Abstract

The Mahāyāna Buddhist worldview, grounded in the principles of compassion, interdependence, and the transformation of consciousness, represents a significant cultural resource for analyzing social change in Central Asia. This study examines how philosophical and practical elements of Mahāyāna are perceived and adapted within the contemporary societies of the five republics of the region — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

Furthermore, the Mahāyāna tradition is shaped by the depth of its philosophical foundations, particularly the doctrines of emptiness (śūnyatā) and dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda). These concepts provide the intellectual architecture that sustains its spiritual vision of the bodhisattva, understood as a heroic archetype of compassion and responsibility. In the Central Asian context, the bodhisattva figure may be interpreted not merely as a religious path, but as a robust cultural model of ethical engagement and social responsibility. This study seeks to examine how the bodhisattva ideal contributes to reconfiguring the understanding of modern humanity within the post-secular framework, offering new perspectives on identity, relational subjectivity, and the negotiation of tradition and modernity.

The research is currently in progress as part of the doctoral dissertation “The Mahayana Buddhist Worldview in the Socio-Cultural Space of Central Asia: Social and Philosophical Aspects”. It aims to reconsider the role of Buddhist philosophy — and the bodhisattva ideal in particular — in processes of cultural adaptation and modernization in Central Eurasia.