Land of Beautiful Vision

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. Although some people in the Buddhist organization I am studying dislike the word ‘‘convert,’’ I use it in a sociological sense to refer to people practicing a religion they adopted by choice; indeed, it has been widely used for discussing the Dalit conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism. 2. Although they owned the property for almost four years before adopting this name, for simplicity I use the name Sudarshanaloka throughout this book, except when quotations refer to ‘‘Tararu.’’ Similarly, I use the Buddhist names of people who have become Order members and have thus taken Buddhist names before or during the time period I am discussing (up until 2000). With those who were ordained after 2000, I have retained their former name (e.g., Sue Thompson/Akasamati). To assist readers who find the Sanskrit and Pāli names of Western Buddhist Order (WBO) members difficult to follow, I include the names of key Order members from the book in the glossary. 3. There is no formal membership of the FWBO in that people can choose the manner of their association with the movement and do not sign up as formal members or pay membership fees. However, I use the term ‘‘member’’ in its sociological sense, as a way of referring to members of a group, as opposed to signed-up members of a club. Occasionally I use expressions such as ‘‘the FWBO represents itself as x.’’ This is not intended to turn the organization or network into an entity with its own agency; rather, it is to avoid repeatedly spelling out such expressions as ‘‘key members of the FWBO represent the movement as x.’’ 4. Pratt (1992) and others borrow the term ‘‘transculturation’’ from Cuban lawyer and public intellectual Fernando Ortiz. 5. Like most anthropologists, I use the term without the pejorative layer of meaning that a French speaker tells me the term bricoleur suggests. 6. Most anthropological studies of Buddhism have focused on small-scale community or nation-state settings in Buddhism’s heartland areas. Such studies include Buddhism in Burma (Spiro 1970), Sri Lanka (e.g., Bartholomeusz 1994, Bond 1988, Carrithers 1983, Gombrich 1971), Thailand (Tambiah 1970), and Nepal (Ortner 1989). J. L. Taylor (1993) considers the relationship between ‘‘forest monks’’ and the nation-state in Thailand; Malalgoda (1976), Gombrich and Obeyesekere (1988), and Seneviratne (1999) discuss religious change in Sri Lanka, where Buddhism is a state religion. As Gellner (1990) notes, most anthropological literature on Buddhism focuses on Theravāda Buddhism as found in Sri 166 • Notes to pages 8–13 Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia; his book addresses Mahāyāna Buddhism in an attempt to redress this imbalance, while Samuel (1993) focuses on Tibetan Buddhism. 7. Chandler (2004) writes about modernization and globalization in the Foguangshan, an international Chinese Buddhist institution, and Covell (2005) discusses contemporary Japanese Temple Buddhism and its adaptations to modernity. With regard to studies of convert Buddhist movements, Kay (1997) compares the New Kadampa Tradition (Tibetanbased ) and the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives (Zen-based) in Britain; Cadge (2005) compares immigrant and convert practitioners of Theravāda Buddhism; Rocha (2006) investigates the creolization of beliefs among Zen Buddhists of different backgrounds (Japanese Brazilians and upper middle-class Brazilians) in Brazil; and P. Moran (2004) explores the encounters of Western and Tibetan Buddhists in Kathmandu. The internationality of forms of Buddhism previously associated with a particular nation is a theme in Cate’s (2003) study of the artwork in a Thai Buddhist temple completed in Wimbledon, England, in 1992. 8. The guidelines for ethical research at The University of Auckland require fully informed consent from all research participants. In observing these requirements, I gave participant information sheets and consent forms to those I formally interviewed and ensured that the information about my research was also made available to the FWBO in the Auckland Buddhist Centre newsletter, Kantaka, and through a poster and personal communications with people at Sudarshanaloka. In circumstances in which I felt it was inappropriate or impractical to ask people to sign consent forms, I explained the research verbally. When the possibility of publishing the research arose I ensured that the key interlocutors were made aware of this and given an opportunity to comment. I explained the book manuscript to the Sudarshanaloka management committee in June 2005, and it met with unanimous approval. 9. The word ‘‘Western’’ also runs into problems in that similar interpretations arise in places not conventionally considered ‘‘Western’’—e.g., are ‘‘cosmopolitans...