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With over 90% of Thai citizens identifying as Buddhist, how are Buddhist values communicated to youth? In the past, the temple was the center for learning, where elders taught their grandchildren how to chant and pay respect to monks. But in contemporary Thailand, this system is quickly losing influence. Because of this, a number of strategies have recently developed to communicate Buddhist teachings to Thai youth. This paper investigates two significant strategies: private schools with Buddhist-inspired curricula and media targeted towards Thai youth. The first part of this article focuses on the Buddhist education philosophy of Than Ajahn Jayasaro, who is the spiritual director of two schools in Thailand. The second section highlights the media produced by Phra Maha Wutthichai Vajiramedhi and Phra Maha Sompong Talaphutto, who hope to reach younger generations with relevant topics, which they infuse with Buddhist teachings.

During fieldwork in Ladakh in July–August 2018, three authors from Asian studies, anthropology, and religious studies backgrounds researched “multiple Buddhisms” in Ladakh, India. Two case studies are presented: a Buddhist monastery festival by the Drikung Kagyü Tibetan Buddhist sect, and a Theravada monastic complex, called Mahabodhi International Meditation Center (MIMC). Through the transnational contexts of both of these case studies, we argue that Buddhist leaders adapt their teachings to appeal to specific audiences with the underlying goal of preserving the tradition. The Buddhist monastery festival engages with both the scientific and the magical or mystical elements of Buddhism for two very different European audiences. At MIMC, a secular spirituality mixes with Buddhism for international tourists on a meditation retreat. Finally, at MIMC, Thai Buddhist monks learn how to fight the decline of Buddhism through missionizing Theravada Buddhism in this land dominated by Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. Paying attention to this multiplicity—to “multiple Buddhisms”—we argue, makes space for the complicated, ambiguous, and at times contradictory manner in which Buddhism is positioned in regards to secularism and secularity.

Female non-Buddhists have been writing detailed descriptions of their personal experiences in vipassanā meditation retreats since the 1960s. These memoirists relate to the English-speaking world their experience of the retreat process and self-transformations. Early memoirists traveled Asia in order to learn and practice vipassanā meditation. These memoirs are as much about the meditation practice itself as living in an Asian culture. The mindfulness craze, beginning in the late 2000s, brought with it increased awareness of vipassanā practice. At this time we see a renewed interest in recording vipassanā retreat experiences, but these are even more personal and not concerned with travel, as many vipassanā meditation retreats are now available outside of Asia. I consider four female memoirists: Marie Byles and Jane Hamilton-Smith, writing in the 1960s and 1970s, and Raji Lukkoor, and Jennifer Howd, whose memoirs appeared in 2010 and 2014, respectively. These women’s writings demonstrate that, although non-Buddhist female meditators understand vipassanā meditation as a nongendered practice, it is still an embodied, gendered experience. Each of these women has different reactions to the female gender on the retreat, from outrage at gender discrimination to acceptance of it, from judgment of female teachers and meditators to revealing a more feminine self.