What Makes Folk Buddhism?

In English-language scholarship, folk Buddhism has indicated at least four distinct, yet often overlapping, types of rituals, ideas, and Buddhists: the miraculous or supernatural, the non-normative or unorthodox, the adopted or assimilated from another religious tradition, and the ordinary or low status. The delog (‘das log) phenomenon, found in Tibetan Buddhist cultures, offers a useful case study for investigating these different connotations of folk Buddhism. Delogs, people believed to be dead who return to life with stories of postmortem realms, occupy an uncertain position vis-à-vis Buddhist institutions. Although delogs support the didactic and economic needs of Buddhist monastics, delogs’ miraculous death journeys, their unorthodox reports about the dead, and their status as ordinary laypeople render them suspicious and problematic for the Buddhist elite. As delogs demonstrate, folk Buddhism is interesting Buddhism. At the same time that the label “folk” works to denigrate and dismiss, it signals that something or someone is challenging the status quo.