[Buddha-l] Protestant Buddhists (was Memes amd me)

[Sally McAra]

Hi there,
Richard wrote about Protestant characteristics, including this:

>4. Reduction or elimination of icons and other religious symbols. (Again, the 
>Quakers are a limiting case in Christianity. In Buddhism hardly anyone, 
>except Goenka-inspired Vipassana, comes even close to be "protestant".)

You might be interested to know that Goenka's followers are building a massive stupa/pagoda near Mumbai. When I found the website for it (www.globalpagoda.org) I was fascinated, I'd thought the vipassana movement wasn't into stupas (my PhD research - still going, after 5 years - is about a group building a big stupa in Australia, see www.stupa.org.au; and my book due out this May is about a NZ group doing something similar on a smaller scale - see  http://tinyurl.com/y48lhl). 

I'd be interested to know what you think - does building such a big, golden stupa make them seem less "protestant"-like? Interesting to read their reasons for building it (on their website).

For me it affirms Richard's remark that applying labels from Christianity to Buddhism has some severe limitations. But even if it can be misleading, the term has been taken up in various contexts, and thus I have still found it a useful term to "think with" about the modernist tendencies some Buddhists express (as opposed to those who prefer a more esoteric or devotional approach--  apologies for using these labels in passing like this, I'm well aware one could debate the ins and outs of these terms forever....)

cheers
Sally McAra
PhD candidate
Department of Anthropology
The University of Auckland

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