Buddhism in the UK - there are a small but constantly growing number of followers, the number of which is replenished mainly due to converts [1] [2] . According to the 2001 census, about 152,000 people practiced Buddhism in the UK (about 0.3% of the country's population) [3] . After a census in 2011, it turned out that the number of Buddhists in the UK increased by 0.1% compared with 2001 and is about 0.4% [4] of the population. In total in the UK there are about 800 Buddhist groups and centers and 750 monasteries and temples.
Initially, the idea of Buddhism in Britain was formed in connection with the interest of scholars in the Buddhist tradition of Theravada of Burma , Thailand and Sri Lanka , which ultimately led to the founding of the Pali Text Society , which took on the serious task of translating the Buddhist canon from Pali into English.
The first Buddhist practitioners to go through the ritual of converting to Buddhism in 1880 were the Theosophists of Blavatsky and Henry Alcott . Subsequently, the influence of Theosophical Society and Theravada Buddhism was felt in Britain until the middle of the 20th century.
Beginning in the 1950s, interest in Zen Buddhism began to intensify in Great Britain. And in 1965, Kagyu Samyé Ling Monastery and the center of Tibetan Buddhism were founded in Scotland.
Now, besides Theravada and Tibetan Buddhism, all other schools and schools of Buddhism with their centers and monasteries are represented in Great Britain. Among the directions of Tibetan Buddhism, the development of which occurs under the influence of lamas of non-Tibetan origin, we can name the Buddhism of the Diamond Way .
The largest and most influential organization in Europe is the Buddhist Society of Great Britain (founded in 1924), which publishes The Middle Way magazine, which publishes information on Buddhism in European countries and in the United States. In the UK, there are also the Buddhist Mission (since 1926), the London Buddhist Vihara (since 1954), the Buddhapadipa Temple (since 1966), the Tibetan Center, the British Buddhist Association (since 1974), the Zen Training Center, " Friends of the Western Buddhist Community ”and others. There are about 40 such organizations in total; they are members of the Buddhist Society of Great Britain.
Notes
- ↑ BuddhistChannel - Allure of Buddhism growing in the UK
- ↑ Buddhist Channel - Seed of Buddhism now growing in UK
- ↑ National Statistics Online
- ↑ 2011 Census - Office for National Statistics . www.ons.gov.uk. Date of treatment March 27, 2016.
Literature
- Bell, Sandra (1991). Buddhism in Britain - Adaptation and Development , PhD thesis, University of Durham
- Bluck, Robert (2004). Buddhism and Ethnicity in Britain: The 2001 Census Data , Journal of Global Buddhism 5, 90-96
- Kay, David N. (2004). Tibetan and Zen Buddhism in Britain: Transplantation, Development and Adaptation, London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon
- Cosmopolitan Dharma: Race, Sexuality, and Gender in British Buddhism. - BRILL, 2016 .-- ISBN 978-90-04-23280-8 .