The Buddhist Card

As a faith shared by nearly 400 million people from India to Thailand, Buddhism is a faith that is rising among Americans as a personal matter but seems to fly below the radar in all other manners.

Lately, Buddhism has seemed to be more prominent in developments throughout much of Asia.

A popular Buddhist monk returns to Vietnam for only the second time in 40 years, testing the religious waters (especially among young people) in a country ruled by a Marxist clique.

Aides say the Zen master wants to seed a new wave of teachers in Vietnam who can spread his practices to a generation that may see Buddhism as old-fashioned. The newly ordained are between 16 and 32 years old – a deliberate policy, says Chan Kong, a nun, who calls them a young “Peace Corps” for Vietnam. “Our spiritual heritage has been lost to war and communism. We can bring it back,” she says.

Buddhism as harmony in China. Chinese officials are effectively trying to co-op the Buddhist faith within the country to help reduce the social pressures tearing at much of the country.

Last April China organised a meeting of Buddhist leaders from around the world in the coastal province of Zhejiang (it did not, however, invite the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader). The event was given considerable prominence in the official media. The theme, “A harmonious world begins in the mind”, echoed the party’s recent propaganda drive concerning the need for a “harmonious society”. It implied just what Mr Pan had suggested— that the opium Marx was talking about should be seen as a benign spiritual salve. In October the party’s Central Committee issued a document on how to build a harmonious society, arguing that religion could play a “positive role”.

The party’s change of tone coincides with its recent efforts to revive traditional culture as a way of giving China, in its state of rapid economic and social flux, a bit more cohesion. The term “harmonious society”, which in recent months has become a party mantra, sounds in Chinese (hexie shehui) like an allusion to classical notions of social order in which people do not challenge their role in life and treat each other kindly. It is, in effect, a rejection of the Marxist notion of class struggle.

In response to a deadly Muslim insurgency in their southern provinces, Buddhism as the state religion in Thailand is now a very real probability.

The campaign by militant Buddhists grows out of these divisions while playing into a nationalist approach that both sides of the political divide have used as a banner, said Surin Pitsuwan, a longtime politician who comes from the south.

“I think a sense of identity and sometimes a raw and naked nationalism have often become features of the new politics,” he said. “This is certainly part and parcel of that.”

As temples have been bombed, monks beheaded and Buddhist teachers and residents murdered in the south, Buddhism and nationalism have become intertwined. Some Buddhist leaders warn that the religion itself is under attack from what they see as an alien religion.

Conversions to Buddhism by lower castes in India have been known to raise the ire of Hindu nationalists while offering new social opportunities to others.

Mahi described life in villages where dalit children could not enter schools and dalits were forced off local buses.

“If we change our religion, things should improve, we will get respect,” he said. “This is our beginning.”

Traditional Hindu society in India sets limits on economic and educational progress among those born in low-caste families. Dalits say they are routinely barred from entering temples and schools despite the caste system being outlawed.

“There has been so much discrimination and nothing is done to stop it,” said Jayandra Kamble, a trader from Mumbai who converted to Buddhism on Sunday. “I now belong to a religion that truly believes in peace and harmony.”

All the stories here are points of fracture or change that do not often register on our radar. Are the warnings for strife on the level of Sri Lanka possible if Buddhist nationalism mutates in Thailand? What are the mid to long-term effects of communal tensions in India amid these types of mass conversions? Are low-key Buddhist led social improvement platforms that emphasize germinating changing of attitudes and viewpoints sustainable in Burma, Vietnam and within China and elsewhere? Indeed, what forms of Buddhism will evolve with 21st century social and political challenges?

For most Americans, though Buddhism is a fast-growing religion in our midst, we hardly comprehend it aside from pop culture snapshots that are often far from accurate and betray our larger simplistic misconceptions about the rest of the world. We would be wise to look at Buddhism not only as a personal religious faith with monks and temples, but among nations in South and SE Asia as a potential political agent, an understated cultural force and a dynamic (or dampening) social ingredient.

Let the learning begin.