ABSTRACT

This chapter considers how studying the variations among Buddhist traditions might benefit from the application of remix theory and the adoption of concepts like remix, recyclability, and versioning. The application of concepts like remix, recyclability, and versioning to the development of religious traditions uniquely reflects the digital age as they specifically signal its communicative and consumptive sensibilities, and how those sensibilities shape conceptions and cultural interactions. Considering archives in this context as remixed collections of history and cultural heritage can help inform, the variations on schools of thought and practice among diverse iterations all commonly referred to as Buddhism, along with the overall drive to remix source material in new ways to create unique versions of Buddhist thought and practice. The chapter describes the framing in the study of religion to consider the content of religious traditions as sets of data corresponding to particular archival material in respective databases subject to being sampled and remixed over time through different iterations.