Russian Buddhism, Traditional Values, and the Public Media Sphere

This article is a continuation of the previously published study of the strategies of the Russian-speaking Buddhist community in relation to the Internet and new media and is devoted to the analysis of the public contribution of Buddhist civil initiatives. The complexity of this topic lies in its novelty and extremely weak study through the prism of sociological methodologies. Meanwhile, the transformations of Russian society in the spheres of politics, law, education and religion urgently require from sociologists both new theoretical reflections on the relevance of established research methodologies and new applied studies of the changed reality. The analytical framework of the study was a combination of the concepts of postsecular society by Jürgen Habermas and the "organisational substrate" by Julia Berger. The applied part of the study included expert interviews on the topic of civil Buddhist initiatives in the period of the 1990s-220s. and a case study of two Buddhist non-governmental organisations – the Foundation for the Preservation of Cultural and Philosophical Traditions of Tibetan Buddhism and the Foundation for the Promotion of Buddhist Education and Research. The conducted analysis allowed us to identify the ideational and particular components of the organisational substrate of Buddhist non-governmental organisations. The ideational component of the organisational substrate of both funds is based on the Buddhist regulation of social action as aimed at gaining good merit and bringing benefit to living beings, purification of consciousness. The key vectors of civic activity of Russian lay Buddhists are determined by the particularism of the Buddhist model of dissemination of the teaching (prohibition of missionary work, the Teaching as the Gift of preaching), doctrinal regulation of social activity of lay people and religious professionals, and a civilian model of reproduction of traditional values through Buddhist education. The organisational substrate identified by the authors allowed them to study the main areas of civic initiatives of Russian Buddhists. These, in accordance with the substrate, were the creation of a media niche of traditional Buddhism in the public sphere of Russian society; mediation of relations between traditional Buddhism and the political-legal and scientific-educational subsystems of Russian society. An analysis of the stages of institutionalisation of Buddhist non-governmental organisations showed that the first stage included the formation of a public initiative from below, the second stage covered the construction of a long-term dialogue with the authorities on the problem of reproduction of Buddhist education, and the current, third stage - the consolidation of the Buddhist sangha in the socio-cultural and political-legal context of the Russian Federation.

postsecularism, religious nongovernmental organizations, organizational substrate, Russian Buddhism, public sphere