Modern Buddhism
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How Buddhists remade Buddhism in response to modernity.
Caution! Under Construction
Please be aware that this tag is still under construction and as such is missing information and may be changed or removed at any time. For all the content under consideration for this tag, see the “Modern Buddhism” folder on Google Drive.
Table of Contents
Books (22)
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When we adopt a Buddhist perspective on the wounds that afflict our world today, we soon realize that these wounds are symptomatic: a warning signal that something is fundamentally awry with the way we lead our lives.
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Readings (68)
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Embarrassed the organizers were indeed, even dismayed, when they were showered with fervent thanks from the women participants for organizing such a wonderful spiritual experience…
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Just as a river is geographically conditioned to flow in a certain direction, [compassionate] efforts are predetermined to move toward success (as sentient beings are endowed with Buddha nature). But just as a river will never dry up, their project will never end.
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Even as Vajirayan criticized the supernaturalism of indigenous Siamese religious forms, certain ideas and practices were left intact. In particular was a focus on karma or merit and morality…
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Sōtō Zen temples in Japan kept necrologies in which the ancestors of outcaste members of their congregations were clearly identified, sometimes by derogatory titles such as “beast” or “less than human.” Indeed, Sōtō priests routinely allowed access to these memorial registers by private investigators, who perform background checks to insure that prospective marriage partners or company executives do not come from outcaste families.
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… the evidence found in early printed liturgical booklets that promote Buddha-vandanā points to a different kind of modernization. This article reveals how Buddhist activists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made use of the capabilities presented in the colonial context, including print technology, to promote this devotional ritual practice as a principal marker of a newly constructed Buddhist identity.
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From the 1920s, Vietnamese Buddhist reformers revitalized their religion, inspired in great part by the Chinese monk Taixu’s blueprint to modernize and systematize sangha education and temple administration, and by his idea of rénjiān fójiào, “Buddhism for this world”
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Anyone who tries to emulate Buddhadasa, whichever life one has decided to lead, should first remember the authenticity in his life. Authenticity engenders humility because aspiring to any ideal can never be perfectly achieved.
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The first way to explain this unlikely fusion of merciful religion and a quite merciless modern creed is to remember to what degree the impact of Social Darwinism on early modern Korean intelligentsia was strong and lasting.
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Watanabe did not envision a radical position for Buddhists on the issue of the ‘labour question’; rather, he imagined Buddhism as a harmonizing influence that could help avoid the pitfalls of unrestrained capitalism, on the one hand, and revolutionary socialism, on the other.
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… the sudden wealth generated during Taiwan’s period of rapid economic development created a need to give that wealth meaning […] Ciji provided a way of adapting traditional Buddhist rhetoric and imagery to facilitate the move from traditional “almsgiving” to “modern scientific charity.”
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Like an object circling the sun, the visitor senses she is within the gravitational pull of a powerful entity.
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The Kandy episode reflects Chulalongkorn’s self-image both as a Buddhist leader—a “defender of the faith”—and as a champion of rationalism. This dual self-fashioning remained an extremely strenuous exercise.
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… two Buddhist responses to rising nationalism and the restriction of freedom of religion and thought
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… a critical assessment of naturalism and a reevaluation of the most recent forms of Buddhist modernism, including the extraordinary success of Mindfulness. It argues for a more balanced and encompassing approach that would extol the richness of the Buddhist tradition.
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The introduction to Gems of Buddhist Wisdom shows how many Buddhist evangelists reacted to the challenge of the West, giving a modern “sales pitch” for their religion.
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It is remarkable that there was a cosmology in Buddhism twenty-five centuries ago that doesn’t conflict with modern physics.
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These scholarly nuns elevate the standards of their Buddhist academies and use their original academic specializations to expand the educational curriculum of their school. The role of scholarly nuns in contemporary Taiwan exemplifies that Buddhism provides educational resources for women, as educational resources enhance women’s engagement in Buddhism.
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Audio/Video (23)
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… the integral, yet unacknowledged, role that Indians played in the making of modern global Buddhism in the century prior to Ambedkar’s conversion, and the numerous ways that Buddhism gave powerful shape to modern Indian history
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He is usually understood through the process by which Sri Lanka became independent, by which Sri Lankans who had become Christians returned to their Buddhist origins: an entirely Sri Lankan context. But reading the diaries, I realized he spent 80–90% of his adult life living outside of Sri Lanka.
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Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism (2021) – Richard M. Jaffe
How Japanese Buddhists looked West and helped create modern, global Buddhism.
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The nunneries and monasteries are trying to respond to these critiques and to this question of identity but, as often times with religious institutions, the changes are slower than the changes in the societies around them.
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The Buddhist modernizer Taixu was no reluctant translator, but was rather a committed utopian living in a chaotic time.
52 min
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