Freshly cut orchids and lotuses stand in plastic buckets of water on the kitchen island. Several women are gathered around, speaking animatedly in Vietnamese, their voices rising and overlapping in bursts of laughter and commentary as their hands move over the stalks of flowers with practiced ease, trimming old leaves with shears, peeling back the bruised outer petals of lotuses, and arranging each stem carefully into tall vases. Later that morning, these floral offerings will be placed at the feet of the Buddha. A gentle Pacific breeze drifts in from the lanai (covered patio), which faces the Punchbowl area of Honolulu and the glinting coastline below. It is Sunday morning, and as they have every Sunday for years, this group of about a dozen Vietnamese American women and men, most in their seventies and eighties, together with a few middle-aged women, gather at the Bodhi Tree Dharma Center in Honolulu for chanting and meditation, followed by a vegan potluck lunch.
The morning begins with a procession to the large Buddha altar on the top floor, where flowers and cut fruit are offered. Immediately afterward, the group moves into walking meditation in the main hall, following the style of Thich Nhat Hanh. When they return to chant, participants like Mai Frascarelli, the septuagenarian foundress of Bodhi Tree Center and fellow Vietnamese American community members, take their seats—some on cushions on the floor, others on chairs lined along the walls. During chanting, they rise and sit in cycles, hands held in prayer, chanting devotionally, standing, bowing, and returning to their seats in a steady rhythm. Their recitations draw from multiple traditions: verses from the Amitabha Sutra, passages from the Cầu Siêu sutra dedicated to transferring merit for the deceased, and Theravada gāthā drawn from a Vietnamese-language booklet. The session concludes with an open discussion on Buddhist teachings.
The morning before, another group had gathered in the same space for the Bodhi Tree’s weekly Saturday Vipassana meditation practice. On this day, twenty-five people—a mix of regulars and first-timers—took their seats in the sunlit room on chairs or floor cushions arranged in a loose circle to the side of the Buddha altar. The participants ranged widely in age, ethnicity, and gender: retirees in shorts and t-shirts, young professionals in beachwear, and long-time Hawai‘i residents of mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds settling in side by side. A few newcomers chatted about their surprise at finding a meditation center tucked quietly within a residential neighborhood, while regulars moved easily toward their preferred spots. As Trinh Nguyen, Mai’s niece and the center’s manager, and Quynh Nguyen, the morning’s teacher, offered warm greetings, Trinh’s small poodle wandered to the front of the room and curled up near the Buddha altar, suggesting the center’s relaxed and welcoming atmosphere.
Quynh opened the session with a brief introduction before guiding the group through a slow, steady body scan, inviting participants to “notice what’s here.” The room settled into stillness as she transitioned into mindfulness of breathing. Some sat cross-legged on cushions, others rested comfortably in chairs, adjusting as needed. When the bell sounded after 45 minutes, Quynh closed with a short period of mettā practice, and a time for questions. Before ending, Trinh invited newcomers to share how they had found the center—responses ranged from MeetUp to Eventbrite; many were vacationers in Honolulu. She invited the attendees to explore programming held throughout the week at Bodhi Tree— whether it be this vipassana class, to the secular mindfulness session, to the sound healing sessions, or the early sunrise Yoga session—to come explore “whatever resonates with you.”
These two snapshots of Buddhist practice at the same location both evoke and trouble the “two Buddhism” typology that scholars of Buddhism have historically used to describe Buddhism in America: this model distinguishes between Asian American heritage Buddhism, characterized by cultural preservation and devotional practice among immigrant Buddhists and convert Buddhism, typified by meditation practice and individual wellness. At Bodhi Tree, Hawai‘i, the easy dualisms that scholars have often reached for to interpret American Buddhist life blur and dissolve, offering a lens into how Buddhists in the diaspora are actively engaging in and shaping interest in Buddhism as a form of therapeutic health and wellness.
Hawai‘i is home to the largest Buddhist population in the US According to the latest Pew Research, five per cent of Hawai‘i’s population identified as Buddhist compared to one per cent on the mainland, with Buddhism identified as the second largest religious affiliation after Christianity. This demographic significance is due in no small part to the islands’ complex history of US settler colonialism. Following the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani in 1893 and Hawai‘i’s annexation as a U.S. territory in 1900, successive waves of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrants were brought to work on sugar and pineapple plantations, carrying with them diverse Buddhist practices and beliefs. The 1970s also marked the beginning of significant immigration from Southeast Asia. Vietnamese migration to Hawai‘i, for example, largely followed the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and continued into the 1980s, as refugees and their families resettled across the islands. Pew further reports that more than half of Hawai‘i’s population identifies as Asian or multiracial with at least partial Asian ancestry, making it the only US state with a majority-Asian population. Most Buddhists in Hawai‘i are of Japanese descent.
Parallel to these developments, there also emerged in Hawai‘i Buddhist practice communities and established by transplants from the main-island, particularly of Anglo-American and European descent. Robert Baker Aitkin’s (1917–2010) family moved to Hawai‘i when he was a young child. Aitkin began his Zen sitting group, known as the Diamond Sangha, in 1959. It would develop into an international network of Zen sanghas. Lay teachers Steve Smith and Michele McDonald co-founded Vipassana Hawai‘i in 1984, which brought the Burmese monastic lineage of Mahasi Sayadaw to the islands. Dr. Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Buddhist scholar and Tibetan Buddhist nun, established the La’i Peace Centeron the North Shore of Oahu, Hawai‘i, where it offers education and training in peace and non-violence based on Buddhist principles. The center is a project of Sakyadhita Hawai‘i, a branch of the Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women, which Tsomo co-founded.
Despite this staggering diversity of Buddhist lineages in Hawai‘i, research shows that the number of those who identify as Buddhist is declining. Japanese Buddhism in Hawai‘i, who represent the largest demographic of Buddhists on the islands, and consists of denominations like the Honpa Hongwanji’ congregations that employ a membership system that keeps regular count of active participation in religious life, offers some numerical evidence for these broader trends. In his 2012 study of Japanese Buddhism in Hawai‘i, sociologist Jorn Borup found that membership had significantly dropped across the denominations. This point was echoed by Tsomo in her 2020 study of the key role Japanese immigrant women played in establishing Buddhist practice in Hawai‘i. She found that membership has rapidly decreased in Honpa Hongwanji’s Buddhist Women Associations.
Researchers like Borup and Tsomo have identified several underlying factors to this in their research. One of these factors has beenwhat happens to religion in the context of late modern individualized spirituality; wherein secularization has been accompanied by a move away from traditional churches and institutional “other-worldly” religion to individualized “this-worldly” sacralization of the self, fulfilled by a spiritual and wellness marketplace. In such a marketplace, the range of practices such as sound bowl meditations, yoga, mindfulness, tarot, reiki, herbalism, and breathwork exercises can be accessed as individual practices without the need for a deeper religious, ethical, or communal commitment.
Borup, in his research in 2013, found that with the decline of Buddhist membership and active participation in religious life of the church in Hawai‘i, there was also an uptick in Hawai‘i of what he calls the spiritualization of Buddhism itself. Borup found that many practicing in Japanese Buddhist congregations were dismissive of the spiritual marketplace and saw it as distinct from their own Buddhist tradition, with him identifying heritage Buddhism and this spiritualized Buddhism in competition with one another.
Writing over a decade later, however, Tsomo noted that some Hongwanji temples were incorporating meditation practice to try and appeal to the younger generation and a broader demographic. In conversation, Tsomo reflected that many people these days are more drawn to doing sound meditations on the beach at sunset than learning about the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness. While she is passionate about maintaining the depth and integrity of the dharma, Sakyadhita Hawai‘i is a non-denominational organization that applies Buddhist principles to a variety of practices and holds workshops such as How To Be Well in the World, introducing diverse healing modalities. One of its senior members, Debbie Azama-Park, offers chair yoga and stress reduction breathing classes at the Nichiren Sect Mission of Hawaii.
These trends continued to be observed by us in 2025, where we found other Buddhist communities in Hawaii seeming to follow similar routes. In our observations, as in the example of the lay-led Bodhi Tree Dharma center, we found that rather than competition or displacement of traditional Buddhism with “spiritualized Buddhism” that instead, the former were seamlessly offering a space for both. As Trinh, the manager of Bodhi Tree center noted, the purpose of the Center for her aunt Mai was to start a Buddhist center to give back to the people of Hawai‘i, to access meditation as a means of ending suffering. To do this meant that Bodhi Tree was “not a religious space,” but rather it was a “spiritual space” led by lay people that welcomed any tradition that brought wellness and health to the community.
Another crossover occurs at Mu-Ryang-Sa (Broken Ridge Temple). While serving primarily as a location for Korean monastic training and a cultural hub for the Korean American community, lay teacher Dr. Gregory Pai offers a vipassana class every Saturday afternoon at the temple—in fact, it is where Mai herself first rekindled her own meditation practice twenty years ago, after going through a particularly difficult period in her personal life with loss and trauma, and where she found inspiration in Pai’s lay-led meditation program. Pai is Korean American but came to Buddhism through Vipassana Hawai‘i and also trained with Burmese monastics in Myanmar. Pai explained that Mu-Ryang-Sa’s abbot, Do-Hyun wanted to offer something to the wider community through an English language meditation class. Pai’s Saturday afternoon “sit” is very popular. On successive visits there we found the space, with its stunning backdrop of Mahayana bodhisattvas, filled with meditators sitting cross-legged on the floor and filling the benches at the back of the temple. Attendees ranged from committed students, many of whom meet at the temple on Tuesdays for Dharma discussion, to drop-in vacationers.
Other Buddhist communities in Hawai‘i seem to be following similar routes. While meditation is not a traditional practice in Jodo Shinshu, some Hongwanji temples have begun to offer meditation and yoga classes. For example, Rev. Blayne Higa, minister of Kona Hongwanji Buddhist Temple on Hawaiʻi Island, offers monthly meditation sessions and weekly yoga classes, serving as an entry point into the specific spiritual traditions of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism. For Higa, these programs provide meaningful opportunities for Dharma learning and for cultivating an embodied practice that nurtures body, mind, and spirit. As he explains, “Our monthly meditation session provides an intentional moment to quiet the heart and mind, better hearing Amida Buddha’s calling voice in our lives. Our weekly yoga class is a wonderful offering that promotes wellness through gentle, mindful movement. These activities enhance temple life in ways that skillfully respond to the changing needs of our community.”
Indeed, Asian American Buddhist communities and leaders are increasingly attending to the diverse spiritual and religious needs of their members, while also engaging the pluralism that accompanies secularization. Asian American Buddhist groups are appreciating the spiritual and religious needs of different demographics, including their own members, and engaging with the spiritual pluralism that has come with secularization.
As portrayed above, however, the Bodhi Tree Dharma Center, which identifies itself as a “sanctuary for mindfulness, healing, and compassionate community in the heart of Honolulu,” seamlessly offers a space for both. Indeed, what distinguishes the Bodhi Tree is its explicitly non-denominational vision. It was not founded as a Vietnamese-only space nor as one led exclusively by monastics. Instead, it affirms that lay practitioners can serve as leaders and cultivate meditation communities themselves, and presents itself as a place of gathering, worship, and spiritual devotion for the Vietnamese American community too.
To be sure, Vietnamese Buddhism’s longstanding religious syncretism has significantly shaped the development of a space like the Bodhi Tree. As Trinh explains, Vietnamese culture has historically maintained an openness to religious pluralism, influenced by the convergence of Mahayana (particularly Chan/Zen), Theravada traditions from South and Southeast Asia, and Confucian thought. This layered heritage fosters a flexibility that carries into the diasporic context. As immigrants, Vietnamese Americans have often adapted by embracing what is useful while letting go of what is not—this pragmatic, adaptive spirit has also motivated Trinh’s aunt’s vision. In addition to bridging heritage Buddhism and more individualized, “spiritualized” forms of practice, Bodhi Tree aspires to connect different Buddhist denominations in Hawai‘i, where everyday Buddhist life can sometimes be marked by sectarian divisions. As Mai sees it, there are, as the Buddha said, “84,000 ways to practice the Dharma,” emphasizing multiplicity and inclusivity. She describes her work as “watering the Dharma stream,” nurturing its growth in diverse forms.
Spaces like Bodhi Tree in Hawai‘i and the other emergent examples given here don’t fit into the two Buddhisms typology or the heritage versus spiritualized Buddhist tension. They may offer a glimpse into an emerging spirituality, one which emphasizes friendship and healing, community and experience, and challenges some of the limits of both traditional religion, which can be exclusive and individualistic neo-liberal spirituality.
Acknowledgements: This article was made possible through the support of grant #63243 from the John Templeton Foundation.
See more
Key facts about Asians in the U.S.
Nichiren Sect Mission of Hawai‘i
Broken Ridge Temple
Bodhi Tree Dharma Center
Religious Landscape Study – Hawaii (Pew Research Center)
Diamond Sangha
Vipassana Hawai‘i
Sakyadhita Hawai‘i
Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women
Kona Hongwanji Buddhist Temple
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