I had no idea about this unique history of appropriation. I think for the west coast American hippies they saw the good in Buddha, the calming sense of serenity and love during war time, and used it to get away from Christianity. I was watching a documentary from 1970 yesterday that was filmed around Chicago. The working middle class people, the youth and the adults, were mainly disturbed by the war, thought their government wasn’t listening to them, were thinking through how to get the attention of officials to stop spending on unnecessary foreign wars like Vietnam that left greater debt. Nobody was fooled about “communism” and most thought it was just a way for the military industrial complex to make money. It still is. But I think this appropriation of Buddhism was positive for the new way of spiritualism it introduced to people unfamiliar with Buddhist thought. Today as a result we have widespread mediation techniques as a result, and even the Apple Watch has a meditation timer. What started as theft has evolved doing some good. The way is never known when the path first walked on.