Buddhism and Business: Merit, Material Wealth, and Morality in the Global Market Economy

201 Pages·2021·8.365 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg Trine Brox

Buddhism and Business
Contemporary Buddhism
MARK M. ROWE, SERIES EDITOR
Architects of Buddhist Leisure: Socially Disengaged
Buddhism in Asia’s Museums, Monuments, and
Amusement Parks
Justin Thomas McDaniel
Educating Monks: Minority Buddhism on China’s
Southwest Border
Thomas A. Borchert
From the Mountains to the Cities: Buddhist
Propagation in the History of Modern Korean Bud-
dhism
Mark A. Nathan
From Indra’s Net to Internet: Communication,
Technology, and the Evolution of Buddhist Ideas
Daniel Veidlinger
Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a
Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan
Levi McLaughlin
Guardians of the Buddha’s Home: Domestic Religion in
the Contemporary Jōdo Shinshū
Jessica Starling
Morality and Monastic Revival in Post-Mao Tibet
Jane E. Caple
Buddhist Tourism in Asia
Edited by Courtney Bruntz and Brooke Schedneck
Monastic Education in Korea: Teaching Monks about
Buddhism in the Modern Age
Uri Kaplan
Buddhism and Business: Merit, Material Wealth, and
Morality in the Global Market Economy
Edited by Trine Brox and Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg
Buddhism and Business
Merit, Material Wealth,
and Morality in the Global
Market Economy
Edited by Trine Brox and
Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I PRESS
HONOLULU
© 2020 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
25 24 23 22 21 20 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Brox, Trine, editor. | Williams-Oerberg, Elizabeth, editor.
Title: Buddhism and business : merit, material wealth, and morality in the
global market economy / edited by Trine Brox, Elizabeth
Williams-Oerberg.
Other titles: Contemporary Buddhism.
Description: Honolulu : University of Hawaiʻi Press, [2020] | Series:
Contemporary Buddhism | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019057906 | ISBN 9780824882730 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9780824884161 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9780824884178 (epub) |
ISBN 9780824884185 (kindle edition)
Subjects: LCSH: Buddhism—Economic aspects. | Economics—Religious
aspects—Buddhism.
Classification: LCC BQ4570.E25 B84 2020 | DDC 294.3/373—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057906
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free
paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Council on Library Resources.
Cover photo: Buddha statues being made in a factory park, Sichuan, China.
Photo by Trine Brox.
Contents
vii Series Editor’s Preface
ix Acknowledgments
1 IntroductIon: Buddhist Encounters with the
Global Market Economy and Consumer Society
Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg and Trine Brox
22 CHAPTER ONE
the Lama’s shoes: Tibetan Perspectives on
Monastic Wealth and Virtue
Jane Caple
40 CHAPTER TWO
a sIno-tIbetan buddhIst modernIsm: Religious
Marketplace, Constellative Networking, and
Urbanism
Dan Smyer Yü
59 CHAPTER THREE
Prosperous Temple Buddhism and NRM
Prosperity Buddhism
Jørn Borup
76 CHAPTER FOUR
the soka GakkaI economy: Measuring
Cycles of Exchange That Power Japan’s Largest
Buddhist Lay Organization
Levi McLaughlin
93 CHAPTER FIVE
the mIndfuL Gardener and the Good
empLoyee: Mindfulness Practices and
Affective Labor in Danish Workplaces
Marianne Viftrup Hedegaard
v
vi Contents
111 CHAPTER SIX
brandInG and/as reLIGIon: The Case of
Buddhist-Related Images, Semantics,
and Designs
Inken Prohl
128 CHAPTER SEVEN
Marketing the Buddha and Its Blasphemy
Michael Jerryson
145 CHAPTER EIGHT
economIes of reLIGIon, buddhIsm
and economy, buddhIst economIcs:
Challenges and Perspectives
Lionel Obadia
161 Works Cited
181 Contributors
185 Index
Series Editor’s Preface
DUE IN PART TO WHAT GREGORY SCHOPEN famously called the “Protestant
presuppositions” of Buddhist studies, scholars are only just beginning to
conduct serious research into the connections between Buddhism and busi-
ness. This exhilarating, multi-authored volume thus marks a crucial develop-
ment in the field by using ethnographic case studies from Asia, Europe, and
beyond to develop new theoretical frameworks for understanding the “eco-
nomics of religion.” Although critiques of Buddhist materialism have dogged
the tradition for millennia, Buddhist institutions have always been embed-
ded in market economies. Rather than offer further examples of Buddhist
commoditization, the authors focus on the very processes of commodifica-
tion and commercialization—how exactly are Buddhists engaging with
markets, commodities, and exchange in an era of neo-liberalism? How are
Buddhist semantics being deployed in economic contexts? Approaching
Buddhism as both “commodity and capital,” they present explorations of
Buddhist branding, “prosperity Buddhism,” the affective and gendered ele-
ments of Buddhist giving, the “blasphemy” of Buddhist marketing, mindful-
ness and self-actualization in the work place, the connection between wealth
and monastic virtue, and “constellative networks” in Buddhist urbanism. The
results will have far-reaching effects on how scholars approach the business
of Buddhism.
vii

Acknowledgments
THE PRESENT VOLUME IS THE RESULT OF an international, interdisciplinary,
and collaborative research project, Buddhism, Business, and Believers (the
BBB project), under the auspices of the Center for Contemporary Buddhist
Studies at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University
of Copenhagen. The editors gratefully acknowledge generous financial support
from the Danish Council for Independent Research | Humanities. Additionally,
the Carlsberg Foundation granted funding toward several activities as well as
a postdoctoral research position organized under the BBB project. We are grate-
ful for the inspiration and insight we have gained through the discussions
and presentations by participants at the conference “Buddhism, Business, and
Economic Relations—in Asia and Beyond” (University of Copenhagen, October
2016), the panel “Buddhism and Business: Examining Ambiguous Religious
Economic Practices from the Past to the Present” (International Association
for Tibetan Studies, Bergen, 2016), and the panel “Buddhist Wealth Accumu-
lation and Distribution: The Spiritual Politics of Wealth in the Global Economy”
(Association for Asian Studies, Philadelphia, 2014), which were organized as
part of the BBB project. We would like to thank Niclas Juul and Jennifer
Durant, who were our student assistants and helped us copyedit the manu-
script. We also want to thank Thomas Nielsen, Tabita Rosendal Ebbesen,
Solvej Hyveled Nielsen, Janus Søndergaard Hjorth, Therese Fredgaard, and
Renee Maria Kazimierska Andersen, who helped us organize conferences and
workshops in Copenhagen. Finally, at the University of Hawai‘i Press, we are
grateful to our two anonymous reviewers, whose encouragement and feed-
back contributed to the final manuscript; Stephanie Chun, our acquisitions
editor; Cheryl Loe, our managing editor; and Robert Fellman, our copy editor.
ix