Herman Vetterling

Carl Herman Vetterling (1849-1931), also known by the Tibetan pseudonym of Philangi Dasa,cite book | title = Imagining Tibet : Perceptions, Projections, and Fantasies | first = Thierry | last=Dodin | publisher = Wisdom Publications| pages = p. 171-172 | isbn = 0861711912] was a Swedenborgian philosopher who converted to Buddhism in 1884 and took the Tibetan name. He was one of the first Americans to officially embrace the Buddhism. He founded "The Buddhist Ray" in Santa Cruz, California in 1887, which was the first Buddhist journal in the United States. [cite web | title = The Dharma of Emanuel Swedenborg: A Buddhist Perspective | url = http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ENG/loy11.htm | first = David | last = Loy | year = 1995 | accessdate = 2007-03-31 | publisher = The Swedenborg Association]

His most well-known work was "Swedenborg the Buddhist, or The Higher Swedenborgianism: Its Secrets and Thibetan Origin", published in 1887. It is a fictional spiritual dialogue between Swedenborg, a Buddhist monk, a Brahmin, a Parsi, an Aztec Indian, an Icelander, an anonymous woman, and Vetterling himself. Six years later this work was translated into Japanese. [cite web | url = http://www.theohistory.org/notes-queries-archive1.html | title = 53. From Yoshinaga Shin'ichi (Nov. 24, 1999) | accessdate = 2007-03-31]

Due to his eclectic combination of Swedenborgianism, Theosophy, Buddhism, homeopathy and Spiritualism, many scholars of his lifetime questioned his authenticity as a "real" Buddhist.

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