ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 25, 2018
Geopolitics of Buddhism
André Laliberté
University of Ottawa
This article
argues that Buddhists still lack an international organization that
could help them present a unified voice the way that the World
Council of Churches does for non-Catholic Christians, or the
Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, for all Muslims, whether they
are Sunni or Shia. There exist international organizations that claim
to speak on behalf of Buddhists the world over, but they compete
against each other. The basis of this competition has little to do
with the differences between the Mahāyāna, Theravāda, and Vajrayāna
schools, but owes a lot more to competition between Asian great
powers, in particular China and India. The article will demonstrate
this by first presenting an historical account of the different
attempts to create a unified Buddhist international organization,
along with different transnational Buddhist institutions. Then it
will review the divisions that have prevented, so far, the creation
of such an organization.
|
