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Global Theravada: Transmission Beyond Asia

2022· reference-entry· en· W4291291887 on OpenAlexaff
Mavis L. Fenn

Bibliographic record

VenueOxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion · 2022
Typereference-entry
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicArchaeology and Historical Studies
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Waterloo
Fundersnot available
KeywordsBuddhismAttendanceZoningPolitical scienceCultural heritageHistorySociologyLawArchaeology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract Theravada Buddhism is practiced by 150,000,000 people worldwide and is found on every continent except Antarctica. Its global transmission came via two streams. One was the emigration of Theravada Buddhists from Asia (heritage). The other was a Buddhism most closely associated with the colonial period and adopted by non-heritage Buddhists. Heritage and non-heritage Buddhists share some challenges. Both faced initial difficulties in being designated a religion outside of Asia. In Australia, performing marriages was one criterion for designation as a religion, and the Swiss forbade the establishment of monasteries until 1973. Finances are a problem as well. Finding money to maintain monks and buildings can be difficult. While zoning regulations can affect both, it can be more difficult for heritage Buddhists due to language, desire for traditional temple architecture, and community resistance or racism. Both may initially share space with other groups, and both have concerns about passing Buddhism on to the next generation. Heritage Buddhist communities and their monks face additional challenges. The community may be dispersed over a large area, and transportation may hinder regular attendance. Disagreements occur regarding the primary focus of the temple, cultural preservation, or religious services. Monks may find it difficult to follow the Vinaya rules strictly and may be criticized by the laity when they do not. There also may be considerable lay leadership as countries require charitable organizations such as churches and temples to establish a board of directors. While non-heritage Buddhism tends to be layperson led, their communities also struggle with issues of power and leadership within a group, social justice issues, issues concerning what constitutes traditional and proper practice, and money and management issues. The Theravada bhikkhunī sańgha died out around the 13th century. While its revival in the 20th century is generally accepted outside Asia, it is still highly contested in South and Southeast Asia. Organizations such as Sakyadhita International are often accused of trying to impose colonial and feminist ideas on largely uninterested female renunciants. The terms used in Buddhist studies to describe, discuss, and compare these various Buddhisms are highly contested. Terms such as the two Buddhisms and ethnic/Western/traditional/modernist are problematic on several fronts: they are not accurate descriptors of the multiple forms of Theravada Buddhism; they assume that Buddhism is a static “thing,” and they have undercurrents of imperialism and racism. Although no general agreement exists regarding terminology, heritage and non-heritage or convert are commonly used in Buddhist studies. They too are problematic because they can easily be understood as Asian and White. The terminology and its implications continue to be debated.

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How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMeta-epidemiology (narrow), Science and technology studies, Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: Not applicable
GenreCandidate signal: Other · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.582
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0020.002
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0000.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0060.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.045
GPT teacher head0.307
Teacher spread0.262 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreOther

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

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Citations0
Published2022
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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