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This paper proposes “making refuge” as a conceptual placeholder and an analytical rubric, a guiding ethos and praxis, for the engaged Buddhist aspiration of responding to the social, political, economic, and planetary crises facing the world. Making refuge is conceived as the work of building the conditions of trust and safety necessary for living and dying well together as co-inhabitants of diverse communities and habitats. The paper will explain the rationale for making refuge by connecting the dharmic understanding of dukkha with feminist conceptualizations of the body and vulnerability. This will chart some theoretical and methodological pathways for engaged Buddhism to further its liberatory aspirations in reciprocity with emergent movements in radical critical theory, contemplative studies, and social and ecological activism. The paper will also examine the effects of white supremacy in U.S. Buddhism through the framework of making refuge. This will demonstrate how political healing and restorative justice might be cultivated through a dispositional ethics that pays appropriate attention to the vulnerabilities facing oppressed people.

This paper proposes that the question of the role of faith in academia invites

Is there a place for autoethnography in Buddhist Studies, particularly the emerging discourse described as Buddhist critical-constructive reflection? Predicated on a commitment to be always mindful of the colonial, Orientalist heritage of Buddhist Studies and the role of the subject in its own discourse, Buddhist critical-constructive reflection brings together the sacred and scholarly pursuits of the Buddhist practitioner-scholar to develop new interfaces between Buddhism, academia, and society. This article explores the possible contribution of autoethnography by sharing the autoethnographical reflections of the author, who despite growing up in Singapore where Buddhism forms a part of his ancestral, cultural heritage, only embraced it as a life-pursuit after discovering in Australia Western interpretations of Buddhist doctrine and practice.