ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores how certain aspects of modernization are changing Buddhist religious culture within the recent Sri Lankan social experience. He explores briefly two other changing dimensions of religion affected by processes of modernization. The first of these is how religion has been understood within the dynamics of Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict, or the civil war that raged between the early 1980s and 2009. The second is the profound impact of technological change upon the nature and ethos of Buddhist ritual culture. What continues to transpire within these two dimensions (religion in relation to the politics of ethnicity and in relation to technology) of the modernizing process will have profound impact on how Buddhist religious culture is articulated in the twenty-first century. He concludes by commenting on some other trends likely to be of significance in the future.
