From karma to sin: a kaleidoscopic theory of mind and Christian experience in northern Thailand

Abstract

In this essay, I argue for a 'kaleidoscopic' theory of mind implicit in people's common-sense awareness of themselves, others, and reality in northern Thailand. Phenomenal experience is here generally understood as contingent on a host of factors, from personal habits to the influence of others, such that sensory perceptions themselves are in part a consequence of prior action (karma) with moral import. When Thai people convert to Christianity, they reject karma in favour of a God who will absolve a believer of all offence. Drawing on both neo-Pentecostal and Buddhist Thais' rich descriptions of their encounters with the divine and a host of other 'supernatural' experiences, I show how many Thai Christians maintain an abridged sense of karmic contingency. With attention to local theory of mind, non-monotheistic knowledge formations come into focus, highlighting the unique nature of the individualism emerging among Thai congregants and the stakes such individuation has for them.Johnny Srisak 1 explained his conversion from Buddhism to Christianity as the result of a single Bible verse: Romans 8: 5. He was a young man at the time -before his marriage, before the launch of his successful architecture career, before the birth of his now teenaged sons. First his older sister had converted, which was an anomaly then in a northern Thai family. He and his father eventually followed her lead. As we talked in the open-air portico of his now long-established Pentecostal church in the urban centre of Chiang Mai, he recalled a question that had haunted him in his youth. Was there no power in the universe that could change our fate and clear us of our wrongdoings? The question was a rail against karma, the force taken for granted in his social world, that which can limit one's life chances regardless of even the most active striving. Then one day his sister presented him Romans 8: 5: 'But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us' . It was the answer to his rail. Christ could alleviate all the moral wrongdoing that could not be undone directly and immediately by any other means. Johnny traded karma for sin and felt himself absolved.

Believe it and/or not: Opening up to ontological pluralities in Northern Thailand

“…Buddhaghosa's treatment of the Abhidhamma , detailed below, provides a guide to what I call a “kaleidoscopic” view of the mind present in contemporary Thailand. Indications of a kaleidoscopic theory of mind were evident for both Buddhists and Christians in our study (see Aulino 2020), and my work here seamlessly includes first generation converts to Christianity as such. Working from this framework allows the modes of believing articulated here to reflect ontological pluralities pointed to by my Thai interlocutors, which in turn serves to subvert otherwise hard-to-shake implications of belief.…”

Seeking contact: British horsemanship and stances toward knowing and being known by (Animal) others

“…Aulino adopts the term patiency from philosopher of Buddhism Maria Heim, who uses it to describe the passive or nonagentive aspects of lived experience (2014). There is no ethical burden, or aspirational possibility, of training oneself into sensing relatedness accurately once and for all, since “perception itself [is]understood at least in part as a function of prior actions and one's fated position” (Aulino 2020 41).…”

“…Horses were not the only mirrors, then: riders worked on themselves within a hall of mirrors, calibrating and checking perceptions and interpretations of what was really going on, dwelling on the ever‐enigmatic question of how they were really connected. To emphasize the particularity of this ethical urge to know and be known well, consider anthropologist Felicity Aulino's (2020) contrasting case of Thai Buddhist understandings of mind. There, Aulino explains that “karma provides a moral ‘patiency’ to experience” (2020:41).…”

‘Not as single spies’: a review of European Social Anthropology 2020

“…Across a viable spectrum of sites, diverse in their geography, economy, history and culture, a team of researchers deploying a shared process, inspired by the work of Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, have sought to establish an empirically comparative evidence base. Reflecting work done among converts to Christianity from Buddhism in Thailand, Aulino (2020) proposes a 'kaleidoscopic' theory of mind where the logics of previous perceptual experience, particularly related to karma, continue to be available to subjects, like images revolving in a kaleidoscope where they can be drawn into patterns that elaborate various combinations of experience. Brahinsky (2020) examines the strategies developed by charismatic evangelical Christians in the USA to integrate personal experience of the supernatural within a phenomenological frame which is overwhelmingly secular by culture.…”