Accelerating in the past decades, rapid and profound socio-economic, cultural and political changes have transformed historically Buddhist societies across Asia, posing challenges as well as offering new opportunities for Buddhist institutions, beliefs and practices. At the same time, Buddhist lineages of different traditions have become established in western societies, developing a range of approaches to meet the challenges of transmission and translation (broadly understood) involved in the process. We are particularly interested in the global dynamics shaping processes on both ‘ends’, in Asia as well as in the West.
This workshop/seminar focused on methodological and conceptual issues involved in the study of the global dynamics that constitute contemporary Buddhism and modernity. We invited scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds and approaches to help us think through and develop theoretical tools and innovative methodological approaches that do better justice to the lived realities, complexities and multiplicity of forms that contemporary Buddhism takes in the West as well as in Asia.
