We would like to begin this brief introduction with an anecdote, which we believe will be illustrative of the importance of the studies contained in this special issue of the Journal of Dharma Studies. When, in late January of this year, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) a public health emergency of international concern, the ways that Buddhist monastic communities in and around Kathmandu, Nepal, responded were consistent with the public health protocols of most secular institutions at the time: the compulsory use of masks, hand-sanitizing, and temperature-taking at entry points, as well as total closure monastic facilities to the public—a measure that seemed drastic at the time. However, alongside these measures, there was a distinctly religious and ritual response to pandemic: the coordination of massive pūjās at the Boudhanath stūpa, often sponsored by wealthy international donors, conducted to avert the further spread of the virus both locally and globally, as well as the dispensation and circulation of protective amulets by Tibetan medical institutions. Buddhists monastic communities in Kathmandu thus availed themselves of all the resources at their disposal: evidence-based public health practices which we might identify as “scientific” as well ritual and contemplative practices which we might construe as “religious.”
