The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia: Second Edition

Postscript

buddhism and modernization 203 Postscript We have explored Buddhism in Southeast Asia as a dynamic multiplex and multivalent system of thought and practice embedded in the respective cultures, societies, and histories of the region. Such a holistic, multifaceted approach belies the possibility of a grand interpretative theory in terms of which we can easily characterize the nature of Southeast Asian Buddhism or predict its future. Certainly, any interpretation of religion and society in Southeast Asia begs a crucial question. Can or will Theravada Buddhism, which has been such an integral part of the societies of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia, be sustained in a form resembling the description given in these pages? The post-World War II years have brought major changes to much of Southeast Asia, so drastic that the Buddhist worldview and the institutions fostered there are under threat. In Cambodia and Laos, the Buddhist sangha was severely disrupted by the Vietnam War and its aftermath. The sacred monarchical traditions of Southeast Asia traditionally identified with Buddhism and largely undermined during the colonial period, exist only in vague, vestigial forms. Even Thailand’s existing monarchy is no longer immune from challenge or criticism.152 The traditional religious festivals that once shaped community life are gradually losing their importance. A smaller percentage of the male population is being ordained into the Buddhist monkhood. Nevertheless , in much of what remains of rural Southeast Asia, traditional rites, rituals, and festivals continue to bind people together in a common identity; Buddhist values continue to play a normative role in a people’s view of social well-being and personal salvation; and Buddhist institutions are making creative adjustments to economic, social, and political changes. Furthermore, new forms of Buddhist thought and practice that are emerging from extensive interaction between Asia and the West, between men and women, between monk and laity hold great promise for the future. Indeed, although the face of Buddhism will reflect its Asian roots, its visage will assume a new aspect, one that is increasingly international and broadly multicultural. 204 part iii At a symposium on the impact of globalization on Thailand, a professor of Buddhism at Chiang Mai University suggested that while a “global” or “international” Buddhism was philosophically realistic, it would necessarily be culturally impoverished. He concluded his remarks with the question, “Is this really the kind of Buddhism that we would like to have?” At the same symposium, a Thai monk with a doctorate from India suggested an even more distressing possibility. Seeing globalization primarily as the commercialization of culture, a “globalized” Buddhism would inevitably become a religion whose values were determined more by the ideology of commerce than the idioms of the Buddha-dhamma. These two views offer starkly different visions, one a rationalized, culturally denuded Buddhism taught by philosophers and subject to sloganizing by politicians with little meaning to real-life people in Southeast Asia; the other, a Buddhism overwhelmed by the commercialization of culture, a Buddhism devoid of the power to define or challenge a community’s moral identity or transform individual lives spiritually. As a longtime student of Thai Buddhism, I see and fear the truth of both possibilities; I hope that the reality will be neither. ...