Casting Indra's net across the Pacific: Robert Aitken and the growth of the Diamond Sangha as a trans-pacific Zen movement

Robert Baker Aitken and Anne Hopkins Aitken cofounded Diamond Sangha (DS) as a small living room sangha in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, in 1959. By 1993, DS served as the primary hub for an international network of sanghas, extending across the Pacific region. This paper traces DS's development from its...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Baroni, Helen J. 1959- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: [publisher not identified] 2022
In: Journal of global buddhism
Year: 2022, Volume: 23, Issue: 2, Pages: 145-160
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Aitken, Robert 1917-2010 / Diamond Sangha / Pazifischer Ozean / Zen Buddhism / Spread of / History 1959-1992
IxTheo Classification:AF Geography of religion
AH Religious education
BL Buddhism
KBM Asia
KBQ North America
KBS Australia; Oceania
RB Church office; congregation
RJ Mission; missiology
TK Recent history
Further subjects:B Robert Aitken
B Zen
B Buddhism
B Diamond Sangha
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Summary:Robert Baker Aitken and Anne Hopkins Aitken cofounded Diamond Sangha (DS) as a small living room sangha in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, in 1959. By 1993, DS served as the primary hub for an international network of sanghas, extending across the Pacific region. This paper traces DS's development from its humble beginnings into a major conduit for the flow of trans-Pacific Zen from Hawaiʻi to the continental USA, Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand. It argues that DS played a vital role in the rapid growth of Zen throughout the Pacific region by utilizing a horizontal networking style of visiting teachers nurturing local leadership in distant sanghas, creating a lattice of interrelated sanghas across the Pacific. It likewise argues that Aitken's vision for DS entailed a blending of innovation and tradition, straddling the divide between the imperatives to meet the needs of local contexts and to preserve inherited styles of practice.
ISSN:1527-6457
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of global buddhism
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.26034/lu.jgb.2022.1994