Paper short abstract:

This paper returns an ethnographic account of the contemporary practice of establishing "garden shrines" in Buddhist rural communities in Java. The author investigates how this phenomenon is equally concerned with a new form of religiosity as is with a wider process of neighborhood re-configuration.

Paper long abstract:

Following the surge of nation-wide decentralisation and identity politics, often coloured with ethno-religious discourses, contemporary Indonesian Buddhism has undergone substantial modifications in the process of gaining equal recognition in a socio-religious landscape dominated by Islam and Christianity. The introduction of "garden shrines" in rural Buddhist communities in the island of Java, participates in these larger dynamics. The paper situates this practice within a number of concurrent phenomena partly relating to the internal developments of Indonesian Buddhism itself, partly to the practical concern of community building in the face of a perceived demographic precarity and socio-political subalternity.

The material formation of these new sacred places is intertwined with issues and aspirations that transcend religiosity as they participate in a communal vision that simultaneously aims at revitalizing a specific version of a Javanese ethnic identity. At the same time, this constructed and self-conscious idea of cultural revival is imbued with a very modern and urban idea of village lore and aesthetics. In this way, garden shrines join in a wider reformulation of village life which is not only the mark of a Theravada Buddhist turn in religious ritual and imaginary but encompasses also concepts such as environment-friendliness, community development and leisure/tourist potentiality.