As it was presented in this paper, Buddhism has a tradition in Brazil of, on the one hand, ethnic affirmation and, on the other hand, of a search for a religious identity that better assists urban demands. We focused on the issue of a search for a religious identity, of those who made a symbolic migration. The data from interviews showed us that most of the practitioners of Zen Buddhism were originated from Catholicism. Why the abandonment of this tradition? The answers that puts in evidence this migration are that "Catholicism doesn't answer to reality anymore", "it has a very moralistic vision", "the issue of sin is out of fashion ", among others. On the other hand, Zen Buddhism teaches us to live daily life, to search for inner peace, to have a more holistic viewpoint.

The issues that called our attention the most are that, inside a mass, urban society, there are those characteristics that were already remarked by several of the most competent authors - abandonment, synonym of isolation; poverty, violence, lack of liaisons; break of the family nucleus; competition in the labor market and lack of leisure time. Socioeconomic complications explain this process, but what will the cultural explanation be? Since Catholic tradition, the founder of this New World, was not able to either find an answer, or to overcome these demands, alternatives are sought - among them the religious one. The very religion which gives concrete and effective answers for the individual to live this present moment.

Our hypothesis of work is that an exclusion of these two symbolic universes does not take place, but what happens is a process of bricolage. Catholicism that once assisted to the problems of living here has distanced itself, even after Vatican II, when the Church tried to answer these urban pleas. Now ritual became empty of myth and therefore empty of meaning for the "I at the present moment". Other religions answered these demands better, such as Evangelical Churches, called Televangelical Churches, and the Afro-Brazilian ones, where the symbolic effectiveness happens in the present time.

These religions have strong characteristics of the social classes they are composed of, low and low middle classes, while Zen Buddhism is marked by upper middle class, a more intellectualized population, which is linked to left wing and vanguard movements. These latter ones are the classes originated with Catholic tradition. Catholic ethics does not supply answers anymore, the mysticism of its tradition was banished. As states Le Goff, the separation between what is secular and what is transcendental became a strategy where the Catholic Church lost its followers. It was there where the ritual was emptied of its myth. Thus, the rite became the individual and the myth lost its place of epiphany.