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In this chapter, I also introduce the readers to the particular transnational Tibetan Buddhist community working to build the Maitreya Statue. This chapter provides an overview of Global Buddhism today with special attention to issues of community and identity for FPMTers. In the literature on Global Buddhism, disparate communities of practice are often differentiated with imprecise or careless terminology: 1) for example, Jan Nattier’s use of “ethnic” vs. “elite,” which overstates racial and class factors; or, by using the term “convert,” which is anathema to some people labelled thusly. This chapter makes a substantive contribution to the issue of properly naming disparate practitioners, as I’ve posited a heritage spectrum of practitioners that more sensitively works to contextualize various Buddhists.

This chapter looks FPMT as an organization. It examines the teachings, beliefs and practices espoused in FPMT. Looking at the religious landscape of FPMT through the lenses of enculturation, ritual practice and charitable giving offers context that shows why FPMT might want to build the tallest statue in the world. To show FPMTers in practice, the chapter narrates a particular offeratory ritual in Bodh Gaya. This chapter also examines a “relatively non-heritage” Buddhist institution in depth and how issues of translation and change are processed by practitioners. This chapter makes a substantive contribution to the issue of properly naming disparate Buddhist institutions, as I’ve posited a heritage spectrum of institutions that more sensitively works to contextualize various Buddhist groups.

This chapter explores the religious utility and merit-making involved in statue building in Tibetan Buddhism. Turning towards the MPI statue itself, the chapter looks at its history from conception through various early instantiations of the design and then to its final iteration. The chapter looks at the MPI organization and staffers, and the early practices and plans of MPI in their first location: Bodh Gaya.

This chapter looks at the religious phenomenon of relic veneration in Tibetan Buddhism, and how that tradition has been harnessed by FPMT’s global Relic Tour. The Relic Tour, which travelled regularly for many years, both displayed relics and promoted the MPI statue. In this chapter, there is an in-depth ethnographic account of one particular Relic Tour stop, which shows the material and expressive culture on display

Drawing on the literature of the anthropology of futurity, this chapter engages with the articulations of hope evinced by those who desired to build the Maitreya Project statue. The chapter looks at some techniques of ritual forecasting in Tibetan Buddhism, such as oracles and casting divinations, and how these were deployed in service of the promotion of the MPI statue. The chapter also deconstructs administrative projections and missives directed at the public, and how momentum was constructed in the service of fundraising. I argue that the “future tense,” the culturally articulated gap between what is and what informants are striving towards, is a useful analytical frame for the anthropology of futurity.