Negotiating Self and Other. Transnational Cultural Flows and the Reinvention of Mongolian Buddhism

Abstract

The article examines processes of constructing self and other in the context of the Buddhist revival in Mongolia. The text figures a historical outline of the genesis of the connections between Mongolian and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as the developments during the Communist era, when there was a strong influence on and against Buddhism in Mongolia. The present revival of Buddhism in Mongolia since 1990 restores ancient connections between the Mongolian and the Tibetan Buddhist communities, the latter having been globalized since 1959, when the larger part of the Tibetan clergy went into exile in India and later to different Western countries. Thus a deterritorialised worldwide Buddhist community was generated, within which resources such as ideas, people, and money have been circulating. These transnational cultural flows foster the postsocialist revival of Mongolian Buddhism, bringing back traditional Buddhist knowledge as well as practices of establishing Buddhism in modern societies. The article examines how these cultural flows are integrated into Mongolian identity on the one hand and rejected as foreign influences threatening the uniqueness of Mongolian Buddhist identity on the other.