that she will lead the guided
meditation. According to her, the meditation is based on the levels of attain-
ment taught by the Buddha himself back before the religion was ever cor-
rupted. She says these are the pure teachings. She begins, “even [for] those
we call savage or heathen, …all Life moves upwards and all life treads The
Path toward a higher level.”1 The guide begins speaking in a slow calm-
ing voice as she says a novice meditator will begin “the Soul’s journey” by
meeting the “Guardians of the Race,” who will assist a young being heading
towards “The Heights.” These Heights represent a sort-of cosmic Parthenon
where an individual meditator is able to merge with the great over-soul. The
“Guardians of the Race” can see deep into the past and into the future, as
156  Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft
well as travel across the universe, which is why they help to navigate spiritual
seekers, like yourself. Your guide says,

first, picture earth in its infancy, where you will meet the race of cy-
clopses who once lived on earth during an ice age; these gigantic mon-
strous creatures are forced to root their tentacles through “etheric
matter” in order to find sustenance.2

The guide tells you that these beings represent some of the earliest evo-
lutions of the human “root races,” according to Buddhist doctrine; each
Buddha is sent to progress a new “race” of beings forward spiritually, she
says. After picturing yourself travelling through time to view the early cy-
clopses, you are told that the “Guardians of the Race” plunge you deep
into the ocean, where they show you a miraculous kingdom made of gold.
Here, you are able to master the “Powers of the Realm of Water” while con-
versing with the great “Water Deva of Atlantis,” which your guide tells you
was a known Buddhist stronghold.3 Through your guided meditation, you
are told that eventually, with Buddhist practice, one can even attain super-
natural gifts, such as the “First Ray Power” which combines creation and
destruction, which will help in the creation of a new “Manvantaric Morn-
ing.”4 This ray power is created through the concentration of the third eye,
which many humans lost after the final cyclopses died out. After traversing
“The Way,” and seeing the various stages of evolution for spiritual beings,
your teacher says you will be able to “find [yourself] in the Universal Self.”5
After a few silent moments, the meditation instructor claps her hands. She
says that you have now undergone a transformation, although you are not
sure you feel any different. This is an admittedly confusing portrayal of the
Buddhist path, which is today often seen as a programme of self-care akin
to psychological agnosticism. Where does this hybridity come from and
does it tell us something more about the way Buddhism was presented to
American audiences?
In the post-war era of the 1940s and 1950s, Metaphysical Buddhists pre-
sented Buddhism as an upward evolutionary trajectory of the soul towards
an eventual merger with an over-soul. “The Way,” was a running serial
guidebook for the Buddhist path described through the spiritual adventures
of a young “Western Chela” as he travels towards “The Goal.”6 Buddhism
was presented as a path of spiritual evolution with a set goal; this path was
combined with popular Theosophical and Metaphysical doctrines in the
United States to posit an upwards evolution for “races” that would even-
tually progress mankind forward. If the development of Buddhism in its
supposedly true form is a sign of human spiritual development, which was
posited throughout Metaphysical Buddhist works, then those who prevent
the spread of dharma, or promote a “false” Buddhism, are creating a great
disservice to human spiritual development. This racist imagining of Ameri-
can Buddhism is an example of the theory of racecraft in history. The inner
 Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft  157
logic is present within the argument; if Asians corrupted Buddhism once, it
follows that they would continue to do the same thing today, as bioracism
supposedly proves “racial” characteristics are simply passed from genera-
tion to generation. Racecraft obviously does not need to follow along the
lines of real logic, which might simply suggest that no “pure” Buddhism ever
existed, and no corruption ever occurred. Instead, racecraft works through
“racial formation” to imagine an “other” against which Americans have
always been fighting.7 Through racecraft, this battle could be designated a
cosmic one, fought over millennia, and with the high stakes of evolutionary
progress as the prize. Through this racecraft, American bioracism takes
on a different character, at least for the building of ideology following the
Second World War, whereby the differing sides must be defined so as to set
humanity on the correct path for the future. The history of Buddhism, and
its future progress in America, became a metaphor for the Aryan “race” as
a whole and human spiritual evolution more broadly.
Metaphysical Buddhists utilized doctrines adapted from Theosophy and
Buddhism in order to imagine a form of Buddhism which is “joyful,” in the
American cultural sense, and ends in self-deification through connection
with an over-soul, or god. In Theosophy, the “deific self” has progressed
through aeons of spiritual development to attain oneness with the over-soul,
which simultaneously progresses all of human spiritual evolution. The most
advanced beings in the universe, and representatives or emanations of the
over-soul in form, are the Mahātmāns. The journey of the self is then one of
individual spiritual advancement and upwards mobility of the soul, while
simultaneously dragging all of humanity along for the ride like a maverick
Sisyphus. This individual hero’s journey is attained through scientific and
religious inquiry, and not, through false practice which makes a person,
“become perverted into absurd practices of sitting in a peculiar posture,
fixing the eyes on a fly-speck on the wall, and working oneself up into a
weird and morbid state of mind” in an “unholy attempt to gain ‘powers’ by
means of ‘concentration.’”8 Certain Buddhists utilized the presentation of
“race-based” evolution presented in Theosophy as uncorrupted Buddhist
doctrine in the 1940s and 1950s.
Metaphysical spirituality and bioracism, here presented as Theosophical
science, become the panacea of the ills of Asia, and therefore the universe
as a whole. In The Golden Lotus, one of the longest-running American Bud-
dhist magazines, Metaphysical Buddhism is clearly linked to Theosophical
doctrines over more traditional forms of Buddhism. In the mission state-
ment of the first issue, the editors claim to be associated with the idealism of
the Yogācāra school, which was said to be most closely akin to Blavatsky’s
Buddhism, and in direct opposition to the Mādhyamika nihilism character-
istic of Asian Buddhism.9 Not only does this allow the writers and subscrib-
ers of the Lotus to claim a distinct side in creating a new Buddhism for the
modern age, but it simultaneously places their argument deep into Buddhist
history to imagine a historical place for themselves.10 This ability to find
158  Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft
space through connections with an ancient past follows the theories of Ed-
ward E. Curtis, IV in his study of the Nation of Islam and the ways in which
they were able to claim positioning within ancient debates to posit them-
selves as the true Muslims. By tying their magazine to polemic Buddhist
debates dating back over a millennium, Metaphysical Buddhists were able
claim positioning in historical debates and continue to promote themselves
as authentically true Buddhists. In fact, these supposedly pure Buddhists
are the spiritually advanced, who “penetrate to or reach Illumination far
enough to comprehend the doctrines reserved for those who pass the outer
gates of understanding”; fortunately, the mission statement makes clear that
although Asian Buddhism has been corrupted, through these spiritually ad-
vanced individuals, “the East may find a voice again within the West.”11 In
The Golden Lotus, “stripped of miracles, Buddha stands as the wisest man
of ‘our’ race” when he created “The Aryan Path,” which was used as an ep-
ithet for the Buddha-Dharma.12
Metaphysical Buddhist sources used the language of bioracism to pro-
mote themselves as the inheritors of the true Aryan religion, in Buddhism,
who would then be tasked with teaching this tradition back to Asians, who
had originally corrupted the doctrine. In the October 1944 issue of The
Golden Lotus, the author of “Pathways to the Supreme” explicitly states the
need for the “Āryan root race” to reclaim their racial and religious inher-
itance in the form of pure Buddhism, while on the opposite page of the mag-
azine is featured an excerpt of Rudyard Kipling’s poem The White Man’s
Burden which says:

take up the White Man’s burden, send forth the best ye breed…take up
the White Man’s burden And reap his old reward: The blame of those
ye better, The hate of those ye guard – The cry of hosts ye humour Ah,
slowly toward the light: “Why brought us from bondage, Our loved
Egyptian night?”13

Not only does this provide the sense that “lesser peoples” will be uplifted
by the supposedly superior “White Man,” but it should also be noted that
Egypt was viewed as an Aryan homeland. In The Golden Lotus, a running
series titled “Egyptian Thought” makes clear that ancient Egyptian thought
and Buddhist philosophy,

present a startling picture of complete agreement upon essential princi-

ples, expressed in manner and form to fit the times, the civilization, the
race, the level of understanding, and the heritage of the people among
whom the wise ones moved and served.14

The messaging of Metaphysical Buddhist magazines suggests that Ameri-

cans reclaiming Buddhism is a step in human spiritual progress. In Heart of
Darkness, Joseph Conrad portrays the idea of the White Man’s Burden in its
 Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft  159
true form when he describes Marlow as “a Buddha preaching in European
clothes and without a lotus-flower,” who says,

the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from
those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than
ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What
redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental
pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea.15

The “White Man’s Burden” became part of the ideological thread of Bud-
dhism for Metaphysical Buddhists. “The East” should be “known” in order
to push American and European greatness further, while undertaking the
“burden” of bringing the rest of humanity along the progressive evolution-
ary journey.
If Metaphysical Buddhists could view themselves as the Aryan heirs to
Buddhist tradition, they could also posit an “other” who could be traced
back like degenerate family studies to represent the original Dravidians.
This out-group could then function as the repository for a number of neg-
ative tropes throughout history, such as the threat of clerical oppression.
Similarly, the “clinging, parasitic superstitions” which had developed in
“uncivilized lands” could be attributed to specific groups, such as the Ti-
betans or the Chinese.16 Buddhist Modernists were promoting a Buddhism
which was transnational and not tied to a particular nation or sect, but for
those promoting an Aryan form of Buddhism, this could be interpreted as
license to disregard all of Buddhist history entirely.17 By including notions
of Aryanism, this modern reformulation could be portrayed as a “purifica-
tion” and return to the founder, as well as a modern inclusion of “science”
simultaneously. In The White Buddhist, Stephen Prothero argues that Colo-
nel Henry Steele Olcott created a “creole Buddhism” which uses the “outer
form” of Buddhism to explain the “inner form” of Theosophy, whereas I
argue by 1945, American Metaphysical Buddhists used Theosophical ter-
minology and phrases to explain the structure of Buddhism.18 What this
leads to, when mixed with the purported “science” of bioracism, was a Bud-
dhism of souls progressing spiritually along an evolutionary path towards
an over-soul, with the Aryan “race” as the most advanced on this trajectory
offering a helping hand back to those who had fallen behind. Metaphys-
ical Buddhists in America in the 1940s, “taught that man came from the
lower evolutions upwards; that all men pass through this stage on the way
to higher stages…that he should turn his eyes toward the Heights and climb
toward them” in an article titled “The Dharma.”19 Metaphysical Buddhists
attempted to merge bioracism and Theosophy to create their presentation
of Buddhism.
Nowhere is the supposed upward trajectory of the “soul” of Buddhism
more evident than in the running saga of the “Western Chela,” which was
used to create the guided meditation vignette above. The story begins with
160  Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft
the chēla’s traditional Buddhist education in lists of fetters and meditations
practices, before eventually journeying upwards throughout parallel uni-
verses towards the Heights in an attempt to pierce the centre of the spiritual
universe. Throughout his journey, the young chēla encounters a species of
giants and even learns to perform astro-travel. In the story of our young
“Western Chela,” each “race” he views is meant to be a step in the evolu-
tionary process of human spirituality. The young chēla is displayed as part
of a “Cosmic Process,” or a continual evolution of the universe which ends
with final merger with the over-soul; the authors then “look back” to the
readers and claim “but that is mystery only travellers upon the Way would
understand,” to suggest that they themselves speak for the enlightened.20
This ideological edifice had been created over 50 years as the result of views
of colonial “ownership” of specific lands and peoples.
The idea of American Buddhist evolution had been percolating in cul-
ture for over a generation, as can be seen in the writings of Metaphysical
Buddhists, as well as culture more broadly, such as Rudyard Kipling’s 1900
novel, Kim. Through his father, Rudyard Kipling knew Aurel Stein as well
as the other Orientalists of his day, and in the 1880s used to spend his sum-
mers at Theosophical lodges.21 In 1900, Rudyard Kipling wrote Kim, a novel
about the orphaned son of an Irish soldier and his Irish maid living in the
streets of Lahore, who eventually meets a Tibetan Buddhist Lama, Teshoo,
and is subsequently involved as a spy in The Great Game, of colonial es-
pionage. Even though Kim is living in India (modern Pakistan), he never
forgets that he is “well-born” and even has special papers which identify
him as European. A great deal has been written on the relation of Kipling
to Buddhism, as well as Orientalism and racism more broadly. However, it
is in the final pages of the novel that we can find new venues for analysis,
especially viewed through the prism of racecraft. Kim is the novice chēla
of Teshoo Lama, but as Said argues, “throughout the novel Kipling is clear
to show us that the lama, while a wise and good man, needs Kim’s youth,
his guidance, his wits; the lama even explicitly acknowledges his absolute,
religious need for Kim.”22 Kim, as the chēla for the Teshoo Lama goes from
a beggar in India, with superior birth, and evolved into one of the most
important spies in Britain’s colonial game; at the end of the narrative, the
Lama reaches his river of enlightenment, but so does Kim himself, who
“with an almost audible click” also gains enlightenment under a Banyan
tree which the earth recognizes as “the many-rooted tree above him, and
even the dead man-handled wood beside knew what he sought, as he himself
did not know.”23 It is at this time that Kim is able to encapsulate all of India,
through a process of vision and mapping as described by Said, and reaches
his nirvāṇa, stating,

I saw them at one time and in one place; for they are within the Soul. By
this I knew the soul has passed beyond the illusion of Time and Space
and of Things. By this I knew I was free.24
 Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft  161
Kim has become a Buddha, realizing enlightenment beneath the Bodhi
tree, and in so doing subsumed the land and peoples of India within one
over-soul. Kim has advanced along the spiritual path, which typifies his
European upbringing as it also involves exemplary playing of The Great
Game, and assisting his own guru in reaching his final rest. Kim is compa-
rable to the version of Buddhism being put forth in Metaphysical Buddhist
magazines. Kim and the “Western Chela” both display the progressive de-
veloping of ideology which results in American “ownership” of Buddhism,
from 1900 with Kim till 1957 with Suzuki on the cover of Vogue. Americans
viewed Buddhism as an Aryan tradition corrupted by Asian racial degener-
acy, supposedly verified by bioracism, but this Aryan tradition could be re-
vived through the evolution of “races” culminating in new American forms
of Buddhism. This imagined Buddhist superiority was further proven, be-
cause Americans were adding a soul and a god, which were supposedly the
Buddha’s true original teachings, which was backed by the “science” of
Buddhists Studies. The character of Kim can be read as a metaphor for co-
lonialist views of Buddhism, which state that the religion can be taken over
and progressed by the presence of an elite group of people who will advance
the religion beyond its purported traditional superstitions.
In Metaphysical Buddhist sources, Buddhism was presented as having a
soul, at least in its original Aryan form, and it is this soul which will evolve
mankind forward in a progression of “races”; this was considered Buddhism
and science in the 1940s. Buddhism had been corrupted from its “original
pure” Aryan language and tradition, and with the addition of Metaphys-
ical “science” one can also ascertain that this corruption is holding back
human evolution, as an actual detriment to mankind; those who were to be
blamed for such a detriment to evolutionary progress went by many names
in bioracism, Buddhism, and Metaphysical traditions, whether the Semites,
Orientals, Atlanteans, or Asians. Metaphysical Buddhism was interpreted
through the prism of Theosophy to include a soul which was not attributed
to textual tradition or established lineage, but instead based on the idea
that those who were “racially superior” could speak for Buddhism based
on their genealogical relationship to the founder of the Aryan tradition.25
Again, the author disregards all Asian history as unnecessary to their pro-
nouncements. This supposed “science” of Buddhism with a Self should be
taught back to Asians in order to progress human evolution. Metaphysical
Buddhists even used emic arguments, as they viewed themselves as the true
Buddhists, to explain the doctrine of a Buddhist Self. In “Sattva – The Self:
(Annattism and the Middle Way),” John Roger argues that anātman is an-
nihilation, and therefore cannot be a part of Buddhism as this would be an
extreme view, not in accord with the Middle Way. Rogers goes on to claim
“[anātman] propaganda, which misrepresents Buddhism, deceives students,
and negates the work of those who seek to spread the Dharma in the West.”26
By denying a permanent Self and making individuals into “five transitory
skandhas,” the Buddha would have made nirvāṇa into “empty words” and
162  Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft
turned “Arhatship” into “an absurdity.”27 Without a Self, there is nothing
to attain Arhatship, claims Rogers, but he does not need to cite sūtra liter-
ature or tradition because he claims “Anattism outrages common sense,”
and is therefore anathema to the “Western mind.”28 This American “racial
genius” was the arbiter of an imagined true Buddhism, even deciding the
words of the Buddha through perceptions of logic and rationality attached
to supposed “racial traits.” This is not simply a situation where we might
agree to disagree, because the doctrine of anātman is described as “destruc-
tive and unnecessary,” as having no Self, “would deny to Man these higher
principles that form the over-shadowing Spiritual Trinity, and at one blow
deprive him of his heritage of rebirth and reward for effort.”29 Like scholars
editing the words of the Buddha, it would seem that Metaphysical Buddhists
had no problem changing the words of Buddha, or his “Spiritual Trinity.”
American notions of bioracism posited Asian Buddhists as a corrupting
force, while Americans were saviours reinterpreting Buddhism “correctly”
for humanity.
The soul and god are presented as proof of the Asian corruption of
Buddhism; this assertion is supported by academic studies of Buddhism,
undertaken by top “Western” minds; however, the upwards evolutionary
trajectory of Buddhism romanticizes this view, once perceived as cold sci-
entific truth into a cosmic process of Asian detriment to human spiritual
development. To retrace our ideological steps, if the Aryan was present in
every major civilization, and for humanity to progress evolutionarily they
must be pushed forward by superior beings, then those who have attempted
to stop this movement, be they “Semites,” “Asians,” or “Lemurians,” are
halting progress itself. In a review of Lily Adams Beck, presented in “The
Golden Lotus Bookshelf,” the author describes Buddhist history by say-
ing, “the Aryan People of India are the determinant of the highest thought
of Asia,” but Americans, “as descendants of the Āryans, have discarded
our heritage of their great philosophic teachings to adopt the teachings of
the Hebrews.”30 Human evolution is described as one of both spiritual and
technological progress, only moving upwards and claiming new heights, but
this journey requires the strong to lead over the weak.31 It is only when “the
Gods of Other Lands…lay behind us” that the Aryan “race” will suppos-
edly be allowed to progress and advance humanity.32 The hybrid tradition
of Buddhism in America which continues to be a defining quality today was
created throughout 1899–1957, but throughout this time, the hybrid tradi-
tion included the influence of Aryanism and bioracism.
In the United States, racecraft supports the sacred canopy of American
exceptionalism, as it reinforces both domestic and international power dy-
namics and justifies history as well as current prejudices.33 Portraying Bud-
dhism as a religion with a soul or a god allowed Buddhist writers to portray
the religion as optimistic, progressive, and scientific through the use of bi-
oracism. Metaphysical Buddhists could cite specific Orientalist scholarship
to prove that the traditional doctrines of Buddhism itself were suspect, and
 Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft  163
therefore changeable as long as someone had the correct qualifications.
What qualifications allowed someone to speak for the Buddha directly?
From 1899 to 1957, this meant claiming to be Aryan, like the Buddha. Like
witchcraft, racecraft has an internal logic which builds upon itself; for in-
stance, if one first assumes that Buddhism was corrupted from a “pure” tra-
dition, and that devolution happened due to in-born traits of bioracism, then
completely adapting Buddhist notions of the Self would be justified as an
attempt at reformation, while still maintaining reverence for the founder of
the tradition. Racecraft provided the building blocks for the sacred canopy
of ideology, which states that the “East” will always be foreign and lesser by
the very fact that phenomenon originated from the “East”; we know that the
Orient is foreign and mystical, because bioracism and psychology tell us so.
This circular logic reinforces itself through the continued machinations of
racecraft ideology. Fields and Fields describe racecraft as a “circular logic,”
which first defines certain characteristics as “racial,” and then offers these
as “proof” that the “races” differ inherently.34
For Metaphysical Buddhists, a religious doctrine without a soul or a god
was proof of the Asian corruption of Buddhism, as they were “racially”
linked to philosophical negativism and slavishness, and this supposed devo-
lution was evidenced by the presence of doctrines like anātman, which must
have been created by fiendish monks because Aryans believe in a soul and
a god. Furthermore, the idea that nearly half the world’s population would
accept a religion with no god, no soul, and annihilation as its goal was held
as further proof of the incompatibility of the Orient with Occident. All of
Asia could be held as fundamentally different from the United States be-
cause their supposedly incorrect views on Buddhism were tied to the un-
changing biology of the “Asian mind.” Through racecraft, we can also posit
this problem well into the future as well. If historically, Aryans had been
attempting to push humanity forward against those who had attempted
to hold back this progress, which was supposedly verified by Aryan Bud-
dhism, then one might also assume that this process continues today as the
“double-distilled” Aryans of America continue to fight against the forces
which hold back evolution. Not only that, but perhaps the “new land” of
America, which was already held as a place of bioracist “purity” due to
segregation, could be placed as a future Aryan utopia.

Conclusion
Metaphysical Buddhists presented the “scientifically rational” idea that the
Buddha was an Aryan, derived from academic studies of Buddhism, and
then romanticized this notion into a story of evolutionary progress which
justified and continued perceptions of Aryan “racial” greatness. This ro-
mantic expression of supposed “science” was “proven” in part by suggesting
that true Buddhism had a god and a soul, which were akin to a changing
monism, which was posited as fact. By engaging the language of bioracism,
164 Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft
Metaphysical Buddhists were able to fit their doctrines within the limits of
American culture, but also broader perceptions of modernity. American
views of evolutionary progress developed throughout the era from 1899 to
1957, with the rise of new technologies and perceptions of American par-
ticularism. For comparison, we might look to Curtis’ Black Muslim Religion
in the Nation of Islam. Curtis analyses the ways black Muslims in America
recreated polemic discussions within the history of Islam to imagine them-
selves as a larger part of the history of the religious tradition and therefore
claim space for themselves as part of the Orthodox tradition. This helped
to position them not only within the Muslim community (ummah) but also
helped them to claim a new level of respect in the racist milieu of American
culture.35 Metaphysical Buddhists similarly imagined themselves within
deep polemic debates of Buddhism, but used their position of privilege to
then claim all of Buddhism for themselves, and remove everyone else from
the historical record. Metaphysical Buddhists were able to capitalize on bio-
racism and the Aryan myth in order to argue for their superiority within this
history, rather than simply claiming space within. We can see the building
in ideologies from cultural notions of Buddhist ownership in Kim, written
in 1900, to the articles of Metaphysical Buddhists who claim that an Aryan
religion would not promote atheism and nihilism, so Buddhism must have a
soul and a god. This is the building of ideology; the Buddha was supposedly
an Aryan, which means his tradition was corrupted because Aryans are no
longer Buddhists, and this corruption must be the fault of Asians as they are
now the “false” Buddhists. If the history of Aryanism was one of progress in
fighting against destructive outside forces leading to the “double- distilled”
Americans, then this would suggest that the history of Buddhism was also
an evolutionary journey, paralleling Aryanism itself. How then, could the
supposed corruption of Buddhism be explained if Buddhism was meant to
represent evolution? Metaphysical Buddhists posited that it was the sup-
posed Asian corruption of the Dharma which had prevented the evolution
of Buddhism, meaning if the negative influences were removed, Buddhism
could be reformed. Buddhism was thus remade as active and progressive, as
well as a religion of positivity with an end goal. This particularly “ethnic”
American form of Buddhism was combined with American notions of
particularism to suggest that the end goal of Buddhism was actually the
aspiration of Aryanism and therefore all of humanity. If Buddhism was
Aryanism, and American represented the future homeland of this “race,”
then Buddhism could be posited as the spirituality which would usher in
this American Aryan utopia.

Notes
1 “Greetings,” The Golden Lotus 1, no. 12 (December 1944): 114. This piece de-
scribes the story in this vignette as a “guidebook” for Buddhist meditation.
2 “Broken Strands,” The Golden Lotus 8, no. 3 (March 1951): 49. The idea of
“monstrous races,” such as cyclopses and other creatures was only disproven in
 Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft 165
1775, in the dissertation of bioracist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach [Nell Irving
Painter, The History of White People, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
2010), [Apple Books Version], 125].
3 “The Way,” The Golden Lotus 8, no. 4 (April 1951): 105.
4 Manvantara are the cyclical ages in Hinduism, suggesting a new age is dawning.
5 H. Groot, “The Chela Path,” The Theosophical Forum 23, no. 12 (December
1945): 532. Italics in original. The original text says “himself.”
6 “The Way—A Serial: Preface,” The Golden Lotus 2, no. 1 (January 1945): 4.
7 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd
Edition, (New York: Routledge, 2015), 12.
8 T. Henry, “The Greater Self,” The Theosophical Path 18, no. 3 (March 1920): 234.
In Theosophy, humanity is only on the third of seven planes of existence,
which is a materialistic one, so people must now begin to reclaim Aryan spirit-
uality and mix materialism with religion in order to usher in a new dawn.
9 “The Golden Lotus,” The Golden Lotus 1, no. 1 (January 1944): 1.
10 Edward E. Curtis IV, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975,
(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 1.
11 “The Golden Lotus,” January 1944, 1.
12 “Readers Questions: Are there Miracles in Buddhism?” The Golden Lotus 15,
no. 3 (April–May 1958): 67.
13 The Golden Lotus 1, no. 10 (October 1944): 79. Diacritics in original.
14 “Egyptian Thought,” The Golden Lotus 1, no. 6 (June 1944): 41.
15 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer, (Toronto: Bantam
Books, 1981/1902), 7.
16 In “The Story of the Buddha’s Dharma,” the author claims that when Buddhism
moved from India to Tibet, the religion adopted “uncivilized qualities,” as it
had entered an “uncivilized land”; the corruption of Buddhism is tied to racism
as the author states, “customs govern thought, and thought governs customs”
[1944: 42].
17 If Asians were said to represent the corruption of Buddhism, then this would
justify ignoring all Buddhist history up till the present day. For Metaphysical
Buddhists, the teachings of the Aryan religion were preserved until a group with
sufficient racial genius could safely reclaim Buddhism. One of the most repeated
sūtra texts from 1899 to 1957 was the Kālāma Sutta, which contains the famous
claim of the Buddha that one should, “not go upon what has been acquired by
repeated hearing; nor upon tradition.” This text supposedly represented the
proof that a Buddhist need not follow “tradition,” but that one can provide their
own criteria for truth. This sūtra was quoted in the frontispiece of every early is-
sue of The Golden Lotus. Metaphysical Buddhists viewed themselves as judging
the merits of Buddhism as a whole and casting out that which did not conform
to their verifications.
18 Stephen Prothero, The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steele
Olcott, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 5.
19 The Dharma,” The Golden Lotus 1, no. 7 (July 1944): 50.
20 “The Way: Chapter 81, Manu.” The Golden Lotus 11, no. 6 (1954): 144.
21 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 158.
22 Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 139.
23 Rudyard Kipling, Kim, (London: MacMillan Publishing, 1901), 206.
24 Ibid, 210.
25 In “The Dharma: Delusion of Self (Continued),” a running series to explain
the corruption of the doctrine of the self, the author asserts that “original Bud-
dhism,” has strayed so far from “what the founder of Buddhism meant by his
teachings,” that Buddhists in the United States will, “invariably discard the
ANATTĀ doctrine, because of its illogical nature.”
166 Buddhism and the evolution of racecraft
26 John Roger, “Sattva-The Self: (Anattism and the Middle Way),” The Golden
Lotus 14, no. 4 (1957): 85.
27 Ibid, 86.
28 Ibid, 85.
29 “The Dharma: Delusion of Self (continued,” The Golden Lotus 9, no. 4 (1953): 86.
Italics mine.
30 “The Golden Lotus Bookshelf—‘The Story of Oriental Philosophy’ by L. Adams
Beck,” The Golden Lotus 2, no. 3 (March 1945): 40.
31 “The Quest,” The Golden Lotus 2, no. 3 (March 1945): 33.
32 “The Gods of Other Lands,” The Golden Lotus 2, no. 3 (March 1945): 38.
33 Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of
Religion, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967), 4.
34 Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in
American Life, (London: Verso, 2012), 113.
35 Curtis, 2006, 15.
9 An Aryan Buddhist utopia

Introduction
In the previous chapter, we analysed Metaphysical Buddhist notions of
progressive history, which set Buddhism as an Aryan religious tradition
capable of pushing humanity forward towards new spiritual awakenings.
Metaphysical Buddhists took this argument to its logical conclusion by as-
serting that spiritual evolution may result in a utopia on earth, and that
removing supposedly corrupting elements from Buddhism would help to fa-
cilitate this goal. By the 1950s, Metaphysical Buddhists were attempting to
merge their religion with notions of modernity by aligning it with “scientific
rationalism” through asserting that the Buddha and Buddhism were both
Aryan, while expressing that sentiment through romantic presentations
of an evolutionary-progressive Buddhism which represented the spiritual
trajectory for all mankind. But where would this logic of racecraft lead?
American bioracists did not posit an end-goal for Aryanism, but they did
argue that the “race” found its most distilled form in America. For Meta-
physical Buddhists, who argued that Buddhism represented the spirituality
of Aryanism throughout Universalist history, this goalpost could be known
and even located. With the supposed foreknowledge that Buddhism was
an Aryan tradition, and that it followed the “scientific” trajectory of his-
tory, Metaphysical Buddhists could posit that their perceived purification
of Buddhism would reinstate Buddhist greatness. In the previous chapters,
Metaphysical Buddhists claimed that Buddhism was actually a religion of
joy, because it had a soul and was tied to bioracism, and that this notion of
joy created a religious path of spiritual evolution; in this chapter, I analyse
the final conclusion of this evolutionary logic, and show that Metaphysical
Buddhists posited a future utopia, founded in America and presided over
by “true Aryans.” This turn to an American utopia represented both a pre-
scription for American Metaphysical Buddhists, and the fulfilling of a sup-
posed Aryan destiny of the world. We finish the chapter with a trip to 1950s
Los Angeles, California and the Philosophical Research Society of Manly
P. Hall, who taught that the secret destiny of America was the formation
of a Buddhist utopia, once prophesied by Nostradamus and other adepts.
168  An Aryan Buddhist utopia
Metaphysical Buddhists presented Buddhism in America as human evolu-
tion towards a future utopia, while simultaneously fighting against forces
hell-bent on holding back progress and derailing mankind. By positioning
Buddhism as a thoroughly Aryan tradition which was the future destiny of
America, all of Asian Buddhism, including people, could be essentialized as
part of the supposed corruption of Buddhism, and therefore a literal hur-
dle to evolution. In this chapter, I detail Metaphysical Buddhist arguments
which combined notions of Aryanism as an explanation for all human de-
velopment with ideas of evolutionary progress to posit a future Buddhist
utopia in America. This notion was created through deep reading of certain
texts in order to find secret meanings and codes within supposedly esoteric
texts. These supposedly secret teachings helped to create a perennial sense
of history which maintained already defined boundaries of “racial” hierar-
chy. By claiming that Aryans had been attempting to create a Buddhist uto-
pia in America, but Asians were holding back human progress, notions of
white supremacy could be viewed as cosmically ordained, so as to maintain
power structures for all time.

Imagining an American Buddhist Utopia

Picture yourself in 1955, living on the West Coast of America. It is a warm
evening in Los Angeles as you pass beneath gently blowing palm trees; the
sun is setting, leaving only bright splotches of purple and orange in the fad-
ing sky as you walk up to the front doors of the Philosophical Research
Society. A friend has invited you to tonight’s meeting, claiming that this so-
ciety has found a way to connect the histories of all the various groups of the
world while functioning as the key to future spiritual growth for mankind!
For you, a budding but enthusiastic young initiate into Metaphysical prac-
tice, this is an enticing and thought-provoking promise. The founder of the
group, Canadian-born Manly Palmer Hall (1901–1990) claims to have dis-
covered “the secret teachings of all ages,” and has since been asked to give
thousands of lectures across the world, including speaking engagements at
Carnegie Hall and throughout Asia, or the “mystic East.”1 As you enter the
tan stucco building, the scent of candles and incense wafts through the air,
reminiscent of a Catholic Church, but over the Victrola you hear clanging
cymbals and horns which create such a deep cacophony that it seems to be
reverberating your stomach. You follow your friend and take your seat on
a plush purple carpet, when a thin man with slicked hair and piercing eyes
enters the room and takes his seat beneath a painting of a pyramid featuring
an all-seeing eye at the top, which you recognize from the money in your
pocket, but strangely, you noticed a caption at the bottom reading “Uni-
versity of Atlantis”; although confused, you certainly do not want to seem
ignorant in front of a man who claims to have unlocked the teachings of all
religious traditions throughout history! The thin man who you now believe
to be Mr. Hall has taken his seat at the front of the room. “When Jesus
 An Aryan Buddhist utopia  169
Christ was being crucified on the cross, to whom did he call out?” asks the
speaker while simultaneously clanging his finger cymbals.2 A silence falls
over the room as the audience attempts to remember their Sunday school
lessons; “my father, my father, why hast thou forsaken me” a voice from the
back of the audience ventures. “Ah, yes, you know your Holy Bible,” says
Hall, “but this is a mistranslation, perpetuated due to our ignorance regard-
ing our racial and spiritual heritage!” Jesus did not cry out to some distant
god for salvation! What he actually cried was “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachtani!”
This statement comes from the Mayan Language, which Jesus learnt during
his time studying Buddhism in Tibet. The translation from Mayan means,
“Eli, Eli, now I immerse within Him, before the dawning of his presence.”
Jesus on the cross called out to his root guru!’ You sit there flabbergasted;
Jesus learnt Mayan in Tibet? Jesus was a Buddhist? Your thoughts swirl in
your head as you wonder what else you’ve learnt in life that was wrong. Why
were you never told about the Buddhist training Jesus underwent, and what
does this mean for the history of the United States? The speaker assures the
crowd, that this is all part of the secret teachings, and that the adepts of the
universe have created this land specifically to fulfil the purpose; you are not
just an American, in other words, but the rightful heir to a spiritual tradi-
tion which was ordained by the Great White Brotherhood, a world govern-
ment of enlightened beings, even before the “Aryan race” was fully evolved.
“So this is Buddhism,” you think to yourself, “I guess that is why so many
Japanese people want to move here, so they can live in a Buddhist country.”
How did we get here? What kind of Buddhism is this?
The project of Americanizing Buddhism was infused not only with the
necessity of a soul and of Aryan lineage, it also required land-based ap-
peals and prophecy in order to entangle the exceptionalism of the American
project with the claims of Buddhist authenticity. To domesticate Buddhism,
American Metaphysical Buddhists proposed that Buddhism was not a reli-
gion, but Aryanism itself, which would come to its full fruition in America,
thus ushering in a utopia. Metaphysical Buddhists in America were able to
make this assertion by claiming that the American utopia was foretold in
Buddhism and that knowledge could be determined through study of Ar-
yan history mixed with “science,” that the utopia would only come when
corrupting influences holding back evolution were removed, and that the
source of that corruption could be identified through bioracism. Buddhist
magazines and other primary sources posited the United States as a future
Buddhist utopia, which would reverse the historical corruption of the Ar-
yan religious tradition perpetrated by “racially inferior” Asians. Although
scholars of Buddhism may be quick to point out discrepancies between
traditional doctrines and the assertions of Manly P. Hall and others, these
authors cited each other, as well as scholars of Buddhism discussed in the
previous chapters to prove their points, such as articles in The Golden Lotus
which cite academic George Grimm to validate the later perceived Dravid-
ian corruption of Buddhism. When Metaphysical Buddhists did not have
170  An Aryan Buddhist utopia
recourse to traditional sources of authority on Buddhism, whether textual
or scholarly, they instead relied on their self-designated “racial” superiority
to grant them access to the imagined original teachings of the religion. The
supposed Asian corruption of Buddhism and the imagined “racial” connec-
tion of Americans to the Aryan founder allowed Metaphysical Buddhists to
claim any additions they made to the religion, or subtractions, represented
the true teachings. Hall furthers the Aryan myth by claiming a singular
historical narrative, whereby secret adepts held the true teachings of all the
world religions, and progressed them through humanity’s historical devel-
opment to create what they saw as a secret destiny for all; this progressive
model for all development, splitting humanity into two by saying “the Oc-
cidental is convinced that he is making history while the Oriental is wor-
shipping history.”3 Once again, “the Occidental” is progressive and forward
moving while the “Oriental” is mired and stunted; through the “scientific”
study of history, and a mapping of historical development, the future could
also become knowable, as a way to posit utopian progress in the future,
and therefore justify current actions and prejudices as moving towards the
future goal.
Metaphysical Buddhists in America claimed that America was destined
to serve as the home of an Aryan utopia, and that this knowledge could be
determined through the study of religious and Aryan history. For Manly
P. Hall, the Theosophists, and others, finding connections throughout
historical development, such as the presence of “Aryans” was akin to sci-
entific truth, thus allowing them to claim nearly anything as long as they
could assert the presence of Aryans in the area. In fact, in The Adepts in the
Eastern Tradition, Hall asserts that Mahāyāna Buddhism contains an over-
government of religious adepts known as the Great White Brotherhood who
are headquartered in the Great White Mountains of Tibet, and even their
institute is known as the Great White Lodge.4 This adept over-government
is theoretically in charge of sending a new Buddha down for each “race cy-
cle,” meaning the Aryan Buddha was the most advanced religious being
ever to walk the earth. Hall ties Buddhism to a group of apparently superior
beings who will usher in this utopia, writing:

the Northern school certainly believed that the great teachers of the
world, including non-Buddhists, formed part of an over-government.
This invisible Fraternity of the illumined is the true Sangha, of which
the physical assembly is only a shadow…the Arhats wait in silent med-
itation to be discovered by those who deserve instruction and are will-
ing to earn the right of growth through personal consecration and
endeavor…the Adept or Arhat is regarded as a personification of the
overself.5

American Metaphysical Buddhist sources present the Dharma as being tai-

lored for a select elite. Metaphysical Buddhists are painted as superior souls,
 An Aryan Buddhist utopia  171
reflecting the universal self, and discovering their spiritual tradition without
intermediaries and pushing evolution forward. Hall asserts that Maitreya,
the future Buddha to come, will be reborn in America, creating a Buddhist
utopia as the new Shambhala once the new Buddhist nation was able to take
up arms against “alien religions” which corrupted it. In fact, when Maitreya
descends from Tuṣita, the heaven where he currently awaits rebirth, he will
not “merely confirm his predecessor,” but instead, “the teaching will be
suitable to the times.”6 For Metaphysical Buddhists, Buddhism was created
by spiritually and “racially” elite Aryans, who kept the tradition alive un-
til it was overtaken by foreign forces. However, these supposedly superior
Aryans will return to teach a new Buddhism, which will be suitable for
the times. Hall is removing Asians from Buddhism entirely. They are the
corrupting force against which Aryans must fight. This is the divine “will”
of the over-soul, and the scientific progression of mankind. The history of
Aryanism and the history of Buddhism are portrayed as synonymous, and
each one ends with the supposed utopian vision of American Buddhists
claiming their rightful spiritual heritage; for Metaphysical Buddhists, the
Aryan Buddhist is the “Overman,” and the history of humanity is the story
of evolution.7
Metaphysical Buddhists in America attempted to rewrite Buddhist his-
tory to remove the supposed corruption, and instead transform the entire
narrative into one of Aryan greatness and a millennia old struggle to pre-
serve the teachings until the rightful heirs could be found. Through this
reformulation of Buddhist history, all of the patriarchs of Buddhism could
be brought within the fold of supposed Aryan greatness. According to Hall,
the Śūnyatā doctrine of Mādhyamika represents the central philosophy of
Buddhism, but that Nāgārjuna was misunderstood, and was really trying
to describe a Buddhist notion of god.8 By presenting Śūnyatā as a form of
Absolutism, the supposedly Buddhist notion of god could be spread to all
aspects of life, which meant that religious traditions and lineages of teachers
could be disregarded and replaced with a more independent form of ver-
ification, which was possible through the mental refinement which came
with supposed “racial” superiority.9 Bodhidharma and Tsongkhapa were
both European Aryans, according to Metaphysical Buddhists, which was
evidenced by each having “piercing blue eyes.”10 According to Hall, Tsong-
khapa was initiated into esoteric Buddhism while still living in “the West,”
and without the aid of a master. In 1929, Hall wrote that pre-Buddhist Tibet
was a land of “savage cannibals,” who were taught Buddhism, but this was
eventually corrupted because Tibetans are naturally, “racially,” prone to
“devil-worship.”11 Hall combines Tibetan Buddhist and academic accounts
of Buddhism’s introduction to Tibet, claiming that although Tibetans be-
lieve supernatural beings visited Tibet, the native people were simply in
shock at seeing the far superior Aryans.
The destiny of America was supposedly foretold from thousands of years
ago, and Metaphysical Buddhists argued that they were the select elite to
172  An Aryan Buddhist utopia
reform the supposedly original teachings of the Aryan Indian sage. In The
Secret Destiny of America Hall writes that America was set aside thousands
of years ago by “the Ancients” who knew the nation would eventually be-
come a great philosophic empire, with an individual select group chosen
for rebirth there, as “wise men, the ancients believed, were a separate race”
so that, “it is this larger and coming race that will some day inherit the
earth.”12 In fact, these ancients selected an Aryan known as Christopher
Columbus, who Hall asserts was Greek rather than Italian, to found the new
world and begin the creation of a new Atlantis. This connection of spirit-
uality with bioracism explains why Hall asserts, “if a word is to be said for
bringing in the clergy, it might be that the theologian planner who will be
truly useful will be one who acquires at least some knowledge of the science
of biology”; the spirituality of “the East” will counteract the materialism of
“the West,” ushering in a new utopia.13 For many Metaphysical Buddhists
in America, it was the combination of an Aryan spirituality derived from
the “mystic East” which could be combined with “Western materialism” in
order to create a new spiritual future for humanity.
Once Metaphysical Buddhists had determined that America was a pre-
destined land of utopia, they began to identify the supposed impediment
stopping spiritual evolution, and to begin to remove that element. Meta-
physical Buddhist and Theosophist sources make clear that the removal
of corrupting influences is not to be viewed as negative, but part of evolu-
tionary processes of involution and evolution. According to Metaphysical
Buddhists in America, it was only through the process of advanced beings
choosing to “come down” and teach humanity the correct ways that human
evolution is pushed forward; if the United States was set aside as a future
spiritual utopia, and Americans were the distilled form of the Aryans who
had been at the heart of all human development, it would only make sense
for Americans to teach the “true Aryan” tradition back to those who had
corrupted it. Americans both mirrored and justified the colonialism by ar-
guing that Asians must be taught the supposedly true original Buddhism
in order to progress humanity forward, which is a project America already
believed itself to be accomplishing. This extended quote from Hall captures
the sense of the “White Man’s Burden” with which American Buddhists
viewed their destiny in Asia, which would help to purify the Dharma and
push evolution forward towards the future utopia:

we are fundamentally a materialistic people and few are the Occidentals

who are not in some measure bound by material values, attachments,
and ambitions. Metaphysics is to us an avocation, a hobby, a luxury, a
passing experience. We must accept the materiality of our race as part
of the divine plan. Like the prodigal son, we must metaphorically go
down into Egypt and herd swine. In the end we shall be richer for all
the experiences that we shall have gained; we shall be wiser and nobler
for our journey in the land of darkness and error. The reward for our
 An Aryan Buddhist utopia  173
experience is to be truly greater than the angels, in acquiring wisdom,
courage, vision and truth. Because we are very different from Eastern-
ers, and because we are different from the ancients, we must adapt their
mystical philosophies to present conditions.14

For Metaphysical Buddhists, in order to usher in a new Buddhist utopia, the

inherent rulers of the earth must take back and purify the Aryan religious
tradition.
Metaphysical Buddhists in the United States posited that the history of
Aryanism and the history of the United States were one in the same, as both
claimed Buddhism as their true spirituality. According to Hall, the Aryan
“race” was responsible for the creation of America, and set it aside as a
future Buddhist utopia, and this was done far in advance of any of the sup-
posedly great civilizations of history. Many Metaphysical Buddhists would
have seen no problem with Hall’s claim that it is “perfectly true that A merica
is older than Egypt, and that Egypt is older than what is now called India.”15
The history of the Aryans was thus reversed to place America as both its
historical roots and ideal future. These sources come from the 1940s and
1950s, which means in many cases they are written during the Second World
War or just after. Nazi uses of Aryan mythology combined with bioracism
would have been known to American audiences at this time. Metaphysical
Buddhists did not present the history of Buddhist corruption as something
to despair over, as it was simply “scientific fact” that, “the East as far as
India, including Ceylon” were of “a low grade karmic intelligence, materi-
alistic, selfish, cruel, revengeful and at their height they developed a great
deal of sorcery and black magic,” and so throughout all of human history,
theoretically “races are reborn to either suffer or repay each other.”16 Met-
aphysical Buddhists did not present this racism as what we today call white
supremacy, but instead saw this development as the evolutionary process of
humanity. In Metaphysical Buddhist magazines, humanity is currently in
the “Kali-Yuga,” or an age of pessimism and dread which will find the “root
race” involved in full-scale war, but this should be considered a positive
development as fighting will remove karma and force evolutionary rebirth
through mass deaths. Metaphysical Buddhists, including Hall, argued that
each new “root race” would have a new Buddha, and the next “root race”
would start in the United States. In fact, new “root races” germinate within
the previous “race,” which means the “sixth root race” is already evolving
in the United States. Buddhism in America was “dethrowning…the god
of tyrannical dogmas and arbitrary commands to worship and sacrifice at
such an altar.”17 Metaphysical Buddhists used the “proof” found in Orien-
talist and bioracist writing to argue that by engaging with their own inter-
pretation of Buddhism and disregarding all of Asian thought and history,
Americans were remaking Buddhism into an Aryan tradition.
By claiming that American Buddhists were the rightful heirs to the Ar-
yan religious tradition, Asian Buddhism could be displaced, not simply as
174  An Aryan Buddhist utopia
an example of corruption, but as a stumbling block for human evolution,
holding back the development of utopia. The flowering of Buddhist uto-
pia represents a new adaptation in American Buddhism, which was tied di-
rectly to the supposed superiority of the Aryan “race.” In the United States,
bioracism was considered the most cutting-edge “science” of the day, and
Buddhists were able to use their own emic connection to this “science” in
order to fit themselves within the American religious landscape; in so doing,
Buddhists also lost their religion in a certain sense, as a specific form of Bud-
dhist Modernism was created and appropriated by other audiences. To be
modern was to utilize the “science” of bioracism; to be American similarly
meant a belief in “science,” of which bioracism was a major part. In other
words, to be modern and American, Buddhism Aryanized, which eventu-
ally helped the religious tradition gain space and footing within American
culture. Buddhism in America is now considered the purview of the affluent
and middle class, and defined, in many ways, by a sense of white privilege.18
Japanese Buddhists on the other hand were actually imprisoned as a direct
result of anti-Asian racism; when they returned, their history and traditions
had become a cultural fad, and the Japanese were labelled “Square,” or tra-
ditional, versus the modern American “Beat Zen.” To say that “Buddhism”
was stolen lends credence to the essentialized monolith described by early
Buddhist Studies scholars, but it is fair to say that the object created through
racecraft, mixing bioracism, Buddhism, and Aryanism, was taken from the
Buddhist world and placed distinctly in America as an Aryanized form of
Buddhist Modernism. This Aryan Buddhism reveres the founder, but dis-
parages millennia of tradition, and argues that millions have been doing
Buddhism wrong until this new Buddhism appeared to purify the tradition;
the perceived fact that Buddhism was once pure and had been corrupted
was already supposedly proven by “science.”
Those who engaged the supposedly lesser and corrupt Buddhism were
considered biologically impaired, while those creating the new Buddhism
were seen as “scientifically” and historically superior, which is what justified
their ownership and adaptation of Buddhism in the first place. This repre-
sents the creation of racecraft ideology. This imagined supremacy helped
Buddhism to become so popular in the United States, and also helped to
create space for Asian Americans as a “model minority.” It was not only
through economic success, but also through the assertion of racial and his-
torical supremacy that Asian Americans were able to find space in America;
it should also be noted that Aryan Buddhism served as a sort-of trade in
this exchange, as “Buddhism” in this sense has been repackaged, commod-
ified, and removed from its historical roots. This is not to say that modern
forms of Buddhism, like mindfulness, are not connected to Buddhism, or
that Asians and Asian Americans have not been actively involved in the
creation of the mindfulness movement, but when we see examples of Bud-
dhism removed from its traditional moorings as a celibate renouncer tradi-
tion, like “Zen tea,” or “mindful sex,” we can safely say that the religion has
 An Aryan Buddhist utopia  175
changed in the modern era. Metaphysical interpretations of Buddhism are
not inherently good or bad, but simply exist. An Aryanized form of Bud-
dhism contributed to the creation of Buddhist Modernism and Buddhism in
America; we cannot say that the use of racecraft had only negative effects.
No matter how we view the outcomes today, there can be no doubt that
the history of Buddhism in America parallels the creation of Aryan Bud-
dhism. In many ways, this research is the story of remythologization which
adds imagination to the world, or the creation of an “ethnic” Buddhism in
America, whereby racecraft is grafted into Buddhism to create a uniquely
American ethnic Buddhism with a completely imagined history, although
often overlapping and mirroring traditional narratives. In many ways, Bud-
dhists actually aided in the creation of the Aryan myth, as they used it to
promote their own cross-cultural greatness, but it was also through this
use of racecraft that Buddhism was traded. Included under the umbrella of
Buddhist Modernism, we should include a “global folk Buddhism” derived
from the particular ethnic beliefs of a nation known as the United States,
called Aryan Buddhism.

A new “Zen” Buddhism, for Americans

Other than mindfulness, perhaps the most defining term for Buddhism
in America since the 1940s has been “Zen,” both in its lived tradition and
popularity among Americans, but also in the academic study of Buddhism.
Scholars like Robert Sharf and Brian Victoria have pointed to the ways
in which the Japanese characterization of Buddhism, and especially Zen,
provided a specific picture which was culturally constructed by Japanese
intellectuals prior to the Second World War. According to Sharf, Zen was
portrayed specifically by Japanese nationalists prior to the Second World
War to promote their specific form of Buddhism, which has continued to
colour the ways in which modern scholars study Zen.19 The sources they
are discussing, such as D.T. Suzuki, often directly overlap with my own.
Throughout his writings, especially between the periods Jeff Wilson and
Tomoe Moriya described as “nationalist Suzuki” and “mystical Suzuki,”
the notion of Zen as ahistorical, apart from Buddhism, and derived from
pure experience was prevalent in The Eastern Buddhist and beyond.20 Zen
becomes the focus of a cultural fad labelled the “Zen Boom” in the 1950s,
marking the beginning of “Buddhism” as a commodified item of fascination
for American society, which was the result of ongoing discussions from the
1930s to the 1950s.
However, American Metaphysical Buddhists in the 1950s do not follow
this trend. In fact, as America begins to embrace Zen in the form of Alan
W. Watts and others, The Golden Lotus runs a series of articles disparaging
Zen and Watts. This would seem strange, as we might naturally associate
Metaphysical Buddhists with what scholars call the “Zen Boom” and Beat
portrayals of Buddhism; however, Metaphysical Buddhists already believed
176  An Aryan Buddhist utopia
their “true original Buddhism,” was an Aryan tradition, and employed bi-
oracist logics as evidence, which meant that Zen mysticism derived from
Japan was viewed as lesser in comparison to their academically and “sci-
entifically” derived superior Buddhism. In Metaphysical Buddhist mag-
azines, Zen is portrayed as the most illogical form of Buddhism, derived
from the monkish nonsense of Asian corruption.21 For the Japanese, Zen
was claimed to be beyond even Buddhism itself, as an ahistorical tradition
of mysticism undergirding the science of Buddhism, but for Metaphysical
Buddhists, their Buddhism was science, and it was their connection to the
original founder which made them superior; Zen commands like, “if you
meet the Buddha on the path, kill him” could be seen as exceedingly de-
structive in such a light, or as Zen attempts to destroy science and religion
simultaneously. In The Golden Lotus, Willem B. Roos blames the mysticism
of Asian monks who cast spells like magicians in order to stupefy the more
gullible, but ends with the hope that “any serious student of Buddhism, [will
not be] intoxicated by Zen.”22 Here again, we have the presentation of Bud-
dhism for American audiences set as a warning against the dangers of Asian
mystics and doctrines, or the very “Asian mind.”23
Zen became popularized in America, not necessarily through widespread
engagement, but through feelings of complete ownership over a cultural ob-
ject tied to notions of Aryanism which Americans labelled as “Zen.” Schol-
ars of Buddhism have posited a “Zen Boom” occurring in the 1950s, whereby
Zen suddenly exploded into American culture and popularized Buddhism
for the first time in America. Even in the 1950s, the proliferation of “Zen”
included the availability of consumer goods such as tea, books, and other
cultural products. The critiques of Metaphysical Buddhists should allow us
to further question the existence of this “Boom,” as many American Bud-
dhists disparaged Zen as a lesser form of the tradition. Similarly, Buddhists
themselves did not suddenly arrive in America in the 1950s; in fact, many
Asian Americans were only granted citizenship in 1952. Instead, the Zen
Boom represents the continuous work of Buddhist writers, who attempted
to resist colonial tropes as well as promote understandings of Buddhism and
racecraft. The Zen Boom was not a singular moment at which Americans
became interested in Zen and decided to recreate the tradition in the United
States, but instead the end result of building ideologies about Buddhist
superiority.
By 1958, Metaphysical Buddhists believed they could speak for Buddhism
as a whole, as the author S.L. writes in The Golden Lotus,

we all know that the Lord Buddha would not have taught Reincarnation
without acknowledging something to reincarnate into a body or form
of a human being, and to survive it. It is precisely this senseless inter-
pretation of the teaching of Reincarnation that stops the progress of
Buddhism in Western lands.24
 An Aryan Buddhist utopia  177
Metaphysical Buddhism should force us to question the “Zen Boom” in the
United States, and what it truly meant for Buddhism in America. In many
ways, the position of Metaphysical Buddhists suggests that “American Bud-
dhists” were not actually involved in the Zen Boom, while in other ways it
shows that the Zen Boom was not a sudden explosion, but a long process of
resistance to dominant colonial tropes, even within Buddhism itself. Ac-
cording to S.L., and other Metaphysical Buddhists of this time period, the
problem of false Buddhism can be pinned directly on Asian Buddhists, as
he pointedly declares:

you seem to be the only Buddhists concerned with the true interpreta-
tion of the teaching. Why should all these great dignitaries put them-
selves and their ideas as hindrances in the Path and prevent the spread
of the true teachings of the Lord Buddha? This becomes a tremendous
tragedy to mankind.25

Zen Buddhism, representing Japanese Buddhism in post-war America, be-

came another essentialized object which could be blamed for the corruption
of the once-great Aryan tradition of Buddhism.
This view meshed with the bioracist logics Metaphysical Buddhists re-
lied on, as it laid a historical and philosophical veneer onto the idea of the
Japanese as anti-social, cunning, and corrupt. This series of articles also
displayed the ambivalence towards Buddhism in America, as the Zen tradi-
tion, which was promoted by Japanese missionaries as mystical and scientif-
ically superior was embraced by American culture more broadly. However,
it was this tradition of imagined superiority, which was adopted as cultural
fad, while anti-Asian sentiment continued. Although beyond my time pe-
riod, we could also look to distinctions made later within Zen, such as dis-
tinctions between Beat Zen and “Square” Zen developed by Watts, which
delineate “old” and “stagnant” forms of Buddhism from the past and new
“hip” forms of Zen being developed in Europe and North America. Meta-
physical Buddhist condemnation of Zen as anti-social and heretical mirrors
racist tropes regarding Asian corruption of Buddhism.
Meanwhile, “Aryan Buddhism,” as that mixed with Metaphysical American
traditions and bioracism, claimed a god and a soul, resulting in a nirvāṇa of
joy, and a religion of optimism. This inclusion of a god and soul tied to theo-
ries of Aryan superiority and Asian degradation helped Buddhism find space
in the American religious landscape. Assertions like the corruption of Zen
helped Metaphysical Buddhists to create a sort-of degenerate family studies
for Buddhism, whereby the corruptions to Buddhist doctrine could be re-
traced in order to eradicate their fetters and therefore recreate a new Aryan
Buddhism in America.
Certain scholars of Buddhism argue that Zen Buddhism was a driving
force between Buddhist “terrorism” and the “holy war” of the Second World
178  An Aryan Buddhist utopia
War. In his latest work Zen Terror, Brian Daizen Victoria details the life of
the assassin, Inoue Nisshō and his use of Zen to justify acts of religious vi-
olence.26 Victoria claims that Zen doctrines lent themselves to the develop-
ment of Japanese fascism and that “selflessness” helped to forge ideological
bridges between Buddhist thinkers, like D.T. Suzuki and the Nazis.27 Not
only do I contend that Buddhists were reacting to the “modernism” of bio-
racism, but Metaphysical Buddhist writings on Zen add further nuance to
this assessment. If Zen Buddhism is to be blamed for doctrines of fascism,
as Victoria suggests, then why do Metaphysical Buddhists disparage Zen
but promote Aryanism? Although Zen doctrines were used by Suzuki and
others to promote an Aryan Buddhism, so too were the doctrines of other
forms of Buddhism, as well as Christianity and Theosophy. Metaphysical
Buddhist critiques of Zen show that it was not the Zen school particularly
who engaged the language of racecraft and chauvinism, but it was instead
part of the global cultural zeitgeist of the time. Although the idea of a mys-
tical Aryan utopia is jarring and directly tied to racism for modern read-
ers, Buddhists in America also utilized this idea to promote the Dharma
through the 1940s and 1950s.

Conclusion
From 1899 to 1930, Buddhism in America was perceived as a once-great
tradition that had been corrupted over millennia, only to reemerge after
the Second World War with an almost militaristic sense of defeating its en-
emies in order to usher a new American utopia. We have seen how certain
Buddhists created an ideology of Buddhism as a tradition tied to racist
hierarchy and progressive spiritual evolution. By engaging with A merican
notions of “race” through supposedly “scientific” ideas of Bioracism,
American Metaphysical Buddhists were able to portray Buddhism as an
Aryan tradition, not of the ancient past, but for remaking a new future.
In America, Buddhism could be portrayed as active and optimistic, or as
a religion of joyfulness. In Chapter 7, I discussed Charles Taylor’s keys to
modernity as the inclusion of a scientific rationalism, romantic expression-
ism, and monotheism. Metaphysical Buddhists used imperialist and racist
thinking, perceived as scientific rationalism, to posit the existence of a Bud-
dhist god, who would help to usher in a new utopia in America once the
Aryan doctrine was revived in a romantic expression of racism. Buddhism
was portrayed as scientific in part because of its connection to Aryanism,
which was expressed through romantic notions of human spiritual devel-
opment, which posited that an Aryan tradition would certainly have a god
and a soul, which were all coloured by ideologies of racecraft. McMahan
claims that Buddhist Modernism has been marked by individualism and
social reform, but it is critical to note that individualism during this pe-
riod was sometimes defined by blood purity and that social reform involved
progressive notions of eugenic sterilization. In other words, within the
 An Aryan Buddhist utopia  179
variegated locations and ideas which created Buddhist Modernism, notions
of racial supremacy and Aryanism should also be added. Buddhist notions
of Aryanism drew upon many factors, including what was considered the
most cutting-edge science of the day. Therefore, we cannot fully ascribe
negative intentions to intellectual writers on Buddhism. However, there is
no doubt that these theories have been used in support of white supremacy
throughout history. The ideologies of Aryan Buddhism were built in the
United States at a time which coincided not only with yellow peril history,
but segregationist legislation and eventually the internment of Japanese
Americans. Racecraft and the Aryan myth continuously built upon each
other in the United States from 1899 to 1957, but this was not merely an
intellectual exercise discussed in Buddhist magazines, as these arguments
justified and perpetuated racism and violence; as Hannah Arendt wrote,
“every full-fledged ideology has been created, continued and improved as a
political weapon and not as a theoretical doctrine.”28 Even after the Second
World War and United Nations Declarations against bioracism, the Aryan
myth continued to be used in order to explain Buddhist history and doc-
trines. As Edward Said wrote, “Orientalism carried forward two traits,”
the first being “a newly found scientific self-consciousness based on the lin-
guistic importance of the Orient to Europe” and the second, “a proclivity
to divide, subdivide, and redivide its subject matter without ever changing
its mind about the Orient as being always the same, unchanging, uniform,
and radically peculiar object.”29
The question, though, is how might these historical roots influence and
continue to define modern forms of Buddhism? Metaphysical Buddhists in
the United States began with the idea that Buddhism had been corrupted
by Asians, as this was proven by the science of philological studies, which
means they never needed to change their mind in order to claim that they
were particularly different and superior to the supposed “Orient.” Through
ideologies of racism imagined as racecraft, Asians could be labelled as
corruptors, and a hindrance to human progress, which might even be cos-
mically ordained, as some religions attempted to prove. More bombs were
dropped in Asia following the Second World War than during the fighting,
which the United States justified as a way to prevent Asian nations from
slipping into the mire of Communism and thus holding back humanity. Ide-
ology builds in order to create and justify human separation, which often
leads to violence.
Intellectual building blocks developed from 1899 to 1957 continue to influ-
ence the development of Buddhism in America today. In American Dharma,
Ann Gleig provides a detailed study of the beliefs of modern Buddhists in
America today, and argues that common shared features include a claim to
return to “original” and “pure” teachings, framing Buddhism as a scien-
tific religion, a romanticization of mundane life including increased impor-
tance for the laity, a revival of meditation practice, and an interest in social
reform.30 Historically, Metaphysical Buddhists argued that the process of
180 An Aryan Buddhist utopia
rebirth was actually one of human spiritual progress, which would result
in a progressive awakening of Americans to create a Buddhist utopia and
thus bring back the “original pure” teachings of Buddhism. Gleig further
suggests that white privilege is a common feature among many Buddhist
Modernist groups in the United States. The current study then presents the
historical roots and foundations for the modern iterations found by Gleig.
Richard Payne has previously used the term “White Buddhists” to describe
this particular strain of modern Buddhism in America. We can further sug-
gest that these “White Buddhists” are actually drawing on a long history
of chauvinism and supremacy within Buddhism in America and Buddhist
Modernism. Gleig argues that many Buddhist communities are now moving
beyond the modernist label and engaging with forms of postmodernism,
which combine seemingly contradictory threads in order to create a new
hybridity. However, from 1899 to 1957, Buddhists in America valourized the
historical founder as an Aryan while also suggesting that modern science
would recreate Buddhism in order to form a future utopia, all of which was
tied to the imaginings of racecraft and bioracism.
In fact, it was through Aryanism that both the Buddhist past and future
could be reified while simultaneously disparaging the two millennia of his-
tory which comes between. This is not to say that Buddhism in America to-
day does not show signs of post-modernity, but it is imperative to point out
that the modernity which is being drawn upon is partly rooted in the my-
thology of bioracism. In Philip C. Almond’s The British Discovery of Bud-
dhism, he argues that British imperialists discovered or created something
new out of many disparate traditions, which we call Buddhism.31 However,
in Urs App’s The Cult of Emptiness, he claims that Europeans wrote about
a singular religious tradition which worshipped a Buddha and could be
viewed in different forms from Burma to Japan.32 Aryan Buddhism presents
a middle ground between these two arguments, as this entity was the new
creation in the British discovery of Buddhism; the British were enamoured
with the Aryan myth when they encountered it, and began to use it as an
explanation in history as well as definitive “proof” of the corruption of Bud-
dhism. In other words, the British did not discover Buddhism, as Buddhist
pilgrims had been travelling to other lands for generations, but they did
discover an Aryan Buddhism which touched off a new proliferation of Bud-
dhist travel and publication.33 The creation of Aryan Buddhism, involving a
global network of interlocutors and based on the “folk” American belief in
racecraft, continues to influence the development of Buddhist Modernism
and Buddhism in America even today.

Notes
1 Manly P. Hall wrote The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of
Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic, and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, which
purported to combine the esoteric teachings of all ages.
2 This story is an adaptation from a Theosophical article in the Eastern Buddhist.
These words are actually from L. De Hoyer. However, given the perennial nature
 An Aryan Buddhist utopia 181
of Hall’s philosophy, and his theories of connection between all religions, this
story is still useful from Hall. [L. De Hoyer, “Meditations on Plato and Buddha,”
The Eastern Buddhist 7, no. 1 (May 1936): 39].
3 Manly P. Hall, The Mysteries of Asia, (Los Angeles, CA: Philosophical Research
Society, 2006/1929), 5. Originally printed in 1929 as a series in the Overland
Monthly and reprinted by the PRS in 1958.
4 Manly P. Hall, The Adepts in the Eastern Esoteric Tradition, Part Two: The Ar-
hats of Buddhism, (Los Angeles, CA: The Philosophical Research Society, Inc.,
1953), 5.
Lydia Ross and C.J. Ryan, “Who Are the Mahatmans,” Theosophical Forum
23, no. 5 (May 1945): 208.
5 Hall, 1981/1953, 5.
6 Ibid, 63.
7 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (San Diego, CA: Harcourt
Brace & Company, 1973/1948), 180. I have paraphrased her quote from Testa-
ment of John Davidson (1908), who said “The Englishman is the Overman and the
history of England is the history of evolution.”
8 Hall, 1981/1953, 24.
9 According to Hall, the true teachings of the Mādhyamika were reserved for a
select group who would push spiritual development forward. This group could
make spiritual attainments without the use of teachers from traditional lineages,
as “the Mahayana system went so far as to acknowledge that Adeptship could be
attained without acceptance of Buddhism and without instruction by a teacher”
[Hall, 1981/1953, 3].
10 Hall, 1981/1953, 68.
11 Hall, 2006/1929, 20.
12 Manly P. Hall, The Secret Destiny of America, (Los Angeles, CA: Philosophical
Research Society, 1944), 11.
13 Ibid, 4.
14 Manly P. Hall, Self-Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization: Practical Instruc-
tion in the Philosophy of Disciplined Thinking and Feeling, (Los Angeles, CA:
Philosophical Research Society, 1942), 18–19.
15 G. de Purucker, “Civilizations of Pre-History,” The Theosophical Forum 19,
no. 5 (November 1941): 328. Italics in Original.
16 Arthur A. Beale, “The Races of Man,” The Theosophical Forum 22, no. 2 (February
1944): 63.
17 Thos B. Wilson, “Buddhism in America,” The Light of Dharma 3, no. 1 (April
1903): 2.
18 Ann Gleig, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity, (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2019), 47.
19 Robert H. Sharf, “The Zen of Japanese Nationalism,” in Curators of the Buddha:
The Study of Buddhism Under Colonialism, ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr., (Chicago,
IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 131.
20 Jeff Wilson and Tomoe Moriya, “Introduction,” in Selected Works of D.T.
Suzuki, Volume III: Comparative Religion, ed. Jeff Wilson, Tomoe Moriya and
Richard M. Jaffe, (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 5.
21 Willem B. Roos, “Analysis of Some Writings and Radio Talks of Alan W. Watts,”
The Golden Lotus 14, no. 7 (July 1958): 155.
22 Willem B. Roos, “Analysis of Some Writings and Radio Talks of Alan W. Watts
(continued),” The Golden Lotus 14, no. 9 (September 1958): 178.
23 Luis O. Gómez, “Oriental Wisdom and the Cure of Souls: Jung and the Indian
East,” in Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism Under Colonialism, ed.
Donald S. Lopez, Jr., (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 263.
24 S.L. “Comments,” The Golden Lotus 14, no. 9 (1958): 172.
25 Ibid, 172.
182 An Aryan Buddhist utopia
26 Brian Daizen Victoria, Zen Terror in Prewar Japan: Portrait of an Assassin,
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019), 1.
27 Brian Victoria, “D.T. Suzuki and the Nazis,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 11, 43,
no.4 (October 2013): 1.
28 Arendt, 1973/1948, 159.
29 Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 98.
30 Gleig, 2019, 22.
31 Philip C. Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), 5.
32 Urs App, The Cult of Emptiness: The Western Discovery of Buddhist Thought and
the Invention of Oriental Philosophy, (Rorschach: UniversityMedia, 2012), 12.
33 Richard M. Jaffe, Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern
Japanese Buddhism, (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2019), 4.
Conclusion

By 1957, Buddhism in the United States was Aryanized; not only was the
founder of the tradition an Aryan, but his doctrine had been transformed,
through “science” into a tradition of supposed superiority. Of course, Aryan
Buddhism does not define all of Buddhism in America, as we would likely be
more accurate to call them Buddhisms in America. In America, bioracism
and the Aryan myth were largely marginalized following the Second World
War and the horrors of the Holocaust coupled with the UNESCO declara-
tion against bioracism titled “The Race Question,” and published in 1950.
However, racecraft has continued to define American culture, even to the
present day, and some scholars even argue that bioracism is making a come-
back. In Superior: The Return of Race Science Angela Saini shows the ways
in which bioracism has been reformulated and packaged anew for American
audiences in the form of racialized medicine, IQ testing in schools, and its
continuance in psychological studies today.1 In 2011, the blog Psychology
Today posted an article by Satoshi Kanazawa, an American-born professor
of evolutionary psychology at the London School of Economics, who wrote
that,

black women have lower average level of physical attractiveness net of

BMI [body mass index]. Nor can the race difference in intelligence (and
the positive association between intelligence and physical attractive-
ness) account for the race difference in physical attractiveness among
women.2

It would seem that “scientists” are returning to the myth of “race,” including
the subjective use of beauty through the eye of academics as somehow con-
stituting a credible typology. Kanazawa’s argument does not rely simply on
his own racism, but draws upon an extended history of associating “beauty,”
explained “scientifically” through Petrus Camper, with European descent.
This is another example of racecraft; an academic subjectively decides that
millions of people are unattractive to him, and therefore lack beauty, which
he ties to a lack of intelligence, although there is absolutely no proof for this
assumption. The scholar, Kanazawa in this case, never questions why they
184  Conclusion
think millions of people are unattractive based on skin colour, but assumes
their pronouncements should carry weight. For whatever reason, the disci-
pline of psychology seems to be rife with people making pronouncements
with little evidence that define “the mind” of millions of people, such as the
LGBTQI+ community.
In American culture, people still believe in racecraft as if it is true; the
national census asks everyone about “race” although these categories have
changed drastically over the years and in the world of medicines like BiDil,
the first medication designed specifically for African-Americans to treat
heart disease.3 The pervasive nature of racecraft in American society seems
to encompass almost everything, and continues to be used as an explana-
tory tool for perceived differences in humanity. It is strange that humanity
seems obsessed with the idea of perceived psychological individuality, or
separateness from others, while we look repeatedly for internalized biolog-
ical groupings to lump everyone together; why do we not realize that we
are genetically individual, tied only to our own personal hereditary trees
and the family which created us, and that mentally we would do far better
in a like-minded collective? We split ourselves off to be individuals based
on our beliefs or political opinions when these should be the uniting ties of
collective thought and action, while in our genetics we seem very willing to
pronounce huge groups of people as “materialistic,” or “cunning,” or even
“superior.” Why should I feel some deep cosmic connection to a person in
another nation whose politics, religion, and sense of history differ so much
from my own simply because we share genetic markers of phenotype?
Racecraft is stunted thinking; this notion of “race” prevents humanity
from seeing the interconnectedness of ourselves to those around us, while
allowing people to feel superior based on imagined connections based on
biology. In “Being Buddha, Staying Woke: Racial Formation in Black Bud-
dhist Writing,” Adeana McNicholl compares the modern use of the term
“woke,” meaning someone who is anti-racist, with the Buddhist use of awak-
ening.4 The Buddhist notion of awakening suggests opening one’s eyes and
seeing clearly, suggesting the majority of us are asleep or living in a sort-of
dream, as the Diamond Sūtra suggests. In America, racecraft is so ubiqui-
tous that its existence is very rarely questioned; instead racism is viewed as
a line which designates an “in-group” from an “other.” In America just one
century ago, bioracism was considered the most cutting-edge “science” of
the day, and the existence of “races” as biological reflections of personality
and mind was common knowledge. In other words, like the Azande studied
by E.E. Evans-Pritchard for whom witchcraft was so ingrained in culture
and thought that it seems nearly impossible for them to see outside of it.5
Racecraft is a “hereditary phenomenon” passed down over the course of
generations as a way to explain phenomenon and justify the patterning of
the world. To be Azande was to engage with witchcraft, for to them, there
was no other reality; Pritchard says that when he arrived in Zandeland, one
of the first words he learnt was Mangu, meaning witchcraft, and I would
 Conclusion  185
argue that this is similar to Asian American Buddhists and “Buddhism”
more broadly encountering racecraft in America.6 To be American is to
engage with racecraft, as the idea of “race” is an underlying fundamental
belief to so many aspects of American life, to the point that we might extend
the use of the colloquial phrase “woke” to awakening from a dream.7
In analysing the writings of Buddhists from 1899 to 1957, I was imme-
diately struck by the racist language present in published articles, but
also noticed that something different was happening than in the writings
of Lothrop Stoddard or Madison Grant. In Race and Religion in Ameri-
can Buddhism, Joseph Cheah discusses the presence of white supremacy in
modern American Buddhism and the hegemonic assumption that European
interpretations of Buddhism and forms of practice are normative.8 This
history presents some of the ideological threads and foundations of this
thinking. However, can we say that D.T. Suzuki or Anagārika Dharmapāla
was engaging the language of white supremacy? What about Shaku Sōen
or Sokei-an? These additional interlocutors make our answer less clearly
apparent. I think racecraft provides the more useful theoretical lens as it
allows for the included complexities of Japanese Buddhists engaging their
own imperial agenda and Japanese American Buddhists attempting to fit
themselves within American “racial” frameworks. Some may argue that the
present analysis suggests that Buddhists were at best disingenuous, or at
worst racist, in their presentation of an Aryan Buddhism, but we must re-
member that this was considered “science” for the time period, and that this
notion of racecraft was so ubiquitous in American culture that to question
the existence of “races” would have been further marginalizing. The build-
ing ideology of racecraft proves that racism is not a simple line in the sand,
where we can delineate who and what is “racist” from those which are not.
Even the work of Gobineau himself on the Aryan myth, which was trans-
lated numerous times until Inequality of Human Races became a best-seller
in the 1920s. These ideological blocks are reformulated and repackaged
again for new audiences, which we can see in the repetitious and patterned
thinking of racism. The same arguments are used again and again for new
groups. In this sense, we cannot simply be “not racist” but instead must
position ourselves as anti-racism, and view this struggle as a constant fight
against encroaching ideas of supremacy, corruption, and racism.

Racecraft in Buddhist studies

Studies of Buddhism in America created a number of typologies which
came under scrutiny for seemingly turning a blind eye towards white su-
premacy, or in some cases perhaps even recreating some of its mythoi. In
American Buddhism, written in 1979, Charles Prebish posited that the two
Buddhisms in America were represented by a “true” Asian Buddhism and
an imagined American Buddhism.9 The two Buddhisms typology was then
reformulated in works such as Martin Baumann’s “Protective Amulets and
186  Conclusion
Awareness Techniques, or How to Make Sense of Buddhism in the West,”
in Westward Dharma where he attaches “modernist” and “convert” Bud-
dhism and separates “ethnic” and “traditional” Buddhism, suggesting that
Asians were not involved in Buddhist Modernism.10 In 1998, Jan Nattier
wrote “Who is a Buddhist?” as a chapter in The Faces of Buddhism in Amer-
ica, which delineates “baggage,” “import,” and “export” Buddhists; Nattier
has received the greatest critiques for her use of the term “baggage” Bud-
dhist to mean Asian immigrants who pack up their “traditional” Buddhism
and bring it via suitcase to the United States.11 Scholars of Buddhism have
regularly attempted to nuance this picture by showing the adaptations of
Buddhists upon entering America to complicate the narrative that Bud-
dhism is simply unpacked in a new nation. However, some voices in studies
of Buddhism have been rather condemnatory against Nattier’s work, as well
as other “two Buddhisms” and “three Buddhisms” typologies.12 Since these
studies were published, scholars have attempted to nuance our understand-
ings of “two Buddhisms” and add extra complexity to our historiography
by showing the “Modernist” trends within “ethnic” Buddhism in America.
Similarly, this study shows that “ethnic” can easily be applied to “convert”
Buddhists through American uses of racecraft to explain Buddhist doc-
trine, while “ethnic” Buddhists engaged the most cutting-edge “science”
of the day in bioracism. Nattier, Baumann, and others were writing about
Buddhism in America in the 1990s, and I think this is key to understanding
their typologies and tempering our critique of these studies. In the 1990s in
the United States, it was a sign of inclusive politics to “not see race,” and to
therefore ignore racism as a factor as much as possible; without more nu-
anced terms like racecraft, to analyse “race” in the 1990s was akin to being
racist socially. Jan Nattier, Martin Baumann, and others were attempting to
describe racecraft without the language to do so, or they were attempting to
analyse racism in America with “one hand tied behind their back,” as far as
scholarly analysis.
To describe Buddhism in the United States, one must obviously deal with
racecraft, not only historically, but also in the present day. In Joseph Cheah’s
study of white supremacy in American Buddhism since the 1960s, he writes,

race has been the central, if latent, factor in the ways in which white
Buddhists and sympathizers have translated Buddhist texts and adapted
Buddhist practices to the Western context. Race is an essential factor in
this volume because I posit it as a political category, not simply a phe-
notypical difference or a derivative of class.13

Cheah further identifies three points of Buddhist adaptation in America

which reinforce white supremacy, including the hierarchization of two Bud-
dhisms, which claims that “ethnic” only applies to Asian Buddhists, the
authority to declare “true Buddhism,” and the repurposing of meditation
to fit North American values. The discussion in this book then provides the
 Conclusion  187
foundations for many of these findings in modern Buddhism. The idea that
“white” Buddhists are not “ethnic” continues today, but we can nuance this
discussion with American Buddhist uses of particularly American forms of
racecraft. For Americans just over a century ago, “true Buddhism” meant
Aryan Buddhism. This historical research should reinforce the story told by
Cheah, as Buddhists from 1899 to 1957 provided ideological justifications
for continued notions of white supremacy in American Buddhism post-
1960s and the opening of American immigration. The phenomenon being
described by scholars in the 1990s like Nattier is racecraft, and the practical
result of generations of segregation, but “race” was the one issue scholars
were not to bring up during this time period. Imagine going to California in
the 1940s as an ethnographer and not having “race” as a category of analy-
sis. Racecraft actually helps us to nuance studies like Nattier’s, as her typol-
ogy has been criticized roundly, to show that “not seeing race” was the real
problem as scholars attempted to describe racecraft without using racism as
a factor. An earlier scholar who is more difficult to rescue is James William
Coleman, whose studies of “New Buddhism” from the early 2000s have also
been roundly criticized for their chauvinism about Buddhist Modernism.
Coleman’s assessment of “two Buddhisms” can be summarized,

as converts, it is logical to assume that most of the early Buddhists must

have had the same kind of spiritual hunger that draws Westerners into
Buddhism today, in contrast to most contemporary Asian Buddhists
who are simply born into the faith. Siddhārtha himself never placed
much emphasis on rites, rituals, and ceremonies, and neither do many
of the new Buddhist groups.14

In many ways, we can see that Coleman was attempting to describe the same
phenomenon as David. L. McMahan in The Making of Buddhist Modern-
ism, yet Coleman’s work seems to carry the chauvinism of racecraft, and
even portrays “Westerners” as being closer to the religious founder. Cole-
man asserts that Asians are associated with “old Buddhism” which is a cor-
rupted religion as opposed to the pure tradition of seekers associated with
Śākyamuni.15 We can also see the impact of Buddhist uses of racecraft on
Buddhists “on the ground” in the United States.16

Racecraft in Buddhism in America

Within Buddhist communities in the United States, we see ongoing issues of
racism and marginalization. In 1991, Helen Tworkov, the editor of Tricycle
claimed that Asian American Buddhists “have not figured prominently in
the development of something called American Buddhism,” whose member-
ship is “almost exclusively, educated members of the white middle class.”17
In Old Wisdom in the New World, Paul David Numrich describes the adap-
tations of an Asian Buddhist community living in Chicago, as well as the
188  Conclusion
theory of parallel congregations which describes varying Buddhist groups
meeting separately even within temples, which were largely split along the
lines of “race.”18 For Numrich, the parallel congregations within a singu-
lar Buddhist group accomplished different goals, like providing ancestor
worship on a particular night and sūtra study on another. Ann Gleig labels
white supremacy as a defining feature of modern Buddhism in America.
Joseph Cheah argues that racecraft has been one of the central factors in
the development of Buddhism in America today. In “We’re Not Who You
Think We Are,” published in the Buddhist magazine Lion’s Roar, Chenx-
ing Han argues that young Asian Americans feel marginalized within the
Buddhist community due to stereotypes surrounding Asians following
“traditional” Buddhism.19 Asian Americans have felt shut out of Buddhism
in America, and the history of Aryanism and the supposed corruption of
Buddhism provide some of the historical threads for modern phenomenon.
Black Americans have also felt marginalized within the Buddhist commu-
nity, as can be seen in articles like “Yes, We’re Buddhists Too!” by Jan Willis
in Lion’s Roar, or Radical Dharma by angel Kyodo Williams, Lama Rod
Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah.20 This study focusses on Buddhist history
in the United States, rather than current forms of the religion, however, it
should provide historical foundations and ideological threads for research-
ers and Buddhists in America alike.
Today, it seems that racists in the alt-right and Buddhists are rediscov-
ering Buddhist uses of Aryanism for themselves. Jason Reza Jorjani is an
Iranian-American and founder of alt-right.com; in Atlas and Prometheus
he claims that Buddhism will be the new “Indo-European (Aryan) world
religion” separate from the “parasitic Abrahamic religious fundamental-
ism.”21 In “‘Call me a Racist, but don’t say I’m a Buddhist:’ Meet America’s
alt right,” we meet a man named Eric, who is one of the founders of the
American Freedom Party and a self-described “Nazi” who does yoga and
meditates daily.22 Although alt-right ideology may not be showing up in
Buddhist temples in America just yet, the internet provides a meeting place
for like-minded racists. The Reddit page for “Alt-Buddhism” promises to
“Unite the Right of Dhamma,” with pictures of the “Buddhist Bin Laden”
Ashwin Wiratu and the Japanese “god of war” (gunshin) Lt. Col. Sugimoto
Gorō (1900–1937) who supposedly used Zen practice to aid him on the bat-
tlefield.23 The group claims that, “Western Buddhism is castrated, weak,
corrupted by progressivism and rejects the original thoroughly masculine,
head-oriented ascetic system advocated by the warrior aristocrat Siddattha
Gotama.”24 On the reading list for the page, they recommend the works of
the Italian fascist Julius Evola, who argues that Buddhism derives its great-
ness as a religion specifically from its supposed Aryan “racial” origin in The
Doctrine of Awakening, and is still available in print on Amazon. The group
seems to be connected to Brian Ruhe, who is a Canadian Buddhist teacher
living in Vancouver who teaches mindfulness-based stress reduction, and
has a personal website with articles like, “The Life of Adolf Hitler Viewed
 Conclusion  189
25
from a Buddhist Perspective.” Buddhist Aryanism seems to be reemerging
in our current era of racecraft. They will find ample evidence in the history
of Buddhism in the United States.
Two of the most dominant ideas in studies of Buddhism in America over
the last decade have been Buddhist Modernism and Postmodernism. This
study provides historical details for the foundations of modernism, as well
as the development of particular strains of chauvinism and supremacy
within this movement. In The Making of Buddhist Modernism McMahan
traces numerous global flows and counters in a transnational network of
ideas that became Buddhist Modernism. McMahan defines Buddhist Mod-
ernism as a transnational and trans-sectarian movement which is based on
compatibility between Buddhist teachings and science and universalism.26
As proven in Chapter 3 on racecraft in America, a portion of what was then
considered “science” was simply racism masquerading as bioracism, while
universalism similarly represented a form of racecraft in the Aryan myth.
This is not to say that Buddhist Modernism as a whole should be coloured in
such a way, but that these currents exist within the wider phenomenon, and
have perhaps been perpetuated in imperial nations through white suprem-
acy. Buddhist Modernism describes a diverse and heterogeneous grouping
of phenomena, of which Aryan Buddhism was a part. In the work of C.A.F.
Rhys Davids, she argued that Buddhism was corrupted by none other than
Buddhagoṣa, and the monastic community meant to preserve the “true”
Buddhist tradition; in his 2007 punk-rock dharma book Against the Stream,
Noah Levine claims Buddhism was, “co-opted by the very aspects of hu-
manity that [Siddhārtha] was trying to dismantle…greed, hatred, and delu-
sion.”27 In Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist Stephen Batchelor also argues
that the Dharma has been corrupted over centuries and that if the Buddha
were alive today he would likely fight against “Buddhist Orthodoxy” and
find a community of seekers instead.28 Batchelor also appropriates Bud-
dhist stories in order to rewrite doctrines with the supposedly correct inter-
pretation.29 Perhaps one of the biggest singular contributions of McMahan’s
study was taking seriously the developments of Buddhist Modernism, as
opposed to Coleman, and placing them within historical context and trans-
national flows between “East” and “West.” Buddhist Aryanism represents a
continued strain of thought within Buddhist Modernism.
Today, scholars of Buddhism are moving away from Buddhist Modern-
ism, and instead suggesting that we have entered an era of Buddhist post-
modernism. In American Dharma, Ann Gleig argues that Buddhism in
American can be more accurately described as Buddhist postmodernism,
based on her ethnographic research within meditation-based communities
in the United States.30 Buddhist postmodernism is defined by the combining
of disparate elements of a developing modernity with a revalorization of the
past or traditional forms. Gleig argues that as culture has shifted towards a
postmodernist mode, Buddhists in America are also working out their own
relationship to the tradition, such as in the mindfulness movement where
190  Conclusion
new innovations in technique and understanding are combined with cries
from within the community to reorient mindfulness within the history of
Buddhist meditation practice.31 The idea of postmodern Buddhism, in my
interpretation, suggests that the defining feature is drawing upon the past
and a seeming call to tradition in order to reanimate the future; in some
ways we can see the beginning rumblings of this postmodernism as far back
as the 1940s, when Buddhists in America called for a return to the “origi-
nal” doctrines of the Aryan Śākyamuni Buddha, which would then usher
in a Buddhist utopia in the United States and disavow all of the corrup-
tion which had supposedly taken place in the interim. This historical line of
thinking from the era of Aryan Buddhism may provide some of the initial
threads for the historical growth of Buddhist postmodernism in America
today. In the chapter, “The Dukkha of Racism,” Gleig discusses the ongo-
ing work for diversity and inclusion within the American Buddhist commu-
nity as well as some of the counter reactions to this form of work. Especially
following the most recent events of the Black Lives Matter movement, Bud-
dhists across America have been involved in racial justice movements, but
Gleig points out that this growth has been disjointed and sometimes faces
pushback within the community, even causing a rise in “Buddhist Culture
Wars.” History and past assumptions continue to influence Buddhist post-
modernism and leave traces on the way Buddhist communities continue to
deal with “race.” Without looking deeply at this history and the continued
influence racecraft has on American Buddhism, the fetter of racism cannot
be fully removed. My hope is that this study will aid the Buddhist commu-
nity in bringing this history to light, and thus beginning the process of root-
ing out the continual habituation of racecraft in the United States.
In historical academic studies, scholars are always forced to delineate a
time period, or a beginning and an end to their study; originally, when cre-
ating the present historiography, I had intended to end with the Zen Boom,
as posited by scholars like Charles Prebish.32 In looking through the schol-
arly literature, the Zen Boom seemed apparent, as by the late 1950s Alan
Watts and D.T. Suzuki were widely known and books like Dharma Bums
by Jack Kerouac introduced America to interpretations of “beat Zen.”33
During this time period, Zen starts to be used as a sort-of buzzword for
“Asian spirituality” still attached to fantasies of a “mystic East” and soli-
tary wise monk.34 There is no doubt that Zen, and Buddhism more broadly
made great inroads in American popular culture throughout the 1950s;
however, it should be noted that the Zen Boom represented an American
cultural fascination with specific presentations of Zen, such as Suzuki’s Zen
of bare awareness, rather than deep engagement with Buddhism, or even
Buddhists for that matter. Although American interest in Buddhism likely
helped Asian Americans find space as a “model minority,” this did not sud-
denly end anti-Asian racism, as evident today.35 As Madeline Y. Hsu argues
in The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became a Model Minority,
the economic success of Asian American immigrants was a major factor in
 Conclusion  191
the positioning of “model minority” language in the United States following
the Second World War. I would further add that the language of Aryan Bud-
dhism helped Asian Americans argue for their superior position within im-
agined racecraft hierarchies and white supremacist views of history which
still posit the Aryans at the centre. The Zen Boom, or Zen Explosion, sug-
gests a moment of eruption, or a time at which Buddhism burst onto the
American scene. This explosion did not take place. Instead, from 1899 to
1949, Buddhists both within and outside of America worked tirelessly to
reinterpret doctrine, write articles, and speak across the country to promote
their religion. It was the resistance and reinterpretation of Buddhists in light
of “science” and other criticisms that forged a new presentation of Zen for
American audiences, removed from Buddhism, which would have been a
religion to fear less than a generation prior. D.T. Suzuki did not simply land
in America one day with a new item in his “baggage” called Zen; Buddhist
writers had been repackaging Buddhism as an Aryan tradition throughout
the previous decades. It was this sense of Buddhism, coupled with racecraft
superiority and the notion of an original spirituality underlying all human
evolutionary development which created space for American Zen in the
1950s. This latter point is significant, not only for the way that we as schol-
ars periodize historiography, but also in displaying the continued contribu-
tion of Buddhists in recreating their own tradition, even when that ends up
completely dislodging Buddhism from some of its more traditional moor-
ings, such a comparable phenomenon is evident in modern mindfulness.
The mindfulness movement is not just a singular moment where American
culture has taken mindfulness practice out of Buddhism, but also involves
lineages of transformations in intellectual history and many Buddhist mo-
nastics and others reinterpreting doctrines to create new ideologies.36 In
The Birth of Insight Erik Braun shows that mindfulness can be traced back
to colonial Burma and the incursion of British imperial forces which forced
monks like Ledi Sayadaw to repackage Buddhism for the laity and in op-
position to outside threats of violence. The Zen Boom and much Modernist
phenomenon can be traced directly back to Asian Buddhists. It was through
making Buddhism more ethnically American by using bioracism that Zen
could eventually become a cultural phenomenon in the United States.
In the United States, Buddhism is generally considered a “nice” religion,
pictured as a solitary meditator and wise monk, but around the world we
have numerous examples of Buddhist violence.37 Throughout Asia today
we have examples of Buddhist violence, especially against non-Buddhist
minorities, such as in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand. Academic stud-
ies on Buddhist uses of violence often discuss Buddhist interpretations of
violence in sūtra literature, or they analyse the development of Buddhist
violence within post-colonial contexts, whereby an imagined notion of na-
tional purity becomes paramount. To this larger discussion, I would also
add the history of Aryan Buddhism, and the nuances this adds to our dis-
cussion of Buddhism and science. As Buddhism spread to the United States,
192  Conclusion
racecraft was spread throughout Asia and was included in interpretations of
Buddhist Modernism. John S. Harding, Victor Sōgen Hori, and Alexander
Soucy label these different trends as “Alternative Buddhist Modernities” in
the Journal of Global Buddhism.38 This is certainly true in the modern era,
but from 1899 to 1957, Aryan Buddhism was central to the success of the
religion in American culture more broadly. The developing ideologies of Ar-
yanism and bioracism have influenced Buddhist uses of violence throughout
Asia. This is evidenced as monks in Sri Lanka and Burma and beyond draw
on the language of Aryan Buddhism from the previous century and beyond.
The idea of protecting Buddhism from impurity is a common trope in in-
citing violence against the Rohingya and others. Just as we saw bioracist
ideology growing in Japan prior to the Second World War, so too do we
see the continued influence of racecraft on Buddhism in Asia in the post-
colonial era. The influence of Buddhist Aryanism on religio-ethnic violence
throughout Asia represents an interesting future avenue of study.

Moving forward
Each academic study which is completed opens up new venues for analysis
and begets further discussion. In this section, I will provide some possible
avenues for future research. For instance, one particular area which de-
serves more analysis in the history of Buddhism in the United States is the
role of women in the development of Buddhist Modernism and even Aryan
Buddhism. Figures like Lily Adams Beck and Ethel Trew Dunlop appear
repeatedly in Buddhist magazines, not to mention Beatrice Erskine Lane
Suzuki, whose mixing of Theosophy, Shingon, and other traditions had a
great impact on the early study of Buddhism. I do not present analysis on
gender or the role of women in the development of Aryan Buddhism in this
volume due largely to my focus on international primary sources, but this
would be necessary for filling in remaining gaps in the historiography. As
I discussed in Chapter 4, Aryan Buddhism was generally portrayed as an
overly masculine endeavour, while women were prescribed a life of support
for male counterparts. Women were active participants in the publishing
effort which helped to create Buddhist Modernism, and the gendered as-
pects of Aryan Buddhism deserve further study. Throughout this work, I
have attempted to situate each of the historical characters discussed within
their specific temporal and national frameworks, but a number of names
demand further research. Dwight Goddard and Manly P. Hall would both
form useful biographies for the history of Buddhism in America. These
individuals represent the hybrid nature of the development of Buddhism
in America, and show the ways in which the Buddhist religion was fit into
American culture. Recently, Ernest Shinkaku Hunt has gained increased
notoriety for his role in developing American Buddhism and creating a
generational foundation through his invention of Buddhist Sunday school
programmes; however, Hunt and his wife Dorothy are both deserving of
 Conclusion 193
further analysis. Ernest and Dorothy Hunt present a useful case study as
they actively helped to create space for Buddhism in American culture and
adapted Buddhism simultaneously, all within the purview of Buddhist no-
tions of Aryanism. As I mentioned above, tracing the use of bioracism and
racecraft into other nations which have experienced Buddhist violence,
including genocide, would also be very useful. What differences and simi-
larities can we see between American uses of Buddhism and Aryanism, as
opposed to the tropes used against the Rohingya in Burma? Does the idea
of Aryan purity and bioracism continue to influence Buddhist violence as
experienced throughout the world today? There is no doubt that Buddhists
are involved in violence in the world today, but intellectual analysis of their
use of supremacy, and perhaps the notion of Aryanism would be useful for
the analysis of ideological development in America. The analysis of racism
in the United States and beyond is a continuing field of analysis, which
unfortunately, seems to be found in every aspect of American life. As we
can see today, issues of racism and racecraft are not fading from the pub-
lic consciousness and continue to result in violence and dehumanization
today. My hope is that historical studies like the current one force us to
“wake up” more fully and recognize the perpetual encroachment of race-
craft thinking in modern culture and learn to resist these building blocks at
every turn, as this history displays the build of ideology which constantly
solidifies and justifies power hierarchies while simultaneously separating
us as human beings.

Notes
1 Angela Saini, Superior: The Return of Race Science, (Boston, MA: Beacon Press,
2019), [Apple Books Version], 892–893.
2 Ibid, [Apple Books Version], 893–894.
3 Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in
American Life, (London: Verso, 2012), 49.
4 Adeana McNicholl, “Being Buddha, Staying Woke: Racial Formation in Black
Buddhist Writing,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 86, no. 4 (July
2018): 883–884. 883–911.
5 E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande,
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), 1.
6 Ibid, 1.
7 McNicholl, 2018, 907.
8 Joseph Cheah, Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and
Immigrant Adaptation, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3.
9 Charles S. Prebish, American Buddhism, (North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press,
1979), 9–10.
10 Martin Baumann, “Protective Amulets and Awareness Techniques, or How to
Make Sense of Buddhism in the West,” in Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond
Asia, ed. Charles S. Prebish and Martin Baumann, (Berkeley: University of Cal-
ifornia Press, 2002), 52–55.
11 Jan Nattier, “Who Is a Buddhist? Charting the Landscape of Buddhist
America,” in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Charles S. Prebish and
Kenneth K. Tanaka, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 183–195.
194 Conclusion
12 Wakoh Sharon Hickey, “Two Buddhisms, Three Buddhisms, and Racism,”
Journal of Global Buddhism 11 (2010): 1.
13 Cheah, 2011, 129.
14 James William Coleman, “The Emergence of a New Buddhism: Continuity and
Change,” in North American Buddhists in Social Context, ed. Paul David Num-
rich, (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 185–202, 186–187.
15 James William Coleman, The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an
Ancient Tradition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 55–56.
16 Gregory Schopen, “Archaeology and Protestant Presuppositions in the Study
of Indian Buddhism,” in Defining Buddhism(s): A Reader, ed. Karen Derris and
Natalie Gummer, (London: Equinox Publishing, 2007), 24.
17 Helen Tworkov, “Many Is More,” Tricycle (Winter 1991), https://tricycle.org/
magazine/many-more/.
18 Paul David Numrich, Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Im-
migrant Theravada Buddhist Temples, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,
1999), 5.
19 Chenxing Han, “We’re Not Who You Think We Are,” Lion’s Roar (27 January
2017). Accessed 5 December 2020. www.lionsroar.com/were-not-who-you-think-
we-are/
20 Jan Willis, “Yes, We’re Buddhists Too!” Lion’s Roar (10 November 2011), https://
www.lionsroar.com/yes-were-buddhists-too/
Angel Kyodo Williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah, Radical
Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation, (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic
Books, 2016).
21 Jason Reza Jorjani, Prometheus and Atlas, (London: Arktos, 2016), 74. Jorjani
cites Carl Jung to define the “Eastern mind.” [14]
22 Sanjiv Bhattacharya, “‘Call me a Racist, but don’t say I’m a Buddhist:’ Meet
America’s alt right,” The Guardian, (9 October 2016). Accessed 14 June 2017,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/09/call-me-a-racist-but-dont-say-
im-a-buddhist-meet-the-alt-right
23 Alt-Buddhism, https://www.reddit.com/r/AltBuddhism/.
24 Alt-Buddhism, https://www.reddit.com/r/AltBuddhism/. Spelling of “Siddattha
Gotama” in original.
25 Brian Ruhe, “The Life of Adolf Hitler Viewed from a Buddhist Perspective,” (9
December 2020): https://www.brianruhe.ca/555543-2/
Stephen Hui, “Adolf Hitler Admirer Upset Capilano University Turfed Him
as Buddhist Meditation Instructor,” The-Georgia Straight, [Vancouver, BC]
(28 August 2015): https://www.straight.com/news/518581/adolf-hitler-admirer-
upset- capilano-university-turfed-him-buddhist-meditation-instructor
26 David L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008), 8.
27 Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolution-
aries, (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007), xii. Levine calls
Siddārtha “Sid,” which I have returned to the Sanskrit. Levine has been accused
of sexual impropriety with students, and others outside of his organization. Lev-
ine blames the #MeToo movement for his downfall. [Sean Elder, “Noah Levine
Blames the #MeToo Movement for the Demise of His Punk Rock Buddhism
Empire,” LA Magazine (10 July 2019): https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/
noah-levine-buddhism-me-too/]
28 Stephen Batchelor, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, (New York: Spiegel & Grau,
2010), 99.
29 Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening,
(New York: Riverhead Books, 1997), 5.
 Conclusion 195
30 Ann Gleig, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity, (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2019), 4.
31 Ibid, 50–51.
32 Prebish, 1979, 9–10. In 1979, Prebish disregarded the BCA, to argue that, “to a
large degree, the history of Buddhism in America up to 1960 is, with the excep-
tion of the Buddhist Churches of America, really a history of Zen in America…
it was not until a full decade after the conclusion of World War II that America
witnessed the ‘Zen Explosion.’”
33 Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums, (New York: The Viking Press, 1958).
34 Jane Naomi Iwamura, Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popu-
lar Culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 47.
35 Madeline Y. Hsu, The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model
Minority, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 3.
36 Erik Braun, The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the B urmese
Monk Ledi Sayadaw, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013).
Jeff Wilson, Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Medi-
tation and American Culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
37 Thomas A. Tweed, “Why Are Buddhists So Nice? Media Representations of
Buddhism and Islam in the United States Since 1945,” Material Religion 4, no. 1
(May 2015): 91–93.
38 John S. Harding, Victor Sōgen Hori, and Alexander Soucy, “Introduction:
Alternate Buddhist Modernities,” Journal of Global Buddhism 21 (2020): 1.
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Index
Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes.
Absolutism 77–78, 171
ālayavijñāna 72
Alt-Buddhism 188
Amitābha/Amida 29, 72–73, 127,
129–131, 142, 147
anātman 7, 14, 62–63, 95, 141, 145–147,
161–163
Ancient Greece 1, 13, 24, 29, 64, 77, 116
Anglo-Saxon 43–45, 49, 67
animism 92
anti-Asian racism see yellow peril
anti-Catholic 40, 42
anti-Irish 42–44
anti-Semitism 22, 31, 33–35, 42; anti-
Semitism in America 45–46, 61,
67; anti-Semitism in Asia 90, 92–94,
98–100, 111, 114
Apollo Belvedere 25–27
Ariosophy 148
Armstrong, Robert Cornell 108
Aryan/Aryanism 1, 2, 4–8; Aryanism
and degenerate family studies
72–74; Aryanism and eugenics 75–79;
Aryanism and optimism 138–142;
Aryanism and philology 21–25,
27–30; Aryanism and racism in
Buddhism 11–17; Aryanism and the
yellow peril 84–85, 87; Aryanism
and Zen 122, 124–127; Aryanism in
academia 57–59, 61–65; Aryanism
in America 39, 41, 43–46, 49, 52–54;
Aryanism in American Buddhism
148–150, 154–155, 157–159, 161–164,
167–180; Aryanism in Ceylon 90–94;
Aryanism in Japan 96, 98–100;
Aryanism in Theosophy 142–148;
Aryans as master race against Semites
31–36; connections to modern
Buddhism 183, 185, 187, 188–193;
Japanese as true Aryans 104–108; Shin
modernism and American Aryanism
127–129, 134; Yamato Aryan god
110–117
Aryan mind 61–63, 116, 162
Aryan myth 11, 13–15, 21–24, 28–31, 33,
34–36; America and the Aryan myth
139, 164, 170, 175, 179–180; Aryan
myth as pseudoscience 39, 57, 61, 65,
78–79; Aryan myth today 183, 185,
189; Aryan race 23, 31, 43–44, 98, 110,
126, 140; Aryan race and evolution
144, 154, 157, 159, 162, 169, 173;
Asians as other to the Aryan myth 85,
87, 92, 94, 104–105, 117,
126, 134
Aryan root race 49, 144, 156, 158, 173
Asian mind 58, 61, 62, 64–65, 73, 74, 79,
84, 116, 163, 176
Atlantis 2, 144, 156, 168, 172
ātman 62, 64, 73, 77, 146
Baartman, Sarah 9
Baldwin, Daniel Pratt 50
Beat Zen 174, 177, 190
Beck, Lily Adams 52, 112, 162, 192
Benga, Ota 46
Berkeley Bussei 122–124, 129–131, 134,
138–139
Besant, Annie 91
bioracism 2, 3, 5; in academia 57–59, 63,
65; in American culture 39–40, 43–49,
51, 54; in Asia 84–88, 90, 92–95;
definition of 9–17, 21; in degenerate
family studies 67–70, 72, 74, 76–77; in
Japan 97–100, 104–106, 111, 114, 116–
117; in Metaphysical Buddhism 154,
218 Index
157–159, 161–164; in Metaphysical
religions 138, 141–142, 147–149; in
modern American Buddhism 183–184,
186, 189, 191–193; in Zen and Shin
121, 125–127, 133–134; racism as
science 26–30, 33, 35–36; as utopian
trope 167, 169, 172–174, 177–180
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna 91, 106,
143–144, 148
Blue Grass Blade 140–141
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich 26
Bodhidharma 171
Boxer Rebellion 2, 3, 85–86
Brown, T.L. 51
Brown v. Board of Education 4
Buck, Carrie 7, 58, 65–68, 70–71, 74
Buck v. Bell 58, 66–67, 71
Buddha (Śākyamuni) 1, 11–12, 14;
as Adept 138, 144–149, 155–156,
158–159, 161–164; as Aryan today
187, 189–190; and colonialism 90,
93–96, 100; in comparison to Amida
131, 133–134; and the corruption of
Buddhism 72–79; and evolution 167,
170, 176–177, 180; as imagined Aryan
22–24, 28–29, 32–33, 35; as mystical
Aryan 105, 108, 113, 125, 128; as
racial archetype 52–53, 57–58, 62–65
Buddhahood 129
Buddha Nature 113
Buddhist Churches of America (BCA)
121–124, 127, 129–131, 133–134
Buddhist Mission of San
Francisco 3, 128
Buddhist Modernism 2, 4–5, 12,
14–16, 35–36, 52; and Metaphysical
Buddhists 139–140, 174–175, 178–180;
in Shin and Zen 122–124, 127, 129,
131, 134; transnational 89, 91, 94, 99,
111; today 186–187, 189, 192
Burke and Hare Murders see Knox
Burnouf, Eugène 1, 23–24, 28–29, 31, 95
Camper, Petrus 24–25, 27, 183
Captain America 47
Carus, Paul 139, 142, 145–147
Cat’s Yawn 104, 124–125
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 130
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart 45
chēla 156, 159–161
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1888 87–88
Christianity 3, 34; and atheism 140,
141–142, 147, 178; compared to Shin
127–129; in comparison to Buddhism
50–52, 63, 66, 78, 91–94, 96, 99, 105,
109; as inferior religion 111–114, 125
clash of civilizations 50
Clifton, Robert Stuart 143, 151n13
Cold Springs Harbour 66–67, 75
colonialism 2–3, 9, 13–15; and the
creation of race 21–23, 26, 35, 53, 61,
64, 66, 68, 73, 76, 79; in Ceylon 84–85,
89–94; and Japan 94–96, 98–100;
and civilization 104–109, 113–116,
130; and American Buddhism 139,
160–161, 172, 176–177; in modern
studies of Buddhism 191–192
Columbus, Christopher 1, 105, 172
Conrad, Joseph 2, 158
Conze, Edward 72
Coolidge, Calvin 41, 45
corruption 1, 5–6, 14–16; as academic
fact 57–58, 62–65, 68; in American
Buddhism 123, 127, 129; in Asia
84–85, 90–93, 95–96, 100; and
Buddhism 24, 29, 33; and degenerate
family studies 72–78; and evolution
138–141, 145–146, 149; and purity
in America 39–40, 45–46, 48, 50–51,
53; and purity in Japan 107–109; and
racism today 185, 187–190; source of
154–155, 157–158, 161–164; as white
supremacy 167–174, 176–180
craniology 1, 9, 22, 25–27, 31, 67, 75
Curse of Ham 143
Cuvier, Georges 9
cyclops 156
Davenport, Charles Benedict 67
Dayal, Lala Har 95
Dearborn Independent 45, 120n45
Devadatta 63, 81n25
devolution 45, 140, 141, 163
Dewitt, John L. 132
Dharmakāya 117, 125, 129, 136n36
Dharmapāla, Anagārika 6, 8, 35, 91–94,
98–100, 185
Diamond Sūtra 12, 184
domestication 149
drapetomania 59
Dravidian 30, 33, 58, 63, 73, 94, 107, 159
Dugdale, Richard L. 69–70
Eastern Buddhist 4, 18n23, 104, 106, 111,
143, 175
Eastern mind see Asian mind

Egypt 1, 24–27, 29, 61, 64, 77, 125–126,
145, 158, 172–173
Ekayāna 96, 106, 139
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 44
Esoteric Hitlerism 148
essentialization 16, 35, 49–50; academic
studies as 57–59, 63, 65; against
colonialism 84, 107, 115; and
Buddhist Aryanism 168, 174, 177; and
degeneracy 72–75, 77
eugenic apocalypse 9, 41, 50
eugenics 7, 9, 19n31; beyond America
89, 97–98, 109, 126; craze 39, 45–46;
as science 48, 53, 58, 60, 66–68, 70, 72,
74–76
Eugenics Record Office (ERO) 58,
66–67, 75
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 184
Evola, Julius 148, 188
evolution 9–10, 15–16, 23, 25–27, 32–33,
40, 44–45, 49, 51, 59, 64, 67, 78,
84–85, 91, 96, 99–100, 106, 111, 113,
117, 125, 128; as anti-Asian racism
154–157, 159–164, 167–169, 171–174,
178; and racism today 183, 191; and
utopia 138–142, 144–145, 147, 149
Executive Order 9066 132
Eye of Horus 125–126
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
151n13
First World War 47, 62
Ford, Henry 45–46, 55n33, 120n45
Freeman, Edward A. 42
Freud, Sigmund 60
Gentleman’s Agreement 88
Giants 160
Gliddon, George 27, 44
de Gobineau, Joseph Arthur 27–30,
34, 185
Goddard, Dwight 104, 109–110, 113,
117, 192
Goddard, Henry H. 68–69, 71
Golden Lotus 7, 143, 150n1, 157–158,
162, 164n1, 165n17, 169, 175, 176
Gorō, Sugimoto 188
Grant, Madison 9–10, 18n28, 45, 46, 185
Griffith, D.W. 50
Grimm, George 62–63, 73, 169
Haeckel, Ernest 9, 18n27, 152n33
Hall, H. Fielding 145
Index  219
Hall, Manly P. 16, 147–148, 167–173,
181n9, 192
Hamilton, Alexander 106
Harding, Warren G. 41
Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of
Civilization 43, 85–87, 90
Haya, Akegarasu 127, 136n28
Hebrews see Semites
Hinduization 63, 77
Hinduism as essentialized/Dravidian
52, 60, 62–63, 72–73, 76–77, 107; and
Theosophy 142, 146, 152n40
Hitler, Adolf 32, 55n33, 67, 98, 119n29,
148–149, 188
Holmes, Oliver Wendell 66
Hongwanji Buddhist Mission (HHMH)
18n15, 128
Horus see Eye of Horus
Hunt, Dorothy 192,–193
Hunt, Ernest Shinkaku 110, 128,
192–193
hybridity 13, 142, 150n1, 156, 180
inferiority 5, 47, 53, 76, 84–85, 99, 104,
107, 144–145
intelligence testing 10, 19n28, 60, 184
International Buddhist Institute
(IBI) 128
immigration 6, 9–10, 18n28, 39, 41–42,
45, 49–50, 52, 57, 67, 71, 88, 187
Immigration Act of 1924 10, 41, 45, 67
Ishiura, Newton 130, 134
James, William 77
Japaneseness see nihonjinron
Jennings, J.G. 63, 77, 80n22, 81n25, 109
Jesus Christ 18n27, 34, 45, 50–52, 63, 93,
100, 114, 120n45, 168–169
jinshukaizengaku 97
jiriki 96
Jōdo 95, 121, 123, 127, 131
JōdoShinshū 3, 15, 110–111, 121–124,
127, 129–130, 142, 151n13
Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924
see Immigration Act of 1924
Journal of Race Development 7, 17n9
Juke, Margaret 58, 70–71
Jung, Carl Gustav 59–61, 65, 111,
126, 148
Kallikak, Deborah 58, 68–73
Kallikak, Martin 69
Kali-Yuga 173
220 Index
Kanazawa, Satoshi 183–184
Karloff, Boris 47
Keith, Arthur Berriedale 72–73
Kerouac, Jack 122, 190
Kim 22, 76, 160–161, 164
Kino, K. 128–129
Kipling, Rudyard 2, 22–24, 32, 76, 110,
158, 160
Knox, Robert 43
kokugaku 89, 96, 98
Ku Klux Klan 6, 39–42, 50, 110
Lahore Museum 13, 22–24, 31, 36n2
Lamaism 109
de Lapouge, Georges Vacher 46
Lavater, Kaspar 25
Laws of Manu 30
Levine, Noah 189, 194n27
Light of Dharma, The 7, 128
Lindbergh, Charles 46
London, Jack 48, 133
Lotus Sūtra 87, 96
Mādhyamika 58, 76–78, 157, 171, 181n9
Madole, James 148
Maha-Bodhi and the United Buddhist
World 90
Mahātmāns 91, 144, 157
Mahātmān Letters 143
Mahāyāna 29, 91, 96, 106–110, 113, 115,
122, 143, 170
Maitreya 171
Manchu, Fu 47, 86
Manchuokuo/Manchuria 97, 98, 99,
109, 115, 133
materialistic/materialism 51, 84, 93, 108,
110, 111, 112, 116, 119n34, 119n36;
and the Aryan age 144, 165n8,
172–173, 184
McKinley, William 86
Meiji Restoration 48, 53, 88–90,
94–95, 116
metaphysical 15–16, 125; Buddhism
138–142, 145–147, 149, 150n1,
151n10, 154–159, 161–164; and white
supremacy 167–173, 175–179
miscegenation 27–28, 30, 34, 44,
67–70, 72
miscegenation laws 67, 70
model minority 34, 114, 117, 174,
190–191
modernism 15, 92, 124, 127, 134,
149–150; and white supremacy 178,
180–181; in studies of Buddhism
183–190
monism 77, 146, 152n33, 163
Monist League 18n27, 152n33
Moore, Charles Chilton 140–141
Mori, Masatoshi Gensen (M.G.) 111,
128, 131, 136n30, 136n36
Morton, Samuel George 26–27
Mukherji, Savitri Devi 148, 153n48
Müller, Max 23–24, 29, 31, 57, 63
Murti, Tirupattur Ramasehayyer
Venkatachala (T.R.V.) 58, 76–79
Nāgārjuna 77, 171
Nakamura, George Jobo 130
Nast, Thomas 18, 19n28, 43
nationalism 92, 115–116, 119n34, 122
National Renaissance Party 148
Nazis/Nazism 12, 32, 42, 45–46, 98, 148,
173, 188
nihonjinron 94–98, 106, 115, 123, 125
nirvāṇa 12, 16; in American Buddhism
125, 128, 131, 141, 147, 160, 161, 177;
and Self 62, 64
Nishi Honpa Honganji 111, 127, 142
Nishima, Kakuryo 3
Nott, Josiah 17n5, 27, 44
Nuremberg Laws 31, 67, 83n73
Olcott, Henry Steele 91, 159
One-Drop Rule 31, 76
The Open Court 145–146, 152n37
Open Door Policy 2–3, 53, 86
Order of the Star in the East 106
Orientalism 3, 5, 21, 23, 28–29, 33, 35; as
colonial justification 50, 52, 57, 64–65,
74, 84, 96, 160, 162; in Buddhism
today 173, 179
original Buddhism 29, 53, 62, 64, 77;
as Aryan 172, 176; and Buddhism in
America 123, 129, 131, 134, 146, 147,
150n25; and Buddhism in Asia 89–91,
93, 100, 108
Other-Power see tariki
over-soul 16, 110–111, 125; in American
Buddhism 145, 147, 154–157,
159–161, 171
Pāli Text Society 62–64, 90–91
The Passing of the Great Race 9
Patten, Simon Nelson 146
Pearl Harbor 99, 132–133
philology 1, 23–24, 28, 34–35, 45, 58, 179

polygenesis 27, 60
popular culture 13–14, 36, 40, 43; and
the yellow peril 47–50; and Buddhism
50–53, 132, 190
Pratt, Sunya N. 131
Progressive Era 2, 66, 68
Pure Land 5, 72–73, 95–96, 121,
127–128, 131, 147
racecraft, definition of 8–13
race-mixing, dangers of see
miscegenation
racism 2, 4–13, 16–17, 21–22, 33–35;
anti-Asian 87, 100, 110, 116–117,
122–123, 130–131, 133; in Buddhism
today 183–186; as modern science 40,
42, 52–54, 58; and sterilization 71,
73, 76; in studies of Buddhism 190,
193; and white supremacy 138–139,
145–146, 149, 160, 173–174, 178–179
Renan, Ernest 34
Rhys Davids, C.A.F. 62, 189
Rhys Davids, T.W. 57, 62–63, 72
Ripley, William Z. 2, 46
Roos, Willem B. 176
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 130, 132
Roosevelt, Theodore 9, 18n28, 70–71, 75
Ross, Edward A. 44
Russo-Japanese War 48, 88, 94, 95, 99
Ruhe, Brian 12, 188
Rupert, G.G. 49
San Francisco Chronicle 3, 113, 141
Sanger, Margaret 41, 46
Sasaki, Ruth Fuller Everett 124, 125
Schliemann, Heinrich 31
Schrader, F. Otto 64
science 1, 7–9, 12, 14–17; and anti-
colonialism 84–85, 87–90, 92, 93;
Aryanism following the 138, 148–149,
154, 157, 173, 175, 178–179, 183,
191–192; and Buddhism in the USA
126–129, 131, 134; and Buddhist
corruption 139–141, 143–146, 150;
and evolution 154, 157, 159, 161,
163, 169, 172, 174, 176, 179–180; and
internment 121, 123, 125, 129–130,
133, 135n3; and modern Buddhism
183–186, 189, 191; racism as 25–26,
30–31, 35–36, 39–41, 44, 47–49; and
racial corruption 53, 57, 59, 61, 65,
67–68, 70–71, 75, 78; Second World
War 32, 35, 42, 68, 85, 89–90, 98–100,
Index  221
110, 114–116, 120n45; and the Yamato
race 96–100, 104–107, 111–114,
116–117, 122
Self 62–63, 76, 116–117, 126, 147, 156,
161–162
self-power see jiriki
Semite/Semitic 22, 24–25, 30, 33, 45, 85;
as Aryan other 92–93, 129, 161, 162
Serrano, Miguel 148
Shaver, Richard 49
shin bukkyō 89, 98, 131
Shinto 88–89, 95, 99
skulls see craniology
Smith, Joseph 143
Sōen (Soyen), Shaku 97, 185
Sokei-an 8, 104, 124–126, 185
Sonoda, Shūe 3
Square Zen 174, 177
Stanley, Leo L. 67
sterilization 7, 9, 10, 19n31, 40, 44–45,
58, 65–68, 70–71, 74, 98, 178
sterilization laws 7, 10, 19n31, 66–68, 70,
71, 98
Stoddard, Lothrop 40–42, 54n5, 185
Sukhāvatī 73, 127, 147
Śūnyatā 126, 171
supremacy 6–8, 13–14, 17, 21, 22, 25,
34–35, 49, 68; in Buddhism today 185–
189, 191, 193; reversing colonialism
84, 108, 113, 132; white supremacy in
Buddhism 147, 168, 173–174,
179, 180
Suzuki, Beatrice Lane 106
Suzuki, D.T. 1, 4, 8, 65, 97, 104–106,
114, 116–117, 121–127, 145, 148, 161,
175, 178, 185, 190–192
swastika 24, 31, 32, 60, 106, 110, 119n29,
128, 146
Taft, William Howard 66
Taishō Era 89, 94
Takakusu, Junjiro (J.) 107–108, 115
Tariki 96
Tathāgatagarbha 113
Teutonic 2, 32, 43, 70
Thalassophilia 69
Theosophy 13, 15, 49, 62, 82n65; and
Aryan evolution 157, 159, 161, 165n8,
170, 172, 178; in Asia 91–92, 100,
101n17, 104, 106; and root races 138,
142–145, 148–149, 150n1, 151n10
Theosophical Society 91, 106, 126
Theravāda 77, 91, 107–108, 110
222 Index
Tibet 1, 23, 29, 34, 58, 101n17, 106, 109;
as Aryan homeland 116, 144, 169,
170–171
Tokugawa 88–89
Transcendentalism 87, 111, 119n34, 44
Tsongkhapa 171
universalism 21, 28, 61, 65, 127, 189
universal self see over-soul
Upāya 114, 126
utopia 16, 49, 99, 139; in America
163–164, 167–174, 178, 180, 190
Vedanta/Vedantic 76–78, 109
Victorian Era 15, 124, 139, 141, 146–147
völkisch groups/movement 32, 61,
110, 148
warfare of the cradle 51, 70–71, 75
Watts, Alan 122–123, 175, 177, 190
Wells, H.G. 49
Western mind see Aryan Mind
White Man’s Burden 2, 94, 109,
158–159, 172
white supremacy 5–8, 13, 21–22, 25, 43,
68, 84; and Aryan Buddhism 147, 158,
168, 173, 179; today 185–189, 191
Winckelmann, Joachim 24–25
wonder house see Lahore Museum
Wolverton, Emma see Kallikak,
Deborah
World’s Parliament of Religions
87, 96
Wundt, Wilhelm 60
Yamato 85, 95–98, 107, 109–110,
113–115, 122, 125
yellow peril 2–3, 17, 36; in American
culture 39–40, 42–43, 46–50, 52, 68,
72; and Metaphysical Buddhism 141,
174, 177, 179, 190; reactions to
85–87, 89, 90, 116, 123, 130–131,
133, 136n36
Yogācāra 72–73, 77, 83n71, 152n34, 157
Young East 4, 94, 102n39, 104, 106,
110, 112
yǔseigaku 97
Yūsei Undō 97
Zen 4–5, 8, 15, 65, 97, 104, 106, 109;
and Jōdo 115, 117, 121–127, 133–134,
135n10; Metaphysical criticisms of
143, 148, 174–178; Zen and Aryanism
in America today 188, 190–191,
195n32
Zen: A Magazine of Self Realisation
109–110
Zen Boom 4, 16, 40, 106;
reinterpretation of 122–124, 126, 134,
175–177, 190–191
Zen For Americans 97
Zen Notes 125–126