Buddhism in the Global Eye

Buddhism in the Global Eye

Buddhism in the Global Eye focuses on the importance of a global context and transnational connections for understanding Buddhist modernizing movements. It also explores how Asian agency has been central to the development of modern Buddhism, and provides theoretical reflections that seek to overcome misleading East-West binaries.

Using case studies from China, Japan, Vietnam, India, Tibet, Canada, and the USA, the book introduces new research that reveals the permeable nature of certain categories, such as "modern", "global", and "contemporary" Buddhism. In the book, contributors recognize the multiple nodes of intra-Asian and global influence. For example, monks travelled among Asian countries creating networks of information and influence, mutually stimulating each other's modernization movements. The studies demonstrate that in modernization movements, Asian reformers mobilized all available cultural resources both to adapt local forms of Buddhism to a new global context and to shape new foreign concepts to local Asian forms.

Acknowledgments
Spelling Conventions
Contributor biographies
Introduction
Part One: World Religions
1. Buddhism and the Secular Conception of Religion, Victor Sogen Hori, (McGill University, Canada)
2. Mapping Buddhism beyond East and West, John Harding (University of Lethbridge, Canada)
3. Buddhism and Global Secularisms, David McMahan (Franklin and Marshall College, USA)
4. Women and Vietnamese Buddhist Practice in the Shadow of Secularism, Alexander Soucy (Saint Mary's University, Canada)
Part Two: Global Flows
5. Socialism, Russia, and India's Revolutionary Dharma, Douglas Ober (University of British Columbia, Canada)
6. D.T. Suzuki and the Chinese Search for Buddhist Modernism, Jingjing Li (Leiden University, Netherlands)
7. Recent Emergence of Theravada Meditation Communities in Contemporary China, Ngar-sze Lau (Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
Part Three: Asian Agencies
8. Shin Buddhism in Choshu and Early Meiji Notions of Religion-State Relations, Mick Deneckere (University of Ghent, Belgium)
9. Nanjo Bunyu's Sanskritization of Buddhist Studies in Modern Japan, Paride Stortini (University of Chicago, USA)
10. An Alternative to the 'Westernization' Paradigm and Buddhist Global Imaginaires, Lina Verchery (Harvard University, USA)
11. Glocalization in Buddhist Food Ventures on a Small Canadian Island, Jason Ellsworth (Dalhousie University, Canada)
Appendix
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Explores Buddhism in the modern period by challenging the divisions of "East" and "West" that distort the complex realities of global contexts and transnational connections.