UC Santa Barbara

One of the most unusual, influential, and overlooked figures in the early history of Buddhism in the United States was Swami Mazziniananda (pseudonym, unknown-1931), a former patent medicine salesman and quack doctor who became a spiritualist minister and fortune teller while claiming dubious credentials as a Buddhist bishop at the turn of the century. This article traces the rise of Mazziniananda and his connections to the Buddhist Mission of North America, as well as the circumstances surrounding their split and his final years. I suggest that the best way to understand the figure of Mazziniananda-his mixture of Buddhism and occultism, real engagement with other Buddhists and fabricated titles and rituals-is as a type of Buddhist "wandering bishop." Finally, I argue that in light of his close ties with the Japanese Buddhist establishment, the influence of his liturgy and hymnals, and the deep engagement with the occult by his contemporaries and the members of the Dharma Sangha of Buddha that preceded him, Swami Mazziniananda is best seen not as a marginal or atypical figure, but rather as central and emblematic of the Euro-American Buddhist converts of his time and the deep linkages between occultism and the history of Japanese Buddhism in America.