This text provides a comparative investigation of the affinities and differences of two of the most dynamic currents in World Buddhism: Zen Buddhism and the Thai Forest Movement. Defying differences in denomination, culture, and historical epochs, these schools revived an unfettered quest for enlightenment and proceeded to independently forge like practices and doctrines. The author examines the teaching gambits and tactics, the methods of practice, the place and story line of teacher biography, and the nature and role of the awakening experience, revealing similar forms deriving from an uncompromising pursuit of awaking, the insistence on self-cultivation, and the preeminent role of the charismatic master. Offering a pertinent review of their encounters with modernism, the book provides a new coherence to these seemingly disparate movements, opening up new avenues for scholars and possibilities for practitioners.

In 1956, Theravada Buddhists in Sri Lanka and throughout Southeast Asia celebrated the 2500th anniversary of the Buddha`s entry into Nirvana and of the establishment of the Buddhist tradition. This book examines this revival of Theravada Buddhism among the laity of Sri Lanka, analysing its origins and its growth up to the present-day. Within the spectrum of reinterpretations that have comprised the revival, the book focuses on four important types or patterns of reinterpretation and response. It examines the rational reformism of the early Protestant Buddhists led by Anagarika Dharmapala and the conservative neotraditionalism of the Jayanti period.Particular attention is given to two of the most recent and dynamic reforms, the insight meditation movement, breaking with tradition, has opened the path of meditation to lay people, enabling them to seek Nirvana without renouncing the world. The sarvodaya Shramadana movement has addressed the social context, reinterpreting the Buddhist heritage to derive authentic forms of Buddhist social development. Comprising this series of interpretations and options for lay Buddhists, the Buddhist revival represents a new gradual path to Nirvana.

The birth of Buddhism goes back to the sixth century BCE and, over the centuries, there has been considerable variety as well as considerable change in its doctrines, practices and propagation across the different parts of Asia. This volume showcases the expansion in the religion's contours and popularity in Asia in modern times. Focusing on India, Sri Lanka and China, the essays in the book highlight the cross-fertilization between Buddhism and contemporary discourses which makes the phenomenon of Buddhist revival in Asia unambiguously modern. They also show how this resurgence assumed a great variety of forms depending on the specificities of the historical and cultural context, including Buddhism's encounter with other religious traditions. Continuities with the past are not absent, and revivalist movements have been characterized and propelled by a strong sense of history and yet this, in effect, involved crafting new interpretations of a distant past, and the introduction of new ideas and practices. The term reinvention seems to capture this aspect of dynamic change better than revival. At the same time, as this volume reveals, the choice of terms is not as important as tracing the trajectories of the phenomenon and the awareness that its impact extended far beyond the religious domain into many spheres, including those of cultural practice, national identity and international relations. This is a historically rich and readable volume which will interest general readers as well as students and scholars of history and of Buddhism.

This is the first comprehensive coverage of socially and politically engaged Buddhism in Asia, presenting the historical development and institutional forms of engaged Buddhism in the light of traditional Buddhist conceptions of morality, interdependence, and liberation.

The intent here is not to offer a new metastrategy for global development but to underscore the need for diverse responses to the vast array of economic, social, and environmental dilemmas."--BOOK JACKET.