Buddhism as a value source in the course of new identity and lifestyle formation in the Czech Republic

This study is focused on cultural phenomena of contemporary Europe: the creation of a new religious identity without cultural precedent in European cultural history. It will concentrate on non-Asian Buddhist converts, who have adopted religious world views different from those of their ethnic heritage and the mainstream culture they live in and who use Buddhism as the value-source for their children's upbringing. The parents who, to a certain degree, master Buddhist practice and are attached to this particular religious culture, accumulate a specific religious capital which develops when there are higher levels of religious participation, knowledge and experience, including social networks. The aim of my study is to illustrate how accumulated religious capital and value models affect parental choice regarding children's education. How are these values transmitted within the families of different Buddhist streams? What is the role of the local Buddhist community in family life?     

How the Swans Came to Lake Michigan: The Social Organization of Buddhist Chicago

An analysis of the social organization of Buddhist groups and networks in metropolitan Chicago sheds light on the social organization of Buddhism and other new religions in American cities generally. Following an overview of the history and geography of Buddhist Chicago, this essay examines the dynamics underlying the emergence of local Buddhist groups and networks under two main headings: religious identities and sociological factors. First, Buddhism's various branches, traditions, and lineages are discussed; sociological factors discussed include organizational types, ethnic/racial distinctions, sociological functions played by Buddhism for “culture Buddhists” and “convert Buddhists,”and the role of local social dynamics in the emergence, proliferation, and interaction of Buddhist groups. As the field of American Buddhist studies enters a period of renewed productivity, this essay offers a conceptual framework for understanding major issues that can benefit both researchers within the field and interested social scientists outside of it.     

A Research Note on English‐Speaking Buddhists in the United States

Using data from the 2007 Pew Religious Landscape survey (PRLS), which includes over 650 Buddhist respondents (after weighting), this research note examines the usefulness of previously devised typologies for describing the religious and social characteristics of Buddhists in the United States. Existing “two Buddhisms” typologies capture the category breaks of the U.S. Buddhist landscape, with a couple of exceptions: convert Buddhists report higher rates of belief and higher rates of social activity than do those born into the religion. Analysis also shows that three‐group typologics capture additional complexity within the U.S. Buddhist landscape. Examination of the social characteristics of Buddhists in the United States mostly corroborates previous assumptions with one exception, women do not outnumber men.     

从榜样到边缘--"佛教范式"在中国宗教中的地位变迁

从宗教范式而不是宗教势力的角度看,外来的佛教在中国的发展经历了一个其范式由榜样到边缘的过程。在中国古代宗教格局中,自从佛教在中国站稳脚跟后,“佛教范式”便成为各种宗教纷纷仿效的榜样;但是,在鸦片战争后中国近现代宗教格局中,由于西方基督教的传入和受“西方中心主义”的影响,“佛教范式”便被边缘化了,而“基督教范式”则取而代之成为各种宗教纷纷仿效的榜样。“佛教范式”在中国宗教史中的这一地位变迁折射出了中国社会所特有的没有西方式宗教对立的“不排异”的宗教文化氛围。     

Emptiness: interpretation and metaphor.

This article describes the history and practice of Thai Buddhism in America from the early 1970s, when the tradition first arrived, to the present. It is the first systematic historical overview of the tradition in the United States and is based largely on unique information gathered over an eighteen-month period in interviews with the Abbots of eighty-seven Thai Buddhist temples in America. After providing a brief history of Thai immigration, the paper presents and analyzes the history and current locations, leadership, attendership, and activities of Thai Buddhist temples in the United States. At the center of the paper is evidence of the multidimensional ways Thai Buddhism is adapting in the American context.     

Buddhists and Buddhism in the United States: The Scope of Influence

Researchers have speculated about the growing influence of Buddhists and Buddhism in the United States, but little has been done to estimate the scope of this influence or to consider alternative ways of understanding it. We present data collected from a large, nationally representative survey completed in 2003. The data show that one American in seven claims to have had a fair amount of contact with Buddhists and that one person in eight believes Buddhist teachings or practices have had an important influence on his or her religion or spirituality. We describe three perspectives from which variations in exposure to Buddhists and being influenced by Buddhism may be understood: two versions of the "strictness hypothesis" from the religious economies literature and a broader argument about institutional embeddedness. We find empirical support for each of the three perspectives.     

“THE NEW SCIENCE OF HEALTH AND HAPPINESS”: INVESTIGATING BUDDHIST ENGAGEMENTS WITH THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF MEDITATION

Clinical and neuroscientific studies of Buddhist meditation practices are frequent topics in the news media, and have helped certain practices (such as mindfulness) achieve mainstream cultural status. Buddhists have reacted by using these studies in a number of ways. Some deploy the studies to show the compatibility of science and Buddhism, often using the authority of science to lend credence to Buddhism. Other Buddhists use meditation studies to demonstrate the superiority of Buddhism over science. Within inter‐Buddhist debates, meditation studies are used to argue for changes in practice or belief, but also sometimes to reinforce certain traditional practices. Benjamin Zeller's threefold categorization of religious groups’ attitudes toward science (guide, replace, absorb) and José Ignacio Cabezón's three ideal types of relationships between Buddhism and science (conflict/ambivalence, compatibility/identity, complementarity) contribute to analysis of Buddhist uses of scientific studies of meditation.     

Internal Diversity in Buddhism: Comparing the Values of Buddhist Teens Raised by Heritage and Convert Parents

Self-assigned religious affiliation has been linked to different extents with other aspects of religiosity in Christians, but this correlation has not previously been studied for Buddhists. In this study, relevant attitudes were examined through focus groups conducted with 75 heritage- and convert-raised Buddhist teenagers at seven British locations. Issues investigated included identity, spirituality, congregational participation, hopes, worries, fears, parents, friends, substance use, and right and wrong. Similarities between the two groups did not particularly show Buddhist content. Contrasts included values concerning life after death, Buddhist identifiers, place of congregation, hopes, parental formality, spiritual teachers, femininity, meditation and the Sangha, alcohol and marijuana. The recommendations arising from this study are that social policy-makers working with religious identifiers would benefit from having awareness of the complex dynamic of religious styles in respect of Buddhism, shown in this research, and that future research on Buddhist identity and values should be clearly qualified by considerations of religious style.     

Mettābhāvanā in Traditional and Popular Buddhist Contexts

Some have referred to relatively recent forms of popular Buddhism as an ‘engaged’ Buddhism that has revived or redirected traditional Buddhist ideas and practices found in meditation texts to reflect a greater social or worldly emphasis than suggested in earlier historical moments. One of these ideas is the quadripartite framework of the ‘immeasurable states’ (aprameya/appameya) or ‘divine abidings’ (brahmavihāra), the most prominent of which in popular Buddhism is mettā (friendliness/loving-kindness). This article traces the philosophy of the ‘immeasurable states’ found in meditation texts from various Indic traditions (Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu) and then presents the ways in which these traditional ideas (especially mettā) have informed popular Buddhist movements in the twentieth century. Points of discussion include: ‘engaged’ Buddhism's relationship with traditional Buddhist ethics; arguments concerning the coalescence of monastic-centred meditation practices with popular Buddhist notions of social service; and the distinct utilization of mettā in contemporary Buddhist societies in contrast to the mobilizing impulses of comparable religious communities (Hindu and Jain) with a similar heritage of mettā discourse in South Asia.     

Brooklyn Bhikkhu: How Salvatore Cioffi Became The Venerable Lokanatha

This article provides a biographical overview of the life of the Venerable Lokanatha (1897–1966), who was born in Italy as Salvatore Cioffi and raised in Brooklyn, New York. After converting to Buddhism in his late-twenties, Lokanatha travelled to Burma, took ordination as a monk, and began a remarkable 40 year career as a writer, lecturer, organizer, and Buddhist missionary throughout South Asia and the world. Beyond biography, Lokanatha and the various responses to him are contextualized within the different cultural spheres in which he operated, from the anti-colonial Buddhist revival in Burma to the mocking indifference Lokanatha found in the United States. Scholarship on modern Buddhism, particularly recent work on U Dhammaloka, is used to situate Lokanatha's life and its facets of conservative reformer and transnational actor. Finally, an account of the source material used to reconstruct the life of Lokanatha is employed to offer practical methodological explanations for his absence from conventional narratives of modern Buddhism and what his inclusion along with other figures might mean in the future.     

Strolling through Temporary Temples: Buddhism and Installation Art in Modern Thailand

Thai installation art provides a view into modern, non-monastic experiences of Buddhism. Buddhist practice and scholarship often depend on centuries-old ritual practices and texts, and designated religious sites and persons. However, installation art illumines a fluxing and organic Buddhism – and one that is increasingly globalised and public. An evolving artistic zeitgeist is fused with classical tenets of Buddhism and diverse spiritualties. Each with a unique flair and multi-media repertoire, artists such as Jakkai Siributr, Montien Boonma, Sarawut Duangjampa, Chalermchai Kositpipat and others are offering creative contemplations on Buddhism today. Their works are often experienced in a leisurely fashion by the attending public, amidst social outings or intellectual excursions. People are encouraged to react however they wish to installations, which are themselves fundamentally transient – lasting usually between three and six months. Buddhism is thus asserted as an on-going project: a continual discovery rather than a quest for knowledge from the past.     

What makes you not a Buddhist?: a preliminary mapping of values

This study sets out to establish which Buddhist values contrasted with or were shared by adolescents from a non-Buddhist population. A survey of attitudes toward a variety of Buddhist values was fielded in a sample of 352 non-Buddhist schoolchildren aged between 13–15 years in London. Buddhist values where attitudes were least positive concerned the worth of being a monk/nun or meditating, offering candles & incense on the Buddhist shrine, friendship on Sangha Day, avoiding drinking alcohol, seeing the world as empty or impermanent and Nirvana as the ultimate peace. Buddhist values most closely shared by non-Buddhists concerned the Law of Karma, calming the mind, respecting those deserving of respect, subjectivity of happiness, welfare work, looking after parents in old age and compassion to cuddly animals. Further significant differences of attitude toward Buddhism were found in partial correlations with the independent variables of sex, age and religious affiliation. Correlation patterns paralleled those previously described in theistic religions. Findings are applied to spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and for the teaching of religion to pupils of no faith adherence. The study recommends that quantitative psychometrics employed to conceptualize Buddhist values by discriminant validity in this study could be extended usefully to other aspects of the study of Buddhism, particularly in the quest for validity in the conceptualization of Buddhist identity within specifically Buddhist populations.     

Building Buddhism in England: The Flourishing of a Minority Faith Heritage

From the earliest days of Buddhism in Britain, individuals and communities have sought out buildings to provide locations where they might practise and teach Buddhism. In this paper, we focus on this neglected area of the study of minority faith traditions in Britain. Our research, which was commissioned by Historic England, examines how Buddhist communities have used buildings and what this tells us about how a minority tradition is initially established and how it subsequently changes and develops. In this context, we suggest that buildings are more than bricks and mortar and provide a richly rewarding analytical lens to tell stories about migration, socio-economic status, religious diversity and integration and the complexity of processes around secularisation and religious change, as well shifting policy agendas in the UK that have begun to take faith seriously. This contributes to deepening the picture of the migration and adaptation of Buddhism and Buddhist practice across the globe.     

Breakthrough to Modernity,Apologia for Traditionalism: the Russian Orthodox View of Society and Culture in Comparative Perspective

Since the end of the socialist period in 1990, Buddhism in Mongolia has been undergoing a resurgence. Temples no longer oversee vast tracts of land and receive income from the activities of bonded nomadic herders as they did in the presocialist period. They must instead fund themselves from the freely given donations of lay Buddhists. Whilst the majority of the Mongolian population self-identify as Buddhist, regular donations to temples are not an assumed part of social and economic relationships. Unlike the case in most other Asian Buddhist societies, the concept of giving donations as a way to make merit was not present amongst my interlocutors. The urban Mongolians that I spoke to viewed their donations as payments for highly valued ritual services. The act of donating to temples was for some an ambivalent activity, bringing to the fore broader issues relating to spiritual authority, religious education and observance, and the necessary conditions for spiritual efficacy. In this article I investigate patterns of religious giving in Ulaanbaatar in relation to ideas about donation, the role of religious specialists and concerns about the intersections between capitalism and religion.     

Fitting in with the flock: Social attractiveness as a mechanism for well‐being in religious groups

For most people, religion is practiced and experienced within a social group of believers who interact regularly. Yet the role of social psychological intergroup processes has largely been ignored with respect to religious phenomena. The present study explores social attraction as a mechanism by which religious groups affect the psychological well‐being of their members. Data were taken from a large survey of the members of 411 religious congregations in the United States. Linear mixed modeling analyses were conducted predicting two aspects of well‐being in the religious context from a range of variables at the levels of the individual, of the group, and of individual–group fit. Fit measures between individual characteristics and norms within congregations were found to be significant predictors of well‐being for a variety of measures across domains of demographics, religious beliefs, religious behavior, and group integration. These results support the view that the intragroup process of social attraction is a mechanism by which people obtain some benefits from belonging to religious groups. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religion,ethnicity, and citizenship: the role of Jain institutions in the social incorporation of young Jains in Britain and the United States

The on-going importance of religion as a marker of identity among young South Asians has provoked reflection on the relationship between religion and citizenship in the aftermath of events such as 9/11 and 7/7. In general, European and American scholarship highlights different perspectives on the role of religion in the social incorporation of immigrants and their children. In this article I explore how religion shapes identity and citizenship among young Jains, a group that experiences successful socio-economic integration and material success in Britain and the United States. This qualitative comparative analysis of Jain institutions which are oriented towards young Jains reveals the ways in which the intersection of transnational circulation of religious ideas and actors, national integration regimes, migration histories, and the place of religion in specific contexts shapes religious identities, religious group boundaries, and religious discourses in different ways. Different Jain religious assemblages affirm views of religion in the United States as having a positive role in the social incorporation of immigrants and their children, but point to a more neutral role for religion in the incorporation of middle-class young Jains in Britain.     

The Temple Mount of Fredrika—Translocality and Fractured Transnationalism of a Visionary Thai Buddhist Retreat Centre

On a mountain hill outside Fredrika, a small village in the rural north of Sweden, a standing Buddha statue and the seated statue of Luang Pho Thuat invoke reverence from visiting Buddhists. The plans of a large-scale temple and meditation centre have also invoked hope of religious tourism and economic growth in an area highly affected by depopulation. The Temple Mount, as it is referred to locally, has, on the one hand, become a source of religious power, not only for Thai Buddhist pilgrims, but also for other religious networks that has established themselves in the area. On the other hand, Fredrika has also become a contested religious space. The article discusses the background of the Temple Mount as well as contrasting examples of usual establishment patterns of Thai Buddhist temples in Sweden, highlighting translocal religious activity at Fredrika, showing how diaspora Thai Buddhism becomes intertwined with other religious networks.     

Conceptions and Misconceptions about “Western Buddhism”: Issues and Approaches for the Classroom

Abstract. This article responds to the exponential growth in academic textbooks on Western or American Buddhism by arguing that popular trade books written by Buddhist teachers in the West make more effective tools for teaching and learning about the growth of Buddhism in western societies. The use of such texts in the classroom provides students with opportunities to exercise critical thinking and permits instructors to avoid conveying misleading interpretations about the practice, thought, and identities of Buddhists in North America and Europe. The pedagogical advantages of using what could be described as primary sources on Western Buddhism include promoting active learning techniques, muting the differences drawn between convert and ethnic Buddhist communities, and encouraging students to become aware of and refrain from Orientalist approaches towards describing and knowing the religious and/or cultural Other. A list of practical suggestions for classroom exercises using trade books written by Buddhist teachers is provided at the end.     

The Varied Trajectories of Engaged Buddhism: New Works on Buddhist Environmental Ethics,Interdependence, and Racial Karma

This book discussion reads three works in contemporary Buddhist social ethics alongside one another: Ogyen Trinley Dorje’s Interconnected, David Loy’s Ecodharma, and Larry Ward’s America’s Racial Karma. Each of these works contributes to the subfield of engaged Buddhism, which aims to bring Buddhist value theory to contemporary social and political issues in order to effect social change. The rapid development of engaged Buddhism constitutes a particularly rich moment in the history of Buddhist thought, as Buddhist ethics is showing itself to be actively in process—a tradition in the midst of rapid transformation, revision, and cross-cultural application. This book discussion interrogates these three works with that metaphilosophical and historiographical issue in mind, analyzing the particular ways in which they contribute to challenging and reshaping the traditional contours of Buddhist ethics into a contemporary social and political register. In exemplifying the approaches of translation, extending, and applying, these works demonstrate the creative and experimental moment in which Buddhist social ethics finds itself today. Such adaptations of the Buddhist tradition are historiographically significant as innovations, while also of a piece with Buddhism’s history of intercultural transmission.