Why Do European Buddhists Meditate? The Practical Problem of Inventing Global Buddhism

Abstract

Globalising “Buddhism” beyond its pre-colonial homelands was a complex practical challenge. Actors seeking to bring Buddhism to new audiences in very different cultures met with failure far more often than success until recent decades. Modern-era Buddhist missionaries to Europe had to experiment, selecting elements of Asian Buddhism that could theoretically be transmitted – ordinations, preaching, textual knowledge, rituals etc. – and attempt to institutionalise these as conversion mechanisms. This article uses the lens of Irish and British converts and sympathisers in Asia and Europe in the late C19th and early C20th centuries to explore the European situation – one with fewer Asian missionaries and different relationships between society and religion than those in North America. It explores the sources of their various versions of Buddhism; their organising techniques and repertoires of “Buddhist” activity, their audiences and how they defined “Buddhism” in relation to politics, ethnicity and colonialism. It argues that meditation (and “practice”) became central to European Buddhism because it solved a crucial organisational problem: what could Buddhist globalisers offer to turn audiences into Buddhists?