Buddhism in the United Kingdom

Buddhism in the United Kingdom has a small but growing number of adherents which, according to a Buddhist organisation, is mainly a result of conversion. In the UK census for 2011, there were about 247,743 people who registered their religion as Buddhism, and about 174,000 who cited religions other than Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Jainism and Sikhism. This latter figure is likely to include some people who follow the traditional Chinese folk religion which also includes some elements of Buddhism.

Statistics

At the 2011 Census, 178,453 people in England and Wales ticked the Buddhist box. Of these, the main places of birth were UK 66,522, Far East 59,931 and South Asia 9,847, and the main ethnic groups were White 59,040, Chinese 34,354, Asian 13,919, Mixed 4,647, Black 1,507 and Other 34,036. In Scotland, people were asked both their current religion and the one that they were brought up in. 6,830 people gave Buddhism as their current religion, and 4,704 said they were brought up in it, with an overlap of 3,146. In Northern Ireland, the published report which listed religions and philosophies in order of size reported 'Buddhist' at 533. For details of Buddhism in the individual countries of the United Kingdom, see:

* Buddhism in England
* Buddhism in Northern Ireland
* Buddhism in Scotland
* Buddhism in Wales

According to the 2021 United Kingdom census, Buddhists in England & Wales enumerated 272,508, or 0.5% of the population

History

Early Buddhist presence could be seen in the 1810s. Adam Sri Munni Ratna, a Buddhist monk from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), travelled to England with his cousin (also a Buddhist monk) while accompanying Sir Alexander Johnston in 1818. They were keen to learn Christianity as they were travelling to England. During their brief stay, the two monks were baptised and returned to Ceylon where they entered government service.

In Britain, the earliest Buddhist influences came from the Theravada traditions of Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. Interest in them was primarily scholarly to begin with, and a tradition of study grew up that resulted in the foundation of the Pali Text Society in 1881, which undertook the significant task of translating the Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhist Tradition into English. The start of interest in Buddhism as a path of practice had been pioneered by the original Theosophists, the Russian Madame Blavatsky and the American Colonel Olcott, who in 1880 became the first Westerners to receive the Three refuges and Five precepts, the formal conversion ceremony by which one traditionally accepted and becomes a Buddhist.

Burma and Ceylon were both colonies of the British Empire and both colonies had large or were majority Buddhist. Immigration from the two colonies would have happened. During the 19th to early 20th centuries lascar sailors (people from Asia who worked in British ships) came and settled in the UK. Some of the lascars came from the seafaring communities of Burma and Ceylon. There were also Chinese seamen who settled in the United Kingdom, establishing Chinatowns in Liverpool and London.

The Buddhist Society, London (originally known as the Buddhist Lodge) was founded in 1924 by Christmas Humphreys, another Theosophist who converted to Buddhism. In 1925, the Sri Lankan Buddhist missionary Anagarika Dharmapala brought to England the Maha Bodhi Society, which he had founded with the collaboration of the British journalist and poet Edwin Arnold

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