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Introduction Master Xingyun, the founder of the Foguang Buddhist order, frequently announces to his devotees: ‘‘I am a global person’’ (wo shi guojiren). This book explores the historical background, cultural context, and social implications of that deceptively simple comment. The master began to refer to himself in this manner around 1990, just as his organization undertook an ambitious campaign to expand beyond its base in Taiwan and establish branch temples around the world, an effort that by the close of the millennium had resulted in the opening of nearly one hundred centers on five continents. For the master and his followers, this has been the first step in the ‘‘globalization’’ (guojihua) of ‘‘modernized’’ (xiandaihua) Buddhism. From another perspective, it can be seen to be the culmination of a vigorous attempt by an affluent community to protect and promote what its members regard as the best of their traditional culture in response to the Westernization and homogenization that are perceived to have heretofore predominantly shaped the nascent ‘‘global village.’’ The strategy adopted by the master to ensure the continued vibrancy of Chinese Buddhism has been, not to resist modernity, but to embrace many of its pivotal concepts and institutional mechanisms, thereby bringing about a dynamic synthesis of the old and the new. Underlying this approach is the assumption that those elements of modernity conducive to well-being have in fact long been present, at least implicitly, in the Buddha dharma. Tradition can persist and flourish through modernity because the spirit of modernity was already operative in tradition. Or, to restate the issue, modernity neither replaces nor supersedes tradition; it creates a new rendition of it. Master Xingyun’s method of selective appropriation has led him to speak of the Buddhist versions of democracy (minzhu zhuyi), capitalism (ziben zhuyi), equality (pingdeng), women’s rights (nuquan), modernization, and, most recently, globalization. Because the Foguang thrust to internationalize is in direct response to wider processes of globalization, to understand the Foguang phenomenon we must first place it in this context. The term ‘‘globalization’’ as it has entered late-twentiethand early-twenty-first-century discourse refers to the modern trend toward both a greater interdependence of all societies and an accompanying heightened consciousness of the world as a single arena. Long-distance transcultural contact and interchange have taken place for centuries, mainly impelled by political ambition, 2 • Introduction economic incentive, and missionary zeal. To appreciate this fact, one need only recall the empires built by Alexander the Great and Chinggis Khan, the explorations of Marco Polo and the Chinese admiral Zheng He, the remarkable trade of goods from Europe and Africa to China along the silk route, and the vast spread of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Globalization as we know it today, however , having matured over the past century, significantly differs from its earlier manifestations in magnitude. Never before have virtually all segments of all societies been so intertwined with one another or so conscious of transnational and cross-cultural connection. The scale of international tourism, commerce, and migration and the sophistication of global communication and transportation are unprecedented. The current condensing of the world to one global village is also driven by a new strain of economic forces and motivations that was unknown in former days, namely, modern capitalism. The sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein has forcefully argued that what he called today’s ‘‘world-system’’ has evolved directly as a result of market forces that first developed in sixteenth-century Europe (Wallerstein 1974, 1980, 1984). In Wallerstein’s neo-Marxian model, the various values that are associated with global capitalism (e.g., faith in progress, democracy, and human rights) have played no significant role in determining the evolution of the world system, having arisen merely as epiphenomena of market forces. From this, one can see that Wallerstein considers the cultural implications of globalization to be of secondary importance. In fact, in his only article specifically dealing with this issue, he states that the concept ‘‘culture’’ is of negligible heuristic use and, in its social function, serves primarily as an ideological mechanism to legitimate the inequities in distribution present in the world system.1 Others have found the cultural ramifications of humankind’s ever-increasing contact and interdependence to be of great and, in certain respects, troubling signi ficance. Because the international spread of modern capitalism had its origins in Western Europe, a variety of nineteenth- and twentieth-century intellectuals believed that, as other groups were subsumed into the...

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