Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Southeast Asia

Contemporary forms of Buddhist modernity in Southeast Asia are inflected in ways that are specific to the historical and cultural contexts from which they emerged, preempting any attempt to describe modern Buddhist practices in this region in general and comprehensive ways.1 This is due to the cultural diversity within the region and the different ways in which Buddhist traditions have been appropriated and mediated by local cultures and vernacular languages. It is also the result of the fragmented social and intellectual condition of modernity which, as Theodore Adorno (2005: 218) reminds us, ‘is a qualitative, not a chronological category.' Thus, this essay can only provide a partial commentary on selective attitudes, habits, and practices as they are articulated in modern Buddhist reforms, institutions, roles and in the interactions of modern Buddhists with economic, social, and political patterns of circulation.