ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 31, 2024
Economic Justice in the Buddhist Tradition
Christopher Queen
Harvard University
Buddhism is widely associated today with progressive values and exemplary models of economic life. The idea of “Buddhist economics” was paired with the slogan “small is beautiful” by the economist E. F. Schumacher in 1973. Voluntary simplicity, renunciation, and a middle path between self-indulgence and self-denial are seen as keys to sustainable levels of acquisition and consumption. Buddhist kindness and compassion are thought to inspire charitable giving to the poor, and right livelihood to promote occupations of service to society. Yet the history of Buddhist economics does not always support these assumptions. Traditional beliefs in karma and merit-making do not align with modern ideas of justice. We examine the Buddhist record in areas of social equality, property, natural resources, products, wealth, income, jobs, and taxation. Each section surveys Buddhist economics in the Theravāda cultures of South and Southeast Asia; the Mahāyāna cultures that flourished in India, China, Tibet, and East Asia; and the modern period, marked by the rise of Engaged Buddhism in Asia and the West. At each stage we find distinctive teachings and practices in the economic sphere. Read article
ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 30, 2023
Buddhist Violence and Religious Authority: A Tribute to the Work of Michael Jerryson. Edited by Margo Kitts and Mark Juergensmeyer. Sheffield, UK: Equinox, 2022, vi + 187 pages, ISBN 978-1-80050-101-0 (hardback), $75.00, 978-1-80050-102-7 (e-book), $75.00.
Reviewed by Marte Nilsen
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 30, 2023
Beyond Queen and King: Democratizing “Engaged Buddhism”
Donna Lynn Brown
University of Manitoba
What counts as Buddhist social engagement? Why, in Buddhist Studies, do certain forms of engagement and certain Buddhists often not count? This article argues that the limits that scholars Christopher S. Queen and Sallie B. King placed around Buddhist engagement in the 1990s—limits that produced a rough consensus in Buddhist Studies—should be democratized to include all Buddhists and their social engagement. For years, criticism of these limits and research that circumvents them have appeared without seriously undermining them. However, 2022 may mark a turning point. In that year, two publications, by Paul Fuller and Alexander Hsu, offered comprehensive and convincing arguments for considering all Buddhists’ socially oriented activities “engaged.” This article examines the consensus on the nature of Buddhist engagement, its origins in activism, research that dissents from it, and critiques it has faced. The article assesses dissent and critiques and considers why, until recently, they have had little effect. It then discusses why Fuller’s and Hsu’s publications represent a turning point and proposes new areas of research beyond those even these two scholars suggest.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 29, 2022
An Introduction to Engaged Buddhism. By Paul Fuller. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, 248 pages. ISBN 978-1-350-12907-8 (hardback), $63.00/978-1-350-12906-1 (paperback), $19.47/ 978-1-350-12909-2 (e-book), $18.86.
Reviewed by Christopher Queen
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 29, 2022
The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk Who Faced Down the British Empire. By Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, and Brian Bocking. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, 336 pages, ISBN 978-0-19-007308-4 (hardback), $39.95.
Reviewed by Victor Forte
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 28, 2021
The Culture of Giving in Myanmar: Buddhist Offerings, Reciprocity and Interdependence. By Hiroko Kawanami. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020, xv + 185 pages, ISBN 978-1-350-12417-2 (hardback), $115.00/978-1-350-12418-9 (e-book), $103.50.
Reviewed by Jason Carbine
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 28, 2021
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road: Buddhism, Politics, and Violence. By Michael Jerryson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, 240 pp., ISBN 978-0-19-068356-6 (hardback), $115.00.
Reviewed by Manuel Litalien
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 27, 2020
Buddhist Law in Burma: A History of Dhammasattha Texts and Jurisprudence, 1250-1850. By D. Christian Lammerts. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2018, xi + 288 pp., ISBN 978-0-8248-7260-1 (hardback), $65.00.
Reviewed by Nyi Nyi Kyaw
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 25, 2018
Theravāda Buddhist Encounters with Modernity. Edited by Juliane Schober and Steven Collins. Routledge, 2017, 168 pages, ISBN 978-1138192744 (hardback), U.S. $138.01.
Reviewed by Ananda Abeysekara
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 24, 2017
In the Midst of Imperfections: Burmese Buddhists and Business Ethics
Pyi Phyo Kyaw
King’s College, University of London
This article looks at interpretations by Buddhists in Burma of right livelihood (sammā-ājīva) and documents the moral reasoning that underlies their business activities. It explores different ways in which Buddhists in Burma, through the use of Buddhist ethics and practices, resolve moral dilemmas that they encounter while pursuing their livelihood. I give a brief summary of the existing scholarship on Buddhist economics and on economic action in Burma, exemplified by the work of E. F. Schumacher and Melford Spiro respectively. In so doing, I wish to highlight a difference between the approaches of the existing scholarship and that of this article: the existing scholarship analyzes economic issues from the perspective of normative ethics; this research analyzes them from the perspective of descriptive ethics, looking at how Buddhists interpret and apply Buddhist ethics in their business activities, in the midst of moral, social, and economic imperfections. The research presented draws on semi-structured interviews and fieldwork conducted in Burma in the summer of 2010 and relates the interpretations given to the relevant Buddhist literature, the textual authorities for doctrines such as morality (sīla).
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 24, 2017
Quitting the Dhamma: The Ways of Forsaking the Order According to the Early Vinaya
Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya
In this paper, I argue that in the early Vinaya, contrary to the commentarial tradition: (1) two ways of forsaking the Order, equally valid, co-exist; and (2) nuns who have left the Order may be re-ordained without guilt.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 22, 2015
The Birth of Insight: meditation, modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw. By Erik Braun. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013, xvi + 257, ISBN 13: 978-0-226-00080-0 (cloth), US $45.00, ISBN 13: 978-0-226-00094-7 (e-book), US $7.00 to $36.00.
Reviewed by Douglas Ober
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 20, 2013
Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China. Edited by Paul Williams and Patrice Ladwig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, ISBN: 9781107003880 (paper-back), $39.99.
Reviewed by Nicolas Sihlé
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 19, 2012
Intellectual Property in Early Buddhism: A Legal and Cultural Perspective
Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya
In this paper, I examine the modern concepts of intellectual property and account for their significance in monastic law and culture of early Buddhism. As a result, I have come to the following conclusions: (1) the infringement of copyrights, patents, and trademarks does not amount to theft as far as Theravādin Vinaya is concerned; (2) because a trademark infringement involves telling a deliberate lie, it entails an offense of expiation (pācittiya), but I cannot find any Vinaya rule which is transgressed by copyright and patent infringements; and (3) although the Buddha recognized the right to intellectual credit, commentarial interpretations have led some traditional circles to maintain that intellectual credit can be transferred to someone else.
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Volume 19, 2012
Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar: Cultural Narratives, Colonial Legacies, and Civil Society. By Juliane Schober. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011, 190 pages, ISBN 978-0824833824 (pbk), $49.00.
Reviewed by Kelly Meister
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 19, 2012
The Burmese Alms-Boycott: Theory and Practice of the Pattanikujjana in Buddhist Non-Violent Resistance
Martin Kovan
University of Melbourne
This essay presents a general and critical historical survey of the Burmese Buddhist alms-boycott (pattanikujjana) between 1990 and 2007. It details the Pāli textual and ethical constitution of the boycott and its instantiation in modern Burmese history, particularly the Saffron Revolution of 2007. It also suggests a metaethical reading that considers Buddhist metaphysics as constitutive of that conflict. Non-violent resistance is contextualized as a soteriologically transcendent (“nibbanic”) project in the common life of believing Buddhists—even those who, military regime and martyred monastics alike, defend a fidelity to Theravāda Buddhism from dual divides of a political and humanistic fence.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 18, 2011
Tithiyaparivāsa vis-à-vis Noviciation in Theravādin Monasticism
Ven. Pandita (Burma)
University of Kelaniya
Tithiyaparivāsais a particular type of probation in Theravādin monasticism that former ascetics of certain heretic groups must undergo if they wish to gain admission to the Buddhist Order. In the extant probation procedure as found in the Pāli Vinaya tradition, there is no explicit accounting for the stage of novicehood. Why? This paper attempts to answer that question and in the process discovers an unexpected insight into the legally ambiguous status of noviciation.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 16, 2009
Violence and (Non-)resistance: Buddhist Ahiṃsā and its Existential Aporias
Martin Kovan
University of Queensland
This essay considers a paradigmatic example in Buddhist ethics of the injunction (in the five precepts and five heinous crimes) against killing. It also considers Western ethical concerns in the post-phenomenological thinking of Derrida and Levinas, particularly the latter’s “ethics of responsibility.” It goes on to analyze in-depth an episode drawn from Alan Clements’s experience in 1990 as a Buddhist non-violent, non-combatant in war-torn Burma. It explores Clements’s ethical predicament as he faced an imminent need to act, perhaps even kill and thereby repudiate his Buddhist inculcation. It finds a wealth of common (yet divergent) ground in Levinasian and Mahāyāna ethics, a site pregnant for Buddhist ethical self-interrogation.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 16, 2009
Buddhism, Nonviolence, and Power
Sallie B. King
James Madison University
Contemporary Buddhists have in recent decades given the world outstanding examples of nonviolent activism. Although these movements have demonstrated great courage and have generated massive popular support, sadly, none of them has, as yet, prevailed. In this paper I will explore how nonviolent power was exercised in these cases. I will draw upon the work of nonviolent theorist Gene Sharp to help us understand the nature and sources of nonviolent power. I will then use that material to analyze the power dynamics of the Buddhist nonviolent struggles in Vietnam during the war years, and in Burma and Tibet today. I will also reflect upon Buddhist attitudes towards the wielding of nonviolent power in conflict situations.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 8, 2001
The Voice of Hope. Edited by Aung San Su Kyi with Alan Clements. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1997, 304 pages, ISBN 1–888363–83–5 (paperback), ISBN 1–888363–50–9 (hardcover), US $14.95 (paperback), US $24.95 (hardcover).
Reviewed by Barbara E. Reed
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 7, 2000
Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics. By Gustaaf Houtman. Tokyo: ILCAA Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa Monograph Series, no. 33, Publication of the Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 1999, viii + 392 pages, ISBN 4-87297-748-3 (paperback), Free.
Reviewed By Karen Derris
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 5 1998
Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia. Edited by Christopher S. Queen and Sallie B. King. New York: State University of New York, 1996, xii + 446 pages, ISBN 0-7914-2844-3, $24.95.
Reviewed by Mavis L. Fenn
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