MEDITATION FIRST... THEN COOKIES. An ethnographic study on a Tibetan Buddhism association in Göteborg, Sweden

Sammanfattning

The paper investigates how Tibetan Buddhism is produced and interpreted in a Swedishassociation run by laypeople. Data has been collected through ethnographic fieldwork usingparticipant observation, and formal and informal interviews as investigative methods. Theessay's main focus is on how Tibetan Buddhism teachings are interpreted in a non-meditationculture (in this case, a Swedish culture) by Buddhist laypeople operating without a dedicatedlama organizing the teachings. Theories of cultural transmission, down-and-up practices, the"making of place" to ease transmission of foreign cultural elements, hybridity, and languages'function in constructing cultural environments are used to analyze the data.Results show that transmission is facilitated by a combination of mix of language, a sense offellowship within the group, and incorporation of domestic, Swedish elements alongside theTibetan aspects. A sense of assisted cultural transmission aids in making foreign conceptscomprehensible for Western Buddhist practitioners.