Alexander Soucy is currently the Chair of the Religious Studies department, and Associate Professor of the Religious Studies Department, at Saint Mary's University. He is the author of The Buddha Side: Gender, Power, and Buddhist Practice in Vietnam (University of Hawai'i Press, 2012) and several articles on Vietnamese Buddhism and Gender. He also co-edited, with John Harding and Victor Hori, Wild Geese: Buddhism in Canada (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010) and Flowers on the Rock: Global and Local Buddhisms in Canada (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014), and has published several essays on Buddhism in Canada, particularly relating to Vietnamese Buddhism. He has been active in promoting the study of Buddhism in Canada by organizing conferences and conference panels on the subject. His most recent work has been looking at transnational Vietnamese Buddhism and the rising popularity of Zen in Vietnam. Address: Department of Religious Studies, Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 3C3 Canada. E-mail:
關鍵詞
Monasteries; Buddha (The Concept); Buddhist Doctrines; Church Property; Vietnamese Canadians
摘要
The Great Pine Forest Monastery was established in the Laurentian Mountains, north of Montreal, by the Union of Vietnamese Buddhist Churches in Canada in 1988. Its establishment represented, in the minds of the founders, the localization of Vietnamese Buddhism to Canadian soil. The process has, however, been a difficult one and the new acting leader of the monastery is not always optimistic that Buddhism can flourish in Canada, with particular concerns about second and third generation Vietnamese Canadians. This paper will look at the difficult navigation between tradition and adaptation that this Vietnamese Buddhist organization is undergoing, with a particular focus on the obstacles that have emerged for the development of a monastic sangha in Canada.
目次
The setting: the Great Pine Forest Monastery 374 The growing pains of Chua Tam Bảo 376 Monasticism in Canada 379 Western monks 380 Recruiting from the diaspora 381 Importing monastics 384 Retaining monks 385 Conclusion 386 Notes 388 References 391
