Burmese Buddhism in Everyday Life

Nash, Manning

doi:10.1525/aa.1963.65.2.02a00050

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…The monks' role as a field of karmic merit (P. puññākkhetta) for the laypeople amplifies this authority. Moreover, laypeople can acquire karmic merit by paying respects to monks (see Spiro 1982: chapter 17;Nash 1963). The moral authority of the monks especially rests with their having undergone the ordination ritual (institutional authority), which is a rite of separation from the mundane sphere; their vow of celibacy, normative observance of the 227 disciplinary rules of the Vinaya, and ideally their curbing the moral vices of greed, hatred, and delusion (P. lobha, dosa, moha), which would make them more impartial (see Spiro 1982;Walton 2017: 139-140, 148).…”

Section: Monastic Authority: Generic Authority and Nationalist Authoritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Monastic Authority and Legitimizing Religio-Political Activism: Buddhist Nationalist Monks in Myanmar

Foxeus

2023

Numen

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The Buddhist nationalist movements that emerged during the political and economic liberalization of the second parliamentarian period (2011–2021) in Burma/Myanmar provide unique material for the study of monastic authority. The aim of this article is to examine two overlapping dynamics regarding how monastic authority is established and undermined. As for the first dynamic, the article examines three strategies in Buddhist nationalist sermons aiming to provide legitimacy for the nationalist monks. The second dynamic is a political outgroup criticism that became more common during the period in question. The article makes a distinction between generic monastic authority, which is the fundamental one, and nationalist monastic authority, as they are legitimized and established in different ways. Finally, the article argues that recognition of monastic authority by laypeople is based not merely on trust and respect but tends to be a more complex process.

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Section: Monastic Authority: Generic Authority and Nationalist Authoritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Monastic Authority and Legitimizing Religio-Political Activism: Buddhist Nationalist Monks in Myanmar

Foxeus

2023

Numen

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“…Wealthy patrons provide for the more ambitious and at times opulent monasteries that have characterized Indian Buddhism in later centuries. "The contributions [by laity] are so numerous, so frequent, and so varied in size and content (cash, food, clothing, utensils, or labor) that it is very difficult to determine how much of its income a family may contribute in a year" (Ingersoll 1966, 66; see also Nash 1963).…”

Section: Buddhismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altruistic Celibacy, Kin‐Cue Manipulation, and The Development of Religious Institutions

Qirko

2004

Zygon

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Building on a model first proposed by Gary Johnson, it is hypothesized that religious institutions demanding celibacy and other forms of altruism from members take advantage of human predispositions to favor genetic relatives in order to maintain and reinforce these desired behaviors in non-kin settings. This is accomplished through the institutionalization of practices to manipulate cues through which such relatives are regularly identified. These cues are association, phenotypic similarity, and the use of kin terms. In addition, the age of recruits and their contact with actual kin are factors that relate to kinship recognition and that are similarly manipulated by institutions in order to reinforce altruistic behavior directed toward non-kin. Support for this set of predictions is presented from historical and ethnographic sources on monastic life in Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism, as well as Islamic dervish groups, the Essenes, Shakers, and others. Potential implications of the model for understanding the development of religious institutions are preliminarily explored by reviewing Joachim Wach's model of religious developmental stages as well as some of the literature on the relationship between individualism and communalism in incipient religious organizations, in light of the kin-cue manipulation model.

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“…A final view is that doctrinal Buddhism and animism can be distinguished, but that instead of being in conflict, they fall into two distinct and complementary niches. Here, Buddhism is concerned with ‘otherworldly’ goals of better rebirth and spiritual liberation (the attainment of nirvana), while animism is concerned with ‘worldly’ aims of bettering one’s lot in the present lifetime [28]. One meditates and donates to the monkhood in order to further one’s otherworldly progress; but for more material needs, one must turn to gods, spirits, magic and astrology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In anthropology, these begin with Redfield [3], who suggested that the ‘great tradition’ of the literati and the ‘little tradition’ of folk religion comprised two coexisting strata of local religion. While positions like those of Spiro [21] and Nash [28] are compatible with this view, others, including those of Obeyesekere [26] and Tambiah [33], would suggest that the distinction must be re-evaluated: local religion is one, integrated totality, and if there is such a thing as a ‘great tradition’, it is that which exists in urban centres and specialised institutions, not as a stratum of village life. In the study of ancient Near-Eastern religions, the distinction appears, no less controversially, as that between ‘official’ and ‘popular’ religions [34].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Buddhism and animism: A psychometric test of the structure of Burmese Theravada Buddhism

Stanford

Jong

2019

PLoS ONE

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Anthropologists and religious scholars have long debated the relationship between doctrinal Theravada Buddhism, so-called ‘animism’, and other folk practices in southeast Asian societies. A variety of models of this relationship have been proposed on the basis of ethnographic evidence. We provide the first psychometric and quantitative evaluation of these competing models, using a new scale developed for this purpose, the Burmese Buddhist Religiosity Scale. Having tested existing hypotheses in our first study (n = 2285) we formulated an alternative model, which was then tested in our second study (n = 3377). We argue that this model provides support for a two-dimensional distinction between great and little traditions, shedding light on decades-old theoretical debates. Far from being in conflict, the transnational religious tradition of the literati and the variegated religious practices of locals appear to be reflected in two complementary dimensions of religiosity. This distinction has been heretofore neglected in psychometric research, but arguably merits attention beyond Buddhism, in the psychology of religion more generally. Our findings suggest that, insofar as research on religiosity relies on doctrinal pronouncements denigrating little traditions as mere superstition, it may be blinded to a crucial dimension of religious life.

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Burmese Buddhism in Everyday Life

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Monastic Authority and Legitimizing Religio-Political Activism: Buddhist Nationalist Monks in Myanmar

Monastic Authority and Legitimizing Religio-Political Activism: Buddhist Nationalist Monks in Myanmar

Altruistic Celibacy, Kin‐Cue Manipulation, and The Development of Religious Institutions

Beyond Buddhism and animism: A psychometric test of the structure of Burmese Theravada Buddhism

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