How an exploration of Buddhists' forays into politics led to some surprising discoveries

The idea for the piece that became this week's cover story on Buddhist political activism came to me last fall, when I traveled to Southeast Asia to report on the monk-led "Saffron Revolution" in Burma (also known as Myanmar). The fact that Buddhist monks had decided to put themselves at the head of a Burmese opposition movement against the military junta in their country was intriguing. Because the government was refusing visas to journalists, I ended up doing much of the
reporting out of Bangkok, and along the way I also found myself fascinated by the situation in Thailand, where Buddhism has become an increasingly assertive political force in recent years.

Most people outside of the region probably don't tend to think of Buddhism as a political religion. When westerners think of Buddhists, the image that probably comes to mind most readily involves people sitting in the lotus position, calmly meditating in some blissful spot far-removed from the daily tumult of ordinary life. As one leading scholar, Ian Harris at the UK's University of Cumbria, put it to me, "This idea of the monk withdrawn in contemplation is to some extent an Orientalist construction," a cliché indulged by naïve Westerners. Buddhists, he pointed out, have always been deeply involved in the societies in which they live. In medieval times some served as close advisers to kings, while others fought injustice as warriors. In Southeast Asia monks played a major role in decolonization movements after World War II. Nor are Buddhists always noble oppositionists. In Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam Buddhist clergies are tightly subordinate to local governments, and few among the faithful seem visibly disturbed by the idea. "Monks are people, too," notes Thomas Borchert of the University of Vermont. "They're religion specialists but they're citizens. They may not be able to perform politics in quite the same way as other people, but they're still citizens."

And Buddhism, as a faith struggling to contend with the vagaries of twenty-first century life, is finding itself subject to many of the same pressures as other religions: globalization, and the rapid spread of values, information, and money that goes along with it, is challenging traditional beliefs in Buddhist cultures just as elsewhere. "Buddhist monks have to somehow come to terms with rapid changes," says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, one of Thailand's leading political analysts. "Some monks carry mobile phones; lots of monks sleep now in air-conditioned monasteries. This is not just Buddhism. You have a lot of religions that have fundamental beliefs challenged by modernity." Last November a Thai bank proposed an "e-merit-making service," offering users convenient, Internet-assisted ways to make donations to their favorite Buddhist cause and thereby reap a bit of positive karma. Thailand now has thousands of Buddhist websites.

Some believers adapt; others react. Buddhist political activists in places as varied as Thailand, Taiwan, India and Sri Lanka often explain their need to get involved in worldly concerns with arguments that are strikingly reminiscent of those used by Christian, Jewish, or Islamic fundamentalists. In this video documentary by Al Jazeera's English service, you can see Champika Ranawaka, the radical Sri Lankan Buddhist nationalist leader, explaining why he believes that the West is engaged in a conspiracy to subjugate Sri Lanka and wipe out its Buddhist traditions. Many of those Buddhists who took to the streets in Thailand in 2006 to oppose Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra did so as a way of rejecting the threateningly western values he seemed to represent. Shinwatra's camp, meanwhile, has been doing its best to recruit other Buddhists to its own cause as a way of shoring up its nationalist bona fides.

Of course, Buddhism is not "just another religion." It has its own specific histories, traditions, and problems. One of the most fascinating developments at the moment is the rising appeal of Tibetan Buddhist ideas among the ethnic majority Han Chinese of the People's Republic. Most Han Chinese belong to the traditional Pure Land or Zen schools of their religion; for a variety of reasons, say experts, the politics associated with these flavors of Chinese Buddhism tends to be politically conservative, beholden to the state. Yet the esoteric Tibetan version of the religion is making notable inroads among non-Tibetan Chinese. Non-Tibetans tend to be fascinated by Tibetan Buddhists' claims that their faith has a powerful and perceptible effect on their lives. When the Beijing authorities razed an unsanctioned Tibetan Buddhist academy in Sichuan province in 2001, they were shocked to discover 1500 Han Chinese monks and nuns in attendance. Hu Jia, the 34-year-old Beijing dissident arrested in December, wasn't only an environmental activist and critic of the central government; he was also a Han Buddhist follower of the Dalai Lama, a vegetarian whose politics has been strongly influenced by his religious beliefs.

Even the Tibetans – those apostles of cultural purity – are changing. Look for the Dalai Lama to get a bit more assertive in his dealings with Beijing in the run-up to this year's Olympic Games. Experts say that the Dalai and his aides are disillusioned with the back-channel talks that they've been pursuing with China's communist government in the hope of arriving at some sort of autonomy deal that would lighten the load of Chinese rule over the beleaguered Tibetans. Watch this space, in short.