Buddhism and Ireland - From the Celts to the Counter-Culture and Beyond - Laurence Cox
3. The Two Empires: Ireland in Asia, Asia in Ireland
Buddhism and Ireland - From the Celts to the Counter-Culture and Beyond - Laurence Cox
Laurence Cox [+]
National University of Ireland
Laurence Cox is Director of the MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He is co-editor of Ireland’s New Religious Movements (CSP, 2011), Understanding European Movements (Routledge, 2013) and Marxism and Social Movements (Brill, 2013), and a practising Buddhist.
Description
Ireland became related to Buddhist Asia in new ways, with British global hegemony, and knowledge about Buddhism came to be produced within the social relations of high imperialism. This affected Orientalisms both mainstream and dissident, with the use of the Asian Other to critique the here-and now, and the development of anti-colonial and anti-missionary solidarity. Europeans, and Irish people, started to become Buddhist converts and sympathisers, facing far less severe formal sanctions for this, although informal social costs remained high.