Land of beautiful vision : making a Buddhist sacred place in New Zealand / Sally McAra.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McAra, Sally, 1967-

Series:

Topics in contemporary Buddhism.

Topics in contemporary Buddhism

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Buddhism--New Zealand--Thames.

Buddhism.

Buddhist converts--New Zealand--Thames.

Buddhist converts.

Sudarshanaloka Retreat Centre.

Western Buddhist Order. Friends.

Western Buddhist Order.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (226 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Honolulu : University of Hawai'i Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Land of Beautiful Vision is the first book-length ethnography to address the role of material culture in contemporary adaptations of Buddhism and the first to focus on convert Buddhists in New Zealand. Sally McAra takes as her subject a fascinating instance of an ongoing creative process whereby a global religion is made locally meaningful through the construction of a Buddhist sacred place. She uses an in-depth case study of a small religious structure, a stupa, in rural New Zealand to explore larger issues related to the contemporary surge in interest in Buddhism and religious globalization. Her research extends beyond the level of public discourse on Buddhism to investigate narratives of members of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) about their relationship with the land, analyzing these and the FWBO's transformative project through a thematic focus on key symbolic landmarks at their site, Sudarshanaloka. In considering cross-cultural interactions resulting in syncretism or indigenization of alien religions, many anthropological studies concentrate on the unequal power relations between colonizing and colonized peoples. McAra extrapolates from this literature to look at a situation where the underlying power relations are quite different. She focuses on individuals in an organization whose members seek to appropriate knowledge from an "Eastern" tradition to remake their own society-one shaped by its unresolved colonizing past.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Series Editor's Preface

Acknowledgments

A Note on Spelling and Transliteration

Introduction

1 .A New Tradition

2. Unplugging from the Grid

3. A Spiritual Home

4. Unsettling Place

5. The Stūpa Is Dhardo

6. Interanimation

7. ''Re-visioning'' Place

Appendix 1. FWBO Figures

Appendix 2. The Five Precepts

Notes

Glossary

Sources Cited

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Aug 2019)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [185]-199) and index.

ISBN:

9780824863289

0824863283

9781435665972

143566597X

OCLC:

256492568