Transnational Religious Place-Making: Sri Lankan Migrants’ Physical and Virtual Buddhist Places in South Korea

Introduction

This article looks at the process of transnational religious place-making in the case of Buddhist temples, ¹ a physical one and a virtual one, attended by Sri Lankan migrants in South Korea. Transnational religious place-making refers to practices of creating a physical or virtual place to forge a transnational collective identity, which involves an attachment to both departure point and destination, based on religious faith and cultural similarity. This research asks if virtual spaces enhance, modify, and complement the experience of place-making in physical spaces. It focuses on how a network of various transnational actors came to be involved in transnational religious place-making. Tracing how such physical and virtual temples were created and developed, the study uses the theoretical framework of “transnational religious place-making.” Transnational migrants’ religion has become increasingly important in the cultural geographies of religion. It uses mixed ethnographic research methods including participant observations, in-depth interviews, informal interviews, site visits, and archival analysis. This study contributes to the understanding of geographies of religion that recognizes the everyday embeddedness of mobilities.

Our empirical case focuses on the process during which Sri Lankan migrants living in South Korea developed their Buddhist network and built a physical temple and a virtual temple dedicated to Mahamevnawa Asapuwa ² , a Buddhist denomination. The physical temple was established in 2012 and located in Ansan, where a large number of Sri Lankan migrant workers were concentrated. Those migrants’ Buddhist practices consist of both physical and virtual rituals. At 8 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, people get together in the physical temple in Ansan, and at the same time, a virtual temple connects Sri Lankan migrants in Japan, Netherland, Dubai, Italy, United States, United Kingdom, and several cities in Korea. In the physical temple, people offer flowers, candles, fresh water, and other drinks like fruits juice in worship to a Buddha statute, rituals that form important parts of the practice of Theravada. Participants in the virtual temple shared the part of offering flowers, candles, and drinks via Skype. The monk in the physical temple preaches to people about the five precepts, ³ guiding the people to worship while chatting. During the teaching time that follows, people in the virtual temple ask Buddhist questions, and the monk answers them, while people in the physical temple listen to questions and answers from a speaker. A meditation session follows by means of the monk’s instructions. Besides this joint ritual, the physical temple has a regular ritual at 8 p.m. every day and on one Sunday per month.

The case of this study links the transnational approach and place-making. We ask the following: How is transnational religious place-making developed through a transnational network? Our empirical findings illustrates, first, that religious place-making on the part of Sri Lankan migrant has involved key actors including Sri Lankan migrant workers in South Korea, the main Asapuwa temple in Sri Lanka, a Sri Lankan ambassador, Sri Lankan Buddhist monks who reside in South Korea, and Korean Buddhist temples. Negotiation and collaboration among migrant workers with the South Korean Buddhist temple, the Ansan Asapuwa, and the Sri Lankan embassy in particular have played a critical role in place-making. Second, the virtual temple has complemented and interacted with physical Buddhist places. The virtual Buddhist ritual and discussion that Sri Lankan migrants have had with a monk in the United States developed into Buddhist conversations, preaching sessions via Skype with Sri Lankan migrants in various cities of South Korea, and later expanded through personal networks to including Sri Lankan migrants living in various countries.

In making the above arguments, the rest of the article is organized as follows. In the literature review, we critically look at previous studies on migrants’ religious place-making in contemporary contexts. We then briefly discuss our research methods and introduce the case of Asapuwa in South Korea. For findings, we analyze the process through which the Ansan Asapuwa temple and virtual temple were created. We focus on the negotiations that the core group of Sri Lankan migrants have had with other Korean, Sri Lankan, and other international actors. We also discuss how the transnational network for religious place-making has developed through online activities as these evolved into a virtual temple. The conclusion discusses the transition of transnational religious place-making into a period of new mobilities and networks.

Transnational Religious Place-Making in Geographies of Religion

Geographies of religion have contributed to the understanding of the correlated relations between religion and place. Tweed (2009, p. 59) has argued that “religion is about finding a place and moving across space,” being performed and surviving by being in places. Such an association has been based on ideas of place as a conduit for being in the world (Leighly, 1977; Tuan, 1976, 1977, 2013). Cultural geographers have developed close associations with the geography of religion and shared interests in the political symbolism of religious places (Kong, 1990) and in ethnic identities as they surround religious place (Fridolfsson & Elander, 2013; Nagar, 1997). Geographies of religion have paid a special attention to religious places as where social groups experience membership based on their specific moral or spiritual codes and/or marginalization in the mainstream society (Stepick, 2005). Religious places have cultural and religious meaning through material infrastructure, cultural attributes such as ritual, fashion, and ways of social behavior.

“Transnational religious place” has received special attention from sociology, geography, immigrant studies, anthropology, and gender studies. Religious places such as Buddhist temples and Christian churches have held particular importance in the spiritual life of transnational communities. Transnational religious places have been part of the spatial strategies that migrants have developed in constructing local collective identities and claims to belonging (Veronis, 2007). Places of worship for these immigrants become spaces of belonging and exclusivity (Leonard, Stepick, Vasquez, & Holdaway, 2006; Orsi, 1999), often becoming a community center (Chacko, 2003; Ehrkamp & Nagel, 2012), where migrants get together, share their identity, and help each other for the purposes of work, housing, and medical concerns. Previous studies have focused on the impact of migration on people’s beliefs, symbolic function of religious place (Colfer, 2015), levels of religious involvement, place attachment (Mazumdar & Mazumdar, 2004), and the impact of migration on religious landscapes (Kong, 2010).

Postsecular geographies (Gökarıksel & Secor, 2015) scholars, including Kong (2013), have argued that modernization, urbanization, capitalism, and technological development have not weakened religion, but rather reinforced and restructured it. Those previous studies have embraced social changes and recently paid special attention to the religious practices of transnational migrants, religion in motion that includes the movement of religion and migrants’ religion (Kong, 1990; Ley, 2003, 2008), cultural symbolism in urban landscapes, and the association between religious landscapes and other cultural landscapes (Chu, 2012). The religious demands of floating believers and migrants have argued that religious place is fluid and constantly changing (Colfer, 2015), challenging the notion of religious place as “traditionally treated as static or fixed entities and privilege institutional, rather than personal, spatialities of religion” (Wigley, 2016, p. i).

Transnational migrants as an important driver of the travelling religion in motion carry objects, rituals, faith, symbolic value, and meaning (Landau, 2014; Wong & Levitt, 2014). Migrants adopt religious strategies to adapt to new environments (Sadouni, 2014), or their religious practices find ways of compromising social norms in both departure and destination societies (Landau, 2014). Migration becomes a “theologizing experience" by encouraging migrants to question about fundamental questions about their identities (Smith, 1978, p. 1175; see also Staeheli et al., 2012).

Previous studies on transnational migrants’ religion have focused on the effect of religion on communal identities, how religion can both constrain and empower migrant believers, and the role of religious places in transnational communities (Handlin, 2002; Kong, 2010; Williams, 2008). Despite the contribution, however, the contextual process of place-making has not received enough attention. Nor has the nature of the process in that it has become substantially different because of increased mobilities and the development of communicative technology. This study fills these gaps by highlighting place-making in both physical and virtual modes. Cultural geographies have had a long tradition of ethnic enclave, religious place, and place-making research (Bugg, 2013; Hume, 2015; Trudeau, 2006). While the process of place-making (McCann, 2002) and various actors’ roles have been actively discussed, mainly in policy-related development projects (Abramson, 2011), “religious place-making,” however, has not received enough attention.

Religious place-making, while it is important to note that the practices of different faiths have different aims, amounts to attempts to reclaim both a physical and a symbolic centrality through collective performance (Garbin, 2014). Transnational religious place-making is an attempt to maintain spiritual links with homelands and consists of a tool for securing a minority’s adaptive strategies (Sadouni, 2014). It is a religious territorialization that links departure and destination societies as well as other meaningful sites (Garbin, 2014) and a practice of shaping a society according to migrants’ specific moral or spiritual codes (Ehrkamp & Nagel, 2012; Stepick, 2005). Not only the use but also the production of transnational space for the purpose of communal and social life has played a critical role in their identity maintenance and settlement at the same time (Williams, 2011).

Migrants’ religious places have been treated as given rather than as constructed and negotiated among actors. Flows of networks should be noted because place-making is not only about dwelling, mapping, building, and inhabiting but also crossing, as they are connected with mobility, and particularly with journeys and circulation (Vásquez & Knott, 2014). Especially as communication technologies have developed and people’s mobilities have increased dramatically (Hannam, Sheller, & Urry, 2006; Larsen, Urry, & Axhausen. 2016; Sheller, 2007; Urry, 2002), approaches to place in more relational, contested, cultural, and mobile ways have developed (Wigley, 2016). As Jirón, Imilan, and Iturra (2016) have suggested, we have seen the emergence of mobile place-making, a new form of creating places, which is significant in people’s lives.

New geographies of religion (Kong, 2001) focus on virtual place-making mediated by cyber-religious networks (Ostrowski, 2006). Migrants transnationalize daily religious practice and expand global religious institutions that exist in the space of flows (Yang & Ebaugh, 2001) in daily contact with their sending to country partners via the Internet (Miller & Slater, 2000). The development, enhancement, and mediation of religious experience takes place in cyberspace, including by means of specific forms of Internet technology such as social media, e-mails, Skype, religious webpages, and online communities (Aarset, 2016; Kong, 2001; Silk, 1999). An increasing number of studies realize the transformative possibilities in religious practices brought about by electronic space. Taylor has argued that in the new internationalized space of flows, importance is attached to an abstract space with interconnected electronic nodes or grids and virtual reality (Taylor, 2003, 2008). The interaction and dialectic development between physical religious place and virtual religious place, however, has not received enough attention, while the importance of the virtual religious place has increased significantly.

To fill the gap in the literature through the case of this study, we suggest that the process of negotiation on and construction of transnational religious place-making relies significantly on a transnational network of various actors, including migrants. Rituals performed in migrants’ temples relate to wider networks formed through the transnational circulation of ritual objects, practitioners, and donations (Dean, 2015). ⁴ Previous studies on transnational place-making argue that various actors and their networks are essential parts of community formation (Dyck, 2005; McCann, 2002; Pierce, Martin, & Murphy, 2011; Wu, 2000). Key actors’ activities provide important information on the power relations (Kong, 2010) in which migrants, their receiving society, their sending society, and members of other societies form their relations and daily lives. Despite the importance of actor-oriented approach in transnational religious place-making, only a few studies (e.g., see Tavory, 2010) have taken a close look at the specific contexts of actors’ activities.

The Internet is embedded in complex social arrangements, both online and offline (Hine, 2000). International religious practices via online mediation makes an interesting case of a placeless space of worship, in the context of global Buddhism (Baumann, 2001). Cyber-Buddhism (Dawson, 2005; Featherstone & Burrows, 1995; Smith, 2012; Taylor, 2003), which has created “new frontiers” (Jones, 1994) of the religious imagination, has emerged as a response to the needs of an increasingly mobile, Internet network-based, and transnational social order. There is no indication that a net community will replace a monastic community (Taylor, 2003). While migrants in the case of this study overcome distance and support each other by virtual religious place-making, conventional religious places play the roles of nodes, through which the transitional network is localized and, at the same time, of virtual religious place as it further develops. It is clear that cyberspace (in particular, the net), as part of wider social structures, is increasingly becoming contested (Soja, 2000).

Research Design

The selection of the case, of place-making by Sri Lankan migrants, was based on the dominance of Christianity in previous studies on South Korea and the lack of attention to Sri Lankan migrants in the country. The case this particular denomination, Asapuwa shows the characteristics of transnational religion and virtual Buddhism.

The focus of our fieldwork lay in the grounded aspects of how the making of the Ansan Asapuwa temple and the virtual temple was carried out. The time scope of the study was 2007-2015, while our concentrated fieldwork was conducted between July 2015 and May 2016. During this period, both online and offline temples were developed. We cross-examined various sources out of participant observations of weekly online rituals and several time visits to the physical temple, site visits, and semistructured in-depth interviews. The first author, who is able to speak Sinhala, a Sri Lankan language, has had opportunities to closely observe the inside dynamics. The selection of the interviewees was based on her human resources from this participation and on snowball methods by asking people who thought to be the key actors participating in the process of place-making. Interview questions included who initiated the place-making, who made a Buddhist group, Shrawakadaruwo, how they got connected to online Buddhism, who led each activity, and what kinds of incentives and conflicting interests different actors carried. We analyzed the interview results in interpretative ways, focusing on which individuals, groups, and networks have participated in the making of the transnational religious place-making over time.

Case Introduction: Making the Ansan Asapuwa

There are around 30,000 Sri Lankan migrant workers in South Korea, with a substantial influx starting as of 2004. The majority are male workers; there are only around 300 female workers. Sri Lankan migrant workers are able to get a 3-year working visa to work in South Korea. It is possible for them to extend the visa for another year and a half if they go back to Sri Lanka and come back again, if they work in the same place and the owner of the company agrees to extend the visa. The migrants are concentrated in Ansan, an urban area located near Seoul that has received a great number of transnational migrant workers. The activities of the Buddhist place-making took place in Ansan and led to the creation of a temple, Ansan Asapuwa.

The temple has approximately 70 members and 2 residential Buddhist monks. Figure 1 and the explanations refer to the chronological development of both online and offline activities.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The history of Sri Lankan Buddhism in Ansan, South Korea.

There are three stages in the history of the temple. In the first stage, in 2009, four Sri Lankan migrant workers formed a group, the Shrawakadaruwoo Ekamuthuwa meaning Buddha’s children group (Shrawakadaruwoo, hereafter; Figure 2). Because they did not have any monk, it was hard for them contemplate doing something more substantial collectively. One of them knew the first Sri Lankan monk practicing in Korea, ⁵ Ven. Wachitsara, who recognized that they were carrying out their practices in accordance with the Mahamevnawa teaching. Ven. Wachitsara assisted the members of Shrawakadaruwoo to practice religious activities at this stage.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Created Shrawakadaruwoo Ekamuthuwa group.

The second stage of the Ansan Asapuwa creation was marked by the Skype program that they began with the guidance of a monk, Ven. Mangala Thero in 2010. Ven. Mangala Thero, was a monk attached to a different Theravada Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka but still had relationship with the Sri Lanka Mahamevnawa Asapuwa (Figure 3). He was aware of the Mahamevnawa Buddhist practice and, at the same time, he had personal relationships with the monks in the Sri Lankan Mahamevnawa Asapuwa and the Mahamevnawa foreign monasteries. The initial members networked with other migrant workers, and Ven. Mangala Thero’s networking with the Mahamevnawa foreign monasteries created mobile religious spaces within South Korea and, at the same time, an online space which eventually led to creating the Ansan Asapuwa temple in 2013. This has given them the opportunity to network with other Mahamevnawa monasteries and, reflecting back, this also strengthened them in informally recognizing them as practitioners of Mahamevnawa practices.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Shrawakadaruwoo group start the virtual temple (Skype-based program).

The third stage of creating the Ansan Asapuwa depended on the visit of Ven. Kiribathgoda Gnanananda Thero, the founder of the Mahamevnawa Buddhist Monastery, in 2012. Until then, Shrawakadaruwoo had been an independent body without a connection to the Mahamevnawa monastery, though they had received spiritual guidance, like learning about Buddhist practices, and mediation from other Sri Lankan monks who have resided in South Korea. The relationship was mutual and there was assistance provided to one another. While this monk helped Shrawakadaruwoo with their religious practices, members of Shrawakadaruwoo helped this monk financially when he moved to his own temple and also assisted by means of their own labor in the process of building it. The founder’s visit let Shrawakadaruwoo formally create and recognize practices similar to those of Mahamevnawa despite the fact that they had not yet made any formal contact or connection with the Sri Lankan Mahamevnawa Asapuwa because they did not have a monk from the Sri Lanka Mahamevnawa Asapuwa. When the Mahamevnawa founder came to South Korea, it happened by the mediation of Ven. Wachitsara, who introduced Shrawakadaruwoo as a group of young Sri Lankan migrant workers who were adhering to Mahamevnawa practices, creating a formal connection between the two entities. The Ansan Asapuwa temple, after being established in 2014, has guided and coordinated new Asapuwa programs outside of Ansan (Figure 4). The place is located in a commercial building, so did not have typical physical features of religion. The interiors were similar to Sri Lankan Buddhist temple, with curtains sent from the main Asapuwa at Sri Lanka. The Asapuwa is located in a very small place with three small rooms, kitchen and living area and two bath rooms. They have converted the living area into main ritual practicing area by locating a statue of Buddha brought from Sri Lanka, and a small replica of the Stupa (a mound-like or hemispherical structure containing relics—śarīra—typically the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns) and a small Bodhi plant. In 2016, it rented an improved place, moved to a different location, innovated the place, and decorated.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

Shrawakadaruwoo establishes South Korean Mahamevnawa Asapuwa in Ansan, South Korea, physical temple.

Now the contextualized process of transnational religious place-making and the roles and the activities of key actors during the process are discussed, in the next section.

Network of Transnational Religious Place-Making

Transnational religious place-making can be understood as an intersection through which religious practice, leadership, and professional and personal networks worldwide encounter one another. While the collaboration in this case led to the creation of a place where migrants can have religious rituals, communal leadership and international networks played a critical role and developed further at later stages. When Sri Lankan migrants looked for a way in which they could remain spiritual, the links with their theology, Buddhism and that of their homelands, were developed by transnational actors. Through the flow networks of transnational actors including Sri Lankan Buddhists who lived in Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Dubai, India as well as Sri Lanka, their Buddhism has developed in mobile and transnational ways. South Korean Buddhists have also partially constituted the transnational network for religious place-making. Each key actor has contributed to the place-making as in Figure 5, which presents the making of the Ansan Asapuwa in terms of the physical place of the Buddhist temple, as well as the network, in terms of the key actors of the Ansan Asapuwa place-making.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 5.

The transnational Buddhist place-making of the Ansan Asapuwa.

First, Sri Lankan migrant workers played a critical role in bringing to fruition bottom-up methods of religious place-making for both the physical and virtual temple. Especially those who lived in cities other than Ansan participated in virtual temple because they could not easily access the physical one. Rather than Korean Buddhists or Sri Lankan Buddhists in Sri Lanka, migrant workers initiated the temple by establishing Shrawakadaruwoo. The four founders, Sri Lankan migrant workers, happened to experience the Main Asapuwa at Sri Lanka and the teachings of the main monk of that Asapuwa. After migrating to South Korea, they met in Ansan and shared a common interest in finding an alternative lifestyle to that of a secular one in South Korea, and thus improve their spiritual life. They created Shrawakadaruwoo with the support of a Sri Lankan monk who at that time resided in Daegu, South Korea. Though this monk did not belong to the Sri Lankan Asapuwa, he appreciated the methods practiced by the Sri Lankan Asapuwa because of his personal connection with the founder of the Mahamevnawa Asapuwa in Sri Lanka.

Part of the reason why those migrant workers played such a critical role seemed to be spiritual disciplines of the Asapuwa Buddhism. Sri Lankan migrant worker interviewees stated that, besides keeping their identity, pride, distinction, and discipline, this form of Buddhism stopped them from being tempted to drink and other secular misbehaviors that they could have been tempted into in a foreign country, with their families left in their country of origin. Pressure to keep up the discipline came from the transnational extension of the religious organization. They also could bring the prestigious image of the Asapuwa, demonstrating their having access to a number of elite members from their home country. Since the Asapuwa in Sri Lanka is a charismatic temple, and there are many members attached to it, they would not get the opportunity they get here in Korea to be close to the monks, and even to talk to the main monk. The teaching encourages the concept of “Kalyana Mithra,” which is to be actively involved in Buddhist practice while at the same time practicing it as a group, in the context of which one can help other persons’ spirituality, recognizing this as one of the best gifts you can give to friend. The creation of Shrawakadaruwoo symbolized this aspect of Mahamevnawa teachings.

Second, a former Sri Lankan ambassador played an essential role in providing institutional support for transnational religious place-making. The ambassador, who is himself a Buddhist, was impressed with the way the Mahamevnawa Asapuwa conducted their Buddhist activities before deciding to join the Asapuwa in South Korea. The embassy issued letters to get support from South Korean Buddhists. ⁶ After establishing the Ansan Asapuwa main temple, he helped Asapuwa for several events. He also initiated the visit of the main monk of the Sri Lanka Asapuwa to South Korea. Since the visits, the Asapuwa temple in Sri Lanka has sent a monk every 2 years and contributed to the institutionalization of the Ansan Asapuwa. Once the Ansan Asapuwa was in need of shipping a sizable Buddha statue from Sri Lanka, and he helped them get a total tax exemption for this shipment and as well as a 50% cost reduction in the Korea Air delivery cost. As well, during the 2015 Vesak celebration to celebrate the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death, the Ambassador arranged for two Korean television stations (BBS, BTN) to broadcast the events. Believers in Ansan worried about the fact that the current ambassador is a Christian, as they expected support for monk’s travels, as well as maintaining contacts with Korean Buddhists.

Third, the collaboration with and the support from Korean Buddhist temples and international network including Asapuwa foreign branches in the United States and Germany and Sri Lankan migrants in other countries contributed to the making of the transnational religious place. Because Sri Lankan migrant workers’ visas have time limits and do not allow them to invite another person to South Korea or own a place, establishing a place for worship heavily depended on South Korean people and organizations. Impressed with the Buddhist practices conducted by Shrawakadaruwoo, the Korean Buddhist temple in Daegu assisted them to formally invite two monks to South Korea to formally establish the Mahamevnawa Asapuwa in South Korea. While the place was created as a product of the network among transnational actors, the case of the virtual Buddhist place and the interaction between online and offline places illustrates the emerging dynamics of contemporary transnational migrants’ geographies. Our next findings section discusses the creation of an instance of cyber Buddhism and the dynamics that it has brought about to transnational religious place-making.

Interaction Between the Physical Temple and the Virtual Temple

The evolution of the roles and nature of the cyber Buddhism is noticeable because it articulated the development of the transnational network that contributed to the place-making of the physical religious place. The virtual activity constituted a part of the built environment of the physical place as shown in Figure 3. The creation of the Korean Asapuwa by the Sri Lankan migrant workers received religious guidance from different international branches of the main Sri Lankan Asapuwa around the world, the first case of such international guidance. One Sri Lankan migrant worker of Shrawakadaruwoo knew a monk in the German Asapuwa and contacted him to ask for guidance to perform religious activities. This practice has continued even after the physical temple settled down.

The cyber Buddhism presented the following two characteristics. First, at the beginning, the cyber Buddhism played the role of a substitute for a physical religious place. Ansan Asapuwa has used the online platform in different ways at different stages of its creation. The four Sri Lankan migrants who initiated the place-making thought of distributing CD’s containing speeches by Ven. Kiribathgoda Gnanananda Thero, the founder of Mahamevnawa Buddhist Monastery. Planning to distribute CD’s was an act of their desperate need to spread the Buddhist teaching of the founder of the Mahamevnawa and, at the same time, was the only activity that they could imagine because they did not think that they had the capacity to set up an online platform or a physical place. They looked for possible ways to reach people who attended other Sri Lankan Buddhist temples, as well as to other Sri Lankan migrant workers in South Korea more generally.

Such activity motivated the four migrant workers to set up a group. Then, they began to use an online platform by putting up a link to the Mahamevnawa Sri Lanka Asapuwa website, which consists of text, audio, and video materials of Mahamevnawa Buddhist teachings, on a very popular commercial website run by a Korean migrant worker. They invested money for some time on this web link, until eventually the “spreading Ven. Kiribathgoda Gnanananda Thero’s teaching” transformed into a key mode of conducting religious programs throughout South Korea.

The online Skype program was a further development in response to the constraints of their situation, and it eventually developed into a virtual temple. When the monk Ven. Mangala Thero began the online Skype program with other Mahamevnawa Asapuwa located in other foreign countries, the migrants’ negotiation and networking formed the social background for the online platform. The online program has been used by the German and other Mahamevnawa branches in other countries as a substitute for the requirement of having a monk from the Mahamevnawa Sri Lanka Asapuwa. These online programs are conducted through Skype, which allows them to make conference calls with 25 Skype accounts at one time. A Skype conference calls is an audio call where the participants cannot see each other. The virtual ritual and talks have promoted the Shrawakadaruwoo members to the extent of becoming part of Mahamevnawa Asapuwa. With online guidance, they have conducted religious activities according to Mahamevnawa culture. The activities eventually led them to invite two monks from the Sri Lanka Mahamevnawa Asapuwa to make the physical temple in Ansan.

The established Skype group in the Ansan Asapuwa became a transnational network for religious place-making in other countries by providing spiritual leadership on the part of the monk. It is noticeable that the Asapuwa members in South Korea, who participate in these online Dharma by the monk, continue to practice online, despite the fact that they now have a physical temple. The Dhamma recite a selected teaching or a story from Theravada Buddhist scripts. The talks invite their friends and families in other countries like Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, and Italy to join the virtual temple. Sri Lankan migrant Buddhists in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Japan join the Skype group as well, as they do not have access to a religious place. Every week they send an online reminder to the participants of these programs, confirming the time in each country’s time zone, while one person in South Korea initiates the Skype call and adds all the participants to the call. As Asapuwa increasingly settled down, at one point, Ansan Asapuwa became the representative Mahamevnawa Monastery for East Asia and eventually began another online program for a number of Sri Lankan migrants in Japan. There seemed to be an expectation that this online program in Japan will eventually set up the conditions necessary to establish a Japan-based Mahamevnawa Asapuwa.

The virtual temple also developed into Buddhist conversations and sermons in various cities across South Korea. Since the two monks began their work in South Korea, up until now (mid-2016) they have continued with their Skype Dharma discussion program. As a monthly program conducted by monks in some major cities, the monks have put in a continual effort into developing these online programs, which they were encouraged to do after the enthusiasm displayed by participants when the online programs first began. There have been some temporary pauses to the Skype program, but today, these programs are conducted routinely, on a weekly basis.

There have been several kinds of virtual temples conducted, each one having a group name, specific time, and a community. For example, on Wednesday night, they have a Buddhist discussion named “Namo Buddhaya,” where around 50 Sri Lankan migrant workers connect through Skype. The virtual temples have been at night, at a time when a significant part of the migrant community finish their daily shifts at work. The cyber Buddhism through Skype contributed to disciplining migrant workers in spiritual life as they carried out their lives in a foreign land. One of the monks in the Ansan Asapuwa leads the discussion, and the members ask the monk Buddhist Philosophy-related questions such as how they can control the sexual desires they feel when they see women’s sexy outfits in South Korea and how they can practice meditation at work. On Thursdays, there was a virtual temple for newcomers who are not that familiar with Buddhist teaching. It consisted of Sri Lankan migrant workers and Sri Lankan students in South Korea. On Saturdays, they organized another virtual temple where a monk delivered a teaching talk.

Second, the online platform has not disappeared even after the physical temple began to play the main role among those living and working in Korea, but developed further as transnational platform as well as continuing to have weekly rituals. Such online activities further developed into a virtual temple via Skype. The two residential monks in the Asapuwa maintained playing a role in the virtual temple to reach Sri Lankan migrant workers who are scattered throughout South Korea. This means that, in the process of the religious place-making, the virtual temple consists of an instrument of religious place-making and later became part of the religious place itself. Initially, the Skype conversation led to the transnational religious place-making of the physical temple and supplemented the role of the physical temple by providing access to believers in other places. Since then, the format and the membership developed along with the physical temple and eventually became a virtual temple, an independent religious place itself. Over time, the transnational networkers of these members led them to expand their virtual temple into other countries.

Conclusion

The findings of this study demonstrate the following. First, the Buddhist place-making has involved in the increased mobilities of the key actors who contributed to the making of both physical and virtual places. Four migrant workers who migrated from Sri Lanka to work in South Korea have initiated the idea, created a core group, and invited two monks by contacting other actors. They contacted the main Asapuwa temple in Sri Lanka and invited two monks to come to South Korea with help from a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk who resided in South Korea and a South Korean Buddhist temple. Expanding the Korean Asapuwa, they located their main temple in Ansan. The Sri Lankan ambassador has empowered the religious place-making by institutionalizing the network between the Buddhist temple in the destination society and the main temple in the departure society. These actors’ mobilities and encounters constituted the interactive process of the religious place-making.

Second, in terms of the online platform, a virtual temple has evolved from a substitute to a transnational religious place itself. A transnational network developed during the process and supported the place-making of a physical Buddhist place, the Ansan Asapuwa, and, at the same time, sustained an active virtual temple that connected Sri Lankan migrants in various countries. Modern communicative technology such as Skype provided a platform where personal networks developed into collective making of religious places.

This study asks about the relation between transnational mobility, networks, technology, and daily living in terms of collective performance in space. It implies that spatial relations are constructed and negotiated and contributes to the mobilities discussion as well as place-making discussion. As motilities become multiple among increasing number of migrants, their religious place-making as the place of belongingness is becoming increasingly flexible, multidimensional, and complex. While migration is constrained depending on the relations between different nation states, flexible place-making can take place either via the motilities of religious leaders (monks) accommodated by institutions or online religious performance that does not require physical motility. It should be also noted that leaders are not only given but also created during the relational process of religious place-making. It is important to understand that transnational religious place-making takes place both in the space of flows and in the space of places (Castells, 1996; Taylor, 2003). The nature and culture of the religious places will not be the same as in the flows, opening up an interesting future research agenda.