Is Nessie a Naga?: Buddhism in the West and Emerging Strategies of Importation
Issued Date: 2 Dec 2014
Abstract
In 2014 Lama Gelongma Zangmo of Scotland sparked curiosity when she suggested that the Loch Ness monster or “Nessie” is actually a naga––a fantastic creature from Buddhist mythology. Visitors to her Tibetan practice center on the shores of the Loch will be able to leave offerings to Nessie. Without exaggerating the significance of these offerings within the larger context of Zangmo’s practice, this article suggests that efforts to ritually incorporate Nessie into a Buddhist cosmology is an index of broader changes in Buddhism’s arrival to the West. First, Zangmo’s open discussion of cosmology, ritual, and supernatural beings is a marked distinction from “Protestantized” Western Buddhism, which has historically presented Buddhism as a rational and philosophical alternative to Christianity. This suggests that Buddhists in the West have become less concerned with conforming to Protestant notions of “proper” religion. Second, Zangmo’s praxis is significant to broader patterns of how Asian religions adapt to Western topography. Whereas Asian immigrants have sometimes re-imagined Asian sacred sites in Western countries, Zangmo was taken the opposite strategy of “Buddhicizing” a local monster. This suggests that similar transformative moves can be expected as a globalized world continues to transplant religious traditions from one continent to another.
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Halberstam, Judith. 1995. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Durham, NC: Duke Universi- ty Press.
Hall, David D. 1990. Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England. Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Klu ʼbum dkar nag khra gsum rgyas pa: a reproduction of a manuscript of the White, Black, and Mottled books of the Nāga : based upon the Rtag-brtan Phun-tshogs-gliṅ block- print redaction of the text. 1983. Dalhousie, H.P.: Dam- choe Sangpo.
Layman, Emma McCloy. 1976. Buddhism in America. Chi- cago: Nelson-Hall Publishers.
“Loch Ness Monster vs. Buddhists.” 2014. Laughing in Pur- gatory. Accessed September 13, 2014. http://www. laughinginpurgatory.com/2014/04/loch-ness-mon- ster-vs-buddhists.html.
“Loch Ness Monster is ‘Spiritual’ Say Buddhists.” 2014. The Scotsman, April 25. Accessed October 12, 2014. http://www.scotsman.com/news/odd/loch-ness- monster-is-spiritual-say-buddhists-1-3388747.
Loxton, Daniel, and Donald R. Prothero. 2013. Abomina- ble Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and other Famous Cryptids.
VOLUME 43, NUMBER 4 / NOVEMBER 2014
BULLETIN FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION 39
McMahan, David L. 2008. The Making of Buddhist Modern- ism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nattier, Jan. 1998. “Who Is a Buddhist? Charting the Land- scape of Buddhist America.” In The Faces of Buddhism in America, edited by Charles Prebish and K. K. Tana- ka, 193-95. Berkeley: University of California Press
Orsi, Robert A. 2005. Between Heaven and Earth: The Re- ligious Worlds People Make and the Scholars who Study Them. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Prebish, Charles S. 1979. American Buddhism. North Scitu- ate, MA: Duxbury Press.
Prothero, Stephen. 1996. The White Buddhist: the Asian oOd- yssey of Henry Steel Olcott. Bloomington: Indiana Uni- versity Press.
Sharf, Robert H. 1995. “Buddhist Modernism and the Rhet- oric of Meditative Experience” Numen 42 (3): 22883.
Tweed, Thomas A. 1992. The American Encounter with Bud- dhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dis- sent. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
———. 1999. “Night-Stand Buddhists and Other Crea- tures: Sympathizers, Adherents, and the Study of Re- ligion.” In American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, edited by Dunken Ryoken Wil- liams and Christopher Queen, 71–90 Surrey: Curzon Press.
Wojcik, Daniel. 1997. The End of the World as We Know it: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America. New York: New York University Press.
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