Buddhist Vernaculars: Anthropology of Buddhism and the Problem of Orthodoxy in Buddhist Studies

What might lay-Sri Lankan Buddhists who engage in charitable giving to the poor as merit-making practice and American convert-Buddhists who engage in mindfulness practice to explore racialized dukkha share in common? They both consist of Buddhists practicing the Theravada tradition in vernaculars that depart widely from the normative philological evaluative take on what does and does not constitute “real” Theravada Buddhism. Thinking comparatively on ethnographic research conducted in these widely different socio-historical contexts, this paper explores how as an anthropologist, the Buddhist social life exemplified by these two contemporary case-studies— often relegated to the marginalia of what counts as real Buddhism—surface an important problem in the field of Buddhist Studies. Namely, the tendency to judge contemporary Buddhist vernaculars against a canonically based conception of orthodoxy. On a more personal note, the paper also explores the complexities of being an ethnographer and a native “Buddhist” studying contemporary Buddhist marginalia.