European Buddhism began in libraries. Before there were practitioners there were philologists, and the tradition Europe first encountered was a textual reconstruction made by scholars who had never met a Buddhist.

That origin still shapes European Buddhism, which remains more scholarly, more textually oriented, and — in several countries — more institutionally organised than its American counterpart.

The scholarly beginning #

Missionaries and travellers had reported on Asian religions since the sixteenth century, without recognising that Ceylonese, Siamese, Tibetan, and Japanese practice belonged to one tradition. The unification was a European scholarly achievement of the early nineteenth century.

Eugène Burnouf’s Introduction à l’histoire du Buddhisme indien (1844) is the founding work of Buddhist studies. Working from Sanskrit manuscripts sent from Nepal by Brian Hodgson, Burnouf established the Buddha as a historical person and the tradition as an object of historical study.

The Pali Text Society, founded by T. W. Rhys Davids in 1881, undertook the editing and translation of the Pali canon and remains the publisher of the standard editions. Rhys Davids and his wife Caroline Rhys Davids — who translated the Therigatha and much of the Abhidhamma — were the central figures of the English-language field for half a century.

In Germany, the philological tradition produced Hermann Oldenberg, Karl Eugen Neumann, and later Wilhelm Geiger. In France, Sylvain Lévi, Louis de La Vallée Poussin, and Étienne Lamotte. In Russia, Fyodor Shcherbatskoy’s work on Buddhist logic.

This scholarship constructed an “original Buddhism” located in ancient texts and contrasted with contemporary Asian practice — a framing with lasting consequences, discussed in Buddhist Modernism.

Schopenhauer #

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) was the first major European philosopher to engage seriously with Buddhist ideas, and he read what was available with enthusiasm, keeping a Buddha figure in his study and describing Buddhism as the most excellent of religions.

His own system — the world as will, suffering as the consequence of striving, salvation as the denial of the will — was developed partly independently and reinforced by what he read. Whether he understood Buddhism accurately is doubtful; he read nirvana as annihilation, which the tradition explicitly denies.

His influence, through Nietzsche, Wagner, and the late nineteenth-century pessimists, established Buddhism in European intellectual culture as the philosophy of world-denial — a characterisation that took a century to dislodge.

The first European Buddhists #

Kalmykia, on the north-west shore of the Caspian, is the exception to everything in this article: a historically Buddhist region within Europe. The Kalmyks, Oirat Mongols who migrated westward in the seventeenth century, brought Tibetan Buddhism with them. The tradition survived Tsarist suppression, was devastated under Stalin — the entire population was deported to Siberia in 1943, with enormous mortality — and has been substantially rebuilt since 1991. Buryatia and Tuva, in Russian Asia, have parallel histories.

Among Western Europeans, the first ordinations came at the turn of the twentieth century.

Anagarika Dharmapala visited Britain in 1893 and established a branch of the Maha Bodhi Society in London in 1926.

Allan Bennett (1872–1923), an Englishman who had been a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, ordained in Burma in 1902 as Ananda Metteyya and is generally regarded as the first British bhikkhu. He led a mission to Britain in 1908.

Anton Gueth (1878–1957), a German violinist, ordained in Burma in 1904 as Nyanatiloka, founded the Island Hermitage in Sri Lanka, and trained a generation of Western monks including Nyanaponika Thera, whose The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1962) was among the most influential meditation books in English.

Christmas Humphreys founded what became the Buddhist Society in London in 1924, and his Penguin paperback Buddhism (1951) introduced the subject to a very large British readership.

After the war #

European Buddhism grew from the 1960s along lines broadly similar to America’s, with national variations.

Britain. The Buddhist Society continued as an ecumenical body. Sangharakshita (1925–2018), an Englishman ordained in India who had known Ambedkar, founded the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order in 1967 — now the Triratna Buddhist Community — which deliberately set out to create a Western Buddhism not tied to any Asian form. It is among the largest Western Buddhist movements and works extensively with Ambedkarite communities in India. Sangharakshita’s legacy is complicated by well-documented sexual misconduct with students, which the order has publicly acknowledged and apologised for.

The Thai forest tradition established a strong British presence through Ajahn Chah’s Western students: Amaravati and Cittaviveka monasteries, founded by Ajahn Sumedho, are among the most substantial Theravada monastic institutions outside Asia. Gaia House in Devon is the principal insight retreat centre. Tibetan centres include Samye Ling in Scotland, founded in 1967 and the first Tibetan centre in the West.

France. Home to Europe’s largest Buddhist population, largely through Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Lao immigration after 1975. Plum Village, founded by Thich Nhat Hanh in the Dordogne in 1982, is the most internationally known Buddhist institution in Europe. France also has significant Tibetan centres, and Buddhism has an unusually high public profile relative to the size of the practising population.

Germany. A long scholarly tradition and a substantial network of centres across traditions; the German Buddhist Union dates to 1955.

Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia have all developed centres across the main traditions since the 1970s, with Italy notable for granting Buddhism official recognition and the associated tax arrangements.

Central and Eastern Europe saw rapid growth after 1989, with Poland and Hungary developing particularly active communities. Hungary has a state-accredited Buddhist university.

How it differs from America #

Several consistent differences.

Monasticism is stronger. Amaravati, Cittaviveka, Plum Village, and Samye Ling are residential monastic communities on a scale less common in the United States, where lay-led meditation centres dominate the convert landscape.

The scholarly connection is closer. European Buddhist studies is older and more institutionally embedded, and the traffic between academic and practising communities has been greater.

Relations with the state differ. Several European countries have formal religious recognition systems, and Buddhist umbrella organisations exist partly to engage with them — Austria recognised Buddhism in 1983, Italy and others have followed. This produces more centralised national bodies than the American pattern.

The immigrant communities are differently composed — Vietnamese and Cambodian in France, Sri Lankan and Thai in Britain and Germany, and the historically Buddhist Kalmyk and Buryat populations in Russia.

Numbers #

Estimates are unreliable for the usual reasons. The European Buddhist population is commonly put in the low millions, with France having the largest absolute number and Kalmykia the highest proportion of any European region by a wide margin.

As in America, the practising population divides between immigrant heritage communities and convert communities, with limited overlap.

Common questions #

Which European country has the most Buddhists? France, largely through Southeast Asian immigration. Kalmykia has the highest proportion.

Is there a European form of Buddhism? Triratna is the most deliberate attempt at one — founded explicitly to be Western rather than a transplanted Asian lineage. Most European Buddhism otherwise follows Asian lineages with local adaptation.

Was Buddhism ever historically present in Europe? Only in Kalmykia and the adjacent Russian regions, which are historically Buddhist by migration from Inner Asia. There are intriguing but inconclusive traces of ancient contact — Ashoka’s Rock Edict XIII claims dhamma emissaries were sent to Hellenistic kings, and no independent evidence of their arrival survives.

Did Buddhism influence European philosophy? Directly in Schopenhauer, and through him in Nietzsche and Wagner. More broadly, the nineteenth-century scholarly encounter shaped comparative religion as a discipline. Claims of earlier influence, on Pyrrho of Elis for instance, are argued about and not settled.

Sources & further reading #

Martin Baumann, “Buddhism in Europe,” in Charles S. Prebish & Martin Baumann (eds.), Westward Dharma (University of California Press, 2002) — the standard survey. Stephen Batchelor, The Awakening of the West (Parallax, 1994) — a narrative history of the European encounter. Donald S. Lopez Jr. (ed.), Curators of the Buddha (University of Chicago Press, 1995) — on the scholarly construction of Buddhism. Philip C. Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism (Cambridge, 1988). Urs App, The Cult of Emptiness (UniversityMedia, 2012) — on the early European encounter and Schopenhauer’s sources.