Global Buddhism

This paper begins to build a comparative framework for understanding the intersections and possibilities of Buddhism and the environment across sectarian and national borders. Even as groups like the International Network of Engaged Buddhists are attempting to frame a unified Buddhist position on environmental issues, Buddhists in different places are interpreting and adapting Buddhist teachings in ways specific to and meaningful in each society. Can the efforts of Buddhists to develop and implement an environmental ethic or activism in one location be translated into other Buddhist societies? Through two case studies – of the adaptation of a Buddhist environmental training manual in Theravāda Southeast Asia and the use of pilgrimage walks or Dhammayeitra to promote environmental awareness – this paper will critically examine the process involved in translating Buddhist environmentalism across sectarian, social, political, and economic borders.

This paper addresses the broader issues of continuity and change during the transition of Tibetan Buddhism from Asia to the West. It looks at the Diamond Way, a contemporary Karma bKa' brgyud lay movement founded by the Danish lay teacher Ole Nydahl. The paper aims to open this area of study by employing a balanced approach between a hermeneutics of suspicion and a hermeneutics of trust, and by adding the historical-critical approach of Tibetan Buddhist Studies to the perspectives of sociology and cultural anthropology. Acknowledging Nydahl as both a charismatic and controversial figure within contemporary Buddhism, the discussion focuses on notions of lay and yogi Buddhism in the Diamond Way and on the question of westernization in Diamond Way practices. The paper concludes by raising questions about the future, continuity and change of Nydahl's heritage after his death.

Discussions about the gendered experience of Buddhism, especially in the modern period, have often centered on the status of Buddhist women and the changing role of women’s authority and legitimacy vis-a-vis their male counterparts.  Based on fieldwork conducted in Sri Lanka   between 2009-2010, this essay explores some of the conceptual challenges that lay Buddhist women's participation within Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka pose to standard liberal conceptions of women's agency and power. Women’s religious giving and charity has played a pivotal role in efforts to sustain a postcolonial Sinhala Buddhist imaginary in Sri Lanka. They derive their power and agency in these nation-building efforts not feminist consciousness within the oppressive patriarchal nationalist project. Instead Sinhala middle-class lay Buddhist women enacted their own privileged place in Sri Lankan society by shoring up culturally prescribed notions of motherhood for the purpose of the elite national...

This paper explores two practices performed by a Tibetan Buddhist group developed in Argentina three decades ago. The dance of vajra and the yantra yoga practice are spiritual techniques characterized by complex corporal movements, chants and visualizations. This study aims to examine the specific ways in which both practices create a religious habitus whose key settings are mainly based on a physical training developed within a ritually structured intersubjective context. The research examines how these practices are symbolically based on several notions related to the person, the body, the energy, and the cosmos as they challenge the Modern dualist conceptions and reveal themselves as powerful methods of subjectivation.

This chapter explores issues of diasporic Buddhist movement and cultural adaptation, as well as how individuals affiliate with Buddhist denominations in diverse settings worldwide. One of the enduring features of religion worldwide is mobility. Ideas, concepts, practices, prohibitions, and cosmologies circulate beyond cultural and political
boundaries in ways ranging from intentional to spontaneous. The transregional and multicultural dimensions of Buddhism have been central to its history, institutional growth, and conceptual development, yet we also see specific ethnic versions of Buddhist practice shaped by very local concerns. Using the term “diaspora” for coerced as well as
voluntary relocations of Buddhist traditions and practitioners helps track issues of accommodation, hybridity, discourse, and experimentation as new sociocultural contexts shape existing practices and patterns.

The discussion also investigates how individuals affiliating with Buddhist traditions, whether as a form of heritage or as new converts, experience “taking refuge” in the Three Jewels in culturally conditioned ways.

Keywords: Three Jewels, convert, diasporic Buddhism, transregional, Buddhist denominations

Starting with a historical overview of the development of " Business Executive Courses " offered by Centers of Vipassana Meditation as thaught by S. N. Goenka I give an analysis of the aims of these courses as outlined by Goenka himself and other official Vipassana sources. With a view on emic statements from their websites and two films, one produced in the U.S. (Vipassana Meditation – Harmony in Business. Vipassana Research Institute, 2007, 11:52 minutes) the other filmed in India (Vipassana in Business. Being in touch with your inner leader. Vipassana Research Institute, 2009, 12:11 minutes) the following can be shown: Although the " Business Executive Courses " courses (seem to) have been initiated in the US and European countries, the courses offered in Asia, especially those in India, attract far more people and take place on a much more regular basis. Their greater impact (or longer tradition?) in Asian countries is strongly connected to the history of Goenka's Vipassana school and Goenka's own curriculum vitae. The Indian voices in the film testify to the aims of the practice with a strong focus on the impact of their business in terms of improved efficiency and productivity through enhanced decision-making ability. In stark contrast stands the fact that in the US-American film stronger emphasis is placed on the practice of meditation itself. Testimonies on its results testify to a stronger interest in self-cultivation by a method of psychological healing, and the development of mental well-being out of which higher ethics in business will be achieved.

This article presents two separate analyses. The first concerns the structure of conversion to the Buddhist Compassion Relief Ciji Association ("Ciji") in economic and sociological terms, arguing that the sudden wealth generated during Taiwan's period of rapid economic development created a need to give that wealth meaning and the wealthy an identity, and that Ciji provided one way to meet that need. The second argues that Ciji provided a way of adapting traditional Buddhist rhetoric and imagery to facilitate the move from traditional "almsgiving" to "modern scientific charity." The concluding section will show that these two issues connect to each other, with the modernization of charity enabling the formation of a new identity for converts that lends meaning to their wealth.

Throughout this introductory article, I bring attention to the important distinction between the field of Buddhist Economics and the field of Buddhism and Economics. Rather than drawing up normative frameworks for how one should engage economically, the authors in this special issue offer new theoretical frameworks for conceptualizing how Buddhists necessarily do engage economically. First, I provide a brief overview of the field of religion and economics, and the burgeoning field of Buddhism and Economics more generally. I then narrow in on the innovative theoretical frameworks presented in this special issue, including important discussions as to the impact of Max Weber, along with considering merit and the contingent conjunctures within which Buddhists negotiate economic contexts. The contributing authors in this special issue emphasize not only how Buddhists necessarily engage with the economy, but also how Buddhist economic exchanges influence as well as are influenced by the s...

Why did many modern Chinese intellectuals turn to an extreme form of Buddhist idealism—Yogācāra (the school of consciousness-only)— at a time when science, realism, and social Darwinism were dominating early twentieth-century China? To understand this apparent paradox, this dissertation traces the intellectual journey of the renowned advocate of Buddhist idealism, Lü Cheng. In the 1920s, Lü called for an aesthetic revolution. He soon turned to consciousness-only philosophy as the prime resource for renewing society. This study reveals that Buddhist idealism appealed to many modern Chinese intellectuals for its powerful social critique. Consciousness-only doctrines proved effective in counterbalancing scientific materialism, remedying the ills of modern capitalism, and redefining social evolution as spiritual progress. This dissertation argues that Lü’s philosophy repurposed Buddhist spiritual exercises to build an egalitarian, democratic society. Lü was one of the most interesting figures trying to reorient the Buddhist path of liberation for social reform. His endeavor reveals to us that, to understand the social transformation of modern China, we must take seriously the Buddhist vision for societal renewal. Lü’s theorization of Buddhist social consciousness also illuminates the transnational trend of integrating Buddhism and activism, which later contributed to the rise of engaged Buddhism.

This article analyzes the historical and contemporary relations between Buddhism, economy, and materiality. It shows how, on the one hand, the sangha has been a preconditioning catalyst for and continuous generator of economic development, while, on the other hand, economic transactions and wealth generation have been preconditioning contexts for the development and maintenance of the Buddhist sangha. This is argued for by referring to two modes of economic transactions: a “secular economy,” a byproduct of the sangha’s engagement with the secular world, and a “religious economy,” based on economic transactions related to Buddhist ideas, practices, objects, and institutions. Max Weber’s ideas of the “Protestant ethic” and Robert Bellah’s model of religious evolution are used as theoretical frameworks to analyze possible correspondences between religion, economy, and cultural evolution. It is suggested that Buddhism has also played a significant role in economic and civilizational dev...

The last decades of the twentieth century have been a time of new visibility and social activism for Buddhists in Taiwan and around the world. This paper compares the social engagement of nuns in the Chinese Buddhist tradition in Taiwan and North America. I would like to argue that whereas nuns in Taiwan have developed a variety of approaches to social involvement, their counterparts in the Chinese diaspora in North America have had to face a set of challenges specific to overseas Chinese communities in addition to Chinese Buddhist tradition. The article concludes with reflections on the prospects for nuns' social activism in Taiwan and North America in future years.

Scholars of Buddhism in the United States have attempted to give order to the varieties of Buddhism that they encounter. Typically, such studies have focused on doctrinal, lineal, or socio-historical factors that are, in many ways, already familiar in the field of Buddhist studies. What has been less explored is the ways in which Buddhism has become institutionalized in the United States. This study explores how three pre-existing models of institutional organization have structured the forms that various Buddhisms have taken, regardless of their doctrinal, lineal or socio-historical background. Religion, self-help, and science comprise this three-fold structure. Understanding this three-fold structure involves adding a third term to the common opposition of religion as the transcendent sacred and science as the mundane secular. That third term is the immanent sacred, which is generally suppressed by semiotic pairing of the other two terms, but which is present in the culture of sel...

This article presents two separate analyses. The first concerns the structure of conversion to the Buddhist Compassion Relief Ciji Association ("Ciji") in economic and sociological terms, arguing that the sudden wealth generated during Taiwan’s period of rapid economic development created a need to give that wealth meaning and the wealthy an identity, and that Ciji provided one way to meet that need. The second argues that Ciji provided a way of adapting traditional Buddhist rhetoric and imagery to facilitate the move from traditional "almsgiving" to "modern scientific charity." The concluding section will show that these two issues connect to each other, with the modernization of charity enabling the formation of a new identity for converts that lends meaning to their wealth.

With the rise of globalization in the past twenty years, the positioning of religious belief and activity worldwide has become increasingly complicated due to new information technologies, immigration flows, corporate restructuring and transnational finance. This paper identifies five factors that not only characterize late modern societies but also create conditions to which religions must adapt, or ignore at their peril. Using Buddhist temples, priests, and their surrounding communities in Japan as case studies, the paper traces how social forces such as 1) a “crisis of orientation,” 2) corporate and bureaucratic restructuring, 3) consumer culture, 4) individualization within a “risk” society, and 5) experimental approaches to spirituality impact religious practice and institutions. Without a perspective that incorporates the global into the local (but still acknowledges the power of individual agency), our analysis of religious activities remains parochial and sociocentric.

Department of Theology and Religious Studies University of San Diego 5998 Alcalá Park, San Diego, CA 92110 ktsomo@sandiego.edu ... Copyright Notes: Digital copies of this work may be made and distributed provided no charge is made and no alteration is made to the ...

Braun's exhaustively-researched book focuses on the Ledi Sayadaw (1846-1923) and his reformulation of the sasana through the popularization of meditation that saw the emergence of mass meditation, including lay people as well as monks, in Burma at the beginning of the twentieth century. Braun's main interest is the when, why, and how of this reformulation. The book is necessarily interweaved with the Ledi's biography and focuses very much on the Ledi's own writings and reactions to them. One advantage of this to the broader field of Burma Studies and other audiences not focused mainly on religious studies is that the layout of the discussion provides a narrative that scholars in other fields can follow without getting lost in specialist tangents nor is Braun's text unnecessarily weighted down with disciplinary jargon. At the same time, this approach also lays out concepts core to Ledi's thinking and contemporary Buddhist practice in Burma, with enough theoretical discussion to make religious studies scholars satisfied. Maintaining this balance between erudition and accessibility is a difficult one that few scholars ever get right, but Braun achieves with impressive finesse. The structure of the book includes a theoretical introduction that also discusses the sources, in particular the three main Burmese-language biographies of Ledi, a conclusion/epilogue, and in-between there are five chapters focusing respectively on the Buddha's formative years, his doctrinal disputes with other Buddhists, his popularization of Abhidhamma, lay study of Abhidhamma, and the emergence of Insight Meditation. After Braun sums up the chief findings of the book in the conclusion, he continues on to discuss the historical progression of the Ledi's teachings, including those teachers without direct links to Ledi. This epilogue of sorts is valuable for highlighting the trajectory of mass insight meditation into the present, which will be a useful lead for those who seek to intersect with the topic for periods after the Ledi's death. Ledi's life spanned the precolonial and colonial divide and as Braun rightly points out the present study is the first to direct such in-depth attention to an influential Buddhist figure from this period. What we see most through the insight Braun's study provides, are continuities between the premodern and modern periods. Braun suggests that the case of Ledi's particular vision of Buddhism, mixing together as it did old and new, raises the problem of identifying what makes a form of Buddhism modern. Ledi did not invent meditative practice although he came to understand it in new ways through his interactions with Western knowledge on the body that was partly mediated by interactions with U Hpo Hlaing. Instead, the Ledi was responsible for transforming meditative practice to preserve the sasana. Ledi responded to widespread and understandable perceptions of Burmese that the conquest of the Burmese kingdom and dethronement of the Burmese king Thibaw at the hands of the British had ushered in the decline of the Buddhist Religion.

Zen Buddhism has for decades fascinated the West, and the former elitist tradition has in contemporary times become part of broad popular culture. Zen is for Buddhists, but it is also part of a general “Easternization” and alleged “spiritual revolution” narrative. In Japan, both Zen and “spirituality” are important factors in both media and the lived religious environment. This article aims to investigate how and to what extent “Zen” and “spirituality” are related as narratives and religious practices in a contemporary Japanese context. While there are overlaps, it is argued that the two domains are separate and that such a division is based on general differences in culturally constrained narratives (Western/Japanese, Zen/spirituality). Besides focusing on a concrete Japanese context, the article also contributes to research on global and transnational (Zen) Buddhism as well as to the field of comparative spirituality.

Focusing on theory and method in the study of U.S. Buddhism, this article analyzes the subfield’s interpretive categories and theoretical assumptions during each of its four phases. A new phase opened in 2000, and no single theory or method has emerged as predominant, just as few scholars have scrutinized the moral implications of their frameworks. Most prevailing interpretive models, which are borrowed from scholars not trained in religious studies, remain indifferent or hostile to religious practice, or specialists draw on models from religious studies that commit the interpreter to a static and bounded notion of culture that offers little aid to those who want to study the dynamics of religious practice in the era of global flows. Further, whether the guiding models are derived from religious studies or not, the models’ moral implications are not always examined. The emergent concerns of the subfield, in other words, are not well served by the available theories of religion and t...

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Buddhism in the West has reached beyond the enclosures of monastic buildings and meditation centers, meeting the masses at the market, in films, books, magazines and ads, often portrayed as anything but religion. This article investigates relations between media, popular culture and religion and analyses representations of Buddhism in Danish mass media, relating it to opinion surveys, statistics and developments of Danish Buddhist groups. It discusses the mediatization, entertainmentization, commodification and popularization of Buddhism and concludes that such representations serve as cultural narratives, regenerating and transforming both the culture and the religion.

Academic Buddhist Studies investigates historical and social conditions behind Buddhist formulations and institutions. Buddhists must appropriate these findings to establish their place in the modern world and to speak effectively within it. But many traditional Buddhist centers remain largely uninformed by such findings. Some academic scholars of Buddhism, who also practice Buddhism, are exploring new ways to serve both the critical interests of the modern academy and the constructive needs of their Buddhist communities in meeting the modern world. This new vehicle in the academy has been called “Buddhist critical-constructive reflection” or “Buddhist theology.” How might academic knowledge inform contemporary Buddhist understanding and practice? How might Buddhist understanding and practice help address current social needs and provide new insights into current issues? Buddhist critical-constructive reflection explores those questions.

Buddhism in the West has reached beyond the enclosures of monastic buildings and meditation centers, meeting the masses at the market, in films, books, magazines and ads, often portrayed as anything but religion. This article investigates relations between media, popular culture and religion and analyses representations of Buddhism in Danish mass media, relating it to opinion surveys, statistics and developments of Danish Buddhist groups. It discusses the mediatization, entertainmentization, commodification and popularization of Buddhism and concludes that such representations serve as cultural narratives, regenerating and transforming both the culture and the religion.