Engaged Buddhism in the West: an Example of the Acculturation of Buddhism in the Globalized Society
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2006 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | The Ecological Problems and Spiritual Traditions of the Peoples of the Baikal Region. |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Philosophy and religion |
| Keywords | buddhism in the West - acculturation - engaged Buddhism |
| Description | Globalization with all its consequences is the main factor of a number of processes in economic, political, social and religious areas. Engaged Buddhism is one of the attempts to find adequate answers to changes brought about by globalization. Within the history of Buddhism this is a specific phenomenon, representing a distinct interest in the problems of everyday life, which were often overlooked by Buddhists in the past. An important aspect, largely determining the form of todays engaged Buddhism, is not only the spread of western culture to traditionally Buddhist countries, but also the growth of popularity of Buddhism within the western culture. Here Buddhism begins to adopt a new form and it may be expected that its socially committed part will grow stronger and will play a significant role in the formation of the specifically western (or global) shape of Buddhism in the following years. The constitutive core of this process will probably become the quest to find answers to serious moral questions of contemporary global culture, whose basic feature is the tension between the growing fragmentariness and individuality on the one hand, and mutual interconnection and dependence on the other hand. In such world, an individual is faced with qualitatively new moral problems, problems that boost the formation of socially committed movement within the framework of contemporary Buddhism. |
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