Buddhist Practice in Southeast Asia

Abstract This chapter explores Buddhist practice in Southeast Asia, with a focus on practice in the Theravada branch of Buddhism found in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. The first half surveys the religio-historical geography of Southeast Asia and contemporary practices found in Theravada Buddhist cultures. The second half then explores important issues in the study of Theravada Buddhist practice, including the appropriateness of the term “Theravada,” the relationship between Theravada Buddhism and other religious practices, “Tantric Theravada,” and the encounter between Theravada Buddhism and modernity. This inquiry into Southeast Asian Buddhist practice is situated within a theoretical framework that recognizes the distortion that has been wrought for many years by a modernist construction of the Buddhist tradition that conflates “Theravada Buddhism” with “early Buddhism.”