In Part 1, we will explore the Neo-Buddhist Movement.

Yūshi Ono, who was a graduate of Tokyo University and became an IT venture capitalist after working for IBM Japan, has recently become a Buddhist monk by renouncing his total asset of nearly 10 billion yen (over $65 million). His monastic name is Ryūkō 龍光 (meaning “light of dragon”). His story sounds quite similar to Siddhartha’s. This article talks about the Buddhist monk Ryūkō, and his mater Shūrei Sasai 佐々木秀嶺 along with the religious landscape in India.

Religious Landscape in India

Buddhism originated in ancient India and grew after Ashoka adopted it. By the 2nd century CE, Buddhism was widespread in India and had expanded outside of India into Central Asia, East Asia and parts of Southeast Asia. During the Middle Ages, Buddhism slowly declined in India, while it vanished from Persia and Central Asia as Islam became the state religion.

According to Wikipedia Randall Collins says that Buddhism was already declining in India by the 12th century, but with the pillage by Muslim invaders it nearly became extinct in India. In the 13th century, Buddhist monks in India fled to Tibet to escape Islamic persecution. Efforts to revive Buddhism in India began in the 19th century, such as with the efforts of Sri Lanka Buddhist leader Anagarika Dharmapala who founded the Maha Bodhi Society. The Maha Bodhi Society, according to Bhagwan Das, was not a Dalit movement however, because it mainly attracted upper-caste Hindus to Buddhism.

Pew Research Center (June 2021) states that Indians say it is important to respect all religions, but major religious groups see little in common and want to live separately. More than 70 years after India became free from colonial rule, Indians generally feel their country has lived up to one of its post-independence ideals: a society where followers of many religions can live and practice freely. India’s massive population is diverse as well as devout. Not only do most of the world’s Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs live in India, but it also is home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations and to millions of Christians and Buddhists.

Anagarika Dharmapala – Buddhist Revival Movement

Anagarika Dharmapala (1864 – 1933) was born as Don David Hewavitharana in Sri Lanka, at that time the British colony of Ceylon. He was raised in the English-speaking middle class of Colombo and was educated in Christian schools run by Anglican missionaries, where he is said to have memorized large portions of the Bible. His family was Buddhist, and he met Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott during their first visit to Ceylon in 1880. In 1884, he was initiated into the Theosophical Society by Colonel Olcott and later accompanied Madame Blavatsky to the headquarters of the society of Adyar, India. She encouraged him to study Pali, the language of the Theravada Buddhist scriptures.

In 1881 he had taken the name Dharmapala, Protector of the Dharma. Prior to the time in Ceylon, the leadership in Buddhism had been provided by monks and kings. Dharmapala established a new role of Buddhist layperson, creating the category of the ‘anagarika’ or wanderer, a layperson who studied texts and mediated, as monks did, but who remained social active in the world, as laypeople did. In 1889 he traveled with Colonel Olcott on his lecture tour of Japan. On a trip to India in 1891, he was shocked to see the state of decay of the great pilgrimage sites of India, all under Hindu control, and most especially Bodhi Gaya, the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment. That same year he founded the Maha Bodhi Society, which called on Buddhists from around the world to work for the restoration of the great sites to Buddhist control, a goal that would only be achieved after his death.

Anagarika Dharmapala managed to spread the word of the Buddha in the West on a scale that had not been attempted before, at a time when colonial powers and their socio-religious ideas were dominating the world. He used the existing tropes and frameworks of the colonizers to revive Buddhism in the public consciousness. He understood that the revival needed to take place within the milieu of his times and used the same tools of the rulers.

He envisioned a world where there would be widespread knowledge of the Buddha’s teaching, with people who dedicated their lives to that mission by living as renunciants and, the upliftment of under privileged people through better healthcare, education and vocational training.

In Part 2, we will explore the Navayāna (New Vehicle).