I get reams of magazines but I do try to make room for Tricycle, the glossy Buddhist review that does as well as any publication in explaining this religion to me. Only in 2002, when I made forays to Thailand and Japan, where I interviewed Buddhists or former Buddhists for a piece in our foreign section, did I realize the complexity of this world religion.

Recently, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life put out a massive survey of 35,000 people that gave as good an outline of any as to what shape the major religions have taken on American soil. Two-thirds of American Buddhists, it said, are first-generation converts; an impressive percentage.

Other facts: Forty-five percent of the country's Buddhist live out West, followed by 23 percent in the South, 17 percent in the Northeast and 15 percent in the Midwest.

The biggest age group is that of 30- to 49-year-olds, the same demographic advertisers crave. Just over half are male. Fifty-three percent are white and 32 percent are Asian; they are equally distributed among income and educational levels, 45 percent are married and 31 percent have never married. Seventy percent have no children. Hmmm. Sounds like this is a group that will be quite slow in reproducing itself for the next generation.

Back to Tricycle, its spring issue has an intriguing Q&A with minimalist composer Philip Glass, a convert from Judaism to Buddhism. Thirty years ago, he wrote a Sanskrit-language opera about Mahatma Gandhi, "Satyagraha," about the Gandhi's early years in South Africa. An updated version will be performed at New York's Metropolitan Opera House in April while Pope Benedict is in town. Maybe he can drop by?

One of the most intriguing points in the story (found on the site) is how Gandhi, a Hindu, studied Christianity in London, where he found Jesus' teachings on compassion so compelling that he based his life on them. The New King James Version words a key verse (Matt: 25: 35-36) as follows: "For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me."

Photo courtesy of Tricycle magazine

"I think there is something very much at the heart of Gandhi in those words," Glass said near the end of the Tricycle interview. "And of course it's Christian. And that may make it a hard pill for us Buddhists to swallow."

He added, "I think that basically the Buddhist community is a weak community. And it's weak because it's guided by self-interests." I was not sure, by the end of the piece, whether he held out much hope for Buddhism's ability to change hearts, much less national destinies.

Is there something vital missing in Buddhism that it took a Hindu acting along Christian principles to liberate India from the British? (Remember, one does not have to believe in God to be Buddhist). Does its inwardness have anything to do with such a high percentage of American Buddhists remaining childless? Folks such as Philip Glass are asking really interesting questions.

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times