2021 Volume 85 Issue 4 Pages 730-749
What kind of society does the gift of Indian religion imagine/create? With the Thabarwa Meditation Center in Myanmar as a case study, the purpose of this paper is to shed light on the structuring processes of the kind of organization imagined or created through the Buddhist concept of “good deeds.” Firstly, I analyze how the concept of “good deeds” leads to the creation of organizations in terms of the formation of redistribution systems, the social welfarization of the center, the accumulation of interracial people, goods and money, and the spontaneous development of organizational structures. Secondly, I point out that as the concept of “good deeds” is refashioned based on such a transformation of the organization, the meaning of this concept itself is expanding. It is a process of (re) imagining the ideal of the center each time. Therefore, I conclude that the creation of an organization and the pursuit of the concept of “good deeds,” that is, the imagining of an organization, are two aspects of the same phenomenon.
