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What happens when ancient Eastern spiritual practices gain following among modern Westerners? Tibetan Buddhism reached spiritual seekers of Europe and North America after it had been cultivated in virtual seclusion for many centuries.

In her interdisciplinary dissertation, Maria Sharapan studies how religious and cultural elements and meanings of Tibetan Buddhism are negotiated in the new global interconnected environment. Her analysis is based on online forum discussions of an educational program in Tibetan Buddhism, as well as interviews with students and teachers of Tibetan Buddhism in Finland. Looking into this paradoxical phenomenon, she offers insights into the process of construction of a new referential framework, “culture”, and the actual factors involved in this process.

A new old religion

Buddhism first started to penetrate the minds of Western intellectuals during the times of Enlightenment. This encounter was influenced by the colonial and post-colonial negotiation of Buddhism’s meanings, ideals and goals, taking place between Asian and Western intellectuals of the 19^th, early 20^th centuries. But Tibet was still closed to travelers at the time, and for Western intellectuals its religion was mainly a subject of various fantasies and fabrications. However, after the Maoist invasion of Tibet, the refugees, including the Dalai Lama XIV, started re-establishing their religion in new countries and actively welcoming pale-skinned converts.

Reaching Europe and North America, the religion, steeped in pre-modern narratives and foreign décor, attracted highly educated middle class citizens, intellectuals and even celebrities of the time. Many organizations and temples were created, both as manifestations of Tibetan Buddhist culture and as vibrant communities of spiritual seekers. According to Maria Sharapan, nowadays, the religion is no longer limited or conditioned by geographical factors, but instead represents clusters of globally connected organizations, whose spread relies on economic and political accessibility, rather than on physical proximity.

When will we see the Western Buddhism?

There has been a lot of anticipation or straightforward calls in popular and academic literature to create a new, updated version of Buddhism, now that it reached Western audiences. There is still a lot of research looking into new, Western, American Buddhism, based on an intuition that the cultural differences between the West and the Eastern religion would be an obstacle for people to adopt a Buddhist practice. “Having analyzed seven years of forum discussions, and a total of 21 interviews with both students and traditionally trained teachers, from the perspective of Intercultural Communication, I can say there is little ground for such assumptions”, says Maria Sharapan.

The mediated and interconnected world we live in nowadays allows for small communities to form considerable entities with their own meanings, elements, narratives and reference framework (i.e. “culture”). “These communities are connected online, but at the same time, very embodied, particularly when it comes to Tibetan Buddhism, which puts so much emphasis on ritual, art, real time presence and personal relationships among students and teachers”, Maria says. Another important factor at play is the exposure to foreign elements and concepts, allowed by information and communication technologies and popular culture. “Westerners are more familiar with things they perceive as Eastern than they think they are, and the modern East is also modernized and globalized, so in a sense, the opposition seems more imagined than objective”, she adds.

Future directions

Maria Sharapan sees the research on Buddhism in the West going more and more in the direction of global mediated organizations and their meanings, as they manifest in the online space or in specific countries. As for Tibetan Buddhism, she comments: “If things are not changing as we expect them to, it doesn’t mean they don’t change at all”. According to her, Tibetan Buddhist organizations and teachers, regardless of whether Western or Eastern, should be moving towards a greater transparency and inclusion and away from any form of othering. This co-constructed development is of great need voiced directly or indirectly by many students, and there is no obstacle to it within the religion itself.

FM Maria Sharapan defends her doctoral dissertation in Intercultural Communication "Transculturation of Tibetan Buddhism: adoption or adaption?" on 26.11.2021 at 13 in the lecture hall H320. Opponent is associate professor Jørn Borup (Aarhus University) and Custos is associate professor Marko Siitonen (Ģ��ֱ��).

Publication:

The public examination event can be attended also online. The link to the event is 

The audience can ask questions at the end of the event by calling the custos at +358405767861

Further information:

Maria Sharapan, masharap@jyu.fi +358400800689

Communications Specialist Anitta Kananen, anitta.kananen@jyu.fi, tel. +358 40 8461395