Such is the conventional story of Theravada Buddhist modernism, but Justin McDaniel, the author of Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words: Histories of Buddhist Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand, is not having it, or at least, he is not having all of it. They sought to proselytise a rational worldview that even today sees Buddhism as compatible with Western science. Many indigenous Buddhist thinkers were intent on eliminating superstitious elements from the religion. The impulse was fundamentalist, a return to orthodoxy and the Buddhist canon. Across the region, including Ceylon, the encounter with Western travellers, diplomats and missionaries provoked a re-examination of monastic practice rather than doctrine. Cambodian Buddhism experienced similar changes under French colonial rule, drawing inspiration from what was taking place in Siam. The same process began in Siam in the middle of the nineteenth century and continued into the early twentieth with new curricula for the education of monks. In Burma reform started in the late eighteenth century with the enforcement of strict ordinations and the strengthening of an ecclesiastical hierarchy. Reform of Theravada Buddhism occurred in different parts of Southeast Asia in different circumstances at different times. Seattle and London, University of Washington Press, 2008.
Justin Thomas McDaniel, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words: Histories of Buddhist Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand.
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