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Buddhadharma: Reclaiming Our So-Called “Cultural Baggage”

You can often hear Western meditation-based convert circles use the term “cultural baggage” to refer to the ritualized acts, cosmological ideas, and devotional practices associated with “heritage” Buddhist communities. This is in contrast to the idea of a more “authentic” or “true” Buddhism that is consonant with a modern rationalized worldview. In my research among meditation-centric convert Buddhist communities, I consistently observe a reluctance to take “heritage Buddhist” practices and cosmologies seriously, with many of my interlocutors often commenting on these ideas’ incompatibility with their own interpretation of Buddhism. Read More

The Intersection of Gender, Nationalism and Faith-based Giving in Sri Lanka

On September 9 2021, the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities (JLI) held a webinar where CRCC's Nalika Gajaweera presented her paper on the Intersection of gender, nationalism, and faith-based giving in Sri Lanka – The Mothers of the Righteous Society: Lay Buddhist Women as Agents of the Sinhala Nationalist Imaginary. Andrea Paras, University of Guelph, responded, followed by a Question and Answer session. Read More

Sexual Abuse, Whiteness and Patriarchy in Buddhist Sanghas

North American Buddhist communities have been and continue to be sites of sexual violations and power abuses. "Sexual Abuse, Whiteness and Patriarchy" is the first in a series of conversations that brings together practitioners and scholars to examine multiple dimensions of abuse in Buddhist contexts and articulate best practices for building safe and inclusive sanghas. Read More