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Introduction In February 2003, there was heated discussion on the Brazilian e-mail list Buddhismo-L over a widely watched, popular Sunday variety program on the TV Globo network.1 The controversy arose when the program featured a woman who claimed to be a Buddhist but resorted to Afro-Brazilian and French-Brazilian Spiritist beliefs to prescribe a solution for personal problems. One of the first messages posted explained the issues at stake. Yesterday, by a samsaric2 [sic] misfortune, I was watching the Faustão TV program. A woman, who claimed to be an astrologer, tarot reader, futurologist , Buddhist—obviously a deceiver—was there making predictions. Yes, shocking! At one point, while giving advice to the KLB singer, she said he was carrying the spirit (encosto) of someone he had dated who had later died. In order to be able to date his new girlfriend in peace, this woman advised him to go to a Buddhist center to make a symbolic cremation of this encosto. I immediately received 10 phone calls (including ones from my father, mother and wife). My mom asked me what I have been into in these past four years. My wife wanted details of what this cremation would be. A friend of mine, a convinced atheist, called me, as a joke of course, macumbeiro [a derogatory word for Afro-Brazilian religions, meaning witchcraft, sorcery]. There wasn’t much I could say, but I believe that this notion of encosto does not exist in Buddhism, right? Anyway, I would like to clarify this point because I felt offended by that woman claiming to be a Buddhist. I felt humiliated, really. I believe that TV Globo has to apologize URGENTLY!3 Reading this message, I realized how the theme of and interest in ‘‘Buddhism ’’ has expanded over the years I have been pursuing my research. When I started it in 1997, the phenomenon of the rise of interest in Buddhism was still not plainly visible in Brazilian culture. Yet in the intervening years things have changed considerably. Mainstream magazine and newspaper stories feature Buddhism frequently (many times as cover stories), associating it with fashion, high culture, modernity, rationality, nonviolence, and tranquility, while profiling Brazilian and North American celebrities who practice it. Books by North American, 2 • Introduction European, Japanese, Tibetan, Vietnamese, and Brazilian Buddhists have become increasingly popular among upper middle-class urban populations. In this context, Buddhism has become desirable symbolic capital to possess as it lends the prestige of cosmopolitanism and foreign trends to its followers. While reading the above message in 2003, I realized that for the first time Buddhism had become more than just an upper- and upper middle-class enclosed phenomenon. Unsurprisingly, it had reached disenfranchised classes through a very popular TV program, and not through the books, newspapers, magazines, and Internet sites written by and to educated classes. Certainly, this e-mail message shows that in 2003, as in 1997, the meanings Buddhism has acquired in the encounter with Brazilian culture have not changed; they have just become intensified with time and extended in the sectors of society it was presented to. For instance, the writer’s social location (upper- or upper middle-class sectors of society) and his feelings of humiliation and offense when his religious choice was confused with Afro-Brazilian religion (of mainly disenfranchised sectors of society) shows how Buddhism is employed as a marker of social distinction. The same point is exemplified by his friend calling him a macumbeiro, a term historically used to dismiss and condemn Afro-Brazilian religions as witchcraft . In addition, the easy creolization the woman makes among various religious traditions and the placing of the newly arrived Buddhism in this religious matrix shows how tradition creatively incorporates modernity and how plural and porous the Brazilian religious field is. Moreover, the message makes evident the role mass media plays in carrying global flows of Buddhism from metropolitan centers into Brazil—from Hollywood and, more recently, Tibetan and Indian Buddhist movies, books, newspapers, and magazine stories (consumed by the upper strata of society) to TV programs (mostly directed to the lower strata of society). I have chosen this e-mail message as a point of departure because it evokes many of the themes that I myself found while conducting fieldwork. They include the aspiration toward modernity, the coexistence of modernity and tradition, the intense creolization of religious traditions, the role of global flows of media, people, technologies, and ideas in the...

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