Why Do European Buddhists Meditate? The Practical Problem of Inventing Global Buddhism

IF 0.3 0 RELIGION
Laurence Cox
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Globalising “Buddhism” beyond its pre-colonial homelands was a complex practical challenge. Actors seeking to bring Buddhism to new audiences in very different cultures met with failure far more often than success until recent decades. Modern-era Buddhist missionaries to Europe had to experiment, selecting elements of Asian Buddhism that could theoretically be transmitted – ordinations, preaching, textual knowledge, rituals etc. – and attempt to institutionalise these as conversion mechanisms. This article uses the lens of Irish and British converts and sympathisers in Asia and Europe in the late C19th and early C20th centuries to explore the European situation – one with fewer Asian missionaries and different relationships between society and religion than those in North America. It explores the sources of their various versions of Buddhism; their organising techniques and repertoires of “Buddhist” activity, their audiences and how they defined “Buddhism” in relation to politics, ethnicity and colonialism. It argues that meditation (and “practice”) became central to European Buddhism because it solved a crucial organisational problem: what could Buddhist globalisers offer to turn audiences into Buddhists?
为什么欧洲佛教徒要冥想?创立全球佛教的现实问题
让“佛教”走出前殖民时期的故土,全球化是一项复杂的实际挑战。直到最近几十年,试图将佛教带给不同文化背景的新观众的演员遭遇的失败远远多于成功。近代前往欧洲的佛教传教士必须进行实验,选择理论上可以传播的亚洲佛教元素——受戒、讲道、经文知识、仪式等——并试图将这些作为皈依机制制度化。本文以19世纪末和20世纪初亚洲和欧洲的爱尔兰和英国皈依者和同情者为视角,探讨欧洲的情况——亚洲传教士较少,社会与宗教之间的关系与北美不同。它探讨了他们各种佛教版本的来源;他们组织“佛教”活动的技巧和技巧,他们的受众,以及他们如何将“佛教”与政治、种族和殖民主义联系起来。它认为,冥想(和“修行”)之所以成为欧洲佛教的核心,是因为它解决了一个至关重要的组织问题:佛教全球化者能提供什么让听众变成佛教徒?
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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