Women and Ultramodern Buddhism in Australia
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 5
Abstract
Buddhists started arriving in Australia in large numbers during the mid-1800s, and the first Buddhist societies and centres began to be formed in the mid-late 1900s. This paper examines the role of women in bringing Buddhism to and establishing it in Australia. Women have featured prominently in a small amount of scholarship, including Paul Croucher’s (1989) Buddhism in Australia: 1848–1988 and Cristina Rocha and Michelle Barker’s (eds. 2011) edited volume on Buddhism in Australia: Traditions in Change. This paper draws on these sources, but primarily on more recent digital oral histories of prominent Buddhist women and men in Australia, recorded as part of the first stage of the Buddhist Life Stories of Australia project in 2014–2015. These first-hand accounts bring the early female pioneers of Buddhism in Australia to life and provide a rich re-telling of this history with emphasis on women’s contributions to it. We also argue that these women’s experiences can best be understood through a framework of ‘ultramodern Buddhism,’ built upon theories of modern and post-modern Buddhism, as many of these women were trailblazers bridging dualisms of tradition and modernity, Asia and the West, and adhering to both feminist and Buddhist principles.
Authors and Affiliations
Anna Halafoff, Jayne Garrod and Laura Gobey
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP26009
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9050147
- Views 331
- Downloads 12
Trust at Work: A Study on Faith and Trust of Protestant Entrepreneurs in China
There is much talk about the trust crisis in China and the possible role of religion in rebuilding China’s moral order. This study is an attempt to examine religion’s impact on the emerging market economy in China, foc...
Beyond Christian Nationalism: How the American Committee on Religious Rights and Minorities Made Religious Pluralism a Global Cause in the Interwar Era
During the 1920s and 1930s, the American Committee on Religious Rights and Minorities offered a potent challenge to the view of the United States as a Christian nation. The Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish members of t...
Rethinking Amalek in This 21st Century
Twice in the Hebrew Bible—Exodus 17:14–16 and Deuteronomy 25: 17–19—the ancient Israelites were commanded to “blot out” the memory of Amalek, their enemy for all time (as God intended to do as well). Yet, because these...
Geoffrey Hill’s “Hard-Won Affirmation”: The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy
Sir Geoffrey Hill, long hailed as Britain’s greatest living poet, was devoted to remembering the deceased, those forgotten in the debased din of mass culture—some of them worthy of our emulation, others edifying by the...
Emerging Adult Religiosity and Spirituality: Linking Beliefs, Values, and Ethical Decision-Making
This paper challenges the “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) category as a methodological artifact caused by interacting two closed-ended survey items into binary combinations. Employing a theoretically rich approach...