Dr. Elsa Ngar-sze Lau - Pilgrimage, Traveling Gurus and Transnational Networks: Lay Meditation Movement in China

Modern and Contemporary Buddhist Encounters in the Southern Sinosphere

Institute for the Study of Humanistic Buddhism (ISHB), University of the West

Elsa Ngar-sze Lau - Education University of Hong Kong, HKSAR

Transnational religious networks developed through migration and diaspora have been well discussed. However, in the past few decades, there are growing religious transnational networks developed not by migrants, but by pilgrims and travelling gurus. Since the 1960s, some Westerners have travelled to Southeast Asia to learn meditation and then returned to the West to become meditation teachers. They also invited well-known meditation teachers to travel to the United States from Asia to lead meditation retreats. The movement of transnational lay meditation and later secular mindfulness have been flourished in the West. In the past two decades, Chinese traveling to learn meditation in Southeast Asian Buddhist countries have impacted the growth of transnational meditation practices in mainland China. There has…