Buddhism, Meditation, and Global Secularisms
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1251845Keywords:
secularism, modern Buddhism, meditation, mindfulness, vipassan?Abstract
Buddhism in the modern world offers an example of (1) the porousness of the boundary between the secular and religious; (2) the diversity, fluidity, and constructedness of the very categories of religious and secular, since they appear in different ways among different Buddhist cultures in divergent national contexts; and (3) the way these categories nevertheless have very real-world effects and become drivers of substantial change in belief and practice. Drawing on a few examples of Buddhism in various geographical and political settings, I hope to take a few modest steps toward illuminating some broad contours of the interlacing of secularism and Buddhism. In doing so, I am synthesizing some of my own and a few others’ research on modern Buddhism, integrating it with some current research I am doing on meditation, and considering its implications for thinking about secularism. This, I hope, will provide a background against which we can consider more closely some particular features of Buddhism in the Chinese cultural world, about which I will offer some preliminary thoughts.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2017 David McMahan

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.