Buddhism in the modern West comprises two very different kinds of groups. On the one hand, it has come to North America , Europe and Russia as the religion of Asian immigrants. For these new arrivals, Buddhism provides a sense of cultural community, continuity, and tradition in new and often challenging circumstances. Often over time the Buddhism practiced in these immigrant communities increasingly takes on the shape of Christian church worship, with the introduction of scripture reading, sermons, and youth education ("Sunday school").
The other form of Buddhism in the West is made up of Western converts who are almost always attracted not to the devotional or even the communal element of Buddhist religion as much as to the philosophical and especially meditative component. For these Western lay practitioners (there are at present very few Western Buddhist monastics), the practice of Buddhism means first and foremost meditation, a dimension of the religion formerly in Asian contexts confined almost exclusively to the monastics.
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