Architects of Buddhist Leisure

Justin Thomas McDaniel

Justin Thomas McDaniel

Architects of Buddhist Leisure

Socially Disengaged Buddhism in Asia’s Museums, Monuments, and Amusement Parks

In: Contemporary Buddhism

Edited by: Mark Michael Rowe

University of Hawaii Press | 2016

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824866013

Overview
Contents

About this book

Buddhism, often described as an austere religion that condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture in Asia. Creative religious improvisations designed by Buddhists have been produced both within and outside of monasteries across the region—in Nepal, Japan, Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Justin McDaniel looks at the growth of Asia’s culture of Buddhist leisure—what he calls “socially disengaged Buddhism”—through a study of architects responsible for monuments, museums, amusement parks, and other sites. In conversation with noted theorists of material and visual culture and anthropologists of art, McDaniel argues that such sites highlight the importance of public, leisure, and spectacle culture from a Buddhist perspective and illustrate how “secular” and “religious,” “public” and “private,” are in many ways false binaries. Moreover, places like Lek Wiriyaphan’s Sanctuary of Truth in Thailand, Suối Tiên Amusement Park in Saigon, and Shi Fa Zhao’s multilevel museum/ritual space/tea house in Singapore reflect a growing Buddhist ecumenism built through repetitive affective encounters instead of didactic sermons and sectarian developments. They present different Buddhist traditions, images, and aesthetic expressions as united but not uniform, collected but not concise: Together they form a gathering, not a movement.
Despite the ingenuity of lay and ordained visionaries like Wiriyaphan and Zhao and their colleagues Kenzo Tange, Chan-soo Park, Tadao Ando, and others discussed in this book, creators of Buddhist leisure sites often face problems along the way. Parks and museums are complex adaptive systems that are changed and influenced by budgets, available materials, local and global economic conditions, and visitors. Architects must often compromise and settle at local optima, and no matter what they intend, their buildings will develop lives of their own. Provocative and theoretically innovative, Architects of Buddhist Leisure asks readers to question the very category of “religious” architecture. It challenges current methodological approaches in religious studies and speaks to a broad audience interested in modern art, architecture, religion, anthropology, and material culture.

Author information

McDanielJustin Thomas:

Justin Thomas McDaniel is professor of Buddhist studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.RoweMark Michael:

Mark Michael Rowe is associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University.Justin Thomas McDaniel is professor of Buddhist studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Reviews

Ronald G. Knapp, State University of New York at New Paltz:
Clearly a scholar with very broad interests and an intimate knowledge of Buddhism over a long period, Justin McDaniel has succeeded in narrating the complex story of Buddhist leisure space throughout modern Asia in a way that provokes each of us to reexamine the fleeting and fragmented glances at places we have encountered but haven’t really understood.

Yoko Hayami, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University:
In this enjoyable book, Justin McDaniel once again questions the overemphasis on authenticity in Buddhist studies and opts to look at Buddhism in people’s everyday lives, placing it in local contexts. Architects of Buddhist Leisure will ultimately persuade readers to join McDaniel in asking what makes Buddhism so compelling and to marvel at the far-reaching boundlessness of the question.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	vii
Series Editor’s Preface Free access PDF PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Free access PDF PDF	xi
Introduction Open Access PDF PDF	1
1. Monuments and Metabolism Open Access PDF PDF	30
2. Ecumenical Parks and Cosmological Gardens Open Access PDF PDF	82
3. Buddhist Museums and Curio Cabinets Open Access PDF PDF	131
Conclusions and Comparisons Open Access PDF PDF	162
Notes Open Access PDF PDF	177
Bibliography Open Access PDF PDF	205
Index Open Access PDF PDF	215
About the Author Open Access PDF PDF	225

Architects of Buddhist Leisure

Socially Disengaged Buddhism in Asia’s Museums, Monuments, and Amusement Parks

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