Women and Ultramodern Buddhism in Australia

Abstract

Buddhists started arriving in Australia in large numbers during the mid-1800s, and the first Buddhist societies and centres began to be formed in the mid-late 1900s. This paper examines the role of women in bringing Buddhism to and establishing it in Australia. Women have featured prominently in a small amount of scholarship, including Paul Croucher’s (1989) Buddhism in Australia: 1848–1988 and Cristina Rocha and Michelle Barker’s (eds. 2011) edited volume on Buddhism in Australia: Traditions in Change. This paper draws on these sources, but primarily on more recent digital oral histories of prominent Buddhist women and men in Australia, recorded as part of the first stage of the Buddhist Life Stories of Australia project in 2014–2015. These first-hand accounts bring the early female pioneers of Buddhism in Australia to life and provide a rich re-telling of this history with emphasis on women’s contributions to it. We also argue that these women’s experiences can best be understood through a framework of ‘ultramodern Buddhism,’ built upon theories of modern and post-modern Buddhism, as many of these women were trailblazers bridging dualisms of tradition and modernity, Asia and the West, and adhering to both feminist and Buddhist principles.

Buddhism in the Far North of Australia pre-WWII: (In)visibility, Post-colonialism and Materiality

“…What we also discovered is that some of the characteristics of Buddhism in Australia, as documented by Barker and Rocha (2011) and Halafoff et al (2018), were evident in the earliest period of Buddhism in Australia pre-1901. Buddhism in the Far North was certainly strongly influenced by flows of people, ideas, practices, and material cultures into and out of Australia from and to Asia.…”

“…This later study was a digital oral history crowdfunded pilot project, led by Anna Halafoff in 2015-2016, which recorded nineteen interviews with prominent Australian Asian and Anglo/European Buddhist leaders, including from Tibetan, Thai, Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, Chinese and Taiwanese traditions. Halafoff and her team also observed significant levels of appreciation and cooperation between lay and monastic, and Asian and Anglo/European Buddhists, and a deep connection with the Australian landscape, through Buddhist concepts of space and stillness, as additional characteristics of Buddhism in Australia, mentioned by Anglo/European and Asian Buddhist leaders alike (Halafoff, Garrod, and Gobey 2018). Both Rocha and Barker's edited collection and the BLSA project have been relatively small endeavours, as research on Buddhism in Australia has never received substantive funding or scholarly attention in broader studies of religion in Australia, compared to research on Christianity, Judaism, or Islam.…”

“…1 The spread of Buddhism into Australia is typically thought to have occurred a century later, in the late twentieth century, with increased immigration following the lifting of the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act, known as the White Australia Policy, and the ending of the Vietnam War. Prior research on the arrival of Buddhism in Australia has also focused largely on the activities of white Buddhists in southern states from the 1970s onward (Croucher 1989;Rocha and Barker 2011;Barker 2016;Halafoff, Garrod, and Gobey 2018). Buddhists are currently Australia's fourth largest religious group, comprising 2.4% of the population, following Christians (43.9%), Muslims (3.2%) and Hindus (2.7%), and Buddhists currently enjoy a higher positive public image in Australia than other religious minorities (ABS 2022; Barker and Rocha 2011;Markus 2021;Singleton et al 2021;Weng and Halafoff 2020).…”

Shown by the Marron’s Claw: Ecological Receptivity as Mindful Praxis

“…Whilst the relationship between Asian migrant and first generation Buddhists in Australia is outside the scope of this paper, significant work has been carried out on this topic. SeeHalafoff, Fitzpatrick, and Lam (2012),Halafoff, Garrod, and Gobey (2018),Halafoff et al (2022),Lam (2019),Phillips and Aarons (2005).JOURNAL OF GLOBAL BUDDHISM | Vol. 25 (1), 2024…”