Contemporary Buddhism in Australia

Introduction

Australia is the smallest of the geographic continents, though not of geological continents. The Australian continent is the smallest and lowest-lying human-inhabited continent on Earth, having a total land area of some 8,560,000 square kilometers. Australia and adjacent islands are connected by a shallow continental shelf covering some 2,500,000 square kilometers including the Sahul Shelf and Bass Strait and half of which is less than 50 meters deep. As Australia the country is mostly on a single landmass, and comprises most of Australia the continent, it is sometimes informally referred to as an "island" continent, surrounded by oceans. 

The continent primarily sits on the Indo-Australian Plate. The lands were joined with Antarctica as part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana until the plate began to drift north about 96 million years ago. For most of the time since then, Australia-New Guinea has remained a single, continuous landmass.

Religions in Australia

In the 21st century, religion in Australia remains dominated demographically by Christianity, with 64% of the population claiming at least nominal adherence to the Christian faith as of 2007, although less than a quarter of those attend church weekly. 18.7% of Australians declared 'no-religion' on the 2006 Census, and the remaining population is a diverse group that includes fast-growing Islamic and Buddhist communities. Nevertheless, the relationship between the Commonwealth government and religion is much freer than in the United States, with governments working with religious organizations that provide education, health and other public services.  At the time of European settlement, the Indigenous Australians had their own religious traditions of the Dreamtime and ritual systems, with an emphasis on life transitions such as adulthood and death.  Christian leaders have remained prominent in health and education in Australia ever since, with over a fifth of students attending church schools at the beginning of the 21st century and a number of the nation's hospitals, care facilities and charities having been founded by Christian organizations. During the 1800s, European settlers brought their traditional churches to Australia. These included the Church of England and the Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Baptist churches. Freedom of Religion was enshrined in the Australian Constitution of 1901. The impact of migration from Europe in the aftermath of World War II led to increases in affiliates of the Orthodox churches, the establishment of Reformed bodies, growth in the number of Catholics and Jews and the creation of ethnic parishes among many other denominations. More recently in 1970s, immigration from South-East Asia and the Middle East has expanded Buddhist and Muslim numbers considerably and increased the ethnic diversity of existing Christian denominations. Religious places of worship have made their mark on Australia. Australia also has one of the larger Buddhist Temples in the Southern Hemisphere.

So as this is a subject about Buddhism in the contemporary world, I shall deal with Buddhism only. According to the earlier history of Buddhism in Australia. Buddhism first arrived in Australia with Chinese miners who came here at the time of the gold rushes, beginning about the middle of the nineteenth century. Most of them returned to China a few decades later and consequently the Mahayana Buddhist element in their religious practices had little lasting influence on religious life in Australia. Then the Japanese arrived shortly after the Chinese to settle in the pearling centers of Broome, Darwin and Thursday Island. Their public celebration of Buddhist festivals became a popular feature of life in Broome. In the 1880s went Sinhalese laborers from Sri Lanka, most of who were Theravadin Buddhists. They constructed Australia’s first Buddhist temple on Thursday Island, and planted bodhi trees there. Like the Chinese, most of these Sinhalese Buddhists returned to their homeland by the end of the nineteenth century and some remained. The gradual introduction of Buddhism to Australia by Asian immigrants have continued into the twentieth century. By the early 1950s there were Buddhist study and practice groups throughout the country. A significant factor in the formation of these groups was the occasional sponsoring of visits to Australia by Buddhist monks and nuns from overseas. Prominent among these visitors was Sister Dhammadinna, an elderly Buddhist nun from the USA, who had spent many years in Sri Lanka. On her first visit she stayed for almost a year, lecturing and teaching meditation, and generating much interest in Buddhism. As the number of Australian Buddhist societies grew, a need was felt for an umbrella organization that could bring them all together. The style of Buddhism that attracted the attention of those early Australian Buddhists was, in most cases, Theravada. Mahayana evidently had less appeal, with the exception of Japanese Zen, which was promoted by several groups. By early in the 1970s some of Australia’s Buddhist groups had set up simple monasteries, complete with resident Theravadin monks invited from Asian Buddhist countries. Also, a growing number of Australians were themselves undergoing Buddhist training in the Theravadin monasteries of Thailand, Burma, and etc. Some of them took ordination as monks in the Sangha, a few subsequently returning to Australia to teach. The mid-1970s saw a turning point in the history of Australian Buddhism, with the arrival of large numbers of ethnic Buddhists as refugees from the Indochinese wars. They subsequently established well-endowed temples with resident Vietnamese monks and nuns. Such societies and temples became important as centers of ethnic identity. Another group of refugee Asian Buddhists that arrived during the 1970s was the Tibetans. Their Vajrayana style of Buddhism holds a strong fascination for many westerners. One factor responsible for this may be the colorful Vajrayana symbolism; another may be the charismatic figure of the Dalai Lama, who has visited Australia several times to teach and conduct Vajrayana rituals.  A large number of followers began to study and practice including the non Tibetans. .

Since the late 1980s Asian migration to Australia has been characterized by an ever increasing proportion of so-called ‘business migrants’. Coming mostly from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, this class of migrants includes large numbers of Chinese Mahayana Buddhists, who have had a big impact on Buddhism in this country. At the same time, Buddhist groups that are exclusively Sri Lankan, Burmese, Thai, Lao, or Kampuchean have developed, most of them associating readily with non-ethnic Theravadin groups. major branches of world Buddhism Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana are now well represented in Australia. For the majority of non-Asian Australian Buddhists one of the most valued things offered by Buddhist groups is the opportunity for meditation practice. This message is that a precious inner liberation can be attained through calming the normally turbulent mind.

Contemporary Buddhism in Australia

A recent count put the total number of Buddhist groups in Australia at 361. Roughly speaking, the number of groups doubles every ten years. The total number of individual Buddhists in the country cannot be known with certainty because of difficulties in interpreting the census data. At present it is likely to be approaching 200,000. Buddhism has been identified as the fastest growing religion in Australia, and this trend seems set to continue. As a well-known Chinese Buddhist saying has it,

The statistics compiled in the 1986, 1991 and 1996 Commonwealth Government Census support the view that Buddhist numbers have been steadily increasing. Between 1986 and 1991 the numbers of practitioners rose from 80,387 to 139,847, a growth of 74%. Due largely to the decrease in immigration numbers in recent years the percentage growth for Buddhists slowed between 1991 and 1996 to 43%, from 139,847 to 199,812. This rate of increase is still higher than that of any other religion.

Potential Buddhists are attracted to the Dharma (Buddhist teachings) not only to take refuge from a world of chaos and confusion, but also to re-invent their own personal sense of a meaningful spirituality in a society of high-tech consumerism, commercialism, violence and apathy. It is not a faith. It is not technically a religion either, though when discussing systems of worship it is easier to work with that label. It is more a psychology and a philosophy wrapped around a moral code of mind training. a couple of years ago, showed that over the ten years to 1991 Buddhism was by far the largest growing religion in our country: an increase in the order of some 300%" he said. "To a significant extent, of course, the figures reflect the substantial increase in migration from south-east Asia over that period.

"A lot of young people in the twenty to mid-thirty age group are coming because they don’t feel imposed upon", he said, " and there are deeper meditative techniques they can draw upon". The Buddhist website he operates (http://www.buddhanet.net) gets an average 9,000 ‘hits’ a day. Venerable Pannyavaro offers cyber-nirvana at this site in the form of online meditation sessions where people can log on, meditate and contemplate the infinite.

Conclusion

There are now more than ninety Buddhist temples and organizations in New South Wales, sixty-five of them in Sydney. The bulk of the two hundred people who each week visit the Buddhist Library, Meditation and Information Centre in Camper down in Sydney are in the thirty to fifty age group. About eighty-percent are from a non-Asian background. Buddhism is even being taught in one New South Wales primary school during religious scripture classes. Now, forty-five of the schools three hundred and fifty students attend classes in Buddhism. This religion seems to have, at first glance, a vigorous influence on the world stage.