Feeling Apart: Relations of Belonging in Tibetan Buddhist Lay-Monastic Communities

Abstract

Studies of belonging and community formation often emphasize commonality of values, emotions, and feelings. This article highlights the importance of practices that create relations of distance between members as well as closeness. Drawing on fieldwork in institutionalized Tibetan Buddhist communities in northeastern Tibet (Amdo/Qinghai), I focus on everyday practices of respect and faith that materialize community by putting monks, reincarnate lamas, and laity “in their place.” This can include the most quotidian of acts, such as standing when someone enters a room. I argue that such practices of “feeling apart” and their refusal are central to individual negotiations of religious belonging and to the dynamic, ongoing process of community formation. The importance of these practices becomes particularly apparent when, as is the case in northeastern Tibet, seemingly taken-for-granted relations of belonging and the emotional style that enacts and creates these relations are felt to be precarious.

The Aesthetics and Emotions of Religious Belonging: Examples from the Buddhist World

“…The issue uses this diversity in approaches and case studies to destabilize and provincialize concepts such as belonging, authenticity, and temporality. We follow actors who negotiate the authenticity of religious objects through their "aesthetic habitus" (Brox 2021), who sustain belonging through "feeling apart" (Caple 2021), or whose communities center on emotions that relate simultaneously to multiple temporalities (Baffelli and Schröer 2021). Our actors are found embedded in complex aesthetic formations of spectacle (Williams-Oerberg 2021), foodways (Kolata and Gillson 2021), musical practice (McLaughlin 2021), and textual narrative (Townsend 2021b).…”

“…What and who should and should not belong to their communities? People who appear in these studies articulate a moral politics of belonging through quotidian concerns, such as how food is prepared and consumed (Kolata and Gillson 2021), how one appreciates music (McLaughlin 2021), the emotional style of interactions between community members (Caple 2021), or if one has the innate sensibility to feel whether or not a Buddhist commodity for sale in a local market is "true" (Brox 2021). The emphasis throughout is less a matter of determining static boundaries around what Buddhism is than analyzing how it is done.…”

“…The specific cases we examine extend from socio-historically embedded "traditional" Buddhist communities (Brox 2021;Caple 2021;Kolata and Gillson 2021) and emerging or expanding lineage traditions (Townsend 2021b;Williams-Oerberg 2021) to stigma-laden "new religions" (Baffelli and Schröer 2021;McLaughlin 2021). The authors treat each case as a carefully contextualized site within which to explore our shared questions about how it feels the way it does to belong to a Buddhist community and how these communities' constituent aesthetic practices guide their participants' understandings of themselves.…”

“…This includes the creative use of aesthetic forms by established authorities to "strengthen and expand religious community" (Williams-Oerberg 2021) or by visionaries engaging in an aesthetics of persuasion oriented as much toward themselves as others (Townsend 2021b). It can also include the care taken in the preparation of a dish of rice and beans (Kolata and Gillson 2021); the dedication of working through basic exercises to perfect instrumental technique (McLaughlin 2021); the sorting of sounds, smells, and sights as one shops in a market (Brox 2021); or even the act of rising to one's feet when someone enters a room (Caple 2021). The upheaval of extraordinary events can precipitate the formation of new communities and connections (Baffelli and Schröer 2021;Townsend 2021b;Williams-Oerberg 2021).…”

“…The upheaval of extraordinary events can precipitate the formation of new communities and connections (Baffelli and Schröer 2021;Townsend 2021b;Williams-Oerberg 2021). But bonds between members are sustained and shaped through everyday aesthetic forms and emotional practices, as well as through their refusal (Caple 2021;Kolata and Gillson 2021;Williams-Oerberg 2021) or appropriation (Brox 2021). This is so even if, as McLaughlin indicates, changing institutional dynamics can render precisely what it is that members belong to less clear.…”