Passive Heterophily in the Transfer of Buddhist Traditions (Co-Author: de la Garza, Primary author: Wong)

Passive Heterophily in the Transfer of Buddhist Traditions to the United States:

Locating Hidden Ethnocentrism in Communication Practices

Terrie Siang-Ting Wong

Arizona State University

and

Sarah Amira de la Garza


Top Paper

Intercultural Communication Interest Group

Western States Communication Association

2014 WSCA Convention – Anaheim, CA

February 14-18, 2014



Abstract

Intercultural communication research has emphasized the transfer of ideas and practices

between cultures in domains such as agriculture, public health and telecommunication but a

paucity of research exists in explicitly religious/spiritual contexts. To date, only two

communication scholars have conducted empirical research on cultural transfer in the domain of

religion/spirituality. Both studies explored the white American adoption of Native American

spiritual practices and theorized in the area of cultural identity. In contrast, this paper investigates

the communication practices of white Americans who adopt Asian Buddhist religious/spiritual

traditions. The dynamics of intercultural exchange are articulated as they take place when

individuals adopt the religious/spiritual traditions of those considered as Others.

Grounded Theory method is used for the analysis of data gathered through participant

observation and interviews. A particular form of intercultural communication that takes place in

American spiritual followers’ adoption of Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions is thereby

identified, and named Passive Heterophilous Communication (PHC). Passive heterophilous

communication is defined, and the characteristics of PHC are described as they relate to the

practices of hidden ethnocentrism. The paper concludes with a discussion of the contributions

that intercultural communication research can make to the study of cross-cultural adoption of

religious practices.

PASSIVE HETEROPHILY 1



Terrie Siang-Ting Wong


Sarah Amira de la Garza


“Religion has remained an unexplored area of intercultural interaction but probably not blindly

so. Religion is difficult to discuss and even more difficult to analyze from the tools that we

currently have as academics…. Critical intercultural communication scholars need to devise a

new vocabulary for engaging with religion.”(Nakayama & Halualani, 2010, p. 599)

There is much communication research on the diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 1995)

and the transfer of ideas and practices from one culture to another in the domains of agriculture,

public health and telecommunication. There is, in contrast, a paucity of research within

communication, and specifically, in the area of intercultural communication, on the transfer of

ideas and practices between cultures in the domain of religion and spirituality. Nakayama and

Halualani (2010) draw attention to this, and as early as 1994, González1 had called for

communication scholars to study and develop the knowledge bases to make informed critiques in

this area.

Prior to Wong’s (2013) dissertation on the US-American adoption of Buddhist

religious/spiritual traditions, only two communication scholars had conducted empirical research

on the transfer of religious/spiritual philosophies and practices between individuals from

different cultures. De la Garza (writing as González, 1997) published a collection of

ethnographic poetry on the white American appropriation of Native American spiritual traditions.

1 The co-author of this paper, Sarah Amira de la Garza, previously published under the name M. C. González.


Roberts (2003) conducted a rhetorical analysis of the white American appropriation of the Native

American pow-wow.

These two papers in current intercultural communication research that address the

transfer of religious/spiritual traditions between cultures are both focused on white American

spiritual followers’ adoption of Native American religious/spiritual traditions. In the concluding

chapter of the Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Nakayama and Halualani

(2010) challenged scholars to conduct more research in the domain of religion. Our paper adds a

new facet to the literature regarding intercultural exchange in the domain of religion by

investigating American spiritual followers’ adoption of Asian Buddhist religious/spiritual

traditions.

In “Painting the White Face Red,” De la Garza (writing as González, 1997) theorizes

about the process of identity-shaping through the sharing of spirituality, where white American

persons reject the cultural values and lifestyles in which they were raised so as to live in

accordance with Native American spiritual traditions. Using axiomatic poetry developed to

reflect the Grounded Theory categories and analysis of a 2-1/2 year ethnographic study,

González (1997) demonstrates the culturally embedded dialectic tensions of the “positive and the

negative, the strong and the weak, the admirable and the shameful, as it existed in the real

experience” (p. 488) during interactions between Native Americans and white Americans sharing

Native American religious/spiritual traditions. In her book chapter, González intentionally

obfuscates her critique with the poetic form, and although it is present, it is difficult to separate

her critique from the poetic context, thereby making theoretical extrapolation difficult.

Roberts (2003) is similarly focused on theorizing about cultural identity in the adoption

of others’ spiritual traditions. Like González, Roberts writes about white American persons’


adoption of Native American spiritual traditions. Unlike González, Roberts’ research focused on

settings that are produced for and by white Americans; there are few or no Native Americans in

the pow-wows where Roberts did participant observation. Roberts’ study analyzes the rhetorical

strategies that white Americans use to justify their appropriation of Native American spiritual

traditions. Her paper critiques the white cultural appropriators as being focused primarily on self-

image and self-expression. Roberts uses the term emotivism to describe the argument that an

individual’s desire for self-expression and their attitudes of affinity towards Native American

culture give them the right to declare themselves as Native American. She critiques emotivism as

an unethical rhetorical strategy, but does not explore the cultural ethnocentrism possibly behind

these strategies. Interestingly, although not explicitly identified, these same patterns of

emotivism are visible in Gonzalez’ axiomatic poetry.

In both of the above works, intercultural communication is assumed to have taken place

and the cultural identity of the participants is foregrounded. Both of these works call for more

research, having raised the awareness of a distinct set of dynamics that exists in settings where

white Americans are adopting the religious/spiritual traditions of cultural Others. In contrast to

the above focus on identity development and intercultural differences in practice as in the works

by Roberts and González, our paper aims to contribute specifically to the understanding of the

actual assumption of intercultural transfer within the domain of religion. We describe and

expand on the work introduced by Wong (2013) in her dissertation study that explored the

practice and adoption of Buddhism by U.S. Americans. While González’ (1997) work alludes to

embodied practices and references awareness of practitioners’ consciousness of the significance

of the body, in the axial poetry of “Painting the White Face Red,” there was no explicit

theorizing. Wong (2013) specifically explores the embodied communication dynamics of


intercultural exchange that take place when individuals adopt Buddhist practices and

philosophies rooted in another (foreign) culture. Our paper expands on the work by Wong (2013)

and previous researchers by exploring these questions from her study:

• Which bodies are present in the adoption of Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions by

Americans?

• What voices are privileged when Americans learn about the Buddhist religious/spiritual

traditions of Asia?

• What attitudes towards cultural relations lie beneath the surface of the smiling,

compassionate faces of American spiritual followers who are practicing Buddhist

religious/spiritual traditions?

Buddhism in America

According to the 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted by the Pew Forum on

Religion and Public Life, 0.7% of American adults surveyed reported affiliation with a Buddhist

religious/spiritual tradition (i.e., Zen, Theravada, Tibetan, Other). Although the number of

Americans who self-identified as Buddhists is by no means large, a Google search of “Buddhist

publications in the United States” provides over 8.5 million search results. It is easy to find not

only books and magazines, but meditation centers, gift shops, and clothing styles that

demonstrate the presence of Asian Buddhism in U.S. America. This creates a popular cultural

ambience within the U.S. that not only influences the public’s views and impressions/knowledge

of Asian culture and religion/spirituality, but given the mainstreaming of these themes (see e.g.,

Coleman, Fall 2011; Coleman, July 05, 2010), is likely to be the most influential source of

knowledge about the Asian traditions of Buddhism for many U.S. Americans.


When exploring the demographics of those who identify as Buddhist in the U.S., only

slightly over 25% are of Asian ethnic descent. The rest are non-Asian and had “converted” to

Buddhism later in life. This racial-cultural prevalence inspired the niche magazine,

Buddhadharma, to feature a forum in 20112, “Why is American Buddhism So White?”

The above is in sharp contrast to other east-Asian religious/spiritual traditions such as

Islam and Hinduism where most of the followers are native-born adherents. A remarkable aspect

of U.S. American practitioners of Buddhism is that almost one in four has post-graduate

education compared to the national average of one-in-ten of the adult population. This raises the

question of why members of the nation’s most well-educated populace are interested in

conversion to Buddhism. While our paper will speculate on this based on the research results,

our emphasis is more critically aimed at answering the question: How do the traditions and

practices of Buddhist religion/spirituality transfer from Asia to America?

As part of the emergent design implicit in the Grounded Theory method described in the

following section, our study also evolved to explore the following related questions: From whom

are Americans learning about Buddhism and the Buddhist spiritual practices? What are the

methods and practices used when Americans are learning about Buddhism? Finally, we explore

Wong’s (2013) discussion of the question: What is the nature of intercultural communication in

the transfer of Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions from Asia to American Buddhism?

Method

Data Collection

Our study is grounded in data from participant observation at events and locations

explicitly labeled or framed as Buddhist, as well as from interviews with Americans who

2 Buddhadarma Online (2011) Forum: http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/web-archive/2011/11/9/forum-why-is-

american-buddhism-so-white.html?printerFriendly=true


identified themselves as learning and/or teaching Buddhism. These methods are described in

more detail in the following sections, which serve to contextually frame the data provided in our

narratively situated analysis. The data from Wong’s (2013) study was made available and re-

examined to further explore Americans’ adoption of Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions. The

field data were obtained from classes, weekend retreats and seminars where members of the

general American public came together for the purpose of learning about Buddhism. These

classes and events were held in individuals’ homes, at Buddhist Centers and Buddhist temples in

the Southwestern part of the United States.

Participant observation was conducted over a nine-month period during which Wong

actively observed and participated in activities in these Buddhist settings, such as meditation,

chanting, and prostrations. Her work documented meditation instructions and explanations of

Buddhist concepts as well as notes from public conversations overheard before and after the

formal Buddhist events. This allowed for a record of the questions people asked about

Buddhism, the comments they made about Buddhism and the conversations that participants had

with each other while they were “doing Buddhism”. Additionally, in-depth interviews with

practitioners were conducted to gain an understanding of the Americans’ understanding of their

experience of adopting Buddhism.

Data Analysis

Data analysis was guided by Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) Grounded Theory methodology,

as articulated by Charmaz (2006) and Strauss and Corbin (1998) and included progressive

coding, writing of memos, use of axial diagrams for explanation of categorical relationships, and

constant comparison. Constant comparison is the iterative method introduced by Glaser and

Strauss in their 1967 book, and it involves repetitive cycles for comparison of data and


interpretation — i.e., comparing codes in one set of field notes to codes in other sets of field

notes, comparing incidents described in one set of field notes to incidents in other sets of field

notes, comparing early memos to later memos, comparing memos to interviews to field notes, etc.

In addition, all data are compared to current literature; in this study, the literature on intercultural

communication was utilized in order to assist in the development of concepts from ground up.

The primary question asked at all stages of the process of constant comparison was:

"what is happening here?” (Glaser, 1978), encouraging conscious detachment from favored

interpretations in order to remain open to new readings and interpretations of the data. The

iterative method is repeated until it begins to result in highly redundant readings and no new

situations are encountered that cannot be somehow explained by the analysis that has emerged,

called “saturation.”

By staying closely grounded to the data during analysis, the researcher discovers the

concepts and theories that are most useful for the explanation of the phenomena that they are

studying. In a Grounded Theory study, these concepts and theoretical explanations emerge from

the coding of the data and are then compared to established theories. This process emerges

through the creation of numerous theoretical memos that are analyzed together as the theory is

developed.

In this paper, we explore the theoretical memos and narrative accounts from Wong’s

(2013) work that capture the embodied experiences where the transfer of culture has been

identified as taking place. Creative nonfiction (Gutkind, 2008) was utilized as an analytic

methodology throughout narratives adapted from those written by Wong, demonstrating the

nature of the concepts through contextual framing. Our discussion of these concepts then follows.


Narrative Exploration of Results

Doing Buddhism

Black robes extending from shoulder to ankle distinguish the regulars at the Zen temple.

The regulars converse softly on the veranda at the Zen temple, wearing cotton robes that

resemble long dresses held together with a cloth belt at the waist. A few of the men have shaved

heads and chins. They could probably pass as monks in their robes.

The person-in-charge at the Zen temple is an elderly, white American lady. A full head of

white hair neatly frames her bright sparkling eyes. She extends her right hand with a steady,

present gaze to welcome me to the temple. I (Wong) thought to myself that based on her

demeanor, she could have played a role in a Jane Austen film. One could half-expect her to

introduce herself as “Mary,” “Margaret,” or “Beatrice”. Instead she says to me: “Hi, I’m

Teishan.”

The temple yard is decorated with several white stone Buddhas, each of them sitting in

meditation poses and located in the nooks and crannies between the trees and bushes. A string of

inch-high paper lanterns painted with ink calligraphy hang from the roof of the temple. To the far

left, at eye-level, is a plaque with the Chinese characters 人心直指人心直指人心直指人心直指 carved into the wood. I could

easily imagine being in a Zen temple in Japan or China if it weren’t for the white American

participants in their black robes, chatting softly in English, in groups of threes and fours.

The deep tone of a meditation bell summons the black robes from across the yard. The

sound of quick footsteps is mixed with that of cloth swishing as it rubs against cloth. I move to

enter the meditation room with the group. The participants place their hands together in a prayer

position in front of their chest, bowing at the door before entering the meditation room to take a

seat on one of the meditation cushions in the room. It takes about a minute for all of us to loudly


adjust our meditation cushions, and then the group settles into a frozen picture of upright spines,

folded legs and closed eyes. I close my eyes to join them, and we meditate in silence for the next

thirty minutes.

In the field sites where I conducted participant observation, I saw scenes similar to the

one I just described. The Buddhist groups that I conducted research with usually gather in rooms

ornamented with religious objects from Asian countries such as Tibet, Japan, Thailand and India.

Groups of white Americans sit together to practice Buddhist cultural traditions adopted from

Asian countries such as Japan, Tibet, and Sri Lanka. When they were not meditating, their

conversations with each other were peppered with the occasional Japanese, Sanskrit, Pali or

Tibetan term. Although I learned their names, I still find myself caught off guard when white

American Buddhist practitioners refer to themselves using Chinese or Tibetan Buddhist names.

Gradually, I came to be accustomed to the fact that these identity performances were essential to

“doing Buddhism” for the white American people whom I was meditating with.

Given American spiritual followers’ extensive adoption of Buddhist religious/spiritual

aesthetics and rituals from Asian countries such as Japan, Tibet and Sri Lanka, I (Wong) had

considered at the beginning of my project that perhaps they would define their identities in

relation to some country in Asia. In addition, I assumed that getting to know about Asian culture

and establishing relationships with Asian people would somehow be relevant to the Buddhist

participants at these temples. When I started my fieldwork, I was curious to find out if U.S.

Americans who were learning the religious traditions of Asia were doing so in order to be able to

engage with people from Asia — with people like me? Through observations and interviews, I

thought I might find out what exactly was their interest in Asian culture and spirituality.


To my surprise, one of my interviewees, Sandra, unequivocally expressed that she had no

special interest in Asian culture. Sandra has been a Buddhist practitioner for over twenty years

and she currently leads a meditation group at her teacher’s Buddhist center. When I asked her,

“Have you always been interested in other cultures? Is that what this is about?”

Susan responded, “(What attracted me to Buddhism) wasn’t the culture. It was the

philosophy. The philosophy could be here or anywhere. It happens to have germinated in India

and then it has gone to Japan and China and Tibet and all these different places. But it has come

to the West also. And the wonderful thing about Buddhism is that as it comes to a different place

it will adopt the culture of the people that it is with.”

I was intrigued. “So, in terms of Buddhism coming from a different country… is that

something that is important to you? Does it matter?” I asked, pushing from another angle to try

to make sense of her interest, since she considered Buddhism as an independent entity, separate

from the people who practice it. “That it comes from a foreign country?” She asked me. I nod,

and she continued, “No, that doesn’t matter to me at all. I mean, it does matter in the sense that

we are developing a Western Buddhism,” she began. I nodded her on.

“We are not changing the teachings of the Buddha, but we are putting it into our culture.

I like that. You know, I don’t want to adopt another culture. I’m not interested in that. But the

fact that it came from another culture to me is irrelevant because the way I look at it is that we

are all human and we are all going to be dead.” I continue to listen, attempting not to react. A

question at this point might disrupt her flow, and I’m fascinated by what I’m hearing.

“We all have to use the toilet,” she continues, “I mean we are all the same regardless of

our culture. We all have moments of happiness. We all suffer a great deal. So this unites us in

many ways. That’s the way I look at it.”


* * *

Like Susan, several of my other interviewees also expressed that they were interested in

Buddhism not because Buddhism was an Asian religion. In fact, my interviewees preferred to

think of Buddhism not so much as a religious tradition from Asia but rather a “global religion”

with universal themes that resonate across all other cultures. In addition, like Susan, several other

interviewees also expressed that they thought of their Buddhist activity as creating an American

or Western Buddhism rather than adopting the religious/spiritual tradition of another culture.

What is happening here? Instead of describing the transfer of religious/spiritual

philosophies and practices from East to West as a form of cultural adoption, U.S. American

spiritual followers are defining their experience as one of cultural creation. They see themselves

as creating an American Buddhism rather than adopting an Asian Buddhism. These U.S.

American spiritual followers do not consider their engagement with Buddhism as a form of

cultural transfer. Instead, cultural creation was a significant contextual frame for their experience.

Thus, I wondered -- what are the dynamics of intercultural exchange in this contextual frame?

Questioning the Assumption of Intercultural Communication

At the beginning of the study, I (Wong) perceived Americans’ adoption of Asian

religious/spiritual traditions as indicative of their cultural openness and curiosity towards foreign

cultures, despite my co-author’s (de la Garza) cautioning that this assumption might be a

projection of the way that I myself approach another culture. In my (Wong) mind, it seemed an

impressive feat that a group of individuals are open to embracing other cultures in the world so

much so that they would adopt another culture’s religious/spiritual traditions. I idealized

American Buddhist religious/spiritual sites as intercultural hotbeds where people of the United


States would open themselves to people from other cultures for the common goal of forming

religious/spiritual community.

My idealization of U.S. American Buddhism as a hotbed of intercultural activity became

disrupted when doing fieldwork forced my attention to the actual individuals who were

participating in the Buddhist classes and events I observed. In half of my fieldwork sites, I saw a

mix of ethnicities and nationalities attending the events and classes. However, the other half of

my fieldwork sites attracted a fairly culturally homogeneous white American crowd. Based on

my conversations with participants of predominantly white American Buddhist classes and

events, these spiritual followers were often quite well-educated and held white-collar or

professional jobs. Based on my subjective observations of their physical appearance, many of the

attendees at these predominantly white American Buddhist groups were of middle to senior age.

More telling than their demographics, however, was my gradual awareness of the ways that the

white U.S. American spiritual followers at these homogenous sites preferred to learn about

Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions.

Engaging with Texts instead of People

Interviewing American spiritual followers about their process of adopting Buddhism led

me (Wong) to see how the process of learning about Asian Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions

began from reading written texts rather than from interacting with Asian practitioners of

Buddhism. For example, when I interviewed Lorenzo, who had recently participated in classes

on Buddhism, he brought his favorite Buddhist books, filled with underlining and highlighting,

to show me his process of learning about Buddhism. Lorenzo also brought a binder full of

printed notes on Buddhism that he’d gotten from the Internet to explain how he expanded his

knowledge of Buddhist concepts and theories beyond the books that he was reading.


Another interviewee, Sandra, told me that she started learning about Buddhism when the

person who had sparked her interest left the country. “At that point, well…we had talked about

‘taking refuge’ and I was like, yeah well, ok… How do I do that? So I wrote down books, and I

wrote down all these things and I decided ok, I will get these books and then I will go to Nepal

and I will find the highest lamas and I will take refuge that way,” she began, “and…so I decided

well I’d just get books by the Dalai Lama because, of course, that would be the very best thing to

do. And I got the books by the Dalai Lama.” I began to see how in the minds of American

spiritual followers like Lorenzo and Sandra, engaging with texts instead of people is “the best

thing to do” when one wants to learn about a foreign culture.

If we reflect on what we know about American intercultural training and cultural

preparation for international work, Lorenzo and Sandra’s experience is echoed in the history of

U.S. American engagement with foreign cultures. Engagement with texts instead of people is a

key aspect of learning about Asian religious/spiritual traditions in America. Buddhism has been a

fascination with independent intellectuals in the U.S. American cultural tradition. In his record of

the history of Buddhism in America, Fields (1981) notes that Henry David Thoreau and Ralph

Waldo Emerson, both who are famous for blending Asian religious/spiritual philosophy into

their writing, had never met with a practicing Hindu or Buddhist. “The Concordians stayed

home.” (Fields, 1981, p. 55). Americans such as Thomas Jefferson who in later life became

interested in Buddhism and Hinduism drew their knowledge mainly from books published by

their fellow US-Americans. This is indicative that perhaps it is an American tradition for U.S.

American spiritual followers to do away with the need to interact with cultural others when

learning about their religious/spiritual traditions by relying on books about that foreign culture.


That being said, this tendency to prefer one’s own study and interpretation to actual

interpersonal engagement is also present in mainstream U.S. Christianity (Miller, January 2006).

It could be argued that the value on personal “networking” in U.S. culture would foster a desire

to engage personally with traditional Buddhist teachers. But when it comes to Buddhism,

Americans seem to create a second type of “refuge” in their experience-- in a way that permits

engagement with texts instead of people. This perhaps reflects a general trend in American

religious practice; while Miller’s premise of “No Church, No Problem” is speaking of problems

with dwindling congregations, what we are noting in this study could be more accurately “No

Asian, No Problem,” and addresses the absence of intercultural communication. But our interest

in this paper is not for now on deep cultural history, but rather, on recognizing this dynamic

when Americans decide to study and/or become members of a religious tradition.

In summary, the use of the constant comparative method helps us to raise the question of

whether there is a tendency in U.S. America to avoid interaction with cultural Others even while

claiming deep interest in their culture. Those who enjoy study are most likely to find another

culture and its practices provocative, but cultures Others are seemingly kept at bay, preventing an

experience of deeply engaged intercultural human interaction. At this point of the study, we are

led to ask why this particular preference exists.

Consulting Like Others

My interviewees, despite being from different places and personal histories, had a similar

path of entry to Buddhism. After some time of reading about Buddhism on their own, they began

to look for other people from within their community with whom to study Buddhism. After all,

Americans like to create groups and clubs as part of the tradition of a civil society!(Bellah, 1985)

My conversations with my interviewees, as well as my observations of the makeup of the groups


and classes I attended, indicated to me that even if they were to interact with others as part of

their growing practice and study of Buddhism, U.S. American spiritual followers grouped

together with those of similar cultural background to learn Buddhist religious/spirituality.

Learning Buddhism with others provides the benefit of a more systematic form of

intercultural independent study than simply reading books on one’s own. For example, at

Lorenzo’s Buddhist group, the Buddhist teacher taught an eight-week course to beginning

Buddhists. Every week, the class reads one chapter from a book provided by the teacher. The

teacher emails two to three questions about the book chapter as a homework assignment.

Students discuss the assigned reading and email assignments when they meet for class.

The primary Buddhist teacher at four of my six fieldwork sites was a white American

man and the participants of these Buddhist groups were also primarily white American. As I

(Wong, 2013) considered these emerging patterns in my observations, I was uncomfortably

perplexed. I developed a critical curiosity about the way these individuals came to understand

Buddhist explanations of life and its complexities. How do American spiritual followers make

sense of a philosophy whose explanations came from a completely different cultural paradigm

that includes concepts (e.g., reincarnation, lungta) and deities (e.g., Kwan Yin) for which they

had no cultural context? As our analysis proceeded, these questions expanded. How is learning

about a foreign religious/spiritual tradition possible without at least a modicum of intercultural

interaction? Wouldn’t someone be required to establish how these concepts from Asian Buddhist

traditions ‘fit’ with a culturally grounded everyday world view?

Personal Subjective Sense Making

Some interviewees explained that the concepts and frameworks in Buddhism “just make

sense” to them when they read the text, even if there was no one to explain the text to them.


Susan recounts her experience reading her first book on Asian spiritual philosophy: “I started to

read it and something clicked. I was about 28, 29 years old and something clicked and I realized

that that there was reincarnation. It just made sense to me. All of a sudden it was like there was

this cloud in my brain and it lifted. That was like the huge awakening.”

Upon reading these responses and considering the conceptual analysis I was developing,

Amira (de la Garza), recalled the work of Bieri (1955), whose study on cognitive complexity and

simplicity strongly influenced research in human communication. In particular, it was Bieri’s

ideas on projected cognitive similarity that were most relevant to intercultural communication.

As she considered these trends, she posited how Buddhist materials could make sense possibly

via a projection of meaning onto the concepts that ‘fit’ with already existing held definitions. As

such, when U.S. American spiritual followers referred to Buddhist concepts, despite the language

used, they might be talking about something wholly consistent with a taken-for-granted

Protestant or Catholic Christian-influence. In addition, given the prevalence of Jewish writers in

the area of Buddhism, there could have been a strong Jewish-American cultural framing of

Buddhist religious/spirituality. This could explain how Buddhism could become uniquely

“American,” as Sandra had alluded to in her interview. Still, our interest remains on how U.S.

American Buddhists interact with the cultural ‘otherness’ in Buddhism with no or minimal

physical interpersonal encounters with those who are foreign Others.

Lorenzo expressed how he experienced a moment of Buddhism “making sense” during

his independent study of Buddhism: “I have a difficult time learning because I don’t retain things

well so I have to go over and over and over and over, you know, and then I get them. I mean they

make sense. It’s not that I’m convincing myself that this is true. It’s ‘oh! That makes sense to

me.”


Karl Weick’s theory of sensemaking explains how in his study of organizational

members, when something does not make sense, it is “retrospective awareness” from previous

experience that will help to make the “interruption” sensible. Once an interruption is sensible in a

way that can allow their identity to feel coherent, individuals may continue their life without

disrupting the way they wished to proceed (Weick, 1995). Weick’s ideas have been used

popularly in programs on international business in the United States. Foreign culture makes

sense much as Susan described earlier. Here is a type of confidence that individuals can “make it

on their own” without the help of others, or as Weick would say, they can continue with their

“projects.” It is the confident voice that says “don’t worry, I’ve got it” when thrown the question,

“Need help with that foreign text?” The quicker the return to a familiar stability, the better.

From a sensemaking perspective, this could allow one’s project of “I’m on the right track” to

proceed. What is most important here, as in the instances of projected cognitive similarity, is the

individual’s personal subjective experience.

Gradual Clarification of the Core Explanatory Concepts

This concept that the “foreign culture (Buddhism) just makes sense” is a necessary

condition for seeking out like others in one’s study, as well as adhering to a preference for texts

rather than human teachers. The constant comparative method allowed the emergence of an

axial relationship between these conceptual categories that emerged from the data:

Personal subjective sense-making was the key to cultural transfer of Buddhist

religious/spiritual traditions for the white Americans in this research study.

There is no need to engage with others who are culturally different if one feels or thinks

that Buddhist religion/spirituality “makes sense.” Further, there is no need to engage with

individuals from another culture if one is able to understand Buddhist religious/spirituality by


figuring out what the difficult terms mean with the help of other like-community members.

Cultural others are irrelevant to the process of understanding Buddhist religious/spirituality

because the individuals involved in this process are confident that they have understood the

Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions by themselves.

Capitalizing on Heterophily

In literature on the diffusion of innovation, the degree to which conversation partners are

culturally similar is referred to as homophily (Rogers, 1995, p. 19). Heterophily is the opposite

of homophily. Heterophily refers to the degree to which the individuals in a communication

interaction are dissimilar from each other. The essential difference between homophily and

heterophily is that the former refers to cultural similarity and the latter refers to cultural

dissimilarity. The transfer of Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions at the sites where participant

observation took place was primarily between homophilous individuals (i.e., white U.S.

American teacher teaching white U.S. American students). Who amongst the culturally

homophilous in these groups would be the teacher? Not all white Americans are able to teach

Buddhism. Individuals who had spent time and effort collecting knowledge about Buddhist

concepts and building a network of Asian Buddhist teachers and friends have the cultural capital

(Bourdieu, 1986) to become the teacher amongst their peers.

Many Buddhist teachers I observed have the habit of dropping the names of “Buddhist

superstars” such as the Dalai Lama during class. For example, Cameron, a white American

teacher at a weekly beginners’ classes, said this when he began the first class: “Tibetan

Buddhism is the most academic of all Buddhism and that Gelupa tradition, in particular, is very

academic, focusing on lists and numbers. We are in the same lineage as the Dalai Lama. That

being said, all four lineages are intertwined.” In addition, many Buddhist teachers, like Cameron,


liberally pepper their lectures with foreign terms and they often have questions for those in the

audience about the meaning of those foreign terms as a way of teaching them Buddhism. By

capitalizing on their experience with cultural heterophily, white Americans create a hierarchy

between those who know and those who do not. Those who know have the capital to become the

teachers of those who do not know. Capitalizing on heterophily is therefore a necessary

condition for consulting like others. When homophilous communities come together to learn a

foreign culture, at the exclusion of heterophilous others, this requires that someone in the

homophilous community be willing and able to capitalize on heterophily.

To summarize the above, we have found that intercultural exchange can take place

without interaction with cultural others, and that the properties of this form of intercultural

exchange exist when: (1) individuals have access to books or other texts about foreign cultures;

(2) use their own subjective interpretation to make acceptable sense of the foreign culture; (3)

they eventually group together with others in their community for discussion and continued

learning about the foreign culture in a systematic manner; and (4) they locate someone from the

community who is willing and able to capitalize on his/her past intercultural experiences and

learning (including a range of symbolic practices) to become guides on the foreign culture.

If cultural others are not important to U.S. American spiritual followers’ adoption of

Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions, does this mean that intercultural communication does not

exist in such instances? What does this type of intercultural exchange mean for intercultural

communication scholarship? Having articulated the dynamics of how intercultural exchange

takes place within groups of culturally homophilous individuals, we will now address the

consequence of these findings for intercultural communication scholarship through the

presentation of the core concepts of the emerging theory developed from this data.


Discussion

Intercultural communication is traditionally defined as communication with others who

are unlike ourselves (Gudykunst & Mody, 2002). Based on our analysis of Wong’s (2013) study

of U.S. Americans’ adoption of Asian Buddhist religious/spiritual traditions, we agree with the

formulation she reached that in communication contexts where foreign cultural traditions are

adopted in a culturally homophilous setting, one is still engaging in intercultural communication

albeit in second-hand form. A question that is raised as we explore how the ideas of Weick and

Bieri, as well as cursory exploration of the elite American philosophical and cultural writings of

those like Emerson and Thoreau, is whether the underlying cultural continuity of Americans is

comfortably ethnocentric—and possibly has been this way from the outset of U.S. American

cultural establishment. This ethnocentrism we have identified manifests itself in the preference

for one’s own interpretation and representation of traditions that are from another culture.

More substantively, what this study contributes to our understanding is the explanatory

theoretical modeling Wong first suggested in her 2013 study. Intercultural communication is

first-hand when one directly interacts with a heterophilous-other. This is the traditional definition

of intercultural communication, i.e., communication with others who are unlike ourselves.

Intercultural communication is second-hand when one is engaging indirectly with a foreign

culture through the interpretations and directions of those who are culturally similar to

themselves, such as the “cosmopolite” described in the work of intercultural communication

scholar, Everett Rogers on the diffusion of innovation. The difference between first-hand and

second-hand intercultural communication is visually explained in the figures on the next page.


Figure 1. First-hand Heterophilous Communication

Figure 2. Second-hand Heterophilous Communication

What our paper suggests is that the learning of another culture is in fact, an innovation to

one’s cultural world view. And, in the United States, at least in the context observed by Wong,

what seems at first glance to be a preference and desire for heterophily is actually an exercise in

self-expression, using the language, symbolism and practice of Asian Buddhist religious/spiritual

traditions and practices. If direct interpersonal intercultural communication is heterophilous

communication, then second-hand intercultural communication is not just indirect, but passive

heterophilous communication. Parallel to how passive smoking refers to taking in cigarette

smoke without actually smoking a cigarette and passive income refers to receiving income

without needing to go to work (e.g., dividend income from stocks and shares or rental income

White

American

Asian

Buddhist

Teacher

White

American

Asian

Buddhist

Teacher

White

American

Book about

Buddhist

Spiritual

Traditions

Asian

Buddhist

Teacher

White

American


from property ownership), passive heterophilous communication refers to engaging with a

foreign culture without actually needing to interact with heterophilous others.

The properties of passive heterophilous communication are as discussed earlier: (1)

Engaging with texts instead of people, e.g., preferring to learn about Buddhism through studying

texts instead of engaging with cultural Others who practice the tradition; (2) Consulting like

others, e.g., exploring one’s comprehension and practice with individuals who are culturally

similar; (3) Personal subjective sense-making, e.g., trusting that one’s personal experience “just

makes sense” to establish it as valid and authoritative for their future practice as Buddhists; and

4) Capitalizing on heterophily, whether through dress, possessions, use of language or reference

to symbolic others from the cultural target (in this case, Buddhism).

In this paper, we argue that individuals are engaging in a form of intercultural exchange

even if they are not physically interacting with people from that culture. Passive heterophilous

communication is also intercultural communication! When it occurs in a group setting, passive

heterophilous communication (hereafter, PHC) requires individuals who are willing and able to

leverage their past experiences and actively use this to communicate symbolically to teach others

about Buddhism. In the United States, it may be that this tendency to leverage on one’s past

experiences and subjective sense making as the basis for authority is a cultural phenomenon.

Transferability of PHC

There are striking similarities between the American Buddhist groups observed in this

research project and Kong’s (2012) ethnographic research with an American group practicing the

Japanese tradition of aikido martial arts. She describes her aikido dojo in this way:

Hand-written calligraphy with the three characters ‘ai-ki-do’ hung over the threshold into

the main hall. Cloth dyed with intricate motifs covered the doorways to tease and please


wayward eyes while ensuring the occupants of the interior space privacy. In the main

practice hall, the letter-character ‘ki’ connoting energy was placed between two weapons

racks for everyone to see. Practitioners on the mat had taken off their slippers and

shoes … just like the way shoes would be removed and arranged before entering a house

or private quarters in Japan. (p. 6).

Like my research participants, the white American practitioners at the aikido dojo where

Kong (2012) did participant observation also adopted Japanese traditions of address. American

Aikido practitioners would refer to each other using the suffix “-san” at the end of their names.

For example, a student named Maria would be known as Maria-san in the aikido dojo. In

addition, aikido practitioners use Japanese terminology to refer to their martial arts techniques.

Similar to the scene from my research, one could easily imagine being in a dojo in Japan if not

for the fact that most of the people on the mat are white U.S. Americans.

Kong (2012) interprets the actions of the participants at her aikido dojo as not interested

in “mimicking Japanese mannerism or embodying Japanese ethos” (p. 7). Despite the outward

Asian manifestations, practicing aikido was more about developing a life-long practice as well as

forming kinship bonds, than about interest in Japan or Japanese people. This curious lack of

necessity of Asia and Asian people to the white American’s adoption of cultural traditions from

Asia was also seen during my own fieldwork with American Buddhist groups. Kong’s study did

not explore her findings critically but through the properties of passive heterophilous

communication it is easy to see that there was a practice of establishing social capital through the

symbolism of heterophily through dress, language and other practices. Meanwhile, the

subjective sensemaking of the dojo members reinforced the value of group association and


membership. We learn about the values of the group through the profession that it is important to

them that it be known they are “not interested” in mimicry of Japanese semiotic practices.

In summary, PHC is not a phenomenon unique to Buddhism. Passive heterophilous

communication can be applied to the transfer of cultural traditions across multiple domains. PHC

can be said to occur when white American martial arts enthusiasts learn Chinese, Japanese or

Korean martial arts from their fellow white Americans. PHC occurs when would-be expatriates

get together to learn about cultural adaptation from someone in their community who has been

living abroad as an expatriate for many years. In short, passive heterophilous communication

occurs whenever members of a homophilous community engage with a foreign culture as

mediated through the interpretations and explanations of another person, or a text on the foreign

culture.

PHC as hidden ethnocentrism

Passive heterophilous communication manifests communicatively as interactions

between culturally homophilous bodies (e.g., groups of white Americans practicing the cultural

forms and traditions of a foreign cultural group). When in a group setting, PHC manifests

communicatively as privileging the voice of a cultural in-group member (e.g., the person chosen

to teach white Americans about foreign culture is also a white American). The cultural in-group

is privileged in the adoption of foreign cultural forms. Foreign content and form is adopted;

foreign bodies and foreign voices are kept at bay. Ultimately, it creates an individual authority

that is reinforced collectively by emphasizing personal sense making as the evidence of

understanding. Further research might explore how individuals who have gained their

intercultural knowledge through PHC might report the experience of learning directly from a

member of another culture.


PHC as a model for intercultural communication expands upon Milton Bennett’s (1986,

1993) conceptualization of ethnocentric states in the six-stage development model of

intercultural sensitivity. Bennett (1986, 1993) defines ethnocentricity as the tendency to think of

one’s culture as superior to other cultures, for example, by placing one’s cultural norms as the

basis for evaluating other cultures; by considering one’s own culture as the only good and real

culture and other cultures as inferior, delusional or lacking in some other way.

In the Development Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS), Bennett et al (2004)

outline three phases of ethnocentric responses to cultural others -- (phase 1) denying the

existence of other cultural forms as valid forms of existence, (phase 2) raising defenses against

other cultural forms as forms of existence that valid for respect and (phase 3) minimizing the

importance of culture in one’s interaction with others, e.g., thinking about others as culturally

neutral, i.e., “everyone is a human being after all”.

The passive heterophilous communication observed in some American Buddhist groups

is similar to ethnocentric denial (DMIS phase 1) in that the conversation takes place in

homogenous groups that are isolated from cultural others. However, PHC manifests differently

from ethnocentrism in the DMIS in that instead of placing one’s own cultural norms as central to

reality, individuals engaging in PHC are discarding their own cultural norms in preference for

the cultural norms of the Other. They, having created their own interpretation of others’ cultural

practices¸ then proceed to perform and teach these cultural practices even as they themselves

continue to define the practices. In other words, unlike traditionally considered ethnocentrism,

the persons observed in this study were not insistent on their own enculturated practices. Rather,

they insist on their right to interpret the Other. PHC can therefore be described as capturing the

paradoxical tension of privileging as well as not privileging others’ cultural norms. PHC


privileges the notion of others’ cultural norms in terms of being willing to engage with foreign

cultural norms; PHC does not actually privilege Others’ cultural norms in that it prefers the

cultural in-group’s interpretation of Others’ cultural norms instead of trying to understand Others’

cultural norms from the perspective of the cultural Other. The key point here is that Others’

interpretations of their own cultural norms are irrelevant to and not included in the transfer of

cultural traditions. As such, PHC enables us to identify subtle, yet highly significant aspects of

ethnocentrism that go unaddressed in cultural critiques focusing simply on the denial of the

Other.

Further, PHC is different from ethnocentrism as described in the DMIS in that U.S.

American spiritual followers do not explicitly reject the cultural Other. In fact, the assertion that

U.S. American Buddhist activity is ethnocentric does not seem to have face value if one looks at

the amount of interest American spiritual followers display towards learning about Buddhism,

the amount of time and money spent on consuming Asian religious artifacts, as well as the

manifest changes in appearance (e.g., black robes) and identity markers (e.g., adopting a

Buddhist name instead of one’s given name) that American spiritual followers make when doing

Buddhism. As such, we posit that PHC is an indirect expression of the rejection of cultural

Others. The implication here for future research in that we should not assume that surface level

observations of intercultural sharing precludes ethnocentrism, racism and prejudice from actively

operating.

The Buddhist classes and seminars where Wong conducted her research were welcoming

of everyone from the general public, regardless of race, nationality and ethnicity. Yet, at the

same time, by closely studying the bodies in the space of Buddhist practice, the (lack of) direct

intercultural communication interactions during the learning of Buddhism—as well as the nature


of voices that are privileged in the teaching of Buddhism—it is apparent that the cultural Other

can be physically “in” the scene but will not be included as a consequential subject. What is

happening here? Those interested in the study of tokenism and social patterns of political

correctness in intercultural behavior and relationships might find an interesting area for further

investigation.

PHC could be considered an insidious form of intercultural communication because it

manifests as openness towards other cultural forms and traditions; however, when one looks

closely into the seemingly insignificant details of intercultural interactions, the subtleties of race

relations reveal themselves. Underlying the manifest interest in and openness to intercultural

exchange, lies a viable hidden ethnocentrism that is difficult to reference because in discussing

subtle forms of intolerance, there is the tendency to wonder if one is being hypersensitive, if one

should not just give the other party the benefit of the doubt. Further, out of consideration to avoid

upsetting social equilibrium when in the presence of a cultural other who expresses cultural

appreciation based in PHC, the delicate balance of comfortable relations with those from other

cultural groups is threatened. One fears to speak, particularly if one is aware that the sensed

ethnocentrism or prejudice has not been explicitly expressed but is often encoded within the very

symbolism of the “Other” (see Holton, 1998, p. for a discussion on the experiential subtleties of

prejudice).

Further, in the domain of religion, ideologies such as being compassionate to others or

speaking kindly to others, can result in the disciplining of oneself into silence. To point out the

hidden ethnocentrism in PHC is necessary for intercultural scholarship but very difficult to speak

of, especially in these contexts. As scholars of intercultural communication, we are challenged

to articulate the difficult and unpleasant dynamics that we find when conducting our research.


Suggested directions for future research

In addition to the above discussions on PHC and ethnocentrism, the phenomenon of

redefining the adoption of others’ religious/spiritual traditions as cultural creation rather than

cultural appropriation has yet to be articulated in current literature. Research on the white

adoption of Native American spiritualties primarily frames the adoption as a form of cultural

appropriation. The discussion of findings in these studies revolves around issues of authenticity,

identity and exploitation of traditions (see e.g., Aldred, 2000; Churchill, 1994; Tsosie, 2002)

attributed to the practices of colonization and the postcolonial legacy of those experiences. This

paper demonstrates how a grounded intercultural communication study can contribute new

language and foci for understanding the transfer of religious/spiritual traditions between cultures.

Perhaps the discourse in this area could move to a new stage of conceptual formulation and

articulation with new emphases and studies of intercultural communication. For example, the

potential of a theory of PHC would urge a re-examination of the axial poetry in González’ work

on the sharing of Native American spirituality, to see if the properties described here might yield

deeper insight in areas that have been summarily classified as domains of cultural appropriation.

Afterword

We began this paper with a quote from Nakayama and Halualani (2010) that concurred

with González’s (1994) call for new approaches to discuss the domain of religion and spirituality

in intercultural communication. Issues of disciplinary language as well as personal and cultural

allegiances make religion “difficult to discuss.” As we reflect on the fieldwork and interviews

from Wong’s (2013) study and our deeper articulation of its significance to the study of the

transfer of religious/spiritual traditions from East to West, we speculate on the possible reasons it

is difficult to write about research on religion. Ideologies regarding speaking of others kindly


(themselves rooted in cultural and religious traditions and identities) make pointing out a dark

side of intercultural communication in domains of spiritual practice seem rude and unkind,

perhaps even sinful to some. We believe that a key challenge for intercultural communication

scholars interested in a program of research in the domain of religion/spirituality is therefore to

develop the skills to conduct needed critical research while developing awareness of how

embedded practices of hegemonic normativity might work to silence important insights.

Learning to read and report this work with compassion might require the need to recognize how

defensive responses can themselves be indications that passive, hidden and implicit cultural

practices are being articulated and “called out.” As scholars, it is vital to support each other as

we embark on work that helps us in this way.


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Documents

Passive Heterophily in the Transfer of Buddhist Traditions (Co-Author: de la Garza, Primary author: Wong)