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Alternatives and Innovations in Buddhist Religious Practice In the span of a few short years, the digital revolution has enabled individuals from all social and economic classes to position themselves within expansive networks that are quite unlike anything the world has seen. Just as individuals and businesses can extend their digital reach, so too can churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, or other religious organizations muster technological resources and IT skills to reorient themselves socially and globally. One of the defining features of globalization is that local organizations like banks, markets, schools, or religious institutions can be reconfigured and repositioned to align with more expansive systems that transcend and often subvert traditional boundaries. This process creates a spectrum of both opportunities and resistance among a wide range of social actors. Familiar patterns of action shift in ways that range from subtle to dramatic, often empowering individuals and organizations but sometimes isolating or alienating them as well. Pulitzer prize–winning economist Thomas Friedman writes that the era of globalization has led to a democratization of technology, one built around falling telecommunications costs—cheaper microchips, satellites, fiber optics, and Internet access.1 Today anyone with access to a phone line or satellite relay and a credit card can put up a Web site in a matter of minutes that not only announces to the world a new product or idea but can provide real-time interactivity. These technologies have empowered new ideas, business practices, and types of financing, so much so that Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, says, “we have moved from a world where the big eat the small to where the fast eat the slow.”2 There is nothing strange or surprising about spotlighting globalization, economics, and technology at the beginning of a chapter on religious innovation in Japan. These forces have enabled many new forms and expressions of religious practice, often at the expense of tradition and stability. As Friedman notes, global markets frequently force the adoption of business practices and disciplines that cannot be generated internally.3 Japanese society has a long history of undergoing dramatic change facilitated in part by pressure from external forces (commonly known as gaiatsu). Among the more significant examples would be the 142 • Experimental Buddhism sixth-century introduction of Buddhism, the influence of Christianity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Admiral Perry’s “Black Ships” forcing open Japan’s feudal system less than 200 years ago, and of course the postwar occupation by Allied forces from 1945 to 1953. It is likely that historians of the future will identify the Internet (and affiliated technologies) as the latest force creating significant adaptation and change in Japanese society. We will explore in this chapter a number of examples of innovation within religious traditions that, at first glance, indicate there have been benefits resulting from technological innovations, greater choice, and a restructuring of the economy. For one thing, a religious institution can reach a far greater audience online if they are able to find that elusive combination of appeal, product placement, and marketing that communicates to highly selective consumers. Some Buddhist temples and Shintō shrines have gone beyond the usual information about history and organization to provide actual services online: prayers, memorial rituals, the sale of amulets, and so on. On the other hand, the restructuring process of late modernity has coincided with, and contributed significantly to, the individualization of religious practice. The communities that once supported temples financially are slowly being eroded by demographic shifts and greater personal choice regarding religious affiliation. James Spickard has identified several key characteristics of religious restructuring that parallel some of the features of an experimental approach to Buddhism.4 First, there is the crafting of a custom-made religious life (individualization ) that is no longer dominated by brand loyalty to a particular tradition. Now that a majority of people have a choice about whether to become involved in religion once they become adults, they can select from a range of possibilities and competing systems of meaning and value. They are no longer coerced or socialized to follow the “institutional package” of their religious upbringing and may look elsewhere for ideas, practices, or communities that better align with their life situation and the evolution of their beliefs. Spickard calls this process of selection “religion á la carte,” resulting in a “bricolage” of ideas and practices that may diverge from doctrines set forth by a religious organization. This assertion of personal agency—one of the most consequential features of an...

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