[nostromo]

I don't think "invented by white folks" is fair. It's more of a collaboration. When East met West, both cultures were changed, and Buddhism is no exception.

Here's a good book on the subject:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195183274/

> This sweeping and sophisticated analysis of the ways in which westerners and Asians alike have constructed new forms of Buddhism under the pressures of modernity is thoroughly disillusioning, in the best sense of the word. McMahan shows that much of what has been written and said about Buddhism in the modern era only can be understood against the background of dominant western discourses.