Ambedkar and the Buddha's Sangha: A Ground for Buddhist Ethics

The saṅgha is one of the three jewels of the Buddhist tradition. While undervalued in many other Anglophone iterations of Buddhist modernism, Ambedkar’s approach to Buddhism placed a reconceptualized saṅgha at the center. Where traditional accounts often limit the boundaries of saṅgha to ordained monks and nuns, Ambedkar sought to include all lay Buddhists within its frame. He suggests that the role of the saṅgha is not, as many traditional accounts might suggest, the personal liberation of the monks and nuns who join it, but instead social service directed toward the community at large. Ambedkar’s commitment to the development of a religion that champions egalitarianism naturally lead to his inclusion of women as full participants in his image of the saṅgha, despite the historically patriarchal limits placed on them in many traditional Buddhist settings. This wide-tent approach to the saṅgha, along with its emphasis on service and egalitarian principles, are defining features of Ambedkar’s unique approach the Buddhist tradition.

Engaged Buddhism

Engaged Buddhism emerged in Asia in the 20th century as Buddhists responded to the challenges of colonialism, modernity, and secularization. It is often dated to Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s challenge to caste discrimination in India in the 1950s and the antiwar activism of Vietnamese Buddhist monastic Thich Nhat Hanh, although recent scholarship has pointed to the influence of Chinese Buddhist reforms occurring in the 1930s. Hanh coined the term “engaged Buddhism” to describe social and political activism based in Buddhist principles in the 1960s. The terms “engaged Buddhism” and “socially engaged Buddhism” were taken up by loosely connected Buddhists in Asia and the West who adapted Buddhism to a range of nonviolent social activist projects such as peacemaking, human rights, environmental protection, rural development, combatting ethnic violence, and women’s rights. With globalization and technological advances, engaged Buddhist organizations and efforts have spread across the globe. Reflecting the culture shift from the modern to the postmodern, generational and demographic shifts within these communities are marked by increased attention to intersectionality and postcolonial thought. Engaged Buddhists see their social and political activities as extending Buddhism’s classical focus on individual suffering to the suffering generated by unjust structures and systems, and set collective as well as individual liberation as a soteriological goal. While there is a consensus in academic scholarship that engaged Buddhism is an expression of Buddhist modernism, recent debates have arisen around whether conservative, nationalist, and even ethnocentric modern forms of Buddhism can be considered as forms of engaged Buddhism.

Introduction

This chapter lays out the origin of Buddhist revitalization in Malaysia. It has attempted to reflect on the influence of colonization on the construction of knowledge and understanding of well-defined religion (in specific Buddhism) that subsequently affected how Buddhists interact with traditional Chinese religion followers. The body of knowledge reviewed is in the fields of colonization and Buddhism, Buddhist modernism, Chinese religion studies, and Malaysian studies in terms of religious contestation with Islam and Christian.